52

THE GOOD REASONS PARADOX

ANDREW OLDENQUIST

In Universalizability and the Advantages of Nondescriptivism 1 1 had argued that the universalizability principle entails that there always are reasons for moral judgments, that it entails a good reasons requirement) I also argued that the good reasons requirement applies only to singular moral and evalu- ative judgments, and not to principles. Douglas Greenlee, in criticizing that essay, says that it is inconsistent not to apply the good reasons requirement to principles too, and that moral and evaluative principles, even when not actually supported, must be understood to be supportable.

There is, I think, a serious philosophical problem here, but I do not think that this suggestion of Greenlee solves it. The good reasons requirement is very rigorous: it does not say that a moral judgment must be supportable (whether or not anyone knows what supports it); it says a moral judgment must be supported by its propounder, in the sense that he has in mind a reason why he calls a thing good. Otherwise someone could get away with saying, of two things that appeared exactly alike to him, that one was good and the other bad, and then deduce from his disparate moral judgments that the two things admitted of a second difference, of which he was totally unaware. I argued, in the paper Greenlee criticizes, that such a procedure would involve a conceptual error. So even if the Universe were built such that every moral principle was supportable by another principle, ad infinitum (whatever this might mean), the blunt fact remains that we do not support our principles with infinite chains of reasons: There are such things as ac- knowledged ultimate principles which ex hypothesi are not accompanied by reasons-in-mind.

When someone offers what he considers an ultimate moral principle, is he misusing the moral words employed in his principle? It seems highly im- plausible to say so. Here the good reasons requirement generates the good reasons paradox. For it is the conceptual requirement that we have in mind something about a thing we call good and which separates it from things we do not call good, that drives us to appeal to relevant principles which embody these differentiating characteristics. Yet if these characteristics are themselves called good, it looks as though we must either always have reasons why they are good or deny that these evaluations are standard evaluative

1 The Journal o f Philosophy, Vol. LXV, No. 3, February 8, 1968. 2 By 'good reason' I mean only that a reason must satisfy certain formal, and not

substantive, requirements: That it is believed to be relevant by its propounder; that its formulation contains no irreducible singular terms; that it appeal only to non-moral and non-evaluative characteristics.

The Good Reasons Paradox 53

uses of "good." In other words, it is just the conceptual requirement that moral judgments have reasons that requires us to keep offering supporting moral judgments until we run out of reasons. My solution simply was to say that the good reasons requirement applies to judgments of individual things but not to judgments of abstractions such as kinds or characteristics. A defense of this lies in the fact that we do think and speak this way. But Greenlee is right to worry about it: I f the reasons requirement is derivable from the meaning of "good" it ought to apply to anything called good. Greenlee says I "do violence to" my claim that the reasons requirement is part of the meaning of "good,"; I suppose that qualifying general claims can be called doing violence to them, in the sense that the more general our claims the better they are, if they are true (though I am not sure I have in mind a reason why greater generality is better). I maintained that unsup- ported moral or evaluative judgments about individual things, but not un- supported judgments of characteristics or unsupported principles, involve one in a conceptual error. To maintain this is to restrict the scope of the good reasons requirement. And I do not see how in the world anybody can escape this conclusion, unless he thinks he can produce an a priori proof of a moral principle.

Why is it that the necessity that principles be supportable would require an a priori proof of them, while in "Universalizability and...Nondescrip- tivism" I argued that the necessity that singular moral judgments be sup- portable does not require an a priori proof of either singular judgments or principles? In that paper I should have spelled out why this is so more clearly than I did. If principles must have reasons, those reasons must either be another principle, or some factual statement necessarily connected with the principle. Ruling out the latter alternative, if principles must have reasons, then one never can hold any principle at all, for as soon as one has one of them he must have an infinite number of them - these being the reasons for the reasons for the reasons, etc. -, and this is clearly impossible. But any- thing which is a reason for a singular moral or evaluative judgment is going to be a principle and not another singular judgment; so no such regress is involved in saying all singular judgments require reasons.

I think Greenlee unduly minimizes the significance of the distinction be- tween singular moral and evaluative judgments of things, actions and charac- ters, and on the other hand those principles to which we appeal in order to support singular judgments. There is, after all, a very great difference between a particular thing or act, which is the standard object of appraisal, and those abstractions we call kinds or characteristics and which form the content of justifying principles.

It is because of this that the arguments I employed to show that singular moral and evaluative judgments must be made on the basis of reasons do not show that judgments of kinds and characteristics must be made on the basis of reasons. This is not to say that no problem remains, since, intuitively, it seems that if the good reasons requirement applies to one type of judgment then it should apply to all types which are not necessary truths. I f I say

54 The Journal of Value Inquiry

intelligence is good and drunkenness is not, must I have a reason? Is it like saying Jones is good and Smith is not and having to have a reason? I can ask " I f you concede that Jones and Smith are exactly alike, how can you evaluate them differently?" I cannot ask " I f you concede that intelligence and drunkenness are exactly alike, how can you evaluate them differently?" Intelligence and drunkenness cannot be exactly alike or exactly similar, but Jones and Smith can. I can say "These two characteristics differ in that one is intelligence and the other is drunkenness, and that is why one of them is good and the other is not." I cannot say "These two people differ in that one is Jones and the other is Smith, and that is why one of them is good and the other is not." Individual things can be numerically distinct but exactly similar, and because of this offer no basis for disparate evaluation. But kinds or characteristics cannot possibly be numerically distinct and exactly similar, though they can be relevantly similar. So just naming a kind or characteristic is already to name what it is about it that (logically) can be the basis of a moral or evaluative judgment of it, whereas just naming a particular does not achieve this.

Throughout I have spoken as though asking for the justification of a principle and asking for the justification of the goodness of a characteristic amounted to the same thing. I am not sure this is so. That is, I am not sure

that (1) Intelligent things are good

and (2) Intelligence is good

mean the same, or even that whatever justifies the one justifies the other. I want to avoid this issue, and content myself with maintaining that both (1) and (2) must be distinguished from singular moral judgments, and that this must be done in some way that makes intelligible the exempting of (1) and (2) from the good reasons requirement; and that the good reasons paradox arises if we cannot do this.

There is no suggestion intended that there can be no argument about prin- ciples. We always can ask someone why he holds a certain principle, and often one can answer the question. We often demand that someone justify or support a principle, especially if we think that its point or its morality are dubious. People are in considerable agreement as to which moral princi- ples are ultimate and which are secondary, but when someone surprises us with an eccentric ultimate principle, one thing we cannot do is accuse him of misunderstanding the meaning of "good." True, he says he has no reason, but those who hold more familiar ultimate principles are in exactly the same boat.

This is not to say there are not other ways in which the holder of the eccentric ultimate principle can go wrong. He may fail to understand the nature of the acts he approves or forbids, or he may be ignorant of their circumstances or consequences. He may be unwilling to consistently apply the principle in his own case, and not know this due to ignorance, lack of imagination or self-deception.

Ohio State University