Moral Reasons and Rational Status

The question "Why be moral?" is open to at least three extremely different interpretations. One way to distinguish these interpretations is by picturing the question as being asked by, respectively, Allan, who is going to act immorally unless he can be convinced to act otherwise, Beth, who is perfectly happy to do what is morally required on a certain occasion but who wants to know what is it about the act that makes it morally required, and Charles, who is trying to understand why rational people act morally. An answer to the question as understood by Allan is, for some, the holy grail of moral philosophy, and it is also perhaps the default understanding of the question. The question as asked by Beth is what David Copp, in his contribution to this volume, calls the "why-think-morality-requires-this" question. The question as asked by Charles can be called the "what-rationally-justifies-moral-behaviour" question. Charles' question, importantly, is about rational permissibility, and it is most pointed when moral behaviour requires sacrifice. It can also be put in the following way: "Why is it always rationally permissible to act as morality requires, even when it requires personal sacrifices?" Charles' question is perhaps more theoretical than practical. Even if there is a satisfying answer to it, that answer may well fail to convince someone like Allan to act rightly. Nevertheless, Charles' question does have some practical significance. An irrational action is an action one should never perform; it is ruled out by the relevant reasons. Some people who are generally disposed to do what they think is morally required might worry, in some circumstances, that such behaviour would be irrational. Showing them that it is not irrational might make it easier for them to act in the morally correct way.

Many philosophers have thought that Allan's question cannot be answered by citing moral reasons. After all, if one is entertaining doubts about morality's authority, the voice of that very authority is unlikely to quell one's doubts. This seems correct to me. Beth's question, on the other hand, seems obviously to be a request for moral reasons: one can answer it by citing some foundational moral principle, for example, and then showing how it applies to the current case. I think that most philosophers would say that Charles' question is more like Allan's in this respect than like Beth's. That is, I think that most philosophers would baulk at the idea that a moral reason could provide any sort of satisfying answer to the "what-rationally-justifies-moral-behaviour" question. This worry comes out very starkly when one considers certain popular contractualist accounts of morality that start with a notion of rationality and construct an account of morality on its basis. After all, if the relevant notion of rationality included a responsiveness to moral reasons, wouldn't such a contractualist account simply amount to a complex but pointless circle? And how could such an account ever hope to shed light on the nature of moral reasons in the first place, since it would seem simply to presuppose them? Despite these worries, this paper will argue that there is a useful sense of "moral reason" according to which it makes sense to claim that it is moral reasons, on some occasions, that provide the rational justification required for there to be a satisfying answer to Charles' question. It will also suggest that such reasons can play an unproblematic role in contractualist accounts of morality.

1. Some Initial Distinctions

The notion of "a reason" has been at the focus of philosophical theorizing about normativity – especially in the practical domain – for at least thirty years now.² As a result, clarity has been brought to a number of issues. But the proliferation of senses of "a reason" also allows for many new and subtle confusions. As a result, it is almost a requirement for a discussion of reasons to begin by making a series of distinctions in order to pick out the topic of relevance. This is especially true in the present case...