[资料] Towards a Theory of Moral Change

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Towards a Theory of Moral Change


            Charles E. Harris
            Texas A&M University
            
                Moral concepts found enshrined in traditions do not stay the
                same. They undergo transformation. They are subject to
                investigation and criticism. They expand, shrink, or disappear.
                John T. Noonan, Jr., Bribes, p. 683
                ...what we call morality is a body of practical knowledge....The
                character at any particular time of a body of practical
                knowledge such as medicine or music is the result of historical
                circumstances....morality is a human creation that changes
                through time... James Wallace, Ethical Norms, Particular Cases,
                pp. 9 and 12.
              These passages suggest that morality changes. Often moral change
              is associated with an excitement and fervor that these quotations
              do not convey. One thinks of the abandonment of witch trials, the
              rejection of judicial torture, the long fight for religious
              liberty, the abolition of slavery, the reversal of the prohibition
              of usury, the agitation for contraception and women's rights, the
              lifting of the prohibition of divorce, and the struggle for civil
              rights. To what extent can we understand moral change
              conceptually? Are there any factors that are always, or at least
              commonly, associated with moral change? Would knowledge of these
              factors help us to understand present moral controversy or even to
              anticipate moral change? Is it possible to have a theory of moral
              change? In this talk I shall try to address these questions in a
              preliminary way.
              1. Preliminary Considerations
              Let me begin by considering several issues that I believe will
              arise in any discussion of moral change. The first set of issues
              has to do with the broad context in which moral change occurs. Let
              me begin with some terminology. Unless the moral issue is entirely
              novel, there is a "going position" with respect to what I shall
              call a practice. That is, there is a widely-accepted moral
              evaluation of the practice, which I shall call the traditionalist
              position. Examples of practices are holding slaves and charging
              interest on money loaned. Before the eighteenth century, the
              traditionalist position with respect to the practice of slavery,
              for example, was that it is morally permissible for one human
              being to own another. In the eighteenth century, the
              traditionalist position was replaced by what I shall call a
              revisionist position with regard to slavery, i.e. a new moral
              evaluation of the practice of slavery, according to which slavery
              is exploitation and a violation of human rights. I want to hold
              that the burden of proof should be in favor of the traditionalist
              position. That is, there must be good reasons to accept a
              revisionist position, and it is up to the revisionist to supply
              those reasons. Absent good reasons, the traditionalist evaluation
              of the practice should continue to prevail. I offer two reasons
              for this claim. First, most of us are committed to the moral
              tradition in which we find ourselves. We accept much more of it
              than we reject. I believe the most plausible interpretation of
              this commitment is to say that the traditionalist evaluation of a
              practice should be accepted unless there is good reason to reject
              it. Second, intellectual and moral stability require that we not
              modify tradition unless there is good reason to do so. There is
              another important point to make about the
              traditionalist/revisionist distinction. While the burden of proof
              should be in favor of the traditional evaluation of a practice, a
              significant challenge to it cannot go unanswered. Once a serious
              revisionist position is put forth, it cannot be refuted merely by
              pointing out that it contradicts the traditionalist position. This
              is because in the past the burden of proof has often been met by
              revisionists, as the examples of moral change mentioned earlier
              attest. To say that a sufficient justification of a practice is
              simply that it is the traditionalist position would mean that all
              past moral change has been wrong, and this would commit one to
              some highly implausible moral views. A second set of issues has to
              do with the distinction between causal and normative explanation
              of moral change. Most authorities on the history of morality
              attempt to give causal accounts of moral change. Some even argue
              that specifically moral considerations play little or no part in
              moral change. The classic example here is the claim that it is
              changes in economic factors, not moral criticism, that caused the
              demise of slavery. As a moral philosopher and not a historian or
              sociologist, I am interested primarily in a normative explanation
              of moral change rather than a causal explanation. That is, I am
              concerned here primarily with factors that could justify moral
              change, not simply causally explain it. I am not, however, simply
              interested in factors that could justify moral change, but rather
              in factors which there is some reason to believe actually did
              justify moral change in the minds of people of a certain era.
              Still, one is left to wonder: Were these rational justifications
              really efficacious in any sense in bringing about moral change, or
              were they simply interesting but ineffectual ideas in the heads of
              people in a certain age? In philosophical jargon, were they simply
              epiphenomenal? In less philosophical language, were they simply
              icing on the cake? My short response to this issue is to assume
              the position taken by John Stuart Mill that rational arguments do
              influence moral change, by way of their influence on human thought
              and action. Concerning the demise of slavery, Mill wrote:
                It was not by any change in the distribution of material
                interests, but by the spread of moral convictions, that negro
                slavery has been put an end to in the British Empire and
                elsewhere...It is what men think that determines how they
act....
              A related issue is whether we can identify the rational
              considerations (the normative elements) that were actually
              important in a specific moral change, assuming that they were. The
              only way to do this is to look at examples of moral change to
              determine whether the factors that I shall shortly begin to
              identify seem to have historical validity. A third set of issues
              has to do with the distinction between moral progress and moral
              decline. The expression "moral change" can refer either to moral
              advance or moral degeneration. Moral conservatives would argue
              that much moral change at the present time represents
              degeneration, not progress. Can we provide criteria that enable us
              to distinguish moral progress from moral degeneration? Responding
              to this issue, James Wallace writes: "it is the continuity of the
              changed ideas with the earlier moral notions that prevents the
              change from being a corruption...." I don't think this criterion
              is adequate, however, because most moral change probably has
              considerable continuity with the past. My own suggestion is that
              moral change which can be justified by the five factors I shall
              mention shortly should be considered moral advance and that change
              which cannot be so justified should be considered moral decline.
              Unfortunately, this criterion also suffers from a certain
              vagueness, but I believe it may still be useful.
              2. Five Factors in Moral Change
              Now I want to identify five factors that I believe are important
              in a normative explanation of moral change. There is a certain
              amount of arbitrariness in selecting these factors, and no doubt
              the selection could be made differently. Nevertheless, I shall
              make the attempt. Not willing to go out totally on my own in
              identifying these factors, I shall take suggestions from others,
              mostly from the two writers quoted at the beginning of this talk.
              Now let us look at the five factors. 1. Changes in Social
              Structures. The most concerted attempt to isolate the factors
              important in moral change with which I am familiar was made by
              historian of morality John Noonan in a 1993 article, "Development
              in Moral Doctrine." In considering how the emergence of
              religiously pluralistic societies affected traditional moral views
              on religious toleration and divorce, for example, Noonan remarks
              that "only as social structures changed did moral mutation become
              possible." We can see how the emergence of religious pluralism
              might supply grounds for religious toleration and a more
              permissive attitude towards divorce. If religious strife is
              undesirable, religious toleration be attractive as a way to avoid
              it when there is no agreement on religious matters. Similarly,
              divorce might be more justifiable in a society where religious
              differences may make a marriage intolerable. These considerations
              do not, of course, demonstrate conclusively that religious
              toleration and the sanctioning of divorce are right, but they do
              make the options more attractive. I want to use the term
              "highlighting" to refer to the way in which a change in social
              structures (which also includes economic and legal structures) can
              contribute to the justification of moral change. By "highlighting"
              I mean a change which serves to throw into stronger relief certain
              moral considerations which may have been present all along. After
              the highlighting takes place, these factors are given greater
              moral weight, as it were. Here is another example of what I call
              highlighting. In the eighteenth century, the use of judicial
              torture came under severe criticism. In Torture and the Law of
              Proof, legal historian John Langbein argues that the explanation
              of the decline of judicial torture is to be attributed to a
              modification of the law of proof, whereby a confession was no
              longer a virtual requirement for conviction in a serious crime. He
              argues that, apart from this legal change, all the moral
              criticisms in the world--most of which had been around for a long
              time--would not have produced a change. With this change, the
              moral criticisms of torture were thrown into stronger relief. 2.
              New Factual and Metaphysical Beliefs. Changes in factual
              (empirically verifiable) or what I shall call metaphysical (non-
              empirical-verifiable) beliefs about the world can also contribute
              to the justification of moral change. Consider the example of
              slavery. Here, again, this often occurs by way of the phenomenon
              of highlighting. Historian of slavery David Davis finds the Quaker
              opposition to slavery particularly important in the abolitionist
              movement. Quakers were the first Christian church or sect to
              express disapproval of owning and trafficking in slaves. It was,
              he believes, Quakerism that furnished the set of conditions that
              made an antislavery movement possible. According to Davis, the
              change in the idea of sin (an example of what I call a
              metaphysical belief) is the key to the religious origins of
              antislavery thought. Much of traditional Christianity conceived
              the natural relationship of man to God after the fall as one of
              total subordination. Sin was identified with the individual's
              indulgence of his desires, and the state's function was to
              suppress them in the interests of social order. Slavery was simply
              one aspect of a fallen and sinful social order that must be
              accepted. It was not possible, Davis believes, to fully perceive
              the moral contradictions in slavery until this picture was
              modified. The modification came in the form of the resurgence of
              perfectionist thought and of the prophetic traditions, represented
              by such groups as the Quakers. These traditions taught that people
              have a desire for virtue, and that it is possible for Christians
              to be delivered from the bondage of sin, or at least to move
              closer to perfection. Sin can be identified, at least in part,
              with social forces that block the movement toward perfection. One
              should free oneself from these corrupting influences. Slavery is
              one such influence, so one should free oneself from its corrupting
              influence by renouncing the ownership of slaves. Here we have a
              change in metaphysical beliefs, in this case about the
              relationship of man to God and the possibility of human
              perfection. Changes in these beliefs highlighted not only the
              moral problems with slavery, but also the possibility of its
              abolition. 3. "New" Experience. Referring again to the emergence
              of religious toleration in the Roman Catholic tradition, Noonan
              identifies another factor in moral change by observing that "these
              social structures could not have shifted without experience." On
              the negative side, Noonan posits that the experience of
              persecuting heretics must have been demoralizing. On the positive
              side, he believes that the experience of religious freedom in
              America was important in Vatican II's endorsement of religious
              toleration in the 1960's. The experiences which challenge a
              traditionalist position are often not really new, but rather
              experiences that have newly come to the attention of the wider
              public, often by way of literature or the work of a moral prophet.
              Sometimes voicing this experience requires creating a new
              vocabulary. Writing about the oppression of women, Richard Rorty
              says:
                ...only if somebody has a dream, and a voice to describe that
                dream, does what looked like nature begin to look like culture,
                what looked like fate begin to look like a moral abomination.
                For until then only the language of the oppressor is available,
                and most oppressors have had the wit to teach the oppressed a
                language in which the oppressed will sound crazy--even to
                themselves--if they describe themselves as oppressed.
              Conveying experience that can justify moral change requires not
              only imagination and creativity on the part of the writer or moral
              prophet, but also sympathy on the part of the public. One factor
              in the movement to abolish slavery was the rise of the philosophy
              of benevolence and the praise of "the man of feeling" who could
              empathize with he sufferings of others. Adam Smith's The Theory of
              the Moral Sentiments (1759) based virtue on sympathy, or our
              ability to put ourselves imaginatively in another's situation. It
              was characteristic of abolitionists--even Christian
              abolitionists--that they appealed more to feelings of sympathy and
              benevolence than to the Bible. Perhaps the most important example
              of this appeal to sympathy, however, was Harrriet Beecher Stowe's
              Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) which David Davis calls "... probably the
              most sensational literary success of the nineteenth century...."
              Whatever might be said about the literary quality of the novel,
              its importance from the standpoint of moral change cannot be
              overestimated. Stowe portrayed for a wide audience the
              dehumanizing reality of slavery: Uncle Tom's separation from his
              spouse and children, being bought and sold like a commodity,
              having his fate decided by others, whipping and finally death at
              the hands of a sadistic master. The use of experience as a
              justification of moral change often involves an implicit argument
              based on the Golden Rule. Stowe repeatedly asks her readers to
              place themselves in the position of Uncle Tom and ask whether they
              would be willing to be the recipients of his treatment. But the
              traditionalist may resist the Golden-Rule argument. She may
              say--for one reason or another--that she sees no reason to place
              herself in the position of the recipient. The advocate of slavery
              may admit that she would not want to be in Uncle Tom's shoes, but
              she may say that those who are slaves occupy a role assigned by
              God, and she does not and should not occupy that role herself.
              In order to counter this argument, the revisionist must convince
              the traditionalist that she really should make the imaginative
              leap into the recipient's position. This task often falls to
              literature. The traditionalist must be led to appreciate the
              humanity of the slave and to see that the supposed differences
              between the slave and herself that keep her from making the
              imaginative leap into the slave's position are invalid. In the
              words of Rorty, the traditionalist must be led to see that the
              plight of the slave is indeed an abomination. If this can be done
              successfully, the use of experience can contribute to the
              justification of moral change. 4. The Emergence of a New Paradigm.
              Noonan also finds an explanation of moral change in what he calls
              "new analyses." In the case of usury, he maintains, the most
              important aspect of the new analysis was the shift from a focus on
              the loan itself to focus on the lender and the nature of the
              investment. This resulted in the conclusion that the lender
              himself could be exploited if he did not charge interest. I
              believe Noonan's point can be seen as referring to what I shall
              call the emergence of a new paradigm. For most practices subject
              to moral evaluation, there is a typical or paradigmatic example of
              the practice. This paradigmatic example presents the picture which
              is the object of moral evaluation. If the paradigm itself changes,
              the moral evaluation of the entire practice is likely to change.
              In the case of usury, the old paradigm went something like this:
              A farmer has a bad year with his crops. He must borrow money from
              his more fortunate neighbor in order to feed his family and buy
              seed for the next year. The neighbor charges such an exorbitant
              rate of interest that the farmer can never get out of debt, and
              his sons lose their inheritance.
              The new paradigm for a loan, brought about by changed economic
              circumstances, might run like this:
              A merchant needs money for a business venture. He calculates the
              maximum interest he can pay and still make a profit and borrows
              the money at that rate or a lower rate.
              Here is another example of the emergence of a new paradigm that
              contributed to the justification of moral change. Historian of
              divorce Roderick Phillips describes three changes in the
              conception of the nature and purpose of marriage that explain, he
              believes, the increase in the number of divorces. One element was
              the emergence of romantic love as an important element in
              marriage. As a result of this change, the expectations for
              marriage rose. Another change was the decline of the economic and
              social pressures that kept marriages together. Traditional
              families were productive units, operating perhaps a farm or a
              family business. If a spouse died, he or she was replaced quickly,
              in order to insure the continuation of the family enterprise.
              Violence, hostility, emotional indifference and sexual infidelity
              were more easily tolerated if the family enterprise went well. A
              third change was the emergence of alternatives to marriage. In
              traditional societies, women, in particular, had little
              alternative to marriage. Independent employment was difficult, and
              widows often sank into poverty. Men had more opportunities: they
              could "go to sea" or join the military. But even they found a life
              outside of the bonds of marriage difficult, and it probably had
              less social status.
              Phillips argues that the vastly greater incidence of divorce may
              be due not so much to lower morality, but to these changes. The
              new paradigm of marriage provided different standards for a "good"
              marriage and for a justified divorce. According to the new
              paradigm, the primary purpose of marriage is love and emotional
              satisfaction. The importance of marriage as an economic unit is
              less important. Divorce is legitimate when the proper expectations
              of marriage are not fulfilled. Thus, a new paradigm of marriage
              developed, which in turn lent justificatory weight to a
              revisionist position with regard to divorce.
              (5) Value Inconsistency. In Ethical Norms, Particular Cases, James
              Wallace suggests that a practice can be suspect morally because it
              violates norms inherent in other practices which we accept. Thus
              slavery came to be considered wrong because it violated emerging
              doctrines of human rights accepted in other areas of Western
              society. Here is another example. The use of torture was clearly
              incompatible with the emerging doctrines of human rights. Several
              writers advanced what historians refer to as logical/moral
              criticisms of torture. Although Montesquieu and Voltaire denounced
              torture as a violation of the dignity and rights of human beings,
              perhaps the most important single eighteenth-century protest
              against torture was produced by Casare Beccaria in his On Crimes
              and Punishments. Here Beccaria advances various criticisms of
              torture. It makes a person his own accuser and tests a person's
              physical endurance rather than his veracity. It also places the
              guilty person in a more advantageous position than the guilty. If
              an innocent man is tortured and he confesses, he is punished for
              something he did not do. If he does not confess, he has been
              unjustly tortured. If the guilty man confesses, on the other hand,
              he receives only what he deserves. If he does not confess, he has
              transformed a heavier sentence into a lighter one. It is easy to
              see how these considerations can contribute to a justification of
              moral change. The use of torture was incompatible with the
              standards of fairness and justice upheld in other areas of Western
              social and political life. We have already seen that these
              considerations were highlighted by the change in the law of proof.
              Sometimes the inconsistency appears in the form of an incoherent
              application of the norms within a practice itself. In the case of
              usury, exceptions to the prohibition of usury were increasingly
              recognized. A Christian had always been allowed to extract usury
              from an enemy, including heretics and infidels. Then a distinction
              between compensation and usury was developed. Thus, a lender had a
              right to compensation for delay in repayment, for a loss of the
              use of funds loaned out in charity, and a loss because one is
              forced to contribute to a bond. As time went on, still more
              exceptions to the prohibition were recognized. If one invests time
              and the other money in a business partnership, the one who invests
              money risks a loss that the other does not, so he is entitled to
              interest. Later, even those who furnished money in a partnership
              and insured themselves against loss were allowed to collect
              interest on the monetary contribution to the partnership. In both
              cases, the argument ran, the money invested in a commercial
              enterprise ceased to be available for other purposes. Merchants
              storing money in banks were also allowed to collect interest. The
              last two exceptions seemed especially implausible modifications of
              the traditional position and posed a dilemma: either these
              exceptions should not be allowed or the prohibition of usury
              itself should be abandoned.
              3. Homosexuality and Moral Change
              I believe the analysis of the factors in moral change that I have
              developed here can be applied to many contemporary moral issues.
              Two issues that I think are particularly appropriate are
              euthanasia and homosexuality. I believe both of these areas are
              ones in which moral change is justified. One of the ways to make
              such an argument is to identify factors operating in past moral
              changes which we consider justified and show that they are also
              evident with respect to these issues. For lack of time, I shall
              limit myself to the issue of homosexuality. I shall further limit
              my discussion by considering only the last four factors. 1. New
              Factual and Metaphysical Beliefs. Many contemporary writers
              believe that homosexual orientation is difficult if not impossible
              to change. Whether it has a basis in early experiences or in
              genetics, there is widespread recognition that sexual orientation
              is not very malleable. The relationship of this belief to the
              question of the moral justification of homosexual conduct is
              controversial. It does not show that such conduct is morally
              justifiable, for it is certainly open to the traditionalist to
              maintain that a homosexual who cannot change should embrace
              celibacy. Still, most of us probably intuitively sense that the
              belief that sexual orientation is difficult to change does have an
              important bearing on the morality of same-sex relationships. I
              believe the relationship can be understood in terms of the
              phenomenon of highlighting. The belief in the difficulty of change
              highlights the issue of the traditionalist prohibition of same-sex
              relationships. We now place considerable value on sexuality as an
              important part of personal fulfillment and self-realization. If
              many homosexuals must choose between a same-sex relationship and
              celibacy, the arguments for the traditional prohibition had better
              be good ones. The difficulty in changing sexual orientation might
              be thought of as an argument for raising the threshold of proof
              that homosexual conduct is immoral. Good reasons will have to be
              supplied to justify the invitation to perpetual celibacy. If these
              arguments are weak, their weakness will be more evident than
              before. 2. "New" Experience. An extensive literature depicting the
              experience of homosexuals is an important feature of the
              contemporary debate over homosexuality, just as the narratives
              depicting the experience of slaves and women were important parts
              of public controversy over slavery and the rights of women.
              Accounts by homosexuals of their experience of social
              condemnation, their struggle to accept their sexual orientation,
              their sense of wholeness and peace after their self-acceptance,
              and the integrity which their lives can display--these are all
              important challenges to the traditionalist position on
              homosexuality. To be sure, the traditionalist may respond that one
              should not apply the Golden Rule to the homosexual's position. We
              should not ask ourselves whether we would be willing to be the
              recipient of the unfavorable social response to homosexuals, on
              the grounds that we should not place ourselves in the position of
              one pursuing an immoral lifestyle. But it is one of the functions
              of a narrative in moral debate to show that a practice
              traditionally condemned can indeed have the kind of integrity that
              undermines this objection. 3. Paradigm Change. The traditional
              paradigm of homosexual practice in the Christian West was probably
              something like this:
              Engaging in homosexual acts does not make one a distinct type of
              person, namely a "homosexual." Rather, there are homosexual acts,
              not homosexual persons. Homosexuality is not a crucial aspect of
              one's identity. Further, the decision to engage in homosexual acts
              is more or less freely chosen, not a part of a sexual orientation
              that is difficult if not impossible to change. Homosexual acts are
              not strongly connected with personal fulfillment, and romantic
              love is usually not an aspect of homosexual relationships.
              In terms of this paradigm, it was perhaps not inappropriate to
              call same-sex relationships a perversion, much as it was not
              inappropriate to call usury in the old paradigm a form of
              exploitation. Without going into detail, two ideas that can be
              associated with the concept of perversion are voluntariness and
              the use of another person as a "mere means," in Kantian terms.
              Social constructionists have taught us that much has happened to
              the paradigm of a homosexual act in the last century and a half.
              The very term "homosexual" was invented, and homosexuality was
              medicalized. This medicalization was probably an important aspect
              of the transition from the old paradigm to the new one that
              appears to be emerging. At any rate, the new paradigm includes the
              notion that sexual orientation is discovered rather than chosen,
              that sexual orientation affects the entire personality, and that
              it can be associated with romantic love and long-term commitments.
              It is obvious that this change can contribute to a very different
              moral evaluation of same-sex relationships. The new paradigm is
              much more amenable to the evaluation of homosexuals and homosexual
              acts under the same or similar criteria used to evaluate
              heterosexual acts. As Michael Walzer points out, this is a
              familiar pattern in moral change:
              Insofar as we can recognize moral progress, it has less to do with
              the discovery or invention of new principles than with the
              inclusion under the old principles of previously excluded men and
              women.
              4. Value Inconsistency. One type of inconsistency is the use of a
              criterion for moral evaluation of a practice that is not used for
              evaluating any other practice. Homosexual acts have been
              historically condemned as "unnatural." Yet in non-Catholic
              circles, this criterion is seldom employed in evaluating any other
              moral practice. Even practices once condemned for their
              unnaturalness (such as masturbation, non-procreative intercourse
              and sterilization) are no longer condemned by most people at all,
              and certainly not by reason of their unnaturalness. These and
              similar considerations raise serious questions about the
              consistency of the traditional condemnation of same-sex
              relationships.
              4. Conclusion
              I believe the foregoing investigation suggests a framework in
              terms of which at least some contemporary moral issues can be
              discussed. The investigation has suggested that if an analysis of
              a moral issue is to be persuasive and complete, it must approach
              the issue from a number of different perspectives. That is, the
              arguments must be of several different types. While some of the
              arguments, such as the exposure of inconsistency, are standard
              fare in philosophy, others are somewhat different. Analyses of
              highlighting, paradigm, change, and experience, for example, are
              not as common in the writings of philosophers, at least not
              philosophers in the analytic tradition.
              Finally, my investigation has suggested that many of these modes
              of argument are rhetorical in nature. That is, they incline
              without necessitating. Taken by themselves, they are not
              conclusive. Stacked on top of another, they have a significant
              cumulative effect.
              In examining the factors involved in a normative account of moral
              change, we may be closer to the types of considerations that
              influence people outside philosophy. This is one of several
              reasons why I believe philosophers can profit from the study of
              moral change.



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            Last modified on:

            06/21/99 by mz

sydUID: 151948

you can always get access to those useful materials , they are very helpful , especially the argument materials ,thank you very much.