Fall, 2004
The last two sentences of Leigh Turner's article, "Bioethics in culturally diverse societies" are "Bioethics has its limits." and "Perhaps it is better to recognize these limits than to claim that some method, theory or technique of reasoning, is available that will magically resolve longstanding moral conflicts." (Lahey Clinic Medical Ethics, Spring 2004). I am in complete agreement. Furthermore, it is not merely bioethics that has its limits; there is no method, theory or technique of reasoning available that will resolve longstanding moral conflicts in any area of morality.
However, Leigh Turner takes himself to be providing an attack on the notion of a common morality and I am a leading defender of the view; something is quite puzzling. 1-4 Part of the puzzle is due to the fact that the view that Leigh Turner is attacking is the principlist version of common morality, a view that Beauchamp and Childress adopted in later editions of their book, Principles of Biomedical Ethics. This principlist version of common morality has only a distant relationship to the account of common morality that we put forward in Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals. 5
Common morality cannot and should not be used to settle longstanding moral conflicts in bioethics. Rather, common morality explains why, although there is agreement about the vast majority of moral decisions and judgments, there are some unresolvable moral disagreements. The agreement about the overwhelming majority of moral decisions and judgments, e.g., it is morally wrong to subject a patient to a serious risk of death simply to make money, is overlooked because these kinds of cases are rarely if ever discussed. The relatively few controversial issues, e.g., the moral acceptability of abortion or the use of "medical futility" to discontinue treatment, are widely discussed, and thus are mistakenly taken as constituting the vast majority of moral decisions and judgments. But although the number of unresolvable moral issues is small relative to the number about which there is complete agreement, it is a mistake to think that any moral theory will resolve these longstanding moral conflicts.
Common morality is not a theory; it is the system that people use, usually not consciously, when they make their moral decisions and judgments based on a thoughtful consideration of the facts involved in a specific situation. The correct account of common morality is similar to the correct account of grammar provided by grammarians. These grammarians simply describe the grammatical system that is used, usually not consciously, by speakers of the language when they speak and when they interpret the speech of others. people are speakers of a language if they can understand and can be understood by other speakers of the language. If a grammarian puts forward a description of the grammatical system of a language that is in conflict with the way in which any significant number of speakers use it, that grammarian has put forward a mistaken account.
Philosophers who put forward moral theories that conflict with the moral judgments of any significant number of moral agents, are similarly mistaken. People are moral agents if they can understand what morality prohibits, requires, discourages, encourages and allows and can guide their conduct by it. That is why any accurate account of common morality must allow for unresolvable moral disputes concerning issues about which a significant number of moral agents disagree.
However, although I agree with Leigh Turner about the limits of common morality, we have a significant disagreement about what counts as morality. He says "there is a crucial difference between making normative claims about how humans ought to act and making transhistorical and crosscultural claims about the empirical status of particular moral practices." He seems to hold that any claim about how humans ought to act is a moral judgment. This is a common mistake of philosophers. Turner seems to offer the following in support of his view that moral practices differ, "Deliberately inflicted violence against the innocent is a staple of human history." That he thinks that inflicting violence against the innocent is a moral practice can only be explained by his acceptance of the view that however any society claims that people ought to act is a moral practice.
When philosophers talk about morality, they are not talking about all of the diverse practices that different societies put forward as guides to conduct. Morality has certain features that they rightly take to be essential. Among these features is that it is inappropriate to make a moral judgment about the actions of a person if he is legitimately ignorant that what he is doing is morally discouraged or prohibited. This distinguishes morality from law and religion, for it is appropriate to make a legal or religious judgment about the actions of a person even if he is legitimately ignorant that what he is doing is legally or religiously discouraged or prohibited. Together with the fact that, unless they are legitimately ignorant of the facts of the situation, it is appropriate to make moral judgments about the actions of all normal adult human beings, this feature of morality has a somewhat surprising implication. The conclusion is that morality cannot be based on religion, for no religion is known to all normal adult human beings. Thomas Aquinas's acceptance of this conclusion explains why he tries to show that the moral views put forward in the Christian Scriptures are the same as those known by natural reason. Neither Aquinas nor I deny that a particular religion may put forward correct moral views, but both of us deny that what makes them correct moral views is that they are put forward by that religion.
Genuine unresolvable moral disagreements are the result of a number of factors, of which two are the most important. The first is a difference in the rankings of the various benefits (goods) and harms (evils). Everyone agrees that death, pain, disability, loss of freedom and loss of pleasure are evils or harms. Everyone also agrees that abilities, freedom and pleasure are goods or benefits. However, within fairly wide limits, rational persons differ in their rankings of these goods and evils. For example, two people suffering from the same painful terminal illness may make different choices, both rational. One may choose to stop life-prolonging treatment in order to avoid the continuing pain, whereas the other may choose to continue life-prolonging treatment despite the pain. Turner is correct that these differences are often the result of different cultural and religious backgrounds, but it is the rationally allowed differences in the rankings of the evils that are directly responsible for the unresolvable moral disagreement.
A second important source of unresolvable moral disagreement are differences about who is included in the group that is impartially protected or protected at all by morality. The group must include all moral agents, those about whom it is appropriate to make moral judgments. if a person denies that any group of moral agents is impartially protected by morality, e.g., women or blacks, he is a sexist or a racist, he is not putting forward a rationally allowed way of being moral. But there is considerable disagreement about who else in addition to moral agents should be included in the impartially protected group. Almost everyone in western societies wants to include infants, but there is considerable disagreement about whether fetuses should be included. Some people want to include non-human animals, especially highly intelligent mammals such as chimpanzees and dolphins, but others disagree. Like the differences in the rankings of the harms and benefits, this difference about who is included in the group impartially protected by morality is often decisively influenced by cultural and religious factors. However, these cultural and religious factors are only indirectly responsible for the unresolvable moral disagreement; the differences in deciding who besides moral agents should be included in the impartially protected group are what is directly responsible for the unresolvable moral disagreement.
Leigh Turner is correct in claiming that common morality cannot resolve longstanding moral conflicts, but because he equates moral practices with any practices that a society puts forward to guide behavior, he offers mistaken arguments for his claim. Were he to have recognized the distinction between morality and other guides to conduct such as legal or religious guides, he would have been able to support his claim that common morality cannot resolve longstanding moral conflicts without lapsing into what seems like ethical relativism.
Bernard Gert, PhD
Philosophy Department Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH The centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga, Australia
Footnotes
1 Gert B. Common morality and computing. Ethics and Information Technology. 1999;1(1): 53-60. Reprinted in Readings in CyberEthics, 2nd ed. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2004;308-322.
2 Gert B, Culver CM, Clouser KD. Common morality versus specified principlism: reply to Richardson. J Med Philos2000;25(3):308-22.
3 Clouser KD, Gert B. Common Morality. In Bioethics: A Philosophical Overview. Kushf G (ed). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.
4 Gert B. common Morality: Deciding What To Do. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
5 Gert B, Culver CM, Clouser KD. Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Oublier Aquinas
(It's time to forget Aquinas)
Once again,let me review two problems with common morality approaches in bioethics. First, the common morality is often described as being in "reflective equilibrium." Gert suggests that the common morality provides a "system." The language of reflective equilibrium emphasizes orderliness and stability. One point of my commentary was to suggest that in contemporary social orders we can identify both zones of moral conflict and zones of moral stability. Postmodern theorists typically emphasize the existence of conflict. principlists and casuists tend to emphasize order and stability. If postmodernists overemphasize conflict, philosophers of the common morality exaggerate the degree of stability and order in contemporary societies. Gert argues that there is agreement about the "vast majority of moral decisions and judgments." I'm not convinced there is agreement on "the overwhelming majority" of moral issues and decisions. Gert suggests there are "relatively few" controversial moral issues. However, any newspaper reader knows that moral controversy surrounds many different topics. Furthermore, these issues are not just of interest to a small cadre of academic specialists. Should the U.S. have invaded Iraq? Is it both legal and moral for the U.S. to detain "enemy combatants" without trial in Guatanamo Bay? Should same sex marriage be both legalized and celebrated? Should governments provide substantial funding for embryonic stem cell research or should research involving embryonic stem cells be prohibited or highly restricted? Should governments fund "faith-based" social institutions? These issues have a moral dimension and "we" do not all agree upon what constitutes appropriate moral decisions and judgments. Caution must be exercised when offering judgments about whether there are "relatively few" or "many" controversial moral issues. This is one area where scholarship by sociologists, anthropologists and other interpreters of societies might make a useful contribution to bioethics. To what extent is there a broadly shared "common morality" in such countries as Australia, Canada and the United States? it is not possible to address such questions simply by offering question-begging claims about what "everyone" thinks.
Second, as I indicate in my commentary, I do not challenge the substance of what many scholars characterize as the common morality. When I note that humans often seem to take pleasure in inflicting harm, violence and suffering, I am not presenting a brief for warfare, genocide or organized famine. Rather, I am suggesting that we need to be skeptical of sunny notions about human nature and the fundamental moral decency of all thinking humans. The last century alone ought to make us skeptical of the notion that humans are generally guided by a beacon of natural reason that prompts them to be honest, trustworthy and respectful of property rights. In short, I am noting problems with empirical claims made by proponents of common morality approaches to moral reasoning. Too often, they make wholly unsupported assertions about the widespread prevalence of common moral intuitions. I wish they would provide some evidence to buttress their claims concerning what "everyone" thinks about pain, death and loss of pleasure. Such experiences might seem like bedrock dimensions of human existence. However, is it accurate to claim that death, pain, loss of freedom and loss of pleasure are always and everywhere experienced as evils or harms? If this claim is inaccurate, proponents of the common morality draw upon a great many mistaken assumptions when they describe what "everyone" thinks. Claiming that "right-thinking" people know the "essential features" of morality seems to offer a tautology rather than an argument.
If I am prepared to suggest that conflict is a part of moral existence and many moral "intuitions" appear to be local, culturally and historically shaped phenomena, am I properly labeled "an ethical relativist"? As I indicate in my commentary, I challenge the "justifications" or "foundations" provided for the common morality. I nowhere suggest that all social practices are equally morally defensible. I might take issue with aspects of the substance of the common morality if philosophers ever clarified in fine detail just what this concept is supposed to include. It is hard to criticize the substance of a concept more often assumed than defended or even described in depth.
Contemporary inhabitants of societies such as Canada and the United States are socially and historically shaped beings. We live at a particular moment in human history. We are enculturated into particular social and cultural traditions. Some of "our" moral norms have longstanding roots and can be found in many different social settings around the world. Other moral norms are of more recent vintage and local provenance. Richard Rorty, Jeffrey Stout and other philosophers with pragmatist leanings think it possible to defend particular social practices and institutions even if the moral norms these practices and institutions embody are not hardwired for all eternity into the human mind. We can say goodbye to Aquinas and his account of natural reason because in the 21st century we inhabit multicultural, multifaith, pluralistic democratic societies where moral agreement is often difficult or impossible to achieve. We should think of the common morality creed in bioethics as more an article of faith than a detailed framework for normative deliberation.
Leigh Turner, PhD
Assistant Professor
Biomedical Ethics
Department of Social Studies of Medicine
McGill University, Montreal
in collaboration with
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
The opinions expressed in the journal, Lahey Clinic Medical Ethics,
belong to the individual contributors and do not represent the institutional position
of Lahey Clinic on any subject matters discussed.
