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Show Chapter X. The Criterion of Inclusiveness 394 4. Test Case #3: The Great War for Control of Reality In what follows, I begin this process of inquiry by discussing at length a hypothetical example in which the moral interpretation of an act is in dispute, in order to derive at least some of the more specific requirements on a moral theory to which satisfaction of the criterion of inclusiveness commits us. The point of the example is to explicate what I assume to be shared methodological intuitions of moral salience, and then to formulate them as more detailed elaborations of the criterion of inclusiveness offered at the outset of this chapter. One implication of proceeding in this way, which I accept, is that intuitions that directly conflict with those I formulate here as criteria of inclusiveness are based on some sort of cognitive deficit: incorrigible pseudorationality or psychopathy, perhaps. I address incorrigible pseudorationality about racism, misogyny, homophobia, elitism, and antiSemitism in Chapter XI, following. Because the resulting criteria are metaethical requirements on any adequate moral theory rather than substantive requirements on a particular one, they call our attention to certain recognizably moral data that must be given weight within an adequate moral theory. They do not thereby provide an answer as to how this data should be weighed within the domain of any particular moral theory, nor how particular individuals should be treated because of it. Nor do they provide substantive answers to any other pressing moral questions in which competing interests have a claim on our moral consideration (for example, to the question whether a human fetus has rights that outweigh a woman's right to control her own body). Rather, the strategy is to examine certain typical, pseudorational mechanisms by which such data are excluded, and then to derive more specific criteria of inclusiveness from them that appropriately situate these data within the moral domain. Although I conclude that only a Kantian-type moral theory satisfies each of these criteria, this is not to deny that there might be further criteria of inclusiveness that it fails to satisfy. The example runs as follows. Smith is the Philosophy Department Chairman, a full professor, and a European American male. Vogeler is his colleague and pal, also a full professor, and a European American male. Washington is an assistant professor, untenured, and an African American female.8 Some of the remarks Vogeler makes to Washington over the course of her first semester are as follows: that Washington certainly is a hot number and must have a lot of boyfriends; that Washington only got this appointment because she is black; that Washington looks just like the sexy housemaid Vogeler's family used to have; and that Washington must learn to be more friendly to her senior colleagues if she wants to get tenure. Some of the An easy way to keep clear the cast of characters is to connect Vogeler's name with the double entendre in the German vernacular. 8 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
