Hare I
Standard disclaimer: My lecture notes are primarily meant to help me remember what to talk about in class. As a further service to students, I have been endeavoring to write them out clearly enough for others to make sense of them and then to make them available to students. However, this is a long and laborious process, and in most cases it is unfinished. Therefore these notes should be taken with a grain of salt, as I have not had time to make them absolutely complete or to proofread them carefully enough to guarantee that they are without mistakes. As always, your primary source of information should be the lectures and class discussions andBmost important of allBthe texts we are reading.
HARE'S PROJECT
I. So now we turn to Hare and Gewirth. They are both taking what I earlier called the Rationalist Strategy for justifying morality.
A. That is, rather than showing the immorality is against your self interest or imprudent, they argue that it is some sort of error in rational thinking.
B. So they agree with Gauthier (et al) that morality is a kind of rationality, but they do not agree that it is prudential rationality.
C. That is, Hare and Gewirth do believe that immorality is irrational, but they do NOT believe that immorality is always against one's self-interest.
D. The irrationality that Hare and Gewirth see in immorality is not the same kind of irrationality that Gauthier sees in it.
II. Hare is actually R. M. Hare. He's still living. His main books are The Language of Morals (1952), Freedom and Reason (1963) and Moral Thinking (1981).
A. In many ways the middle book is the most central.
B. The first sets the stage with an analysis of moral terminology which first puts forward and defends the theory of universal prescriptivism.
C. The second book reviews the argument for universal prescriptivism and then uses that that theory to argue for a version of utilitarianism.
D. The third book builds on some of the themes of the second.
III. Now there are two main differences between Hare and Gewirth.
A. The first, as we will see in a lot of detail later, is that they end up in very different places. Hare ends up arguing for utilitarianism, whereas Gewirth ends up arguing for a version of deontology.
B. Second, Gewirth is pursuing the more ambitious strategy of showing that everyone has a reason to be moral. Hare, on the other hand simply argues that if you are going to be moral, then it is irrational to fail to be a universal prescriber, and hence (he thinks) some sort of utilitarian.
IV. Hare’s argument owes quite a lot to Kant: it claims that if you are not making universal demands, then you aren't making moral statements. You are just giving advice or making demands of particular persons in particular situations.
A. Recall that Kant thinks that the fundamental principle of morality, the Categorical Imperative is: "Act only on a maxim that you could will to be a universal law."
B. Hare is heavily influenced by this. His theory is called universal prescriptivism, and both halves of that have clearly Kantian roots.
UNIVERSAL PRESCRIPTIVISM
I. See Pojman chapter for a quick overview.
II. Description versus prescription
A. A moral claim does more than simply describe the way things are. It also makes some sort of demand.
1. If there is no demand being made, then the claim is not a moral claim.
2. It is simply the nature of morality that it makes demands.
3. Hare claims that is not simply Hare's intuition about morality, but instead it is simply what the word "morality" means.
B. To say that moral terms and moral claims made demands is to say that they are PRESCRIPTIVE.
C. According to Hare, if a statement does not have a prescriptive element, then it is not a moral statement, but rather some sort of description. Morality, by its very nature, is a system of orders or demands or commands--that is just what the word "morality" means. Thus any moral statement must have a prescriptive element.
1. Hare spends a lot of time talking about moral terms that have both prescriptive and descriptive content.
2. A word like "brave" is like this.
a. Normally the term "brave" has a recommending element to it: To call someone brave is to do more than simply describe her. It is to praise her, and in a sense to suggest that she is worthy of being emulated. Such a suggestion is the PRESCRIPTIVE content that normally attaches to the term "brave."
b. However, the term "brave" also has descriptive content. For to call someone brave is not ONLY to praise her and recommend that we emulate her. It is also to give some description of her.
3. These "hybrid" moral terms, that contain both prescriptive and descriptive elements, are going to play very little role in the rest of the argument, though they do play an important role in some fairly important work in moral theory that we will discuss at the end of the course if time permits.
III. Universalizability
A. Not all prescriptions are moral prescriptions.
B. For example, if you tell your little sibling "Bring me a beer", you are not issuing a MORAL prescription.
C. Hare thinks that a necessary condition for a prescription to be moral is for it to be universalizable.
D. To be universalizable, a prescription has to apply to everyone.
1. however, it can be conditional on certain factors. Thus for example, a prescription of the form "Let trespassers be prosecuted" may not seem to apply to everyone, since not everyone is a trespasser. However, in fact it is universalized, since it really means: Let everyone be prosecuted if they trespass.
2. If you have had quantified predicate logic (and if you are thinking about grad school in philosophy, you'd better make damn sure to take it), then you can see this point more formally. A prescription is universal if it can be expressed wit a universal quantifier, even if it involves a conditional predicate.
a. Let everyone who trespasses be prosecuted becomes (for all x) (if X trespasses, then let X be prosecuted).
b. if we let Px = x is prosecuted, and if we let Tx = x trespasses, then we have (for all x) (if Tx then Px).
E. Hare thinks that the key difference between moral prescriptions and non-moral prescriptions is that the former are universal.
F. A non-universal prescription is a mere demand, with no pretence to objective validity.
IV. The Language of Morals and the first part of Freedom and Reason contain detailed arguments for universal prescriptivism. That argument is as much phil of lang as moral phil, which one reason I did not ask you to read it. (The other is that there's only so many hours in the day!)
V. However, a very rough (very very rough) approximation of his argument is this:
A. Hare believes that moral language is prescriptive--if it does not make some sort of recommendation or give some sort of praise or blame, then it is not a moral statement.
B. Hare rejects naturalism, that is, the claim that moral judgments simply express ordinary facts.
1. Hare rejects naturalism because he holds what is sometimes called Hume's Law, which says that evaluative statements (i.e. statements which include a recommendation or praise or blame) cannot be derived or deduced from purely factual statements.
2. This is sometimes called the fact-value gap: You cannot derive or deduce any values (any evaluative statements) from purely factual statements.
3. So Hare believes that moral judgments are something other than simple claims about facts.
4. What else does morality do besides reporting facts? According to Hare, it gives recommendations or commands, or it gives praise and blame (which also entail at least a suggestion that things that are worthy of praise are to be imitated, and things worthy of blame are to be avoided).
C. Hare holds that moral judgments must be at least partially "objective" in the sense that it must be possible for them to be mistaken.
1. This is sometimes called "fallibilism"--it must be possible to make a mistake, so that all moral claims are not automatically correct.
2. Hare believes that this claim is necessary to fend off moral relativism, which he finds as abhorrent as anyone else who thinks about it carefully enough.
3. Recall from before that the danger of any non-cognitivism meta-ethics is that it will imply moral relativism. If morality is just commands, then don't we all just issue whatever commands we like?
D. Much of The Language of Morals is concerned with the logic of prescriptions. Among the claims it makes is that a pair of prescriptions can be inconsistent if they call for incompatible courses of action. Since inconsistency is a kind of error or mistake, this introduces one way in which moral claims can be mistaken.
E. Hare gives other arguments for the claim that moral prescriptions must be universal. Partly this comes from his analysis of what the word "moral" means. Part of it comes from the claim that non-universal prescriptions would lack the kind of "objectivity" that morality seems to have.
F. The solution, then, is that morality consists of universal prescriptions. This allows Hare to claim that moral judgments are not simply descriptions of fact, and yet at the same time they can be correct or incorrect. In particular, if they are inconsistent or if they are not universalized, then they are incorrect.
I. According to Hare, any sentence that contains a moral ought can be translated into a sentence that expresses a universal prescription.
Thus: "Each citizen morally ought to pay her taxes" actually means "Let each citizen pay her taxes."
II. In general, any sentence of the form: "Everyone morally ought to do X" can be translated into an imperative of the form "Let everyone do X."
III. Notice that a universal prescription LOGICALLY ENTAILS various singular prescriptions, and that it can be used in various sorts of logical arguments.
Thus: "Let each citizen pay their taxes" implies "let Rob Noggle pay his taxes" and "let Bob Stecker pay his taxes" and "Let Gary Fuller pay his taxes" and so on. It also implies : "If X is a citizen, then let him pay his taxes." Or, in quantified predicate logic: (for all x) (if X is a citizen, then let x pay his taxes).
Notice also that "Let all debtors be cast into prison" implies "If X is a debtor, then let X be cast into prison"
HARE'S ANALYSIS OF MORAL ARGUMENTS
I. I've plopped you right down in the middle of Hare's book. In the earlier part of it he argued for his claim that moral language is by its very nature universal and prescriptive. If you want to see that argument in more detail than we discussed here, feel free to pick up Freedom and Reason and look at chapters 2 and 3.
II. But for now let's provisionally grant Hare's claim that moral statements are universal prescriptions, and see where he goes with that.
III. He gets something very very much like Kant's universalization version of the CI (p. 89 BOTTOM):
A. READ IT OUT LOUD
B. Boiled down, it comes to this: make those and only those prescriptions that you would accept if the situation were reversed.
IV. The Debtor example: (modified from 90)
A. Joe owes you, and you owe Visa.
B. You decide whether to pester Joe because he has not yet repaid you.
C. But by the universalization rule, it would be immoral to do that unless you would think it OK for Visa to do the same to you.
D. Since you really do not want Visa calling you up and pestering you, it appears that it is immoral to do that to Joe.
V. Now, this kind of reasoning takes three things: (p. 92-3)
1. the facts of the case--the real facts of a real case, or the hypothetical facts of a hypothetical case
2. logic, namely the universalization principle
3. inclinations about what you would want to have happen to you if the situation were reversed.
4. Imagination (p. 94) to actually picture yourself in the other situation.
VI. Now, in most cases we will be using hypothetical cases: for it will not always be true that you are both a borrower and a lender, eg.
A. So we will generally be asking what you would want IF YOU WERE IN THE OTHER PERSON'S PLACE.
B. In the debtor example, you ARE in the other person's place in a sense: you owe someone just like someone owes you.
1. But this kind of reasoning can work even if that is not the case
2. For we can rely not on the question: What do you want A to do to you given that you are in the same position relative to A as C is relative to you? but rather on the question What prescription would you make if you were in C's position?
3. Later we will see that for technical reasons, this is not QUITE the right way to formulate the question, but for our present purposes this is close enough.
C. Now, this kind of reasoning looks superficially like the use of hypothetical cases on the part of intuitionists.
1. But it is not at all the same, and it is crucial to keep them separate.
2. the difference is that on Hare's scheme, we DO NOT ask about your "INTUITIONS" about what it would be OK to do to you if you were in the other person's position, but rather WHAT YOU WOULD *WANT* DONE TO YOU.
3. An intuition is a belief about what is right. An inclination is just a preference or want.
4. So on Hare's scheme we do not ask what our intuitions say about what would be right if the situation were reversed, but what we would WANT if the situation were reversed.
V. On p. 94 Hare hints at a line of reasoning that is subtle and very important: the idea that what morality is about is somehow disregarding the fact that you are in the position you are so as to consider the situation from everyone's point of view. This idea will play a big role later on, but it's just kind of in the background here.
VI. On page 97, Hare makes an important and interesting claim: If we all accept Hare's analysis of moral language, then he seems to think that all other moral differences can be settled.
A. Thus he seems to think that his analysis YIELDS a decision procedure that can, in principle, settle any moral disagreement.
B. It is going to turn out that this decision procedure is in fact a version of utilitarianism. But this is jumping the gun just a bit.
I. Starting around page 98, Hare considers various ways that someone might try to resist the universalization argument. What he says about these is important for helping us to understand just how Hare thinks of this argument. (This is all explicated in terms of the debtor example from before.)
A. Failure to universalize: The resistor may suggest that he ought to put his debtor in prison, but that he ought not to be put into prison. What can we say to that?
Such a person cannot be using the term "ought" in its moral sense (99). All he can do is to give "singular prescriptions" or demands. So if he says he is using the term "ought" in a moral way when he says that he ought to put his debtor in prison but that he ought not to be put in prison by the person to whom he owes money, then he is simply confuse about what the term "moral" means.
B. Indifference to morality/refusal to make moral judgments (100).
Here the resistor gives up the use of moral terms and only issues singular prescriptions (commands). Hare says that such a person is not even bothering to "play the moral game" and so our failure to win that game should not bother us. However, if he opts out of morality altogether, then we can feel free to disregard his demands if we feel that they are unreasonable. But if he wants to try to GIVE us REASONS for complying with his demands, then his refusal to use universalizable prescriptions (which, according to Hare are the heart of moral reason-giving) will hamper his ability to do this.
C. Special Pleading (102)
Here the resistor makes different moral judgments about himself than about others. Thus he may believe that it is moral for his debtor to be imprisoned but not for he to be himself.
To this, the moralist will ask "on what basis do you make this distinction?" Now it may be possible to produce such a basis in ordinary cases. But if we take the hypothetical case, in which we put ourselves into EXACTLY THE SAME situation as the other person, this move will not be available. For our present purposes (as Hare notes) we are supposing the cases of B and C to be identical, so this move seems unavailable in the present example anyway. And in the absence of any (defensible!) basis on which to make the distinction between your own situation and that of another person, there is no reason not to make the same judgment in both cases. If someone fails to do this, then they are back to failing to engage in moral debate.
D. "Fanaticism" (103-106)
Hare declares: If you believe that it is MORALLY RIGHT for you to imprison C, then you must accept that it is MORALLY right for A to imprison you, given that the situation of you and C is the same as the situation of A and you. The fanatic chooses to "bite the bullet" and accept the conclusion. A FANATIC is Hare's term for a person who would accept universalized moral principles even when they call for him to make singular prescriptions that damage his own interests.
Subversive question for later: Is a utilitarian a fanatic on this definition?
Some Technicalities (106-111).
I. First, Hare notes again that the kind of argument here proceeds by HYPOTHETICAL CASES. And in a hypothetical case, we can assume anything we want.
A. In particular, we can assume that you are in EXACTLY THE SAME circumstances as the other person.
B. Such an appeal to hypotheticals is tamer than some:
1. Since you will only be putting yourself into situations that could actually occur, you don’t have to worry about outlandish assumptions like the state of nature or people seeds or anything like that.
2. All you have to do is to imagine yourself in the (very real) circumstances of someone else. This may require great imagination, but it does not require imagining unlikely or impossible scenarios.
C. Noggle’s Note: In some ways calling this a hypothetical may be just a bit misleading.
1. In a way, we are not so much saying "imagine what you’d want if you suddenly awoke in So-and-so’s body with So-and so’s life, etc., as we are imagining what it is like for So-and-so in his/her actual situation.
2. So what Hare really seems to be looking for is something more like imaginatively identifying with the other person.
3. This is because (as we will see later in more detail), it is not so much "you" that is put into the other person's shoes as it is trying to imagine the other person's total situation from that person's own point of view.
a. What's the difference? the difference is that you are not supposed to imagine YOU waking up in someone else's shoes with all of YOUR preferences and values in tact.
b. Instead, you are to imagine BEING the other person, with that other person's own values and preferences.
II. Second, we do not ask the person presented with the moral argument to predict what he WOULD prescribe in that situation.
A. Rather, we ask him what he now DOES prescribe about the hypothetical case in which he is in that position.
B. This proviso is necessary for there to be a logical contradiction between his current universalized prescription and the singular prescription he makes about the hypothetical case in which he is the other person.
C. However, this is something of a technicality that will not really affect most of what we have to say, so we will just continue to use the locution "what would you prescribe in that situation?" as a sloppy short-hand for the more proper "what do you prescribe about the hypothetical in which you are that other person's situation?"
III. Third, we are not arguing from any facts about what preferences the person has.
A. So we do not say: "Because you do not want this to happen to you in the hypothetical case, you should not do it to the other person in the actual case."
B. To say this would be to derive a moral conclusion from purely factual statements.
C. Instead, we derive the moral conclusion from the prescriptions that the person makes.
D. Of course the prescriptions the person makes are determined largely by the preferences the person has, but we do not derive moral claims directly from preferences.
E. And this brings us to another important point, which goes back to the issue of fanaticism: If you do not want a certain thing, then normally it makes no sense to prescribe that one get it. However, there is nothing illogical about this. That is what a fanatic does. Also, there is nothing illogical about wanting weird things. Many fanatics also do this as well.
a. Both such people (the wanter of weird things and the person willing to prescribe against his own desires) are difficult to deal with morally.
b. However, anyone who wants more or less the same things as we do, and who generally will not prescribe in opposition to her own desires, is a good candidate for moral discussion.
c. In a later chapter, Hare discusses what to do about the fanatic. In it, he makes the following main claims:
i. there are not as many fanatics (in the technical sense of the term) as one might think. Instead, there are people who simply refuse to act on the conclusion that they themselves can draw from the universalization argument. (A quote from Robert Nozick is relevant here. Click here to see it: The Frustrations of Philosophy )
ii. we simply cannot reason with fanatics, and so we may as well not try. Instead we should make sure that fanatics do not do any real harm.
iii. If we do a good job of teaching people that morality is something that can be reasoned about, and help people develop the kind of imaginations required to look at things from the point of view of others, then we should be able to get people to see that there are more alternatives than just fanaticism or relativism. (It is passages like this that make me feel good about teaching PHL 118, even to students who don't really want to take it.)