Two demands.

Consider two demands:

1. A moral theory must be able to accommodate many or most of our deeply-held, commonsense intuitions.  If a moral theory tells us to do something we feel strongly we ought not do, then there is something wrong with the moral theory.

2. A moral theory must be capable of surprising us.  That is, it must be able to tell us something we would not have been able to know prior to taking up a systematic approach to moral questions.  If a moral theory cannot do this, we should abandon it; and if no moral theory can do this, we may as well abandon moral philosophy and just listen to our consciences, which is easier, faster and (in terms of opportunity cost, anyway) cheaper than doing ethics.

Is it possible for one and the same moral theory to answer both of these demands?  At first glance, it seems unlikely: I cannot confirm something you already believe and, in the same breath, surprise you.  In this post, I'll offer a tentative answer to this question. 

There seem to me three basic kinds of moral questions.  I list them here, with examples supplied in parentheses:

A. Questions which most people think are already settled, and which most people would answer in the same way.  ("Is it wrong to torture innocent children for fun?")

B. Questions which many people think are already settled, at least for them, but which remain controversial.  ("Is it wrong to have a late-term abortion in order to avoid the emotional and physical pain of childbirth?")

C. Questions which many people feel ambivalent or uncertain about.  ("What applications of genetic engineering would be moral?") 

(I'm not sure I did a very good job of selecting the examples; I'm relying on you to provide your own examples if you don't like mine.) 

Intuitions about answers to questions in categories B or C are likely to be conflicting or ambivalent, and therefore insatiable, so it would be unreasonable to expect a moral theory to conform to them.  Thus, when we make the first demand above (the demand that a moral theory ought to accommodate "deeply held" intuitions) we should mean that a moral theory must accommodate intuitions about answers to questions in category A. 

On the other hand, when we make the second demand (the demand that a moral theory should be able to surprise us) we are not looking for surprise answers to the questions in category A; we've already got answers to those questions.  The unexpected results we're looking for are answers to questions we haven't already answered -- questions in categories B or C. 

So, apparently, it is possible for a moral theory to answer both demands at once.  It can do this by providing us with the expected answers to questions in category A while providing us with unexpected answers to questions in categories B and C.

However, there are reasons to think it is difficult to answer both demands at once.  Our commonsense intuitions are infamously many, diverse, and specific.  This makes it difficult to find a consistent set of principles which can cover them all.  And it makes it likely that when such a set of principles is discovered, the principles are either not general enough, or not precise enough, to be used to address questions for which there is no intuitive solution.

My suggestion, then, is that it is difficult to meet both demands with the same moral theory.  This does not mean we should not go on trying to construct a moral theory which can answer both demands.  But in the meantime, it might be worth preparing for the day, which may never come, when we will need to begin to ignore one or the other of these demands.  Which of these two demands have a greater claim on us?  Is it more important for a moral theory to agree with conscience, or to outperform conscience?

Comments

[Herbert Browne]

If moral theory must dance with conscience, then does conscience owe theory anything- some notes about its lineage, perhaps- or the nature of its entanglement with intuition? Does the instinct to survive provide anything to this story?
With our success as a species, the planet becomes a relatively smaller place. Does our success create a paradigm change? Survival over most of our history as a species depended upon social organization. Adding tool development to that organization appears to have brought us to the point where it may be possible to 'intuit' our connection to the greater web of Life, again- an awareness that our cultural development over thousands of years was free to discount (or ignore), as we multiplied and adapted our surroundings to conform to our wishes, rather than following an older paradigm. Is our present 'conscience' (& intuition?) a product of the last paradigm shift? If so, it may have need of some 'surprises', by a theory whose circle of morality extends well beyond the human sphere... ^..^

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