Moral Argument

Filed with 60.10 Argumentation · Related: Rhetoric & Persuasion (MOC) · Ethics & Metaethics (MOC)

What is a Moral Argument?

Definition:
A moral argument is an argument with a conclusion that expresses a moral claim.
Pretty simple, maybe even trivial. But even simple definitions can contain important information.

Moral Arguments are Arguments

First, this definition makes it clear that moral arguments are indeed ARGUMENTS. So they inherit all of the familiar properties of arguments.
[If the concepts I introduce below are entirely unfamiliar to you, I recommend reviewing the first few sections of the course titled “Become an Argument Ninja”.]
Moral arguments, like all arguments, are composed of claims, or propositions, or statements (these are all synonymous for our purposes). One of these claims we call the “conclusion”; the others we call the “premises”.
These claims — the premises, and the conclusion — make assertions that can be either true or false (that’s what makes them claims at all).
[There are some exceptions to this rule. Definitions, for example, may play important roles as premises in arguments, but definitions are meant to stipulate the meaning of a term, they don’t actually assert something that could be true or false. But let’s move on …!]
In an argument, it is understood that the premises are being offered as reasons to believe or accept the conclusion, that are directed toward some intended audience (real or hypothetical).
For any argument, we can ask whether the conclusion follows from the premises or not (is the argument valid or invalid? strong or weak?). If the logic of the argument is valid or strong, the argument satisfies the “logic condition”, and is a candidate for a good argument.
We can also ask whether the intended audience of the argument has good reasons to accept the premises or not. If they do, then the argument satisfies the “truth condition”.
[Note: the “truth condition” is really a “plausibility condition”. What it means for a claim to be plausible to an audience is that the audience has good reasons to accept it, whether or not the claim is in fact true. This is a subtle but important distinction, which is discussed at length in “Become an Argument Ninja”.]
If the argument satisfies both the logic condition and the truth condition, then we may ultimately judge it to be a good argument. If it fails to satisfy either or both of these conditions, then it’s a bad argument.
So, moral arguments are no different from other arguments in these respects. They’re open to the same kinds of analysis and criticism as any other argument.

But What Is a Moral Claim?

The distinguishing feature of moral arguments is their subject matter. They offer reasons to accept or believe a moral conclusion, a conclusion that expresses a moral claim.
But what exactly is a moral claim? How are they different from other sorts of claims?

Descriptive versus Normative Claims

Moral claims are a type of normative claim. 
For this to be helpful we need to say something about normative claims.

Descriptive versus Normative Claims

A “claim” is statement that asserts something that could be either true or false.
A DESCRIPTIVE claim is a claim that asserts that such-and-such IS the case.
A NORMATIVE claim, on the other hand, is a claim that asserts that such-and-such OUGHT to be the case.
Normative claims make value judgments. Descriptive claims do not make value judgments. 

Examples of descriptive claims:

• “The mug of coffee in front of me is now at room temperature.”
• “I had toast and eggs for breakfast this morning.”
• “Kevin is under six feet tall.”
  These are all descriptive claims. They make no value judgments.

Examples of normative claims:

• “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, is a better movie than Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace”. 
• “That was a really stupid thing to do.”
• “If you wanted to pass that test you should have studied harder.”
• “Your electrocardiogram test results are normal.”
• “The State should not have the right to take the life of one of its citizens as punishment for a crime.”
  These are all normative claims. Each one of them expresses a value judgment of some kind.
  However, only the last one expresses a moral claim. The others express different kinds of non-moral normative values, and make different kinds of normative judgments.
  Let’s take a closer look at these different kinds of normative values, so that we have a better idea of what distinguishes moral values and moral claims.

Types of Normative Claims: (I) Aesthetic Claims

Let’s look at our first example of a normative claim.
“Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, is a better movie than Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace”. 
Here we’re making a statement about the relative quality of two different movies in the Star Wars franchise. We’re saying that one movie is better than another movie.
Better how? Better in what respects?
Better in the respects that we commonly use to make judgments about the artistic and aesthetic qualities of film. Better acting, better script, better story-telling better cinematography, better art direction, etc.
These are artistic or aesthetic judgments, and they are a particular type or class of normative judgment.
We make aesthetic judgments when we say that such-and-such piece of music, film, dance, theater, cartoon, fine art, etc. is good or bad, high quality or low quality, successful or unsuccessful, and so on.
We also make aesthetic judgments when we judge the quality of a figure skating performance, or judge the quality of wine or food.
When we make these judgments, we’re making value judgments of a certain kind. These value judgments express norms of quality or excellence within a particular context or domain.
All of us have argued forcefully about such issues. 
When we argue about them — when we’re defending our aesthetic judgments and evaluating the judgments of others — it’s important to appreciate that we’re not treating them as mere subjective expressions of personal taste, like a preference for chocolate over vanilla. 
This is an important distinction. No one argues about whether chocolate is REALLY better than vanilla or vice versa. We all see that there is no point to such an argument, because there is no fact of the matter about the question. There’s no point in arguing “no, you’re wrong — you should prefer vanilla over chocolate”, because we recognize that expressions of personal preference are just that, expressions of personal preference.
But we will argue strenuously about whether one piece of music or film or painting is good or bad, or better or worse than some other piece of music or film or painting.
Why do we do this? Because we believe there is a distinction between good art and bad art that is grounded in principles and values that have an objectivity that goes beyond our purely subjective tastes and preferences. There really does seem to be a fact of the matter about whether a particular work of art is good or bad, better or worse, successful or unsuccessful, as a work of art, that is distinct from the personal preferences of individuals.
Now, what kind of facts these are, and exactly how their objectivity is grounded, is an open question for debate. Actually, that’s a basic question for the philosophy of art.
Different people may hold different views on what makes a piece of art good or bad. But what cannot be denied is our almost universal willingness to make such judgments and offer reasons and arguments to defend them.
As it turns out, this widely held intuition about the objectivity of normative judgments is enough to ground normative argument analysis. There’s an important lesson here for moral reasoning and moral argumentation, which I’ll return to shortly.
But first let’s walk through the remaining types of normative judgments. Then we’ll take a closer look at moral judgments.

Types of Normative Claims: (II) Rationality Claims

Here’s our second example of a normative claim:
“That was a really stupid thing to do.”
It’s clearly normative in the sense that it’s making a value judgment. To say that you’ve done something stupid is to imply that you shouldn’t_have done it.
But what kind of value judgment? It’s not a moral judgment, and it’s not an aesthetic judgment.
Let’s call this a “rationality” judgment. 
We can talk about rationality in _descriptive ways, like when psychologists study how human beings actually form judgments and make decisions.
But we can also talk about rationality in normative ways, where our interest is in norms of good reasoning. When we violate these norms we invite the charge that we’re acting or thinking “irrationally”.
To call an action “stupid” is just a colloquial way of saying that it violates some norm of good reasoning or rational behavior.
There are lots of different ways that we can judge how people make decisions and form beliefs, that fall under this category of rationality.
For example, if a person is inconsistent in their beliefs, accepting one view and alternately accepting another view which contradicts it, and you point out the contradiction to them, what are you hoping they’ll do? You’re hoping they’ll acknowledge the inconsistency and reassess their beliefs, because contradictory beliefs can’t both be true.
In other words, you’re hoping that they accept as a principle of rationality that one ought not indulge in contradictory beliefs. That’s a normative principle of good reasoning.
There are other kinds of irrationality. Another category is sometimes called “instrumental rationality”, or “prudential rationality”. This is when you have goals you want to achieve, but you choose actions that fail to promote those goals.
Consider our third example of a normative claim:
“If you wanted to pass that test you should have studied harder.”
The “should” here is normative, but what is being described is a failure of instrumental rationality. Given your goals (you want to pass the test), and the assumption that studying harder would have increased your chances of passing, then what is being claimed in this statement is that you failed to choose the action that maximizes your chance of achieving your goals. In this respect you failed to live up to a norm of rational behavior.
There are entire disciplines devoted to the study of norms of rationality, but they aren’t our main concern here. I just wanted to give you another example of how a claim can be normative — it can make a value judgment — but not be a moral claim.

Types of Normative Claims: (III) Function Claims

Here’s another example of a normative claim that is distinct from aesthetic claims and rationality claims, but is clearly not a moral claim either:
“Your electrocardiogram test results are normal.”
An electrocardiogram (ECG) measures electrical activity of your heart. It’s used to diagnose chest pain or symptoms of heart disease, and otherwise monitor the health of the heart.
To say that your ECG results are “normal” is to make a normative claim — your heart is functioning the way it SHOULD, the way a healthy heart OUGHT to function.
This is not a purely descriptive claim. It implies that there is a standard or criterion of proper functioning against which the actual functioning can be compared, which characterizes a desirable (“good”) state of the heart.
Other examples that employ this kind of normativity:

• “The tumor caused severe brain damage.”
• “If you don’t get treatment for your high blood pressure it could lead to kidney failure.”
• “There’s a bug in the computer program somewhere. It’s not functioning properly.”
  “Damage”. “Failure”. “Not functioning properly”.
  We often use normative language like this to describe the intended or proper or normal functioning of natural and artificial systems, and deviations from this functioning.
  For the sake of a name, let’s call these “function claims”.
  Philosophers have written a great deal about this kind of function talk, especially in the natural sciences, where there has been a struggle to understand the kind of normativity that seems essential to describing biological functions. The issues also cross over into the philosophy of medicine, which is concerned (among other things) with the nature of health and disease and how these concepts are grounded.
  It would take us too far afield to follow up on these issues here, and they’re not immediately relevant to moral reasoning, so we’ll leave it at that.
  But I still think it’s important to appreciate that normative concepts and categories play important roles in our everyday thinking, and that normative concepts extend beyond the moral domain.
  That’s the take-away message of these examples.

Types of Normative Claims: (IV) Legal Claims

“You should come to a complete stop before proceeding through the intersection.”
That’s a traffic rule. We may not always follow it, but according to the law, we should follow it.
This is a legal norm —a specification of how we should or should not behave, according to the law.
How are we to understand the normative force of legal norms? Are they reducible to moral norms? Are they nothing more than expressions of social conventions? Do legal norms exist separately from moral norms?
This is an old question in the philosophy of law and political philosophy.
We don’t need to consider it further, other than to point out that legal claims may be a distinct category of normative claims.
It’s easy to find examples of policies that may be legally justified in a certain sense, but not morally justified. Think of laws prohibiting interracial marriage, or prohibiting women from voting.
Libertarian critics may regard taxation laws as normative in a legal sense (they agree that they should obey the law) but not morally justified, and will campaign to change those laws.
Examples like these make it clear that, on the face of it, there are differences between the normativity of legal claims and the normativity of moral claims.

Types of Normative Claims: (V) Moral Claims

Let’s consider the last example we gave of a normative claim:
“The State should not have the right to take the life of one of its citizens as punishment for a crime.”
The statement is asserting that capital punishment is not morally justifiable.
The “should” here is a MORAL “should”. The assertion is that the state does not have the RIGHT to take the life of a citizen, with the implication that to do so would be unjust or immoral in some way.
Let’s look at some other examples of moral claims:

• “You shouldn’t lie to someone just to get out of an uncomfortable situation.”
  
• “It’s wrong to afflict unnecessary pain and suffering on animals.”
  
• “Julie is a kind and generous person.”
  
• “Abortion is morally permissible if done within the first trimester.”
  
• “Abortion is never morally permissible.”
  
• “Police offers have a duty to uphold the law.”
  
• “John has been dishonest about his work record.”
  
• “The intentional use of violence against civilian populations is never morally justifiable.”
  
• “Waterboarding is a barbaric way of extracting information from people.”
  
• “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
  
• “My bike was stolen outside the grocery store.”
  All of these assert that something is right or wrong, good or bad, in a distinctively moral sense. They all make moral value judgments of some kind.
  Sometimes the claim is about the rightness or wrongness of an act (lying, adultery, waterboarding, etc.). Sometimes the claim is about a person’s character (“kind”, “generous”, “dishonest”). This is an important distinction that we’ll follow up on later.
  Sometimes we use language that implies a moral judgment, rather that stating explicitly that X or Y is morally right or wrong. To say that waterboarding is “barbaric” is to imply that it’s morally problematic. To say that my bike was “stolen” is to imply that it was taken wrongfully, unjustly.
  These are the sorts of claims that we’re concerned with in this course.

What are Moral Values?

The moral claims on the list we just looked at express different kinds of moral values.
We need to become familiar with the various types of moral values that motivate us and other people.
This is especially important if we want to engage constructively in moral dialogue with other people.

1. What Are Values?

Let’s back up a bit first. Moral values are a type of value. But what is a “value”?
This question can turn unnecessarily philosophical very quickly. The philosophical study of values has a name, actually — it’s called “axiology”. It studies the metaphysical and epistemological status of values, broadly understood.
But for our purposes, it’s enough to say that values are things that people care about.
Values are what matter to us. They are what motivate our behavior. They ground our judgments about what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable.
Any form of activity that involves making judgments about what is better or worse, good or bad, high quality or low quality, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, desirable or undesirable … all of these judgments involve values in one form or another.
There are values in sports, values in art, values in social and cultural practices, values in science, values in relationships, values in economic transactions, religious values … our everyday experience is saturated with values and value judgments.

2. What are Moral Values?

The way we care about moral values is different from the way we care about non-moral values.
Moral values are connected to fundamental human emotions and experiences that motivate us in distinctive ways.
Consider:

• The overriding love and concern that parents feel for their children.
• The sympathy and empathy we experience when we perceive the suffering of others.
• The sense of duty and loyalty we feel to our family and close social groups, or broader communities to which we belong.
• The anger and indignation we feel toward those who threaten us or those we love. 
• The feelings of unfairness and injustice we experience when we are treated poorly, and others treated better, for no good reason. 
• The positive feelings associated with having the freedom to make our own choices and determine our own future. 
• The admiration we feel toward those who exhibit courage and compassion. 
• The guilt or shame we feel when we have violated a trust or otherwise failed to live up to the values we endorse.
  When you examine the character of these feelings and emotions, and how they motivate our judgments and decisions, you’re exploring the moral dimension of our shared human experience.
  One of the consequences of this shared human experience is that I don’t have to spend time convincing anyone that moral values matter to us in important and distinctive ways, and that they can function as reasons to believe or do things.
  This shared human experience is what makes moral argumentation possible.

Shared Moral Values Make Moral Argumentation Possible

I closed the previous lecture with this statement:
“This shared human experience is what makes moral argumentation possible.”
How does our shared moral experience make moral argumentation possible?
It makes it possible because, in virtue of this shared moral experience, I can assert moral claims that most people are willing to accept as true.
These claims can then function as premises in a moral argument, even if we are completely divided philosophically on what makes a moral claim true or false. 
Let me give you an example.
Raise your hand if you think it’s wrong to kill another person for pleasure.
All hands up? Good.
Because of this agreement, I can write an argument like this …
1. It’s morally wrong to kill another person for pleasure.
2. Tommy killed his cousin Rick for pleasure.
**Therefore, what Tommy did was morally wrong.
… and this argument will make perfect sense to you. You can see at a glance that the conclusion follows from the premises, and the key moral premise strikes you as obviously true. You can easily read and evaluate this as an argument.
But now let me ask you — why is it morally wrong to kill another person for pleasure?
Another way to phrase the question: if it’s wrong, what makes it wrong?
Are you confident in your answer?
You might be surprised at the diversity of replies you’ll get if you ask this question. Try it over dinner some time.
Here are some replies you might hear:
“It’s wrong because he’s taking pleasure in it, and that’s just evil.”**
“It’s wrong because it violates one of God’s commandments — thou shalt not kill.”
“It’s wrong because it violates another person’s right to life.”
“It’s wrong because any sane culture would say it’s wrong. If we allowed murder like this to go on without punishment we wouldn’t have any social order.”
These are very different answers. There’s far less agreement on the question of why killing for pleasure is wrong, than the initial judgment that_killing for pleasure is wrong.
This is hardly surprising. The question “what makes an act morally right or wrong?” is a question for moral philosophy. Within the Western philosophical tradition there is 2500 years of debate on what grounds the truth of moral claims.
Fortunately, what matters in this example, from the standpoint of moral argumentation, isn’t _why we think it’s wrong to kill a person for pleasure, only that we think it’s wrong.
If the premises you’re offering are ones that your intended audience is willing to accept as true, for whatever reason, then they can serve as reasons for your audience to accept what logically follows from those premises.
In the case of moral argumentation, all we need are moral premises that an audience is willing to accept as true. The stronger and wider the agreement on the premises, the more effective the argument can be.
Obviously, people disagree about many moral issues (abortion, capital punishment, welfare, war, pornography, homosexuality, …).
These are the precisely the issues about which people feel compelled to formulate moral arguments.
But we can only argue about these issues if there ALSO exists a large collection of moral judgments about which the arguer, and the intended audience of the argument, agree. These are the claims that we can rely on as plausible moral premises, or shared background assumptions, in moral arguments.
Fortunately, among groups there is often a great deal of common moral ground that can serve as a foundation for constructive moral argument and debate.
Most of us agree, for example, that happiness is a good thing and suffering is a bad thing, all other things being equal.
Most of us agree that restricting the freedom of other people, for no good reason, is a bad thing (again, all other things being equal).
Most of us agree that courage and compassion are moral virtues, not vices.
We could go on.
Of course there is variation in shared moral values across cultures, age groups, religious groups, historical periods, etc. Think of differing moral attitudes between religious conservative and secular liberals, or between younger people and older people.
These differences in moral values can pose a challenge to productive moral dialogue and debate between these different groups.
One of the goals of this course is to provide some tools that can help meet this challenge.

Philosophical vs Psychological Perspectives on Moral Values

In an introductory class in ethics that you might take in a college or university philosophy program, the subject of moral values is commonly integrated into the discussion of moral theories. That association limits the range of moral values that are discussed, but is nonetheless a very important association to be aware of.
By contrast, when moral psychologists talk about moral values, they aren’t trying to map particular moral values onto particular moral theories. They’re focused more on the descriptive project of categorizing distinctions in moral values, for the purpose of understanding the role that moral values play in explaining differences in moral behavior, and explaining why certain moral values play a larger role in the moral psychology of some people than in others.
Both of these perspectives, the philosophical and the psychological, are equally important for moral literacy and for critical thinking about ethics. 
So in what follows I’ll be moving back and forth between these perspectives.
I strongly believe that this integrated approach offers a more effective foundation for learning how to craft moral arguments that are compelling and persuasive.
An integrated approach is also crucial for understanding the proper role and limits of moral argumentation in the framework of our personal and social lives.
Let’s begin with how philosophers tend to categorize moral values in relation to moral theories.