Fred Feldman, "Morality and Ethics"
From Introductory Ethics , Prentice Hall, 1978, pp. 1-11)

What Is Morality?
When faced with a question such as "What is morality?" one may be stumped. Is morality an idea? Or is it an institution? Perhaps it is a set of rules. Some may say that morality is a feeling, or a kind of behavior. Of course, morality can't be all of these things. Thus, it is hard to begin to answer the question when it is put in such abstract terms.

In this sort of case, we often find that we can achieve more useful results if we consider a somewhat less abstract version of the question. The word "morality" is a noun. It is intimately related to the adjective "moral." We use this adjective often, in phrases such as "moral judgment," "moral act," "moral choice," and "moral principle." […] Let us pick one of the most interesting of these uses of the adjective "moral" and ask instead, "What is a moral judgment?" […]

There seems to be an obvious intuitive differernce between moral judgments and judgments of other sorts. In ordinary cases, most of us can make this distinction with little trouble. If someone says that abortion is wrong, we know that he's made a moral judgment. If someone says that Marblehead is north of Boston, we know he's made a nonmoral judgment. So the difference is, in a way, pretty obvious. But what, in general, is the basis of this distinction? What is it about moral judgments that makes them recognizable as moral? What interesting features moral judgments have that nonmoral ones lack?

A very simple answer to these questions might be based on some features of the sentences that are used to express moral judgments. When an English-speaking person expresses a moral judgment, she usually makes use of words such as "right," "wrong," "obligatory," "good," "bad," "evil," "ought," and "should." Although this list is obviously incomplete, it is probably long enough to enable any competent speaker of English to make her point. All the words in this list may be called "value terms." Surely, most of us can tell an English value term when we see one. So we could probably add quite a few more value terms, if we had to. And we undoubtedly could tell that an enormous number of words do not belong in the list of value terms.

Making use of this concept of "value term," we can introduce a proposal concerning moral judgments. The proposal is based on the idea that whenever someone makes a moral judgment, he must use a value term. For the sake of convenience, let us restrict our attention to sentences in English. Now we can say:

M1: An English sentence expresses a moral judgment if and only if it contains a value term.

 According to this proposal, the following sentences express moral judgments:

(1) Abortion is always wrong.
(2) Everyone ought to love his neighbor.
(3) Under certain circumstances, suicide is right.
(4) Torturing babies is bad. 

Most people would agree that each of these sentences does express a moral judgment – although, of course, not everyone would agree that each of them expresses a true moral judgment. For the present, however, our interest is not so much in distinguishing the true from the false moral judgments. Our interest here is primarily in distinguishing the moral from the nonmoral judgments. We are just trying to isolate the sphere of the moral.

None of the following sentences contains any value term. Hence, according to M1, none of them expresses a moral judgment: 

(5) My telephone is black.
(6) Marblehead is north of Boston.
(7) Everybody loves somebody sometime.
(8) Torturing babies is boring.

Most people would agree that each of these sentences does not express a judgment. Thus, we seem to have eight positive instances of M1. That is, we seem to have eight cases in which the result yielded by the application of M1 is correct. But it should be obvious that M1 is not, in general, correct. There are plenty of cases in which the application of M1 will yield incorrect s. Here are some: 

(9) When rebuilding my engine, I put in the timing gears all wrong.
(10) If you want larger yields, you ought to use more fertilizer.
(11) He turned right at the corner.
(12) The acting was good, but the lighting was bad.

M1 implies that each of these sentences expresses a moral judgment. For of them contains a word from our list of value terms. It is clear , ver, that none of the sentences has a thing to do with morality. y, no one would say that there is a specifically moral obligation to ming gears into engines correctly. The word "wrong" in (9) is not in a moral sense. Similarly, the word "ought" in (10) is used in a nonmoral sense; it has more to do with prudence than with morality. The "right" in (11) is not used to express any sort of value. And finally, "good" and "bad" in (12) might be used to express aesthetic rather moral values. Thus, none of (9)-(12) in fact expresses a moral judgment, although M1 incorrectly implies that each of them does.

It should be clear that this approach will not work. Moral judgments cannot be distinguished from nonmoral judgments simply on the basis of the words used to express them A more fruitful approach might be to consider the subject natter of the sentence. Perhaps moral judgments all have to do with the same set of issues. We can formulate a short list of "moral issues." The list might include such topics as abortion, suicide, euthanasia, civil rights, sexual behavior, honesty, fairness, keeping promises, and showing respect. Now we can propose that moral judgments are judgments about these moral issues:

M2: An English sentence expresses a moral judgment if and only if it is about some moral issue.

The application of theory M2 yields correct results in many cases. For example, it implies that (1) and (3) express moral judgments, and in fact they do. M2 also implies that (5) and (6) do not express moral judgments, and in fact they don't. Thus, the application of M2 yields results in these cases. But it isn't hard to see that M2 is utterly misguided. Although we often make moral judgments about these moral issues, we just as often make nonmoral judgments about them. Thus, every one of the following sentences is about a moral issue, but none of them expresses a judgment:

(13) Abortion is illegal in some places.
(14) Suicide occurs more frequently during economic depressions.
(15) People sometimes request euthanasia for themselves.
(16) Vigorous sexual activity can be good exercise.

In light of examples such as these, it appears that we cannot distinguish judgments from nonmoral ones simply on the basis of their subject matter.

Perhaps some of you will feel that the most promising way of dealing with this puzzle would be to combine the ideas behind M1 with those behind M2. That is, you may feel, first, that moral judgments are expressed by sentences that contain value terms, and, second, that moral judgments are about moral issues. This idea deserves consideration.

One of the most interesting developments of this approach is that of Hartland-Swann. (John Hartland-Swann, An Analysis of Morals, London: Allen and Unwin, 1960) His version is based on the fact that every society has a variety of customs. Among these customs, some are considered by members of the society to be of very great "social importance." To violate a custom of very great social importance is to threaten the very existence of the society. For example, in our society we have the custom of, in general, not stabbing our neighbors when they annoy us. If we began to violate this custom, the whole fabric of our society might begin unravel. Other customs are viewed as being of intermediate social importance – for example, the custom of keeping our promises. Finally, some customs are viewed as being of very slight social importance. In our society, a custom of this sort would be that of shaking hands with another person when we are introduced.

According to this view, each sort of custom is associated with a sort of punishment. If you violate a custom, your punishment should be of the appropriate degree of severity. Thus, if you violate a custom of very great social importance, you may be fined, sent to prison, or even executed. If you violate a custom of intermediate social importance, your fellow citizens may reproach you or give you the cold shoulder-they will let you know that they think you have behaved poorly. Finally, if you violate a custom of slight social importance, you will be held up to slight condemnation. People may kid you about your gracelessness, or laugh at you.

Hartland-Swann maintains that in any society, the rules governing the most important customs turn out to be the laws of that society: This set of rules expresses the legal obligations of the citizens of that society. The rules governing the customs of intermediate social importance turn out to be the rules of morality for that society. This set of rules expresses the moral code of those people. Finally, the rules governing the least socially important customs are the rules of etiquette for that society.

Although Hartland-Swann does not put it in this way, we can develop his idea as follows. First, we can introduce the notion of a "moral custom." Let us propose that a custom is a moral custom in a society if it is believed by the members of that society to be of intermediate social importance. So, for example, it might be said that the custom of keeping promises is a moral custom in our society. On the basis of our proposal, we can identify the sphere of the moral without drawing up some static list of "moral issues." That is, what counts as a moral issue will vary from society to society, but it will always be something that the people of that society believe to be of intermediate social importance.

Now we can combine our two earlier proposals. We can say, first, that sentences used to express moral judgments contain words from our list of value terms, and, second, that they have as their subject matter customs that are moral customs for their societies. According to this proposal, then, a sentence must pass two tests to count as expressing a moral judgment. It must have the right sort of subject matter, and it must say the right sort of thing about it. Thus, our third proposal is:

M3: An English sentence expresses a moral judgment for a society if and only if (i) it is about a moral custom of that society, and (ii) it contains a value term.

Proposal M3 is designed to capture a number of important insights. First, like M1, it captures the insight that moral judgments are expressed in English with such terms as "right," "wrong," and "obligatory." Second, like M2, it captures the insight that there is a special subject matter for moral judgments. But unlike M2, Ma allows this subject matter to vary from society to society. Finally, Ma is based on the idea that moral issues are more socially important than matters of mere etiquette, but less socially important than matters of law. All in all, Ma seems to be a very interesting suggestion.

However, if we reflect on it for a minute, we will soon realize that M3 is not acceptable. There are plenty of sentences that express moral judgments in fact, but that do not express moral judgments according to M3. Consider, for example, these sentences:

(17) Killing people is always wrong.
(18) Torturing babies is evil.

It should be obvious that each of these might be used to express a moral judgment for our society. (Of course, there might be some debate as to whether (17) expresses a true moral judgment for our society.) Yet M3 implies that neither of these sentences expresses a moral judgment for our society. For in each case, the sentence is about a custom that is not of intermediate social importance in our society. But in each case, the custom is of great social importance. Surely, there are few customs of greater social importance in our society than that of refraining from killing other people, and that of refraining from inflicting pointless pain on innocent babies.

In the other direction, there are plenty of moral judgments that are not moral according to Ma. .For example, suppose a man is living alone on a desert island. Suppose that there are many beautiful butterflies on the island, and that the man enjoys seeing them. Perhaps he would like to collect one butterfly of each species, but out of a respect for life and an appreciation for their beauty he decides to let them all live freely. He might say to himself:

(19) It would be wrong to kill any of these butterflies.

It seems reasonable to maintain that when the man says (19), he is making a moral judgment. Yet Ma apparently implies that ( 19) does not express a moral judgment for any society. For according to M3, a judgment is moral for a society only if it is about a custom considered by the members of that society to be of intermediate social importance. In our example, however, there doesn't seem to be any society-the man is living alone on a desert island. Thus, there may be no society in which the custom of refraining from killing the butterflies is considered to be of intermediate social importance. In this case, the judgment is not a moral judgment for any society.

The result is the same even if we assume that the lonely man constitutes a society all by himself. For although the man might consider the matter of the butterflies to be of some importance, it is doubtful that he would consider it to be a custom, or that he would consider it to be of social importance. The matter of the butterflies, if it is important at all, is not important from the point of view of society. It has little to do with one person's relations with others. Rather, it has to do with a person's relations with a part of nature. Many people feel that there are moral obligations to avoid needless injury to nature. Such moral obligations, if there are any, provide counter-instances to any attempt to define morality in terms of purely social concerns.

It appears, then, that we have not as yet been able to distinguish moral judgments' from nonmoral ones, either on the basis of the words- used to express them, or on the basis of their subject matter, or even on the basis of a combination of their words, their subject matter, and their degree of social importance.

A final approach to the problem of distinguishing the moral from the nonmoral is based upon some insights of the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant. We will consider Kant's views in much greater detail in Chapters 7 and 8, but it may be worthwhile to see, in a rather rough way, how Kant might deal with our present question.

Kant draws a distinction between what he calls "the imperative of morality" and the nonmoral imperatives. Thus, Kant's comments are directed not to our question about moral judgments, but rather to a corresponding question about moral imperatives. For our purposes, we may think of imperatives as sentences containing the word "ought," or some equivalent. Thus, each of these is an imperative:

(20) If you want to blow up the bank, you ought to use dynamite.
(21) You ought to be more considerate.
(22) You ought to save your money for a rainy day.

The first of these imperatives is explicitly hypothetical in form. That is, it is of the "if you want _____, then you ought to ____"form. It says that if you want to achieve a certain end, then you ought to use certain means. In this particular case, the end is blowing up the bank, and the recommended means is the use of dynamite. By itself, (20) does not imply that you ought to use dynamite. It only implies that you should do this if you want to blow up the bank. Of course, most of us don't want to blow up banks.

Some imperatives, though not explicitly hypothetical in form, may be said to be implicitly hypothetical. That is, although they are not actually of the "if you want _____, then you ought to ____" form, the person who uses them has some hypothetical thought in mind. If you were to ask this person to explain her meaning, she would quickly produce an explicitly hypothetical imperative. This can be seen in the case of (22). If someone asserts that you ought to save money for a rainy day, and you ask her to expand upon her view, she is likely to reply like this:

(23) If you want to be happy in your old age, you ought to save money for a rainy day

or

(24) If you want to avoid needless pain later, you should save money for a rainy day.

Such imperatives, then, though not explicitly hypothetical, are implicitly hypothetical.

There are some imperatives, finally, that are neither implicitly nor explicitly hypothetical. (21) is an example. Suppose a person utters (21) and, when asked to expand upon his meaning, says that he simply means that you ought to be more considerate. He says that he does not mean that if you want people to like you, then you ought to be more consider- ate. Similarly, he does not mean that if you want to be happy, then you ought to be considerate. He insists that he means that regardless of what you want, you ought to be more considerate simply because it is the right thing to do. Kant would say that the imperative this person uttered, (21), is a categorical imperative. It is an ought-statement that is neither explicitly nor implicitly hypothetical in form. Kant's extremely interesting thesis is that the categorical imperative is the imperative of morality. In other words:

M4: An English sentence is a moral imperative if and only if it is a categorical imperative.

Although this version of Kant's view is of considerable interest, and although its application yields correct results in many cases, it is fairly clear that, as stated, it is incorrect. To see why, consider this case. A young woman is thinking of going to the Merchant Marine Academy. Since women have traditionally not gone to the Academy, she wonders if it would be morally right for her to go. She expresses her concern to her mother, who says:

(25) If you want to go, then you ought to go.

Perhaps her mother's view is that the only morally relevant issue here is whether her daughter wants to go. Perhaps the mother thinks that the traditional barrier against women is morally irrelevant. Thus, when she asserts (25), she means to be uttering a moral imperative. This all seems quite plausible. Yet M4 would incorrectly imply that her imperative is not moral, since it is explicitly hypothetical in form.

It is by no means clear that this example would refute more sophisticated versions of the Kantian position. But it does refute M4. Perhaps we should draw the modest conclusion that although it is provocative and initially quite plausible, in its simplest form the Kantian proposal seems to be incorrect. It would be interesting to see if some modern-day Kan- tian can develop this view so as to make it both clear and correct. I, for one, do not know how to do it.

So we have to admit, right at the outset, that it is not easy to say just what it is that makes a judgment a moral judgment, or what it is that makes an imperative a moral one. Hence, we have not succeeded in answering the questions we set out to answer. We have not said what the adjective "moral" means. In light of this, it seems unlikely that we will be able to give a fully satisfactory answer to the more abstract question, "What is morality?"

It may be fair to assume, in spite of this, that most of us have some intuitive grasp of the distinction between the moral and the nonmoral. It is by appeal to this intuitive grasp of the distinction that we evaluate proposals such as MI-M4. So even though we haven't said just what it is that makes a moral judgment or imperative moral, we may still be able to recognize a moral judgment or imperative when we see one. Perhaps this will be enough for our present purposes. Assuming, then, that we have some rough idea of what the adjective "moral" means, let us consider what morality might be.

The morality of a society, it seems, is the set of moral principles that are accepted in that society. The morality of a person, similarly, may be taken to be the set of moral principles he or she accepts. Morality in general, if there is such a thing, may be thought of as the set of all the true or correct moral principles. Although this is obviously rather rough, and makes use of the undefined concept of "moral principle," it may be sufficient. So let us turn to our second question, "What are the main forms of philosophical inquiry into morality?"

The Philosophical Study of Morality
Moral beliefs vary from society to society. In one place, people are morally outraged at the sight of nude sunbathers on a public beach. In another community, such behavior is considered quite acceptable. The study of varying moral beliefs is an interesting and worthwhile pursuit. Those who engage in it often discover curious and important facts about human attitudes and behavior. Furthermore, they may develop a sort of enlightened tolerance for moral diversity. This sort of study, which may be called descriptive morals, is therefore quite legitimate.

However, descriptive morals is not in itself a particularly philosophical enterprise, though it is not easy to say exactly why. Anthropologists, sociologists, social historians, and others may be better suited to the task 'Of describing and comparing the moral codes of different groups. Philosophers, though, may be quite good at what they do even though they have very little expertise in the social sciences. It is interesting to note, however, that some philosophers have had remarkable success in combining descriptive morals with more specifically philosophical studies in ethics.

Another form of moral inquiry might be called nontheoretic morals . We can say that people engage in nontheoretic morals when they attempt, without making any explicit appeal to fully general moral principles, to develop and defend positions on important moral issues. For example, if we were to discuss the morality of war, euthanasia, sexism, or vegetarianism without first agreeing on general moral principles, we would be engaged in nontheoretic morals. An informal version of this sort of enquiry goes on in dormitories, bars, coffee shops, and wherever intelligent people have a chance to engage in serious discussion of moral issues. A more formal version of nontheoretic morals is undertaken in

many ethics courses and in many books on moral problems. A third sort of moral inquiry is generally called normative ethics . Understood in one way, normative ethics is the attempt to discover, formulate, and defend the most fundamental principles about morally right action. In order to obtain a clearer idea of what this involves, let us consider some examples of what people do when they engage in normative ethics.

Some philosophers have maintained that the most fundamental principle about morally right action is something like this:

U 8: An act is morally right if and only if it produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number .

This principle is a rather garbled version of act utilitarianism. According to this view, what makes an act right, if it is right, is a certain fact about its results, or consequences. The fact in question is that the act produces more happiness for more people than anything else the agent could have done. You will probably discover, if you think about it for a minute, that deep down inside you believe in something like this.

Many philosophers have attacked the utilitarian position. They have insisted that it cannot be the case that in all our action we should aim only at maximizing happiness. To do so, they have claimed, would be utterly immoral. We should aim, in addition, at increasing knowledge, virtue, and justice. Indeed, some philosophers have said that justice is far more important than happiness. In some cases, they have argued, it would be better to insure that justice be done even if it would be possible to make more people happy by allowing injustice to reign. When philosophers criticize a normative view in this way, they are also engaging in normative ethics.

A fourth kind of moral inquiry is usually called metaethics. In metaethics we attempt, among other things, to discover and explain the meanings of the crucial terms of moral appraisal. Thus, we raise the question "What does the word 'good' mean?"

Often, philosophers who engage in metaethics attempt to explain the meaning of "good," "bad," "right," and other terms of moral ap- praisal by giving formal definitions. For example, a philosopher who adopted this approach might claim that the real meaning of "good" is explained by this definition:

D1: x is good = df. I approve of x."

Other philosophers have claimed that the most fundamental terms of moral appraisal cannot be defined. Some have said that these terms cannot be defined because they express simple, unanalyzable properties, and no term expressing a property of this sort can be defined. Others have said that these terms cannot be defined because, strictly speaking, they don't have any meaning at all! The study of such views, and the arguments pro and con, fall under the heading of metaethics.

Other sorts of moral philosophy also fall into the category of metaethics. One of these has to do with the logical features of moral concepts. It is sometimes said that the concept of moral obligation has a number of interesting logical characteristics. For example, we might want to consider whether the following principle is valid:

If a person morally ought to do an act a, and it is impossible for him to do a without also doing b, then he morally ought to do b.

Another interesting possible principle is this one:

If a person morally ought to do an act a, and he also morally ought to do anOther act b, then he morally ought to do both a and b.

A final sort of philosophical activity may be called moralizing. The authors of books on ethics often attempt to make their readers become morally better people. Authors may exhort their readers to pay more attention to the needs of others, or to reflect more carefully on the possible consequences of their actions. This sort of enterprise surely has its place. Since there are so many bad people, it is clear that someone ought to try to do something to make them better. Traditionally, philosophers have tried to do this.