Idea Transcript
T. M. Scanlon on Meaning and Moral Permissibility: Limitations of Moral Pluralist Accounts of Moral Education Christopher Martin Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada ABSTRACT. Philosophers of education attempting to develop a reasoned programme of moral education often struggle with the fact that moral philosophy provides many diverse and conflicting accounts of the ethical life. Typically, attempts to resolve the conflict by demonstrating the superiority or priority of a chosen ethical framework have often played out in applied philosophy of education in terms of the development of rival, and often incompatible, moral education curricula. However, recent developments in scholarship have evinced a move to a more pluralistic account of moral education, incorporating insights from a variety of moral paradigms. This shift offers opportunities in the application of moral theory to contemporary issues in education. This essay seeks to define different approaches to pluralism in moral education and critically assess them. Finally, I show how recent work by T.M. Scanlon on moral permissibility stands as an excellent example of how developments in moral theory can make important contributions at the level of applied philosophy to the furtherance of a comprehensive account of moral education in ways that require neither a narrow monolithic nor a radically pluralistic approach. KEYWORDS. Moral theory, moral education, T.M. Scanlon, philosophy of education, virtue ethics, Kantian ethics
I. INTRODUCTION
T
he fact that moral philosophy provides many diverse and conflicting accounts of the ethical life creates numerous challenges for philosophers in education endeavouring to apply such theories in the development of a reasoned programme of moral education. This observation is nothing new, but the trajectory that philosophical reflection can follow in response
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 18, no. 1(2011): 53-78. © 2011 by European Centre for Ethics, K.U.Leuven. All rights reserved.
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to such challenges offers opportunities in the application of moral theory to contemporary issues in education. Most interesting, in my view, is a shift in the philosophy of education away from the appeal to any all-encompassing or monolithic account of the ethical life toward more diverse accounts that attempt to incorporate insights from a variety of frameworks. I group these latter views under the term ‘moral educational pluralism’. Moral educational pluralism is the view that there is no singular theoretical account that can explain all aspects of ethical life, and so the justification of a comprehensive moral education curriculum will have to draw from a variety of ethical concepts such as duty, virtue and care. While there may be a great deal of internal variation within this view, I will attempt in the present contribution to provide a philosophical account of how such a view has come about and assess something of its cogency. I argue that while we should aim for comprehensiveness in our application of moral theory in developing an understanding of moral education, I reject the view that moral pluralism can avoid making certain theoretical commitments. Finally, I show how recent work by T.M. Scanlon on moral permissibility stands as one example of how moral theory can make important contributions to the furtherance of a comprehensive account of moral education. Though situated within a particular philosophical tradition, Scanlon’s work is used as an example of how contemporary moral philosophy can be applied in ways that do not require the exclusion of or downplaying of other concepts that make up the ethical life in ways suggested by more strongly monolithic approaches. According to this view, developments in moral theory can promote a more comprehensive understanding of what moral education can and ought to be comprised of.
II. FROM MONOLITHIC MORAL THEORY TO A CONTESTED MORAL EDUCATION Debates about the nature, scope and content of moral education cross a variety of disciplinary boundaries such as psychology, sociology, anthro-
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pology and philosophy, as well as related fields including educational policy and curriculum development. Educational psychologists, for example, may be interested in determining which teaching methods are most effective in changing children’s behaviour. Sociologists may be interested in how daily life can shape our character, or how explicit programmes of moral education for school systems may reflect dominant societal values. Policy makers, on the other hand, may try to develop a rationale for implementing moral education curricula in school systems that offer little in the way of an explicit programme of moral education. What do philosophers bring to the table? When philosophers of education debate about moral education they are usually trying to identify, broadly speaking, the ‘moral content’ that any form of moral education curricula ought to have. For example, any approach to moral education must make or imply some assumptions about the nature or scope of morality in order to refer to moral education at all (Sanger 2005). Such assumptions determine what should be aimed for or sought after. Is a good moral education one that produces rationally autonomous agents? Should it be the formation of virtues of character? If so, what virtues? Philosophers involved in such debates may be engaged in arguments about normative assumptions regarding the specific moral goods that should be aimed for, or metaethical arguments about the nature and scope of morality itself. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that philosophers of education have answered the question of what a moral education must consist in through the lens of a favoured philosophical tradition (Haydon 2010). For example, individuals sympathetic to Kantian or other rationalistic views of the moral life come to view moral education as an education in the application of learned moral principles. Inevitably, competing philosophical views encourage different (and perhaps conflicting) curricular emphases. The most notable alternatives being the translation of Carol Gilligan’s care ethics into the fostering of empathy and caring concern for others (Gilligan 1982; Noddings 1984) and MacIntyre’s ethics being translated into the promotion of virtue (MacIntyre 1981; Carr 1991).
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This strong ‘monolithic’ approach to the justification of moral education – the development of a reasoned moral education curriculum through logical terms of ‘If theory A, not theory B (or C…)’ – forces a specific argumentative strategy where adherents of one theoretical position try to demonstrate the priority or superiority of the ethical concepts that the position seems to handle best. Kant, for example, claims that the moral worth of an action must lie in a principle of action conforming to universal law (4:401-403). Accordingly, Kohlberg formulates mature moral reasoning from the standpoint of a universal principle of justice as the apex of moral development (1981). The details of Kohlberg’s theory are well-known and do not need to be restated here. It is clear, nevertheless, that his theory is best suited to those instances in which we have an obligation to consider the interests of others; to treat other persons with respect. But what do we do with other ethical concepts such as moral sensitivity, or care for others, or virtue? One approach, already mentioned, might be to argue that one theory’s central ethical concepts have greater educational priority than other concepts. It is important here to distinguish between claims that certain ethical concepts have educational priority from the claim that certain concepts have deliberative priority. After all, there is no necessary relationship between the educational priority of ethical concepts and their priority in our moral reasoning. Imagine for the sake of the argument that we agree that judgments of justice have deliberative priority over judgments about what is good. In this view, I should be moved by what is just when this conflicts with what is good for me and my interests. It may be the case, nonetheless, that for a variety of sound educational reasons it is more important that we educate persons first in judgments of what is good (perhaps we must learn the latter before we can understand the former, or maybe we encounter hard cases about assessments of goodness far more frequently than we do hard cases about what is right). We can see this at play with Kohlberg. He argues that efforts at inculcating traits in children reflect a ‘bag of virtues’ approach that would
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presumably leave children at a more basic stage of moral development. Such strategies lead to potentially endless debate about the educational priority of ethical concepts, i.e. it is more important that children become caring persons than to think from an impartial perspective of justice; the development of character is more basic than the development of cognitive capacities for moral reflection, and so on. The second strategy is to try to subsume the ethical concepts prioritized by rival accounts into one’s own theory. To continue the example of Kantian-influenced conceptions of moral education, Kohlberg’s later work sought to incorporate a complementary ‘principle of benevolence’ into his Stage 6 of moral development. This was meant to show how the consideration of interests of other persons required by the principle of justice presupposes an empathetic concern for others (Kohlberg et al. 1990). This move can be interpreted as an attempt to assimilate the ethical concepts primary to care ethics. Extending a moral theory in order to assimilate ethical concepts from a rival theory, however, can lead to alterations or changes that are detrimental to, or an outright contradiction of, the core insights of the both. This is the conclusion arrived at by Jurgen Habermas with respect to Kohlberg’s principle of benevolence, for example. Habermas points out that Kohlberg’s principle calls for something like an empathetic concern for specific individuals, not persons conceived in the abstract (1990, 235243). Yet, the grounding of an ethic in concern for situated, concrete others undermines the very impartiality required by the principle of justice. For Habermas, what comes out of Kohlberg’s attempt to assimilate care into his model of moral reasoning is something that does not quite remain true to the concept of universal respect for persons, nor does it really do justice to the concept of care for others. Such an analysis serves as something of a cautionary tale for other attempts to assimilate conflicting ethical concepts into moral theories. I am not arguing that we should never attempt to expand upon the scope of a particular tradition in moral theory in an effort to account for the
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many different aspects of ethical life (in fact, this is exactly what this paper attempts to do). Rather, I am suggesting that by trying to assimilate care into terms of moral respect, or rule-following into terms of character, we run the risk of doing a disservice to all these factors. This can, in turn, have negative implications for the way in which we develop and implement moral education curricula. For example, Kohlberg’s rationalistic principle of benevolence could be used to justify a moral education that reduces the notion of care to a strictly cognitive exercise, neglecting much of the emotive dimension of caring for others. Based on the analysis offered so far, the viability of a monolithic approach for the justification of moral education is fairly limiting. First, trying to assimilate all aspects of ethical life under one theory runs the risk of doing a disservice to both the theories and the concepts in question. Second, trying to demonstrate the educational superiority or priority of one set of ethical concepts by excluding or marginalizing others can result in an unjustified privileging of that one dimension of ethical life. If there is little settled agreement on the superiority and cogency of rival accounts at the level of theory, it would seem that we are at least equally as unclear on what we can justify in moral education through a singular framework. Asserting the educational priority of one set of ethical concepts over another on such philosophical grounds presupposes a degree of clarity and substantive agreement in moral philosophy that is rarely, if ever, achieved.
III. FROM A PLURALISM OF PRINCIPLES TO MORAL EDUCATIONAL PLURALISM One philosophical alternative can be termed ‘moral educational pluralism’. Moral educational pluralism, as I broadly define it, is the belief that no one moral theory can capture all aspects of our ethical life. Of course, from this premise can follow all sorts of arguments about what a moral
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education can and should consist in. In what follows, I want to examine three different ways that this shift to pluralism can be interpreted. Does such a shift, in any of its forms, offer much in the way of an alternative? The first interpretation is what I term ‘pluralism of outcomes’. The pluralism of outcomes interpretation claims that since no one theory can sufficiently account for all our ethical concepts, there is no clearly defined sense of moral rightness or wrongness, good or bad, which would require us to construct a particular programme of moral education. This does not entail an explicitly relativistic position. But I think it could lead to a fairly robust instrumentalist approach to moral education. Here, we simply inculcate in children those ethical conceptions that we think will serve the most useful outcome at any given time. Maybe we think that children are sufficiently morally sensitive, but the community needs them to be a little more impartial in their judgments. If so, we adopt a more Kantian approach. If children are thought to be generally slack and untidy, time to break out some virtue ethics. What I have in mind here is an approach to moral education that seems to be adopted by formal schooling generally – i.e. a reactionary curriculum that responds to whatever policy trend is dominant at a particular moment. I will leave this approach where it is, as I suspect it would have little philosophical appeal even if it might have merits from a policy perspective. The second conclusion would reflect not so much a pluralism of outcomes but pluralism at the level of moral principle. In this view, there exist a variety of moral phenomena at any one time. There are demands of moral respect, care, courage and empathy. All may offer good reasons for acting at any one time, but life is complex, and sometimes these demands call on us all at once. This perspective is best articulated by Kenneth Strike: In some contexts, we want to talk about respect, in others utility. Sometimes we want to talk about care, sometimes about virtue. Sometimes we are unsure, and we become puzzled when these diverse conceptions are in tension. Philosophers are tempted to deal with such
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puzzlement by constructing philosophical theories that locate these conceptions in a larger picture. Perhaps we should not. Theory construction of this sort easily distorts moral experience. We try to make things fit (2005, 43).
Plurality at the level of principle is Strike’s explanation of moral pluralism. In this account, a plurality of moral principles reveals conflicting moral goods: Becauce justice and caring aim at different moral goods, they may conflict. When teachers grade, they may wish to encourage, and they may wish to give each student what he or she deserves. They may not be able to do both. One account of such a conflict is moral pluralism. Moral pluralism says that moral goods are irreducibly many and often conflict. It is part of the human condition and we cannot achieve every good fully in every situation (1999, 21).
For Strike, this means that educators are not really faced with a conflict between rival moral theories; rather, we are simply faced with a choice in concrete circumstances between caring or justice, courage or duty, and so on: “To be faced, for example, with a choice between justice and mercy is not like being faced with a choice between Kantianism and utilitarianism or Christianity and Islam. We are not asked to choose one in favor of the other” (2005, 43). The fact that justice, care, courage or duty sit more comfortably within rival moral theories should not really be relevant to our moral deliberations; rather, each moral theory is simply better at explaining certain moral phenomena. For Strike, moral philosophy mistakenly inflates various theories into comprehensive doctrines that must each defend themselves against the central claims of the other. Such projects should not interfere with a comprehensive moral education. What is of educational relevance here is a learned ability to apply various principles appropriately, depending on the context. Is this a move forward? The application of moral understanding to specific cases is an integral part of moral thinking, and there is something
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appealing about the idea that care, justice, virtue and duty can all be recognized as legitimate parts of our admittedly complex ethical lives. After all, one of the problems with a strongly monolithic moral education is that it might suggest that would-be students should ignore, or maybe even look down on, other aspects of moral experience. I am not convinced, however, that the separation between a plurality of principles, on the one side, and their application to specific situations, on the other, is a theoretically sufficient explanation of moral pluralism. Consider that Strike needs to tell us how one is supposed to go about deciding between such a plurality of principles. Yet, despite suggesting that we can and should do away with moral theory in addressing this question, he endorses a kind of ethic of balance that requires some kind of theoretical justification. To see how this comes about, it is worth reviewing his argument in some detail. Strike claims that plurality at the level of moral principle creates situations where we must assess how the moral goods served by such principles can be balanced in situation (1999, 43). Consider the idea that in trying to apply something like a principle of respect for persons, we can have a conflict between two duties. What makes the duties conflict is that while both may be valid (I have a duty to tell the truth but I also have the duty to save an innocent life) it may be unclear which duty is appropriate to a particular situation. There is no balance to be struck. You can either tell the truth and an innocent person will die, or you can lie and save a life. This seems like a genuine problem in the application of the principle of respect to a specific situation. But the application problem makes sense here because even though two duties conflict it remains a conflict of moral duty. Duty offers a reason to lie, but it also offers a reason to tell the truth. The answer depends on what we think our duty really is in this situation. Strike suggests that as distinct goods, care and duty do not share a common ethical ‘metric’. Each represents different values (or goods), and each can offer reasons to act. But there is nothing within each of these
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values that can help us to assess which reasons are more appropriate to act on in a given situation. The ‘good’ of care will be a reason to act one way, and the ‘good’ of justice is going to recommend that fairness should be a reason to act in different way. Only once we have chosen to ‘achieve’ a certain good (in this case, care or justice) does the question of application make sense. For example, having chosen justice, is it fair to encourage a student by boosting a mark, or does fairness suggest that encouragement is not a relevant reason for acting in this way? What happens when two different moral goods or principles are at play? A conflict between distinctly different moral goods seems like a separate problem from that of application. I may want to give students what they deserve, but I know that one student in particular needs encouragement. Should I boost the student’s grade? What about the other students who performed equally well but will now get a lesser grade by comparison? I don’t think we can really characterize this dilemma as a matter of application at all. In this case, the question concerns which principle is appropriate to the situation, a question that must be addressed prior to a principle’s application. In addressing such cases, Strike claims that judgments of appropriateness require that we strive for a balance between goods: If we grant that there is a plurality of principles that people have developed to speak to certain kinds of situations and that work well in certain contexts and less well in others, we might better conclude that we should deal with the tensions among them by striking balances rather than by constructing theories. Respect or utility? Both. Sometimes more of one, sometimes more of the other (43).
But what do we mean by balance here? Strike says that we can draw from a plurality of principles, and we can reason our way to the right balance (2005, 45). But what criterion does he have in mind? Perhaps balance means that we should try to make roughly equal the number of times we act on reasons proffered by care and justice, virtue and respect.
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Or is balance something closer to Aristotle’s ‘mean’? Moreover, what about cases where striving for balance is not the solution, but the problem? What if balancing care against justice by occasionally (but not always) bumping up the marks of my students makes some of them illegitimately competitive in competing for an academic scholarship? If a plurality of moral goods offers conflicting reasons to act, then perhaps the rational thing to do is to act on those reasons that will do the most good. All these alternatives could be what Strike has in mind when he argues that we need to strike a “reasoned balance” when different moral conceptions compete (1999, 36). In any case, it seems that in trying to sidestep philosophical disagreement by avoiding making any explicit theoretical commitments, Strike ends up endorsing a kind of meta-ethics of balance that needs to be explained and justified. He wants to avoid having theoretical debates about the ethical domain getting in the way of our moral thinking (and by extension, the way in which we promote this thinking in children). Yet, there is a difference between encouraging a more comprehensive or inclusive account of the ethical life, on the one hand, and doing away with moral theory altogether, on the other. I suspect that Strike really wants to do the former, and thinks he can do so only by embracing the latter. Nevertheless, Strike’s brand of moral pluralism needs an explanation of how and why certain moral goods should be balanced (and why they unavoidably conflict in the first place). Contrary to his own efforts, conceiving of the ethical world as a domain of conflicting goods backslides into a fairly substantive ethics of ‘balance’ that is hard to apply. How is ‘balance’ not simply one more moral good among duty, care, respect, and so on? Furthermore, as but one more rival normative ethic, it is difficult to see how far the call for balance among conflicting goods can be instructive as a component of a programme of moral education, or sufficient as an explanation of moral pluralism. Strike needs to construct a theory explaining why and when the search for balance trumps theory construction.
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A third explanation of moral pluralism is that it reflects pluralism at the level of ethical life. In this view, different aspects of the ethical life, broadly speaking, reflect distinct aspects of our ethical world. We can make distinctions between these aspects. Graham Haydon, for example, distinguishes public morality, or morality in the narrow sense, from the pursuit of a good or well-lived life (1999, 33-40). Public morality refers to universalizable or generalizable questions of interpersonal conduct and moral permissibility. Ethics refers to more personal questions about the identity and the good life. The distinction is also adopted by Habermas, who articulates the differences as follows: One will be able to choose between pursuing a career in management and training to become a theologian on better grounds after one has become clear about who one is and who one would like to be. Ethical questions are generally answered by unconditional imperatives such as the following: “You must embark on a career that affords you the assurance that you are helping people.” The meaning of this imperative can be understood as an “ought” that is not dependent on subjective purposes and preferences and yet is not absolute. What you “should” or “must” do has here the sense that it is “good” for you to act in this way in the long run, all things considered. Aristotle speaks in this connection of paths to the good and happy life (1993, 5).
These kinds of questions can be distinguished from moral questions: Only a maxim that can be generalized from the perspective of all affected counts as a norm that can command general assent and to that extent is worthy of recognition or, in other words, is morally binding. The question “What should I do?” is answered morally with reference to what one ought to do. Moral commands are categorical or unconditional imperatives that express valid norms or make implicit reference to them. The imperative meaning of these commands alone can be understood as an “ought” that is dependent on neither subjective goals and preferences nor on what is for me the absolute goal of a good, successful or not-failed life (1993, 8).
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Haydon and Habermas argue that each approach is asking a distinct question calling for a different kind of ethical assessment. Consequently, Haydon argues that by not making clear distinctions between questions of the good and questions of moral permissibility, moral education struggles with an over-reliance on various moral frameworks such as Kohlberg or Aristotle (2010, 183-184). Conflating such distinctions encourages a certain antagonism between different approaches to moral education, as if Kantian moral theory alone should be able to justify standards of a good or well-lived life in addition to standards of moral permissibility, or Aristotelian theory alone should be able to settle contemporary questions of social justice in addition to questions of character or virtue. Such differentiation seems to make sense. After all, we make similar distinctions in other aspects of social life. It would be odd, for example, to argue that impartial rules can justify all relevant aspects of learning a particular sport. As new generations of young players enter the game, it will also be necessary to model teamwork, and encourage habits of training and practice. Educationally speaking, no one aspect is ‘superior’ to the other. Competent rule-following may be necessary for a sport to be a game, but this is not all that new players will need to know. What kind of player do I want to be? What habits will I need to acquire to be able to play well? These are all distinct and important questions for the wouldbe athlete. Pluralism at the level of ethical life can help address the insufficiency of pluralism at the level of principle. There may be a plurality of principles, and we may come to learn to think carefully about the application of such principles. However, what appears as a conflict between distinct moral goods may, at least in some cases, reflect confusion about the kind of ethical inquiry we must undertake. In the role of teacher it is impermissible to not act on the best interests of the students in my custody. This is a question of public moral principle. My intentions in carrying out this work address a different question, a question of the kind of teacher I hope to be (or the kind of teacher that I am). For example, Haydon
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would say that the obligation to never act against the best interests of students is a question of moral permissibility. But this requirement does not stipulate that I may not be moved to do so out of care for those students, fear of losing my job, or concern for impartiality. On this account, whether I act in accordance with the interests of students and the extent to which I do so because I care are two different ethical questions. One refers to what I may or may not do, the other reflects my character. Both are part of the ethical life.
IV. SCANLON ON THE CRITICAL AND DELIBERATIVE USE OF MORAL PRINCIPLES It may seem contradictory to hold to the idea that different accounts of moral value can all be judiciously applied to the development of justifiable moral education curricula, especially since so much discussion in moral theory and moral education has focused on the inadequacy of competing frameworks. But I think that Haydon gains some ground in showing how the ethical life does not have to be conceived as an undifferentiated domain of moral goods. As he argues, the appeal to Kohlberg, Gilligan and Aristotle together in our understanding of the moral life only seems contradictory when we are committed to the idea that there is an allencompassing theoretical account of the ethical life among them (2010, 186). For Haydon, each theory may be trying to grasp different aspects of moral experience, requiring different kinds of reflection. These aspects may all have relevance for individuals in a process of moral education, even if the theories that may help us understand these distinct aspects may conflict. I think that one likely critical response to these insights is that an unhelpful degree of artificiality would creep into moral education. Even if we can make a clear theoretical distinction between the ethical and the moral, life is much more messy and complex in practice. For example,
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Habermas and Haydon’s distinction parallels the liberal distinction between the right and the good. Several commentators have challenged this separation on the grounds that the conception of the person at play in such a distinction is too narrow or reductive (Sandel, Taylor). Accordingly, this version of educational moral pluralism could be misleading in suggesting to children (and teachers) that ethical problems can be reduced to a specific kind of question. Life cannot be easily differentiated into so many heteromorphic pieces. Facts of character greatly influence our intentions. Our (in)capacity for empathy shapes our ability to understand the interests of other persons, even in the abstract. Even if we could settle on such distinctions at the level of moral theory, how would this be in any way helpful in justifying a vision for moral education? I argue that if the moral/ethical distinction holds, we can cogently search for the respective competencies involved, along with the conditions of their attainment. I think we can do so in a way that makes use of moral theory but without being reductive. In addressing these concerns, I will show how recent work by T.M. Scanlon on moral permissibility can make helpful contributions to the furtherance of a coherent account of moral education. The application of Scanlon’s work serves as an example of how recent work in moral philosophy can be applied in ways that do not require a return to a more ‘monolithic’ approach to philosophical reflection on moral education curricula. Such an account maintains a theoretical distinction between the permissibility of actions and assessments of character along the lines suggested by Habermas and Haydon without entailing an artificial separation at the level of moral experience. To be clear: I am not arguing that Scanlon is himself a moral pluralist, or that his work in some way represents an atheoretical approach to our understanding of the ethical life. His work is well-situated within the company of Kantian constructivists that have adopted the central insights of proceduralized moral thinking as rendered by the Categorical Imperative test (see, for example, works by Rawls and Parfitt). Scanlon’s own account of moral permissibility, for example, is
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based on the contractualist principle of reasonable rejection developed in his What We Owe to Each Other (2000, esp. chapter 4). However, what I wish to show is how moral theories such as Scanlon’s (and I suspect others as well) can actually make more nuanced contributions to our understanding about the ethical life in ways that do not necessarily try to ‘crowd out’ other moral concepts even while being situated within a particular moral philosophical tradition. While decidedly Kantian, Scanlon’s theory is open to the possibility that the ethical life requires more than honouring the right principle. It can therefore by used to inform a conception of moral education that includes a variety of ethical concepts. This is in marked distinction from an approach that would be dismissive of such complexity. Scanlon’s most recent book, Moral Dimensions (2008), attempts to overturn the commonly accepted distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences in assessments of the rightness and wrongness of actions. Scanlon’s target is the doctrine of double effect. This doctrine holds, for example, that an action aiming at the death of an innocent person is always wrong, and can never be justified by its good effects. The doctrine is used to justify cases such as the following: [I]f the limited amount of a drug that is available could be used either to save one patient or to save five others, it is permissible to give it to the five, even though the one will die. But it would not be permissible to withhold the drug in order to save the five others by transplanting his organs into them after he is dead (2008, 1).
The doctrine holds that the latter case is impermissible because here one is intending to use another as a means to saving five. In this view, it is the agent’s intention that determines, fundamentally, the moral permissibility of an action. However, Scanlon argues that intent cannot serve as a fundamental explanation of the wrongness of an action. Consider the example of educational programming. Now, in any programme of education there are risks: many students will succeed, but some others may fail
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and even be left worse off from the experience. Given these risks, is it permissible to undertake the education of the young? The double effect doctrine would try to explain the permissibility of education in terms of intention: it would be wrong to undertake a programme with the intention of deliberately sacrificing the developmental interests of some students in order to increase the developmental benefits of others. But if a programme intends to promote the learning of all students, and the failure of some is merely an unintended side-effect, the action is permissible. Scanlon thinks that this is not a sufficient explanation. Intention does not directly bear on the permissibility of action in the way claimed by the doctrine of double effect. Consider a variation on the last example: imagine that you have extremely reliable empirical data predicting that the majority of students targeted by a specific educational programme will always show a healthy progression in their learning and development, but a small number, who cannot be determined beforehand, will become deeply indoctrinated. As the director of your school district, a local school principal has asked if she may run this new programme in your school. Clearly, your assessment would focus on whether there is justification for implementing the programme, given the likely consequences. Yet, it would be strange to reply that your decision to authorize the programme depends on the principal’s intentions as the double effect doctrine would suggest: does she intend to promote the development of most of the students or is her intention to indoctrinate a minority? For Scanlon, this shows that intention is not necessary for moral permissibility, rather, the intention to run the programme is wrong because the act intended is wrongful, and the act intended is wrongful because of the consequences. Scanlon’s critique is far more complex than I can offer here and would take us far from the topic at hand. What is important for our purposes is that Scanlon claims that the doctrine of double effect arises from a failure to distinguish between assessing the agent and assessing the permissibility of her proposed action (2008, 21). The distinction clearly parallels the distinction between the ethical and the moral proffered by
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Habermas and Haydon, but can do so in a way that shows how both dimensions can be operative in the same moment of moral experience. Scanlon illustrates this distinction by showing that moral principles can be used in either a critical or deliberative sense (2008, 22-28). In their deliberative usage, a moral principle is used to assist agents in assessing the permissibility of their proposed actions in the form of “May I do X?” Principles tell us what reasons are relevant and which considerations count for or against actions. In their critical usage, however, the same principle can be used to assess an agent’s moral reasoning. Consider a further variation of the previous example. The data predict, reliably, that some students will become indoctrinated because of a new programme. Let us assume that this is a decisive reason for not implementing the programme (imagine something like a principle of non-indoctrination). From a deliberative standpoint, the principle tells us that the fact that some of the students could benefit from the programme and their better test results would improve the overall performance of the school (and therefore bolster the principal’s career) is not a sufficient reason for implementing it. Imagine the school principal goes ahead and implements the programme, and the predicted outcomes do occur. In assessing the principal’s action, we could say that she acted wrongly in her intention to take her own career advancement as sufficient reason to undermine the rational autonomy of some of her students. Scanlon would say that this is true, but only in terms of a critical assessment of agent’s thinking. Fundamentally, what makes the action wrong is not that the principal acted for a selfish reason, but the fact that indoctrination is morally impermissible as a matter of principle. Let us consider more closely the two usages of a general prohibition against indoctrination. If the principal asks, “May I implement the curricula? After all, it will benefit my career”, we could criticize her for taking her own career advancement as a reason for risking the well-being of the students in her care. This is a critique of the way the principal went about deciding, not an explanation of why the action would be wrong.
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There are many other contexts in which acting for career advancement would be permissible, after all. From a deliberative standpoint, what makes the implementation of the curriculum wrong is that the principal may not undermine the developmental interests of all her students. It does not matter if she acts from a desire for career advancement or mistakenly sees indoctrination as a valid aim or purpose. In either of these cases, the intended act results in indoctrination. Without a sufficient reason to do otherwise, the deliberative assessment, “May I implement the curricula?” would result in a ‘no’.
V. MORAL MEANING AS A COMPREHENSIVE CATEGORY OF MORAL ASSESSMENT Scanlon argues that these two forms of ethical assessment distinguish between the permissibility of an action (deliberative usage) and the quality of decision-making employed by the reasoner (critical usage) (2008, 27-28). This distinction has interesting possibilities for moral education, and Scanlon’s framework can clearly fit with Haydon’s distinction between the ethical and the moral. For example, a Kantian-centred conception of moral education would likely claim that because only those actions have moral worth that are motivated by and in accordance with duty, children’s moral thinking should be encouraged in this direction. This conception of moral worth raises the potential objection that acting out of an interest in doing one’s duty is not the only relevant feature of the ethical life. But the objection is partly a red-herring, or more appropriately, a misreading of the role of duty in Kant’s theory. This misreading is clearly articulated by Christine Korsgaard: When an agent finds that she must will a certain action as a universal law, she supposes that the action it describes has [moral worth or value]. Many of the standard criticisms of the idea of acting from duty
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are based on confusion about this point. The idea that acting from duty is something cold, impersonal, or even egoistic is based on the thought that the agent’s purpose is ‘in order to do my duty’ rather than ‘in order to help my friend’ or ‘in order to save my country’ or whatever it might be. But that is just wrong. Sacrificing your life in order to save your country might be your duty in a certain case, but the duty will be to do that act for that purpose, and the whole action will be chosen as your duty (2009, 11).
Now, Kant’s account is focused on the worth of actions in the context of what Haydon would call public morality and what Scanlon calls moral permissibility. What may I (or may I not) do? It is clear that there is nothing in Kant’s account that requires an agent to act on such principles only or strictly as a means to fulfilling a duty. Our actions can have many purposes and ends to them. Duty is not our only end. However, it remains the case that acting from duty is a necessary condition for the act (and the end sought) to have moral worth. My purpose has moral worth only if my reason for doing so is, fundamentally, that I have a duty to do it. I may not have to help my friend simply in order to fulfil a duty, but I must make helping a friend my purpose because it is my duty. Only in the latter case does the action have moral worth. This raises an objection that is more germane to Scanlon’s project: according to Scanlon’s account of Kant (because I am presenting Scanlon as an illustration of a comprehensive account of moral education, I am assuming his account as a cogent one), our maxims make salient our reasons for acting, and only those reasons that are universalizable or generalizable are morally good reasons. From the standpoint of trying to figure out what is morally permissible, this may well be good enough. But when we shift to an assessment of the agent’s character, the picture broadens somewhat. There may be many coexisting reasons informing the agent’s action, including duty, and those coexisting reasons may have moral relevance. Accordingly, Scanlon objects to the idea that acting from and in accordance with duty is the only type of moral worth or moral meaning we
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should be concerned with. Here is why: Scanlon’s analysis makes a good case for the idea that moral permissibility (public moral principles) and the goodness of actions (the reasons the agent has for acting) are actually two different categories of moral assessment (2008, 24-25; 100-101). While we can undertake a universalizability test akin to the Categorical Imperative in order to determine that we have an obligation not to do X, it does not follow that our own reasons for not doing X must always be due to this sense of moral obligation. What we may (not) be permitted to do and our own reasons for (not) doing it are distinct moral questions. Scanlon develops this distinction as follows: while the agent’s intentions may not have a fundamental role in determining moral permissibility, they do confer a certain meaning or value to the action. These meanings can reflect our relationship with others. Consider the following example given by Scanlon: Suppose, for example, that I promised my friend that I would meet him for dinner, and that it is also true that I would greatly enjoy seeing him and that there is no other way I would rather spend my evening. I may regard each of these as an entirely sufficient reason for going to the restaurant at the appointed time. Given that I promised, I would go even if I did not feel like an evening out, and given how much I expect to enjoy it, I would go even if I had no obligation to do so. The meaning of the action for me and for my friend depends on the fact that I see both of these considerations as reasons for going. My going would have a different meaning if I went solely out of obligation or only because I thought it would be fun (giving no weight at all to what I promised) (2008, 56-57).
Scanlon identifies at least two aspects of ethical life in this example (or as he calls them, moral dimensions). The first is moral permissibility: one may not break one’s promise without sufficient reason. For example, if another friend offers him a ticket to a concert he really wants to attend, is this is a sufficient reason to break the promise? The assessment of permissibility has nothing to do, fundamentally, with the reasons the agent
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himself may have for not showing up. The basic question is simply whether anyone in that situation has sufficient reason(s) to break the promise. This does not mean that the agent’s intentions are ethically worthless. Intentions inform a different kind of assessment from permissibility, potentially opening up a more comprehensive account of moral value or meaning. For Scanlon, both the ability to be moved by a promise and the reciprocity of friendship are of ethical value, and we have no need to reduce one set of reasons to the other. Scanlon continues: [G]iven that I see both of these considerations as reasons, there is no need, for the purposes of determining the meaning of the act, to single out one of them as the reason for which I act. Doing so would change, and perhaps diminish, the meaning of the act (2008, 57).
On the one hand, a failure to see a promise as a reason to show up suggests a character flaw. In this case, the agent betrays an inability (or unwillingness) to see other persons as worthy of equal respect. On the other, to be moved out of a sense of obligation or duty alone suggests a failure to understand what friendship involves. Disjunctively allowing for only one or the other as morally relevant reasons diminishes the possibilities for the accurate and comprehensive conferring of moral meaning on our actions. Accordingly, a case can be made that understanding both respect for persons and friendship are educationally worthwhile from the standpoint of moral education. Scanlon’s account shows how a reasoned conception of moral education can justifiably recommend that one come to understand a variety of morally laudable intentions. This suggests that a more complex and educationally worthwhile picture of moral education is possible despite the fact that, at least in the case of Scanlon, we are operating with a particular tradition of moral theory. Another example can be made in terms of permissibility, the moral worth of duty and the ethical meaning of care. Consider the example of a person whose wealthy relative’s dying wish is to see that person one last time. The person visits, but his or her only reason for doing so is in order
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to be considered more generously when it is time to finalize the will. In terms of public morality or moral permissibility there seems to be nothing wrong with what the person has done. It is not as if the person ought not to have met the relative’s dying wish! One response to this is to assert that one ought to have visited the relative, but for the right reasons. According to a Kantian interpretation, for example, it is not enough that we visit in accordance with duty, rather, it must be done from duty (4: 398). Only the latter has moral worth. Scanlon claims his own theory of moral meaning and Kant’s conception of moral worth both rely on the agent’s intentions (2008, 101). In this respect, they are different species of the same genus of moral assessment. To be clear: Scanlon is not rejecting the idea that acting from duty can have moral worth, rather, he wants to make the case that there are various types of moral meaning or worth, each depending on the agent’s intentions. In the case of the dying relative, the selfish motive is not by itself impermissible. But the moral meaning of the action does reveal something ethically relevant about the person’s character and their relationship with their dying relative. In this case, it is very little: they see the relative simply as an opportunity for financial gain. Yet, if the person acted for the reason that they have an obligation to help a person get their dying wish when they are the only person who can meet this wish, this too reveals something about the person and the relationship with the dying relative. Now, if the relative were a complete stranger this could require meritorious assessment of the agent’s character in the sense that Kant has in mind when he talks about the good will. But this is but one type of moral worth or meaning. If the relative were someone close to the person, visiting out of a sense of duty alone seems more problematic. While Korsgaard is right in claiming that acting from duty is not cold or impersonal, it is clear that in this case there remains a distinct failure to be moved by an appropriate sense of care or empathy, given the person’s relationship with the sick relative. Here, acting from reasons of selfishness or that only accord with
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duty (or both) reveals something lacking in the person. While failing to act for the ‘right reasons’ may not count against the permissibility of an action, it can reveal a fault in the agent (Scanlon 2008, 58). So while we can make clear distinctions between questions of permissibility and character, both can coexist in the same action and both can have ethical relevance.
VI. CONCLUSION Scanlon’s distinction between moral permissibility and the various moral meanings of our actions represents one example of how a particular type of educational moral pluralism can be supported by moral theory. I do not mean to give a full defence of Scanlon’s account here, nor am I suggesting that Scanlon’s Kantian approach is the only theory that can do so. However, what I want to show is that contemporary moral theory can and does respond to the plurality in our ethical lives and is not necessarily as ‘monolithic’ in its treatment of ethical concepts as it is often portrayed in the philosophy of moral education. Scanlon’s analysis, for example, can provide arguments for why children can and should be educated in reasoning, not simply about deliberative assessments of moral permissibility (or Haydon’s education in public morality), but in the critical assessment of the potential relevance and meaning those reasons for the specific individual involved (what Haydon would call ethical questioning). We may disagree with the particulars of Scanlon’s approach, but I think the level of sophistication in the approach is right. Finally, I am not suggesting that my account of Scanlon’s theory and its relevance to moral education has been exhaustive. Much more, for example, could be said about the relationship between character formation and reasons, as well as Scanlon’s account of public standards of moral permissibility. What I mean to show is how moral theories can progress in ways that can be reflected in our justification of moral education. Moral theories are not static. The idea that we adopt Kant in toto and apply his
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theory in a top-down manner is misleading. As we develop more nuanced arguments about duty (or permissibility, or care or virtue) and its place in our moral life, these understandings can be reflected at the level of curriculum development. In this view, the inclusion of a variety of ethical concepts in the development of, say, a moral education curricula, does not necessarily reflect irreconcilability at the level of moral theory. Rather, it reflects the fact that our moral understanding will grow more complex as a reflection of a more developed (and more comprehensive) reconstruction of what the ethical life consists in.
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Scanlon, Thomas M. 2008. Moral Dimensions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Scanlon, Thomas M. 2000. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Strike, Kenneth A. 1999. “Justice, Caring and Universality: In Defense of Moral Pluralism.” In Justice and Caring: The Search for Common Ground in Education. Edited by Michael Katz, Nel Noddings and Kenneth Strike, 21-36. New York: Teachers College Press. Strike, Kenneth A. 2005. ““Oh, Hull. Let’s go rafting!” Two Kinds of Moral Pluralism.” In Philosophy of Education 2005. Edited by Kenneth R. Howe, 41-45. Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society.
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