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- THEORY
- DOES MORAL PHILOSOPHY REST ON A MISTAKE
- MOTIVE AND PURPOSE DISTINCTION
- TYPES OF INTUITIONISM
PRICHARD AND PUBLISHINGThe relatively limited publication of Prichard’s writing is largely due to his personal reluctance to have his work published. His daughter Marjorie explains that, “He was always so reluctant to publish, never feeling satisfied he had really found the truth about his problems. So much of what he wrote, specially in letters, was an attempt to sort out the ideas in his mind.” To Prichard, therefore, publishing his work would be sharing personal thoughts with the public. Prichard also believed that publication led to a deadening of the actual theory. He felt it was in his best creative interest to not publish his work. For these reasons, there is minimal published material to be found. Much of Prichard’s work was published after he had done his teaching, and was organized by others. Although Prichard has spoken negatively about publishing, students of philosophy are lucky that someone took Prichard’s work and published it. His contributions to the establishing of morals, and a process for determining what is moral would be sorely missed had he never been published. THEORYA large foundation of Prichard’s thinking is best outlined in his most famous essay, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” It is in this paper that Prichard contends in his thesis that if individuals act because of a feeling of obligation, then there is essentially no purpose. He explains that obligation is always trumped by desire. That is, at a base level virtually all “moral” action is only due to some desire, rather than by the sense that it should be done for an obligatory reason. The bottom line is that if a person is obligated to take an action, that action can never be moral. In order for the action to be regarded by Prichard as moral, it must be taken out of a desire felt by the actor. That is, Prichard believes that people, at a subconscious level, pervert “moral right” to justify desires, and that something “feels” like it is intrinsically good if it serves pleasure, even in the larger sense. And while this perspective may seem radical at first, it is upon consideration of the distinctions Prichard makes that the argument appears increasingly legitimate. DOES MORAL PHILOSOPHY REST ON A MISTAKE?Prichard writes in “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” “The thesis, however, that, so far as we act from a sense of obligation, we have no purpose must not be misunderstood. It must not be taken either to mean or to imply that so far as we so act we have no motive. No doubt in ordinary speech the words ‘motive’ and ‘purpose’ are usually treated as correlatives, ‘motive’ standing for the desire which induces us to act, and ‘purpose’ standing for the object of this desire. But this is only because, when we are looking for the motive of the action, say of some crime, we are usually presupposing that the act in question is prompted by a desire and not by the sense of obligation.” “At bottom, however we mean by a motive what moves us to act; a sense of obligation does sometimes move us to act; and in our ordinary consciousness we should not hesitate to allow that the action we were considering might have had as its motive a sense of obligation. Desire and the sense of obligation are co-ordinate forms or species of motive.”(pp. 15) MOTIVE AND PURPOSE DISTINCTIONThe distinction Prichard draws between motive and purpose is extremely important in that (according to most contemporary readings of Kant, at least) motive is essential in evaluating whether or not someone acted morally. Prichard admits that the distinctions between motive and purpose are blurred in everyday speech and conceptions. However, in order to advance his arguments, he discusses the differences so that his readers will have a common understanding of what the terms mean. It is important to move beyond traditional interpretations of the terms, and understand them as separate. Likewise, it should be noted that while certain ends may have countless motives in achieving them, the purpose remains constant: to achieve the end. This, however, is infinitely superficial because it fails to account for the more pertinent aspect associated with the action: the why, as it is specific to the individual undertaking the action. It is thus that the theories Prichard advocated were labeled “intuitionism,” intuition being specific to the individual motive for each person, and thus leading to the consideration of people exclusively, instead of the general purpose that Prichard is trying to discredit. In that sense, Prichard’s focus is on what drives individuals to take the actions that they do. He is less concerned with some general purpose that drives all of humanity. TYPES OF INTUITIONISMBefore getting far into a discussion of Intuitionism, however, it seems vital to distinguish between the various wings of the theory. J.H. Sobel does an excellent job of elucidating the difference between the differing viewpoints: “‘Intuitionism’ is in this book, as it is usually today, the name of a cluster of views concerning the language, concepts, and realities of ethics. It is the name of one of the three major metaethical positions. The main difference among our Intuitionists is in their normative, broadly substantive, views concerning duty and right and wrong. Moore is a utilitarian. He holds that what makes an action a duty is that, among the alternatives before an agent, this action would, taking into consideration not only it in itself but also all of its consequences, result in the greatest good. Moore considers goodness to be the fundamental property in morality, and explains duties in terms of it – duties are actions that best promote the good. In this he is like Plato.” “Our other Intuitionists are not utilitarian. They are not only ‘metaethical intuitionists’, that is, in this book, simply Intuitionists, in this book, but also what are sometimes termed ‘normative intuitionists’. They think that there are duties – prima facie or 'other things equal' duties – to produce good. Ross, for example, endorses "duties of beneficence" to promote virtue, intelligence, and pleasure… But these philosophers hold that there are many other ‘duties other things equal’. For example, Ross says there is a prima facie duty to keep promises that meet certain conditions such as that of not having been procured by misrepresentations of fact. These philosophers consider duty and right and wrong to be the fundamental properties of morality. They consider that if promise-keeping, for example, is a good to be promoted along with other goods such as happiness and well-being by one’s actions, it is additionally an object of a demand that, unless outweighed by other demands, is to be honored in one’s actions. Similarly for truth-telling, making amends, displaying gratitude, respecting rights, and the like.” Moore can agree that these actions of good are of intrinsic value, but will not say that they are additionally ‘other things equal’ duties. In his utilitarian-view there is only one duty, namely, to do what would taken together with its consequences be best. 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