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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 383 satisfies them, and argues that these are necessary supplements to the formulation of the theory that are implicit in the ideal case. Section 6 introduces a fourth criterion, equally implicit in the ideal case, that addresses not the victim of moral wrongdoing, but rather the corrupt system that denies her fair recompense; and argues for the exclusion of such a system from moral recognition. The discussion of each of the four criteria in Sections 5 and 6 eliminates those moral theories that fail one or more of them. Finally, Section 7 concludes that only a Kantian-type moral theory satisfies these four in addition to those previously discussed. 1. Theoretical Inclusiveness In fact I do think a case can be made that moral theories of the type that K exemplifies satisfy standards of structural elegance and explanatory simplicity, but I do not try to make that case here. More pressing in the case of moral theory is the requirement that the theory enable us to address all the available data of moral phenomena; that its scope not be restricted by ignoring, dissociating, or minimizing the existence of moral phenomena that seem to violate its higher-level laws; and therefore that it have practical application in the non-ideal case of moral anomaly. An adequate theory needs to work in practice. It can do that by restoring theoretical moral anomaly to a recognized place within the theory as an object of moral concern. 1.1. Postow's Objection A first, rough formulation of the inclusiveness criterion, then, requires that a moral theory be receptive to all moral phenomena, i.e. that it not commit the sins of pseudorationality, detailed in Chapters VII and VIII, against events or states of affairs of moral significance that seem anomalous from the perspective of a relatively provincial moral theory. The theory should recognize as morally significant all phenomena that are in fact of moral import; i.e. all phenomena about which moral judgments appropriately can be made. Betsy Postow objects that this requirement in turn requires "theoryindependent guidance in identifying that which really is morally significant;"2 i.e. that a requirement of theoretical inclusiveness commits us to metaphysical realism about moral entities - or, as it is called, moral realism.3 I do not agree. To demand of a scientific theory that it be inclusive rather than provincial, i.e. that it enable us to understand all the available data of physical phenomena does not in turn require theory-independent guidance in identifying that which really is physical phenomena. To what theory-independent guidance could we possibly turn? If the argument of Chapter II is sound, what counts 2 "Piper's Criteria of Theory Selection," Southern Journal of Philosophy XXIX, Supplementary Volume: Moral Epistemology (1990), 60 - 65. 3 I.e. as found in Harman, Sturgeon, or Boyd. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
