Guides and Standards

Continuing the search for principles of moral philosophy and what these things might be I have (as mentioned in the last post) recently been reading the excellent Principled Ethics. I have previously looked at McKeever and Ridge's first description of what principles might be; standards (I wrote about them here). They have more distinctions to add, and I will now move on to their second and third suggestion of what a principle might be: guides, and action guiding standards.

Where standards are the exceptionless rules we might follow if we had a godlike perspective, rules like the principle of utility or the categorical imperative which apply always, perhaps even necessarily, guides are more like rules of thumb. If we were explaining to someone how to win at the stock market we might either pass on the obvious but vacuous standard "buy low and sell high", or give the practical advice of spreading their investments and knowing what the average price is for each share bought. Ethics in practice are performed in a limited time frame, by imperfect agents acting in non-ideal situations. Because the bigger picture is hard to even know, and harder to predict, it is useful perhaps to see principles as less like standards and more like guides. Like rules of thumb.

The authors begin to talk about how one might construe Ross and his system of prima facie duties as a system of guides. I suppose their intent was to highlight the way in which his system allows rules to override each-other, leading one to occasionally break one principle because of consideration of another. They put a disclaimer in, to highlight that Ross may not have intended his ideas in this way, and I feel this was wise. Ross did not have this kind of idea in mind at all. There is a huge gulf between 'useful rules of thumb' and the fundamental set of principles he described. His method was to 'boil down' certain principles we think of as part of morality until only those which could not be split further remained. He certainly did not think of these as the kinds of rules which allowed exception, in the way a rule of thumb might when the standard was consulted.

McKeever and Ridge continue with an interesting combination of their first two ideas, and this gives us action guiding standards (p9).  They consider two ways this might take shape, one 'uninteresting' version in which the only standards accepted are practical, and one which makes use of an ideal virtuous agent. The virtuous agent would be able to ascent to the higher level of critical awareness of a standard to assess the rightness of the guide they use. The authors this ability is necessary for situation in which the agent is able to forsake their virtue in-order to (for example) achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

I wonder if the uninteresting version is as uninteresting, and I wonder if the virtuous agent view is actually much to do with virtue. The 'uninteresting' view is interesting because I like the idea that some guides for action may also be exceptionless standards. I suppose the authors see that this kind of crossover would be rare due to the complexity of putting standards into practice, and in this I certainly see their point. It struck me that a principle like 'do not lie' if it were understood as complicated and involving clauses which specified action may be exceptionless. If it were sufficiently complicated, it would be both a standard and a guide... but of course as finite beings, perhaps we would not be able to grasp such complexity.

In my mind I am currently thinking of this as the complexity problem. A related problem for principles seems to be the non-translatability problem. Perhaps the two are linked: principles do not seem to be the kinds of things we can express with a simple rule (though we try to anyway). When we do express them so, they have hidden, unmentioned clauses which we take to be 'obvious' if one understands the principle properly. It strikes me that this 'understanding properly' is highly complex, and so I don't think it is inconceivable that principles are complex. I need to respond to Dancy on this point however, and am not ready yet.

As for the virtuous agent view, I find it misunderstands virtue. I realise the authors are talking about a virtuous agent in the sense that a utilitarian might call her virtuous who acts in ways which generally promote the greatest happiness. Given this meaning of 'virtuous agent' it does make sense to say that one might forsake their 'virtue' in order to promote the greatest good. However this is to take the idea of virtue as merely the internalisation of acts which generally promote the greatest happiness. Virtue on this view of it is the rule of thumb, and not something which is good in itself.

What I have against this view is perhaps just pre-critical thought. I like to think that virtue is intrinsically good, and that an agent who exemplifies the virtues (perhaps not Aristotle, but similar) would thereby be good in some sense which transcends utility. I need to consider this a bit further to develop it into a criticism.