Chapter XIV: Part 14

And this view that when we talk of wrong or duty, we are not merely, each of us, making a statement about the relation of the thing in question to our own feelings, may be reinforced by another consideration. It is commonly believed that some moral rules exhibit a _higher_ morality than others: that, for instance a person who believes that it is our duty to do good to our enemies, has a higher moral belief, than one who believes that he has no such duty, but only a duty to do good to his friends or fellow-countrymen. And Westermarck himself believes that, some moral beliefs, "mark a stage of higher refinement in the evolution of the moral consciousness."[2] But what, on his view can be meant by saying that one moral belief is higher than another? If A believes that it is his duty to do good to his enemies and B believes that it is not, in what sense can A's belief be higher than B's? Not, on this view, in the sense that what A believes is true, and what B believes is not; for what A is believing is merely that the idea of not doing good to your enemies tends to excite in him a feeling of moral indignation, and what B believes is merely that it does not tend to excite this feeling in _him_: and both beliefs may perfectly well be true; it may really be true that the same actions do excite the feeling in A, and that they don't in B. What then, could Westermarck mean by saying that A's morality is higher than B's? So far as I can see, what, on his own views, he would have to mean is merely that he himself, Westermarck, shares A's morality and does not share B's: that it is true of him, as of A, that neglecting to do good to enemies excites his feelings of moral indignation and not true of him as it is of B, that it does _not_ excite such feelings in him. In short he would have to say that what he means by calling A's morality the higher is merely "A's morality is _my_ morality, and B's is not." But it seems to me quite clear that when we say one morality is higher than another, we do not merely mean that it is our own. We are not merely asserting that it has a certain relation to our own feelings, but are asserting, if I may say so, that the person who has it has a better moral taste than the person who has not. And whether or not this means merely, as I think, that what the one believes is true, and what the other believes is false, it is at all events inconsistent with the view that in all cases we are merely making a statement about our own feelings.

For these reasons it seems to me extremely difficult to believe that when we judge things to be wrong, each of us is merely making a judgment about _his own_ psychology. But if not about our own, then about whose? I have already said that the view that, if the judgment is merely a psychological one at all, it is a judgment about our own psychology, is in some ways more plausible than any other view. And I think we can now see that any other view is _not_ plausible. The alternatives are that I should be making a judgment about the psychology of all mankind, or about that of some particular section of it. And that the first alternative is not true, is, I think, evident from the fact that, when I judge an action to be wrong, I may emphatically _not_ believe that it is true of all mankind that they would regard it with feelings of moral disapproval. I may know perfectly well that some would not. Most philosophers, therefore, have not ventured to say that this is the judgment I am making; they say, for instance, that I am making a judgment about the feelings of the particular society to which I belong--about, for instance, the feelings of an impartial spectator in that society. But, if this view be taken, it is open to the same objections as the view that I am merely making a judgment about my own feelings. If we could say that every man, when he judges a thing to be wrong, was making a statement about the feelings of all mankind, then when A says "This is wrong" and B says "No, it isn't," they would really be differing in opinion, since A would be saying that all mankind feel in a certain way towards the action, and B would be saying that they don't. But if A is referring merely to his society and B to his, and their societies are different, then obviously they are not differing in opinion at all: it may perfectly well be true both that an impartial spectator in A's society does have a certain sort of feeling towards actions of the sort in question, and that an impartial spectator in B's does not. This view, therefore, implies that it is impossible for two men belonging to different societies ever to differ in opinion on a moral question. And this is a view which I find it almost as hard to accept as the view that _no_ two men ever differ in opinion on one.

For these reasons I think there are serious objections to the view that the idea of moral obligation is merely a psychological idea.

But now let us briefly consider the idea of "good," in Aristotle's sense, or intrinsic value.

As regards this idea, there is again a difference of opinion among those who hold that it is a psychological idea, as to _what_ idea it is. The majority seem to hold that it is to be defined, somehow, in terms of desire; while others have held that what we are judging when we judge that one state of things is or would be intrinsically better than another, is rather that the belief that the one was going to be realized would, under certain circumstances, give more pleasure to some man or set of men, than the belief that the other was. But the same objections seem to me to apply whichever of these two views be taken.

Let us take desire. About whose desires am I making a judgment, when I judge that one state of things would be better than another?

Here again, it may be said, first of all, that I am merely making a judgment about my own. But in this case the view that my judgment is merely about my own psychology is, I think, exposed to an obvious objection to which Westermarck's view that my judgments of moral obligation are about my own psychology was not exposed. The obvious objection is that it is evidently not true that I do in fact always desire more, what I judge to be better: I may judge one state of things to be better than another, even when I know perfectly well not only that I don't desire it more, but that I have no tendency to do so. It is a notorious fact that men's strongest desires are, as a rule, for things in which they themselves have some personal concern; and yet the fact that this is so, and that they know it to be so, does not prevent them from judging that changes, which would not affect them personally, would constitute a very much greater improvement in the world's condition, than changes which would. For this reason alone the view that when I judge one state of things to be better than another I am merely making a judgment about my own psychology, must, I think, be given up: it is incredible that we should all be making such mistakes about our feelings, as, on this view, we should constantly be doing. And there is, of course, besides, the same objection, as applied in the case of moral obligation: namely that, if this view were true, no two men could ever differ in opinion as to which of two states was the better, whereas it appears that they certainly sometimes do differ in opinion on such an issue.

My judgment, then, is not merely a judgment about my own psychology: but, if so, about whose psychology is it a judgment? It cannot be a judgment that all men desire the one state more than the other; because that would include the judgment that I myself do so, which, as we have seen, I often know to be false, even while I judge that the one state really is better. And it cannot, I think, be a judgment merely about the feelings or desires of an impartial spectator in my own society; since that would involve the paradox that men belonging to different societies could never differ in opinion as to what was better. But we have here to consider an alternative, which did not arise in the case of moral obligation. It is a notorious fact that the satisfaction of some of our desires is incompatible with the satisfaction of others, and the satisfaction of those of some men with the satisfaction of those of others. And this fact has suggested to some philosophers that what we mean by saying that one state of things would be better than another, is merely that it is a state in which more of the desires, of those who were in it, would be satisfied at once, than would be the case with the other. But to this view the fundamental objection seems to me to be that whether the one state was better than the other would depend not merely upon the number of desires that were simultaneously satisfied in it, but upon what the desires were desires for. I can imagine a state of things in which all desires were satisfied, and yet can judge of it that it would not be so good as another in which some were left unsatisfied. And for this reason I cannot assent to the view that my judgment, that one state of things is better than another is merely a judgment about the psychology of the people concerned in it.

This is why I find it hard to believe that either the idea of moral obligation or the idea of intrinsic value is merely a psychological idea. It seems to me that Moral Philosophy cannot be merely a department of Psychology. But no doubt there may be arguments on the other side to which I have not done justice.

[1] E Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, Vol. I, pp. 4, 13, 17-18, 100-101. On p. 105, however, Westermarck suggests a view inconsistent with this one; namely that, when I judge an action to be wrong, I am not _merely_ asserting that it has a tendency to excite moral indignation in me, but am also asserting that other people _would be_ convinced that it has a tendency to excite moral indignation in them, if they "knew the act and all its attendant circumstances as well as [I do], and if, at the same time their emotions were as refined as [mine]."

[2] Ibid. p. 89.

THE END

INDEX

Abstractions, "illegitimate"
Agnosticism
"Analytic" truths
Apprehension, direct
Aristotle's Ethics
Attention
Awareness

"Being" and "Reality"
Berkeley
Bradley
Causal connection
necessity
Consciousness
"Content"

Deduction
Difference,
numerical and qualitative
intrinsic
Direct apprehension
observation
perception
Duty and Wrong
"objectivity" of

Entails
and "implies"
_Esse_ and _percipi,_
Existence
and "reality"
of physical objects
"Experience," ambiguity of
External objects and facts
relations

Fact, matters of
"Follows"

"Given," ambiguity of
"Good," ambiguity of
objectivity of
"for man"

Hegel
Hume

"I."
Idealism
Ideas
Identity of Indiscernibles
"Implication,"
Indiscernibles, Identity of
Induction,
conditions necessary for
Internal relations,
dogma of
two senses of
Intrinsic difference
nature
predicates
value

James, William
Joachim, H. H.

Kant
Knowledge
and belief
by description

Leibniz

"Manifestation of"
Material objects or things
Mill. J. S.
Minds, "in our"
"Modify"
Moral rules, two kinds of

Necessary truths
Necessity, three senses of
logical
unconditional

"Objectivity," ambiguity of
of kinds of value

Objects,
external
material
physical, and sensibles

Observation
Organic unities
"Ought," two meanings of
objectivity of
and "wrong"

Part, physical
and whole

"Perception," ambiguity of
direct
_Percipi_ and _esse_
Physical objects and sensibles
Pickwickian senses
"Possible," three senses of
Pragmatist theory of truth
"Presented," ambiguity of

Reality
Reason, "dictates of"
Reasons
Reid, T.
Relational properties
Relations,
dogma of internal
external
internal
Right, objectivity of
Russell, B.

"See," ambiguity of
"Seems"
Sensations
proper
Sense-data
Sensibles
Solipsism
Spiritual
Strachey, O.
"Subjective"
"Synthetic" truths

Taylor, A. E., 8
"Time"
Truth,
and mutability
pragmatist theory of
and utility
and verification
of words
Truths, "analytic" and "synthetic"
"man-made"
necessary

Value, intrinsic
objectivity of

Westermarck, E.
"Wrong," objectivity of
and "ought"

End of Project Gutenberg's Philosophical Studies, by George Edward Moore