Extending moral domain beyond

reason
Aurélien Darbellay

Abstract:

In Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin argues that any external moral skepticism – i.e. any
meta-ethical view according to which no moral claim is ever true – is self-defeating. To support
his view, he offers what I should refer to as the Master Argument against Moral Skepticism
(MAMS). Consider a sentence, σ, expressing a moral claim (σ may be the sentence “killing
babies is bad”). The MAMS reads as follow: (1) any version of external skepticism entails the
truth of “it isn’t true that σ”; (2) if s expresses a moral claim, so does “it isn’t true that σ” – that
is, the moral domain (construed as the set of sentences expressing moral claims) is closed
under the sentential operator “it isn’t true that…”; (3) therefore, any version of external
skepticism entails the truth of a sentence expressing a moral claim, i.e. external skepticism is
self-defeating.

There are many different ways in which Dworkin’s bold argument can be resisted. In this
paper, I focus on premise (2). In particular, I claim that

What is the point of Dworkin’s argument?

A. INTRODUCTION: A FUNDAMENTAL WORRY

In Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin argues in a very general fashion against all forms of
what he calls external skepticism. He introduces this expression to refer to those theories that
purport to adopt a point of view external to moral debates and claim that there are no true
moral claims. Prima facie, thus it seems that both expressivism and error theory should qualify
as forms of external skepticism.

To defeat these Archimedean views, Dworkin puts forward what I will call the master
argument against external skepticism. He claims, in the first place, that any allegedly external
form of skepticism implies the truth of certain moral claims. In the second place, he appeals to
Hume’s principle to conclude that, after all, the sceptic theory under scrutiny isn’t external; for
Hume’s principle reads that any theory which has moral implications contains at least one
moral premise. Thus, there is no external skepticism. An immediate consequence is that all the
views quantifying over all moral claims to assert that they are not true (all of them) are
somehow self-defeating.

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Here goes the thought that gives birth to this paper: the conception 1 of moral claim
underpinning the master argument isn’t identical to the conceptions involved in most of the
views that Dworkin wants to classify as external skepticism. The latter are usually much more
restrictive than the former. Therefore, by quantifiying over “all moral claims” these theories do
not fall victim to self-referentiality and aren’t self-defeating. Moreover, even if Dworkin
manages to show that his is the best conception of moral claim some (or even most) forms of
moral skepticism can be stated as aiming at a sub-class of the moral claims understood in the
Dworkinian manner.

This shows that Dworkin’s distinction between external and internal debates fails to match the
distinction that the literature draws between meta-ethics and ethics. Thus, his argument
against external skepticism is irrelevant for most meta-ethical debates.

This essay is composed of four sections. You are reading the first, introductory one. The second
section presents Dworkin’s Master argument against skepticism. The third section presents the
worry I raised in this introduction in a more systematic and workable framework. In the final
section I show how the strategy I outline in this essay can be used to save two “traditional”
form of moral skepticism from Dworkin’s Master argument.

B. DWORKIN AGAINST “EXTERNAL” SKEPTICISM

Dworkin’s Master argument against external skepticism can be reduced to a three steps
process. In the first one it is shown that any sceptical (and maybe, in general, meta-ethical)
position has moral first-order implications; in the second one, Hume’s principle is used to infer
that, since it has moral implications, the meta-ethical position itself involves moral claims; in
the last one, sceptical meta-ethical positions are proved self-defeating: if no moral claim is
ever true, sceptical theories cannot be true either.

Step 1 – Moral implications: To convince us that any form of “external” skepticism has moral
implications, Dworkin imagines a debate about abortion. A, B, C conceive of themselves as
moral realists2, while D has adopted a sceptical meta-ethical stance.

“Consider this conversation:

A: Abortion is morally wicked: we always in all circumstances have a categorical reason – a reason
that does not depend on what anyone wants or thinks – to prevent and condemn it.

B: On the contrary. In some circumstances abortion is morally required. Single teenage mothers with
no resources have a categorical reason to abort.

C: You are both wrong. Abortion is never either morally required or morally forbidden. No one has a
categorical reason either way. It is always permissible and never mandatory, like cutting your
fingernails.

D: You are all three wrong. Abortion is never either morally forbidden or morally required or morally
permissible.

A, B, and C make moral claims. Does D?” (Dworkin, 2011: 42)

1
I call conception the view one has about the concept he uses. Inasmuch as the concepts we use aren’t
transparent to us, conceptions and concept might come apart.
2
In the following sense: they think that moral claims are truth-apt and that some of them are true.

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Then, Dworkin goes on claiming that D’s position is obscure and maybe even contradictory: we
cannot distinguish between what it is for something to be permissible, and for something to be
neither forbidden nor required. D is wrong, hence, in thinking that his position on abortion is
any different from C’s. D’s meta-ethical skepticism has moral implications, namely that
aborting is permissible (i.e. neither forbidden, nor required). Moreover, there is nothing
relevantly special about abortion or D’s skepticism: we shall then expect the example to
generalize.

Step 2 – Humean reduction: It has been shown that sceptical argument and positions have
moral consequences. An application of Hume’s principle – which stresses that no moral
conclusion can be reached without moral premises – leads straightforwardly to the following
result: sceptical theories involve moral claims.

Step 3 – Sceptical self-refutation: If we accept the arguments offered in the two first steps, the
following conclusion is unavoidable: any “meta-ethical” position which has it that moral
claims3 cannot be true is self-defeating.4

C. GENERAL OBJECTION TO DWORKIN’S MASTER ARGUMENT AGAINST EXTERNAL

SKEPTICISM

I said in the introduction that Dworkin’s argument against external skepticism is likely to prove
irrelevant, even if it is correct. This thought is captured by the following proposal:

The irrelevance thesis (IT): Although Dworkin’s Master argument might succeed in showing
that “external skepticism” it inconsistent, it is helpless against most of the actual forms of
moral skepticism. For most moral sceptics do not target the whole set of Dworkinian moral
claims.

Now, I take it the following set of four conditions is sufficient to vindicate the irrelevance
thesis:

a. A class of moral claims5 can be individuated on the basis of a property R.

b. A certain form S of moral skepticism can be understood as a proposal about those R-
claims: the S-sceptic conclusions affect R-claims; the arguments the S-sceptic offers
can be reasonalby interpreted as argument about R-claims; and the property R, which
individuates the set of R-claims, plays a central role in S-sceptic arguments.
c. Neither does S-skepticism need R-claims to be formulated, nor does he entail the truth
of any R-claim.

If these conditions are met, I say that we should interpret S-skepticism as a meta-discourse
about R-claims, rather than a self-defeating and self-referential discourse on Dworkinian moral
claims. Add now the fourth condition:
3
From now, I’ll use the expression “moral claims” as including everything Dworkin wants it to include.
4
Dworkin’s master argument has been resisted in many different ways, generally denying that “it is
neither forbidden nor required to…” is equivalent to “it is permissible..” or questioning Dworkin’s appeal
to Hume’s principle. I don’t want to argue here that the way out I’m suggesting is preferable to the
others. My aim is only to point at another possible option.
5
I’m using this expression as to include everything Dworkin wants it to include.

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 d. The main forms of moral skepticism which are present in the meta-ethical tradition
can be stated as to substitute S-skepticism in the former three points

Then, it follows that actual varieties of moral skepticism should be understood as meta-
discourses about a subdomain of the Dworkinian moral domain. Dworkin’s master argument
then is helpless. Maybe it shows that external skepticism doesn’t exist; but, if the four
antecedent conditions are met, external skepticism is a straw man; meta-ethical discussions
are meaningful, independently of how we should label them (whether meta-ethical or moral).

As I see it, Dworkin’s reply would necessarily rely on the denial of d). Dworkin would say, then,
that historical sceptic lines in meta-ethics cannot be saved using the strategy I offer above. The
next section is meant to show that, at least for two important forms of “skepticism” 6 – error
theory and expressivism – the challenge can be met.

D. ON BEHALF OF “EXTERNAL” SKEPTICISM

In this section, I show that we should partially accept point d) of the objection to Dworkin’s
master argument against external skepticism (see section III). This means that, for several
instances of “external skepticism”, I’ll show that they can be interpreted as meta-R-claims
proposal. Moreover, I hope to show that certain famous arguments can be conserved.

Let me finally make clear that I’m not defending a sceptical position; neither am I endorsing
the arguments I’ll rescue in the following lines. The only thing I want to show is how these
arguments and the position they uphold can be protected against the threat of self-
contradiction, by the means of the individuation of an adequate class of R-claims as their
objects.

E. Error skepticism: rescuing the argument from queerness

In order to rescue the error sceptic from Dworkin’s master argument against external
skepticism, I suggest that we individuate a sub-class of moral claims 7 on the basis of the
property (O) of having as part of its truth-maker an objective moral property. Let’s define O-
claims, then, as those moral claims whose truth presupposes the existence of an objective
moral property.8 On the basis of this definition, Mackie’s argument from queerness applies
immediately.

“An objective good would be sought by anyone who was acquainted with it, not because of any contingent
fact that this person, or every person, is so constituted that he desires this end, but just because the end has
to-be-pursuedness somehow built into it. Similarly, if there were objective principles of right and wrong, any
wrong (possible) course of action would have not-to-be-doneness somehow built into it.”(Mackie, 1977 :
40)9

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Dworkin consider as sceptic any view which takes moral claims to be either necessarily false or not
truth-apt.
7
Remember, once more, that I use “moral claim” in Dworkin’s sense.
8
What is an objective moral property? I hope that for the needs of this paper, it is enough to suggest the
following: a moral property whose instantiation isn’t grounded in anyone’s attitude.
9
This is the same passage Dworkin quotes when he “defeats” Mackie’s skepticism, after acknowledging
silently the possibility open by Schaffer-Landau’s suggestion.

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Here is a formulation of this argument, on the basis of the model I have been developing
across the last pages:

P1: A relevant class of moral judgments are O-claims

P2: Objective moral properties would be such that, necessarily,
any living being who got acquainted with them would
necessarily have a (motivating) reason to act in a certain
way;
P3: Such objects would be so queer that our ontology should
exclude them
The relevant class of moral judgments are all false

Now, whatever Dworkin may say about the premises and conclusion being moral claims, it
should be clear that this argumentative sequence does not contain any O-claim. That the truth
of “Killing is good” presupposes the existence of objective goodness isn’t a claim whose own
truth requires any moral property to be part of the world. And the same can be said of the
other claims which compose the argument. And, presumably, the whole error theory can be
stated without using any O-claim or entailing the truth of any O-claim. This is to say that the
conclusion of the theory – that O-claims are false – isn’t self-referential and that the theory
doesn’t defeat itself.

Finally, it is worth noticing one of the virtues of the approach we entertain. The first premise of
the argument makes explicit the domain over which ranges the whole argument: claims whose
truth would entail the existence of objective moral property. This way, it announces how the
argument can be fought against: denying that any (or at least most of the) ordinary moral
judgment(s) are O-claims.

F. Truth-status skepticism:10the argument from (judgment) internalism

Here is the traditional argument from internalism against meta-ethical cognitivism:

P1: Moral judgments motivate by themselves.

P2: There are two different kinds of mental states: beliefs and
desires.
P3: Beliefs, by themselves, do not motivate.
Moral judgments aren’t beliefs.

This argument suggests immediately a property on the basis of which a sub-set of moral
claims11 could be individuated: the property of expressing judgments that are intrinsically
motivating. This means that the moral sceptic who uses this argument is only referring to
those moral claims12 that are intrinsically motivating.13

10
“Truth-status skepticism” is the expression Dworkin uses to refer to non-cognitivism.
11
Once again, remember that I intend to use that expression as broadly as Dworkin does.
12
Ibid.
13
Notice that this restriction isn’t enough to make the internalist thesis (first premise of the argument)
trivially true (but also, probably, irrelevantly true): an externalist like Brink (1986) would deny that any
moral claim is intrinsically motivating.

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Let’s call M-claims those moral claims14 which are intrinsically motivating. Can something like a
non-cognitivist, semantically expressivist, meta-M-claims proposal be (apparently) consistently
stated? I guess we have to answer yes. The proposal would stress that M-claims must be given
an expressivist semantics, because M-claims don’t express cognitive mental states, but express
some complex kind of emotions of the speaker. The three main points of the proposal could be
stated as follow:

a) A relevant sub-class of moral claims are M-claims

b) M-claims aren’t beliefs, but expressions of emotions: therefore they cannot be either
true of false.
c) Sentence expressing M-claims need expressivist semantics.

Neither are these sentences M-claims themselves, nor do they entail that an M-claim should
be true or false. This means that they constitute a proposal that, even if unsound, can be
consistently stated.

Now, a Dworkinian could venture the following objection: the second thesis in the foregoing
proposal is indeed an M-claim. For, if I know that the moral judgments I make have no truth
value, I would hardly be motivated to improve them. Then, the second premise of your
argument motivates me not to try to improve my moral judgments. Then it is an M-claim;
then, following the proposal, it has no truth-value; then the expressivist proposal you submit is
the expression of a complex of emotions.

But this objection fails just because it misunderstands what it is to be intrinsically motivating:
roughly speaking, a judgment is intrinsically motivating if and only if making that judgment
motivates in one direction or the other, without further assumption about the psychology of
the judgment-maker. Now, I agree that, for a rational being who believes that only truth-apt
judgments can be improved on and/or worsened, a belief to the effect that a certain class of
judgments aren’t truth-apt constitute a motivation. But this doesn’t make it the case that this
latter belief is intrinsically motivating. After all, people may not be (and often aren’t) fully
rational. And most of us do not think that only truth-apt judgements can be improved on. And
just as my belief that it will rain tomorrow doesn’t allow inferring that I’m motivated one way
or the other in the absence of further assumptions about my psychology (whether I like the
rain, what I intend to do tomorrow….), an expressivist understanding of certain moral claims
has no behavioural implication by itself.

G. REFERENCES

BRINK, D.O. (1986). “Externalist Moral Realism”, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, V. XXIV.

Dworkin, R. (2011). Justice for Hedgehogs. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass.

MACKIE, J.L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing right and wrong. Viking Press: New-York.

MCDOWELL, J.H.(1998). Mind, Value and Reality. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass.
14
Remember that I’m using “moral claim” in Dworkin’s sense.

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