2379712

Metaethics and Moral NeutralityAuthor(s): Alan GewirthReviewed work(s):Source: Ethics, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Apr., 1968), pp. 214-225Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2379712 .Accessed: 30/10/2012 07:23

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DISCUSSION

METAETHICS AND MORAL NEUTRALITY

ALAN GEWIRTH

I AS IS suggested by its affinity with

4.~ "metalanguage," metaethics is a certain kind of second-order

logical discourse about first-order moral discourse. Since much of contemporary American and British moral philosophy consists in metaethics, philosophers concerned with understanding their disci- pline have tried to clarify difficulties in the concept of metaethics itself (thereby doing, I suppose, "metametaethics"). For there are troublesome questions about what kind of "second-order logical discourse" constitutes metaethics. For example, Bentham's and Mill's contention that the principle of utility is implicitly assumed in most men's singular moral judgments' is a second-order logical assertion, since it purports to analyze the implications of first-order moral judgments; yet many expos- itors of metaethics would deny that the assertion is a metaethical one. They might give as one reason that the utilitarians' assertion aims at providing simply a substantive generalization of the content of moral judgments, whereas metaethical discourse concerns itself rather with categorial logical and meth- odological questions, that is, questions about the most general rubrics under which fall the meanings of first-order moral terms and the methods of justifying first-order moral judgments. This is why the dramatis personae of metaethics have been such very general and

basic concepts as "natural," "non-natural," "factual," "intuitive," "emotive," "prescriptive," "descriptive," and the like. Yet there are also difficulties in re- garding only such concepts as metaethical ones, as against more specific concepts like "utilitarian" or "impartial."

Another reason that might be given for denying that the utilitarians' assertion is a metaethical one is even more controversial. For it is usually held that metaethical discourse must be "morally neutral." While what is meant by "moral neutrality" is often left unanalyzed, in the case of the utilitarians one important thing that might be meant is that their assertion would have to fit, and be intended to fit, all men's moral judgments, both those of which the philosophers themselves approved and those of which, in principle, they disap- proved. (The word "moral" is here used in the general "positive" or "descriptive" sense in which it is opposed to "non-moral" rather than to ''immoral.'') But it is implausible to hold that the principle of utility is implicitly assumed in the moral judgments of such anti- utilitarian particularists as individualistic egoists, racists, nationalists, and the like. It follows, therefore, that Bentham and Mill were tacitly exclud- ing such men's judgments from the range of those "moral" judgments which they held to imply the utilitarian principle; they were referring only to those moral judgments which they con-

214

DISCUSSION 215

sidered to be morally right, at least "in principle." (There is, of course, an im- putation of circularity here.) Hence, the philosophers' second-order assertion presupposed, and was limited by, their own first-order normative moral position; hence, their assertion was not morally neutral; hence, it was not metaethical.

The strikingly novel character of this claim that metaethics must be morally neutral has not, I think, received suffi- cient recognition. For if we define "metaethics" as dealing with categorial logical questions of the meaning of first- order moral terms and the methods of justifying first-order moral judgments, then metaethics is as old as moral philosophy, even though the idea of "lev- els" of discourse, or of discourse about discourse, may not always have been explicitly emphasized. When, for example, Aristotle said that "anyone who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just . . . must have been brought up in good habits,"' and that to ascertain in particular cases the mean between extremes in which moral virtue consists "is not easy to determine by reasoning ... such things depend on particular facts, and the decision rests with perception,"3 he was making two important metaethical assertions about the conditions for justifying or at least acquiescing in moral principles and judgments. He was saying that the acceptance of the first principle of morality requires not an essentially cognitive process but a certain kind of antecedent habituation and that to grasp the cor- rectness of a particular moral judgment about morally good action requires di- rect insight rather than inference or calculation. Yet, in these and similar cases, Aristotle's metaethical discussion

was not morally neutral, for the moral principles and judgments with whose logical character he was dealing were not those upheld by anyone at all (such as Callicles or Thrasymachus) but, rather, those to which he himself ad- hered and which he set forth in central portions of the Nicomachean Ethics. In this respect, then, Aristotle's metaethical discussions presupposed, and were largely or even exclusively concerned with elucidating, his own normative moral position.

The same point holds not only for such philosophers as Hume and Kant but also for much of twentieth-century moral philosophy prior to the emotivists. When the intuitionists discussed the intuitions by which they held that the meanings of basic moral concepts and the truth of basic moral propositions are grasped, they took as their "data" what they regarded as "the moral convictions of thoughtful and well- educated people."4 They did not think that the moral doctrines which, in their view, were untrue or incorrect, such as those of Hitler or Mussolini, were themselves grasped by intuition; on the contrary, they consigned such erroneous doctrines to the sphere of inadequately developed moral beings who were lack- ing in "thoughtfulness" and hence "blind" to their real obligations. This normative moral restrictiveness in metaethics was also found in such a naturalist as Dewey.5 It was only with the emotivists (and such of their near-precursors as Santayana) that the explicit claim was made that their metaethical doctrines fit all moral positions and are not restricted to those upheld as morally right by the emotivists themselves.6 But, of course, the emotivists held that, as philosophers, they had no way of ascertaining what is morally right.

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It is important not to confuse the sense of "moral neutrality" indicated above with another sense. The sense I have used above may be called "referential"; and I shall want to say that a metaethical assertion or doctrine may, in the referential sense, be either morally neutral (or positive) or morally non- neutral (or normative). To say that a philosopher's metaethical assertion is morally neutral in the referential sense means that he does not intend to restrict the assertion's reference or appli- cation to that normative moral position which he may himself regard as morally right; he intends it, rather, to fit all normative moral positions, including those which he regards as morally wrong and those on which he holds no moral view at all. A philosopher's metaethical assertion is not morally neutral in this sense, then, but is, rather, normatively moral, if he restricts the reference or applicability of his assertion to what he regards as the morally right normative ethics, if he intends to elucidate the meanings or methods of only those uses or contents of moral judgments which he regards as morally right. For, in such a case, his metaethical assertion implies or presupposes a specific normative moral position of his own: in presenting his explicit metaethical doctrine he is also presenting, at least implicitly, his own normative moral position as that to which alone his metaethical doctrine refers or applies. He is saying something like the following: "The meaning or use of those moral judgments which take a morally correct position is of kind X." The itali- cized phrase is, of course, not morally neutral but, rather, normatively moral, for here the metaethicist is not merely mentioning a normatively moral char-

acterization; he is using it himself. When such a normatively moral use occurs explicitly or implicitly in what the metaethicist's assertion refers to, his assertion is not morally neutral.

Much of the controversy over whether metaethics is morally neutral has involved this referential sense. It is this sense that figures in such familiar "metametaethical" questions as: (1) How universal is the scope of a given metaethical doctrine? Is it intended by its author to refer, and does it in fact refer, to all normative moral positions or only to the one which he himself regards as morally right? (2) Is the metaethicist presupposing or presenting (at least implicitly) his own normative moral position when he sets forth his metaethical doctrine? (3) Does the metaethical doctrine have normative ethical implications? If the doctrine is true, then does it logically imply the truth, soundness, or acceptability of some normative moral judgment? For example, if the metaethical doctrine says that P is the only logically correct way to justify a normative moral judgment, then does this imply a restriction of the range of justifiable (and hence of "correct") moral judgments?

The referential sense of "moral neutrality" must be distinguished from another sense, which I shall call "predicative." In the predicative sense, "neutrality" centers, not on the range of the normative moral judgments to which metaethical assertions are intended to refer, but rather on what the metaethical assertions predicate of these judgments. To say that a metaethical assertion is morally neutral in this predicative sense means only that the assertion does not itself directly make a normative moral judgment, in

DISCUSSION 217

that the predicate which the assertion assigns to its subject is not a normatively moral one. The predicate is of some other kind, logical, epistemological, psychological, ontological, or what- ever. When, for example, an intuition- ist says that all true moral propositions are and must be grasped by intuition, or when Dewey says that a "genuine practical judgment" requires the appli- cation of experimental methods, these assertions are morally neutral in the sense just indicated. For, while they may indeed be normative statements, they are only epistemologically or logically normative, not morally normative, for the norms they directly up- hold or prescribe are epistemological or logical ones, not moral ones. Hence, while such metaethical statements are not morally neutral in the referential sense distinguished above, they are morally neutral in the predicative sense.7

To see somewhat more clearly the nature and implications of these two senses of moral neutrality, let us en- visage a metaethical statement as having two main parts. Its subject refers to the meaning or use of some moral term or judgment or the argument for some moral conclusion. Its predicate assigns to this meaning or use some metaethical property, such as "descriptive," "prescriptive," "empirical," or perhaps more particular terms specif- ically relevant to ethics. Now the distinction between a morally neutral and a morally non-neutral metaethical statement may be put in terms of either its subject or its predicate. In terms of its subject, the metaethical statement is morally neutral if its subject refers to the meaning or use of any moral term or judgment or the argument for

any moral conclusion, without restriction to those moral judgments or uses which the metaethicist himself regards as morally right. If, on the other hand, the metaethicist does restrict in this way the reference of the subject of his metaethical statement, then his statement is not morally neutral. (The sense of "morally neutral" here is, of course, the referential one.) For when the metaethicist's statement is restricted in its reference to those moral judgments which he regards as morally right, then it implies his own normative moral position, as we saw above.

Let us now look at the distinction between a morally neutral and a morally non-neutral metaethical statement in terms of its predicate. Here, to begin with, we must distinguish between a descriptive and a normative predicate. A descriptive predicate will be of the form: "The use of moral terms is of kind X," while a normative predicate will be of the form: "The use of moral terms ought to be of kind X."28 Now each of these forms of statement may be either morally neutral or morally non-neutral in the referential sense, depending on the intended reference of the phrase "use of moral terms." In addition, the descriptive form of statement is morally neutral in the predicative sense. But whether the normative form of statement is morally neutral in the predicative sense depends on whether the "ought" in the predicate is intended by the metaethicist to be a moral or a non-moral "ought." He may intend it only as a logical or an epistemological "ought." But he may also intend it as a moral "ought," in which case he will mean that, if a moral judgment is to be used in a way that fulfils the requirements of what he considers

218 ETHICS

to be morally right or good, then it morally ought to have certain features, such as sincerity or impartiality or concern for the interests of everyone alike. (Kant is one of many exemplars of such a morally normative metaethicist.) It will be noted that features of the kind just mentioned are more specific than "typical" metaethical terms, such as "descriptive" and "prescriptive." Yet there seems to be no reason why the more specific terms cannot be used in the analysis of the meaning or use of first-order moral judgments.

From the above distinctions, several conclusions follow. For one thing, the referential and the predicative senses of moral neutrality are mutually independent. A metaethical assertion may refer only to those moral judgments or arguments that the metaethicist regards as morally right, while the predicate which he assigns in his assertion may be logical or epistemological, rather than moral. Conversely, the metaethical assertion's predicate may be a moral one, while the assertion refers to all moral judgments, not only to those which the metaethicist himself regards as morally right. In the former case, the metaethical assertion implicitly makes a normative moral judgment, while in the latter case it explicitly makes such a judgment. In addition, of course, the metaethical assertion may be morally neutral, both referentially and predicatively.

It also follows from the above distinctions that both morally neutral and normatively moral metaethics are logically possible. There is nothing in the concept of metaethics, defined in the "second-order logical" terms used above, that rules out either moral neutrality or moral non-neutrality in either

the referential or the predicative senses. It might be thought that the word "logical" in the definition means that the predicates of metaethical statements can be only logical, not moral, ones, so that metaethical statements cannot be morally non-neutral in the predicative sense. If, however, metaethical logical discourse may include the analysis of the implications of particular moral judgments which the metaethicist accepts as morally right (as in my example of the utilitarians above), then such logical analysis may come up with conclusions which make normatively moral assertions. For the conclusions simply generalize the normative moral predicates already accepted by the metaethicist in the singular moral judgments from which he begins. The utilitarian metaethicist, for example, will conclude not only that all "non-vitiated" moral judgments do in fact rest on the principle of utility but also that they morally ought to rest thereon; for his acceptance of the principle is not divorced from his acceptance of the normative moral judgments which he holds to imply the principle.

II

About a decade ago, I wrote an essay devoted to such questions about metaethics, which was published in Mind (and to which I shall here refer as "G").9 This essay has recently been criticized by L. W. Sumner in a paper in Ethics (to which I shall here refer as "S").10 His chief criticism is that my argument in G "contains a fallacy, that there is something seriously amiss with [my] method" (S, p. 99; italics here and in all other quotations are in the originals). The alleged fallacy seems to be a modal one: according to

DISCUSSION 219

Sumner I argued from merely factual- historical premises to a necessary conceptual conclusion, or, more specifical- ly, from the fact that some metaethicists have failed in their attempts at morally neutral metaethics to the conclusion that morally neutral metaethics is logically impossible. Thus, Sumner says that, even if I had suc- ceeded "in showing that certain theories thought to be morally neutral by their authors are not so," this would be only "a quasi-historical claim about the status of certain theories which had been thought to be metaethical in character. . . . And, if we take moral neutrality to be an essential defining feature of metaethics, then he has shown that some theories ordinarily thought to be metaethical are in reality not metaethical at all. To say all this is only to criticize the practice of some supposed metaethicists; it is not to say anything about the possibility of metaethics at all. One does not show that something cannot be done by showing that someone or some group has tried it and failed" (S, p. 99). Hence, Sum- ner concludes, "no amount of pointing out inconsistencies in the practice of some of those commonly taken to be metaethicists can show that metaethics is impossible or that there are conceptual difficulties in the normative-metaethical distinction" (S, p. 100).

I wish to make the following comments on this criticism and on some related ones:

1. In my aforementioned essay, I nowhere tried to show, or said I would try to show, that metaethics in general, as a morally neutral doctrine, "cannot be done" or "is impossible." What I tried to show is that a certain kind of metaethics is impossible, namely, that

which, while claiming to be morally neutral in the referential sense, still tries to differentiate what constitutes morally right or good judgments or actions from those which are not morally right or good. The impossibility here derives from the inconsistency of the following pair of claims: (a) that one's metaethical conclusion refers without differentiation to all moral judgments; (b) that this same metaethical conclusion draws distinctions between what is morally right and morally wrong and refers directly only to what is morally right. But I certainly did not say that all metaethics necessarily incurs this inconsistency. A metaethics which tries to make such normatively moral differentiations I called a "normative" one, and I distinguished it from a "positivistic" metaethics which tries to make its analyses fit equally, without differentiation, all kinds of normative ethics, both those approved and those not approved by the metaethicist. Of this positivistic metaethics, I wrote: "no normative ethical judgment of his [the metaethicist's] own is presupposed by his engaging in such analysis, for his use of 'ethics' does not uniquely reflect his own evaluations" (G, p. 192). I repeated this point in my summary of conclusions at the end of the essay: "When the metaethicist analyzes what for him is positive ethics as well as normative ethics [i.e., the ethics of which he does not himself approve as well as that of which he does approve], with the aim of ascertaining what meanings are common to these, then no specific normative ethical judgment of his own is presupposed or implied thereby; from his standpoint his metaethics is compatible with different or

220 ETHICS

opposed normative ethics" (G, p. 205; see also p. 193).

In view of this repeated insistence by me that there can be a positivistic, morally neutral metaethics, I am mystified by Sumner's repeated assertions that in my essay I "want to show that no metaethical theory is or can be morally neutral"; "Gewirth, then, is committed to arguing that no metaethical theory can be morally neutral" (S, pp. 96, 97). The only passage in my essay that might conceivably support this inter- pretation of my intention is one that occurs on the next to last page (and which Sumner does not quote): "Far from being independent of one another, metaethics is included in normative ethics, and differences in metaethics en- tail differences in normative ethics" (G, p. 204). But, as a glance at the next (last) page of my essay would have shown, the position represented by this passage is, but one of four different logical relations that I tried to establish as holding between metaethics and normative ethics: "From the standpoint of a normative ethics which places the criterion of ethical value in specific psychological conditions, the metaethical analysis of the meanings and methods of ethical judgments in terms of psychological conditions may present an alternative criterion of ethical value, so that the metaethical analysis does make a normative ethical difference. In this situation, from the standpoint of such a normative ethics there is a mutual implicative relation between it and metaethics" (G, p. 205). I at once went on, however, to show that this is not the only relation between normative ethics and metaethics: "This logical relation between normative ethics and metaethics may not, however, obtain either when the normative

ethics in question places the criterion of value in something other than specific psychological conditions or when the metaethics deals with questions of meaning in a very general way" (G, p. 205).

The difference between these two kinds of logical relations between normative ethics and metaethics may be illustrated as follows. Suppose the normative ethicist says that, for a moral judgment to be morally good, certain psychological conditions X (e.g., a "good will") must motivate or accom- pany the judgment; and suppose a metaethicist says that all moral judgments are motivated or accompanied by certain quite different psychological conditions Y which are such that they exclude a "good will." In such a case, the metaethicist is denying something that the normative ethicist is affirming, for while the latter is saying that "all morally good moral judgments are characterized by X," the metaethicist is saying that "no moral judgments are characterized by X." Hence, the metaethical position makes a normative ethical difference, for it declares that the instantiation of a certain normative ethical criterion is impossible.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the metaethicist does not in this way as- sert the contrary of the normative ethical doctrine, either because the metaethicist talks about the psychological conditions of moral judgments in a much more general way (which would not involve denying any specific normative ethical doctrine about the psychological conditions of morally good judgments) or because the normative ethical doctrine's criterion of moral value refers to something other than psychological conditions (e.g., to consequences). In such a case, the meta-

DISCUSSION 221

ethical position does not make any normative ethical difference.

Besides these two alternatives, the conclusions I presented at the end of my essay also listed two other alternative possibilities in the relation between metaethics and normative ethics; I have already mentioned these above as the distinction between "positivistic" and "normative" metaethics, the former being morally neutral in the referential sense, and the latter not. It ap- pears, then, that as against the various qualifications I drew in my quadruple list of conclusions, Sumner has attrib- uted to me a single, unqualified conclusion. In ignoring the complexities of my actual position, he also misdirects his criticisms. If someone claims to have shown that some X is Y and some X is not Y. then to try to refute him on the ground that he has not simply shown that no X at all can be Y, when he never undertook to show the latter, is to commit the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi.

2. Sumner's criticism also raises the issue of the proper method of examining the potentialities of philosophic theses in general and of metaethical theories in particular. In trying to ascertain whether metaethics is or can be morally neutral, should one proceed "conceptually," by examining the "concept" or "notion" of metaethics, or "factually" (or "historically"), by examining the actual statements of metaethicists? It might be thought that Sumner is clearly right in holding that, if one is going to try to prove that metaethics as a morally neutral study is logically impossible, then only the conceptual approach is appropriate. For a conclusion having such a modal predicate as "impossible" can be derived only from premises which state that something is necessary or impossible; but factual

premises, unlike conceptual ones, tell us only what is actual or possible, not what is necessary or impossible.

My answer on this point is that in the part of my argument where I was trying to establish that what I called normative metaethics necessarily makes a normative ethical commitment (so that it is impossible that it be morally neutral in the referential sense), there were required, and I used, both the conceptual and the historical approaches as well as a third, mixed approach. For I had to show (a) that on a certain definition or conception of metaethics it necessarily follows that metaethics is not morally neutral and (b) that the actual practice of many analytic philosophers of ethics con- forms to this definition. I also had to show (c) that this conformity is not merely accidental but results rather from certain basic "demands of their subject-matter."

a) Having distinguished between the "normative" and the "positive" meanings or uses of the word "ethics" (as referring to those rules of conduct of which the user, respectively, approves and does not approve), I wrote that "from these distinctions, the following emerges as an analytic consequence: When a metaethicist analyses ethics in a way which aims to fit indifferently what are for him both the positive and the normative senses of 'ethics,' then no normative ethical judgment of his own is presupposed by his engaging in such analysis, for his use of 'ethics' does not uniquely reflect his own evaluations. When, on the other hand, a metaethicist analyses ethics in what is for him the normative sense of 'ethics,' then his engaging in such analysis does presuppose a normative ethical judgment of his own, for his use of 'ethics' does

222 ETHICS

reflect his own evaluations" (G, p. 192). Here, then, I proceeded in terms of two different concepts or definitions of metaethics, one positivistic and the other normative, and from these I drew certain conclusions about moral neutrality which follow necessarily. But, strangely enough, although Sumner briefly summarizes my above distinctions and even the conclusions I drew from them (S. p. 97), he nowhere shows any awareness that this part of my discussion presents precisely that kind of conceptual analysis which he says is required but absent from my essay.

b) Having made these conceptual points, however, I then went on to emphasize that this "conceptual" approach must be supplemented by a "factual-historical" one: "We must now show that these consequences actually apply to the practice of current metaethicists. For it is not enough to establish these assertions as analytic, since as such they might reflect only our own idiosyncratic definitions" (G, p. 192). If one wants to be able to claim that one's conceptual conclusion refers to the actual doctrines or practice of metaethicists, then to the major "conceptual" premise ("All cases of normative metaethics necessarily presuppose the metaethicist's own specific normative moral position") there must be joined a minor "historical" premise ("Such and such admitted instances of contemporary metaethics are cases of normative metaethics"). Without the latter, how can one be sure that there are any actual instantiations of that morally normative metaethics which is a possible alternative to positivistic metaethics? In other words, just as the claim that all metaethics is morally neutral has been interpreted both as a conceptual and as a historical statement,

so too the refutation of the claim must be historical as well as conceptual.

c) It was also important to show that this instantiation of the conceptual consequence by the actual practice of contemporary metaethicists was not accidental but reflected an awareness on the part of many of them that for their task to be fulfilled completely they would have to deal with what for them was ''normative ethics" as well as "positive ethics": "What is important is not merely the particular terms we have used [conceptual approach] nor even that they fit the empirical facts, i.e. the actual practice of metaethicists [historical approach], but also that the latter seem to be driven, as it were, to a concern with normative ethics as against positive ethics by the demands of their subject-matter. Their task is incomplete so long as they deal with the moral language of cannibals and missionaries, Capones and Schweitzers, as if they were morally on a par" (G, p. 192). In other words, that many metaethicists go in for normative metaethics, and hence make normative moral differentiations between the morally right and the morally wrong, is just as understandable and well-nigh inevi- table as that philosophers of science want to make their doctrines of the nature of scientific method fit the pro- cedures of astronomers and physiolo- gists rather than those of astrologists and phrenologists." Yet this still leaves open the possibility, which I emphasized, that some metaethicists might not want to take this step into normative metaethics.

Not only did I use both the conceptual and the historical approaches in my essay, but Sumner does so also in his, although with seeming unawareness of his use of the latter. That he uses

DISCUSSION 223

the conceptual approach is obvious, and emphasized by him. One of his chief uses of the historical approach comes after he has distinguished two definitions of metaethics, on one of which it is morally neutral and on the other not. Sumner recognizes that a cogent choice between these, if it is to be relevant to what metaethicists do, requires a con- sideration of their actual practice: "the important question still remains: are any of the positions of those commonly called metaethicists morally neutral?" (S, p. 104). I conclude, then, that Sum- ner was somewhat overhasty both in his analysis of my procedure and in his way of contrasting it with his own. He does not, however, use what I have called the "mixed" approach, so that his own positive argument (or, rather, suggestion) is left quite inconclusive.

3. Sumner seems to think that metaethics must either be or not be morally neutral, that only one of his two "definitions" of metaethics is acceptable (S, p. 104). The trouble with this attempt to arrive at one simple conclusion is that it fails to take account of the complexities of the actual situation, that is, the actual practice of those whom he as well as I would call metaethicists. If "metaethics" is defined in the "second-order logical" terms given above (which are common to most of the explicit definitions given by metaethicists), then it emerges that many metaethical doctrines are not morally neutral, especially in the referential sense. Once this is granted, the only necessary incoher- ence would come from the claim that these doctrines were morally neutral. If this claim is dropped as an essential part of "metaethics," the way is clear to see not only the continuity of past and present metaethics but also the

relations between positive and normative metaethics.

What is especially important in this connection is that the analytical devices of metaethics are indispensable tools for the normative ethicist who wishes to clarify the meanings and methods that enter into his own normative moral position. Such a use of metaethics by a normative ethicist would emphatically not be morally neutral in the referential sense distinguished above; but it would be a great loss if this non-neutrality were to be considered a bar to his doing metaethics at all. If all metaethics had to be morally neutral by definition, then the normative ethicist's inquiry into the meanings and logic of his own normative moral doctrines could not be called "metaethical." This, however, would obscure the important similarity and continuity between his analytical, logical inquiries and those engaged in by positivistic metaethicists. I conclude, then, that the basic assump- tion of Sumner's project is unsound philosophically as well as historically.

4. I now wish to deal with a further point of Sumner's discussion. Referring to my citations from Hare, Falk, Toul- min, Duncan-Jones, and Hampshire, where I argued that their statements showed that they were doing normative, not positive, metaethics, Sumner writes: "The particular point that Gewirth challenges in each of these cases is the claim that all moral judgments, as such, are in some sense universalizable" (S, p. 98). He then comments that "it is at least not obvious whether or not universalizability is part of the meaning of the term 'moral' in its positive sense. Gewirth has given no argument to show that it is not" (S. p. 99). For if universalizability is a universal feature of all moral judgments (in the positive

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sense of "moral"), then the metaethical assertion that moral judgments must be universalizable is itself morally neutral in the referential sense, and metaethicists who appeal to universalizability to elucidate what is "moral" are not making a normative moral commitment of their own.

It must be noted, however, that the phrase I used in reporting the doctrines about morality presented by the metaethicists in question was that, according to them, moral judgments must be "impartial or universalizable" (G, p. 195; quoted in S, p. 98). The relation between universalizability and such traits as impartiality, mutuality, universal- ism, and egoism is still a subject of much dispute. But the passages I quoted seemed clearly to interpret universalizability as a normative moral trait. Consider, for example, this passage from Duncan-Jones: "a man cannot be making a moral judgment un- less his attitude is free from partiality for particular places, ages, and social groups, and from self-partiality" (But- ler's Moral Philosophy, p. 172, quoted in G, p. 196). By this requirement for a judgment's being a "moral" one, not only would the individualistic egoist's judgments be debarred from being called "moral," but so too would be those of nationalists, racists, tribalists, upholders of proletarianism, and nearly all other particularistic codes. Now philosophers may propose all sorts of restrictions on the meanings of terms.

But when the restrictions they propose for "moral" are so extensive that they confine the term's applications to a uni- versalist or egalitarian code, then it seems difficult to interpret these restrictions as being neutral toward the various conflicting codes usually called "moral."

Of course, the metaethicist may rep- resent himself as a "revisionist," as not reporting or describing how "moral" is actually used but, rather, as pre- scribing how it ought to be used. In this case, however, the metaethicist would no longer be a "positivist" in the sense indicated above, and there would not be the logical barrier urged by those who hold that a metaethical assertion can never be morally normative. For, suppose that the metaethicist holds that his proposed revision is only logically normative, not morally. This would mean that his metaethical assertion is morally neutral in the predicative sense indicated above. But would it also be morally neutral in the referential sense? It might be difficult to give a decisive answer to this question. Nevertheless, if it turned out that the reference of the metaethicist's revised sense of "moral" coincided with the range of what he, or the members of his cultural group, regarded as morally right or good, then there would be strong ground for sus- pecting that his metaethical assertion was not morally neutral in the referential sense.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

NOTES

1. J. Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legisla- tion, chap. i, sec. xii; J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, chap. i, esp. par. 4.

2. Nicomachean Ethics i. 4. 1059b4; trans. W. David Ross (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954).

3. Ibid. ii, 9. 1 09b21,

4. See H. A. Prichard, "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" in W. Sellars and J. Hospers (eds.), Readings in Ethical Theory (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), p. 156 n.; W. D. Ross, "The Meaning of 'Right' " and "What Makes Right Acts Right?" in Sellars and Hospers, ibid., pp. 171, 177 n., 184, 192.

DISCUSSION 225

5. See J. Dewey, "The Construction of Good," in Sellars and Hospers, ibid., pp. 275 ff.

6. For the emotivists' claims that their metaethical doctrines are morally neutral, see A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (2d ed.; London: V. Gollancz, 1948), p. 103; C. L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1944), pp. 1, 110; R. Robinson, "The Emotive Theory of Ethics," Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, XXII (1948), 93.

7. It seems to be this predicative sense of moral neutrality that W. K. Frankena has in mind when he writes that "an inquiry into the meaning and logic of moral discourse may be normative without being moral" (see his "On Saying the Ethical Thing," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, XXXIX [1965-66], 23).

8. Cf. ibid., pp. 22 ff.

9. A. Gewirth, "Meta-ethics and Normative Eth- ics," Mind, LXIX (1960), 187-205.

10. L. W. Sumner, "Normative Ethics and Meta- ethics," Ethics, LXXVII (1967), 95-106.

11. I have elsewhere discussed in detail this par- allel between normative metaethics and philosophy of science, as well as the severe limitations of the analogy (which Sumner repeats [S, p. 101]) where- by it is said that as (positivistic) metaethics is to normative ethics, so is philosophy of science to science (see A. Gewirth, "Positive 'Ethics' and Normative 'Science,"' Philosophical Review, LXIX [1960], 311-30).

12. I have discussed these questions in "The Gen- eralization Principle," Philosophical Review, LXXIII (1964), 229-42, and in "Categorial Con- sistency in Ethics," Philosophical Quarterly, XVII (1967), 289-99.

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