Moral Knowledge and Moral Language

Moral Knowledge and Moral Language

Moral knowledge is one thing; moral language is quite another. The two topics need to be treated separately. I am mainly concerned here with the language question, but I will make some prefatory remarks about moral knowledge. Moral knowledge comprises knowledge-that, knowledge-how, and knowledge-what: we know (say) that genocide is wrong, we know how to reason about moral questions, and we know what various moral categories are (the right, the good, the virtuous). This knowledge is a priori, largely innate, and arises spontaneously in the human mind (but not in the animal mind, except rudimentarily, if at all). We have a good grasp of various moral natural kinds—lying, stealing, promise-keeping, beneficence, etc.—as well as very general moral kinds such as good and bad acts. These are not like natural kinds whose real essence may be unknown to us. Importantly, moral knowledge is not subject to traditional skepticism: there are no brain-in-a-vat scenarios to contend with (the inhabitants of the Matrix are not morally deluded). Thus, we are justifiably certain of what we claim to know. Also, we are not tormented by the limits of our moral knowledge—it has comprehensive scope. We are not cognitively closed to certain identifiable moral questions as a matter of principle. All in all, our moral knowledge is in good shape; arguably, better than our knowledge of the external world (let alone the past and future). We get an A for moral knowledge—and we didn’t have to study for the test.[1] We might suppose, given our epistemic credentials, that our moral language would be similarly distinguished—that our linguistic moral competence would reflect our epistemic moral competence. We should be expert moral speakers.

But, alas, it isn’t true; indeed, our moral language has struggled to express our moral knowledge. We have trouble verbally articulating our moral understanding. Not to point too fine a point on it, our moral language is inadequate, dubious, slipshod, and metaphorical; it is easy to poke holes in it and lament its imperfections. Logically perfect it is not. The linguistic moral turn is a turn towards the dark, clumsy, and impoverished. First, the moral word “good” has to share its form with the non-moral “good” (and similarly for “right” and “ought”). Second, it is hard to find true moral generalizations: we can’t say lying is always wrong, or promise-breaking, or stealing, or killing. We can’t even say that maximizing happiness is always right (it can conflict with justice). Thus, we are treated to tortuous formulations like “Lying is prima facie wrong”, which even its author (W.D. Ross) feels the need to apologize for. Or we are urged to adopt the imperative mood to express our moral knowledge: “Do this, don’t do that!” But the imperative mood has nothing essentially to do with morality and is wheeled in in a vain attempt to capture the normative force of moral truth—truth, mark you, not obedience. Imperative sentences have nothing logically to do with moral principles or precepts. Moral truths need no commanding authority to give them force (even God). Moral knowledge is not commandment knowledge—that applies to the military not the moral. To act immorally is not to disobey orders (that is neither necessary not sufficient). Nor will categorical propositions do: “Generosity is good”, “Lying is bad” etc. For these are wide open to counterexample and much too strong; they breed skepticism about the force of morality. We all know that morality is not so simple, that such statements must be taken with a grain of salt; but how should they be amended so as to correspond with our moral thought? Should we insert a ceteris paribus qualifying clause? But then, we have to be able say when the generalization breaks down. We just don’t seem to be able verbally to hit the nail on the moral head, to find the moral mot just. The case is somewhat like aesthetics and laws of nature: here too the facts, and our knowledge of them, seem difficult to fit into linguistic form. Our aesthetic knowledge is extensive and sophisticated, but our aesthetic vocabulary is comparatively limited. The word “beauty” has to do a lot of heavy lifting. No doubt this is partly because aesthetics is an affair of the senses for the most part, and our sense experience is notoriously rich compared to our vocabulary. The beauty of a landscape is hard to put into words, as we all know. Likewise, laws of nature are real and known and yet their linguistic formulation is much disputed—how exactly should we frame them? Are they universal generalizations over particulars, or modalized versions of same, or statements about universals, or not statements at all but truth-less predictive devices, or summaries of observations? We find it difficult to put our knowledge of natural laws into words (some of it is knowledge-how). Morality is like this: our knowledge of morality pre-dates our language for it, and our language lags behind, or is inherently unsuitable for the task assigned to it. Morality verges on the ineffable. We can make individual judgments well enough, but we find it difficult to formulate general principles. We can’t even say what grammatical mood best expresses it. We are a bit like Tarzan in the jungle: “Jane, good, snake bad”.

I don’t see any cure for this linguistic lack, but I think I see an area of moral language that gets neglected, and which has some signal virtues. The approach is to privilege the comparative form, so I call it “comparativism”. Thus, “It is better to work than steal”, “It is better to tell the truth than lie”, “It is better to preserve life than destroy it”, etc. In this approach we mark a contrast; we situate the moral value we wish to praise and promote in the context of its opposite. It is better to do X than Y—that is the basic logical form. This doesn’t logically imply that X is good or the best; more modestly, it says that one thing is better than another. It doesn’t make an outright claim of moral goodness. We could paraphrase these formulas as “On the whole, it is better to do X than Y”, thus allowing for exceptions (stealing food in extremity, lying to save an innocent life). Such statements are calculated to ward off accusations of unreasonable absoluteness; they therefore accommodate the principled objector to more absolute formulations—they are easier to accept as true than their stronger counterparts. Note that our moral knowledge might be less qualified, because it can take in more complexity; the comparative theory applies only to moral language—to what we should say morally. In its most forthright form, the theory contends that the basic laws of morality have this comparative form: this is what we mean by saying something is good or bad; this the correct analysis of our moral talk (our thought might be different). It is a linguistic theory not an epistemological or ontological theory. Intuitively, we are saying that one thing is morally superior to another thing with which it might be in competition. It is better, for example, generally to tell the truth rather than to tell a lie. Why this should be is another question—maybe because it is more likely to generate long-term good consequences. It might also be taken to mean that truth-telling as an act of will is inherently more righteous than lying (Kant), though in certain circumstances this intrinsic superiority might be overridden (not Kant). The important point is that we use the comparative form in our verbal explications of the content of morality, i.e., our moral knowledge. They can, of course, be modified according to need and nuance, as in “It is far better to preserve life than to destroy it”. Instead of just saying, baldly, “It is (categorically) wrong to steal”, we can say “It is better on the whole to work for what you have than to steal it from someone else”. Then we allow ourselves wiggle room to append “though in certain circumstances what counts as theft legally need not be a decisive objection to stealing”. Notice there is nothing relativistic about this approach: in every society it is better to tell the truth than to lie, even if members of the society reject such a principle (say by being out-and-out ethical egoists). It is more the idea that moral concepts naturally come in pairs between which a comparison is being made. Russell once gave as an example of an a priori moral truth “Happiness is better than misery”: that seems both true and certain, and it is a comparative claim—not merely the claim that happiness is good, period. Compared to what, one wants to ask. It also allows us to say that happiness is not better than (warranted) grief on a particular occasion—it is just better on the whole. We know what is meant in the simple formulation, because our moral knowledge exceeds our linguistic resources, but the language is clumsy and potentially misleading. Our moral competence outstrips our linguistic competence, but the comparative speech act does better at conveying what morality is all about. It is better than imperatival prescriptivism or statements of prima facie duty or emotional ejaculation or universal quantification; it is truer to the heart of the matter. We might almost say it is less intellectually offensive than other formulations, especially to critically minded people looking for something they can in good conscience get behind. No one wants to put their life on the line for a false or clumsy verbal formula. Moral comparativism has the right combination of the confident and the qualified, the assertive and the modest. We don’t want to understate the strength and seriousness of morality or to overstate its strictness and universality. The language of morals has to steer a judicious line between these two extremes. Moral knowledge meanwhile can capably go its own way, resorting to verbal expression only when necessary.[2]

[1] I am quickly summarizing here, omitting many a caveat; I don’t attempt to defend these views, merely to set the stage for my discussion of moral language.

[2] Have you ever noticed how, when searching for words to express extreme moral outrage, the right moral language seems out of reach—nothing quite measures up? One resorts to animal metaphors or excremental ones. The language seems puny and inept. Our moral language is cognitively and emotionally under-powered. Attempts at general principles often fall flat. The language faculty is not properly hooked up to the moral faculty. Morality is not inherently linguistic (like laws of nature).