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International Phenomenological Society

The Significance of Differences of Ethical Opinion For Ethical RationalismAuthor(s): Richard B. BrandtReviewed work(s):Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Jun., 1944), pp. 469-495Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103036.

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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINIONFOR ETHICAL RATIONALISMThe significance for "ethical rationalism" of disagreements about moral

principles has been a problem for some time. I wish to consider thisproblem in relation, not to all forms of "ethical rationalism," but to aspecific form of it which seems to me more intelligible and important thanany other. Elsewhere I have dealt with a closely related issue by attempt-ing to show that certain laws of variation of ethical opinion suggest thetruth of a certain ethical theory; here I wish to consider simply the rele-vance to ethical rationalism of.difference of opinion in general, or certaintypes of it. Moreover, I shall not attempt to prove either that there areor that there are not real ethical differences of opinion. What I wish todo is simply to make clear in how far there is anything in the nature of thespecific kind of ethical rationalism in which I am interested, and in thenature of at least certain types of difference of opinion about ethical mat-ters, which makes these differences a significant difficulty for this ration-alist theory.'

I. ETHICAL RATIONALISM DEFINEDThe generalposition I am denoting by the term "ethical rationalism" is

the one held in common, or approximated to, by such writers as RichardPrice, Thomas Reid, and contemporaries like Moore, Broad, Rashdall, andRoss. In talking of "ethical rationalism," therefore, I am not aiming todeal with the wider problem of the possibility of rational criticism in ethics,which is admitted, up to a point, by writers as divergent from the afore-named as Hume and Westermarck. Furthermore, although a coherencetheory like Professor Paton's might reasonably be called "ethical ration-alism," his view of the analysis of ethical predicates and of the nature ofethical knowledge is entirely different and subject to entirely differentobjections.How then might one define "ethical rationalism"? Or, in other words,what is the general type of theory supported by the aforenamed writers?

Ethical rationalism is a species of what may appropriately be calledethical realism. Ethical realists believe, first, that there are ethical charac-teristics or properties, and that these sometimes belong to acts, persons, ormotives. This conception makes it possible for ethical realists to thinkthat ethical judgments are not merely expressions of emotion but affirmpropositions as much as any factual judgments (since they assert the

I What I have to say is meant to apply also to the corresponding general theory ofvalue. For closely related considerations supplementary to this paper, see "AnEmotional Theory of the Judgment of Moral Worth," Ethics, vol. LII, pp. 41-79.469


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470 PHILOSOPHY&NDPHENOMENOLOGICAVLESEARCHinherence of these ethical properties in certain subjects). Second, ethicalrealists hold that these properties are irreducibly ethical, that is, cannotbe adequately analyzed into some complex of non-ethical terms. Thusrealism is a non-naturalistic theory. Third, ethical realists generallybelieve that ethical properties belong to their subjects consequentially, thatis, follow from the natural characters of the object.' For example, themoral worth of an action follows from the agent's motive, his conceptionof what is right, and so on; it is not a contingent property which an actionof a certain sort might or might not have, as a triangle might be small orlarge and still be a triangle.2aThe feature which distinguishes within ethical realism the species we arecalling ethical rationalism was described by Richard Price in the followingwords:

"What is the power within us that perceives the distinctions of right andwrong? My answer is: the understanding."'Ethical rationalism is thus marked by the view that moral facts are knownby reason. Negatively, this means that ethical truths are not known bythe senses, the desires, or the emotions, although it is not denied that theemotions play a much larger role in ethical experience than in, say, mathe-matical insight,- either as a consequence of the moral jugment (but not itsground) or as a necessary precondition of the intellectual insight into ethicaltruth. This belief that ethical insight is an affair of the understandingdistinguishes the aforenamed writers from ethical realists of the non-rationalist species: writers like Scheler and N. Hartmann, who believe thatsomehow the awareness of ethical truth is itself emotional in character, andhave therefore protested against the identification of ethical a priorismwith ethical rationalism.4

The ethical rationalist, then, believes qua realist that there are irre-ducibly ethical qualities which inhere consequentially in their objects.

2 This statement requireselaboration for exactness. Obviously, e.g., the rightnessof an act has something to do with the actual, or at least probable consequences whichthe agent was obligated to consider. The point is that the inherence of the ethicalproperty follows from natural facts, although not necessarily facts about the subjectof the ethical property. How one ought in consistency to express one's self dependson one's conventions concerning the use of terms like "property," "fact about," andso on.2a Price and Reid both regardedmoral truths as necessary truths. The point has

been put clearly by ProfessorMoore (PhilosophicalStudies, pp. 267ff.) and ProfessorRoss (The Right and the Good,pp. 121-123).3 A Reviewof the Principal Questions in Morals, ch. I, ?1; in Selby-Bigge, BritishMoralists, vol. II, p. 108.4 Scheler, Der Formalismus n derEthik und die materielleWertethik,pp. 61, 64, 85,260-272;Hartmann, Ethics, vol. I, pp. 177f., 185.


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DIFFERENCESOF ETHICALOPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 471Because he holds that these qualities are irreducibly ethical, he holds thatthey are the sort of entity which cannot be observed by the senses, orthrough introspection. The rationalism of the ethical rationalist supplieshis theory of how ethical facts can be known: not by the senses, or byemotional intuition, but by the understanding.

We must now attempt to describe the specificform of ethical rationalismwith which we shall be concerned. This special form I am going to call,quite arbitrarily, the "self-evidence" theory. This is arbitrary, for manypersons use this term to denote phenomena, or alleged phenomena, alto-gether different from those I am going to denote by it. However, the termis familiar and short; and what I am going to denote by it is simply thetheory that in ethical experience there is, at least sometimes, insight into anecessary connection between ethical and non-ethical properties. I shall,in a moment, try to explain more fully what this means. When this theoryhas been defined as fully as seems necessary, we shall be able to make animportant classification of three types of ethical rationalism, which oughtto be kept distinct, and failure to distinguish which, I think, has resultedin a good deal of confusion.But first one point must be cleared up. The reader will doubtless beasking himself, Is it being claimed that the precise theory which is to becalled the "self-evidence" theory, in the exact form in which it is going tobe stated, would be accepted by all the writers whose names have beenmentioned, or is it merely a theory which the writer of this paper happensto think important? The answer is this. It is not claimed that this precisetheory is explicitly accepted by these writers, but some of them apparentlydo hold a view at least very close to the one to be described, and there arepassages in the works of others which encourage a similar interpretation.But whether these writers would accept this theory, just as it stands, is ofsecondary concern. For, in the first place, the ethical rationalists men-tioned would in any case have to accept a theory so similar to this one thatthe consideration of difficulties, which will be our main concern, will besignificant for the evaluation of whatever theory they would accept. And,in the second place, the definition to be offered of "self-evident insight"appears to me to be a highly defensible account of rational insight in gen-eral, in non-ethical fields (and would, I think, be quite widely accepted, atleast in the main outlines); and since there seems to be no reason to dis-tinguish ethical rationalism, or insight into necessary connections in ethicalexperience, from other insights into necessity (and I find no evidence thatthe ethical rationalists make any such distinction), it seems reasonable tothink that the tenability of this theory in ethics is important to assess.We are saying, then, that one possible ethical theory, which we are callingthe "self-evidence" theory, holds that there is, in ethical experience, knowl-


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472 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEAIRCHedge by way of insight into a necessary connection between ethical andnon-ethical properties. We must now explain more precisely what thismeans. We divide this into two parts.The first point needing clarification is the meaning of "a necessary con-nection of properties." The simplest way of elucidating this is by offeringan illustration: that of the relation between shape and size. A thing can-not have a shape without having some size, and we can, therefore, say thatthe property of having size is necessarily connected with, or entailed by, theproperty of having shape. Or, to take an example from ethics which theethical rationalist might use, we might say that an experience could not bepleasant without being, other things aside, correspondingly good. To putit in general terms, a property (or relation) is "necessarily connected" withone or more other properties (or relations) when the occurrence of the setwould be impossible without the property (or relation) in question qualify-ing, in the way it does, the entity qualified by it.The second matter requiring explanation is the kind of experience wehave in mind when we speak of "knowledge by way of insight" into such anecessary connection. Now the "self-evidence" theory asserts that, in thecase of propositions expressing necessary connections like the one betweenshape and size, we can understand the proposition in the sense of havingclearly and fully before us the terms or essences involved, including therelationships in which they stand to one another, i.e., the whole system ofrelated terms. And when we do so understand it, the theory holds, it isclear that the essences themselves are before the mind, and since they are,their necessary connections, or incompatibilities, are open to inspection, inthought, by us. It appears reasonable to hold that in cases of this sort,the process of thought is controlled by the material before it (and if it is not,how little justification wve ave for believing anything ), so that, when wveare attending to the question of the necessary truth of the proposition onthe basis of an examination of the nature of the elements involved, theawareness of the nature of the terms involves the awareness of the impossi-bility of their being related in certain ways, or their necessary connection.This kind of insight is to be clearly distinguished from mere "inability tobelieve the opposite," for it sometimes happens that we are unable tobelieve the contradictory of a proposition (for example, because someperson who commands our allegiance has declared the proposition to betrue) when we are by no means aware that the nature of the terms impliesthat the terms are necessarily connected as the proposition asserts, that is,when we are not aware that the contradictory of that proposition is im-possible of realization.At a later stage we shall consider one of the objections which may beraised against the account in the preceding paragraph.


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 473Belief in general principles can be justifiably based upon such insight, forit is clear that if we have an insight into a connection depending upon thenature of certain characters or relations as such, then we can be certain ofthe truth of a correspondinggeneral proposition. Some philosophers wouldcall the arriving at a general principle in this way "intuitive induction."It is noteworthy that (a) it is, on the one hand, arguable that our knowl-

edge of the principles of logic (not as uninterpreted sentences, however) and"analytic truths" in general is based upon this kind of insight; and that(b) on the other hand, there is nothing in what has been said which wouldrule out the possibility of some synthetic proposition being known to betrue in this way. If there are important ethical propositions which areknown to be true in this way then there must be some such syntheticpropositions, for the basic ethical propositions are synthetic.One refinement is necessary. It is obvious that, even if one believes thatone can know for certain whether a statement is necessarily true whereverthere is full understanding in the sense described, one might still be doubt-ful whether there are ever sufficient grounds for asserting certain knowledgethat a given proposition is necessarily true, for the reason that there mayalways be room for doubt as to whether one has understood or grasped themeaning of the proposition as fully as is required for certainty. Thismeans that, at least in most cases, we ought not to say that a given proposi-tion is certainly necessarily true, but that it is probably necessarily true.A proposition which, objectively, cannot be false, may therefore, subjec-tively, be unable to gain more than probability for itself. This qualifica-tion of the "self-evidence" theory, which will be explained somewhat morefully later, ought perhaps not to be regarded as one which adherents of"self-evidence" have usually accepted; but it adds so greatly to the de-fensibility of the theory, to my mind, that I shall consider it as a part ofthe "self-evidence" theory.This characterization is sufficiently precise for our purposes. Theessence of it really is simply that we can sometimes get a set of essencesbefore us fully, and that when we do (and when we are attending to themcarefully to the end of seeing their relations) we just can see that certainrelations cannot possibly obtain between some of them, and hence, thatcertain of them are "necessarily connected," and certain propositions arenecessarily true.So far, in the course of explaining what is meant by "knowledge bymeans of insight into necessary connections," I have described the "self-evidence" theory in general terms. Of course, this theory in ethics claimsthat ethical experience is, at least sometimes, insight into necessary connec-tions, of this sort. The theory claims that we have reason to place aconsiderable degree of confidence in some ethical convictions, because we


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474 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHhave a corresponding degree of reasonable confidence that we have insightinto a necessary connection between some ethical property and one or morenon-ethical properties. It is this specific theory, or form of ethical ration-alism, whose tenability I am going to consider in the light of differences ofopinion about ethical matters.But first, I think it is instructive to divide rationalist ethical theories intothree types, on the basis of this conception. I am going to call these types"pure self-evidence," "pure intuitionism," and the "mixed" theory. WhatI mean by "intuitionism" must be stated. It means simply the theory thatthere is direct awareness of the occurrence of an ethical property along withone or more non-ethical properties,' although this direct knowledge is not by"self-evidence" in my sense, but is more akin to sense awareness, differingfrom sense awareness in being intellectual, and in not including a sensorypresentation.All three theories hold that there is in some sense "rational" knowledgeof ethical truths. They differ among themselves with respect to the extentto which they give a place in ethics to insight into necessity (that is, to"self-evidence"), or to put it the other way about, with respect to the ex-tent to which they claim rational ethical knowledge which is not by insightinto necessity. Let us begin with the "mixed" theory. (1) The "mixed"theory holds that it is possible to intuit (or observe non-sensuously) theoccurrence of ethical characteristics in a certain situation, but also holdsthat, after acquaintance with a few such instances, it is possible to see thatany situation of this sort must necessarily have an ethical character of thissame kind. Ethical knowledge is thus like the fact that we first oftenobservethat things are both colored and extended, and then some day itdawns on us that after all they could not be colored without being extended.Thus we begin by simply observing the concurrence of these two characters,and we end by having insight into their necessary connections. Or, to takea case in ethics, we might first

"observe, e.g., a number of instances of lying and notice that they are allwrong. We then reflect, and see or think we see a necessary connection be-tween the non-ethical characteristic of being an intentionally misleadingstatement and the ethical characteristic of being wrong."'(2) Consider next the view we are calling "pure intuitionism." Thistheory is like the mixed theory in asserting that we can often simply observeor intuit the coexistence of an ethical character and one or more non-ethicalcharacters. But it differs from it in denying the possibility of eventual

5Sometimes ethical properties are involved.6 Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory, p. 271; cf. Ross, The Right and the Good, p.33; and Foundations of Ethics, p. 3.


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 475rational insight into their necessity, or the arriving at knowledge of generalethical principles by "intuitive induction." Instead it holds that generalprinciples in ethics are known, with whatever degree of probability they areknown, by problematic induction, the same as any general principle of theempirical sciences.' (3) The "pure self-evidence" theory, on the otherextreme, would hold that whereverhere is moral knowledge, it is by insightinto necessity. It would deny, or at least not assert, therefore, that thereis observation or intuition of the coexistence of an ethical character andone or more non-ethical ones in individual cases. Its theory about theknowing of ethical properties in individual cases is that this knowledge islike the knowledge we have that a given colored patch with which we wereacquainted in the past had some shape or other, although we cannotremember what shape it had, because we know that anything colored musthave some shape or other. That is, it holds that our knowledge of thewrongness, say, of a given lie is, although probably inexplicitly, by way ofseeing that this falsehood, by virtue of being a falsehood, must be bad,because the very nature of falsehood makes it so. The "pureself-evidence"theory, of course, also holds that general principles in ethics are knownthrough insight into a necessary connection of essences.8It need scarcely be said that it is unfortunate if an ethical rationalist doesnot distinguish these three theories. I think also that the failure to makeexplicit the intuitionist forms of ethical rationalism is apt to be misleading,

I This theory is possibly held by Professor Laird; see A Study in Moral Theory,pp. 97-98.8 This theory is possibly illustrated by John Balguy in his Foundation of MoralGoodness,where he says: "If Moral Ideas had no Relations belonging to them, or ifthese relations were imperceptible to Human Understandings: then it might justly besaid, that ourMoral Ideas yielded us no Propositions. But since some of these Ideasagree, and others differ, as much at least as any other Ideas; and since these Agree-

ments and Differences are commonly very evident to all who will attend, it follows,that Moral Ideas must needs be equally fruitful of Propositions. ... The Idea ofGratitude cannot properlybe said to infer any Obligation. But when a Man comparesthe Idea of Gratitude with that of a Benefaction received, and examines the relationbetween them, he cannot avoid inferring or concluding that he ought to be grateful."Part II, article 3; Selby-Bigge, op. cit., vol. II, p. 188. See also articles 1 and 2.It should be noted that the "pure self-evidence" theory is faced with a difficultyfor which the other two theories seem to have a ready solution. This is the problemof the source of our ethical meanings, of our acquaintance with ethical properties.It might be argued that, just as we need visual perception to know the meaning of"colored" or "red," so we need some direct intuition to know the properties meantby "wrong" or "good," etc. The "pure intuitionist" and "mixed" theories would,therefore, regard their "intuition" or "ethical observation" as a solution of thisproblem, and I have no doubt would regard this as a great point in favor of theirtheories. The issue seems to turn on the manner in which the understanding can bethe originator of "ideas." There is space here only to mention this issue.


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476 PHILOSOPHYNDPHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHfor if a writer simply says that ethical knowledge is an affair of reason, thereader is very apt to believe that it is possible to construct a tenable "pureself-evidence" theory of ethics. For surely the term "rational" or "reason"is associated in the minds of most with some insight into a relation of in-volvement or entailment between characters. It is hardly English to callan awareness "rational" if it is simply an observation albeit "intellectual")that some property as a matterof fact accompanies some other charactersin a given instance, independent of any insight that the one follows fromthe others.

Whether there are any among contemporary moralists who accept the"pure self-evidence" theory I do not know. Professor Broad has stateda position, although he does not seem definitely to defend it, which seemsto illustrate the "mixed" theory. He says:

"It is arguable that I first recognize the co-existence of certain non-ethicalrelations with certain ethical relations in a particular case; then see by Intui-tive Induction that the presence of the former entails that of the latter inany case; and finally use this as a premise for inferring the presence of theseethical relations in other cases in which I find these non-ethical relations."9Professor Ross ought also to be classified, I think, as an adherent of the"mixed" theory, although one cannot be sure. He says:

"We see the primafacie rightness of an act which would be the fulfilmentof a particular promise, and of another which would be the fulfilment of an-other promise, and when we have reached sufficient maturity to think in gen-eral terms, we apprehend primaacie rightness to belong to the nature of anyfulfilment of promise. What comes first in time is the apprehension of theself-evident prima facie rightness of an individual act of a particular type.From this we come by reflection to apprehend the self-evident general prin-ciple of prima facie duty."'0What we shall now discuss, however, is the general thesis, common tothe "pure self-evidence" theory and the "mixed" theory, that in ethicalexperience there is rational awareness of a necessary connection betweenthe natural properties of a situation or agent and its ethical qualities, thatis, that basic ethical principles are "self-evident" in the sense in which that

has been defined.II. SELF-EVIDENCE AND ERROR

We turn now to our central problem, that of assessing the extent to whichethical disagreements (or errors) throw doubt upon the "self-evidence"theory of ethics. This matter can be approached most conveniently by

I Five Types of Ethical Theory, p. 112. Cf. also pp. 264-273 and Examination ofMcTaggart's Philosophy, vol. I, pp. 46-53.10The Right and the Good,pp. 32-33; cf. Foundations, p. 3.


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 477first considering the wider question of the reliability of "self-evidence"in general in the face of so many differences of opinion, or errors, on allsorts of matters about which self-evident knowledge has been claimed inthe past. Some writers believe that past errors discredit "self-evidence"as a method of attaining knowledge altogether."The difficulty raised by the fact of error is this: The rationalist assertsthat we can know certain propositions to be true because on examinationthey have been found "self-evident." But, unfortunately, some falsepropositions have been found to be self-evidently necessary, or at leastapparently so. Now this fact apparently permits the skeptic to ask withgood reason of any proposition asserted to be true because it is self-evident:"What better reason have you for believing the proposition you now assertto be self-evidently true than had many people who believed to be self-evident what later turned out to be false? A criterion is no criterion unlessit is a universal sign of the property of which it is alleged to be a criterion.You have no sufficient reason for believing to be true, or even really self-evident, a proposition of which you know only that it appears to be self-evident."

Can this skeptical objection be met? I am inclined to believe that thereis a quite strong reply to it, which must be somewhat as follows. In thefirst place, the rationalist must (and, I think, can) hold that there is noevidence that anyone who has had the meaning of a proposition before him,in the sense in which the "self-evidence" theory required, has made anymistaken claim about its necessity. He can assert that actual errors havearisen, instead, out of the unwitting failure to realize the experience whichis the insight or understanding which is the true insight into necessity.12Whether or not this claim about actual past errors can be made out, thereaderwill have some opportunity to judge, in a moment. But if the claimcan be made plausible, the rationalist would clearly have succeeded insafeguarding from attack one main pillar of the self-evidence theory-thethesis that, when one has realized the conditions prerequisite to insight into

11It should not be forgotten that in many cases where some false proposition hasbeen said to be "self-evident" or "axiomatic," it was not really meant that it wasself-evident in the sense outlined by me, but only in the sense of seeming "fitting,"or "good commonsense," or "that the contradictory of which is ridiculous," or "whatseems obvious" in general but not having the more precise properties I have men-tioned. I suppose that many writers who have complained about reliance on self-evidence have really intended to attack only an uncritical reliance on the "obvious"and not the sort of phenomenon I have described. What I here say is intended toapply to the phenomenon of self-evidence only in my sense.

12 Such a view was expressed by Scheler in connection with a somewhat differingtheory of moral knowledge: "Insight into what is good and evil is essentially incapa-ble of error; there can only be mistakes about whether we have before us a case ofsuch insight." Op. cit., p. 333.


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478 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHnecessity, that is, when one does have clearly and fully before one the "idealfact" being asserted, and is attentive to it, one really can see with suretywhether the proposition in question is necessarily true.

This first claim, however, even if well substantiated falls somewhat shortof meeting the objection satisfactorily. For there still remains the difficultyof showing how the "self-evidence" theory can actually be applied. Thatis, it must be possible to supply some criteria by which one may decide, ina given case, whether or not one is justified in believing that one hasachieved the kind of understanding required. Until one has done this, it isof little value to know that if one had the requisite understanding, one couldbe sure of not falling into error. The question, therefore, is: Can this bedone? I believe the answer to this is in the affirmative. And the answershould take the form of an enumeration of the conditions or circumstancesresponsible for erroneous judgments about necessities. For such an enu-meration will enable us, in a given case, to make an intelligent estimate ofhow confident we ought to feel that a given proposition is necessarily true.For if we know what are the main possible sources of error, we are in aposition to check whether some possible errors have been eliminated, orperhaps to allow for others, and hence, can come to a justified degree ofconfidence about a given proposition. Moreover, such an enumerationprovides a method by which the first claim of the rationalist can be tested;if one can actually get before one a list of the main sources of error, one canexamine whether it is reasonable to believe that the historic errors havearisen from unwitting failure to realize the conditions for valid insight-and not from anv fundamental inability of the mind to grasp necessities.Thus, if the rationalist can find the main sources of error about the self-evidently necessary, he would possibly be able to defend both the principleof knowledgebv self-evidence, and its particular application.

But it is seriously possible to discover the main sources of error in thisfield? The ascertainment of the circumstances responsible for error mayseem a very large order. But it must be rememberedthat we are not askingfor a general analysis of all types of error. And, moreover, I think it canreasonably be claimed that philosophers actually know much more aboutwhat these conditions are than they are accustomed to state. One can findthe most important of these circumstances, I think, although doubtless notall, simply by setting forth what every investigator has more or less ex-plicitly in mind. Many of the normal procedures of the philosopher incriticizing and considering a theory reveal his implicit conceptions of thismatter, although, of course, some aspects of his normal procedure areproperly applicable only to theories which are not necessary and have tobe supported by empirical material. Such demands as that we get beforeus exactly what we mean, in the form of concrete examples where possible,


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DIFFERENCESOF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 479or that we search carefully for alternative possibilities, or that we look forlurking unnoticed assumptions, or that we check and re-check the lines ofreasoning-these methods of eliminating error are at least a partial guideto our conception of the ways in which error is likely to have slipped in.

Without attempting to mention all of the possible sources of error, Ipropose to try to clarify what is meant by considering briefly some instancesof these conditions responsible for error, which must be eliminated orallowed for if we are to aspire to certainty or to some justified degree ofconfidence in our insights into necessity. (1) The first class of sources oferror is whatever circmstances cause us to make a "slip." As Humeremarked, "In all demonstrative sciences the rules are certain and infallible;but when we apply them, our fallible and uncertain faculties are very aptto depart from them and fall into error."'3 The kind of error I have inmind is that of adding a column of figures wrongly. The sources of thiskind of error can hardly be eliminated (except that, say, in the case offatigue, which is one of them, one might take the precaution of not workingwhen overly tired), but it is not essential that they should be, for theresultant errors can be relatively easily discovered and rectified by, forexample, "checking" our answer by adding in the opposite direction, mak-ing our books balance, etc. This type of error can be discovered so readilythat we do not have to consider very seriously the necessity of allowing forits possible presence, in judging of the certainty of a piece of criticizedreasoning. And because it can be so easily distinguished, it cannot reason-ably be said that it throws any fundamental doubt upon our ability torecognize necessary truth.14 (2) A related source of error, which might beregarded as a kind of carelessness, occurs when the thinker does not havethe objects or essences meant before his mind at all, but is working on thelevel of the manipulation of symbols. Beginning logic students often takea fallacious syllogism to be valid because they do not trouble to thinkcarefully of the relations between the terms asserted in the premises.'5 Wemay in general think something self-evident mistakenly, when we have notreally got before our minds the state of affairs in question. It should be

13 Treatise, Book I, Part IV, ch. I.14 There may be more of a difficulty for the "self-evidence" theory here than theseremarks suggest. If, for example, fatigue affects our "self-evident insights" notmerely by making it impossible to get more than symbols before us, or by makingeverything vague, or by making us shirk the effort of attention, but by making our

observation faulty even when a perfectly well-understood whole of terms is beforeus, some modifications of our statement in the previous section would be required,which might make the defense of the position finally arrived at in the next sectionsomewhat more complicated.15A case which I think I have seen in the logic texts is: "White is a color; snow iswhite; therefore, snow is a color."


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480 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHnoted that this source of error can be removed quite readily, simply bytaking care to have the meaning and not merely the words before us whenwe think; where this is not so simple, it is probably because of the presenceof the fourth type of error-makingcondition, which will be described below.(3) What again may be viewed as a kind of carelessless is a source of errorwhich I shall call "over-hastiness."'6 It happens in some cases that we dohave our meaning before us, but that there are nevertheless still certainshortcomings in our understanding. That is, sometimes the terms whichwe mean may really by their natures involve something more than we arethinking of, which is relevant to the truth of the proposition or propositionsbeing considered, and we really need to have the whole situation involvedbefore us if we are to make an adequate judgment. Or, we may. be toocareless to track down precisely where some incompatibility exists, uponwhich a judgment of necessity could be adequately grounded. We canillustrate this latter type of case from the field of ethics, assuming for themoment ,that there are better and worse justified claims of self-evidencethere. Suppose someone says, "Only the worth of the consequences canbe relevant to the rightness of an act." One might say this, perhaps be-cause of the impressiveness of the fact that consequences are always rele-vant and always very important, while overlooking the fact that one hasno right to say it without having gone through all, or at least the mostlikely, other possibilities. This source of error can be eliminated only bytaking the greatest possible care, but I should think that after a careful andhonest person had worked with a piece of thinking for a period of time, hecould make a fairly accurate guess about the probability of significant errorsof this sort-again assuming that errors from the fourth source are notpresent. (4) But if past disagreements about what is self-evident are tobe accounted for, we must seek farther than the conditions of error enu-merated thus far. Among the other sources of error there is one which isparticularly important, which is a considerably more serious source of errorthan any of those we have mentioned, and which is one whose operationcannot well be guarded against as effectively as one could wish. It issimply failure of analysis, deep-lying confusion. People often think, evenafter careful reflection, that they have clearly before them the elements ofa related whole, when as a matter of fact they have them only obscurely inmind. However puzzling the possibility of this may be, we must simplyaccept it as a fact that people are often unwittingly confused. I assumethat most readers will have a fairly clear idea of what I mean, although no

16 This point was called to my attention by Professor Herbert Spiegelberg. I wishto acknowledge my indebtedness both to his paper on self-evidence, Philosophy andPhenomenologicalResearch,vol. II, pp. 427-456, and to many personal discussions ofgreat value.


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 481more precise analysis of "confusion" is attempted."7 Of the importantinstances of mistaken convictions that something is self-evident, most veryprobably owe their origin to confusion of this sort.

It will be useful to illustrate this kind of phenomenon. Suppose it isheld that two straight lines can intersect only once, on the ground that whenwe think of them as intersecting a second time anywhere, as far away asyou please, we seem to see that wherever it occurred, it would be incom-patible with their straightness. This may all seem very clear. But doubtsbegin to appear, I think, as soon as one begins to examine one's conceptionof "straightness." Is the "straight" line the line along which the shortestdistance between the end-points would be measured, or is it any path thatwould be taken by a ray of light outside a gravitational field, or is it someimmediately given property of a figurewithin a sensed field, or is there somefurther meaning? As soon as we have raised these questions, we then haveto consider the conditions of determining which line has these properties,and when we do so it may appear that our original conception of straight-ness was vague and confused, and that our proposition is not self-evidentlytrue at all.The foregoing list of conditions responsible for error makes no pretenseat completeness, but it does indicate the sort of thing which might be donemore fully. And in fact it seems to me that most of the important historicerrors about the self-evidently true can be regarded as the effect of one ormore of these sources of error. Furthermore, it seems that in all thesetypes of case ultimately what we have is an unwitting failure to realize theconditions required for genuine insight into necessity, on account of care-lessness or unwitting vagueness and confusion. And I therefore thinkphilosophers ought to be inclined to believe that the mind is not essentiallydisqualified from seeing necessary connections accurately under appropriateconditions, on account of past errors.

Moreover, if we are inclined to believe that some proposition is self-evidently true, and wish to make more sure that we are right, the thing todo is to examine the proposition more carefully, making sure that we havenot slipped up in some of the ways I have mentioned, or in some similarway. After doing so we shall find on reflection that in some cases wve eemto have better reason for thinking we have a well-analyzed whole before usthan in other cases. Generally, in proportion as the proposition in questiongrows more complex, we shall have less reason for being confident of this.In some cases, the danger of residual confusion or misunderstanding seemsvery small indeed, although in general the possibility of it remains. The

17 Some types of "confusion" appear to me to be closely related to what I havecalled confusions of "over-hastiness." People sometimes simply do not take thetrouble to be as precise and detailed as possible.


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482 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHdegree of our confidence in having a true insight into necessity should varyaccordingly.

Thus it appears that the line of reasoning we have suggested shows thatthe way is open for the rationalist to claim that sometimes it is probablethat we know that certain propositions are necessarily true.'8 Whetherthis probability ever attains certainty is a question of whether we can becertain that all the possible sources of error have been canvassed. Inalmost all cases there seems to be still some room for doubt even where thegreatest possible care has been exercised. In so far the feeling of somewriters that the method of "self-evidence" as a criterion of truth is unrelia-ble has some justification. But I do not think a person can be chargedwithbeing unscientific or gullible because he thinks that sometimes the ap-parent self-evident truth of a proposition is some ground for believing itto be true.

III. MORAL NSIGHTAND THE VARIATIONOF MORALOPINIONWe have now to assess the significance of the occurrence of ethical

"errors.") I have said that I am going to assume, for the sake of dis-cussion, that there are disagreements of certain sorts, although I am notgoing to try to prove it. No ethical realist would deny that there areapparently ethical disagreements. But it may very well be the case thatthe real disagreement is not about any purely ethical principle, but onlyabout factual assumptions. For example, some primitive tribesman, whothinks it his bounden duty to strangle his mother when she reaches a certainage, may seem to be disagreeing ethically with us who do not; but it seemsmore than possible that this conviction of his is based upon certain implicitassumptions (e.g., about the unhappiness of old age, life after death, theshortage of food, and so on), and that if we could allow for this differenceof implicit assumption, there might well not be any disagreement betweenus. There is real doubt, then, whether most, if not all, apparent ethicaldisagreements do not boil down to disagreements about factual assump-tions, at least where all parties are being as careful as they can be, and havethe same situations oi-essences in mind. For the purposes of the argument,however,I am going to assume that there are such differences.

The outcome of our discussion up to now has been that error or dif-ference of opinion is not necessarily a serious obstacle for the use of "self-18 Some philosophers may be disturbed because I have talked of "probabilities"without explaining what I meant. I am assuming here that everyone will recognize

my usage of the word as a fairly common one, which will turn out to have just as gooda theoretical justification as any others. I do not think my use of the word anymore demanding of explanation than that of the statement, "The theory of relativityis probably true."


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 483evidence" as a way to knowledge. We have seen that the occurrence oferrors about the self-evidently true by no means proves either that thereis no knowledge by self-evidence or that we cannot know, with a high degreeof assurance, that a given proposition is self-evidently true. And thereseems to be no obvious reason why this should not apply to ethical insight.Why, then, should "error" or difference of opinion be a problem for the"self-evidence" theory of ethics, at all?

Some moralists have thought, however, that the existence of disagree-ments about ethical principles is of great significance for ethical theory,and that it, in fact, undermines the rationalist ethical theory altogether.And this conviction does not appear to be wholly ungrounded. For theirreason for thinking thus was not simply that there are disagreements, forthere are or have been errors and disagreements in matters involving self-evidence, outside ethical experience; their reason was that they believedethical disagreements somehow peculiar. For one thing, it seemed to themthat the ethical disagreements were both more numerous, and more funda-mental. Moreover, it seemed to them that there has not been, in theethical realm, a more or less steady progress toward agreement as thereperhaps has been, to some degree, in other fields; in fact, it seemed to themthat, as time has gone on, there has tended td be more disagreement, notless."9 This situation does not seem to prove anything by itself, but it isat least sufficiently suspicious to direct attention to ethical disagreements.Two possibilities seem to present themselves. The one is that the statusof error or disagreement in ethics is essentially that which we have describedin the previous section, that is, that it offers no insuperable obstacle toregarding ethical experience as insight into ethical necessities; and that anyunusual prevalence of errorin the ethical field is a result of some secondarycircumstance, such as special circumstances which have the effect of makingmost persons persistently less careful or reliable in their findings as to theself-evident. The other possibility is that some feature of ethical dis-agreements might turn up which would show that ethical errors in someway are so different that the kind of defense of "self-evidence" which wehave been offering would not be available to ethical "self-evidence." Itmight turn out, for example, that ethical "insight" is somehow a quitedifferent sort of experience from intellectual insight, although it can easilybe confused with it; or it might be that ethical disagreement or "error"isof such a nature that, even though genuine insight is ideally possible, onecan never have any reason to believe that that possibility is probablyrealized in a given case.

19 Cf. Westermarck, Ethical Relativity, pp. 42 ff., and H. Osborne, Foundation ofthePhilosophy of Values, pp. 75ff.


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484 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHHow are we to ascertain whether there is anything in the nature of ethical

disagreement which involves a fundamental difficulty for the "self-evi-dence" theory of ethics? One thing which we can do is suggested by ourargument up to now: that we set forth the various types of ethical "error,"or sources of ethical "error" (disagreement) in detail, and see whether theyare compatible with the first, or require the second of these possibilities.Then we can see whether there is anything which sets ethical disagreementsapart from the disagreements which occur in other spheres (e.g., logic andmetaphysics) where knowledge by self-evidence has been claimed, whichwould make impossible a defense of self-evidence in ethics along the linesindicated in the previous section. The occurrence of error of just somekind or other originating from some source or other cannot overthrow theclaim of ethical experience to be self-evident insight, as we have seen; butit may be that the occurrence of some particular kind of disagreement,originating from some particular kind of source, would have this conse-quence.There is in any case another reason for making some sort of survey of thevarious types or sources of ethical error, including especially any which arepeculiar to the field of ethics. For suppose we are using the criterion ofself-evidence for testing an ethical proposition, and are wishing to decidehow confident we should be of our insight, we are in no position to make anestimate unless we have an idea of the various ways in which erroris likelyto creep into such insights. Unless we have such an idea, in view of theprevalence of ethical error, we can hardly justifiably attribute to ouropinion more than a quite low degree of probability. Thus, if we are toclaim a respectable degree of probability for our ethical insights, we needknowledge of at least the main sources of error, in order that we may guardagainst, or at least make a suitable allowance for, the possibility of stum-bling into some pitfall.

It is for reasons of this sort that moralists have felt obliged to discussvarious types of ethical disagreement or "error." They have wanted toshow that there are no errors of such a character as to throw doubt uponthe fact of at least occasional reliable insight into necessity; and they havewanted to indicate the direction in which one should look for the confirma-tion or improvement of one's opinions.The important question for us is whether there are any types of ethicaldisagreement or "error" which (if they exist) somehow throw doubt uponthe "self-evidence" theory of ethics. To this end we shall consider threeof the main types of error or conditions of error which moralists haveconsidered in the course of their attempt to save the "self-evidence" theoryby showing that there is nothing in the nature of ethical disagreementswhich is inconsistent with it.(A) One important source of ethical errors is doubtless the complexity


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 485of ethical problems. Judgments about what is our duty in particularcases have been universally regarded as liable to error on account of thecomplexities of any actual situation. And there are other cases whichconcern general principles where the same difficulties seem to arise; e.g.,in the matter of the bindingness of promises we get into the question of therelevance of any implicit assumptions on which the promise was made,and so on.There seems to be nothing in disagreement caused in this way whichought to raise special doubt about the self-evidence theory of ethics. Forthis kind of liability to error can occur anywhere; it is simply a case offailure to have clear and full understanding because the complexities of thesituation are very difficult to get before the mind. And a person who isestimating the reliability of any insight into necessity ought to take intoaccount the increase in the liability to error as the complexity of the issueincreases.It is to be noted, however, that, this class of "errors"can hardly be all-inclusive. For there are some ethical propositions whose constituentsapproach simplicity-it being recalled that "good" is held by rationaliststo be simple or nearly so. In the case of at least some ethical propositions,if to say that the analysis is practically complete would be going too far,still at least one could only with difficulty maintain that serious misunder-standings about the meanings of the terms have been the cause of disagree-ments. Yet there seems to have been serious disagreement about some ofthese in the past. The following are examples:

"Pleasure is good in itself." "Truth is intrinsically good," or "Knowledgeis intrinsically good." "A promise always has a tendency to make its fulfill-ment a duty, independently of the good and evil consequences involved."The complexity of ethical propositions may, therefore, perhaps be admittedas a satisfactory explanation of some differences of opinion about ethicalmatters, but not about all.20(B) Another important cause to which differences of ethical opinion maybe ascribed is the degree of maturity of the person judging. Rashdall,remarking that an objection to intuitionism on the ground of differences ofmoral opinion is the weakest of the usual objections, said:

"Neither the slow development of the moral faculty nor its unequal devel-opment in different individuals at the same level of social culture forms anyobjection to the a prior character of moral judgments. We do not doubt20 Martineau remarked on this difficulty: "As soon as rightness was insisted on as

an absolutely simple quality, intuitively apprehended by Reason, it became impossi-ble to understand how its presence in a given act could be affirmed by one person anddenied by another; and how, without any complex contents admitting of comparison,it could even be reasoned about between two opponents." Types, vol. II, p. 484.


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486 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHeitherthe axiomsof Mathematics r the rulesof reasoning, ecause omesav-ages cannotcount morethan five, or because omehighly educated lassicalscholarsare ncapableof understandinghe fifth proposition f Euclid's irstbook.... Men'smoral udgmentsmay be intuitive, but they neednot be in-fallible. Self-evident ruths are not truthswhichare evidentto everybody.Thereare degreesof moral llumination ust as there are degreesof musicalsensibility or of mathematical cuteness."21

Rashdall seems to mean (although I am not sure) that the moral judgmentsof some persons are erroneous because, on account of intellectual incom-petence at least in this kind of subject matter, they simply do not under-stand the propositions in question. A classical scholar presumably wouldsee the necessity of an axiom or proof in Euclid, if only he could understandclearly what was being said. One must certainly agree with Rashdall thata person must be able to understand a statement if he is to appreciate itsself-evidence, although one may doubt whether some of the simpler ethicalpropositions (even some about which there is dispute) make very greatintellectual demands.

Differences in maturity seem to be a satisfactory explanation of dif-ferences of moral opinion, again up to a point. For failure to understandon account of immaturity is a universal cause of error about the self-evi-dent. But, like the first possible cause of ethical disagreement, too muchmust not be claimed for it. Some instances of differences of opinion areexplicable in this way without doubt, e.g., a parent explaining points ofhonesty to a six-year-old, or a missionary wrestling with an obtuse bush-man. But very probably some are not, at least -if philosophers are asintellectually mature as they are often supposed to be; for philosophers dosometimes disagree upon ethical principles.22(C) A third source of "error" or disagreement has sometimes been de-noted by the terms "value blindness" or "perversion" of ethical insight.3

21 Theoryof GoodandEvil, vol. I, pp. 84-85. Cf. also Ross, The Right and theGood,pp. 12, 29; Foundations of Ethics, pp. 16-17.22 I do not mean to suggest that differences between moral philosophers are due inany substantial measure to differencesin valuations or ethical feeling. In fact, theirdifferences qua philosophers seem to me wholly traceable to differences in introspec-tion or analysis. Yet it is hard to deny that the philosophical theories of moralistsoften reflect differences between them qua men-sometimes deep-seated differencesof moral feeling. For example, the deep appreciation of character of Kant and Rash-dall is pretty clearly manifested in their ethical theories. Perhaps some disagree-

ments about the intrinsic worth of knowledge have a similar origin. And there are,I think, differences of opinion about the weight that ought to be given to a promiseto a dying man which, I suspect, may be a result of difference of underlying opinionand not merely a mistake in theory.23 A distinction has been drawn between these terms, which seems to me ratherhard to defend, but it. is not important for our purposes.


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 487This source of disagreement has been discussed much of late by writers whodo not call themselves rationalists but who make use of the notion of"emotional intuition," but there is no reason why it should not be used asan explanation of "error" by ethical rationalists, and in fact they haveutilized it at least inexplicitly in the past. The substance of the theory isthat disagreement is to be traced not to the immaturity but to the distor-tion or warping of the organ of insight by passion, disinclination to makeany sacrifice of pleasure or the lower values, and so on.14 We find the mainpoints of the theory in the writings of Thomas Reid:

"Men's judgments are often perverted by their affections and passions.""It is not want of judgment, but want of candour and impartiality, thathindersmen from discerningwhat they owe to others. They are quicksightedenoughin discerningwhat is due themselves." "He that will judge of the firstprinciples of morals, must consult his conscience, or moral faculty, when heis calm and dispassionate, unbiassed by interest, affection, or fashion." "Inmatters of conduct, as well as in matters of speculation, we are liable to bemisled by prejudices of education, or by wrong instruction. But, in mattersof conduct, we are also very liable to have ourjudgment warpedby our appe-tites and passions, by fashion, and by the contagion of evil example. Wemust not therefore think, because man has the natural power of discerningwhat is right, and what is wrong, that he has no need of instruction; that thispower has no need of cultivation and improvement...."25

It is extremely important to know whether or not this source of ethicaldisagreement raises any special difficulty for ethical rationalism. This istrue not only because there seem, at least primafacie, to be many cases ofdisagreement which originate in this way, but also because this source ofdisagreement seems to present essentially the same problem or situation asdoes the influence of custom or propaganda, such as has been experiencedin several countries of recent years where a conscious effort has apparentlybeen made to mold the valuations and moral ideals of the average citizen.These types of case, moreover, are the ones which I think have generallybeen regardedas the ones most difficult to reconcile with ethical rationalism,and if nothing can be found in them which is incompatible with or veryunfavorable to ethical rationalism, it would seem reasonable to expect thatthe "self-evidence" theory is impregnable to attack on the score of dif-ferences in ethical opinion. It must be carefully considered, therefore,whether the origination of difference of opinion in these ways is a serious

24 Cf. D. von Hildebrand, Jahrbuchfur Philosophie und PhanomenologischeFor-schung, vol. V, pp. 463-602;also Scheler, op.cit., ?V, ch. VI, and UeberRessentimentund moralischesWerturteil(1909);also Hartmann, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 226-229.25 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, ?VI, ch. VIII; Essays on the ActivePowers of Man, ?V, ch. I; ?III, chs. VI, and VIII.


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488 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHmatter for the "self-evidence" theory. The issue is a complex one, andone can hardly be dogmatic about it.The defender of the "self-evidence" theory will say that we have in thelast few pages set forth a list, but not a complete list, of conditions whichare sources of error in matters of self-evidence. The kind of source now inquestion is another one of essentially the same nature. He will say it is asource of error of the operation of which most of us are quite well aware.It is one which operates at least to some extent outside ethical experience.Disappointment may temporarily alter our moral opinions, but it may alsomake us think, say, the existence of a good God less probable than we usu-ally think it. Moreover, it will be said, it does not follow from the factthat sometimes passion, etc., pushes us into error, that we are never un-biased and relatively sure that we are seeing the truth-any more thanoccasional confusion can prevent our ever reasonably thinking we havevalid insight. In general, we can distinguish the "normal" opinion andare well enough aware which of our opinions are the ones distorted bypassion or desire. In seeking moral truth, therefore, what we must do isbe sure that our opinions are not distorted by this cause, and when we arepractically sure of this, we have a right to rely on our ethical insights.There is thus fundamentally no greater difficulty in finding truth in ethics,on this account, than on account of "error" arising from confusion orimmaturity.26The strength of this defense must not be underestimated, but neverthe-less the fact that ethical "errors" or disagreements originate in this wayseems to expose the "self-evidence" theory of ethics to two serious difficul-ties. The first one (which would, I believe, arise in all of the forms ofethical realism if this type of cause is admitted to operate) is that this kindof source of "error"involves our not having any way to distinguish, evento a degree of probability, between ethical truth and ethical error. Thesecond difficulty is that this fact is inconsistent with the "self-evidence"theory of ethics, or with the nature of self-evidence as we have defined it.(1) The source of the first difficulty lies in a difference between "errors"or disagreements arising from perversion and those arising in ways likethose described before. For, when disagreement is due to failure to under-stand-say, on account of the complexity of the proposition-then, whenone does have the matter explained to him carefully, one can see what waswrong, and one can see, from that time on, the inferior character of one'sprevious opinion. But this appears simply not to be true of cases where theerror is said to be a consequence of perversion. In this case, when we are

26 The rationalist might, of course, take the line that there are no "errors" ordifferences of opinion which originate in this way.


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 489moved by passion we have one conviction; when we are not so moved, wehave another. But it seems that, when the passion has ceased to act, wedo not have the kind of insight into the inferiority of our passion-createdconviction that we have in the case of the relation of the worse-understoodto the better-understood opinion. On this account, a person who, influ-enced by desire, valued something more highly than others think he should,might well ask them: "How am I to know whether my valuation is wrongor not? After most careful consideration it seems to me clearly to be right.Your only suggestion to me is to get rid of my desire. Then, you say, Ishall see things more accurately. True, I shall see them differently. Butwhy should I believe that a man's valuations are likely to be more correctwhen he is without, than when he is with desires? Why should the apathe-tic person have the most reliable insight in these matters? It is true thatmost persons have my particular desire to a much smaller degree; but theopinion of the majority, just as such, surely does not merit greater cre-dence." This possible answer seems to be a sound one. It means that inan individual case one has no test to guide him in correcting his "self-evident" insight, for there is no reason to believe that his desireless opinionis more likely to be correct than the one we regard as the creation of hisdesire. If we really could know that our desire-caused insights wereerrors, then we should be able to approach a valid opinion by trying toeliminate the effects of desire or at least to allow for them in our estimateof the probable truth of our convictions. But where this is lacking, wehave no method for judging certain of our opinions to be probably moretenable than others.A rationalistic moralist might retort that at any rate this objectionapplies with equal strength in the case of some sources of error accepted ascompatible with relying on self-evidence. Take for example confusion.Here, he might say, although it is true that when we have overcome ourconfusion we can see the inferiority of our former view, yet so long as weremain confused we have no way of deciding whether we are confused ornot. He might, therefore, hold that our difficulty merely illustrates thegeneral limitations on our capacity to judge of the correctness of our in-sights.I think, nevertheless, that the cause of error we are considering is a muchmore serious matter for the ethical rationalist than are the others. For,although it is true that we have no very accurate way of estimating howlikely, in a given case, we are to be suffering from some confusion, we dohave at least some ground for venturing on such estimates. For we may(and often do) consider the class of cases to which a given apparent insightbelongs, and we can see how often opinions like this one have turned out to


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490 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHrequire ubstantialmodification; nd this can reasonablybe a roughguideto the probabilityof present confusioneventually requiringsubstantialmodificationn this case. In addition,we can examinesomeof the viewswhichhave previouslybeen heldon this point,and we can seehow they atleast are inferior o the view we now hold,and we can, therefore,on exam-iningthe successiverefinements f opinionon this point,feelassurancehatseriouserrorcannot lie in those directionsat any rate. But none of thisis true, in the realmof ethics,for there the point is that, in the case of thebasic propositions,we just do not know whetherany progresshas beenmade,and we just do not knowhow largea percentageof opinionsof thisgiven sort has turned out to requiremodification(for we cannot knowwhetherthe modificationwas any better than the original,and, therefore,cannot knowwhetherthe original"required"modification). In addition,it is to b6 feared hat the upshotof this sortof defenseof ethicalrati6oialismis merelythe undermining f rationalismaltogether n anotherquarter.It shouldbe mentioned hat this wholedifficultyarises only if the effectof the interest (etc.) is what I shallcall direct,and not indirect. Thisstate-mentalso applies o the secondobjection,and I shallexplain he distinctionin a moment.(2) Let us turnthen to the seconddifficulty,whichI think is of greaterweightthan the first one. Thisdifficulty,we have said, is in that the pro-ductionof ethical "error"by interest (etc.) is incompatiblewith holdingthat ethicalexperiences an instance of "self-evident"nsightas we havedescribedt. The reasonfor this can be stated quitebriefly.The source of the incompatibility ies in the nature of knowledge byself-evidence. Intellectualinsight, as we have described t, is essentiallythe presenceor givennessof universals,and the observationof their con-nections consequentupon their several natures. There are thus twoessentialconditionsfor valid insight into necessity: the givennessof theuniversalsand the attentive observationof them. Whenthese two condi-tionsarerealized,we have said,there will be validinsight;error s alwaysacase of the failureof these conditions o be realized. In conformitywiththis view, we have assertedthat the historicerrors nvolvingself-evidencemay all be regarded implyas various nstances n which the necessaryandsufficientconditions ailedof fulfillment.Now the fact of the influenceof ethical insightby interestimpliesthatethicalexperiences, for some reason,incapableof being genuinerationalinsight. For if ethicalexperiencewere rational nsightof this sort,ethical"error"or disagreementwould be possibleonly when the necessaryandsufficientconditionsof rational insight were unfulfilled. But, when in-terest and custom affect our insights, this is not true. For the point ofdiscussions the assumption hat sometimes n ethicalexperience,whenwe


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 491have the ethical "proposition" as clearly and fully before us as ethicalpropositions ever can be got before us, there is still "error." Ethical in-sight is (we are assuming for the moment, and it is often admitted bymoralists to be) essentially a sort of experience which can be influenced byinterest, even when, so far as we have any reason to believe, there are nodefects in the understanding of the terms and their relations, as comparedwith other ethical insights. Therefore, if one is correct in saying thatethical insight is essentially an experience in which this kind of "error"can occur, and if real rational insight is essentially an experience in whichthis kind of error could not possibly occur, then ethical insight cannot bethe sort of experience which we call insight by way of self-evidence. Thisis not to say what kind of phenomenon ethical insight is, but we can saythat it is not self-evident insight.One may, of course, deny the premises of this reasoning. One may denyeither that ethical insights ever are (directly) affected by interest or custom,or that self-evident insight is essentially the sort of experience which cannotbe affected in this way. If the ethical rationalist defends himself along thesecond of these lines, what he is saying is that our initial account of self-evidence was overly simple, and that one should really hold that even afterattentive observation of meanings fully before us, our opinion may beinaccurate because of the influence of interests-that self-evident insightis essentially experience in which a certain condition of interest and customis required before validity can be assuredly attained. I shall in a momentpresent what appears to be evidence of some force against this secondalternative, but it may be observed now that it would land us in the skep-tical inability to show any reason for one alternative more than another,which I have just been describing.At this point it is convenient to explain the distinction between directand indirect influence of interest. "Direct influence" means the interestis the immediate cause; "indirect influence" by interest means that interestis only a remote cause, that is, one which operates to produce erroronly bycausing the essential and sufficient conditions of genuine insight to beunfulfilled. For example, interest may prevent us from seriously examininga problem although we may talk as if we had done so; or it may make 11srest with an incompletely analyzed conception; or it may make us ignorecertain factors in the situation of which we are vaguely aware and whichwe could consider if we were honestly interested in an impartial and ob-jective view. There are probably many different circumstances whichmust be thought to be indirect sources of error in this way, that is, whichoperate to cause error by bringing it about, in some way or other, that thegeneral conditions for valid insight are not fulfilled. Our suggestion hasbeen that the operation of interest (etc.) as an indirect source of "error"


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492 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHraises no difficulty for the "self-evidence" theory, but that its operation asa direct source does raise a considerable problem.Let us revert now to the possibility of the rationalist escape from hisdifficulty by denying the premises on which our argument has proceeded.We shall not discuss whether in fact interests (etc.) ever do act directly tocause ethical disagreements; we are assuming that for the present. Whatwe wish now is to know if there is any further evidence for the view thatself-evident insight is essentially an experience which is not directly in-fluenced by passion, custom, etc. I believe that there is such evidence, andit consists in the fact that, when we examine our experience, we can see thatinterests (etc.) do not in fact affect our non-ethical insights into necessity,although they could reasonably be expected to do so if self-evident insightwere the sort of experience which could be so affected. For if self-evidentinsight were essentially the sort of experience which could be directly af-fected by interests, one could reasonably expect that its actual influenceby them would be distributed about in proportion to the extent of theinvolvement of interest in the propositions into which insight is claimed.In the light of this rational expectation, the extent of the actual occurrenceof direct influence becomes an indication of whether this sort of insight isessentially capable of being so affected.

The question then is: Do we in fact find that such insights are directlyaffected by interests (etc.)? Let us consider an example-the law of theexcluded middle, which has been sufficiently debated. Let us ask our-selves if differences of opinion on this point must or can be ascribed, say,to the direct influence of a passion for philosophia perennis or some similardesire or attitude. Or, can we attribute differences of opinion to thesesources in the same way as we can attribute them to failure to get the realmeaning of the issues before us, and so on?It is perfectly obvious that desires and interests do enter in here in someway-desire to defend a position once defended in a paper, desire to opposeas far as possible a general point of view which is disliked, and sQon. Butthe question is: Do desires and interests affect these opinions directly?Here one can simply state one's own meager experience, in the hope andexpectation that others will find the same. In the first place, it is onlyrelatively seldom in debates of this sort that there is a straightforwardquestion as to whether a given proposition is self-evident or not. Mostissues which are debated are entangled in a thicket of assumptions, system,questions of meaning, and so on. But perhaps one can sometimes untanglefrom the thicket a clear-cut issue to be submitted to one's self-evidentinsight (e.g., whether, assuming that the number system is so-and-so andthat the numbers constituting the development of 7rare real in such-and-such a sense, then there must either be or not be three successive sevens


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 493somewhere in the development of ir), and my experience is that when thishappens it always is then seen that the right answer would be so-and-so,if the conditions are granted, and debate does not continue on that point,but always goes back to consider whether the assumptions are reallymeaningful, etc. It does not seem to me that, when such an issue isconsidered, our desires prevent us from seeing; in fact, a statement cansometimes be painfully self-evident. I think it sometimes happens that wecatch ourselves asserting as evident some proposition which we want tohave accepted, at the same time knowing that if we really troubled toattend to it, it would not commend itself to our rational insight; our wishthat it be true or false even when it succeeds in keeping us from attendingto it properly, does not succeed in dulling our sense of what is necessarilytrue. This being so, the necessary and sufficient conditions for validinsight into necessity remain as we have stated them, and do not requirethe inclusion of some ideal conditions of interests, and so on.These considerations appear to me to render the "self-evidence" theoryan unsatisfactory account of moral experience-always assuming, of course,that there are, in fact, "errors" which we must attribute to the-influenceof the desires, etc. It is unsatisfactory perhaps to some degree because,in these circumstances, the criterion of self-evidence is impossible to apply.But it is unsatisfactory mainly because there are in ethics differences ofopinion arising from sources quite different from those which occur in otherrealms where self-evidence may be used, the existence of which is incom-patible with ethical experience being the kind of experience we havedescribed as insight into necessity. The suggestion is that we must allalong have been mistaken in thinking that ethical experience is ever aninstance of insight into necessity-for if it were, "errors" like these couldnot occur.It is noteworthy that it is not ethical error in general which raises anobstacle to the "self-evidence" theory, but only one particular type oferror. And again, so far as our argument is concerned, even this kind oferror may not be an obstacle to ethical rationalism in its pure intuitionistform. It is the "self-evidence" theory and the "value-perversion" theoryof disagreements which cannot keep company. One or the other must begiven up.It should be emphasized again that it may be that there really is not anyethical disagreement of the kind which I have found would be fatal, if itreally exists. Certainly it is hard to prove that there is. It is possible thatour interests, when they work, always affect our opinions only indirectly,by making us careless, or content with the confused, or by making it im-possible for us to get certain essences (e.g., suffering, humility, pride)clearly and fully before our minds, and so on. And in such indirect actionwe have not found an objection to the "self-evidence" theory.


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494 PHILOSOPHYND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHOur conclusion in general, then, is (1) that the method of self-evidenceis not to be condemned because there have been errors or disagreements in

the past, although these errorsought to make us think that our insights aregenerally only probably true; but (2) that the claim that there is self-evident insight into ethical necessity in ethical experience is very dubious,if there are, as we have assumed, differences of opinion caused by interest,passion, and so on, for these could not have occurred if ethical experiencewere the sort of experience which could be a genuine intellectual insightinto necessity.

RICHARD B. BRANDT.SWARTHMOREOLLEGE.

EXTRACTOEl racionalismo 6tico se define como la teoria de que las propiedadeseticas sean inherentes a personas y acciones, y de que este hecho se conocepor el discernimiento racional (evidencia en si), es decir, por la percepci6nde una relaci6n imprescindiblede una propiedad 6tica con la que no lo es,conforme a la naturaleza de ambas. Las teorias racionalistas se dividenen las que mantienen que todo el conocimiento 6tico fundamental es de

este tipo, y las que, por el contrario, admiten cualquier otra '"intuici6n"delos hechos 6ticos que no sea sensorial.A la objeci6n de que la percepcion racional o la "evidencia en si" sea, acausa de los errorespasados, un m6todo por lo comuln ndigno de confianza,se opone la distinci6n entre el uso en principio del m6todo de la evidenciaen si, y su aplicaci6n bajo circunstancias que no sean 6ptimas. Loserroresde la percepci6n racional resultantsiempre, al parecer, de la ausenciade condiciones 6ptimas, y la mayor parte dc los tipos de error se puedenremediaro impedirsi se toman ciertas precauciones que pueden enumerarse.Aun en el caso en que esto no sea posible, hay base para una estimacionracional de la confianza que se pueda prestar a un juicio. El hecho de quehaya habido errores pasados no debe, pues, disminuir la confianza en elmertodoen general, ni en creencias bien examinadas que se mantengan(con la cautela debida) por raz6n de la aparente evidencia en si.Igualmente en 1 't :ta;ni siquiera el nu'merodesproporcionadode diferen-cias de opinion (y por consiguiente de errores) no tiene, como tal, quewiinar a confianzaen laexperieceia etica como percepcion de las necesidades6ticas. Particularmente, el hecho de qcueocurran errores derivados de lacomplejidad de las situaciones eticas, o de la falta de madurez del quejuzga, no presenta ningun obstaculo al racionalismo etico. Sin embargo,la influencia aparente de los intereses, los deseos, las pasiones, las costumbresy la propaganda en las opiones eticas, se opone al racionalismo etico. (Se


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DIFFERENCES OF ETHICAL OPINION FOR ETHICAL RATIONALISM 495supone que las implicaciones de la realidad de tales diferencias de opiniondeben ser investigadas, aunque no se pretenda que su existencia haya sidoprobada.) La raz6n principal de esto es que la percepci6n racional de lanecesidad es una experiencia cuyas condiciones de veracidad son, sencilla-mente, la presencia de universales o esencias en la mente, y la observaci6natenta de ellas. Opinion apoyada por el hecho de que los intereses,pasiones, etc., no parecen influir directamente en las percepciones racionalescon respecto a asuntos teoricos. El hecho de que la percepci6n etica esteinfluida directamente (es decir, directamente en el sentido de que ya nofunciona con s6lo retirar la atenci6n del problema,.o no haciendo caso dealgunos de sus rasgos, etc.) por el interns y la costumbre, sefiala una diferen-cia entre la experiencia etica y la percepci6n 6tica, y aconseja un mayoresfuerzo para producir un analisis que siga otras lineas.

Documents

Brant, Sig of Disagreement for Rationalism