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Sanctions and the Notion of Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Mane Hajdin
Mane Hajdin
Affiliation:
University of Waikato
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Extract

It is sometimes thought that it is part of the notion of morality that moral norms are backed up by sanctions of some special sort. This view is sometimes explicitly argued for, as by T. L. S. Sprigge, and sometimes appears in the background of discussions that are centered around other issues, as in Narveson's The Libertarian Idea. The aim of this paper is to show that difficulties in attempts to analyze the notion of morality by appealing to moral sanctions go much deeper than is usually realized.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Fall 1993 , pp. 757 - 760
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1993

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References

Notes

1 Sprigge, T. L. S., “Definition of a Moral Judgement,” Philosophy, 39 (1964): 301–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in The Definition of Morality, edited by G. Wallace and A. D. M. Walker (London: Methuen, 1970), pp. 119–45.

2 Narveson, Jan, The Libertarian Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 125.

4 McCloskey, H. J., “The Complexity of the Concepts of Punishment,” Philosophy, 37 (1962): 307–25, at p. 310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 The argument that follows is presented as an argument about moral norms but it applies to other types of norms as well: no normative system can be successfully distinguished from the others in terms of sanctions that back up its norms. The argument can be regarded as a generalization of some aspects of Kelsen's analysis of legal discourse.

6 Narveson seems to acknowledge this when he says that “for an act to be obligatory or wrong is for it to be the case that its performance or nonperformance should be universally reinforced, positively or negatively” (The Libertarian Idea, p. 223, italics mine; cf. pp. 125, 264), but he avoids spelling out the consequences of that acknowledgement.

7 Cf. Kelsen, Hans's criticism of the “concept of jurisprudence as prophecy” in his General Theory of Law and State, translated by Wedberg, Anders (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), Part One, XII, C-F.Google Scholar

8 Cf. Kelsen's argument involving a similar infinite regress in General Theory of Law and State, Part One, IV, B. Notice that the infinite regress argument is an argument against an attempt to analyze the notion of a moral norm. It is not directed against someone who simply believes that wherever there is a moral norm about something, there is also another moral norm that directs that sanctions be applied against those who violate the first norm, but who does not regard that as part of what makes the first norm moral. That person's view leads to infinite proliferation of moral norms, which is somewhat awkward, but perhaps defensible after all.

9 Again, my point here is not that there cannot be a non-moral norm telling us to apply sanctions of the sort S whenever moral norms are violated. The point is merely that it is implausible to try to build reference to such norms into one's analysis of the notion of morality.

10 For the purposes of this paper it is sufficient to assume that there is a correct way of arguing about moral questions. The point that is being made here is not affected by philosophical disagreements as to what that method is.

11 While this line of reasoning about moral norms is implausible, an analogous line of reasoning about legal norms results in Kelsen's analysis of law as essentially a system of norms about application of sanctions, rather than norms backed up by sanctions (the latter are for him merely a way of presenting the former).