ABSTRACT
One of the main contentions of this book has been that modern philosophy’s position on ethics is confused; in particular, we have argued that many contemporary philosophers reject the distinctive moral claim that there are correct judgements of human action without recognising that this involves rejecting ethics. In this chapter we shall explore the reasons for this confusion in more detail. As we have seen, one of the main sources of confusion is a reluctance to accept that reasons come to an end. Wittgenstein showed that the denial of bedrock lies behind philosophical problems in many areas, and this is particularly true of ethics. Our beliefs about right and wrong are among our most important convictions, and the suggestion that their correctness cannot be proved is unsettling. This disquiet may be increased by the assumption that the claim to correctness fails unless it can be given unimpeachable support. We tend to assume that if we cannot prove that our moral judgements are correct, this shows that they are simply disguised preferences. Faced with rival claims to correctness, we think that unless we can show that other people are wrong, we cannot claim to be right. But this is misguided. The claim that there are actions which everyone should recognise as right or wrong is a substantive claim which can be supported with reasons but which cannot be proved. Of course, the impossibility of proof is a feature of any substantive claim, but this general point creates a special difficulty in the field of ethics, for here we face not just possible disagreement at bedrock but actual disagreement. It is a confusion, however, to take this to show that the claims of one party to the dispute (the moralist) are wrong.1 The demand for proof is a feature of both modern and past moral philosophy, and this is not at all surprising. Ethics is concerned with fundamental questions
about how we should understand the world and about how we should live, and it has always been one of philosophy’s main aims to provide definitive answers to these questions. But this goal is impossible, for while we can reach conclusions that we are certain are correct, we cannot prove their correctness in ways everyone must accept. The search for proof also brings risks, for it can distort our account of the nature of moral claims. For example, the substantive account of how every individual should act may be confused with an account of what it is in every individual’s (uncontroversial) interests to do. A good contemporary illustration of this process is the claim by Bernard Williams that if ethics could be given an objective foundation, this would have to consist in a deduction from the findings of psychology. This is confused. Even if we could show that acting in certain ways was beneficial to anyone who had goals which most people have, this would not establish that those ways of acting were correct and incumbent on everyone. On the contrary, someone who claims that the individual should tell the truth because this is in her interests thereby avoids rather than endorses the claim that the individual should tell the truth because this is the correct thing to do. Far from providing ethics with some kind of foundation, therefore, this line of argument leads away from ethics and suggests that it is wrong to claim that something should be done purely and simply because it is the right thing to do.
