Abstract

It is then shown more generally how the application of moral concepts require the use of moral judgments, and that this is a process not clarified by the appeal to principle, but instead by appeal to the indefinite body of particular moral convictions which underlie our understanding of principles. The application of principle, then, though necessarily part of moral argument, is not itself a matter to be handled by deduction, using principles. Whether a principle applies to the case before us is instead resolvable only by appealing to analogies with settled cases, which provide relatively fixed points which anchor the understanding of the moral principle. Though not formally explicated, this process of analogical reasoning is illustrated through an examination of several agruments concerning specific moral questions, and a critical response to a contention that such issues can be settled only the use of moral theory. ;This suggests that as principles become more general, they require the use of vague terms of moral assessment, making their application to specific moral issues problematic unless we bring in our judgments about particular cases to supply an interpretation, which is not a procedure involving appeal to principle at all, much less the principle being interpretated. This is a possibility which is elaborated and futher supported by showing how it materially affects two attempts, by Alan Gewirth and John Rawls, to provide theoretical arguments for certain moral principles or particular moral judgments. ;After first showing that the universalizable nature of particular moral judgments does not imply the necessity of their being derived from a general principle that relates the non-moral facts to the moral conclusion, I go on to an examination of one of the crucial problems for any deductive moral system, which is how to account for the variety of moral judgments within a consistent set of principles, for there seem to be at least two major moral considerations which might at times pull us in opposite directions--the injunction to respect the integrity and worth of individuals, and the obligation to do good. If we make "respect" the supreme requirement, as in Alan Donagan's fundamental principle to respect all human beings as rational creatures, the principle becomes too vague to support any clear lines of deductive argument to particular conclusions, and we are thrown back upon reliance on particular considered judgments to supply an interpretation of the principle. The other alternative, utilitarianism, is forced to face much the same problem, though in this instance the vague expression is the "happiness of mankind," which can also be understood only in terms of considered judgments. ;It has traditionally been thought that the question whether moral judgments can be justified is one that can be answered in the affirmative if and only if there can be discovered some one principle or consistent set of principles from which one may deduce the proper moral conclusion, after a determination of all the relevant facts. It is only at the level of principle that an objective moral truth will be found, and it is by deduction from these principles that we must determine the truth on more particular ethical questions. It is my thesis that this picture of moral reasoning is false