Ethical Thinking and Theory
By Tom Regan

Tom Regan (b. 1938) is Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina State University at Raleigh, where he has twice been elected outstanding teacher. He is a prominent and eloquent advocate of animal rights. In "The Bird in the Cage: A Glimpse of My Life" in Between the Species 2, nos. 1-2: 42-49; 90-99 (1986) he shares his moral journey leading to his commitment to animal rights.
In the following excerpt from The Case for Animal Rights, he discusses six characteristics of good moral judgment: conceptual clarity, information, rationality, impartiality, coolness, and use of valid moral principles. Regan maintains that in order to evaluate moral principles, we should apply tests of consistency, adequacy of scope, precision, and conformity with our moral intuitions.

THE IDEAL MORAL JUDGMENT
I shall begin by attempting to answer the question, What requirements would someone have to meet to make an ideal moral judgment? Considered ideally, that is, what are the conditions that anyone would have to satisfy to reach a moral judgment as free from fault and error as possible? Now, by its very nature, an ideal moral judgment is just that- an ideal. Perhaps no one ever has met or ever will completely meet all the requirements set forth in the ideal. But that does not make it irrational to strive to come as close as possible to fulfilling it. If we can never quite get to the finish, we can still move some distance from the starting line.
There are at least six different ideas that must find a place in a description of the ideal moral judgment. A brief discussion of each follows.

Conceptual Clarity
The importance of conceptual clarity is obvious. If someone tells us that euthanasia is always wrong, we cannot determine whether that statement is true before we understand what euthanasia is. Similar remarks apply to other controversies. In the case of abortion, for example, many think the question turns on whether the fetus is a person; and that will depend on what a person is-that is, on how the concept "person" should be analyzed. Clarity by itself may not be enough, but thought cannot get far without it.

Information
We cannot answer moral questions in our closets. Moral questions arise in the real world, and a knowledge of the real world setting in which they arise is essential if we are seriously to seek rational... answers to them. For example, in the debate over the morality of capital punishment, some people argue that convicted murderers ought to be executed because, if they are not, they may be (and often are) paroled; and if they are paroled, they are more likely to kill again than are other released felons. Is this true? Is this a fact? We have to come out of our closets to answer this (or to find the answer others have reached on the basis of their re- search); and answer it we must if we are to reach an informed judgment about the morality of capital punishment. The importance of getting the facts, of being informed, is not restricted just to the case of capital punishment by any means. It applies all across the broad sweep of moral inquiry .

Rationality
Rationality is a difficult concept to analyze. Fundamentally, however, it involves the ability to recognize the connection between different ideas, to understand that if some statements are true, then some other statements must be true while others must be false. Now, it is in logic that rules are set forth that tell us when statements do follow from others, and it is because of this that a person who is rational often is said to be logical. When we speak of the need to be rational, then, we are saying that we need to observe the’ rules of logic. To reach an ideal moral judgment, therefore, we must not only strive to make our judgment against a background of information and conceptual clarity; we must also take care to explore how our beliefs are logically related to other things that we do or do not believe. For example, imagine that Lee thinks all abortions are morally wrong; and suppose that his wife, Mary, recently has had an abortion. Then Lee is not being rational or logical if he also believes that there was nothing immoral about Mary’s abortion. Rationally he cannot believe this while believing the other things we assume he believes. Logically, it is impossible for both of the following statements to be true: (I) All abortions are morally wrong, and (2) Mary’s abortion was not morally wrong. Whenever someone is committed to a group of beliefs that cannot possibly all be true at the. same time, that person is said to be committed to a contradiction. Lee, then, is committed to a contradiction. To fall short of the ideal moral judgment by ‘Committing oneself to a contradiction is to fall as short as one possibly can.

Impartiality
Partiality involves favoring someone or something above others. For example, if a father is partial to one of his children, then he will be inclined to give the favored child more than he gives his other children. In some cases, perhaps, partiality is a fine thing; but a partiality that excludes even thinking about or taking notice of others is far from what is needed in an ideal moral judgment. That someone has been harmed, for example, always seems to be a relevant consideration, whether this someone is favored by us or not. In striving to reach the correct answer to moral questions, therefore, we must strive to guard against extreme, unquestioned partiality; otherwise we shall run the risk of having our judgment clouded by bigotry and prejudice.

The idea of impartiality is at the heart of what sometimes is referred to as the formal principle of justice, the principle that justice is the similar, and injustice the dissimilar, treatment of similar individuals. This principle is said to express the formal principle of justice because by itself it does not specify what factors are relevant for determining what makes individuals similar or dissimilar. To decide this, one would have to supplement the formal principle of justice with a substantive or normative interpretation of justice. Even at this juncture, however, we can recognize the rich potential the formal principle of justice can have in arguments about moral right and wrong. For example, if someone were to say that causing suffering is wrong when humans are made to suffer but not wrong in the case of animals, it would be apposite to ask why the two cases are dissimilar. For they must be dissimilar if, as we are assuming, dissimilar treatment is allowed. If, in reply to our question, we were told that the difference is that human beings suffer in the one case but animals suffer in the other, then it would again be apposite to ask why a biological difference, a difference that relates to the species to which humans and animals happen to belong, can make any moral difference to the morality of the treatment in the two cases. If to cause suffering is wrong, then it is wrong no matter who is made to suffer, and the attempt to limit its wrongness only to human beings is a symptom of one’s showing unquestioned partiality for the members of one’s own species. While the formal principle of justice does not by itself tell us what are the relevant factors for determining when treatment is similar or dissimilar, that principle must be observed if we are to make the ideal moral judgment. Not to observe it is a symptom of prejudice or bias, rational defects that must be identified and overcome if we are to make the best moral judgment we can. I will have occasion to refer to the formal principle of justice in a number of places in what follows.

Coolness
All of us know what it is like to do something in the heat of anger that we later regret. No doubt we have also had the experience of getting so excited that we do something that later on we wish we had not done. Emotions are powerful forces, and though life would be a dull wasteland without them, we need to appreciate that the more volatile among them can mislead us; strong emotion is not a reliable guide to doing (or judging) what is best. This brings us to the need to be "cool." Being cool here means "not being in an emotionally excited state, being in an emotionally calm state of mind." The idea is that the hotter (the more emotionally charged) we are, the more likely we are to reach a mistaken moral conclusion, while the cooler (the calmer) we are, the greater the chances that we will avoid making mistakes.

The position is borne out by common experience. People who are in a terribly excited state may not be able to retain their rationality. Because of their deep emotional involvement, they may not be able to attain impartiality; and because they are in an excited emotional state, they may not even care about learning what happened or why. Like the proverb about shooting first and asking questions later, a lack of coolness can easily lead people to judge first and ask about the facts after- wards. The need to be cool, then, seems to merit a place on our list.

Valid Moral Principles
The concept of a moral principle has been analyzed in different ways. At least this much seems clear, however: for a principle to qualify as a moral principle (as distinct from, say, a scientific or a legal principle), it must prescribe that all moral agents are required to act in certain ways, thereby providing, so we are to assume, rational guidance in the conduct of life. More will be said about moral principles and moral agents in the sequel. For the present it will suffice to say that moral agents are those who can bring impartial reasons (i.e., reasons that respect the requirement of impartiality) to bear on deciding how they ought to act. Individuals who lack the ability to understand or act on the basis of impartial reasons (e.g., young children) fail to qualify as moral agents: they cannot meaningfully be said to have obligations or to do, or fail to do, what is morally right or wrong. Only moral agents have this status, and moral principles apply only to the determination of how moral agents may behave.

How does the idea of a valid moral principle relate to the concept of an ideal moral judgment? In an ideal moral judgment, it is not enough that the judgment be based on complete information, complete impartiality, complete conceptual clarity, and so forth. It is also essential that the judgment be based on a valid or correct moral principle(s). Ideally, one wants not only to make the correct judgment but to make it for the correct reasons. But which among the many possible moral principles we might accept are the correct or most reasonable ones? This is a question we cannot answer merely by saying which principles we happen to prefer, or which ones all or most people happen to accept, or which principles some alleged moral authority is- sues. These ways of answering moral questions have previously been eliminated from serious consideration. What is needed are criteria for rationally evaluating and choosing between competing ethical principles. In the section that follows various criteria are characterized and their appropriateness defended. No claim to completeness is made, nor are the several criteria ranked systematically in terms of their respective weight or importance, though some suggestions will be made in this regard. It will be enough for our present and future purposes to make the case for the reasonableness of the criteria about to be discussed.

CRITERIA FOR EVALUATING MORAL PRINCIPLES

Consistency
A minimum requirement for any ethical principle is that it be consistent. Consistency concerns the possible conjoint truth of two or more statements. Any combination of two or more statements (let us refer to this as any set of statements) is consistent if and only if it is possible that all the statements constituting the set can be true at the same time. Here is an example of a consistent set. (It is assumed that "Jack" refers to one, and "Jill" refers to another, individual, at the same time, in the same circumstances).

Here is an example of an inconsistent set.

Set A is consistent because it is possible for both (1) and (2) to be true at the same time: there is nothing involved in (1)’s being true that automatically or necessarily makes (2) false, and vice versa-the conjunction of (1) and (2) is not a contradiction- though neither (1) nor (2) must be true (for it might be that Jack and Jill are the same height). Set B is inconsistent, however, because if (3) were true, then (4) would have to be false, and if (4) were true, then (3) would have to be false; necessarily, that is, (3) and (4) cannot both be true; the conjunction of (3) and (4) is a contradiction.

Now, a valid moral principle must be consistent. This is true because such a principle aims at pro- providing us with a basis by reference to which we may rationally decide which actions are right and which are wrong. If, however, a proposed principle turns out to be inconsistent, then its failure in this regard would undermine the very point of having an ethical principle in the first place-namely, to provide rational guidance in the determination of what is right and wrong.

One way of arguing that a proposed principle is inconsistent is to show that it implies that the very same act can be both right and wrong. One (but by no means not the only) interpretation of the view called ethical relativism has this implication. On this interpretation, an act is right or wrong when- ever the majority in any given society approves or disapproves of it, respectively. It is important to be clear about what, on this interpretation, ethical relativism comes to. The claim is not that a given act is thought to be right in a given society if the majority approves of it; nor is it that the act of which a given society’s majority approves is right in that society; rather, an act is unqualifiedly right, ac- cording to the interpretation presently under re- view, whenever the majority of the members of any given society happen to approve of it.

This way of viewing right and wrong does imply that the very same act can be both right and wrong. To make this clearer, suppose that the majority in one society happens to approve of killing and eating foreigners, while the majority in an- other society happens to disapprove of it. Then it follows, given the interpretation of ethical relativism we are discussing, both that (a) killing and eating foreigners is right, and that (b) it is not the case that killing and eating foreigners is right. The principle implies, that is, that both (a) and (b) are true. However, since (a) and (b) are inconsistent, they cannot both be true. Neither, then, can ethical relativism, as understood here, be a valid ethical principle.

Adequacy of Scope
A further legitimate requirement is that ethical principles have adequate scope. The reason for this should be clear when we recall that ethical principles are supposed to provide us with practical guidance in the determination of what is right and wrong. Since we find ourselves in a great variety of circumstances in which we have to make such determinations, a given principle will succeed in providing guidance to the extent that it can be applied in these circumstances, and this will depend on the principle’s scope. The wider principle’s scope, the greater its potential use; the narrower its scope, the narrower its range of applications. Though it is not possible to legislate exactly how wide a principle’s scope must be if it is to qualify as adequate, the case for viewing adequacy of scope as a relevant criterion is reasonable, something we will see more clearly as we proceed.

Precision
What we want from an ethical principle is not vague direction concerning a broad range of cases: we expect specific or determinate direction. Without this precision, a principle’s usefulness will be seriously diminished. It is of little help, for example, to be told to "Love your neighbor" or "Do no harm" if we are not told, in a clear and helpful way, what "love" and "harm" and "neighbor," for that matter!-are supposed to mean. If a principle is vague in what it requires, in a significant range of cases, we will be uncertain of what it re- quires; and to the extent we are uncertain, we will also be unsure about what we must do to follow the principle’s direction in the present or whether we have complied with the principle by acting as we have in the past. A reasonable degree of precision, then, is a legitimate requirement for any ethical principle. At the same time, too much precision, or precision of the wrong sort, are illegitimate requirements. Ethics is not geometry . We should not expect or require definitions of moral concepts (e.g., of "love" or "harm") to be as exact as definitions of geometrical concepts (e.g., of "square" or "circle"); nor should we require that moral principles be as precise, or that they be demonstrable in the same way, as the Pythagorean Theorem. Always we must keep Aristotle’s sage advice in mind: "It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits." We shall have occasion to remind ourselves of this elemental wisdom on more than one occasion in the sequel.

Conformity with Our Intuitions
One final basis for evaluating competing ethical principles concerns whether they conform with our moral intuitions. This is by far the most controversial criterion we will discuss and use. Some philosophers flatly reject it as a reasonable test. Others insist on its validity. Whichever position one does or should take, it is essential to clarify what it means in the present context. This is more than idle semantic curiosity. The notion of intuition has been understood in different ways in moral philosophy, some of which are logically distinct from, and thus ought not be confused with, the sense in which this notion is used when "appeals to intuition" are recognized as a legitimate way to test ethical principles. The highly influential twentieth-century English philosopher G. E. Moore, for example, uses the word intuition to refer to those ethical propositions that, on his view, are "incapable of proof," while a contemporary of Moore’s, W. D. Ross, characterizes moral intuitions as "self-evident" moral truths. Whatever else one might wish to say about either Moore’s view of intuition, or Ross’s, or both, it is abundantly clear, as will be seen more fully in what follows, that neither Moore’s sense nor Ross’s is what is meant when one asks whether a given ethical principle conforms with our moral intuitions 0] holds that conformity with them is a legitimate test of an ethical principle’s rational credentials.

A third sense in which "intuition" is sometime used in moral philosophy is to mean "our unexamined moral convictions," including our initial response or immediate reactions to hard moral cases. It is in this sense that the word is used when people are asked, What are your intuitions? , after an unusual case or situation has been described (e.g., a case where a man has to kill and eat his own grand- son in order to survive, and the question is whether he ought to). This sense of "intuition" certainly is distinct from either Moore’s or Ross’s, since in responding to the question by giving our initial response we are far from committing ourselves to the view that what we say is self -evidently true or that it is unprovable. Even more important, our intuitions in this sense are our pre reflective judgments about what is right or wrong. When we are asked about our intuitions in this sense, in other words, we are not being asked to say what we think after we have given the question a good deal of thought-after we have tried, to the best of our ability, to make an ideal moral judgment about the case. On the contrary, what we are being asked is what we think before we have thought about the case in any considerable detail and thus before we have made a concerted effort to make an ideal moral judgment about it. For convenience, let us refer to intuitions in this sense as pre reflective intuitions. Like Moore’s and Ross’s understanding of intuition, this prereflective sense also is not the sense involved, when we require that ethical principles conform to our moral intuitions.

The sense that is involved is what we shall term the reflective sense. In this sense, our intuitions are those moral beliefs we hold after we have made a conscientious effort to satisfy five of the previously listed criteria of making an ideal moral judgment. It is to be assumed, that is, that we have conscientiously endeavored to think about our beliefs coolly, rationally, impartially, with conceptual clarity, and with as much relevant information as we can reasonably acquire. The judgments we make after we have made this effort are not our "gut responses," nor are they merely expressions of what we happen to believe; they are our considered beliefs, beliefs we hold when, and only when, we have done our best to be impartial, rational, cool, and so forth. To test alternative moral principles by how well they conform with our reflective intuitions is thus to test them against our considered beliefs, and, other things being equal between two competing moral principles (i.e., assuming that the two are equal to scope, precision, and consistency), the principle that matches our reflective intuitions best is rationally to be preferred.

Theoretically, however, it is possible that a given principle might pass all the tests for evaluating an ethical principle and yet fail to match one or a few of those beliefs we initially regard as considered beliefs. Moreover, it may also be true that we know of no other moral principle demonstrably better than this principle when it comes to meeting the appropriate criteria for evaluating moral principles, that can account for these intuitions. In that case we should be highly skeptical of those beliefs initially construed as considered beliefs. If no otherwise satisfactory moral principle can be shown to match them, then wisdom would dictate that we agree that, try as we have, we have erred in our initial assessment of these beliefs. Those beliefs we initially identify as considered beliefs, in other words, can themselves be shown to stand in need of revision or abandonment. What we must strive to achieve, to use a helpful expression of the Harvard philosopher John Rawls, is "reflective equilibrium" between our considered beliefs, on the one hand, and our moral principles, on the other. Some of these beliefs may have to be discounted because they can- not be made to fit any principle that is satisfactory in other respects, and some of these principles will have to be dismissed because they fail to match intuitions that can be accommodated by principles that are otherwise satisfactory. No principle is shown to be invalid, therefore, merely on the grounds that it fails to match each and every reflective intuition. But a principle is shown to be invalid if it fails to match our intuitions in a broad range of cases, assuming that these intuitions are matched by an alternative principle that is validated by appeals to other relevant criteria. When "the appeal to our intuitions" is understood as an appeal to our considered beliefs, beliefs that stand up under the heat of our best reflective consideration, in the sense and in the manner explained, we should not surrender requiring conformity with these beliefs as a legitimate test of the validity of moral principles unless we are given a good argument against doing so.