ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we tried to show how the moralist can combine a recognition that various views on how people should act are logically possible with the claim that only one view is correct. Compared with other philosophical accounts, this may seem a strange position, for, while many philosophers have claimed that the possibility of rational disagreement undermines the idea of objectivity in ethics, we have argued that the existence of disagreement is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not there are standards of conduct that should be recognised by everyone. On our account, what distinguishes ethical positions is the claim that the correct way of understanding the world involves recognising that there are correct ways of acting. This claim means what it says. It is not a claim that a certain type of entity exists; nor does it relate to what all rational beings qua rational beings must believe. The moralist does not hold that someone who rejects this claim is making a factual or a logical mistake, but rather that she is failing to accept something that should be accepted by everyone capable of thinking about the human situation. As with any other substantive claim, the reasons that can be offered for the claim to correctness come to end: ultimately the individual must either accept or reject the idea that there are correct ways of acting. This is not to say that the individual can choose the position she prefers. On the contrary, ethical views are defined by their rejection of this idea, and our aim has been to clarify what this involves. As we saw in the case of MacIntyre, it is those who fail to recognise the nature of the claim to correctness in ethics who end up implying that judgements of human action are a matter of social or individual preference. In fact, this is an alternative way of raising the fundamental issue, for instead of asking ‘Does the correct way of understanding the world involve
recognising certain ways of acting as correct?’, we could ask ‘Are all judgements on human action simply the expression of different preferences or are there judgements that should be made by everyone?’. As this way of putting it illustrates, what is distinctive about ethics is not a claim about the kind of things that exist, but a claim about how we should understand the world and our relation to it.
