Moral

Particularism and
Moral Generalism
First published Tue Nov 22, 2016; substantive revision Tue Nov 29, 2016

Among the many questions that arise in the attempt to come to philosophical grips with
morality is what role, if any, moral principles have to play. Moral generalists think morality is
best understood in terms of moral principles; moral particularists deny this. To many people,
ordinary moral practice seems suffused with principles (keep your promises; do not steal; do
unto others as you would have them do unto you). To many moral theorists, the central task
of moral theory has been to articulate and defend moral principles, or, perhaps, a single
ultimate moral principle (maximize impersonal happiness; act only on maxims that can be
willed as universal law). The debate between particularists and generalists thus has the
potential to force a reassessment of both moral theory and moral practice.
This characterization of the debate is so far too impressionistic to provide a tractable
framework for philosophical inquiry. The literature reveals many ways to sharpen the debate,
and sharpening is indeed needed. But both generalism and particularism are best seen as
intellectual traditions in moral philosophy, each of which has a number of distinct but related
strands. This article attempts to disentangle some of those strands with the most attention
being given to recent stages of this debate.
The arguments for and against both particularism and generalism are also diverse, arising
from metaphysics, epistemology, normative theory and the philosophy of language. These
arguments also interact in interesting ways with other debates in moral philosophy. Finally, it
is very much an open and interesting question to what extent other areas of philosophy (e.g.,
the philosophy of language and epistemology) can usefully draw on ideas developed in the
debate between moral particularists and moral generalists.
● 1. Historical Introduction
● 2. “Particularism” and “Generalism” are said in many ways
● 3. Metaphysical Arguments
● 4. Epistemological Arguments
● 5. Semantic/Conceptual Arguments
 ● 6. Practical Arguments
● Bibliography
● Academic Tools
● Other Internet Resources
● Related Entries

1. Historical Introduction
Aristotle might reasonably be characterized as the “forefather” of particularism. Aristotle
famously emphasizes that ethical inquiry is mistaken if it aims for “a degree of exactness” too
great for its subject matter, and added that moral generalizations can hold only “for the most
part”. Moreover, Aristotle tirelessly emphasizes that ethics ultimately concerns particular
cases, that no theory can fully address them all, and that “judgment depends on perception”
(NE, 1109b). These ideas have all deeply inspired contemporary particularists (John
McDowell is a prominent case, though he does not tend to label himself as a particularist; see
McDowell 1981, 1998). Whether Aristotle should ultimately be interpreted as a particularist
is a matter of debate (Irwin 2000; Leibovitz 2013).
Interestingly, no single major historic figure is most obviously characterized as the
“forefather” of generalism. This is presumably because the most important historic
generalists in effect defended generalism by defending specific moral theories or principles.
The two most important traditions here are the deontological tradition which owes so much to
Kant, and the consequentialist tradition which owes so much to the British utilitarians
(Bentham, Mill and Sidgwick). Nonetheless, each of these traditions substantially enriched
the generalist approach with a wealth of ideas and distinctions which need not be restricted to
the theories in which they were originally formulated.
The Kantian tradition puts enormous weight on the idea that morality must be principled and
that the ultimate principle of morality must be one we can know ​a priori​. According to Kant,
the moral law as applied to imperfect agents who are subject to temptations, provides what he
called a “categorical imperative”—an imperative whose rational authority is not dependent
on the agent’s contingent ends. Kant provided several formulations of the categorical
imperative. The so-called “universal law” formulation holds that one must always act so that
one’s maxim could at the same time be willed as a universal law. The humanity formulation
holds that one must always act so as to treat humanity, whether in one’s own person or that of
another, always as an end and never merely as a means. The Kantian tradition emphasizes
common sense moral ideas like respect and dignity, and provides a distinctive interpretation
of the role of universalizability in moral thought. On some readings of Kant, the moral law
must itself be ​constitutive​ of being a rational agent at all. This idea has, in turn, been
enormously influential, especially in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.
Consequentialism enriched the generalist framework in other ways. Most notably, perhaps,
consequentialists have often distinguished between two very different ​kinds​ of principles,
corresponding to two rather different ​roles​ they may play. On the one hand, there are
principles—call them “standards”—which provide the deepest ​explanation​ of why certain
actions are right or wrong. On the other hand, there are the principles which ordinary agents
ought to follow in their day to day deliberations. Such principles are “guides”. Consider a
simple analogy with the stock market. The principle which explains what counts as success
might simply be “buy low and sell high”, but this principle is woefully inadequate as a guide
to making investment decisions in real time. A principle like “have a diversified portfolio”
seems much more suitable for the latter role.
Each of these traditions (the Kantian and the consequentialist) faces a number of ​prima facie
powerful objections. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that there was ultimately a reaction
against the broader generalist aspirations that these theories embodied. On some readings,
one of the earliest particularists in the modern sense was Ewing, who in ​The Morality of
Punishment​ (1929) argued that consequentialism and deontology were the only plausible
principled conceptions of morality, that neither was defensible, and that morality was
therefore not principled (cf. Lind & Brännmark 2008 interview with Dancy, who explicitly
characterizes Ewing in this way at p. 10).
Just one year after Ewing in effect defended a fairly radical form of moral particularism,
W.D. Ross argued for a more moderate form. Ross occupies a very interesting place in the
history of particularism, as he has served as both an inspiration and a foil to modern
particularists. Ross put forward a battery of “​prima facie​ duties” specifying types of
conduct—for example acts of gratitude—that are always, in some sense, obligatory. The
obligation in question need not be an all things considered one, however, since a conflicting
prima facie​ duty might, in the circumstances, be more important.
Setting aside whether Ross thought anything theoretically useful could be said about how to
adjudicate conflicts of ​prima facie​ duty, he did not think it useful to try to formulate
exceptionless principles with regard to all things considered duty (cf. Postow 2006). Ross
thus appears to be a generalist about ​prima facie​ duty, but a defender of particularism about
overall duty. Some contemporary particularists, however, insist on going beyond Ross and
casting doubt even on principles of ​prima facie​ duty, or principles specifying which
considerations are ​pro tanto​ (or “contributory” in Jonathan Dancy’s terminology) reasons.
Jonathan Dancy has done more than anyone to articulate and defend an especially radical
form of particularism. Although Ross was both a foil and an inspiration for Dancy, R.M.
Hare was a more immediate opponent. Hare’s prescriptivism drew on ideas from both the
Kantian and the consequentialist tradition. Hare defended a strong form of universalizability
which can be traced to Kant, but Hare then argued that universalizability lent support not to a
deontological moral theory, but to a form of consequentialism. Indeed it led to a form of
consequentialism which emphasized the distinction between standards and guides (cf. Hare
1963).
In the introduction of ​Moral Reasons​, Dancy summarizes his conclusions as the “mirror
image” of Hare’s. Perhaps most notably, Dancy objected to an idea which he took to be
implicit in Hare’s universalizability principle, that if a consideration is a reason in one
context then it is a reason with the same valence in ​any​ possible context in which it occurs.
(This reading of Hare is open to objection. See McNaughton and Rawlings (2000) for
discussion.) Dancy calls this idea, which he also attributes to Ross, “atomism” in the theory
of reasons and argues against it and in favour of what he calls “holism”.
As Dancy’s early work came to fruition, it inspired his then-colleague David McNaughton to
advance distinct but complementary arguments for particularism. McNaughton was also
heavily influenced by the work of John McDowell, who had argued that it was an advantage
of his own brand of moral realism that it did not presuppose generalism (see McDowell 1981;
see also Blackburn 1981). In ​Moral Vision​, McNaughton defended a form of moral realism
which he argued lent support to particularism. He also argued that particularism better
accounts for moral conflict, fits reasonably well with ordinary practice and can explain why
we might reasonably be suspicious of the very idea of a moral expert.
The work of Dancy and McNaughton inspired a host of other philosophers to carry forward
the particularist research programme, sometimes in rather different directions. This
eventually led to a wide variety of views all going under the heading of “particularism”. Nor
were the challenges posed by these many moral particularisms ignored by those with more
generalist sympathies. Woken from their generalist slumbers, they began to develop
arguments for generalism which did not depend on the correctness of any particular moral
principle(s). This generated a healthy debate, the contours of which the rest of this entry will
outline.

2. “Particularism” and
“Generalism” are said in many
ways
Particularists are united in their opposition to moral principles and generalists are united in
their allegiance to them. What, though, is a moral principle? At least three conceptions of
principles are worth distinguishing. First, there are principles ​qua​ ​standards​. Standards
purport to offer ​explanations​ of why given actions are right or wrong, why a given
consideration is a reason with a certain valence and weight, why a given character trait is a
virtue, and the like. An especially robust metaphysical spin on this conception understands
standards as being ​truth-makers​ for moral propositions (cf. Armstrong 2004). Second, there
are principles ​qua​ ​guides​. These purport to be well suited to guiding action. Third, there are
principles purporting to play both of these roles simultaneously—​action-guiding standards.​
It is not hard to see these different conceptions of moral principles at work in the history of
moral philosophy. In the utilitarian tradition in moral philosophy, the principle of utility
(however it is formulated) is characteristically understood as a standard. Even if some
politically minded utilitarians see advantages to using the principle of utility to guide public
choice and justification, moral philosophers tend to follow Mill in thinking that the principle
is seldom apt for use in individual moral decision-making. They thus deny that it should be
understood as a principle ​qua​ ​guide​. Indeed, some utilitarians go further and argue that the
principle of utility is ​self-effacing​, in the sense that it recommends its own rejection (cf.
Railton 1984; see also Parfit 1984). Utilitarians instead hold that various maxims of common
sense morality should be understood as heuristics which work well enough for normal human
beings, so there is room in this picture for principles ​qua​ ​guides.​

Kant, on the other hand, seemed to have understood the categorical imperative as a kind of
action-guiding standard. Kant’s discussion of examples in the ​Groundwork​ (1785) and his
characterization of the Formula of Universal Law as appropriate method for testing our
maxims makes clear that he thinks of it as appropriately guiding the actions of the morally
virtuous agent. Equally clearly, the categorical imperative is to be understood as the most
fundamental explanation of why given actions are right or wrong, and so also counts as a
principle ​qua​ standard. On a constitutivist reading, the categorical imperative is meant to play
both of these roles in virtue of its constituting our rational agency. Finally, it is worth noting
in this context that a principle can function usefully as a ​guide​ even if its application requires
judgment and sensitivity; principles ​qua​ guides need not be algorithmic.
Principles can also be distinguished in terms of their ​scope.​ Some principles have purely
non-moral antecedents (e.g., the principle of utility), whereas others use moral concepts in
both their antecedents and consequents (e.g., “if an action is just then it is morally
permissible”). Finally, principles can be distinguished in terms of whether they are in some
sense “hedged”, including a ​ceteris paribus​ clause of some kind (e.g., “other things equal,
lying is wrong”), or unhedged.
One might be a particularist or a generalist about moral principles understood in any of these
ways. Whether being a particularist or generalist about principles in one sense drives one to
be a particularist or a generalist about principles in another sense is not a trivial question.
Further complicating matters, there is more than one way to oppose principles (however those
principles are conceived.) Last, the form a particularist’s opposition takes might reasonably
vary across different types of principle. Let us now review different ways one might oppose
principles.
The simplest form of opposition, ​Principle Eliminativism,​ simply denies that there are any
moral principles. Of course, it must be borne in mind here and below that a principle
eliminativist may deny that there are any principles of one sort, while allowing for principles
of another sort. For example one might be an eliminativist about principles purporting to give
the application conditions for moral predicates in entirely non-normative terms (McNaughton
1988) or an eliminativist about exceptionless principles (Little 2000). ​Principle Scepticism
holds, more modestly, that we do not have sufficient reason to believe there are any moral
principles. ​Principled Particularism​ holds that while any given moral truth is explained by a
moral principle, no finite set of moral principles can explain all the moral truths (Holton
2002). ​Anti-Transcendental Particularism,​ which at one point at least was Dancy’s favoured
gloss of the view, holds that moral thought and judgment does not depend on the supply of a
suitable stock of moral principles. Finally, ​Principle Abstinence​ asserts a more practical
opposition to moral principles, holding that we ought not be guided by moral principles. For
each of these forms of particularism, there is a corresponding form of generalism which is
simply the denial of the particularist thesis in question.
Although this taxonomy entails that the logical space for particularist (and generalist) views
is wide and heterogeneous, it would be a mistake to assume that all of the positions which can
be derived from a matrix constructed on the basis of these distinctions really are distinct in
any deep way. For example, ​Principle Eliminativism​ about principles ​qua​ ​guides​ arguably is
equivalent to ​Principle Abstinence​ about principles tout court.

3. Metaphysical Arguments
The debate between particularists and generalists is often framed in metaphysical terms. In
this guise, the debate primarily concerns principles conceived as standards. Moral principles
might then be thought of as true and law-like generalizations about moral properties or,
alternatively, as nomic regularities involving moral properties. To be clear, generalizations in
the relevant sense need not actually be instantiated to be true; plausibly, the moral law would
still be true in a world with no agents and hence with no right or wrong actions. This view has
been developed, in different ways, by McKeever and Ridge (2006), Väyrynen (2006, 2009)
and Lance and Little (2007), though it is not universally accepted (see Robinson 2008). Thus
understood, particularism is often taken to have an affinity with non-reductive or
non-naturalist views in ethics. Furthermore, it has been noted that contemporary particularism
arose alongside a resurgence of interest in non-naturalism (cf. Little, 1994). To a degree, this
is understandable. After all ​some​ naturalist views appear to entail generalism. A form of
reductive naturalism according to which being morally right is metaphysically identical with
being an act which maximizes human happiness appears to entail a robust utilitarian principle
and so, ​a fortiori​, to entail generalism. Furthermore, if one denies any kind of reduction of
moral properties to natural properties then it becomes more difficult to see how any
informative statements connecting moral and non-moral properties could be sufficiently
law-like to count as principles. Nevertheless, one ought not to take it as given that
non-naturalists must be particularists or that naturalists must be generalists. Both classic and
contemporary non-naturalists have endeavored to defend principles (Moore 1922 [1903];
Shafer-Landau 2003). Furthermore, there may be room for particularists to embrace
naturalism by claiming that particular reasons are always grounded in some particular natural
property instance while maintaining particularism by claiming that there are no law-like
generalizations connecting moral and non-moral property types. Perhaps because the
commitments and resources of non-naturalist and naturalist views in metaethics (and even
how properly to distinguish these views from each other) remains contested, one cannot
uncontroversially map the generalism/particularism debate onto the
naturalism/non-naturalism debate.
Non-naturalism would seem to have less bearing on a further question: whether there are
moral principles connecting one moral property to another. This issue is at play in Ross’s
rejection of Moore’s claim that the right action is the action which maximizes the good. Even
if Ross relied on Moore’s own “open question” strategy to challenge Moore’s utilitarian
principle, it is nevertheless the case that Moore’s principle is at least consistent with
non-naturalism. More recently, philosophers sympathetic to particularism have divided over
the availability of intra-moral principles. Some are content to allow that a claim such as, “the
fact that an action is just is a reason in its favour”, is true and informative (cf. McNaughton
and Rawling 2000). Others propose a more radical particularism according to which even
intra-moral principles—that is, principles linking one moral concept with another—are
unavailable (cf. Dancy 2004: ch 7).

Naturalists and non-naturalists typically share a commitment to supervenience. Roughly put,

supervenience says that, necessarily, there can be no moral difference without some natural
(or non-moral) difference. There are various ways to interpret supervenience and its
metaphysical significance. So long as we reject a global error theory, though, supervenience
seems to guarantee some necessarily true universal generalizations involving moral
predicates.
Nevertheless, it is generally agreed by all sides that such “supervenience functions” should
not count as moral principles. The grounds offered for this are various, but include that such
generalizations contain much potentially irrelevant information, that they are massively
disjunctive, and that they lack explanatory import (cf. Little 2000; Dancy 2004; McKeever
and Ridge 2005). The idea is that to be a successful moral principle (​qua​ standard) requires
more than a true or even necessary connection between the descriptive and the moral. The
connection must be explanatory and not cite irrelevant features in the antecedent either. Even
those who gesture at supervenience in mounting arguments for generalism concede that a
successful argument requires significant additional semantic or epistemological premises (see
below, and cf. Jackson, Pettit, & Smith 2000).
While particularism has strong affinities with non-naturalism, the most prominent argument
for particularism—the argument from the holism of reasons—has proceeded from a more
targeted and specific claim about the metaphysics of moral reasons (see McNaughton 1988;
Dancy 1993; Little 2000). According to holism about reasons, a consideration that counts as a
reason in one case may not count as a reason in another case, or may count as a reason, but in
a different direction. By way of illustration, the fact that a remark would be funny might be,
in one case a reason for making the remark, in another case a reason against making the
remark, and in still another case no reason at all. In short it depends on context. Importantly,
holism is meant to be a universal and modal claim. It says that for any consideration that is a
reason it is possible that that consideration might behave differently in another case. Thus
understood, holism is consistent with the possibility that some considerations are, as a matter
of fact, reasons (of the same force and direction) in every case. Holism also seems to
presuppose that the considerations that are reasons are not brutely unique; the insight of
holism—if it is an insight—is built upon the thought that a consideration which is a reason in
one case is repeatable in other cases. Only if, for example, the funniness of a remark is a
consideration that is repeatable can we say, as the holist wants us to, that the funniness of a
remark is a reason in one case but is not a reason in another.
Those attracted to holism about reasons agree that it is typically specific elements of context
that further account for whether a consideration counts as a reason, and a rich language for
characterizing context has been developed. For example, a putative reason might be defeated,
enabled, or intensified by specific elements of the context. To continue the previous example,
the fact that a genuinely funny remark would also be offensive might defeat whatever
reason-giving force that the humor might otherwise have had. On this reading, the humor of
the remark is no reason at all; not just a reason that is outweighed. To vary the case again, the
fact that one’s audience will appreciate a (non-offensive) funny remark enables the humor to
be a reason. Here the humor is a reason, but only against the background of a receptive
audience; the background functions as an “enabler”. Finally, the fact that a funny remark will
break an unduly somber mood may intensify the force of humor as a reason. Humor itself is
especially apt, but only because the mood is unduly somber. Other factors could function as
attenuators, weakening the force of a reason (see Dancy 2004: ch 5).
Holism depends crucially on the sustainability of the distinction between the particular
considerations that count as reasons and the contextual factors (defeaters, enablers, etc.) that
impact whether a consideration counts as a reason. Context-sensitivity without such a
distinction would be unable to explain why a feature which is a reason in one context can fail
to be a reason in another. Moreover, we need to know why the relevant features should not be
“hoovered up” into the content of the reasons themselves. After all, atomists need not be
simple atomists. A hedonist who held that pleasure and pain are both always reasons and the
only reasons, would certainly count as an atomist. But atomists can allow for significant
pluralism and complexity. One way to do so is to insist that the considerations that a holist
calls, variously, reasons, defeaters, enablers, and so on are all but parts of a larger more
complex “whole” reason. Such views have been proposed by Bennett (1995), Crisp (2000),
Hooker (2003) and Raz (2000), and rejected by Dancy (2004: 6.2). One worry about the
atomists’ appeal to whole reasons is that if reasons are identified with large complexes of
facts, then the same reason may seldom recur across cases and the claim that agents act for
reasons may fall under threat (Price 2013).
Setting aside whether holism is true, does it support particularism? Generalists have rejected
the inference on the grounds that holism leaves open the possibility that the behaviour of
reasons, defeaters, enablers, and intensifiers/attenuators is codifiable (see Väyrynen 2004;
McKeever and Ridge 2005). They also observe that some paradigmatic generalists seem to
have exploited this logical space. For example, Kant arguably thinks that the fact that a
course of action would advance someone’s happiness is of variable moral significance,
counting in favor whenever the happiness and its purchase is consistent with the categorical
imperative and counting as no reason at all otherwise (McKeever and Ridge 2005).
Particularists have countered that even if holism is logically consistent with principles it
would nevertheless render them “cosmic accidents” (Dancy 2004: 82). If this were right it
would be enough to cast doubt on the generalist tradition in moral philosophy. Why should
the heart of a discipline be the search for cosmic accidents?! Generalists counter that whether
principles are cosmic accidents depends entirely upon underlying metaphysical issues and not
on whether principles tolerate holism. For example, if the property of being good is identical
to the property of being non-malicious pleasure, then the associated holism tolerating
principle does not look to be a cosmic accident (see McKeever and Ridge 2006: 2.2).
Selim Berker (2007) has challenged the particularist argument from holism in another way.
He argues that the conjunction of holism with what he calls the particularist’s
“noncombinatorialism” about the ways reasons combine to fix an overall verdict leaves the
particularist with no coherent notion of a reason for action. To understand
noncombinatorialism, one must first understand the idea of a “combinatorial function”. A
combinatorial function takes as input all the reasons and their valences in a given situation
and gives the rightness or wrongness of actions in that situation as an output.
Noncombinatorialism simply asserts that the combinatorial function for reasons cannot be
finitely expressed (and so, in particular, is not additive). Berker argues that particularists are
committed to noncombinatorialism, but that this leaves them with no coherent notion of a
reason for action. Particularists typically gloss being a reason as “counting in favour” of that
for which the consideration is a reason. Berker’s point is that talk of a consideration
“counting in favour” of something is itself hard to make intelligible once we abandon a
combinatorial conception of how reasons combine to fix an overall verdict. We are left with a
metaphor that cannot be cashed out in any helpful way. Particularists could of course
abandon the noncombinatorial conception of reasons, but Berker argues that this would
commit them to the truth of numerous exceptionless principles, thus compromising their
particularism. (For critical discussion of Berker’s argument, see Lechler 2012.)
So far we have focused on generalist replies to metaphysical arguments for particularism.
Generalists are not without positive metaphysical arguments for their own views, though.
Most notably, so-called “constitutivists” sometimes invoke premises about the metaphysics
of rational agency to argue for generalism. Kantian constitutivists are the most influential and
clear-cut instance of this style of argument. Christine Korsgaard, for example, argues that the
categorical imperative is constitutive of rational agency (Korsgaard 2008, 2009). The rough
idea is that the principles of practical reasons unify us as agents, and allow us to take control
over our representations of the world and our movements (Korsgaard 2008: 9). Insofar as
simply being a rational agent commits one to the relevant principle(s), this strategy for
defending generalism is also meant to be especially effective at silencing sceptical
challenges, e.g., classic “why be moral?” challenges. The thought is that the sceptic has no
coherent perspective from which to reject the relevant principles.
Whatever the success of these metaphysical arguments, some particularists have worried that
an excessive focus on metaphysics threatens to lead us astray—not to falsehood so much as
misplaced emphasis. The ontological status of moral laws and the grounding of moral reasons
ought not predominate the particularist program. Instead, the particularist should emphasize
how their account of moral psychology makes sense of moral development and competence
(see Bakhurst 2008, 2013).
4. Epistemological Arguments
Particularists and generalists typically share a commitment to moral knowledge. This
common ground is not strictly entailed by either view. For example, proponents of Hare’s
universal prescriptivism will insist that moral thought is principled even if, in their rejection
of the truth-aptness of moral language, they deny that there is moral knowledge. On the other
side, a fictionalist might reject moral knowledge while insisting that the moral fiction is itself
devoid of principled structure, just as the particularist insists. Nevertheless, both generalists
and particularists do in fact typically see moral thought and judgment as achieving
(sometimes) significant success and in this context the shared commitment to moral
knowledge is not surprising.
Particularists and generalists often treat moral knowledge as being on a par with other types
of commonly accepted knowledge. Just as we can know that our internet connection is
running slow, that the milk is on the verge of going stale, or that our friend is annoyed by the
story just told at his expense, so too we can know that it would be wrong refuse directions to
the person who is lost, that our co-worker was courageous to criticize her supervisor, and that
the American justice system treats many people unfairly. Because the commitment to moral
knowledge is a shared one, many of the arguments both for and against particularism have
sought to use it for dialectical leverage. The questions at stake include whether particularism
or generalism best explains our capacity to achieve moral knowledge and whether
particularism or generalism best models the person who has and uses moral knowledge.
Some moral knowledge, it is agreed, involves the transmission or extension of other moral
knowledge already achieved. If Solomon tells me the treaty is unjust, I may know this by
relying on his testimony. If every member of the Diogenes Society whom I have met is
honest, then I may know that Walter, who is also a member, is honest. Here, I rely on an
induction from my other moral knowledge. While highly interesting, these types of
knowledge are typically regarded as derivative (Zangwill 2006) and are therefore set aside in
arguments over moral particularism. The question is what explains our most basic moral
knowledge. How strong an assumption can be made about our moral knowledge while
remaining on ground common to both generalists and particularists? Obviously, particularists
will not grant that we have knowledge of moral principles, and the point of surest agreement
is that we sometimes know the moral status of a particular case, e.g., that this act was wrong.
However, most arguments both for and against particularism deploy somewhat stronger
assumptions.
First, one may make a stronger assumption about the objects of moral knowledge. Of special
interest is the possibility that we can know general truths about morality even while such
general truths fall short of counting as moral principles. For example, while particularists will
deny that there is any exceptionless moral principle to the effect that pain is bad, many
sympathetic to particularism would agree that, as a general matter, pain is bad and that we
can know this. On a deflationary reading, one might treat the claim that pain is bad as a useful
heuristic, a reminder that pain has often been bad in the past and may well be so in the future
(Dancy 1993). Alternatively, that pain is bad might capture an interesting metaphysical fact
about pain; its default status is the status of being bad. We can understand default status in
terms of an explanatory asymmetry. When pain is not bad there must be something that
explains why it is not, but when pain is bad there needn’t be any further explanation of what
makes pain bad (Dancy 1993, 2004). Finally, one might try to invest such generalizations
with real explanatory power while insisting they remain exception laden. That pain is bad is a
kind of defeasible generalization, where this amounts the claim that pain is bad in a
privileged set of worlds (Little 2000; Lance and Little 2004; for critical discussion of each of
these possibilities, see Stangl 2006).
Second, one may make a stronger assumption about the scope of moral knowledge, at least
for some people. Some people, one may assume, are (or become) especially good at acquiring
moral knowledge; they have a measure of practical wisdom or expertise. Their knowledge
thus readily extends not just to their actual circumstances but to a broad array of novel
circumstances as they arise. In so far as this is so, we should like to have a good explanation
not only of how humans acquire specific knowledge but also of how they develop over time
into more competent moral knowers (Bakhurst 2005, 2013).
Two models of moral knowledge predominate in defences of particularism: a perceptual
model and a skill based model. According to the perceptual model successful moral judgment
is properly analogous to sense perception even if it is not, literally, a form of sense perception
(McDowell 1979, 1985; McNaughton 1988). Moral judgment on this view depends upon a
range of sensibilities, developed through experience and acculturation. Once developed,
however, one can just “see”, for example, that a certain response is merited by a situation. As
John McDowell puts it,

Occasion by occasion, one knows what to do, if one does, not by applying
universal principles, but by being a certain kind of person: one who sees situations
in a certain distinctive way. (McDowell 1979: 350)

Since sensibilities may be more or less refined, the perceptual model appears to fit well with
the idea that there are both moral novices and experts. Whatever further account is to be
given of these sensibilities, the resulting knowledge is not dependent upon any deduction
from general moral principles, at least not one transparently and readily available to the
knower. Generalists have observed that similar perceptual metaphors seem equally apt in
domains that admit of principles (McKeever and Ridge 2006: ch 4). For example, one might
just “see” that a sentence is ungrammatical even if grammaticality is rule-governed.
Furthermore, some who develop and defend a perceptual model are not led by it to
particularism (Audi 2013). So the perceptual model of moral knowledge seems not to
establish particularism, but it was likely never meant to. Instead, the perceptual model is
intended to offer more indirect support. If our moral experts reliably achieve moral
knowledge without self-consciously adverting to moral principles, then the generalist inherits
at least some burden to explain why principles should be a centerpiece of moral theorizing.
Two related constraints confront the development of the perceptual model and may threaten
the particularism the model is taken to support. The first is that the model must extend to
prospective and hypothetical cases. Particularists and generalists typically agree that we
sometimes have knowledge that if we were to perform an action (say maintain a confidence)
in our actual circumstances, that action would be right. This seems essential if moral
knowledge is to precede and guide virtuous conduct. Similarly, if slightly more
controversially, we sometimes have knowledge that a certain course of conduct would be
right in some hypothetical circumstance. While one might try to account for such cases by
appeal to inductive reasoning from past actual cases, this is not, in fact, how proponents of
the perceptual model have proceeded. The second constraint arises from the fact that moral
properties are grounded in other properties. For example, it barely makes sense to say that an
action’s wrongness is a brute fact about it; if wrong an action must be wrong on account of
some otherwise specifiable features it has. While this “because constraint” admits of various
explications, the basic idea is common ground and widely thought to be ​a priori​ (Zangwill
2006).
Generalists argue that, once spelled out, the perceptual model is not the ​a posteriori
epistemology it might first have seemed but instead commits us to ​a priori​ intuitions relating
moral features to their grounds. Particularists may grant that basic moral knowledge is ​a
priori​ knowledge of “what is a moral reason for what” (Dancy 2004: 141) while maintaining
that the object of knowledge remains particularized and does not implicate principles. One
challenge for the particularist is that “what is a reason for what” in a particular case is
contingent, and so the particularist risks being committed to ​a priori​ knowledge of contingent
truths. In his defense of particularism, Dancy has been willing to embrace this apparent
consequence (Dancy 2004; for criticism, see McKeever and Ridge 2006). Other particularists
have sought to avoid the implication (Leibovitz 2014).
Particularists sometimes pursue a somewhat different model of moral knowledge, one that
likens the practically wise agent to a person who has a developed skill. Just how different this
model is from the perceptual one must depend upon how each is spelled out. But whereas the
perceptual model directs our attention first to how the virtuous person understands her
situation, the skill model draws attention to the knower as agent, someone who classifies
actions, agents, and states of affairs as falling under moral categories, who reasons to moral
conclusions, and ultimately puts their knowledge into outward action. How might this skill be
understood and, relatedly, how much of an account of it does the particularist owe? Some
particularists (sometimes) demur. For example, Dancy described the virtuous agent as
someone possessed of a “contentless ability” to discern what matters when it matters (Dancy
1993: 50). But many sympathetic to particularism would want to say more (Garfield 2000;
Leibovitz 2014). One might liken the skill of the virtuous person to a behavioral ability, such
as the ability to ride a bicycle. While this analogy could prove apt, it risks underrating the
extent to which the virtuous person’s action is rich with judgment and reasoning and is not
simply a sequence of successful performance.
One way to develop the skill model is to urge that the skill of the virtuous person is akin to
the skill of the person with conceptual competence and then rely on Wittgensteinian
rule-following considerations to urge that conceptual competence cannot be fully understood
in terms of rules or principles. This approach lends itself to a form of particularism that is less
hostile to principles. The claim is not that there are no principles but that practical wisdom
cannot be fully ​reduced​ to principles (McDowell 1979). A perhaps similar strategy can be
pursued by focusing on principles of reasoning and urging that valid principles of reasoning
cannot be treated simply as objects of propositional knowledge akin to premises (Carroll
1895; Thomas 2011). One seeming consequence of these strategies is that particularism it not
something distinctive of morality and other cognate domains. Particularism would be true
everywhere we apply concepts or everywhere we reason. Some might welcome such global
particularism, but we would have lost what for some was initially attractive—that
particularism seemed to identify something distinctive (even if not unique) about morality. A
second worry is that particularism may no longer pose the threat to traditional moral theory
that is sometimes supposed. If the categorical imperative were shown to have the same status
as modus ponens, Kantians could sleep easily.
Another way to develop the skill model could urge that the skill in question is the skill of
applying (or reasoning with) generalizations of a certain kind. Here the claim may be that
moral principles (or generalizations) require judgment to apply, or are defeasible, or come
with implicit ​ceteris paribus​ clauses. This commits the particularist to principles of a kind,
while also allowing both that morality is importantly distinctive and that some traditional
moral theorists have erred by seeking a sort of principle that is not to be found. This path
leads to interesting intermediate positions that are certainly more friendly to principles than
Dancy’s particularism while at the same time concerned to emphasize the limitations of
principles. For example, Richard Holton (2002) suggests that sound moral principles are
conditionals containing an implicit “that”s it’ clause. The dictum that lying is wrong is then
more perspicuously expressed as the claim that if an action amounts to lying and “that”s it’
then the action is wrong. In this context, “that’s it” expresses the idea that no other moral
principle, given the facts at hand, supersedes the principle that lying is wrong.
A different but similar idea is developed by Mark Lance and Margaret Little, who advance a
model of true but defeasible moral generalizations. Here, the claim that lying is morally
wrong is elaborated as the claim that lying is wrong under privileged or normal conditions.
Conditions might fail to be privileged for any number of reasons—perhaps because the
murderer is at the door looking for your helpful information or, less dramatically, we might
be playing a game in which deception is part of the fun. As this last possibility suggests,
Lance and Little’s proposal seems more expansive than Holton’s in so far as they allow that a
moral generalization might fail to govern a situation not only in the case that it is superseded
by other moral principles but because the circumstances might be such that the point of the
moral generalization is simply lost. (See Little 2000 and Lance and Little 2004. For
discussion of the skill needed to apply generalizations see Garfield 2000 and Thomas 2011.
For discussion of reasoning with defaults see Horty 2007.)
One interesting question for this approach is whether the skill part of the equation can be
further explicated in terms of principles, even if these further principles are grasped only
implicitly. This issue has received significant attention from philosophers outside the
particularism debate who are interested in the question whether knowledge-how can be
reduced to knowledge-that (Ryle 1946; Stanley 2011). Perhaps surprisingly, the literature on
particularism has not (to our knowledge) drawn significantly from that debate.
Some generalists, agreeing with particularists that moral knowledge presupposes a sensitivity
to the moral landscape and skill in deploying what appear to be ​ceteris paribus​ laden
principles, argue that such sensitivity and skill is possible only if the landscape itself is
sufficiently patterned (McKeever and Ridge 2006) This argument is supposed to allow for
holism about reasons, and so the relevant patterning consists in there being a finite number of
considerations that can function as reasons, and that these can be affected by a finite number
of enablers and defeaters operating in regular, “principled” ways. Particular pieces of moral
knowledge, on this argument, presuppose only “default moral principles” which specify a
feature which ground reasons, ​ceteris paribus.​ A full array of exceptionless principles, the
argument continues, are presupposed by practical wisdom, characterized as including a
capacity for reliably acquiring moral knowledge in a full range of novel circumstances.
Some resist this argument in its entirety on grounds that we can regularly gain knowledge in
other areas without recourse to principles (Schroeder 2009). Some charge that the second
stage of the argument depends on overly strong assumptions about the extent of practical
wisdom (Schroeder 2009), and that more modest forms of practical wisdom can be explained
without recourse to exceptionless principles. Some argue that a proper account of hedged
moral principles is enough (Väyrynen 2009); others prefer to see moral wisdom as a skill
which, while wide ranging, can fail in utterly novel circumstances (Leibowitz 2014). Still
others have worried that the argument relies on inflated assumptions about what is required
for justification and knowledge, for example that the knower must be in a position to
affirmatively rule out any possible defeaters (Thomas 2011).
A recurring charge against generalism is that it assumes an outmoded deductive-nomological
(D-N) account of successful explanation. According to that account, any successful
explanation must take a deductive structure in which a covering law is identified that,
together with empirical information, could yield a conclusion expressing the phenomenon to
be explained. For many reasons, the D-N model is now widely thought to be misguided.
On behalf of the generalist, one might make two points. First, it is not clear that a generalist
argument from practical wisdom needs to assume that ​all​ successful explanations must
conform to the D-N model. The argument draws upon claims about the person of (highly
ideal) practical wisdom and asks how best to explain her reliability. Second, while the
argument does insist that we must credit the virtuous agent with at least an implicit grasp of a
principle, it is less clear that the argument must treat this principle as functioning as the major
premise in a deduction. Likewise, we might credit an agent with grasping modus ponens to
explain her logical success without thereby assuming that she uses modus ponens as a
premise.
5. Semantic/Conceptual
Arguments
Generalists sometimes invoke premises about the nature of moral concepts or about the
meanings of moral words to argue for their view. Ultimately these arguments appeal to what
can be derived from a certain kind of competence—either semantic or conceptual
competence. It is probably no accident that purely semantic/conceptual arguments to settle
the debate over particularism/generalism have been monopolized by generalists. If the
generalist could show that semantic/conceptual competence commits one to some specific
moral principle(s), or to the existence and availability of some such principles, then that
would already be enough to establish an ambitious form of generalism. By contrast, a
particularist who showed only that such competencies do not yet commit one either to some
specific moral principle(s) or to the existence and availability of such principles would not
yet have established a very ambitious form of particularism. For that negative conclusion is
logically consistent with the availability of a convincing epistemological, practical or
metaphysical argument for the existence and availability of suitable moral principles.
Generalists can and have proceeded in one of two main ways here. First, they might argue
that semantic/conceptual competence directly commits one to the truth of some specific
moral principle(s). Second, they might argue that such competence commits one only to the
weaker thesis that ​if​ there are any substantive moral truths then there must be some true moral
principle(s). This second thesis is weaker both in that it takes a conditional form, so that an
error theorist could endorse it but deny the existence of any true moral principles ​and​ in that
it does not entail that there is some specific moral principle(s) to which one is committed
insofar as one thinks there are substantive moral truths. Consider each of these strategies in
turn.

The most ambitious and straightforward version of the first strategy is effectively just to
argue for a form of analytic naturalism in meta-ethics. For example, consider the meta-ethical
theory that “is morally right” just ​means​ “is an action which maximizes happiness”, where
“happiness” is itself cashed out in purely naturalistic terms. Any convincing argument for that
theory would provide a way of carrying out a very ambitious version of the first of the two
strategies discussed above. Clearly, insofar as that theory is correct, semantic competence
with “is morally right” is enough to commit one to the thesis that, necessarily, an action is
morally right if and only if it maximizes happiness, and that certainly looks like ​just​ the right
sort of generalization to function as a principle ​qua​ standard in the sense laid out in ​section 2​.

Of course, this strategy for defending generalism is for good reason a highly controversial
one. For a start, nobody has come close to offering a fully reductive definition of predicates
like “is morally right” which has met with widespread assent. Moreover, some philosophers
are sceptical of the very idea that knowing the meaning of a word (or possessing a concept) is
already enough, in principle, to know how to live a good life. In way, this concern about
pulling a highly substantive rabbit out of a purely semantic/conceptual hat can be seen as
what lies behind one of the historically most influential arguments against analytic
naturalism, namely G.E. Moore’s “Open Question Argument” (Moore 1922 [1903]). Finally,
anyone who is initially sympathetic to particularism is very unlikely to find analytic
naturalism an ​ex ante​ plausible view, given how trivially it entails a very robust form of
generalism. There is a sense, then, in which this strategy for defending generalism, however
sound it might turn out to be, is unlikely to convince anyone who needs convincing (cf.
Jackson, Pettit, & Smith 2000—the argument there seems ultimately to turn into a version of
this first strategy).
A less ambitious form of the first strategy focuses on so-called “thick” evaluative words or
concepts. Such words/concepts in some sense have both specific descriptive and normative
contents. Concepts associated with virtues and vices are classic examples of thick evaluative
concepts—concepts like courage, justice, fairness and generosity are all paradigm cases. The
argument for generalism focusing on these concepts takes the same form as the more
ambitious argument just canvassed. That is, the argument derives a commitment to moral
principle(s) from mere conceptual/semantic competence.
However, the intended conclusion of an argument in this style is more modest. For here the
relevant principles do not take one from a purely descriptive antecedent to a purely normative
all things considered consequent, as with (e.g.) the principle of utility. Rather, the relevant
principles here take one from an antecedent deploying a thick evaluative concept (like the
concept of justice) to a consequent deploying a thin normative concept (like the concept of a
reason). Such an argument might maintain, for example, that competence with the concept of
justice commits one to a moral principle of the form, “if an action is just then there is at least
some reason to perform it (namely, its justice)”.
Even this modest form of generalism is not uncontroversial. Dancy, for example, argues that
even thick evaluative features can vary in their normative valence from one context to
another, going so far as to maintain that “almost all the standard thick concepts…are of
variable relevance” (Dancy 2004: 121). Insofar as this sort of view is as much as
semantically/conceptually coherent, there can be no straightforward derivation of moral
principles of the sort canvassed above from mere semantic/conceptual competence. Of
course, there may be more “hedged” principles linking thick evaluative concepts with thin
normative concepts—principles which either enumerate or quantify over further conditions
which must be met before the application of a thick evaluative predicate entails the
application of a thin normative predicate. In effect, this is just the point about holism not
entailing particularism again. However, it is also unclear just how one would plausibly argue
that insofar as such hedged principles are not vacuous, they really do follow from mere
semantic/conceptual competence.
There may also be some interesting asymmetries between virtue concepts and vice concepts
which are relevant to how we should think about these arguments. In an interesting series of
papers, Rebecca Stangl has argued for a view she calls “asymmetrical virtue particularism”
(Stangl 2010). On this view, an action is right, all things considered, insofar as it is overall
virtuous. However, the virtues of an action in any specific respect (justice, courage, or
whatever) can vary in normative valence. However, ​vices​ on this view are invariable—they
always count against an action. The deeper explanation of this asymmetry, on Stangl’s view,
is that virtues have “targets” at which they aim, whereas vices are simply tendencies to miss
the relevant targets. Vices are thus parasitic on virtues but not vice-versa. Thus a given virtue
(e.g., mercy) can sometimes be wrong-making because it helps explain why the agent (badly)
misses the target associated with some other virtue (e.g., justice). By contrast, Stangl argues,
a vice always is a tendency to miss some relevant target, and so is therefore always to that
extent wrong-making. Insofar as Stangl makes a convincing case for this asymmetry (and
obviously a lot more could be said about this), we should be less sympathetic to arguments
which hold that there is a semantic/conceptual link between the virtuousness of an action in a
specific way and the presence of an associated reason for action.

Moreover, this more modest form of generalism presupposes that our thick concepts of
justice, courage, generosity, and the like must be genuinely evaluative concepts. But this is
controversial. Pekka Väyrynen (2013), for instance, argues that the evaluations we typically
associate with thick terms such as “just” and “courageous” are conversational implications
which arise from our use of those words in a wide range of contexts. Very roughly, the idea is
that evaluative content is a kind of generalized content which is explained pragmatically. For
example, it may become common knowledge that only people who disapprove of the sexually
explicit tend to use the word “lewd”. In that case, someone who uses that word thereby
implies that she disapproves of the sexually explicit – otherwise, why use the word “lewd”
instead of “sexually explicit”, given that one’s interlocutors will reasonably infer from the use
of the former that one disapproves of the sexually explicit.
If this is right, then the status of thick words as evaluative depends on contingent facts about
the pragmatics of our use of those words. There is then an important sense in which thick
terms are, on this view, descriptive in their semantic content. So although there is a broader
kind of speaker competence which involves understanding the conversational defaults
associated with the relevant words, this is not the kind of semantic competence that could
ground an argument for generalism or particularism. Semantic competence with thick words
is also unlikely to commit one to any interesting moral principles. Depending on our views of
concepts, this view about thick language can allow that some thinkers' concepts of justice,
generosity, and courage may be evaluative. But that is unlikely to be essential to those
concepts, nor will the capacity forthought about justice and other thick notions depend on
having genuinely evaluative thick concepts (Väyrynen 2013: 123–4, 206). In that case,
competence with concepts like justice, courage, and generosity is also unlikely to commit us
to any interesting moral principles. Moreover, the more modest form of generalism may
require that a concept isn't a concept of justice, or courage, or generosity, unless it is
evaluative. In that case the pragmatic view of thick evaluative language would support the
view that there are no thick evaluative concepts and, therefore, no such thing as competence
with thick evaluative concepts.
However, generalists do not have a monopoly on arguments which take theses about thick
evaluative concepts/predicates as their main premise. Some particularists argue that thick
evaluative concepts are “shapeless” with respect to the descriptive (see especially McDowell
1981). Others take a more metaphysical approach, and argue that thick evaluative properties
are “irreducibly thick” in a way that puts pressure on the generalist. Indeed, some go so far as
to suggest that this even undermines some important forms of supervenience (see, e.g.,
Roberts 2011). Whether these arguments are forceful may depend on the extent to which the
argument that there really ​are​ thick evaluative concepts or properties in the needed sense can
avoid begging the question. In this context, it is not enough that no “shape” at the descriptive
level is built into the meaning of evaluative concepts. Such a weaker shapelessness thesis
would seem to rule out only principles that are both analytic and reductive. But it seems
compatible with the possibility that someone who did know the extension of evaluative
concepts could then discover a unity or “shape” to that extension which could be expressed
using descriptive concepts. To rule out this possibility would seem to require a stronger
shapelessness thesis according to which the extension of evaluative terms, properly
understood, has no shape at all. Generalists will want to see an argument for this stronger
thesis. Perhaps more importantly, though, settling whether this stronger version of the
shapelessness thesis is true would seem to require more than ​a priori​ theorizing about moral
concepts and more than semantic theorizing about evaluative terms. (For discussion of
shapelessness and the metaethical lessons to be drawn from it see Väyrynen 2014 and Miller
2003.)
So much for the first of the two strategies for giving a semantic/conceptual argument for
generalism canvassed above. What about the second? Recall that the second strategy is less
ambitious insofar as it aims to establish only a conditional thesis linking substantive moral
truth to the existence of some moral principle(s) or other. The guiding idea here is that a
proper analysis of our moral concepts will reveal that deploying those concepts to make a
substantive moral judgment commits one to the existence and truth of some moral
principle(s) or other which somehow explains the truth of that judgment. Crucially, though,
this commitment to the existence of some such moral principle(s) does not entail that the
speaker is committed to any ​particular​ moral principle(s), or even to the possibility in
principle of discovering what the relevant principle(s) are.
A modified version of T.M. Scanlon’s contractualist theory of “what we owe one another”
(Scanlon 1998) helps to illustrate this strategy. Scanlon himself does not intend his theory as
a conceptual analysis, in part because there are strands of moral thinking, like our thoughts
about the moral status of nonhuman animals and the environment and certain forms of
moralizing about human sexuality, which do not fit very well into his proposed framework.
However, a version of his theory which was offered as an analysis of our moral concepts
would provide a clear illustration of the strategy for defending generalism under
consideration. On Scanlon’s view, to be morally wrong in the sense of “wrong” associated
with what he calls the “morality of what we owe one another” is to be forbidden by principles
for the general regulation of human behaviour which nobody could reasonably reject. The
notion of the “reasonable” is a thick evaluative concept, so the view is not a reductive one. If
the view were to be understood as following directly from an analysis of our moral concepts,
then it would follow that anyone who makes a substantive moral judgment that some action is
morally wrong would thereby be committed to the existence of at least a range of moral
principles (the “reasonable” ones) which are such that they all forbid the action in question.
At the same time, making such a judgment does not entail that one can articulate what the
relevant principle(s) is (are), or even that they are such that one could in principle discover
them.
Another way of arguing for this sort of view is to take a broader focus on normative and
evaluative language. On some views (e.g., Ridge 2014), all uses of “good”, “reason”, “ought”
and “must” advert to ​standards​ of some kind, but the context of utterance determines the
relevant kind of standards. Sometimes, as in moral contexts, the relevant standards will be
normative in some rich sense. Other times, the relevant standards will be purely conventional,
as when we discuss what one ought to do as a matter of etiquette. In other contexts the
standards will be purely strategic/instrumental, as when we discuss what move one ought to
make in a game of chess, say, or what military strategy is best, but where one can sincerely
make these judgments while finding chess a total waste of time or being a committed pacifist.
The view aims to accommodate the context-sensitivity of the relevant words without
implausibly postulating a brute ambiguity across the wide variety of contexts in which such
words are used. As with the conceptual version of Scanlon’s view, this view is also one on
which making a substantive moral judgment commits one to the ​existence​ of a range of moral
standards which require the relevant action (or count the relevant consideration as a reason,
or whatever).
An attraction of this strategy is that it draws its plausibility from high level semantic features
of words like “good”, “reason”, “ought” and “must” which are not specific to normative
contexts. It is therefore perhaps especially unlikely to beg the question against the
particularist. This stands in sharp contrast with the attempt to derive specific moral principles
from mere competence with moral words or concepts.

6. Practical Arguments
As the taxonomy of ​section 2 above​ emphasized, whether moral principles are necessary for
moral understanding or moral explanation is not the only debate between particularists and
generalists. Distinct questions remain about the place and value of principles in guiding moral
decision-making and action and in interpersonal justification. Generalists typically see a
larger and more important role for principles to play in these contexts. Particularists typically
find at least some sympathy with David McNaughton’s claim that moral principles are “at
best useless and at worst a hindrance” (McNaughton 1988: 191). In considering this aspect of
the debate, it is helpful to treat as common ground the idea that it is at least possible for an
agent to be (in some sense) guided by a principle. This assumption has, of course, been
challenged, most prominently by some readings of Wittgenstein’s arguments concerning
rule-following (Kripke 1982). If guidance by principle were utterly impossible, then
questions about the value and importance of principled guidance would be largely moot. For
similar reasons, it is helpful to assume, at least provisionally, that an agent can eschew being
guided by principles and yet still act rationally and for reasons and with some measure of
consistency.
Against this background, we may distinguish two questions. First, we might ask whether
guidance by principles constitutes a superior strategy for acting well as compared to guidance
by particular judgments untutored by principles. One familiar way to understand the
superiority of a strategy is in terms of its reliability at leading an agent to act rightly and for
morally good reasons (McKeever and Ridge 2006; Väyrynen 2008). Second, we might ask
whether guidance by principles enables us to secure morally valuable goods (or avoid
significant moral evils) that would otherwise be out of reach. If particularism tells us to
eschew guidance by principles and if doing so comes with significant costs, then, to use Brad
Hooker’s phrase, there is something “bad” about particularism (Hooker 2000, 2008).
Similarly, if generalism tells us to use principles and this has serious costs, then there is
something bad about generalism.

These questions leave one familiar and related question largely to the side. This is the
question whether there is something inherently morally valuable about being a “person of
principle” independent of the content of those principles and how, more specifically, they
lead one to act. Generalists may, but need not, subscribe to such a view, and even
particularists could (consistently with holism) allow that across some range of contexts being
principled is, itself, a favoring consideration. Turning to the first question just noted, how
might principles constitute a good strategy for moral action?
Most ambitiously, the ultimate principles ​qua​ standards—that is, the principles which provide
the deepest explanations of why right actions are right—could be well suited to guiding
action directly. Arguably this is the view we find in Kant and in many modern Kantian moral
theories. The categorical imperative is both the ultimate standard of right action and at the
same time is well suited to guide the decision-making of a conscientious moral agent. This
view of principled guidance ought to be distinguished from a distinct meta-ethical view
according to which an ultimate moral standard must, if it is to be valid at all, be such that
agents can be (in some sense) guided by it (Bales 1971; Smith 2012). Such a view may be
attractive to those (such as Kant) who think that moral principles must comport with
autonomy and that morality is a species of rationality. It may also be attractive to those who
believe that moral principles must provide reasons on which agents can act. But even a very
ambitious generalist model of principled guidance need not subscribe to this meta-ethical
view. Kant, at least in some passages, encourages optimism about our ability to apply the
ultimate standard of right and wrong directly to our individual decisions. Other philosophers
within the generalist tradition, such as Ross, defend principles which look, on their face, to be
eminently usable, and if Ross is correct that such principles are ultimate standards, then one
might feel entitled at least to a weak presumption in favour of the claim that using them
would be a good strategy.
When we consider other candidates for the ultimate moral principle, however, many find
reasons to be sceptical that the ambitious model just canvassed will carry us very far. This
has been a recurring worry for act consequentialism and, for that reason, many of the most
influential attempts to deal with it have emerged from philosophers working in that tradition.
The basic idea is that the consequences of our action are so many, so various, and (often) so
far reaching that agents cannot figure out in a timely fashion what the right act is by directly
using a consequentialist principle. Using the consequentialist principle in this sense must of
course include gathering the facts about the consequences, not just applying the principles to
the facts as one believes or knows them to be. (For discussion of weaker and stronger senses
in which an agent might “use” a principle, see Smith 2012.) Properly understood, the worry
here is not that the act consequentialist principle provides no guidance whatsoever; it may
point quite clearly to the kinds of information that must be gathered and heeded. The worry is
that attempts to follow the principle will not reliably lead to morally right action. Moreover,
the worry is not simply that the principle fails to constitute a complete and reliable strategy.
Any model of principled guidance—even one such as Kant’s—is liable to require that we rely
also on cognitive and emotional powers that go beyond the principle itself. The worry is that
our normal cognitive and emotional powers together with the principle do not yield a reliable
strategy for performing morally right actions.
Instead of concluding that principled guidance is hopeless, many act consequentialists have
instead proposed that we replace the project of being guided by the ultimate moral standard
(assuming this for the moment to be some form of act consequentialism) and instead be
guided by some more tractable set of principles. According to such “indirect”
consequentialism, the principles we typically employ in deliberation are not the ultimate
standards of right conduct. However, an agent who employs them in deliberation will
regularly and systematically act rightly. Such proposals have been a staple of consequentialist
thinking dating back at least to the work of Mill and Sidgwick. An especially well known
recent version of the idea is defended by R.M. Hare, who calls reliance on such principles
“intuitive moral thinking”. By contrast, “critical moral thinking” proceeds in terms of the
actual standards of moral conduct (Hare 1981). Importantly, neither indirect models of
principled guidance nor the worry that inspires them need be married to a consequentialist
view of moral standards. Kantian moral philosophers have sometimes stressed the need for
“mid-level” principles (Hill 1989, 1992). Even particularists about standards could
consistently embrace the use of such an indirect strategy and so embrace a kind of generalism
about moral guidance, though so far as we know no one has actually adopted this position.
Discussions of indirect consequentialism often proceed as if the correct moral standard could,
in principle, be applied directly to any given circumstance and, if so applied, would indicate
the morally right action(s) to take. Leaving aside whether this is true of (some)
consequentialist principles, many claim that it is not true of other candidate moral standards.
Consider, for example, principles such as “all persons must be treated as moral equals”, or
“property rights must be respected”, or, to borrow a less morally loaded example from Onora
O’Neill, “teachers must assign work appropriate to their students’ abilities” (O’Neill 1996:
73–77). Such principles may not yield determinate guidance in concrete circumstances even
given a full array of non-moral facts. To be properly applied, such principles may require
additional ​moral​ judgment. We must determine just which individuals are persons and what it
is to treat persons as moral equals. We must determine which claims to property correspond
to valid rights and what invasions of property amount to a failure to respect those rights. May
an exhausted runner harmlessly trespass in order to cool off beneath the shade of another
person’s tree? We must even decide how difficult is too difficult when it comes to
challenging students. The obstacle to using the standard as a direct guide to conduct is not
that our cognitive resources come up short, but that the standard is itself not yet sufficiently
determinate. This situation presents an opportunity for principles to play a guiding role by
helping to fill in the normative content of higher level standards. (Whether such guiding
principles would themselves count as non-ultimate standards is a question we here set aside.)
Importantly, however, guiding principles in this sense need not make fully determinate the
higher level principles that they help to fill out. They may, instead, explicitly identify further
questions to be settled—whether by other principles or by judgment. For example, the
principle that a duly convicted criminal ought to receive only the amount of punishment he
deserves is highly abstract. How ought we to determine whether a punishment is deserved?
The further principle that the punishment ought to be proportional to the crime may direct us
to find a way to proportionately rank less and more serious crimes, and it may thus point us
part, but not all, of the way towards complying with the higher level principle.
We now have at least three accounts of how principles ​might​ figure in a reliable strategy for
acting well. But why think that principles do or must figure in the best strategies for moral
action? Or, taking the other side, why think that principles are useless or even
counterproductive? If one could establish or assume a specific generalist account of moral
standards, this would open up many lines of argument for guidance by principle. The same
would be true if one could establish particularism about standards. However, such
assumptions are not dialectically available in the generalism/particularism debate.
Accordingly, we here focus on arguments that are largely neutral about the content of the
moral domain and whether it is “principled”.
Some generalists argue that moral principles help avoid “special pleading”—interpreting
one’s moral duties in ways that favour one’s own interests and in ways that go beyond what a
reasonable accommodation of self-interest would allow. Agents who engage in special
pleading do not do so consciously, but rather think they are impartially assessing what
morality demands in their circumstances. The adoption of moral principles might be thought
to help with this problem. For one thing, principles can be adopted and internalized well
before any conflict with the agent’s interests arises. Having internalized the relevant principle
well in advance may make it easier to avoid special pleading when a conflict does arise (cf.
McKeever and Ridge 2006: 202–203). Furthermore, a practice of articulating these principles
publicly endows them with symbolic meaning. Violating explicitly endorsed principles or
adding caveats in an ​ad hoc​ manner to suit one’s interests can come to stand for our lacking
the right kind of commitment to morality more generally (see Nozick 1993: 29; McKeever
and Ridge 2006: 204–205). Anecdotally, some people seem to think New Years’ resolutions
work in this way, and George Ainslie has provided a body of empirical evidence that such
public resolutions can help motivate agents to (e.g.) stop smoking in a way that somehow
prevents the thought that “one cigarette won’t make any non-negligible difference” from
undermining their resolve (Ainslie 1975 and Ainslie 1986).
Particularists agree that special pleading is a problem but they do not think that principles
afford the proper solution to that problem. Instead, they typically suggest that one simply
needs to “look harder” at the case at hand to avoid such special pleading:
 …the remedy for poor moral judgment is not a different style of moral judgment,
principle-based judgment, but just better moral judgment. There is only one real
way to stop oneself distorting things in one’s favour, and that is to look again, as
hard as one can, at the reasons present in the case, and see if really one is so
different from others that what would be required of them is not required of
oneself. The method is not infallible, I know; but then nor was the appeal to
principle. (Dancy 2013)

Generalists worry that the exhortation to look again is simply unrealistic, given human
nature, and is therefore not only fallible but unlikely to do much good. If so, then even if
principles are far from infallible rejecting them wholesale is premature. The best way to
avoid special pleading could involve an array of more specific strategies with principles
playing some significant role.
On the other side particularists worry that reliance on principles breeds ​inflexibility​ and a
problematic tendency to shoehorn a morally complex situation into some more familiar set of
categories. McNaughton describes such inflexibility as a “serious vice” and claims that
reliance on principles is partly to blame (McNaughton 1988: 203). Dancy remarks that,

We all know the sort of person who refuses to make the decision here that the facts
are obviously calling for, because he cannot see how to make that decision
consistent with one he made on a different occasion. (Dancy 1993: 64)

Importantly, this worry cannot be dismissed simply on the grounds that generalists can (and
do) allow judgment to also play a role in our use and application of principles; the worry is
that the use of principles has a distorting influence of its own. One interesting and empirically
minded proposal for evaluating the force of the particularist’s concern looks to the literature
on the comparative success of rules and expert judgment in other domains (Zamzow 2015).
Much of this literature suggests that rules outperform expert judgment (see Grove et al.
2000).
Let us turn now to a second family of arguments for principled guidance. Setting aside
whether principles are a winning strategy for the individual aiming at virtuous action, one
might think that our collective use of principles enables us to achieve morally valuable goods.
One such argument appeals to the value of predictability (Hooker 2000, 2008). Successful
cooperation and coordination yield enormous benefits yet it requires an ability to predict the
behaviour of others and a willingness to rely on those predictions when making one’s own
choices. If principled guidance supports predictability, so much the better for principles. Not
surprisingly, particularists have questioned whether principles are necessary for
predictability. “People are quite capable of judging how to behave case by case, and in a way
that would enable us to predict what they will in fact do” (Dancy 2004: 83). The key issue is
comparative. Is the person guided by principles thereby ​more​ predictable than the person who
eschews principles? Someone who rejects moral rules altogether and always just tries to
judge each case on its own merits plausibly is less predictable than someone who has
internalized and follows a set of moral principles. But as we saw above, assessing the force of
this generalist argument would benefit from consideration of careful empirical research. One
challenge for generalists who might further develop this argument is that it stands in some
tension with other themes stressed by generalists, for example, that principles can incorporate
various hedges and so exhibit the kind of flexibility particularists embrace (Väyrynen 2008)
and that principles are often indeterminate and must be supplemented by judgment. To be
consistent, generalists will need to show not only that guidance by crude principles makes
one more predictable, but that guidance by a combination of hedged principles and judgment
makes one more predictable than guidance by judgment alone.
A very different practical argument for generalism has roots in the Kantian tradition and has
recently been advanced by Stephen Darwall (2013, see also Darwall 2006). He contends that
publicly formulable principles are necessary for us to realize a valuable form of interpersonal
accountability in our shared moral life. He further argues that such accountability is necessary
for moral obligations (though not necessarily for moral reasons). Within the framework here
developed, one might see Darwall’s argument as a defense of generalism about ​standards​ but
with the argument restricted to standards of moral ​obligation.​ Alternatively, one might see it
as a practical argument for attempting to formulate shared public principles because, if we
fail to do so (or fail to continue to do so), we will lose something that we take to be valuable
about morality, namely the respect for persons that is inherent in a practice of interpersonal
accountability (Darwall 2013: especially 183–191). Darwall’s argument fits very well with
Kantian contractualism of the sort defended by T.M. Scanlon, which emphasizes the value of
our being able to justify ourselves to others and sees principles as mediating justification. It
might also be instructive to compare Darwall’s argument with some of the ideas found in the
tradition of discourse ethics associated with Jürgen Habermas (see, e.g., Habermas 1990). An
important challenge for this argument is to persuasively establish the premise that
accountability (or interpersonal justification) must advert to principles. Particularists may
allow that accountability is an important value while urging that the interpersonal process of
holding one another accountable can proceed entirely in terms of the reasons, defeaters,
enablers, and intensifiers that are at play in the case at hand.

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Related Entries
consequentialism​ | ​ethics: deontological​ | ​ethics: virtue​ | ​moral epistemology​ | ​moral
intuitionism​ | ​moral non-naturalism​ | ​moral particularism​ | ​naturalism: moral​ | ​reasons for
action: agent-neutral vs. agent-relative​ | ​reasons for action: internal vs. external​ | ​reasons for
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Acknowledgments
Section 2​ draws on McKeever and Ridge 2006: chapter 1, though this entry departs
somewhat from the details of that taxonomy.

Copyright © 2016​ by

Michael Ridge​ <​mridge@staffmail.ed.ac.uk​>

Sean McKeever​ <​semckeever@davidson.edu​>