More on non-moral and moral norms

People often talk of moral norms as overriding. The paradigm kind of case seems to be like this:

1. You are N-forbidden to ϕ but morally required to ϕ,

where “N” is some norm like that of prudence or etiquette. In this case, the moral requirement of ϕing overrides the N-prohibition on ϕing. Thus, you might be rude to make a point of justice or sacrifice your life for the sake of justice.

But if there are cases like (1), there will surely also be cases where the moral considerations in favor of ϕing do not rise to the level of a requirement, but are sufficient to override the N-prohibition. In those cases, presumably:

2. You are N-forbidden to ϕ but morally permitted to ϕ.

Cases of supererogation look like that: you are morally permitted to do something contrary to prudential norms, but not required to do so.

So far so good. Moral norms can override non-moral norms in two ways: by creating a moral requirement contrary to the non-moral norms or by creating a moral permission contrary to the non-moral norms.

But now consider this. What happens if the moral considerations are at an even lower level, a level insufficient to override the N-prohibition? (E.g., what if to save someone’s finger you would need to sacrifice your arm?) Then, it seems:

3. You are N-forbidden to ϕ and not morally permitted to ϕ.

But this would be quite interesting. It would imply that in the absence of sufficient moral considerations in favor of ϕing, an N-prohibition would automatically generate a moral prohibition. But this means that the real normative upshot in all three cases is given by morality, and the N-norms aren’t actually doing any independent normative work. This suggests strongly that on such a picture, we should take the N-norms to be simply a species of moral norms.

However, there is another story possible. Perhaps in the case where the moral considerations are at too low a level to override the N-prohibition, we can still have moral permission to ϕ, but that permission no longer overrides the N-prohibition. On this story, there are two kinds of cases, in both of which we have moral permission, but in one case the moral permission comes along with sufficiently strong moral considerations to override the N-prohibition, while in the other it does not. On this story, moral requirement always overrides non-moral reasons; but whether moral considerations override non-moral considerations depends on the relative strengths of the two sets of considerations.

Still, consider this. The judgment whether moral considerations override the non-moral ones seems to be an eminently moral judgment. It is the person with moral virtue who is best suited to figuring out whether such overriding happens. But what happens if morality says that the moral considerations do not override the N-prohibition? Is that not a case of morality giving its endorsement to the N-prohibition, so that the N-prohibition would rise to the level of a moral prohibition as well? But if so, then that pushes us back to the previous story where it is reasonable to take N-considerations to be subsumed into moral considerations.

I don’t want to say that all norms are moral norms. But it may well be that all norms governing the functioning of the will are moral norms.

Nonoverriding morality

Some philosophers think that sometimes norms other than moral norms—e.g., prudential norms or norms of the meaningfulness of life—take precedence over moral norms and make permissible actions that are morally impermissible. Let F-norms be such norms.

A view where F-norms always override moral norms does not seem plausible. In the case of prudential or meaningfulness, it would point to a fundamental selfishness in the normative constitution of the human being.

So the view has to be that sometimes F-norms take precedence over moral norms, but not always. There must thus be norms which are neither F-norms nor moral norms that decide whether F-norms or moral norms take precedence. We can call these “overall norms of combination”. And it is crucial to the view that the norms of combination themselves be neither F-norms nor moral norms.

But here is an oddity. Morality already combines F-considerations and first order paradigmatically moral considerations. Consider two actions:

1. Sacrifice a slight amount of F-considerations for a great deal of good for one’s children.

2. Sacrifice an enormous amount of F-considerations for a slight good for one’s children.

Morality says that (1) is obligatory but (2) is permitted. Thus, morality already weighs F and paradigmatically moral concerns and provides a combination verdict. In other words, there already are moral norms of combination. So the view would be that there are moral norms of combination and overall norms of combination, both of which take into account exactly the same first order considerations, but sometimes come to different conclusions because they weigh the very same first order considerations differently (e.g., in the case where a moderate amount of F-considerations needs to be sacrificed for a moderate amount of good for one’s children).

This view violates Ockham’s razor: Why would we have moral norms of combination if the overall norms of combination always override them anyway?

Moreover, the view has the following difficulty: It seems that the best way to define a type of norm (prudential, meaningfulness, moral, etc.) is in terms of the types of consideration that the norm is based on. But if the overall norms of combination take into account the very same types of consideration as the moral norms of combination, then this way of distinguishing the types of norms is no longer available.

Maybe there is a view on which the overall ones take into account not the first-order moral and F-considerations, but only the deliverances of the moral and F-norms of combination, but that seems needlessly complex.

Vagueness about moral obligation

There is a single normative property that is normatively above all others, that overrides all others: moral obligation.

I think the above intuition entails that there cannot be any non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation.

There are two main non-epistemic approaches to vagueness: deviant logic and supervaluationism. Deviant logic is logically unacceptable. :-) That leaves supervaluationism. But on supervaluationism, there would have to be many acceptable precisifications of our concept of moral obligation. Each such precisification would presumably be a normative property. But only a precisification that was normatively above all others could be an acceptable precisification of our concept of moral obligation. And there can only be one precisification above all others. So there can only be one acceptable precisification of moral obligation.

The above argument is too quick. The supervaluationist can say that in the claim “Moral obligation is above all other normative properties”, we have another candidates for vagueness: “above” (or “overrides”). Then we need to engage in coordinated precisification of “moral obligation”, as well as “above”. For each coordinated precisification, the aboveness claim will be true: “Moral obligation_i is above_i all other normative properties.”

I think, however, that once we allow for a variety of precisifications of “above”, we betray the intuition behind the aboveness thesis. That in some sense moral obligation is above personal convenience is not the bold and bracing intuition of the overridingness of morality. Thus, I think that if we are to be faithful to that intuition, we cannot allow for non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation.

And this, in turn, greatly limits how much non-epistemic vagueness there can be. For instance, if there is no vagueness about permissibility, then it cannot be vague whether something is a person, since vagueness about personhood leads to vagueness about moral obligations of respect. Indeed, it is not clear that there can be any non-epistemic vagueness if there is no non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation. Suppose I promise to become bald, and I have a small amount of hair. Then I am non-bald if and only if I am obligated to remove some hair.