On Moral Properties Jonathan Dancy Mind, New Series, Vol. 90, No. 359. (Jul., 1981), pp. 367-385. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423%28198107%292%3A90%3A359%3C367%3AOMP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L Mind is currently published by Oxford University Press.
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On Moral Properties JONATHAN DANCY
I.
Resultance
We know a priori that if an action has a moral property, it has it in view of some other properties which it has. I want to investigate this truism and explore its relationship with two other truisms, but I shall not be offering an analysis of it. Taken baldly as I have first expressed it, it does not go so far as some philosophers would like. A more demanding version is : We know a priori that if an action has a moral property it has it in virtue of some non-moral properties which it has. Both of these truisms are true enough. T o express them reasonably simply, we can use the term 'resultant' thus: 'l'he F-ness of an object results from properties P1...Pn of that object iff the object is F in virtue of its possession of P1...Pn, where F-ness is not identical with PI.. .Pn nor with any truth function of members of PI.. .Pn. and I shall allow myself to talk of one property resulting from a set of other properties. So we have it that if an action has a moral property M , its M-ness results from some of its non-moral properties. These non-moral properties may be called the reasons why it is M , and typically they will form a rather small group among the action's non-moral properties. But when a man decides that the action is M , his reasons will probably form an even smaller group ; in a favourable case, his reasons will be among the reasons why it is M , but in an unfavourable case, they will not. I n morals as elsewhere, a man can reach the right conclusion for the wrong reasons, and even where he reaches the right conclusion for sound reasons, he need not have exhausted all the available reasons. All this might seem, from a certain point of view, uncontentious enough. Sir David Ross expresses it this way : 'It is clear that it is in virtue of my thinking the act to have some other characteristic that I think that I ought to do it. Rightness is always a resultant attribute-an attribute that an action has because it has another attribute' (Foundations of Ethics, p. 168).
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But he also writes: 'An act that is right is right in virtue of its whole intrinsic nature and not of any part of it. I n respect of certain elements in its nature it may be prima facie right and in respect of others prima facie wrong; whether it is actually right or wrong, and if it is wrong the degree of its wrongness, are determined only by its whole nature' (The Right and the Good, p . 123). I s this simply another conception which also needs to be spelled out, or is it a neu7conception of resultance which competes with our previous one? I n The Right and the Good, his earlier work, Ross distinguishes carefully between the type of resultance which I have already mentioned, and which he calls parti-resultance, and the nev type of resultance, called toti-resultance. We might take it that moral properties are both parti-resultant and toti-resultant, it being true both that they exist in virtue of the sum total of all the non-moral properties, and that some of the non-moral properties of an action still play a special role in the determination of its moral properties. But there can be objections to this attempt to have it both ways-objections from both sides. Ross's view, at least in The Right and the Good, was quite clear: moral properties are toti-resultant and not parti-resultant. What arguments can be produced in favour of this position? I think it possible to discern two arguments in Ross. T h e first is as follows : 'The equality of the two angles is a parti-resultant attribute. And the same is true of all mathematical attributes. I t is true, I may add, of prima-facie rightness. But no act is ever, in virtue of falling under some general description, necessarily actually right; its rightness depends on its whole nature and not on any element in it' (R & G, p. 33). If this is an argument, Ross is moving from the anti-naturalistic view that no natural character is sufficient to guarantee rightness, to the view that rightness is toti-resultant. Is this move valid? I t is interesting that in a footnote to the passage cited, Ross tells us that he has rather over-stated his view in the interest of simplicity 'Any act is the origination of a great variety of things many of which make no difference to its rightness or wrongness. But there are always many elements in its nature . . . that make a difference to its rightness or wrongness, and no element in its
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nature can be dismissed without consideration as indifferent' (ibid.). But if the above argument is valid, it is valid against the position sketched in this footnote. For the converse of the inference is that if rightness is not toti-resultant, then some natural character is sufficient to guarantee rightness. Since Ross's 'true' view is that rightness is not toti-resultant, he should by his own reasoning conclude what he believes false, that some natural character is sufficient to guarantee rightness. This conclusion is not made more palatable by the qualification that the natural character concerned is a complex one consisting of many different qualities. However, as well as there being this ad hominem argument against Ross, it is clear that the inference is invalid. Perhaps the way to show this is to distinguish between two views : I . Some
2.
limited natural character guarantees the rightness of any action which has it. Some limited natural character makes this particular action right.
Ross is arguing from the falsehood of the first to the falsehood of the second. But it seems clear that this action can be right because it is the returning of an axe to its owner, without such actions always being 'necessarily actually right'. I shall return to this point later. T h e second argument discernible in Ross in favour of totiresultance is based on the agreed fact that 'no element in the nature of an action can be dismissed without consideration as indifferent'. This is the point that although an action may have several properties in virtue of which it is prima facie right, there still may be some overwhelming characteristic in virtue of which it is prima facie wrong and which is strong enough to tip the scales so that the action is actually wrong. And we cannot know whether the action is right or wrong until we have seen the effect of each property on the sum total of its values. T h e reply to this argument is as before. First, Ross's own backsliding from true toti-resultance indicates that he thinks the argument unsound. Second, he is right; the argument confuses the truth that each property may make a difference with the falsehood that each property does make a difference. T h e consideration offered here in favour of toti-resultance is an epistemological one; but the conclusion is, in a broad sense, logical. T h e intuitionists
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seem agreed that in order to discover the moral properties of an action or object, one needs first to discover all its non-moral properties. Why should this be so? For no other reason, it seemed, than that the action's moral properties are toti-resultant; and so any moral conclusion we come to before all the non-moral facts are in can at best have the status of a well-ordered guess and might best be expressed in terms of the prima facie. There are two complaints here : the first is that the notion of the prima facie being used is not Ross's technical one (for which see below and Ross's second apology on p. 20 of The Right and the Good) but the normal one, incompatible with Ross's, of an appearance presented at first sight but which later may turn out to be illusory. Second, all the epistemological facts can be accounted for using just the notion of parti-resultance. T h e crucial point here is that we can never know in advance whether a given non-moral property is or is not relevant to the moral properties of the action. This is why we need to look at all the non-moral facts before coming to our moral decision, and does not at all weight the balance in favour of the notion of toti-resultance. I t can still be the case that our final decision is that the action is right in virtue of some of its non-moral properties, for its properties in general are such that the action is right and that its rightness does result from a limited number of them. This being so, ~5 hat can be said in favour of parti-resultance and against toti-resultance? Again, there seem to be two points to be made here. T h e first is made by Ross 'Any act is the origination of a great variety of things which make no difference to its rightness or wrongness' (R & G, P 33). Assuming that parti-resultance and toti-resultance are competitors, (on the basis that both are explicated using the phrase 'in virtue of') this point must create a difficulty for toti-resultance. Moore's doctrine of organic wholes may be an attempt to solve it. But a worse difficulty for toti-resultance is created by its reliance on Ross's notion of a prima facie duty. This notion is subject to grave doubts. T h e notion of a prima facie duty is introduced for two purposes. First, it is introduced in order to increase the consistency of any complex moral position. Suppose that I have as moral principles the following :
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Murder is wrong Breaking a promise is wrong Lying is wrong Helping others in distress is right (and so not wrong) and so on. I will soon find a case arising of an action which comes under more than one of these principles and is said by one to be right and by other to be wrong. If I read my principles as universally quantified implications, I find myself in self-contradiction and must adjust my moral scheme somewhere. But this, Ross thinks, distorts the case; the validity of moral principles is not impugned by their coming into conflict. Ergo, they must be of some other form. Ross therefore finds a form under which they cannot conflict. Murder is prima facie wrong Lying is prima facie wrong Helping others is prima facie right I n the case of a conflict of principles all we can do is to consider the case and decide where the balance of wrongness or rightness lies. Second, the prima facie is used to explain the fact that often, if an act that is a duty is so in virtue of all its non-moral properties, among the properties in virtue of which it is a duty will be some in virtue of which it is wrong. This paradoxical situation can be resolved by deft use of the prima facie. T h e sentence 'Among the properties in virtue of which it is a duty proper are some in virtue of which it is prima facie wrong' lacks any appearance of contradiction (cf. R & G, p. 123). There is a lot to be said about this notion of the prima facie, but I shall restrict myself to two points in order to indicate where it is unsatisfactory. T h e first concerns the nature of a conflict of duties. JVhere such a conflict occurs one may predominate ; but the other is not for that reason abolished ; it may create residual obligations such as the duty to apologise for failing to keep a promise even though it was in the circumstances one's duty to break it, or may give rise to feelings of regret for the action that one was unable to perform. Ross was aware of this and tried to account for it by saying that primafacie duties are of the nature of a claim on one, which is not abolished but overridden in certain circumstances. But his explicit accounts of a prima facie duty leave no room for this sort of remark. H e offers us two.
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(A) An action is a prinza facie duty if it is an action which tends to be a duty (R & G, p. 28). (B) An action is aprima facie duty if it is of such a kind that it would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of another kind which is morally significant. (Ross also suggests the phrase 'conditional dz~ty' in the place of 'prima facie' duty) (R & G, p. 19). T h e first of these accounts, in terms of tendencies, will not touch the particular case; a particular action, even as an action of a certain type, does not tend to be a duty but either is one or is not one. T h e second account cannot be faulted on that score, but fails elsewhere. JVhat it tells us is that where an action is prima facie right in virtue of being the keeping of a promise, prima facie wrong in virtue of being the neglect of the duty of self-preservation, and actually wrong since the prinlafacie wrongness predominates over the prima facie rightness, the prima facie rightness is the characteristic that the action would have been a duty had it not been an action of some other nora ally significant kind. But why should this characteristic create residual duties or a feeling of regret? Despite Ross's good intentions here, the notion of the prima facie seems quite unable to produce what is wanted. I now turn to the second, and for present purposes more important, area in which we might look (without success) for help to theprimafacie. Linked with toti-resultance, we learn that an action is aprima facie duty in virtue of being a promise-keeping if, if it had no other morally relevant characteristics, it would be a duty in virtue of all its characteristics. This position attempts to account for the peculiar place of promise-keeping among those characteristics by putting it completely at the level of theprimafacie. But it surely distorts the matter to suppose that among the characteristics in virtue of which it is a duty proper promise-keeping has not some special place; particularly when we remember that in a case of conflict our action will have some characteristics in virtue of which it is prima facie wrong but which still count, equally with promise-keeping, among those in virtue of which it is actually right. Something must be said to pick out a special relationship between the rightness of the act and some among its qualities, and the notion of theprima facie does not provide what we need. I conclude that the claim that moral properties are totiresultant is not satisfactory until either the notion of the prima
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facie is improved or some other method is found to express the special place that some qualities have in determining the moral property of an act.
Even if the notion of toti-resultance gives an unsatisfactory account of the relation between a moral property of an action and all its nonmoral or natural properties, there remains another and much more popular account of that relation. This is the notion of supercenience. T o say that moral properties supervene on the non-moral is to say that if an action satisfies N,, N2...Nn, where N,, N2...Nn is a complete natural description, and also has the moral property M, then any other action satisfying N,, N2...Nn must also have M , and the first action cannot change in respect of M without changing in respect of N,, N2...Nn, even though the possession of N,, N2...Nn does not entail the possession of M. This notion of supervenience clearly falls into two parts, which are worth separating. Here is an attempt1 at a bipartite definition : (S) If a property M is supervenient upon a class of properties C, then:- M is not identical with any member of C or with any truth function of members of C, and if an object has M and C1...Cn (where C1...Cn are all the members of C which it has), then it is impossible that it should cease to be M or become more or less M than before without changing in respect of some member of C. (Sl) If a property M is supervenient on a class of properties C, then:- M is not identical with any member of C nor with any truth-function of members of C, and if an object has M and C1... Cn (where C1...Cn are all the members of C which it has), then necessarily any other object which possesses C1...Cn to the same degree also possesses M to the same degree. Let us restrict ourselves for the moment, to considering the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral, that is the case where M is goodness and C is the class of non-moral properties. These definitions bring to light several difficulties with the notion of moral supervenience. Apart from general problems concerning the I
(S) and (Sl) are taken from S. Blackburn, 'hloral Realism', in J. Casey (ed.), 12Iornlit~' and Moral Reasoning (Methuen, London, 1971)~pp. 101-124, at p. 106.
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possibility of a sharp distinction between the moral and the nonmoral, and any doubt there may be about conceiving of all the nonmoral qualities, the main difficulty here is to prevent the right hand sides of (S) and (Sl) from being too true (where M is goodness and C is the class of all the non-moral properties) and so proving the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral at the cost of making it trivial. T h e right hand side of (S) is too true in this case since no person can change in any respect without becoming older, and I am not sure that an action can be said to change at all. T h e right hand side of (Sl) is too true in this case since the identity of indiscernible~guarantees it, it being impossible for two things both to possess all the same non-moral properties to the same degree. Assuming for the moment that we are trying to preserve both (S) and (Sl), there seem to be two methods of improving them. One is to look to the literature on the identity of indiscernibles to provide some satisfactory minimal restriction on the notion of all the nonmoral properties. T h e other is to make a more radical change in our version of C, the class of properties on which the moral properties supervene. T h e natural candidate here is that of all the morally relevant properties: the moral properties would supervene not on all the non-moral properties, but only on those of them that are morally relevant. Of these two options, I very much favour the first. Considerations here are twofold. First, can we produce a sound notion of the morally relevant properties under which it will be true that the moral supervenes on them? I shall provide reasons in the next section for doubting this. Second, it is desirable at this stage to make some effort to distinguish between the supervenience of moral properties on the non-moral and the universalisability of moral judgements as propounded by Professor Hare. Narrowing the subvenient class in the way suggested simply collapses the two notions into one. But there would be room on the alternative proposal to reject Hare's doctrine of universalisability without rejecting the doctrine of moral supen-enience, and this is an option which ought to be left open as long as possible. I n the hope that the supervenience of the moral on the nonmoral can become a non-trival matter by an alteration in our account of supervenience along the lines of the first alternative, I shall continue to speak as if it were a moral principle of substance that two actions that share all their non-moral properties to the same degree must share all their moral properties to the same degree, and that no object can change its moral properties without
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changing its non-moral properties. This gives us our third truism. And it gives us, so far, three relations between the moral property M-ness of an object and its non-moral properties. T h e first is between M-ness and the speaker's reasons for asserting M-ness of the object: the second between M-ness and those properties from which the M-ness results; the third is between M-ness and all the properties together. T h e possibility that some non-moral properties are in some special way morally relevant suggests further such relations. But in order to introduce these, I need to return to my starting point and look again at the relation of resultance. A few further difficulties in the definition of supervenience emerge in Section 4.
3. Resultance and uni'z;ersalisability T h e truism that actions have their moral properties in virtue of their non-moral properties should not blind us to the fact that sometimes an action has a moral property in virtue of its possession of another moral property. An action can be good because it is generous. I n the terminology of resultance, although a moral property of an action always results from some of its non-moral properties, sometimes a moral property results, on the way, so to speak, from another moral property. T h e goodness of this action results from its generosity, which in its turn results from some non-moral properties of the action, for instance its being a substantial donation to a needy cause. And if this is true, one thing that we might otherwise feel inclined to say is ruled out. We might, that is, want to suppose that there is some short list of qualities from which moral qualities result; a list, that is, of qualities in virtue of which actions get to be good or bad. But this supposition is ruled out. There is no short list of qualities from which all moral properties result. And we know this because we know that many of the putatively exclusive qualities that are specially reasons tor moral assessment are themselves resultant. T h e quality of being a human being is resultant, because if it is true that someone is a human being it is true in virtue of some other properties which he has. And we know that if a moral property M results from a nonmoral property A which itself results from another non-moral property B, not only is it the case that M results from A, but also that M results from B. For resultance is transitive. If it were not
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transitive, i.e. if it were not true that where A results from B, and B results from C, A results from C, then we would have been unable to assert our second truism, viz. that moral properties always result from non-moral ones. They do, but sometimes they only do so via intermediate moral qualities, as in the case of the action which is good because it is generous. What we know so far is that we cannot insist that the qualities from which moral qualities in particular cases result should be general criteria for the ascription of moral properties, for there is no short list of properties from which moral qualities result. Nor can we in general say, where an action has a moral property M in virtue of having non-moral properties, A, B, and C, that the presence of A, B, and C count generally as reasons for calling actions M. T h e transitivity of resultance makes it the case that there are many abstruse properties from which sometimes moral properties result ; we are not going to insist on that account that the presence of those properties counts as a reason for moral assessment. I t is not, that is to say, the case that noticing the presence of these qualities ought to increase one's confidence that the action is good. As we continue down the train of resultance, we reach properties that are very unlike such qualities as being conducive to human happiness, being commanded by God or whatever else may be thought of as being intrinsically relevant to moral assessment. And so we cannot say in general that where an action has a moral property M in virtue of having non-moral properties, A, B, and C, then the presence of A, B and C count generally as reasons for calling actions
M. There is another and perhaps a more conclusive consideration which defeats the identification of the properties in virtue of which a particular action is good with reasons in general for calling actions good. When I decide that an action is good I see it as being good in virtue of my recognition of other non-moral properties which the action has. These properties, perhaps, count as my reasons for calling this action good, and in making my decision I shall probably focus on a few special properties among all those from which, in the light of the transitivity of resultance, the goodness of this action results. My reasons for calling it good, then, are standardly to be found among the qualities from which the goodness results. Can we say that my reasons for calling this action good must be generalisable, i.e. that I must also call good any action similar to it in those respects? I n general we cannot say this; but it all depends
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on how similar the second action is to the original one. If my reasons for calling the first action good are that it had qualities ABC, I am not committed to calling any action similar to it in those respects, i.e. which also has qualities ABC, good. For the second action might have some further quality D which defeats any tendency that ABC had to make the action good. Thus if my reasons for calling this girl good are that she is chaste and pious, I am not committed to calling another girl good if, for example, besides being chaste and pious she is also cruel. T h e natural tendency at this point is to revert to the first girl and insist that her lack of cruelty must have been among my reasons for calling her good. But I do not think this is so. I do not call someone good because he is not cruel, though I may refrain from calling someone good on the grounds that he is cruel. An argument of the same structure can be used also to defeat the belief that if an action has a moral property M-ness which results from its non-moral properties ABC, then any action which is ABC must have M-ness as well. T h e properties ABC that go to make the action M may only do so in the absence of some defeating property D-ness. If D-ness is present in the second action, that action will not be M. But we cannot insist that the absence of D-ness must have been one of the properties that made the first action M, just as (and this is an analogy only) the facts that cause me to be writing now can only do so in the absence of a nuclear explosion, but such an absence is not for that reason among the causes of my writing. So it is not the case that where a moral property results from a particular set of non-moral properties, any action that has that set of non-moral properties will also have the moral quality. And it is not the case that where my reasons for calling an action good are that it has properties ABC I am committed to calling any other action which has the properties ABC good. It is not difficult to find people who have fallen into error on this point. Here are some examples : 'Hence to give a reason in support of the judgment that a certain individual, A, ought or has the right to do some act, presupposes that anyone with the characteristics specified in the statement of the reason ought or has the right to do the same kind of act in a situation of the kind specified' (M. Singer, Generalisation in Ethics, p. 24). 'Sou- if it is the possession of certain natural features which
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makes the action wrong, then any other action which had just those natural features would also be wrong. I n this sense all moral judgments are universalisable' (R. G. Swinburne, ' T h e Objectivity of Morality', in Philosophy, (January, 1976), p. 8). 'If I say "x is good" I must be able to say that any x which has the same relevant qualities or properties as x is also good, because we judge x to be good for having those qualities or properties' (J. Kovesi, Moral ATotions,p. 158). Sometimes, as in Swinburne's case, the view I am denying is called the universalisability of moral judgments. If this is what universalisability is, it is false. But Professor Hare's way of formulating the doctrine is apparently different : 'any singular descriptive judgment is universalisable . . . in the sense that it commits the speaker to the further proposition that anything exactly like the subject of the first judgment, or like it in the relevant respects, possesses the quality attributed to it in the first judgment,' (Freedom and Reason, p. 12). T h e phrase 'exactly like . . . or like it in the relevant respects' looks like an attempt to have two doctrines in one. Admitting that no two objects can be exactly alike, let us take it that Hare's true intention is that the speaker is committed to a similar description of anything like the first object in the relecant respects, What does Hare mean by this phrase, and does it offer a better notion of universalisability? Unfortunately Hare's practice reveals that he, at least, means no more by this phrase than the position we have already considered and rejected. 'If a person says that a thing is red, he is committed to the view that anything which was like it in the relevant respects would likewise be red. T h e relevant respects are those which, he thought, entitled him to call the first thing red' (Freedom and Reason, p. I I). 'If he makes a moral judgment about one object, this must be in virtue of the possession by the object of certain non-moral features . . . and therefore any other object which possesses those features must have the same moral judgment made about it' (Freedom and Reason, p. 20, cf. also p. 21).
I think, however, that it is possible to find in the notion of a rclevant respect something more promising than what has so far been unearthed, and something which Hare's use of the phrase 'exactly
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like' makes one wonder whether he was not implicitly considering. T h e purpose of introducing the phrase 'relevant respects' was to broaden the basis for comparison between the first action and subsequent ones, in such a way as to escape the possibility of a subsequent action having a non-moral quality which defeats in its case an attribution of the same m o ~ a quality l (viz. a quality such as D-ness in the previous example). It seems to me that the phrase 'similar in relevant respects' has two promising interpretations. T h e first is 'similar in respects relevant to the moral properties of the first action' where, in order to make such respects more wideranging than are the speaker's reasons or even the properties from which the moral properties result, we define the notion of a relevant respect in this way: the qualities relevant to the 4-ness of a 4 object are those in virtue of which it is or which if it had had, or lacked, it would not be +; or which if it had had or lacked it would have been more or less 4 than it is. Using the previous example of the girl who is good because she is chaste and pious, the fact that she is not cruel is relevant to her goodness though it does not count among the reasons why we call her good or among the qualities from which her goodness results. So we are at least doing better than before. But nonetheless, the doctrine of universalisability constructed using this sense of 'relevantly similar' is also false. For it may still be the case that the second action is similar to the first in all respects relevant to the goodness of the first, but is still so specially circumstanced than in its case those qualities do not suffice to make it good. T o see this, suppose that two subjects S1 and SQhare the qualities ABC in virtue of which S1 is good. Then 52 may have a quality D which is a defeater. Now suppose that S1 and 5 3 share all qualities relecant to Sl's goodness. must be among these, and in general the list of shared qualities will be much longer, though still containing only some of Sl's qualities. Suppose we have this situation then
+
qualities
ABC ~ 1 . . - - ~- 1-~ -1 .~B1 . .ABC ~ 1 ~ 1 .D E, F, G , H, I , J E, F , G, H, I, J
Now though no single quality in the list E-J can be a defeater by itself, and so prevent S3 from being good, the combination of E and F may do so without the absence of E or the absence of F being by itself relevant to Sl's goodness, on the present definition of relevance. I t seems to me that any relaxation of that definition to
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exclude the possibility of two qualities combining to make a defeater will turn our present conception of qualities relevant to Sl's goodness into a conception too broad to exclude any of Sl's qualities. T h e other interpretation of the phrase 'relevantly similar' is to be found in the principle that where one action resembles another in all respects relevant to moral assessment in general both actions must be given the same assessment. I have given reasons already for supposing that there is no short list of respects that are relevant to moral assessment. On the account of relevance given earlier, where the notion of relevance is built on the notion of resultance but rather wider than it, we cannot know in advance whether a given property may or may not be relevant to our moral assessment of some object which has it. So there is not too much difference between a principle that talks of any property relevant to moral assessment in general and one which talks of any property whatever, since any property may, in the sense defined, be relevant to the moral property of some action. If this is so, the requirement of universalisability amounts to no more, in the only defensible version, than the requirement that the speaker recognise the supervenience of the property he is attributing to the action, and even this requirement is trivial unless we can devise a non-trivial concept of supervenience. What is more, we can now see a further reason why an attempt to do this by restricting the subvenient class to that of all morally relevant properties is unlikely to be successful, since on one interpretation of this restriction we are sinking supervenience into a false doctrine of universalisability, and on another we are not in fact making any progress at all since there is no difference between all the properties of an action and all its morally relevant qualities.
4. lZloral Resultance and Supervenience Contrasted
I hope that the previous section may have helped to emphasise the difference between resultance and supervenience. Admittedly both in some sense concern the relation between the moral and the nonmoral properties of an action. Both seem to provide us with a sense in which the moral properties depend on or are 'fixed' by the nonmoral properties. Both in some way encourage us to look for an account in which me can say that, case by case, the moral properties of actions consist in their non-moral properties. But the dissimilarity
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between the two notions is far more impressive than their similarities. T h e crucial causes of dissimilarity are first that resultance is a relation between a moral property of an action and only some of its non-moral properties, whereas supervenience concerns itself with all the non-moral properties; and, second, that in talking of resultance we are talking about the properties of the particular action at hand without necessarily comparing it to any other action, whereas in talk of supervenience we are always working from the moral property of one action (already determined) to the moral property of some other action (or that action itself at a later date?). This is why resultance offers much more convincing answers in the three areas I mentioned, vix. : I . Supervenience is not really a relation between the moral and the non-moral properties of an action, but is either a relation between moral and non-moral properties in general or a consequence of whatever relation holds in the particular case between moral and non-moral properties. I t is dubious to talk of those qualities on which this action's goodness supervenes, just as it is dubious to talk of those qualities from which in general goodness results. 2 . Only resultance provides a genuine sense in which the nonmoral properties3x the moral properties: Supervenience only tells us that once they are fixed, they cannot change without a change in the non-moral properties and that if all (?) those properties recur in another action they would 'fix' the same moral property. 3. T h e intuition that there is nothing more to the moral properties of an action than its non-moral properties (a sort of token identity theory in ethics) is one which is only plausible if expressed in terms of resultance. Stated in terms of supervenience it is simply unattractive. For the intuition (11) I n a given case, the action's goodness just consists in all its non-moral properties cannot hold a candle to (I" I n a given case, the action's goodness just consists in those non-moral properties in virtue of which it is good. because whatever the relation of 'consisting in', it is not one which holds between supervenient and subvenient in a given case. I n fact the attraction of that relation, for semi-reductive purposes, is
382 JONATHAN DANCY: not one which we need supervenience to formulate. As a fundamental element in an identity theory, therefore, supervenience is distinctly disappointing. And this should not surprise us, so long as we see reason to adhere to our original definition of supervenience. For according to that definition, it is possible where hI is supervenient on C for an object to have hI without having any properties in C at all. This is unworrying in the special case of moral properties, because of the independently probable absence of objects with a total lack of non-moral properties. I t is more contentious when we turn to other potential instances of supervenience, for instance that of mental states on physical states. But it is difficult to discover from the supporters of this supervenience whether they intend it to include the thesis that no object can have a mental state without having a physical state. If they do, then the supervenience of the mental will be very much harder to establish, and not, I think, in any way necessary to the purposes of the supporters of supervenience, whose main interest in it is that it provides a further way in which the mental and the physical cannot come apart. T h e non-existence of mental states in a non-physical object is established separately by the identity theory; supervenience is an addition to this and does not entail it. Are resultance and supervenience logically independent of each other? Supervenience does not entail resultance, for we could know (in whatever way such things are known) that one property supervenes on a class of others without knowing that in each case some of those others will play a special part. But, as I hinted above, I think that there is a sense in which resultance entails supervenience, since supervenience appears as a consequence of whatever relation holds between moral and non-moral properties of particular actions. Given a non-trivial formulation of supervenience, we know that the relationship between a moral property and those from which it is parti-resultant is necessarily repeated in another object which resembles the first in all (?) non-moral respects. Kot only must the second object have the same moral property; it must have it for the same reasons, since there is ex hypothesi no question of a defeater. j. Epistemology
I t has been held that the fact that moral properties are resultant (whether toti-resultant or parti-resultant), has consequences for
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our epistemology. T h u s Ross in his later book (in which he supports parti-resultance) writes 'Now it is clear that it is in virtue of my thinking the act to have some other character that I think I ought to do it. Rightness is always a resultant attribute, an attribute that an act has because it has another attribute' (FE, p. 168). He continues : 'It is not an attribute that its subject is just directly perceived in experience to have, as I perceive a particular extended patch to be yellow or a particular noise to be loud. X o doubt there are causes which cause this patch to be yellow, or that noise to be loud ; but I can perceive the one to be yellow, or the other to be loud, without knowing anything of the causes that account for this. I see the attributes in question to attach to the subjects merely as these subjects, not as subjects of such and such a character. On the other hand, it is only by knowing or thinking my act to have a particular character, out of the many that it in fact has, that I know or think it to be right' (ibid.). I t is not very clear which of the two aspects of rightness mentioned, resultance and inability to be directly perceived, is wearing the trousers. Is Ross contending that since rightness is resultant, it eannot be directly perceived, or that since it cannot be directly perceived, it is resultant? T h e first is the stronger; but neither line is acceptable. One reason for a bogus distinction betmeen colours and moral qualities with respect to resultance is the view that if a quality is resultant it can never be perceived entirely on its own account, but only via awareness of the qualities from which, in this instance, it results; since colours can be directly perceived, they cannot be resultant. And another similar reason derives from the fear that if moral qualities are truly perceivable, we should be able to learn the meanings of moral terms by pure observation and ostension, which would remove from them the elements of personal decision, action-relevance, sensitivity to conscience, etc. Observability itself has no such consequences. I t is however a simple matter to show that a quality may be resultant but be perceivable without any awareness of the qualities from which, in this itzstance, it results. T h e quality of weakness is resultant. A chess position cannot be simply weak; it must be weak
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because of some other characteristic. But a chess expert can see weakness in a position without yet being able to see the particular failing in which its weakness consists. Maybe he cannot see the weakness directly in the sense that he sees from the shape of the position that it is weak. But this is irrelevant to the question whether resultance is compatible with direct perceivability, for that question gives a different sense to the notion of direct perception. For our purposes what we want to know is whether a resultant property can ever be perceived without some awareness of the qualities from which it results. And the answer is clearly that it can. I n the case of moral properties, then, there seems to be no reason to argue from their resultance to the conclusion that they cannot be perceived in their own right. We may of course still wish to accept this conclusion for other reasons, although probably in that case we will give a different sense to the phrase 'in their own right', i.e. we will make different exclusions. As far as resultance can take us, then, we may talk of seeing that the position is weak, or seeing that the action is right. A quality can be resultant and directly perceptible, or resultant and only indirectly perceptible, or non-resultant and directly perceptible. So are there no relations between the epistemology of moral concepts and their 'logic'? T o point to what is possible is not to reduce the importance of what is typical. I t may typically be the case that colours are perceived in their own right, though this will not prevent colours from being resultant. We know empirically that colours are parti-resultant from other physical properties, and supervenient on a certain sub-class of physical properties. T h e contrast between resultances known a priori and those known empirically does not seem to me to be crucial; on general Quinean grounds, I take it to be based on a difference of degree rather than of type, although of course a difference of degree is still a difference. Again, it may typically be the case that in moral judgment we consider properties that are non-moral on which to base our evaluations. Is it because of this that we know that moral properties result from non-moral properties? I t is important to see here that the fact adduced, namely that our reasons for moral judgments are standardly the presence of non-moral properties, falls short of establishing between the moral and the non-moral a transitive relation of resultance, since the resultance-relation is much broader than the reasons-relation. How then do we know that moral properties result from non-moral ones, if we cannot infer
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385 this from the fact that non-moral properties count as reasons for moral judgments or that we cannot directly (in some sense) observe the moral? I t looks as if we shall have to make a bald claim to a priori knowledge of moral resultance. With such knowledge, we can prove the supervenience of moral properties, if we want. Alternatively, we can claim independent a priori knowledge of supervenience. Neither approach seems very objectionable in the case of rnoral resultance and supervenience.
6. Summary T h e main aim of this paper has been to separate the notions of resultance and supervenience ; perhaps the central element of that separation is the view that supervenience is not a relation between moral and non-moral properties in a given case, but rather a consequence of that relation, whatever it may be. And I gave reasons in Section 4 for finding resultance a much more profitable notion from the point of view of moral theory ; here and elsewhere I have had in mind the attractions of an intuitionist theory of ethics, but I hope that the points I make would be acceptable regardless of one's general ethical standpoint. Theorists of different standpoints should be able to agree on whether moral properties are parti-resultant or toti-resultant, whether and in what sense they are supervenient or universalisable etc., despite differences in the ways in which these claims are interpreted in the different classical ethical theories. A secondary theme in the paper has been the attempt to keep supervenience separate from universalisability and so open the prospect of accepting the former while rejecting the latter. Confusion here seems to me to have earned for universalisability an unjustifiably easy ride." UNIVERSITY OF KEELE 2
I thank H a r n Lenis and D a l ~ dhIcNaughton for their attempts to Improle this paper.
