Defining the Autonomy of Ethics

Philosophical Review

Defining the Autonomy of EthicsAuthor(s): Frank JacksonSource: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 88-96Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183875 .

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DISCUSSION

DEFINING THE AUTONOMY OF ETHICS

THE AIM of this paper is to arrive at a satisfactory definition or specification of the autonomy of ethics.

The standard definition of the autonomy of ethics derives from the dictum that an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is." It is that no factual statement entails an ethical statement, or, equivalently, that there are no (deductively) valid arguments with factual premises and an ethical conclusion.

II. PRIOR AND KURTZMAN

The decisive objection to the standard definition is that it makes the autonomy of ethics uninterestingly false. Consider the following three examples, slightly changed from some given by A. N. Prior and David R. Kurtzman.'

I. Grass is green.

.,. Either grass is green or killing is wrong.

II. Peter has red hair. If redheads ought to help others, Peter ought to help others.

III. No one loves Fagin.

.,. Everyone is such that either he is not obliged to love Fagin or not everyone who is obliged to love someone does love them.

There are three responses possible to these three examples: (i) to argue that they are insignificant, "trick" examples; (ii) to abandon the autonomy of ethics, at least as a doctrine expressed in terms of entailment or validity; and (iii) to modify the definition of the autonomy of ethics so that I, II, III, and the like are no longer counterexamples.

Prior and Kurtzman both give good reasons against (i). We will not repeat these reasons here. They explore (iii), but fail to come up with satisfactory modifications of the standard definition and, con-

1 A. N. Prior, "The Autonomy of Ethics," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 38 (i960), i99-206. David R. Kurtzman, "'Is,' 'Ought,' and the Autonomy of Ethics," Philosophical Review, LXXIX (1970), 493-509.

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DEFINING THE A UTONOMY OF ETHICS

.sequently, incline towards (ii). We will re-explore (iii), the aim of this paper being to offer a satisfactory modification of the standard definition of the autonomy of ethics.

One modification which examples I-III immediately bring to mind is that the ethical conclusions be simple. This, in effect, is Max Black's approach.2 Prior does not consider this modification, and Kurtzman's discussion of it does not seem to me to be entirely satisfactory. His main reason against the modification is the difficulty of distinguishing simple statements from complex ones. This is, of course, a major difficulty; but it might be argued that it is a major difficulty for philosophy in general, and not in any way a difficulty for ethical autonomists in particular.

There are, nevertheless, two reasons for avoiding this modification if possible. First, autonomy is, intuitively, a symmetric notion. Thus, it would be nice if what is claimed of fact versus value were equally plausible of value versus fact. But there are valid inferences from simple ethical statements to simple factual ones; for example, "Joe ought to do A" entails "Joe exists." Second, the autonomy of ethics parades as a general doctrine, a doctrine to be supported by claims about ethical statements in general (concerning, for example, their relation- ship to commands), and the modification suggested in effect restricts the doctrine's application to a very limited class of ethical statements.

In addition to avoiding counterexamples like I, II, and III, a satisfying modification of the standard definition must not be exces- sively ad hoc. It should have evident connections with the sort of thing advocates of the autonomy of ethics have in mind when they advance the doctrine. In other words, we do not want a "cooked-up" modification, we want one which can plausibly be taken to express a central thesis in ethics. Therefore, rather than start by noting "peculiarities" of I, II, and III and their ilk, we will start our search for a modified definition by noting certain connections between the meaning of terms and the validity of arguments or inferences containing them.

III. TERMS, MEANING, AND VALIDITY

(i) To start with terms: We follow Prior and adopt the common approach of defining ethical statements as those containing ethical

2 Max Black, "The Gap Between 'Is' and 'Should,' " Philosophical Review, LXXIII (i964), i65-i8i. Black argues against the doctrine so modified.

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terms; where ethical terms are defined by a technique of listing akin to that used in logic texts to specify the logical particles. That is, the ethical terms are terms like "good," "right," "ought," and so on. Sometimes ethical statements are restricted to those containing essential occurrences of ethical terms3 where an example of a non- essential occurrence is that of "good" in "If A is good, then A is good." But this restriction is unnecessary for this paper. Factual terms are terms which are neither ethical terms nor logical particles. Thus we will use "factual" to mean purely factual. Terms like "murder" and "industrious," which intuitively might be classified as both factual and ethical, are classified as ethical and not factual. This accords with the intentions of autonomists who do not deny that statements containing "mixed" terms entail ethical statements.

There are a number of unsatisfactory features of the "listing" approach to distinguishing ethical and factual terms. Questions such as "What is the common element that makes a term a member of the list?" and "Why isn't 'That is the right answer to that calculation' an ethical statement?" are left quite unanswered. But the considera- tions that follow do not depend on a particular answer to how we ultimately distinguish ethical terms from factual ones. (Readers who feel they have an answer to this latter question are invited to insert it into the discussion at this point.)

Terms in general are defined as semantically significant parts of statements. So "Bach" is a (factual) term in "Bach wrote music" but not a term in "Bachelors are common." Nor is it a term in " 'Bach' has four letters," for this contains " 'Bach,' " not "Bach." We will talk in terms of term types, not tokens; and so we may have the one term appearing many times in a statement or in an argument.

(ii) Sometimes the validity of an argument depends on the meaning of a given term, sometimes it does not. The argument

Pat is a bachelor

.,. Pat is a man

is valid, and its validity clearly depends (in part) on the meaning of the term "bachelor." There are meanings such that if "bachelor" had one of them instead of the meaning it in fact has, the argument would be invalid. The standard way of illustrating this is by noting that if "bachelor" were replaced by, for example, "spinster" the argument would become invalid.

3 See Prior, op. cit., p. 200.

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- DEFINING THE A UTONOMY OF ETHICS

On the other hand, the validity of

Pat is a bachelor .,. Pat is a bachelor or Pat is a woman

is quite independent of the meaning of "bachelor." No matter what new meaning we give "bachelor" (providing "Pat is a bachelor" remains a statement), the argument remains valid. The term "bachelor" may be replaced by any (grammatically proper, meaningful) term without affecting the validity of the argument. Of course, when replacing "bachelor" we must make substitutions for both occurrences of the term. (The fact that the argument can be rendered invalid by replacing one occurrence of "bachelor" and keeping the other constant does not show that its validity depends on the meaning of "bachelor," but rather that it depends on one term appearing twice.)

We call an argument whose validity is independent of the meaning of a term, T, T-invariant. That is, an argument is T-invariant just if (i) it is valid, and (ii) its validity is independent of the meaning of T. Arguments not containing T are trivially T-invariant. Thus, of the two arguments just discussed, the second is, and the first is not, "bachelor" -invariant.

In order to facilitate the use of the notion of T-invariance to yield an acceptable definition of the autonomy of ethics, we introduce an obvious extension of it. Suppose an argument is T1, T2, . . . , T,, invariant, and that T1, . . ., TE are all the terms of type C which appear in the argument, then the argument may be said to be C- invariant. An example is I of Section II. It is "wrong"-invariant, and also ethical-invariant, as "wrong" is the only ethical term to appear in it. An argument containing no term of type C may be re- garded as trivially C-invariant.

IV. THE MODIFIED DEFINITION OF THE AUTONOMY OF ETHICS

We have just noted that I of Section II is ethical-invariant; so is II. It is "ought to"-invariant: replace "ought to" by, for example, "can," "do," or "will," and II remains valid; and "ought to" is the only ethical term in II. Likewise, III is ethical-invariant.

This might suggest that we modify the standard definition by excluding ethical-invariant valid arguments as counterexamples; thus giving as our autonomy definition: all arguments from factual premises to ethical conclusions are invalid or ethical-invariant.

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We should be suspicious of this modification. The idea behind the autonomy of ethics is that ethical and factual terms are logically independent. The obvious way of expressing this is in terms of the logical independence of ethical and factual statements. We have seen that this way fails; there are valid arguments from factual premises to ethical conclusions. But a plausible alternative mode of expression is the claim that ethical and factual terms are independent in the sense that these valid arguments are not valid in virtue of the meaning relations between their factual and ethical terms.

Now it is clearly a sufficient condition of an argument's being such that its validity does not depend on the relation between the meaning of a factual and an ethical term, that its validity does not depend on the meaning of an ethical term-namely, it is ethical-invariant. For if the validity is independent of the meaning of any ethical term, it must a fortiori be independent of the relation between the meaning of an ethical term and a factual term. But-and this is why we should be suspicious of the above modified definition which only excludes ethical-invariant arguments as counterexamples-it is not a necessary condition. An argument's validity may be independent of the meaning relation between ethical and factual terms without being independent of the meaning of every ethical term. Consider, for example, a factual- invariant argument. Its validity cannot depend on the meaning relation between factual and ethical terms, for it is independent of the meaning of any factual terms. But there are, of course, factual- invariant arguments which are not ethical-invariant. For example:

IV. Joe hit Bill.

If Joe ought not to hit Bill, then Joe was wrong to hit Bill.

This example does double duty. For it is also a counterexample to the modification above of the standard definition. It is a valid argument, its premise is factual, its conclusion ethical (and contingent), and yet it is not ethical-invariant (obviously).

We suggested above that a successful modified definition of the

autonomy of ethics might embody the idea that valid arguments from factual premises to ethical conclusions are not valid in virtue of the meaning relations between ethical and factual terms. One already noted sufficient condition for this is ethical invariance; another is

factual invariance. It seems reasonable to require their disjunction as a necessary condition; thus we get: the necessary and sufficient condition for an argument's validity being independent of the meaning

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relations between ethical and factual terms is that it be either ethical- invariant or factual-invariant.

The consequent modified definition of the autonomy of ethics is: the only valid arguments with factual premises and an ethical conclusion are those which are either factual-invariant or ethical- invariant.

This modified definition requires just one obvious enlargement to make it finally acceptable. The modification rules out as counterexamples I-IV. It does not, however, rule out

V. Joe did not kill Peter. Joe did not murder Peter.

V is valid and proceeds from a factual premise to an ethical conclusion, but is neither factual-invariant (try replacing "kill"), nor ethical-invariant (try replacing "murder"). But "Joe did not murder Peter" can reasonably be held to mean something like "Joe did not kill Peter in a morally unjustified manner."4 And if we put the latter in as the conclusion of V, an argument which is either factual-invariant or ethical-invariant results (in fact, the resulting argument is both).

Thus we define the autonomy of ethics as the doctrine that:

(A) No argument from factual premises to an ethical conclusion is valid unless it is either factual-invariant or ethical-invariant (or both), or is reducible to such by synonymy substitution.

Is this last modification ad hoc? I do not think so. For suppose "murder" cannot be broken up along the lines of the preceding paragraph. Then our final definition of the autonomy of ethics, (A), would make the thesis false, and surely this is as it should be. If "mixed" terms (which for convenience of exposition we designated "ethical")5 like "murder," "courageous," "generous," and "industrious" cannot be

4Following D. Davidson, "The Logical Form of Action Sentences," in N. Rescher (ed.), The Logic of Decision and Action (Pittsburgh, t966): "Joe did not kill Peter" would come to roughly "There is no event which is a killing of Peter by Joe," and "Joe did not murder Peter" to "There is no event which is a killing of Peter by Joe and which is morally unjustified."

5 If "murder" had been designated "factual," the only difference would have been that we would have had to deal with: "Joe murdered Peter," .-. "Joe acted wrongly toward Peter," instead of V, by inserting the synonymy clause.

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analyzed into a factual element and a basic ethical element, then the autonomy of ethics is just false.6

By "basic ethical element" here, I mean, for example, that "murder" must be analyzed into simpler terms none of which is synonymous with "murder" itself; in other words, I am insisting on the usual requirement that the analyses be not circular. The illustrative analysis of "murder" above passes at least this test.

This noncircularity requirement is important. It enables us to avoid a problem arising from the difficult question of the relation of logical equivalence and synonymy.7 Is "murder" synonymous with "murder and kill"? And is V's conclusion "Joe did not murder Peter" synonymous with "Joe did not kill and murder Peter"? They are certainly logically equivalent (the two statements in the standard sense, the two terms in the sense that they necessarily have identical extensions). And though this is not usually judged sufficient for synonymy,8 the matter is not clear enough in this case for us to be able definitely to rule out replacing "murder" by "murder and kill" in V on the ground of lack of synonymy. We must, however, rule out this replacement; clearly, it would be making things too easy for the autonomist if we allowed that V was no counterexample because replacing "murder" by "murder and kill" turned it into an ethical and factual-invariant argument.

We can rule out this replacement. Even if "murder" and "murder and kill" are synonymous, the latter is quite obviously not a noncircular analysis of the former into more basic elements.

The restriction on the synonymy substitutions also enables us to meet the following general argument that (A) makes the autonomy of ethics trivially true. Let P, .:. Q be a putative counterexample to the autonomy of ethics as defined in (A); that is, it is valid, neither ethical nor factual-invariant, and P is a factual and Q an ethical

6 Another term one might be tempted to include here is "promise." And, consequently, we should expect the question of analyzing promising into factual and ethical elements to play a central role in the debate initiated by J. R. Searle's "How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is,' " particularly in replies by autonomists to Searle. It does. See the second paragraph of ?3 of A. Flew, "On Not Deriving 'Ought' from 'Is,'" and R. M. Hare's discussion on what he calls (D2) in "The Promising Game." These papers are reprinted in W. D. Hudson (ed.), The Is-Ought Question (New York, i969).

7I am indebted to the referee for drawing my attention to the relevance and to the ramifications of this problem.

8 See, e.g., A. Pap, Semantics and Necessary Truth (New Haven, 1958), esp. ch. IO.

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statement. Then: P, .,. P V Q will be ethical-invariant (obviously). And so, if we allowed replacing Q by P V Q as a synonymy substitution on the ground that they are logically equivalent (which follows from the validity of P, .'. Q), it would be impossible to get a counterexample to (A). But, again quite obviously, P V Q is not in general a noncircular analysis of P into more basic elements, whether or not they are to be counted synonymous when P entails Q.

Our argument's reliance here on the notion of a noncircular analysis into more basic elements raises the question whether our definition of the autonomy of ethics makes it language-relative. Might (A) be true in one language but false in another? I do not think so.

The notion of a noncircular analysis into more basic elements9 is easy to understand and illustrate: it is what philosophers are aiming at virtually whenever they put forward analyses. At the same time, it is notoriously hard to define; so to keep ourselves within reasonable bounds, we will conduct the discussion in terms of an illustration.

In order to avoid an inevitably controversial philosophical illustration, let us use as our example the analysis of (P) "The average man weighs one hundred and sixty pounds" as (Q) "The sum of the weight in pounds of all men divided by the number of men equals one hundred and sixty." Now, it is language-relative that (P) and (Q) are synonymous: "average," for instance, might not have had the meaning it does have. Likewise, the meanings of the elements of (P) and (Q) depend on the language in question (English). Given that the elements of (P) and (Q) have the meanings they do have, however, it is not language-relative that (Q) is a noncircular analysis of (P) into more basic elements: it is a fact about the meanings, not about the words that happen to correspond to them.10 In other words, the fact that (Q) is a noncircular analysis of (P) into more basic elements cannot be affected by a translation of the elements of (P) and (Q) into another language.

Likewise, the question whether the analysis of murder proposed by way of example above is a noncircular analysis into more basic elements is essentially a question about meanings rather than words. Thus our definition of the autonomy of ethics does not make it language-

9 More basic, not the most basic. There is no immediate commitment to atomism here.

10 Entailment offers a parallel here. Is it language-relative that "x is red" entails "x is not green"? It is language-relative that "x is red" and "x is not green" have the meanings they do. But given that they have these meanings, the fact that the entailment holds is independent of any language.

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relative. Of course, if "murder" meant what "bless" means in English and vice versa, the illustrative analysis of "Joe did not murder Peter" would be ridiculous. But in that case we would not be considering the analysis of that sentence, but the analysis of "Joe did not bless Peter."

FRANK JACKSON

La Trobe University, Melbourne

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Defining the Autonomy of Ethics

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