Moral universalizability

The general concept or principle of moral universalizability is that moral norms, facts, predicates, etc. apply universally; that is, if they apply to one person, they apply to everyone. Some philosophers, like Immanuel Kant, Richard Hare, and Alan Gewirth, have argued that moral universalizability is the foundation of all moral facts. Others have argued that while moral facts are constrained by moral universalizability, this constraint is too weak for grounding substantial moral facts. A few have also argued that morality is not constrained by universalizability at all.

The general concept can be distinguished into two main versions, which can be called universal applicability and universal practice conditions, respectively.^[1] Universalizability is a merely formal condition, and does not by tell us which moral predicates apply to a case unless combined with some further criteria to be satisfied within the universalization condition. A "principle" of universalizability can refer, then, either to a universalization condition by itself, or to such a condition combined with a specific criteria to be satisfied therein; only the latter, however, could be called a universalizability test, which purports to distinguish morally correct from incorrect behaviors.

Universal Applicability

In this condition, a moral predicate (like obligatory, permissible, forbidden, etc.) always applies to a given behavior in virtue of some reason, and whenever the same reason is present, the same predicate applies.

Moral Supervenience

In its barest form, the universal applicability condition describes the philosophical principle of moral supervenience, according to which moral properties of actions (obligatory, permissible, forbidden, etc.) supervene on--that is, depend upon or are functions of--non-moral properties. Moral supervenience alone offers no criteria for deciding which non-moral properties the moral ones supervene upon, and therefore does not constitute a universalizability test.

However, in a series of books, R.M. Hare (who introduced the term into the philosophical literature^[2]) made moral supervenience the basis of his derivation of a version of utilitarianism, by combining it with the criterion that the universalized behavior would not produce a greater balance of satisfied over frustrated preferences of all affected agents (including animal agents as well as persons) than any alternative behavior would.^[3][4] It is common for other consequentialists to use versions of this argument, often using the golden rule or the universality of reasons, but essentially meaning moral supervenience, or more generally a universal applicability condition, by these terms.

In Colloquial Moral Thought

This version is also embodied in the colloquial question, "What would happen if somebody else did that (to you)?" Here, the presumption is that the behavior in question causes some harm or offense to other people, even though it may benefit or please the person performing it. When the person reflects upon how someone else's performance of the same behavior might harm herself, she may then judge that it is wrong after all, because she cannot condone its performance by another person. The question is, however, imprecise in that it does not specify exactly what effects of the behavior would be grounds for considering it impermissible, and therefore, like the principle of moral supervenience, does not specify a complete universalizability test. The phrase "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" may also express a version of this test, suggesting that minor, irrelevant differences do not affect the permissiblity of some behavior, so if someone considers it permissible for one person (the "goose") then it is also permissible for any very similar person (a "gander")-with the implication that if someone balks at the second judgment, they had better either explain why the different between the two cases is morally relevant, or retract their judgment of the first case.

In Alan Gewirth

The same criterion of universalizability is used by Alan Gewirth in his "principle of generic consistency,"^[5], who added to it the criterion that the effects of anyone's performance of some behavior may not deny to any other person (including the first person) the necessary conditions of their successful agency, most notably including "freedom and well-being."^[6]

Universal Practice

A related, but quite different conception of moral universalizability is the idea that a behavior if permissible if and only if its universal practice by all persons-perhaps at a given point at time, or perhaps throughout all time in a given world-satisfies some criterion. An imagined world in which everyone in it conform to the same kind of behavior is often called an ideal world.

This is superficially similar to the universal applicability criterion, and is often confused with it, but they are significantly different. The universal applicability criterion includes the universal practice criterion as a sub-case, for the latter is only one of many possible cases considered by the former. That is, while the universal practiced criterion asks whether the following situation:

Everybody performs behavior B

satisfies some criteria or other, the universal applicability condition asks whether the more general situation:

Some person performs behavior B

does so, regardless of who the person is. Since the person in question could be anyone, in any situation where B is possible to perform, this can include both situations where everyone else is already performing B, as well as those in which some but not all other persons are performing B, and even those where no one else is doing so (or has done so, or is going to do so, etc.)^[7] For instance, if the satisfaction criterion is "does not cause more harm than good," then if it is the case that everyone's performing B fails this test, because it causes more harm than good, then it must also be the case that there is at least one person whose performance of B causes more harm than good.

General Problems of Universal Practice Tests

For many behaviors, universalizability tests using the same criteria but different versions of universalizability criteria will reach the same conclusion. For instance, if every person's performance of B causes the same amount of harm and good as anyone else's, no matter what anyone else does, then the total effect of everyone's doing so will be the effect of one person's doing so multiplied by the number of persons; if the criterion is that the effect cause no more harm than good, then the same behaviors will satisfy or fail this criterion whichever universalizability criteria we use. However some behaviors cause different amounts of harm depending upon how many other people are performing them.

There are at least two such general classes of concern here: the first involves the fact that the test seems to give inadequate guidance for dealing with the evil-doers we know our world will actually contain, for some behaviors are such that if everyone did them, there would be no evil-doers (or at least none of a certain type), and the behavior in question actually forbids us from acting appropriately to respond to or defend ourselves against such evildoers. E.g., if everyone else in the world is a complete pacifist, then your being a pacifist will not cause any harm; but there are times when others are being violent and threatening you or innocent third parties, in which case your pacifism could lead to more harm than good.^[8][9]

The second class of problem cases involve coordination problems, where it seems intuitively obligatory for us to do the same thing that everyone around us is actually doing, but where a universal practice test does not require this coordination. E.g., consider the behavior "drive on the left side the road--no matter what!" If everyone does this, your doing so again produces more good than harm; but if not everyone does this (some driving on the right), then your doing so is likely to cause a great deal more harm than good.^[10][11][12] Like the rule of absolute pacifism, this passes some versions of a universal practice test, but fails a universal applicability test, because while everyone's practicing the behavior is not harmful, its practice by some persons while some other people are not doing so does produce significant harm. In no case will a behavior condemned by a universal practice test be acceptable for a universal approval test using the same criteria, so the latter is always at least as strong as the former.

In Colloquial Moral Thought

Despite its including only a subclass of the cases considered by the universal applicability criterion, the universal practice version of universalizability is very popular. It is expressed by the colloquial question "What if everybody did that?" Like the "somebody" question above, it leaves unstated precisely what result of everyone's performance of the behavior would make this result unacceptable and hence make the behavior wrong.

In Kantian Ethics

It is also the core idea behind the "Formula of Universal Law" conception of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant's idea of a categorical imperative or fundamental moral principle.^[13] This states that the only morally acceptable maxims of our actions are those that could rationally be willed to practiced as a universal law, or in a variant "Law of Nature" formulation, one whose practice by all persons we could will to have been a law of nature (and hence necessarily governing the behavior of all persons throughout all time and space).^[14] Kant appealed to two criteria which must be satisfied under such a condition: first, the universalization must be conceivable, and second that this universalization will not necessarily frustrate the ends of any agent practicing the maxim (and hence such an agent can both will his own practice of the maxim, and all other agents' doing so).^[15] The first is violated by maxims, e.g., of always lying or making false promises, for if (per impossibile) everyone did the same thing, no one would even consider any form of words given by another to count as a statement or promise, so it would be impossible to even try to make such statements with the intent to deceive.^[16] The second is violated by maxims, e.g, of never helping another person in need, for while we could imagine a world in which no one gave such help to anyone else, no agent could possibly want others to treat him that way, for there are bound to be occasions which the lack of such help will inevitably result in the frustration of the first person's ends-which, by hypothesis, he wills to satisfy.^[17]

Kant called the first kind of violation a contradiction in conception, the second a contradiction in will. Like Gewirth's idea of frustrating the necessary conditions of agency, they involve a performative contradiction, because the practice of the maxim by others would undermine one's own attempt to practice it, and willing the former (even when this does not cause others to practice it) is tantamount to willing the frustration of one's own agency. However Kant's Formula of Universal Law only identifies these contradictions in cases where the maxim is universally practiced; for Gewirth they can also occur in cases where some (but not all) persons' performing the behavior would deprive you of the necessary condition of agency.

In Rule Consequentialism

Another moral theory using a universal practice test is rule consequentialism, or more precisely that version of it sometimes called ideal rule consequentialism, where a moral rule is permissible if and only if its practice by all persons would produce at least as much of a balance of good over bad results than the universal practice of any other rule would. This theory was first suggested as an amendment to more standard form of consequentialism by R.F. Harrod in 1936, on the grounds that some behaviors cause more harm when everyone (or almost everyone) else is doing the same thing than in the more common case where not everyone else is doing so; since the harm can get so very bad in such cases, he argued that we should use its effects in this universal practice case to condemn the same behavior even when almost no one else is doing it, and even when it actually causes little or no harm in such cases.^[18] He illustrated this with Kant's example of telling a lie, arguing that the practice of lying by many individual people may actually only be modestly harmful, and sometimes may produce more good in individual cases, as long as enough truth-tellers are still around to provide a moral example and allows us to have some confidence that we will be told the truth (and be believed when we speak) when we would like this; but the effect of even those last few hold-outs for truth-telling switching their behavior so as to also lie is more devastating than that of a few lies told when not everyone else is doing so.

This view has been much criticized, however, on the grounds that it involves "rule-worship" which forbids us from performing such behaviors precisely when they are harmless or even beneficial, just because they would be less beneficial in circumstances which we know we are not in.^[19] In particular, considerations of the aforementioned need to handle evil-doers has motivated some of its defenders to suggest version of rule consequentialism which permits only rules which produce at least as much balance of good over bad results when 90% of any given population practice it, which requires us to follow rules which contain provisions for how to respond to the 10% (criminals, etc.) who may be violating the rules in question.^[20][21]

In Other Moral Theories

Other version of a universal practice test are found in M.G. Singer's "generalization argument,"^[22], J. Habermas's "principle U,"^[23] and T.M. Scanlon's "contractualism."^[24] These have each in turn been occasionally criticized for their inability to handle non-ideal cases

References

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