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Rational Morality for Empirical Man1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Anthony Ralls
Anthony Ralls
Affiliation:
University of Dundee.
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Extract

“It Seems natural to suppose”, wrote Mill, “that rules of action must take their whole character … from the end to which they are subservient”. Many moralists have agreed. If we could establish the Summum Bonum, the foundation of morality, the rational basis of moral thinking, this would constitute a criterion, a rule, by means of which men could actually make good practical judgments. This view is radically mistaken. I first try to show this by means of an a priori argument, and then urge the replacement of the “rational model” of practical thinking embodied in this view by an “empirical model”, which should take account of man's actual capacities and limitations. This has important consequences for morality, some of which I investigate.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 44 , Issue 169 , July 1969 , pp. 205 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1969

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References

2 Walsh, W. H., “Kant's Moral Theology”, Dawes Hicks Lecture 1963; Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XLIX, p. 273.Google Scholar

3 ProfessorCrow, James F., University of Wisconsin, “Evolution, heredity, and eugenics”, BBC 3, 10th 05, 1968.Google Scholar

4 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics, London, 5th edition 1893, Book IV, c. IV, sec. 2Google Scholar; quoted in Smart, J. J. C., An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics, C.U.P. 1961, p. 37Google Scholar. Both of these sources contain important discussions of this present issue.

5 Anscombe, G. E. M., “Modern Moral Philosophy”, Philosophy, XXXIII (1958), p. 19.Google Scholar