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O N B A N I S H I N G E T H I C S F R O M O U R M I N D S

JAMES W. NICKEL

In this paper I want to discuss critically the grounds for G. E. M. Anscombe's recommendation that moral philosophy be laid aside until more progress has been made in the philosophy of psychology. 1 As a means of doing this I will consider two criticisms of utilitarianism which Anscombe presents as part of her case for the claim that "it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy."

It is obvious, I think, that the concerns of philosophical psychology are relevant to moral philosophy. Philosophical psychology attempts to analyze such notions as "action," "want ," "satisfaction," "pleasure," "conscience," "deliberation," "motive," "intention," "will," and "character trait." 3 Many of these notions are commonly used to describe the situations and actions with which ethics is concerned, and many theories of ethics utilize these concepts in the formulation of their claims. Because of this one would expect an adequate analysis of these terms to give one a better under- standing of the ethical theories in which they play a role and perhaps even provide one with a better grasp of the ethical phenomena themselves. Hence it seems reasonable to believe that progress in philosophical psychology would lead to progress in moral philosophy.

But in spite of the fact that most philosophers would admit this, not many of them have forsaken the study of ethics for work in philosophical psychology, nor have many demanded that the questions of ethics be put aside while we concentrate our energies in philosophical psychology. Yet this is precisely what Anscombe recommends. Her position on this matter, which I have already alluded to. is that "it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking." 4 She thinks that confusions involving the issues and notions with which philosophical psychology is concerned have vitiated much of con- temporary moral philosophy, and that because of this it would be useful to cease doing moral philosophy for a while and concentrate on such notions as "action," "intention," "pleasure," "wanting," and "virtue." She says,

1 "Modern Moral Philosophy," Philosophy, XXXIII (1958), pp. 1-19. This essay is reprinted in Thomson and Dworkin, eds., Ethics (New York, 1968). pp. 186-210.

MMP, p. 1. a These concepts are roughly those which are dealt with by action theory. But

throughout this paper I have used "philosophical psychology" rather than "action theory" since the former is the term used by Anscombe and since philosophical psy- chology probably includes a wider range of issues than does action theory.

4 MMP, p. 1.

Discussion 205

. . . is it not clear that there are several concepts that need investigating simply as pa r t of the ph i losophy of psychology and, - as I should r e c o m m e n d -

banishing ethics totally f rom our minds? 5 . . . phi losophical ly there is a huge gap, at p resent unfi l lable as far as we are concerned , which needs to be fil led by an account of h u m a n nature, h u m a n action, the type of character is t ic a vir tue is, and above all o f h u m a n "flourish-

ing." a . . . an explanat ion is required how an unjust m a n is a bad m a n . . . . This par t of the subjec t -mat ter of ethics is, however , comple te ly closed to us until we have an account of wha t type o/ characteristic a vir tue is - a p rob lem, not o f ethics, but o f conceptual analysis - and h o w it relates to the act ions in which it is ins tanced . . . . F o r this we certainly need an account at least o f wha t a h u m a n act ion is at all, and how its descr ipt ion as "doing such-and-such" is af fec ted by its mot ive and by the intent ion or intentions in it, and for this an account of such concepts is required. 7

As part of her claim that attention ought to be diverted to these issues, Anscombe tries to show that traditional and contemporary theories of ethics are hopelessly inadequate, and in support of this she catalogues, usually in 25 words or less, the deficiencies of each. For my present pur- poses I will take Anscombe's treatment of utilitarianism as an example of the kinds of charges she makes against existing ethical theories. It will be seen that she tries to show that certain unresolved difficulties in philo- sophical psychology make utilitarianism implausible. I will argue that her attempt to show this is unsuccessful and that her general recommendation about moral philosophy is somewhat misconceived.

I

In her discussion of utilitarianism Anscombe suggests that philosophers have been insufficiently aware of the difficulties in the concept of pleasure and that utilitarianism becomes implausible once one becomes aware of these difficulties. She says,

Be n tha m and Mill do not not ice the diff iculty of the concept "pleasure ." They are of ten said to have gone wrong th rough commit t ing the "natural is t ic fa l lacy"; but this charge does not impress me, because I do no t f ind accounts of it coherent . But the o the r po in t - about pleasure - seems to m e a fatal object ion f rom the very outset . . . . Genera t ions of m o d e r n phi losophers found this concept quite unperplexing, and it r eappeared in the l i terature as a p rob lemat ic one only a year or two ago when Ryle wrote about it. The reason is simple: since Locke, p leasure was taken to be some sort of internal impression. But it was superficial ,

if that was the right account of it, to make it the point of actions. One might adapt something Wit tgenste in said about "mean ing" and say "Pleasure cannot

5 M M P , p. 15. Anscombe ' s emphasis . e M M P , p. 18. 7 M M P , pp. 4-5.

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be an internal impression for no internal impression could have the consequences of pleasure." s

In this passage Anscombe is criticizing two doctrines which were pur- portedly held by utilitarians. These are:

1. Pleasure is an internal impression ("something which they thought of as like a part icular tickle or itch"). 9

2. Pleasure is the point of doing anything whatsoever, i.e. a state of pleasure is the goal which all human actions are ultimately intended to achieve.

Anscombe holds that both of these theses are false, and I am inclined to agree with her, but I do not think that the remark which she adapts from Wittgenstein shows them to be false. The original remark is that meaning cannot be an internal impression because no internal impression could have the consequences of meaning. This remark involves a claim that a certain kind of thing could not have a certain kind of consequences. And the rationale behind this claim is, I think, that the meaning of a linguistic unit makes intersubjective communication possible, and nothing inherently pri- vate like an internal impression could do this; only some sort of public convention could. The consequences of meaning - viz. communication and everything that results from it - depend on an intersubjective connection which no mere internal impression could provide. But when we adapt the remark in the way that Anscombe does, the situation is quite different. If every human action were directed to the attainment of pleasure, then the "consequences" of pleasure would include every human action and every- thing which follows from those actions. Pleasure would indeed have enor- mous consequences on such a view. But why is it that pleasure, seen as an internal impression, could not have such enormous consequences? It is not, as in the case of meaning, that there is some intersubjective gap which no internal impression could bridge. For pleasure-seeking, unlike communi- cation, is not something which essentially involves two people; no inter- subjective link is required. There is no gap between two persons to be

s MMP, pp. 2-3. An almost identical criticism of utilitarianism appeared one year earlier in Anscombe 's book, Intention (Oxford, 1957), Paragraph 40:

It is customary nowadays to refute util i tarianism by accusing it of the 'natural- istic fallacy,' an accusation whose force I doubt. What ought to rule that phi- losophy out of consideration at once is the fact that it always proceeds as if 'pleasure' were a quite unproblematic concept. N o doubt it was possible to have this assumption because the notion that pleasure was a part icular internal im- pression was uncritically inherited from the British empiricists. But it shows surprising superficiality both to accept that notion and to treat pleasure as quite generally the point of doing anything. We might adapt a remark of Wittgen- stein's about meaning and say 'Pleasure cannot be an impression; for no i~n- pression could have the consequences of pleasure. ' They were saying that some- thing which they thought of as like a part icular tickle or itch was quite obviously the point of doing anything whatsoever.

9 Intention, Paragraph 40.

Discussion 207

bridged, and hence the premise that no internal impression can bridge such a gap doesn't come into play. Hence, the rationale which underlies Wittgen- stein's remark about meaning doesn't apply when a similar remark is made about pleasure, and thus the reference to Wittgenstein seems to be mere window dressing.

But even ff we allow that the two theses mentioned are false, this does little to refute utilitarianism since the utilitarian can give up both of them without giving up his essential contentions. Indeed, I think that contempo- rary utilitarians have generally done this. For our purposes let us say that (hedonistic) utilitarianism consists (roughly) in the following claims: (1) human happiness is the only thing that is intrinsically good, and (2) objects are good and actions are good or right insofar as they promote what is intrinsically good.

In committing himself to the view that human pleasure or enjoyment is what is intrinsically good, the utilitarian need not claim that pleasure or enjoyment is an internal impression, analogous to a tickle or an itch. He might equally well hold, for example, that a pleasant state, experience or activity is one which, other things being equal, a person desires to continue or repeat on its own account, and that it is states, experiences, or activities like these that are intrinsically good. Furthermore, it is not at all clear that Mill himself held the view of "pleasure" and related notions which Anscombe is attacking. In his reply to the view that it is impossible for life to be happy, Mill's views on the nature of pleasure and enjoyment become apparent:

When, however, it is thus positively asserted to be impossible that human life should be happy, the assertion, ff not something like a verbal quibble, is at least an exaggeration. If by happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it is evident enough that this is impossible. A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases, and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash o / e n j o y m e n t , not its permanent and steady ~lame. 1~

Now if one views pleasure or enjoyment as an "internal impression," as Anscombe alleges Mill does, then pleasure or enjoyment is an occurrent feeling with a definite and limited duration. But in this context, Mill wants to talk about a pleasant, enjoyable, or happy life, and clearly this cannot be a matter of an occurrent feeling which one has continuously throughout his life. Seeing this, Mill goes on to recognize that enjoyment is not entirely constituted by such states of "exalted pleasure" or "flashes" of enjoyment, and that such states or flashes are only parts of enjoyment. It seems to me that Mill recognizes here that one can be enjoying something without at that moment having some occurrent feeling, and if Mill does recognize this, then his view of "pleasure" and related notions is not as simplistic as Anscombe suggests.

1o Utilitarianism, Chapter II. My emphasis.

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A utilitarian need not accept the second claim either, since utilitarianism, as a theory of value, need not involve any thesis about the end at which people always do in fact aim. The utilitarian merely needs to claim that people can aim at happiness in their actions and that happiness is the only thing intrinsically worth aiming at. Now it is true that most of the 19th century utilitarians did hold that the achievement of happiness is what people in fact seek in all of their actions, but there are two points which should be made in connection with this. The first is that it is happiness, not pleasure, that the utilitarians claimed was the point of doing anything whatsoever. In one formulation, happiness is defined by Mill as "pleasure and the absence of pain." But a more elaborate formulation is provided later. It says that a happy life is " . . . not a life of rapture, but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive . . . . -11 It seems to me that it is not nearly as "superficial" to hold that happiness, as here defined, is the end at which all human actions are aimed as it is to say that pleasure, where this is seen as an "internal impression" or definite bodily feeling, is such an end. The second point concerns the reason why a utilitarian would hold the view that happiness is in fact the ultimate goal of all human actions. We have already seen that this thesis is not implied by utilitarianism as a theory of intrinsic value. But if one wants to use Mill's famous "proof" of utilitarianism, which argues from the fact that pleasure is universally desired to the conclusion that it is intrinsically de- sirable, then one must accept the premise that pleasure is universally desired. But modern philosophers have not found this "proof" particularly plausible, and if one gives it up one can also give up the premise which underlies it. And it seems to be that both the "proof" and its premise can be given up without giving up utilitarianism. Now it may be, as Miss Anscombe seems to be suggesting, that there is no notion of pleasure or happiness which will make utilitarianism plausible as a theory of value. But in order to show this one needs much more than a weak attack on out- moded versions of utilitarianism.

I1

In a paragraph in "Modem Moral Philosophy" immediately following the one cited above, Anscombe gives a different and perhaps more formidable objection to utilitarianism. She says,

Mill also, like Kant, fails to realize the necessity for stipulation as to relevant descriptions, if his theory is to have content. It did not occur to him that acts of murder and theft could be otherwise described. He holds that where a proposed action is of such a kind as to fall under some one principle established on grounds of utility, one must go by that; where it falls under none or several, the several suggesting contrary views of the action, the thing to do is to calculate particular

11 U t i l i t a r i a n i s m , Chapter II.

Discussion 209

consequences. But pretty well any action can be so described as to make it fall under a variety of principles of utility (as I shall say for short) if it falls under any. t2

A few pages later Anscombe summarizes this objection:

Mill assumes, as we say, that there is no question of calculating the particular consequences of an action such as murder or theft; and we saw too that his position was stupid, because it is not at all clear how an action c a n fall under just one principle of utility. 13

We might call the problem which Anscombe is discussing here the Problem of Relevant Descriptions. If a person's action is simply and truly described as stealing $10, then, lacking other information, we would say that what he did was wrong, that it was a bad thing to do. But if the same action can be described as stealing $10 to feed one's starving family, then a somewhat different assessment of the action would probably be given. The information about why the money was stolen affects the assessment of the action, and hence is relevant information. Suppose that our ethical theory has a rule forbidding thefts, and another nile saying that theft is permissible when it is the only means of preventing a significantly greater evil. The action we are considering can fall under either of these rules, depending on how we describe it (limiting ourselves to possible true descriptions), and the assess- ment of the action will vary with the description. In this case the more detailed description, the one that contains information about why the money was stolen, is obviously the better description for moral assessment. But why? What makes one description more appropriate for this purpose than another?

On the basis of the fact that we commonly believe that any kind of judgment will be more rational if it is based on all of the available infor- mation, and on the basis of the fact that adding additional information about an action often changes our moral evaluation of it, we might be inclined to say that a fuller description of an action is always better for moral assessment than a less full one. This rule would have us prefer the description,

(A) "Getting rid of a subordinate military officer by sending him to the front in order to have his wife"

to the shorter description,

(B) "Sending a subordinate military officer to the front"

and this is undoubtedly correct. But this rule does not always give correct results, for it would have us prefer the description,

12 MMP, p. 3. is MMP, p. 9.

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(C) "Getting rid of a subordinate military officer with blue eyes by sending him to the front in order to have his wife"

to description (A), and this seems incorrect since the additional information about the color of the man's eyes is probably morally irrelevant. Hence we see that a fuller description isn't always tantamount to a better description for purposes of moral assessment. Additional information improves a de- scription for these purposes only if the information is morally relevant information. The problem, then, is to give some account of when infer- marion is morally relevant.

Anscombe points out that this was a problem for Kant. For him it took the form of a question about what aspects of a situation should be included in the maxim which one attempts to universalize. And Anscombe claims that this is also a problem for Mill. If we are to calculate the utilitarian consequences of an action, we must choose among the possible true de- scriptions of that action, and Mill supplies us with no way of doing this. Hence, the Problem of Relevant Descriptions is an unsolved problem for a utilitarian theory.

But it seems that this problem will arise, not just for Kant and Mill, but for any ethical theory which allows that it is possible to morally assess actions, since an action must be assessed under some description, and there will inevitably be more than one true description to choose from. No matter what the ultimate basis or standard of morality is held to be, when this ultimate standard is applied, directly or indirectly, to a particular action, we will have to find some criterion for choosing between the possible true descriptions of that action. Hence, this problem is in no way unique to Kantian or utilitarian theories of ethics, and hence the fact that it is a problem for utilitarians can in no way serve as a refutation of utilitarianism. The issue is whether utilitarianism can deal with this difficulty as well as or better than any other ethical theory.

Now it is my opinion that the utilitarian is able to give a fairly plausible account of how to deal with this problem, but before discussing this I would like to try to give a general account of how this difficulty must be handled by any theory.

I think that we can say, quite generally, that a piece of information about an action is morally relevant and should be included in the description of that action if there is some reason to believe that it might affect the outcome of the moral assessment of that action. But this tells us little, since we still need to know what kinds of information affect the outcomes of moral assessments of actions. We need to know what kinds of facts determine, or partly determine, whether an action is right or wrong, good or bad. And a theory which tells us this will be a moral theory. Such a theory will claim that certain types of facts bear on ethical disputes, and this will imply that information about such facts will be information which is relevant and which should be included in the description of an action when we are going to attempt to assess it morally. For example, a deontological rule theory

Discussion 211

of ethics might tell us that whether or not an action is in conformity with all of the requirements of the genuine rules of morality determines whether it is right or wrong, and hence any information about an action which relates to the requirements of one of these rules should be included in the descrip- tion of that action for purposes of moral evaluation.

Now if I am right about this, it follows that a moral theory plays a central role in any answer to the Problem of Relevant Descriptions. Whether information about a given aspect of a situation should be included in a description of that action for purposes of moral assessment can only be determined by finding out whether that information is morally relevant, by finding out whether there is some reason to believe that its inclusion might affect the outcome of the assessment. And this question can only be answered by an account of what sorts of facts about situations involving human actions determine the morality of those actions - i.e. by a moral theory.

Having argued that a moral theory will play a central role in any solution to the Problem of Relevant Descriptions, let us now see what kind of a solution the utilitarian might offer. According to the utilitarian, a moral assessment of an action is an attempt to relate that action to what we know from experience about its consequences or about the consequences of similar actions. And in attempting to do this with regard to a particular action A, we will want to consider all of the characteristics of A which did affect or which may reasonably be expected to affect the happiness of mankind. For example if we find, in general, that the utilitarian conse- quences of telling a lie to avert serious harm to someone are significantly different f rom the normal utilitarian consequences of lying, then the ap- propriate description of someone's telling a lie for purposes of moral assess- ment will include, if possible, information about whether or not the lie was told in order to avert serious harm to someone. If some characteristic of the action is likely to affect its consequences, then that characteristic is relevant to the moral assessment of the action and should be included in the description of the action. Generally, in describing an action for purposes of moral assessment the utilitarian would have us include in the description of the action all of the characteristics which could reasonably be expected to affect the utilitarian consequences of that a c t i o n - because information about any such characteristic could affect the outcome of the moral assess- ment. The description should not be accepted as complete or as the best one available until all available relevant information is included in it. One should keep adding relevant information to the description until no more such information is available. When this has been done the next step is to attempt to bring the action as now described under some principle of utility. The moral characteristics of a number of types of actions, broadly de- scribed, will be determinable from these principles, and if the action as now described can be easily assimilated to one of these types then its moral characteristics will be determinable from the utilitarian principle which refers to that type of action. But if the action as now described is too unique

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or complex for it to be possible to assimilate it to one of these types, then the goods and evils which it involves will have to be individually calculated and balanced in order to obtain an assessment of it.

These are the broad outlines of a utilitarian answer to the Problem of Relevant Descriptions.14

It might be objected at this point that I have failed to really deal with Anscombe's problem because I have only considered actions where there is one basic description to which additional information is added. But there are cases where two quite different but true descriptions can be given of an action and where these descriptions place the action in quite different cate- gories. Suppose, for example, that the action of a city official can be described truly in both of the following ways:

(A) "Furthering urban renewal by clearing the way for a new housing complex" (B) ,"Depriving low income families of the only housing that they can afford to

rent"

Both of these descriptions involve facts which would affect the utilitarian consequences of the official's action, and hence both descriptions should be considered in trying to make a moral assessment of the action. In order to do this we can construct a new hybrid description which combines the infor- mation contained in both (A) and (B), i.e. a description which would take into account all of the relevant information which we now have. For example, this new hybrid characterization might be

(C) Furthering urban renewal and clearing the way for a new housing complex by depriving low-income families of the only housing that they can afford to rent

Our description of the action now includes all of the available relevant information about it and hence we can begin to make some moral assess- ment of it, although this may be a difficult matter.

In connection with the objection that the suggested utilitarian solution doesn't really deal with Anscombe's problem, it might be useful to try to show how, on this account, "an action can fall under just one principle of utility." To do this let us consider the following example. A man sits down on a park bench in a city park. On the same bench is a woman, probably someone who works in one of the nearby office buildings. Her open handbag lies between them, and inside it, but open to view, is a money purse with the corner of a ten dollar bill sticking out of it. Although the man had had no intention of stealing anything when he sat down, he sees the money, is tempted, and when the woman is looking in the other direction, he reaches

14 The approach to the Problem of Relevant Descriptions which is taken here is similar to that of John Hospers, Human Conduct (New York, 1961), pp. 276-343 and to that of David Lyons, Forms and Limits o/Uti l i tar ianism (Oxford, 1965), pp. 30-61.

Discussion 213

down and takes the ten dollar bill from the money purse. In a minute or two he walks away with the money in his pocket.

Let us suppose that the man was under no particular psychological com- pulsion to steal the money, and that although he was far from rich he could have gotten along well enough without the money. He just wanted the money and took it. I will also assume that it is a "principle of utility" that people should not steal, that stealing is a bad thing to do.

Now as always, there are a large number of possible descriptions of this action.

(A) The man took the woman's money. (B) The man took the woman's money without her permission. (C) The man took the woman's money without her permission, and without in-

tending ever to return the money.

All of these are possible true descriptions of the action, and each is prefer- able to those appearing above it since it includes more of the morally relevant information. Description (C) can be summarized by

(D) The man stole the woman's money.

and we have now succeeded in bringing the action under a "principle of utility." But is there some other category which it could also be brought under? How about stealing-in-a-park or stealing-from-a-handbag? The answer to this is that these are probably not morally different categories from stealing simpliciter, since the additional information about where the stealing took place or what the money was stolen from is probably not morally relevant information on utilitarian principles - i.e. these aspects of the theft would probably not significantly affect the utilitarian consequences of the act. (D) will remain the appropriate description until it can be shown that there is a true description which contains some morally relevant infor- mation which (D) ignores. And on the assumption that there is no such information in this case, the action in question falls under the principle about stealing and no other.

In summary, I have tried to show (1) that the Problem of Relevant Descriptions is not an insuperable problem for the utilitarian and that as a consequence this difficulty cannot be used as a refutation of utilitarianism, and (2) that in virtue of the fact that an ethical theory plays a central role in any answer to the Problem of Relevant Descriptions, this problem will be resolved as much by work in ethics as by work in philosophical psychology.

HI

To return now to our original questions about the relations between philosophical psychology and ethics, it should be noted that the objections which Anscombe makes to utilitarianism, although they involve concepts and difficulties within the province of the theory of action, equally involve concepts and issues in ethical theory.

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The claim that there is something about the concept of pleasure which makes utilitarianism implausible was seen to involve issues in both ethics and philosophical psychology. To consider this claim one must find out which notions of pleasure and happiness are intelligible, and whether any utilitarian theory which uses these notions is plausible as a theory of value. This last consideration is clearly a matter for ethical theory.

It was also seen, in the section just preceding, that the Problem of Relevant Descriptions was as much a problem in ethical theory as in philo- sophical psychology, since it primarily concerned what information should be included in a description of an action for purposes of the moral evalu- ation of that action.

What this implies for philosophical practice, it seems to me, is that since some substantial issues in ethical theory also involve issues in philosophical psychology, moral philosophers would do well to acquaint themselves with philosophical psychology. But it does not imply, it seems to me, that moral philosophers should stop doing ethics and deal with these problems - for if they did indeed cease doing ethics, they would have to cease dealing with these problems since these problems are, in part, problems of ethical theory.

The upshot of this, it seems to me, is that Anscombe's recommendation that we first do philosophical psychology and then do ethics is somewhat misconceived. What is required is that we recognize that some of the main problems in ethical theory cannot be dealt with without dealing, at the same time, with some important issues in philosophical psychology. What is required is that moral philosophers be prepared (and competent) to deal with issues in philosophical psychology; not that moral philosophy be abandoned while we concentrate on philosophical psychology.

Perhaps a broader characterization of the issue can be provided in the following way. It seems to me that Anscombe is rejecting the piecemeal, specialized, non-metaphysical approach to ethics which has characterized Anglo-Saxon ethics since Moore. Her demand seems to be for a return to a more unified, aristotelian approach where the study of ethics and the study of man are: closely connected. Her view is that an adequate theory of ethics must grow out of and be integrated with a broader philosophical theory which deals with related issues in philosophical psychology and the theory of action. She denies that moral philosophy can profitably proceed until such a theory has been produced. My criticism of Anscombe does not deny that work in these other areas is needed for progress in ethics; it is rather that the nature of many of the problems she has in mind are such that any adequate way of dealing with them will involve dealing with issues in both moral philosophy and philosophical psychology. And I think that the issues concerning utilitarianism which I discussed provide illustrations of this.

Wichita State University