The ethical theory of Clarence Irving Lewis

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The Ethical Theory of Clarence Irving Lewis

The Ethical Theory of Clarence Irving Lewis J.

Roger �aydah

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS Athens, Ohio 1969

Copyright @ 1969 by

J.

Roger Saydah

Library of Congress Catalog Number 68-20935 Manufactured in the United States of America by Kingsport Press, Inc., Kingsport, Tennessee

Preface Any inquiry into the nature of the ethical theory of Clarence Irving Lewis that is based exclusively upon his published works will be speculative. In his published works, Lewis was never able to do more than hint at the nature and ground of what he called the four rational imperatives: the cognitive, technical, prudential, and moral imperatives. On the basis of his published works, the reader is con­ fronted with three possible interpretations of Lewis' con­ ception of the nature of the rational imperatives. The first interpretation is that the rational imperatives are analytic statements which are known a priori. This interpretation is succinctly stated, at least in regard to the moral impera­ tive or the principle of justice, in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation: the fundamental dictum of justice, "No rule of action is right except one which is right in all instances, and therefore right for everyone," is ... not a principle acceptance of which either requires to be or could be inculcated by argu­ ment where natively the recognition should be absent. Logically considered, it is a tautology: it merely expresses a formal character of the correct or justified, implicit recog­ nition of which is contained in the acknowledgment of the distinction between right and wrong. 1

The second interpretation is that the rational imperatives are empirical or synthetic judgments which are known a 1 Clarence Irving Lewis (La Salle, Illinois: The Open Court Pub­ lishing Company, 1946), p. 482.

VI

PREFACE

posteriori. This interpretation is based upon Lewis' claim that "the ground of validity of imperatives must somehow lie in our human nature." 2 And the third interpretation is that the rational imperatives are neither analytic nor synthetic and thus do not represent a form of knowledge at all. This interpretation is based upon Lewis' claim that rational imperatives are " 'pragmatically a priori.' " 3 This ambiguity, inherent in Lewis' published writings, suggested the topic of this book: which interpretation, if any, is the correct interpretation of Lewis' ethical position? and, is Lewis' ethical theory, so interpreted, valid? First, we will argue that while, for Lewis, goodness and rightness are correctly interpreted in terms of empirical and a priori knowledge, the rational imperatives are not. We will try to show that the correct interpretation of the rational im pera­ tives is that they do not represent a form of knowledge and that this was Lewis' stated position. We shall not attempt to substantiate these claims solely by reference to Lewis' published work; instead we will draw heavily upon the body of manuscripts that Lewis left to his son Andrew K. Lewis. The manuscripts, which run well over nine thousand pages, are devoted largely to ethics and value theory. The most valuable materials in them are Lewis' unpublished lectures, his numerous attempts to explicate the nature of and pro­ vide a ground for the rational imperatives, and his attempts to demonstrate how the rational imperatives and the right are related. This material will form the basis of our argu­ ments and will provide the data necessary for the construc­ tion of a consistent ethical theory along the lines Lewis suggested. The first chapter is a brief summary of Lewis' analyses of empirical knowledge, valuation, and action. Its purpose is to provide the background necessary for an understanding 2 Clarence Irving Lewis, The Ground and Nature of the Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955) , pp. 85-86. 3 Clarence Irving Lewis, Our Social Inheritance (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1957) , footnote, p. 100.

Preface vn of his conception of the right. The second chapter is de­ voted to his analysis of the right. In it we will consider cognitive, technical, prudential, and moral rightness. The third chapter is concerned with imperatives. In it we will consider the nature and the ground of the four rational imperatives distinguished above. The fourth chapter is a consideration of the relationship that obtains between moral rightness and the moral imperative. The fifth chapter is devoted primarily to setting Lewis' theory in the con­ temporary ethical scene by comparing it to the ethical theories of M. G. Singer and R. M. Hare. This comparison also serves to clarify Lewis' position and answer some possi­ ble objections to it. And, lastly, the conclusion is an attempt to answer the question, is Lewis' ethical theory, as pre­ sented, valid? A few words should be said here about Lewis' manu­ scripts. The title "Manuscripts" is one I have given them for the purposes of easy reference. These manuscripts, which consist of the philosophically relevant papers which Andrew Lewis collected from his father's study, have been microfilmed. Although they are grouped and classified in sections, the classification, being based upon their location in the study rather than on their content, is not very useful. For this reason and for the purpose of making some of the more important sections available to the public, Professors Charles Baylis, William Frankena, and John Lange have edited and prepared them for publication. Their book will be published concurrently with this, and since it is not yet available and does not contain a complete copy of the manu­ scripts, our references have been made to the microfilm copies. There are four reels of microfilm. The first reference to any particular material will specify the reel on which the quoted material may be found and any information that will help to identify it. The two lectures and the set of lecture notes to which references are most frequently made are listed in the bibliography. The preface is traditionally the appropriate place to

Vlll

PREFACE

express thanks to those who have assisted the author. I would like to thank Professor Mary Mothersill for allowing me to read her personal copy of her article, and Professors William Frankena and John Lange for helping me to locate and obtain a copy of Lewis' manuscripts. I am especially indebted to Mr. Andrew K. Lewis, who was kind enough to let me have a copy of the manuscripts and to publish those portions that were relevant to my inquiry. I am also in­ debted to Professor David Sidorsky, who read my manu­ script and made many valuable suggestions. Although no words are adequate to express my appreciation, I would like to thank Professor Robert Paul Wolff, whose criticism and advice have been invaluable. I would also like to thank my wife for helping me to proofread the manuscript and for her understanding and encouragement. For all errors and inadequacies, I take full responsibility.

Contents v

Prefure I.

II.

III.

INTRODUCTION: KNOWLEDGE, ATION AND ACTION Empirical knowledge Value and valuation Acts and activities

VALU-

THE RIGHT Cognitive rightness Technical rightness Prudential rightness Moral rightness

1 I 6 13 17 18 27 30 34

IMPERATIVES 45 Qualified and unqualified imperatives 45 The cognitive imperative 49 The two arguments used to ground the cognitive imperative: The 'deduction' The reductio ad absurdum A consideration of the two arguments The technical imperative The prudential imperative The moral imperative The formal criterion of the moral imperative

53 56 60 68 70 75 77

X

IV.

V.

CONTENTS

The contentual criterion of the moral imperative The force of the rational imperatives Additional considerations

81 85 87

EQUALITY AND SOCIAL VALUE The two moral syllogisms Assessment of social value Two applications of the moral syllogisms Two implications of Lewis' theory Lewis' theory and utilitarianism Prudence and morality

99

LEWIS, SINGER, AND HARE Kant's influence on Lewis, Singer, and Hare An evaluation of Lewis' theory through a comparison with those of Singer and Hare: The The The The or

VI.

100 104 106 1 14 121 124

127 127

good or the nature of valuation 130 nature of the "binding" principie 136 nature of moral arguments 140 nature of secondary moral principles moral precepts 151

CONCLUSION 157 The senses in which Lewis' ethical theory may be said to be valid 157

A Selected Bibliography

163

Index

167

CHAPTER

I

Introduction: Knowledge, Valuation, and Action

It was Lewis' belief that "Knowledge, action, and evaluation are essentially connected," 1 and that any ethical inquiry requires an antecedent analysis of these concepts. Any attempt to understand his ethical theory, therefore, re­ quires knowledge of his analyses of knowledge, valuation, and action. While any detailed consideration of his contri­ bution in these areas would sidetrack us from our main in­ quiry, it is advisable to present a brief statement of his views insofar as they are relevant to our thesis. This chap­ ter, then, will provide a background for our consideration of Lewis' ethical theory. I. Empirical knowledge Since Lewis contends that value judgments are empirical statements and, thus, a form of em­ pirical knowledge, an understanding of his conception of empirical knowledge is important for an understanding of his ethical theory. Empirical knowledge, he claims, is the application of concepts or terms, as criteria in mind, to our sense experience. It is sense experience that allows us to judge whether a term applies to the actual world. For this reason, the truth of empirical statements is dependent upon what is immediately given in experience. 1 Clarence Irving Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, Illinois: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1946) , p. 3.

2

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

In analyzing empirical knowledge, Lewis distinguishes three types of statements: expressive, non-terminating, and terminating. An expressive statement is one that formulates what is immediately given or apprehended in experience. Since the immediately given, as immediately given, is an un­ interpreted sensation,2 it must be expressed in a language that will not place an interpretation upon it. Such a lan­ guage, according to Lewis, would comprise expressive state­ ments. The construction of expressive statements, however, poses formidable difficulties; in fact, Lewis was never able to do more than hint at the nature of expressive statements. As a result, there is no evidence that an expressive language which would meet Lewis' demands is possible. Nevertheless, the important consideration here is not whether we can con­ struct a sufficiently neutral expressive language,3 but whether we can have knowledge without experience of the immediately given. Lewis' answer to the latter question is No; without immediate experience, terms and concepts could not have sense meaning because there would be noth­ ing to which they could apply. As a result, we could make no empirical statements; all knowledge would be a priori. This is not to say, however, that expressive statements are empirical statements. Since we cannot be mistaken about our sensations, expressive statements (if they are correct re­ ports of our immediate experience) can be neither true nor false, and, for this reason, are not empirical statements. Consequently, while the immediately given is a necessary condition for empirical knowledge, it is not itself a form of knowledge. Empirical knowledge, asserts Lewis, is conveyed only through non-terminating and terminating judgm ents. 2 Earlier, in Mind and the World Order (New York: Dover Publica­ tions, 1929), Chapter II, Lewis maintained that although we experience the given, any statement of what it is that we experience places an interpretation on it. His position in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation is different. 3 As Lewis notes, "knowledge itself might well get on without the formulation of the immediately given: what is thus directly presented does not require verbalization!' (An An•alysis, p. 183).

Introduction: Knowledge, Valuation, and Action 3 A non-terminating judgm ent asserts that a state of affairs is actual-that it is objective reality. It is an assertion that a non-analytic proposition (or that the constituents of an an­ alytic proposition which have non-analytic meaning) is true. The intension of such a statement is the conjunction of the infinite number of statements entailed by it. All these statements are framed in an object language and, if the non-terminating judgm ent is true, are attributable to the actual world. Terminating judgm ents connect non-terminating judg­ ments and immediate experience. Terminating judgments, which are also entailed by non-terminating judgments, are predictions in terms of sense meaning. They are hypotheti­ cal statements of the form: "If I do x, then I will experience y." According to Lewis, both the antecedent and the conse­ quent of terminating judgments must be formulated in ex­ pressive language. In fact, he was never able to suggest how the antecedent could be so formulated. The confirmation or disconfirmation of terminating judgments is a future fact. The prediction made by them, being a prediction about a content of sense experience, is capable of being completely confirmed or disconfirmed. The case is different for non-ter­ minating judgments, however; since their intensional mean­ ings are infinite, they are always verifiable, but never com­ pletely verified. Thus, the confirmation of terminating judgm ents provides only partial verification of the non-ter­ minating judgm ents by which they are entailed. Non-terminating judgments, being predictions of the fu­ ture, could not be formulated if we did not have knowledge of the past. In claiming that y will always follow x we are, according to Lewis, appealing to the Rule of Induction: if in the pasty has always followed x, then in the future y will always follow x. The Rule of Induction is also formulated by Lewis as the principle of consistency: treat similar cases similarly. It is only on the basis of past experience that we are able to interpret what is immediately given in experi­ ence as a sensory clue to an objective thing or state of af-

THE ETiiICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

4

fairs. It is also on the basis of past experience that we j udge the probabili ty of non-terminating judgm ents antecedent to any confirmation of them . The body of past experience, or the data, upon which the probability of non-terminating j udgm ents depends, increases each time terminating j udg­ ments entailed by them are confirmed or disconfirmed. It is part of the nature of empirical knowledge that it is predictive and, thus, a guide to action. Wi thout empirical knowledge we could not know what to expect in the future, and consequently could not know how to act. "The value of knowing the inevitable fu ture fact," claims Lewis, "lies pre­ cisely in the consideration that by such foreknowledge the incidence of what is predicted upon our experience may be altered by decisions open to us." 4 Empirical knowledge, then, enables us to bring about the valuable and to avoid the disvaluable in experience. The desire to avoid the dis­ valuable i n experience is the reason why not all terminat­ ing j udgments are tested. The fact that not all terminating judgm en ts are tested, however, does not affect their truth or falsity, since, as Lewis notes, "the truth of the hypothetical statement itself . . . is independent of the truth or falsity of the antecedent or hypothesis." 5 We have seen that non-terminating j udgm ents, being based on past experience, are inductive statements and probable only. Terminating j udgments, being entailed and dependent upon non-terminating j udgm ents, are likewise only probable. It follows, then, that all empirical statements are probable and that empirical knowledge cannot claim theoretical certainty. The fact that all empirical s tatements are probable, however, must not be confused with the fact that some are justified, warranted, and righ t, and some are not. An empirical judgm ent that is j ustified is one that, in Lewis' terminology, is cognitively right. According to Lewis, in order for a j udgm ent to be cogni tively right the delibera­ tion that precedes it must be both consistent and cogent. Analysis., p. 207 . Ibid., p. 223.

4 An 6

Introduction : Knowledge, Valuation, and Action

5

While it is impossible for us to provide a complete explica­ tion of the concepts 'consistency' and 'cogency,' an under­ standing of them is necessary for our consideration of cogni­ tive rightness in Chapter II. We will, therefore, consider consistency and -cogency and show how they are distinct. We will limit our discussion to non-terminating judgments. The judgm ent that the deliberation that preceded a non­ terminating judgm ent is consistent in the judgm ent that the non-terminating judgm ent was arrived at by properly applying the Rule of Induction; or, in other words, if the probability of the non-terminating judgment is correctly de­ termined from the data, or past experiences, upon which it is based, then the deliberation that preceded the formula­ tion of the non-terminating judgm ent is consistent. Consistency, so conceived, must be supplemented if the non-terminating judgment is to be cognitively right. This is because a non-terminating judgment may be arrived at con­ sistently and still have little predictive value because the data upon which it was based was not reliable. According to Lewis, in order to make sure that the data is reliable we must insure that it is adequate, that is, that it represents a sufficiently large and varied sample, and that it is proxi­ mate, that is, that it is sufficiently similar to those cases to which the non-terminating judgm ent is to apply. It is in terms of reliability that Lewis defines 'cogency.' A non-ter­ minating judgm ent is cogent if the data upon which it is based is reliable, and it is incogent if the data upon which it is based is unreliable. Given this analysis, it is clear that a non-terminating judgm ent that is arrived at consistently may be unreliable, and thus unjustified and wrong, if the data upon which it is based is unreliable. It is also clear that a non-terminating judgm ent based upon reliable data may be unwarranted and wrong because the deliberation that preceded its for­ mulation was inconsistent. In order for a non-terminating judgm ent to be cognitively right, therefore, the deliberation that precedes it must be both cogent and consistent.

6

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVI NG LEWIS

2. Value and Valuation Lewis' claims that value state­ ments are empirical statements and that value knowledge is empirical knowledge require that he distinguish three types of value statements, which correspond to the three types of empirical statements already presented. In order to substan­ tiate his claims, however, he must also show that the mean­ ing of 'x is valuable' can be explicated in terms of these statements. In this section, we will consider the three types of value statements and present a summary of Lewis' expli­ cation of 'x is valuable.' It is necessary to do this, because Lewis' value theory plays an important role in his analyses of the right and the imperative. We will begin by presenting the three types of value state­ ments. The first are expressive statements. Expressive state­ ments are reports of immediate value or disvalue in experi­ ence. As we have noted, Lewis does not provide us with examples of expressive statements, and it is doubtful that examples could be given. Nevertheless, experiences of imme­ diate value, or apprehensions of value, are the experiential and unquestionable data upon which all value knowledge is based. It is in terms of expressive statements-reports of our experiences of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, happiness and unhappiness, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and so on -that, if we could, we would formulate this data. Although we have referred to immediate value and dis­ value in terms of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, it would be wrong to consider that what we have offered is a definition of value or goodness. According to Lewis, "Imme­ diate or directly findable value [or disvalue] is not so much one quality as a dimensionlike mode which is pervasive of all experience." 6 Any definition of immediate value would, on Lewis' view, be arbitraty; it would be a stipulative, not an explicative, definition. The only possible way to under­ stand what immediate value or immediate goodness is, is to experience it. As Lewis points out, "Value or disvalue is not 6

fbid., p. 40 1 .

Introduction : Kn ow ledge, Valuation, and A ction

7

like the pitch of middle C or the seen color of median red or the felt hardness of steel. It is not one specific quale of ex­ perience but a gamut of such; more like color in general or pitch in general or hardness in general." 7 Immediate value, so conceived, is essential to Lewis' analysis; he is committed to the view that there is no value except as it affects the ex­ perience of individuals-or, in other words, there is no value except immediate or directly findable value. Non-terminating judgments, the first type of empirical statement, are assertions that an object or an action is valua­ ble; and terminating judgments, the second type of empir­ ical statement, are hypothetical assertions that if an indivi­ dual is confronted with a particular object, or if he performs a particular act, then he will experience immediate value (or disvalue) . Terminating judgments, again, connect non­ terminating judgments, which assert that a state of affairs is actual-that an object or action is valuable or disvaluable­ and expressive statements, which formulate the data that provide confirmation or disconfirmation for corresponding non-terminating judgm ents. Ascriptions of value to objects or actions, then, are empirical statements, and as such are probable only and either true or false. In addition, non-ter­ minating j udgm ents are universal statements; the assertion that x is valuable or good is the assertion that it will lead to experiences of immediate value and that all similar individ­ uals in similar circumstances will find this to be true. Like other empirical statements, value judgments are objective. It should be noted here that the fact that different individu­ als do not find value in the same experiences does not make value judgments any less obj ective. As Lewis points out, "All value in objects depends on a relation of them to ac­ tual or possible experience; and the possibilities of experi­ ence depend on the nature and capacities of the subject." 8 Non-terminating judgm ents which assert that an object or action is valuable, if true, are not true of all individuals, Ibid. s An Analysis, p. 532. 1

8

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWI S

but rather only of all individuals who are similar to those in the reference class. The value findings, or the prizings, and the value judgments, or the appraisings, of any particular individual are relative to his personality, his capacities, and the circumstances in which he finds himself. It is in terms of these three types of value statements that Lewis sets out to explicate the meanings of value words. One of the difficul ties any explication or analysis of value words must deal with is that value words, such as 'good' and 'valuable,' are ambiguous and, consequently, that the non­ terminating j udgments which state that obj ects or actions are valuable are ambiguous. The second part of Lewi s' anal­ ysis is devoted to this ambiguity. Al though we cannot do j ustice to his explications, there are five different meanings of 'valuable' or 'good' that we must, however briefly, con­ sider. When we say that something is good or valuable we m ay mean that it is intrinsically, extrinsically, contribu­ tively, comparatively, or socially, valuable. Intrinsic value is immediate value, and only experience can be said to be intrinsically valuable. It follows from this defini tion tha t obj ects and actions must be valuable in some other sense. The term that Lewis applies to the value that obj ects and actions have is extrinsic value. Jud gm ents that obj ects or actions have extrinsic value are non-terminating and, thus, empirical j udgments. There are two kinds of ex­ trinsic value which Lewis distinguishes : inherent value and instrumental value. Obj ects and actions are said to be i nher­ ently valuable if their presence or performance directly leads or conduces to experiences that are intrinsically valua­ ble; they are said to be instrumentally valuable if they lead to or are a means to an end that is itself inherently valuable. Thus, for exam ple, a good painting is inherently valuable because in its presence individuals experience immediate value; but the paints, canvas, and brushes which are used to create the painting are i nstrumentally valuable. On the other hand, the cre ation of the painting, the act of planning and execution, is both instrumentally and inherently valua-

In troduction : Knowledge, Valuation, and Action

9

ble. I t is instrumentally valuable from the point of view of those who see the painting because it is a means to an end that is itself inherently valuable, namely the painting, and it is inherently valuable for the artist because the creation, for him, is an experience that is intrinsically valuable . I n sayi ng that a n obj ect o r action i s valuable, therefore, we are making either one of two non-terminating judg­ ments: that it is instrumentally valuable or that it is inher­ ently valuable. The evaluation of an object or action as ex­ trinsically valuable is not, however, the final evaluation of it. To evaluate it prudentially, for example, i t is necessary that we j udge whether i t will contribute the most value to an individual's whole life ; and to evaluate it socially, it i s necessary that w e j udge whether it wi ll contribute the most value to the whole lives of all those individuals affected by i t. Lewis argues that in order to m ake such judgments we must introduce and distinguish the concepts of contributory and comparative value. The concept of contributory value is based on the fact that "Life is temporal; and human life self-consciously temporal," 9 and, thus, on the fact that no experience is iso­ lated-that every experience is part of a whole life. Because life is "self-consciously temporal," the value quality of any particular experience is modified by the value quality of those experiences that precede and those experiences that follow it, and consequently the value quality of any experi­ ential whole may be di fferent from that of the experiences which comprise it. If the value of an experiential whole is greater than the value of the particular experiences that comprise it, then those experiences are said to have contrib­ utory value or to be contributively valuable. Lewis distin­ guishes two ways in which experiences may contribute to the value of an experiential whole. First, one experience may be indirectly, causally related to, and thus have con­ tributory value for, another. In actuality, the experiences e Ibid., p. 479.

10

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVI NG LEWIS

are not themselves causally related; rather, they are related in the sense that they are experiences that result from differ­ ent consequences of a single act. To illustrate this, let us consider an example in which an act's consequences lead to an experience that has contributory value. Consider an in­ dividual who does not enjoy learning. So far as he is con­ cerned, the experiences he has while engaging in this activ­ ity are intrinsically bad. If, however, what he learns enables him to enjoy his life to a greater extent than he would have had he not learned, then the activity of learning, even though it was unpleasant, has contributed value to his life. The second, and more important, way in which an experi­ ence may have contributory value is by enhancing the value of the whole of which it is a part. If the individual in the first example had enjoyed learning, his whole experience would have been more enj oyable than if he had not. Experi­ ences that have contributory value in this sense need not be consequences of the same act. The experiences of seeing a movie and having ice cream are not the result of the same action, and yet the value quality of the temporal whole, seeing a movie and then eating ice cream, may be greater than that of seeing a movie or eating ice cream, or eating ice cream and then seeing a movie. These considerations point up the fact that the value quality of a particular experience and the temporal whole of which the experience is a part may be different, and by extension, that the value quality of any temporal whole and the value quality of the whole of life of which it is a part may be different. Accordingly, any just, prudential evalua­ tion of an action, object, or experience must be an evalua­ tion of its contributory value as it affects an individual's whole life. Any just evaluation, however, must also take comparative value into account. The comparative value of an object, ac­ tion, or experience is the assessment of it in relation to other objects, actions, or experiences. Those objects or ac­ tions that lead to experiences having more immediate value

Introduction: Knowledge, Valua tion, and A ction

11

than any other alternative obj ect or action are compara­ tively most (instrumentally or inherently) valuable, and those experiences that will contribute more value to an in­ dividual's whole life than any other alternative experience are comparatively most (intrinsically) valuable. Any j udge­ ment that an action, object, or experience is prudentially valuable-that is, that i t will con tribute to the maximi­ zation of value in an individual's whole life-must take i nto account comparative and contributory value. Unlike the judgments of value we have considered, social value is not the value of an object or action judged from a particular poi nt of view; rather, it is the value of an obj ect or action judged from the point of view of all those affected by i t. In j udging the social value of an action or obj ect, we must take into account i ts comparative and contributory value on the whole; that is, we must consider the effects of it, in the actual circumstances in which these effects occur, on the individual whole lives of all persons affected by them. The determination of social value will obviously be highly complex. First, because it will take account of all the value-potentialities of the object, instead of some one value or type of value only, and will require some collation of these various values and disvalues of it. Second, because it involves taking account of whatever persons are likely to be affected by this object; their number, and the bearing of it on their realizations of value. Third, because it calls for attention to the circumstances affecting such value­ realizations from the object; and with respect to those which are beyond control, the assessment of their probability. Fi­ nally, it requires that we bring together all these considera­ tions in one resultant evaluation of the object on the whole. 10

I t should be observed that empathe tic imagination is neces­ sary not only i n assessing social value but also in making any j udgment of value relating to any other individual or group of individuals. Judgments that an object or action is 10

Ibid., p. 542.

12

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

socially valuable are founded on i nductive inferences from observations of the behavior and speech of others. Lewis' analysis of social value, however, is nei ther com­ plete nor -adequate; i n fact, because of its brevity it raises more questions than it answers. One difficulty lies in evalu­ ating the experiences of other individuals and, conse­ quen tly, in assessing social value itself. I t is true that obser­ vation and communication enable us to determine what other people value and to discover their order of prefer­ ences among different al ternatives, but the fact that individ­ ual A prefers alternative I to alternative 2 and that i ndivid­ ual B prefers alternative 2 to alternative I does not entail that the value which would accrue to A through the adop­ tion of alternative I would be equal to the value which would accrue to B through the adoption of alternative 2. The question that Lewis neither raises nor considers is, can values experienced by one individual be compared with those experienced by another? If the answer to this question is No, then the assessment of social value would be impossi­ ble, because, as Lewis claims, the social value cannot be as­ sessed independently of individual values. This difficulty is pointed out analogously by Anatol Rapoport. "Comparing utili ties [or values] of di fferent people," he claims, "is like comparing temperatures on different (unknown) scales." 1 1 Thus, for example, nothing is communicated by stating that the temperature is 80 ° if the person to whom we are speaking is using a different zero point and/or degree size than we are. Likewise, nothing is communicated by my say­ i ng that a particular value experience of mine is ten units if the person to whom I am making the statement has no idea of what ten units of value represent for me. On the other hand, it does make sense to make statements comparing one increase on a temperature scale with another increase on the same scale. For example, the statements " 'Our ther­ mometers rose twice as much today between sunrise and 11

Fights> Games> and De bates (Ann Arbor: The University of Michi­ gan Press, 1 960) , p. 126.

Introduction: Knowledge, Valuation, and Action

13

noon a s they did yesterday in the same period,' " 12 and "I enj oyed playing baseball twice as much today as I did yes­ terday," do communicate something. The point which Ra­ poport is making is that while each individual i s able to compare his own value experiences and to communicate this comparison, he is not able to communicate the exact worth of what is being compared. If he is correct, then it is impos­ sible to compare the value experiences of one individual wi th the value experiences of other individuals; and since we cannot in any way determine what weights we ought to assign the value preferences of different individuals, it is not possible to assess the social value accurately. This difficul ty, admi ttedly, is not peculiar to Lewis' the­ ory; it is a difficulty any theory that assesses social value in terms of individual values must face. It is, nevertheless, a difficulty that we must take into account, because if there is no way of assessing social value, to say that one must assess social value in order to determine whether an act is morally right would be self-defeating. We will consider this and other related difficulties in Chapter IV and will argue there that Lewis' views and the views we have attributed to him enable him to escape the conclusion presented here. 3. Acts and activities 'Activity' is, for Lewis, a general term which encompasses deliberate thinking and deliberate doing. It is to be distinguished from 'behavior,' a term whose meaning includes both activity and those physical and mental processes which we cannot control and of which we may not be conscious. The word 'act' is applicable only to physical doing which is corrigible, that is, physical doing which is the result of conscious deliberation. Acts will, therefore, include what Lewis calls habits or active atti­ tudes. Habits are activities which we at one time consciously adopt and at any time may consciously al ter, but which we now do semiautomatically. Driving a car is an example of this: when driving, we do not have to deliberate every time 12

Ibid.

14

THE ETHICAL THEORv OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

we shift gears or stop for a red light; we generally do these things semiautomatically. Only activity, behavior that is corrigible, is subject to the critique of right and wrong. As Lewis points out, there is no doing which is subject to criticism except as it reflects some result of thinking or is amenable to taking thought, . . . it is only behavior which is corrigible and self-governable for which the doer is to be blamed or for which he merits any praise. 13

Behavior due to insanity or uncontrollable impulses is ex­ cluded from Lewis' analysis, because it is behavior that, being beyond the control of the doer, is outside the prov­ ince of ethics, the critique of deliberate doing. Although ha­ bitual acts and deliberate acts are both subject to the cri­ tique of consistency and cogency, to simplify our investiga­ tion we shall limit it to a consideration of deliberate acts­ acts that result from antecedent deliberation. Lewis' view is that there is a difference between the act and the deliberation preceding it. Deliberation terminates in a decision to do or not to do. The decision to do an act is not the doing of it. An action may be decided upon but not committed; the decision and the commitment are distinct. The commitment is that inscrutable fiat of the will, the "oomph" of initiation, which terminates the mental part and is the bridge to the physical part of the act. Perhaps we should not call this distinctive phase of commitment inscrutable, since there is no other kind of mental item which so surely has our attention in the occurrence of it. But it is hardly describable . . . . 14

In claiming that the "fiat of the will" is not describable, Lewis is not claiming that a physiological explanation can not, or eventually could not, be given. What he is claiming 13 Clarence Irving Lewis, The Ground and Nature of the Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955) , p. 40. 14 Ibid., p. 43.

Introduction: Knowledge, Valuation, and Action

15

i s that the process b y which we consciously or deliberately initiate any action is not understood. The point he is trying to make here is that after we decide to do something, we must do something else before our decision has any noticea­ ble effect; we must trigger the physical chain of events that causes our body to move. I t is the nature of this "something else" that is inscrutable, not the fact of its occurrence or of its effect. It is Lewis' contention that for practical purposes the " fiat of the will" is the same in one action as another: one committing of an action appears to be the same as any other in its character as merely a committing: what distin­ guishes one such commitment from another is the difference of what we so commit ourselves to. What distinguishes the particular act and is specifiable as this particular commitment is simply the consequences of it, as expected. 15

According to Lewis, then, the only way to specify an act is by speci fying its expected or actual consequences. It may be objected that an act could be described by describing what the agent actually does, omitting the consequences entirely. On this interpretation, he shut the door, she pulled the trig­ ger, he raised his arm, would all be descriptions of acts. Lewis realizes that we often do describe behavior in this way, bu t, he argues, in doing so we cannot properly be said to be descri bing actions. Actions are deliberate doings de­ signed to achieve or avoid some end, to make some differ­ ence in the obj ective world; if they are to be properly de­ scribed, this end must be included in the description. The end for which an action is adopted is the purpose of the ac­ tion : "the purpose of an act comprises the expected result or resul ts for the sake of which . . . [the act] is adopted ." 1 6 Any act will generally have consequences other than those we specifically desire to bri ng abou t; these consequences may have value of their own or they may be neutral or dis/bid., pp. 43-44. 1s Ibid., p. 48. 15

16

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

valuable. The total body of expected consequences of a pro­ posed act is its intent or intention. Lewis uses the word 'in­ tention' to indicate that the agent intended to, or at least was aware that, his act would bring about these conse­ quences, and that as a result he is responsible for bringing them about. Any act, then, is specifiable solely in terms of its consequences. The implications that this view has for Lewis' ethical theory will be considered in Chapters III and IV. It is Lewis' contention that any decision to do a particu­ lar act rests on the antecedent empirical j udgment that the act will produce the results desired by the agent and avoid as many as possible of the results he does not desire. He claims that if an agent wishes his j udgments to be empiri­ cally j ustified, then he must subject them to the critique of consi stency and cogency. He must, that is, take into account the circumstances in which the action is to be done, and then, on the basis of the circumstances, the nature of the act as physical doing, and past experience, attempt to deter­ mine what consequences the action will have in addition to those already correctly predicted in the purpose. Only by so doing can he be j ustified in expecting his act to maximize the comparative contributory value of the resultant experi­ ences. Our purpose in presenting these brief summaries of Lewis' posi tion is to set before the reader certain -concepts and ideas to which we refer in the body of this book. We have not considered Lewis' analysis of analytic statements because it plays no role in what is to follow. All that need be noted in rela tion to analytic statements is that they rep­ resent a form of knowledge, that they are known a priori, and that, for Lewis, there is no knowledge which is not ei­ ther a priori or empirical .

C H APTER

I I

The Right It is Lewis' contention that our critical attention is directed to all areas of our deliberate doing and self-govern­ ment. These areas are classified by him under four head­ ings: those concerned with thought, those with technique, those with prudence, and those with morality or justice. Correlated with each of these areas is a specific kind of good and a specific type of right. In addition there are universal rules or principles, the rational imperatives, governing our activity in each of these areas, to which adherence is manda­ tory. The rational imperatives, in conjunction with as­ sertions of what it is right to do, lead to concrete judgments or assertions of what men, either collectively or individu­ ally, ought to do in specific situations. These judgments are also imperatives, because adherence to them is cognitively, technically, prudentially, and/or morally obligatory. They are, however, what we will call derivative or subordinate imperatives, since their force or ground is found in the universal and primary rational imperatives from which they are derived.1 In this chapter we will consider the ground 1 That Lewis considered all these modes of assessi ng actions-the good, the right, and the impera tive-necessary for making decisions abou t h ow one ough t to act, can be seen from the two following pas­ sages: Any j udgment that an act is right must be a "judgment in which all valid claims u pon the act in question are duly weighed and adjudi­ cated. And the technical and prudential, as well as considerations of consequences to others are such valid claims." (Manuscripts, Founda­ tions of Ethics, lectures given at Wesleyan University in October 1959

18

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

and nature of the four modes of rightness distinguished above, and in the next chapter we will consider the ground and nature of the rational imperatives and the concrete judgm ents derived from them. The basic question we will be considering in this chapter is, what is it right to do and how can we know what it is right to do? We have introduced Lewis' four modes of right­ ness, (1 ) the cognitively right, (2) the technically right, (3) the prudentially right, and (4) the morally right. We shall now consider these four modes of rightness and the good correlated with each. I) The cognitively right is explicated by Lewis in his analysis of consistency and cogency. As we have seen, empir­ ical judgments are cognitively right if they are justified; that is, if the conclusions arrived at are in accord with the dictates of consistency, are based on data with a high degree of reliability, and are probable, then they are justified. Val­ uations, being themselves empirical judgm ents, are also ca­ pable of being cognitively right or wrong. Before we investigate the senses in which actions are said to be right, we must first consider Lewis' use of the word 'co­ gent.' His analysis of the cognitively right suffers because his use of the word 'cogent' is ambiguous. At times, he claims that to be cogent is to take into account all relevant data and its reliability; at other times, however, he uses the word 'cogency' to mean 'both consistency and the taking account of all relevant data and its reliability,' or 'cognitive right­ ness.' This ambiguity creates difficulties in following Lewis' arguments. To obviate these difficulties, we will distinguish between these two senses of 'cogency.' In quoting Lewis, the first sense of cogency, the taking account of all relevant data and dated September 1959, Reel IV, Lecture I, "Ethics and the Present Scene," p. 8.) And, "the moral assessment of doing requires to include and give weight to the assessment of it as prudent and technically well judged, and indeed of every other mode of assessing acts as right or wrong-if there be any." (Manuscripts, Reel II, beginning, dated 1/30/60, pp. 11-12.)

The Righ t

19

and i ts reliabili ty, will b e symbolized b y the words '-cogent' and 'cogency.' The second sense of cogency, both consist­ ency and cogency, will be symbolized in quoted material by the words 'cogent' and 'cogency' followed by CR (for 'cog­ ni tively right' and 'cognitive rightness' respectively) i n brackets : cogent [CR] and cogency [CR] . In the text w e will use 'cognitively right' and ' cognitive rightness' for 'cogent [CR] ' and 'cogency [CR] ,' respectively. "Cogency [CR] is correctness in thoughts and beliefs." 2 That which is correct is that which is justified and right. To be cogni tively right, then, is to be right in though t and be­ lief. In The Groun d and Nature of the Righ t, Lewis states that Thinking as distinguishable from overt doing, and consid­ ered apart from its connection with decisions to do, is right or wrong and criticizable so far as it has the character of governable activity resulting in the assignment of objective reference to representations; the character of a determination of fact; a belief which explicitly or implicitly has the charac­ ter of inferred conclusion, and as such is justified, warranted and right or unjustified or wrong. 3

So conceived, cognitive rightness is a necessary condition of all deliberate doing, for no act could be right if the deliber­ ation that preceded i t was not right. Lewis claims that there is a particular type of value corre­ lated with each mode of self-government. There are, he states, two kinds of cogni tive value that can be distin­ guished : intrinsic and instrumental value. The intrinsic value is integrity, the satisfaction taken in being cogni tively right. " Men who find cogency [CR] imperative find a cer­ tain satisfaction in their own cogency [CR], regardless of Clarence Irving Lewis, Manuscripts, Prosemin·ar Lecture Notes, Reel II, written between October and December 1952 and presented in the same year, Lecture VIII, "Modes of Evaluation," p. 5 . 2

3

P . 27 .

20

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

any profit in life to which this cogency [CR] conduces." To illustrate this type of value, he asks, would you

4

rather be able to submit a doctoral dissertation which was an airtight demonstration of your thesis and have it turned down by an incompetent committee and your professional career hopelessly prejudiced by that, or to submit a disserta­ tion with a good deal of incogency in it and have it passed by an incompetent committee and in result go on to a prosperous career? 5

The value attaching to in tegri ty is attainable because cogni­ tive rightness is attainable; our thoughts and beliefs may be justified even though they may not be true. It should be noted that thi s intrinsic value, which Lewis calls integrity, will result from the adherence to anything considered to be right or imperative and that in this sense integrity is not pe­ culiar to cognitive rightness. Cognitive rightness may also have instrumental value. The aim at cogni tive rightness is the aim at truth; and al­ though the attainment of cognitive rightness is no guaran­ tee of the attainment of truth, "adhering to the cogent [CR] . . . is the nearest we can come, by any manner of govern­ ing our thinking, to the assurance of truth." 6 The approxi­ mation, or attainment, of truth is instrumentally valuable insofar as it leads to actions whose consequences are instru­ mentally or inheren tly valuable. If it leads to actions whose consequences are instrumentally or inherently disvaluable, then it is only instrumental . Deliberate doing is the bringing about of consequences. A proposed act will be right to do if both the j udgm ent that i t will have certain consequences and the j udgm ent that these consequences will be good are right. In discussing the conse­ quences of any act, it is necessary to observe that the appli­ cation of the word 'good' to them is ambiguous. In The Lewis, Manuscripts, Proseminar, Lecture VIII, pp. 12-1 3. Ibid., p. 14. 6 Ibid., p. 8 .

4 5

The Right

21

Ground and Na ture of the Righ t, Lewis uses 'G' to symbol­ ize the value character of the consequences of an act that make i t right to do, but he cautions us to be careful in our conception of G. As has already occurred to you, perhaps this mysterious property G which is the distinctive feature of the conse­ quences which may justify an action, is simply good. Let me say at once that I think to take it so would be, at this stage, both unclear and an oversimplification. 7

The reason why the equating of 'good' and 'G' would be an oversimplification i s that there are different meanings of ' go od.' To claim that the consequences of all acts are good i n the same way, or to the same degree, would amount to the negation of Lewis' analysis of value. The actual consequences of an act and the consequences of a proposed act are not necessarily the same. It is necessary to distinguish the nature of the consequences as actual from the nature of the consequences as proposed, because it is possible that an act may be right even though the actual consequences of it are bad. To illustrate this, consider Lewis' example of investing money. If I decide to invest in a particular bond instead of a piece of real estate or a particu­ lar stock and the decision to do so is cognitively right, then my act would be said to be the right thing to do. I f, some­ time after the investment is made, the bond should show "a considerable loss in market value" while the stock "has gone up i n price," 8 and oil has been discovered on the piece of property, i t would be wrong, and perhaps even ludicrous, to say that I made a good i nvestment, but it would not be wrong or ludicrous to say I did the right thing. What is done, then, is to be called good or bad depending upon the actual consequences, but the rightness of an act "depends 7 P. 56. s Clarence Irving Lewis, Manuscripts, Foundations of Ethics, lectures given at Wesleyan University in October 1959 and dated September 1959, Reel IV, Lecture II, "The Right and the Good," p. 44.

22

THE ETIIICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

upon the justified belief as to . . . [the expected] good or bad consequences on the part of the doer at the time and i n the circumstances when h e had t o make h i s decision and choose his action." 9 It is cogni tive rightness, rightness as j ustified belief, that is the ideal to which we should aspire when deciding what to do. To make this clearer, Lewis points out that we can mean any one of three things when we say that an act is right. First, we can mean that it is absolutely right. An act is abso­ lutely righ t if the consequences of it are actually good. No act can be judged absolutely right in the premises of action because man, being fini te and not omniscient, cannot know with certainty what the future consequences of his action will be or what value experiences he will have as a result of those consequences. Such rightness cannot be required of us, claims Lewis, "because nobody has a responsibility to do what he can ' t . " 10 Second, in saying that an act is right, we can mean that i t i s obj ectively right. This manner of rightness . . . is attributable to an act if, and only if, it is rightly judged that its consequences are such that it will be right to bring about. . . . But let us note that the rightness of the judgment is rightness of the kind which is ascribable to beliefs and judgments of fact. But a fact so judged is the property of the possible consequences of action -their being such as are right to bring about. 11

Lewis' poin t here is that i n determining the obj ective right­ ness of an act we are making an empiri cal j udgm ent as to whether the consequences will be valuable in some sense of that word. But for an act to be j udged objectively right, i t must also b e the case that it is justifiably j udged that the act in question will lead to the consequences j udged valuable, and Lewis is careful to point this out. "What m akes the 9

Ibid., p. 47.

10 11

Manuscripts, Reel III, 4/27 /62, p. 36. Lewis, The Ground, p. 48.

The Right

23

judgm ent that a contemplated act is one having such conse­ quences [that is, consequences that are right to bring about] a right judgment is another thing . . . . " 12 With this in mind, he formulates a definition of objective rightness: "an act is objectively right if it is judged that its consequences are such as it will be right to bring about and that judg­ ment is correct." 1 3 Now it may seem as if a mistake has been made and that the definition offered fails to take account of the second judgment, that the consequences valued will be the consequences of the act. Perhaps Lewis intended to let 'its consequences' do the necessary work. Thus, 'its conse­ quencest would mean 'the consequences that we judge the act will have.t To be more precise, he should have changed the last clause to read "and those two judgments are cor­ rect." The purpose of pointing this out is to be sure the nature of objective rightness is clear. A judgment that an act is objectively right is a combination of two empirical judg­ ments. As such, a judgment of objective rightness is proba­ ble only; there is no certainty that the predicted conse­ quences will be the actual consequences of the act, and if they are, there is no guarantee they will have the value char­ acter predicted of them. Third, in saying that an act is right we may mean that it is subjectively right. An act is subjectively right if "the doer thinks [it] will have the consequences which it is right to bring about-whether his so thinking is a correct judgment or not. n 14 That is, if the doer thinks his act is objectively right, then his act is subjectively right. Thus an act is subjectively right (a) when it is objectively right and the doer thinks it is, or (b) when it is objectively wrong but the doer thinks it objectively right. An act, then, is subjec­ tively wrong (c) if the doer thinks it is objectively wrong -whether or not his thinking is correct. 12 1bid. 13 14

The Ground, p. 49.

Jbid.

24

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

In order to make this distinction clearer, let us consider examples of the two types of subjectively right actions and an example of a subjectively wrong action. a) Consider an apartment dweller, Mr. Smith, who is contemplating the purchase of a house. Being a wise inves­ tor, he consults an architect for his professional opinion re­ garding the house and his contemplated purchase. He also looks up the assessment on the house and the tax rate. He consults a bank about a mortgage and possible liens and has his friends, all of whom own houses, look at the house so that he can get their opinions of its livability and its possi­ bilities and limitations. After he has amassed all the data available to him regarding buying and owning a house, re­ ceived a favorable opinion from the architect, a favorable report from the bank, and a favorable report from his friends, he decides to buy the house and does so. Mr. Smith believes that he acted wisely, and for this reason his act was subjectively right. In addition, since he has considered all the relevant data, either by himself or with qualified help, his act was also objectively right. b) Let us now consider Mr. Jones, a file clerk who has lived in houses all his life and knows what he likes. He finally finds a house with a fireplace, plenty of room, and a lovely yard. The price is right and the bank guarantees that there are no liens on the property, so he buys it. Mr. Jones believes that he has done the right thing, that he has made a good purchase, and for this reason his act is subjectively right. Mr. Jones, however, made a mistake by overestimat­ ing his own ability to judge whether the house was worth purchasing. He did not, for example, consider whether the foundation was solid, whether the plumbing was in good shape, whether there were termites, and so on. His decision was based solely on the fact that he liked the house. For this reason his decision to buy the house was incogent and, thus, his act was objectively wrong. c) The third example is about Mr. Wright, an intelli­ gent young college student who has a burning desire to try LSD. He has read all the literature he could obtain on the

The Righ t

25

subject and knows that if a person has schizophrenic tend­ encies the drug may actualize them. Fearful lest he make a mistake, he consults a psychiatrist who tells him that he does have schizophrenic tendencies and advises him strongly against using LSD. Later he is invited to a party at which people will be taking LSD, and, even though he realizes that accepting the invitation would be the wrong thing for him to do, he gives way to his desire, accepts the invitation, goes to the party, and takes LSD. Mr. Wright knew at the time that what he did was the objectively wrong thing for him to do, and because he knew this and still did it, his act was both objectively and subjectively wrong. It should be noted that even though Mr. Smith's house eventually collapses, Mr. Jones' stands forever, and Mr. Wright suffers no adverse effects from his experience, the nature of their respective acts is in no way altered. Such sit­ uations merely demonstrate that the consequences which we justifiedly expect are not always the actual consequences of an act. We must not assume on the basis of these examples that subjective rightness has no role to play in ethical theory. The concept of subjective rightness is important; it is on this basis that we assign praise and blame to a doer. An act is subjectively right and objectively wrong if the doer fails to consider relevant data and/or fails to think consistently, that is, if he fails to be cogent in his thinking. It must be noted, however, that Whatever is, by reason of such negligence or incogency, overlooked or not forseen correctly, is not intended; our intentions in doing are confined to what we expect as result of the act. And an act is subjectively right if it is done with the inten tion to bring about good results. 1 5

But not all subjectively right acts are free from blame. For although subjective rightness is the criterion we accept in approving or blaming ourselves and others for what is deliberately done . . . [there is the]

1s Lewis, Man uscripts, Foundations, Lecture II, p. 52.

26

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

possible qualification that sometimes we regard failure to think or to think cogently [CR], as itself blameworthy .16

We praise or blame the doer of an action on the basis of the subjectively right, because different people have different capacities to be consistent and cogent and even the same person in certain circumstances cannot be as consistent and cogent as he can in others. If an immediate decision is called for, for example, there may be no time for delibera­ tion. To say that an act is right to do is to say that it is obj ec­ tively right. This is not to say, however, that men always do the objectively right act. As Lewis notes, man's inability al­ ways to do the obj ectively right act is " a universal human characteristic," a descriptive fact. "And if it were not for his fallibility, the imperatives he acknowledges would not be imperatives but descriptive generalizations of his behavior." 17 There would be no need for the study of eth­ ics; the right and the imperative would be descri ptions of what people actually do. Despite the relative ability of indi­ viduals to think consistently and cogently, each individual has a responsibili ty to be as consistent and cogent as he can. One who deliberately decides an act is responsible for his deliberation-as well as his commitment taken in light of it. He is responsible for being cogent [CR] in predicting the consequences of his act-if he can be cogent [CR] . 1 8

The implication of this passage is that an act which is subjectively right for one individual may be, on the same premises of action, subj ectively wrong for another; the sec­ ond person should have known better. Subj ective rightness must be taken into account by any ethical theory which 16 Lewis, Manuscripts, Proseminar, Lecture X, "The Individual and the Social Good," also entitled "The Self-governing Individual and the Social Order," misnumbered as Lecture VIII, pp. 1-2. 11 Ibid., p . 9. 1 8 Lewis, Manuscripts, Reel III, 4/27 /62, p. 36.

The Righ t

27

deals with the problem of praise and blame: "Any adequate ethical theory must observe subjective rightness . . . be­ cause retributive judgment 1s a continuing social problem. " 19 There is a difference, however, between the question, should the doer be blamed in a given case? and, what is it right to do in a given case? In his Proseminar Lecture N ates, Lewis states that unless there be some discoverable property of particular acts, done or contemplated, which is the criterion by reference to which they are determinably right to do or not right to do, no imperative of doing could ever be applied to a particu­ lar act.20

This property is the objective rightness of actions. If there were no more to the determination of the right than subjec­ tive rightness, the following statement would be true: an act is right if, and only if, the doer thinks it right. Since "No­ body can escape knowing what he thinks at the moment it is right to do," 2 1 there would be no question of rightness that was not open to our immediate inspection as agents. Lewis' position is that acts are correctly judged to be right, or are objectively right, if the jud gm ent that they are right is cognitively right; and that they are incorrectly judged to be right, or are objectively wrong, if the judg­ ment that they are right is cognitively wrong. Since it is objective rightness that is the criterion in terms of which acts are judged to be right or wrong, it will be in terms of objective rightness that we will consider the technically, prudentially, and morally, right. 2) We shall turn now to a consideration of technically right actions. Lewis' view of technical rightness is ambigu­ ous. On the one hand, he wants to hold that acts are techni19 20 21

Lewis, The Ground, p. 51 . M anuscripts, Lecture X, p. I . Lewis, The Ground, p . 52.

28

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

cally right only if they lead to consequences which are desir­ able. Consider the following passages: The technical critiques are the simplest, since they assume some species of desirable results, and presume this general desirability of them as antecedently determined fact . . . [Their] directives are the product of past experience indicat­ ing those modes of governing technical activity which will., most reliably, produce such desirab le as against undesirable, results. 22 [An assessment of an] act as technically right turns on ap­ praisal of its consequences as instrumenta lly good-'good for' something else. In contrast, the assessment of an act as finally right or completely right must turn upon appraisal of its consequences as good in an equally final sense-the sense of 'good in itself' or 'good for its own sake.' Technical rightness is a subordinate and non-final sense of 'right' because the correlative sense of 'good'-'instrumentally good'-is a sub­ ordinate and non-final sense of 'good.' 23

These two quotes suggest that only those acts whose conse­ quences are antecedently and correctly judged to be good in some sense are to be called technically right. On the other hand, Lewis seems to hold that acts are technically right if they are correctly judged to lead to desired, as opposed to desirable, consequences. On this latter view, his position is similar to Kant's. Kant called the directives enjoining tech­ nically right acts hypothetical imperatives: if you wish to bring about y, then do x. That Lewis also held this view can be seen from the fact that in an earlier passage in the same lecture from which the second passage above was quoted, he states that "there are those exceptional kinds of skill the ex­ ercise of which will, more often than not, contravene social purposes and be the wrong thing to do.,, 24 These skills, though they may help us to achieve our desired ends, may contravene social or prudential purposes. Some examples of such skills are: the right way to steal a car, the right way to Ibid ., pp. 80-81 (italics added) . Lewis, Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture II, pp. 39-40. 24 Jbid., p. 38. 22

23

The Right

29

murder your wife, the right way to mutilate yourself, and the right way to commit suicide. On this view, then, techni­ cal judgments "are, so to say, judgments of how to accom­ plish rather than directives of what we should or should not address ourselves to bringing about, in any given case," 25 and technically right acts are acts which are justifiedly ex­ pected to enable us to accomplish that which we wish to ac­ complish, whether the consequences of the acts are instru­ mentally valuable, disvaluable, or neutral. The difference between these views reflects a distinction that Lewis was trying to draw between types of technically right acts. His attempt failed and, as a result, the meaning of 'technically right' became ambiguous. The distinction Lewis was attempting to draw is that between technically right acts which are instrumental and technically right acts which are instrumentally valuable. This distinction would correspond to the distinction he draws between the utility and the instrumental value of objects. A thing A will never be said to have extrinsic or instrumental value, unless it is meant to imply that there is some other thing B, to which it is or may be instrumental, which has intrinsic value. But we shall say that A is useful or has utility without implying any certainty that B or anything else to which A may lead has intrinsic value. 26

There seems to be no reason for not applying this distinc­ tion to actions as well as objects, since Lewis applies the other senses of 'good' to the consequences of actions and the experiences dependent upon them. If this argument is •cor­ rect, it will be necessary to redefine technical rightness in terms of usefulness or utility. So conceived, not all technically right acts will be instru­ mentally valuable, and consequently not all technically right acts will be objectively right. Only those technically 25 26

Ibid., p. 37. Lewis, An Analysis, p . 385 .

30

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

right acts that are correctly judged to be i nstrumentally val­ uable will be objectively right. By introducing the concept of obj ective rightness, we are able to make the very distinc­ tion Lewis wanted to make, namely, the distinction between those acts which are technically right and obj ectively wrong and those acts which are technically right and objectively right. It should be noted that this distinction is essenti al for Lewis' theory; for if a technically right act could not be right unless it were prudentially or morally sanctioned, then it would be a species of the prudential or moral, and not otherwise distinguishable. I t is an important fact that there may be a difference between an end desired by an agent and an end that is desirable and, thus, the pruden­ tially or morally right one for him to pursue. It follows from our discussion, then, that a technically right act is one that is useful or instrumental only. It has utility. The jud gm ent of technical rightness is an empirical j udgm ent, which states that the proposed or contemplated act will have certain consequences. The judgm ent that a technically right act will be instrumentally valuable, that is, that it is obj ectively right, is another and different empiri­ cal j udgm ent. 3) An act is prudentially right if its consequences will contribute to the maximization of value in the doer's life. The answer to the question " 'How can you know what i t is [prudentially] right to do?' . . . [is, that you know] by know­ ing what choice of action will result i n experience having the greater contributory value." 27 A prudentially right act is, therefore, one that is also obj ectively right. A j udgm ent that an act is prudentially right is a combination of empiri­ cal j udgments: that the act will have certain consequences, that the consequences will have value, that the value they have will contribute to the value of the agent's whole life, that their contribution will be greater than th at of the con­ sequences of any alternative action, etc. Lewis, Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture III, "Doubts about Eth­ ics," p. 70. 27

Th e Right

31

As Lewis points out: The definitive nature of prudence-our concept of prudence -is exhibited and delineated by the maxim of prudence: So act as to maximize your possible realizations of the good, as against the bad, in your life as a whole. 28

Or, as the maxim is stated in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation: "Be concerned about yourself in the future and on the whole." 2 9 The whole life with the comparatively best contributory value is, then, the end in terms of which the prudentially right is to be determined. That is what Lewis means when he states that "the criterion of pruden­ tial rightness of an act is its contribution to the doer's own good life of a value exceeding that of any alternative mode of action in the circumstances." 30 The judgment that a par­ ticular whole life is good, and the judgm ent that a particu­ lar act will result in experience having the highest contri­ butory value for that life, are both empirical. Once these empirical judgments are made, we will know what is pru­ dentially right to do. It might be objected that prudence, which dictates a con­ cern for the future, does not, as Lewis states, dictate the present concern for the whole of one's life. Lewis distin­ guishes two conepts of prudence: the first he calls "short­ term" or "short-sighted" prudence, the second "long-term" or "far-sighted" prudence.31 As far as I can tell, however, he never treated this particular problem in terms of that dis­ tinction. Perhaps he felt that it was obvious that the whole life must be considered if one were to be prudent, that, in other words, prudence and far-sighted prudence were the same thing. This seems to be the case, for he says "That the good life [and here he means the whole life] represents 2s Manuscripts , Foundations, Lecture IV, "An Attempted Answer,"

p. 100.

29 P. 481. ao Manuscripts, Proseminar, Lecture X, p. 4. 3 1 Manuscripts, Proseminar, Lecture XI, "The Social Contract and the Good Will," p. I 7.

32

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

the summum bonum is . . . not to be argued." 32 Whether Lewis is correct or not, Mary Mothersill, in an article enti­ tled "Lewis as Moral Philosopher," argues just this point. She admits that at a certain stage of individual development prudence does become obligatory; but despite this fact, she claims that prudence admits of degrees; beyond the level of survival, one may be concerned about the future to a greater or lesser extent. Some people think prudence is a virtue, even the highest virtue ; others think not. This is a practical issue on which one could take sides and taking a side would mean approving a certain way of educating children, commending behavior and awarding praise and blame. . . .33

There are two distinct questions raised in this passage. The first relates to prudence: does it admit of degrees? The sec­ ond asks whether prudence is the highest virtue. The second question will be considered in Chapter IV. The impor­ tant question here is the first, does prudence admit of de­ grees? Lewis believed the answer to it was No. Before we consider this question, we must understand what the expression 'degrees of prudence' means. In using this expression, Mothers-i ll conveys the idea that we can be more prudent or less prudent. If this means that we can be concerned about our welfare to a greater or lesser degree, and thus act prudently all the time or only some of the time, this is a tenable position. It would be clearer, how­ ever, to say of the individual who acted prudently all the time that he was prudent, and of the individual who acted prudently only some of the time that he was prudent some of the time and imprudent the rest of the time. If, on the other hand, 'degrees of prudence' refers to our ability to be prudent, then the distinction could be made in terms of subjectively right prudential acts and objectively right pru­ dential acts. These, however, do not appear to be the senses in which Lewis, An Analysis, p. 483. sa Unpublished (1959) , p. 27.

32

The Right

33

Mothersill is using the expression. She seems to be using 'de­ grees of prudence' to contrast at least two conceptions of prudence. The first -conception states that insofar as we are prudent we are concerned for the immediate future, what might be called the short-term satisfaction, or for that part of our life which is of immediate concern for us. The second conception of prudence is that of concern for the future in the long run, long-term satisfaction, or for the whole of one's life. Mothersill's use of the word 'degrees' suggests that she believes that there are an infinite number of alternatives between these views, namely, that one's concern could be for the next year, or the next two years, and so on. This in­ terpretation also seems to follow from her claim that "one may be concerned about the future to a greater or lesser extent." 34 Given this interpretation of 'degrees of pru­ dence,' the point of Mothersill's criticism is, why should one be concerned for the whole of his life when it is perfectly consistent with prudence that he be concerned about only the immediate future or the next two years? Mothersill's contention that there is no way to choose be­ tween these different conceptions of prudence is tenable only if we refuse to grant the cognitive and empirical valid­ ity of judgments of contributory value. Once we grant that contributory value is the value upon which decisions to do ought to be based, the conclusion that the whole life must be taken into account is valid. The concept of contributory value stated in its most restrictive form is that the value of any experiential whole, however short and however proxi­ mate, is made up of ordered intrinsic values and that it is on the basis of how these ordered values are related to one another that we decide whether the experience as an experi­ ential whole is comparatively valuable. Lewis argues that it is only in terms of contributory value so conceived that we can make a justified judgment of the value of an experien­ tial whole. To support Lewis' claim that prudence dictates 84

[bid.

34

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

concern for the whole life, all that we must do is to show that the whole of life is an experiential whole. To do this, we will consider the relation of experiential wholes to one another. It is clear that any value attaching to an experien­ tial whole (let us call it EW1) could be altered if the imme­ diately following experiential whole (EW2) were to be dis­ valuable to the point of disaster or valuable to the point of ecstasy. This is because EW1 and EW2 together constitute an experiential whole of, perhaps, a different order EW". EWa would then be subject to the same critique of contrib­ utory value for it would be followed by EW b and, together with EW b , would form an experiential whole EWab, and so on. The argument presented here also applies to any experi­ ential whole, EWn composed of the experiential wholes EW1, EW2, . . . , EWn. This argument demonstrates that no experiential whole which is preceded or followed by other experiential wholes can be evaluated properly unless the as­ sessment takes the contributory values of all the experiential wholes as they are ordered into acount; that, in other words, the whole of one's life is an experiential whole and must be evaluated as such. This argument, although not presented by Lewis, is certainly consistent with his views. We have argued here that this argument is valid. If we are correct, then the burden of proof rests upon anyone who would wish to challenge our conclusion. But what kind of reasons could be given for saying that one experiential whole could not be affected, through contributory value, by a later one? Would not such a reason be tantamount to a denial of con­ tributory value? And would not failure to take the next ex­ periential whole into account be tantamount to inviting disaster and, for this reason, imprudent? In conclusion, then, if judgm ents of contributory value are justified and the imperative of prudence to be concerned about oneself in the future is actually an imperative, then it is imperative that one's concern extend to his whole life. 4) Moral rightness is the most complex mode of right­ ness. The morally right must take into account the other

The Right

35

modes of rightness. To be able to judge that acts are mor­ ally right, however, we must first have in mind the end at which morally right acts aim . The good correlative with the morally right is social value-value as it accrues to all i ndi­ viduals affected by the consequences of an act. The judg­ ment that the consequences of an act will be socially valua­ ble requires, as we have seen, an empathetic imagination, and, like j udgments of prudential and technical rightness, is an empirical j udgment. Social value, then, is the criterion i n terms of which actions are judged to be morally right. For this reason, no action can be judged to be morally right unless it is also judged to be obj ectively right and the value character of its consequences affect more than one person. This last restriction is based upon the fact that the question of social value and, thus, moral rightness does not arise for an i ndividual living entirely alone. The question that immediately arises is whether Lewis is committed, by his claim that the maximization of social value is the cri terion in terms of which actions are judged to be morally right, to the view that all our actions must aim at bringing about the greatest good of the greatest number. According to Charles A. B aylis, the answer to this question is Yes. Baylis claims that "Lewis's view is essentially an agathistic u tilitarian one, wi th strong hedonistic overtones." 3 5 The good correlative with the morally right, on this view, would be the greatest good of the greatest number. In accord with this claim, Baylis states that the cri­ tique of moral rightness is, for Lewis, the final critique and that it rests on understanding the meaning of 'right.' Where action is called for and we are hesitating between possible alternatives, we ask ourselves which act we would be most justified in doing. Merely to be told to do X does not justify our doing it. But if we know that X is right with higher probability than we know any alternative to have, then we are justified in choosing and doing X. Justification 3 5 Charles A. Baylis, "C. I. Lewis's Theory of Value and Ethics," The Journal of Philosophy, LXI (1 964) , p. 564.

36

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

arises not from imperatives but from knowledge. And knowl­ edge of rightness requires a priori knowledge of the meaning of 'right'; e.g., an act is right if and only if no possible alternative, on the available evidence, is probably more wor­ thy of preference. 36

There are two points in this last quotation with which there will probably be no dispute. The first is that in most cases "merely to be told to do X does not justify our doing it," and the second is that it is true that "knowledge of rightness requires a priori knowledge of the meaning of 'right' . . . . " Nevertheless, as an interpretation of Lewis' theory, the im­ plication that the only valid imperatives are grounded on empirical knowledge is wrong. According to Lewis, there are two distinct questions to be answered: (1) What is it morally right to do? and (2) Why is it imperative to do that which is judged to be morally right? Baylis seems to be claiming that for Lewis the answer to the first question is also a satisfactory answer to the second. Although it is necessary to consider Lewis' answers to these questions in greater detail, it may be well to note two statements from A n A nalysis of Knowledge and Valuation in which Lewis explicitly denies the position claimed for him by Baylis. The supposition . . . that determination of the highest social values to be derived from objective values, resolves forthwith the problems of ethics, would be indicative of an oversimpli­ fied conception of those problems, and unwarranted on sev­ eral counts.37

And, Final imperatives belong to ethics, and no valuation is un­ qualifiedly final until it is subjected to the ethical critique. In that sense, our discussions in this book concern those prob­ lems of empirical fact which have the status of prolegomena to ethics. 38 Ibid., p. 567. P. 55 1 . 38 P. 540.

36

37

The R igh t

37

In the final analysis, Baylis' interpretation rests on his claim that Lewis' ethical theory is utilitarian. The final refutation of this claim will come in Chapter IV. The material to be presented in this and the next chapter will be, in part, a prolegomenon to that refutation. The question to which we must address ourselves here is: what was Lewis' conception of the morally right-what types of actions, on his view, will maximize the social good? Lewis' answer is that only if individuals pursue co-operative ends in certain areas and their own prudential ends in others, can the social good be best served. Lewis argues, in effect, that that society is morally good in which each indi­ vidual can maximize the value of his whole life, and that this is possible only in a human society. The question to which we must address ourselves is, then, what makes a so­ ciety human? Only if we answer this question can we have a proper understanding of social value. Its answer, according to Lewis, is to be found in the peculiar nature of man; man as a being who thinks and acts. He states in Our Social In­ heritance that "There is nothing which is distinctive of the human mentality nor any significant phenomenon of the so­ cial organization which is not implicated with the fact of man's capacity for self-direction and self-government." 39 What is so implicated is, of course, a different question and one which must be answered. Lewis' answer is formulated in two closely related arguments. The first, an empirical comparison between humans and other animals, is presented in Our Social Inheritance. We shall briefly review this argument. Man differs biologically from other animals in two major respects: he has hands and he has a more complex nervous system. His hands enable him to deal with and alter his environment more efficiently than most other animals, but it is his nervous system that finally distinguishes him from animals such as the ape or chimpanzee. His nervous system, being more complex, mul39

(Bloomington , Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1 957) , p. 77.

38

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

tiplies the possibilities of doing and responding, and gives rise to imagination, foresight, and thinking. In addition, man is able to devise a language with which he can commu­ nicate not only that which is present or immediately im­ pending, but also that which is future, and that which is past. By means of this language, he is able to communicate ideas and thoughts to others. This enables him to learn by being told, in addition to learning by acting. Man, being thus capable of learning from others, develops a vast and ever-increasing store of knowledge. Though this knowledge is passed on and learned by individuals, it is the product of social organization and is thus called by Lewis our social memory or our social inheritance. This knowledge facili­ tates action and provides the data upon which man bases his judgments of future fact. His action and his thinking are both self-criticizable in terms of this data, that is, in terms of his past experience and the past experiences of his fellows and those who have gone before. This social inherit­ ance of ideas sets man apart from all other animals. Another major difference between man and other ani­ mals is that he, being capable of prevision, can overrule in­ stinctive behavior. He governs his life by viewing the future in terms of the past and is thus able to control his value findings effectively. Through co-operation with others and the application of his vast store of knowledge, man can also increase the range of good and bad in his experience. Co-operation among humans, although probably origi­ nally instinctive, differs from co-operation among other ani­ mals; the social order and co-operation that eventually developed in human society ceased to be biologically neces­ sary. Each man is capable of pursuing his own ends to the detriment, as well as the benefit, of the community; co-oper­ ation, thus, has to become deliberate. It is man's biological make-up which enables him to ad­ vance and progress and, in the process, to change his social organization. These changes in human society eventually re­ sult in changes in the living habits of individual men. The

The Righ t

39

cumulative effect of all changes brought about is what Lewis calls social evolution. It should be evident that social evolution is not brought about by the society but by the in­ dividuals in it. It is through individual initiative that new ideas and new ways of doing things are introduced into the social group. "There is no slightest conquest in human his­ tory which is due to anything but the thinking of autono­ mous individual thinkers. By language, what any individual learns may become a common possession of all." 40 It is es­ sential if the society is to evolve that individuals be able to pursue their own ends through their own initiative. Lewis likens a society in which men would be prevented from ex­ ercising their own initiative to that of an ant or bee colony; there would be no progress, merely constant repetition of the past. But if the individual is responsible and essential for the evolution of human society, human society is respon­ sible and essential for individual development. The individ­ ual would not be able to advance beyond a primitive life if it were not for the established mores, which regulate the so­ ciety, and the inheritance of ideas, which provides the indi­ vidual with the data he needs to pursure his own interests most satisfactorily. On the basis of this analysis, Lewis claims that free or au­ tonomous individuals are necessary for the evolution of so­ ciety. Freedom in this sense is not merely that liberty which consists in the absence of compulsion or constraint imposed by others but, more broadly, in the scope of the concrete possibilities open to the individual for realizing ends which will satisfy his will. 41

This is freedom to think and freedom to act. Its basis 1s "man's capacity for self-direction and self-government," 42 and it is the basis of human progress and social organiza­ tion. Freedom is the independence of the individual from Lewis, Manuscripts, Proseminar, Lecture X, p. 24. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, p. 54. 42 /bid., p. 77. 40

41

40

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

the social group, "but the freedom he enjoys will include much which can only accrue to him through the attain­ ments of his social order and by reason of its legacy from the past." 43 Lewis' point here is that although the social or­ ganization is dependent upon the freedom of the individ­ ual, the individual's own good is dependent upon the social organization. As he states in his Proseminar Lecture Notes: It is by individual freedom of thought, and respect for the individual in his own initiative of self-criticism, that human society has become human instead of an ant colony. On the other hand, the human individual is human only by participation in a human society. The social historical process has made him what he is, and offers the only opportu­ nity he has for what he may achieve and what he may become. Separate him from the social . . . process, and he must return to the Old Stone Age, or to the level of ape-liv­ ing . . . . He is what he is and may realize any value that he individually cherishes only as he meets the conditions of membership in a social order of individuals cooperating in the pursuit of values cherished in common.44

The conclusion of this first argument is, then, that only in a society such as Lewis depicts can men achieve "the highest good of all," which is "essential to all other goods save only those of sheer good fortune," namely, the "freedom progres­ sively to achieve self-chosen goals . . . ." 45 Lewis' second approach to the question, what is impli­ cated by "man's capacity for self-direction and self­ government"? 46 involves an appeal to empirical fact and to the fallacy of composition. Man's self-governing capacity is important only insofar as it enables him to avoid the bad and bring about the good in experience. There is no experi­ ence of good or bad other than that realized by individuals. To argue otherwise is to commit the fallacy of composition, 43

Ibid., p. 54.

45

Our Social Inheritance, pp. 54--55.

44

46

Manuscripts, Lecture X, pp. 24-25. Ibid,, p. 77.

The Right

41

a fallacy Lewis attributes to idealistic ethical theories. Lewis is not arguing that there is no thing of value in such idealis­ tic theories, but rather that they fail because they do not take the good and bad in individual experience into ac­ count. He states that the Absolute of idealistic ethics is a romantic fictionalization of the spiritual but practical fact of the human community of rational purposes. But these purposes end in values realizable in individual human lives. . . . the only valid aims of ethics are predictable ones-the rest we leave to the unknown God who may bring about whatever we cannot predict and so can have no duty to work for. . . . There are no good ends to be realized save values capable of realization in individual lives. The community has no central consciousness in which to enjoy and suffer.47

To treat the community as an individual is to make each in­ dividual human a thing in the service of a non-existent en­ tity. The result of such a conception will be the destruction of the individual. How horrid Transcendental abstractionism may become, we should now observe when it is given the perverse twist which results from the unholy marriage of Orientalism and materi­ alism: the individual life counts for nothing against the realization of the ideal community. For that, no individual sacrifice, whether personal existence or integrity of personal­ ity, is too great. 48

The point is that to the extent that any community fails to recognize that value is found only in the experiences of its constituents, it fails to consider the social value or the com­ munity interest. There is no community aside from the in­ dividuals who comprise it and there is no value at which a moral community can rationally and practically aim save those to be realized in the compo47 Manuscripts, Proseminar, Lecture X, p. 16. ,s Ibid.

42

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

nent real lives of individuals. The community is a collectiv­ ity, and the abstract Society is an idol not even made in the image of any God which rational men can worship or could serve.49

The value realized in any individual life is that of a life found good in the living of it. And the living of a life is something only an individual can do. The prerequisite to individual value is freedom. Thus, we are led once again to the conclusion that the morally right society is one in which each man is an autonomous individual, free to realize his own ends in co-operation with others. This, claims Lewis, is the only type of society in which the individual is capable of realizing goodness. A good society is one in which the indi­ vidual is free to realize his prudential aims; and it is to each individual's advantage to co-operate in the maintenance of such a society. The two arguments presented both lead to the conclusion that the prudential aims of individuals and the social aims of a society, rather than being divergent and incompatible, are, when viewed correctly, correlative and co-extensive. For if one should ask "What is it that is most indispensable to the individual good of any human?" the readiest and most plausi­ ble answer must be, "The privilege of living in a good human society, profiting from its spiritual inheritance of ideas, and sharing its co-operative institutions, preserved and furthered by its mores." 50

But, on the other hand, if any community asks itself "What is it that is most indispen­ sable to our on-going life, to the distinctive character of the life we share, the source of all we cherish, and the hope of all further social achievement?" then the discerning answer is, "The fact that our social order is composed of autonomous individuals capable of thinking and learning otherwise than by being told, and subject to his [sic. : their] own self-criticism 49

50

Ibid.

Manuscripts, Proseminar, Lecture X, p. 25.

The Right

43

and the ultimate authority of his [sic.: their] own self-govern­ ment in action." If we suppress that self-governing initiative, we destroy that only root from which all we possess has come to be and from which alone can spring any social advance to be hoped for in the future. 51

I t i s important to note that only in a society such as Lewis depicts could there be any metaethical inquiry. Once basic principles become static and sanctioned by the society, the only inquiry possible is one into the nature of the applica­ tion of the accepted and sanctioned princi pies. This is the case, for example, in any rigid religion-the basic principles are not questioned. The conclusion to be drawn from these two arguments is that sometimes autonomous actions directed to individual prudential ends are morally right, and that sometimes co­ operative actions directed toward communi ty ends are mor­ ally right. The cri terion in terms of which we are to decide which acts, autonomous or co-operative, are morally right and to be allowed, commanded, or forbidden in any partic­ ular drcumstances is comparative social value . If allowing all to pursue their own prudential interests will maximize the social value, then i t is morally right to allow them to do so. If, on the other hand, commanding co-operative activi­ ties or forbidding autonomous activi ties will maximize the social value, then it is morally right to do so. It is, then, on the basi s of moral rightness that we are to determine under what condi tions or in which types of situations we should pursue our prudential interests. Presented in this way, Lewis' theory does appear to be a form of utili tarianism. His posi tion seems to be that if for­ bidding, comm anding, or permi tting certain actions or types of actions would maximize the social value-or, in other words, maximize the value in the lives of the members of a society-then these actions or types of actions ought to be forbidden, commanded, or permi tted, respectively. On 51

Ibid., pp. 25-26.

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THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

this interpretation, it is not difficult to see why Baylis be­ lieves Lewis was a utilitarian. Baylis' claim that Lewis' utili­ tarianism was agathistic "with strong hedonistic overtones" is also easy to understand; it rests on Lewis' insistence that the maximization of social value depends, to a great extent, upon allowing individual members of a community to pur­ sue their own prudential interests. These considerations, and the fact that Baylis' interpretation of Lewis' theory of the right appears to be valid, do not necessarily mean that Baylis offered a correct interpretation of Lewis' ethical the­ ory. In fact, our considerations in the following chapters will show that while Baylis offers a correct interpretation of Lewis' analysis of the right, he fails to understand Lewis' analysis of ethical principles; that, in other words, he fails to realize that the moral imperative and the other rational imperatives are not a form of knowledge. In this chapter we have discussed Lewis' theory of the right. We have argued that judgm ents that actions are objectively right, technically right, prudentially right, or morally right, are empirical judgm ents and that the deter­ mination of rightness depends upon the antecedent mean­ ing of 'right' expressed in terms of cognitive rightness. In the next chapter we will investigate the relation between the right and the imperative, the different senses in which acts may be said to be imperative, the ground of impera­ tives, and the nature of the rational imperatives.

CHAPTER I I I

Imperatives That which it is right to do is determined emp1n­ cally. N o act is prudentially or morally right if it is not also objectively right or thought to be so. Any act that is cor­ rectly j udged to be objectively right is for that reason im­ perative. As Lewis notes, "whatever is justly valued calls to be realized or maintained" 1 in experience, and "that to which value-terms [correctly] apply is always characterized by something holding an imperative for action." 2 If it is asked, what is the force of this imperative? the answer that must be given is, our desire to bring about the good and avoid the bad in experience. The truth of the statement that we have such desires is de terminable empirically. The imperative to do that which is obj ectively right is, therefore, what Kant called a hypothetical imperative : if you desire to bring about E, then do the obj ectively right act whose con­ sequences include or are E. The force that impels us to ad­ here to this imperative is our desire to bring about the good in experience, and the force that constrains us from doing that which is obj ectively wrong is our desire to avoid the bad in experience. As Lewis notes : "To be rational, instead of foolish or perverse, means to be capable of constraint by prevision of some fu ture good or ill ; to be amenable to the consideration, 'You will be sorry if you don't,' or 'if you do.' " 3 Lewis' view, then, is that it is our desire to bring An Analysis, p. 439. fbid., p. x. a Ibid., p. 480. 1

2

46

THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

about the good and avoid the bad in experience that is the primary force of the imperative to do that which is objec­ tively right. If the good we wish to bring about is our own good, then it is the prudentially right act that is imperative; if, on the other hand, we are seeking to bring about the good of the members of our society, the social good, then that act which is morally right is imperative. The claim that this is Lewis' final position in ethics, how­ ever, creates certain difficulties. It would mean that he was committed to the position that if what most of us would call an unjust act or practice, such as slavery, would maximize the social value-an end, let us assume, which is morally right-then it would be imperative to adopt it. It would also mean that he was committed to the position that if the murder of one's in-laws (or anyone else for that matter) would maximize the value of an individual's whole life, then it would be prudentially imperative for that individ­ ual to commit the murder. The difficulty with this position is that it sanctions, or could sanction, situations or states of affairs that we would agree were unjust or immoral. The fact is that it was exactly such conclusions which Lewis sought to avoid. His reason for presenting an analysis of valuation and a theory of the right based upon it was to separate them as empirical inquiries from the final ethical critique. Such a separation or distinction is essential, he claimed, because actions whose consequences would create an unjust state of affairs, while they may be right to do be­ cause they will maximize the social value, could not be morally imperative. What is needed, he argued, is unquali­ fied and independently grounded imperatives that state the criteria in terms of which objectively right actions are to be judged finally imperative in any of the four modes already distinguished. If there were such independent imperatives, then although everything justly valued would hold an im­ perative for action, this imperative would be qualified and ultimately subject to the unqualified or rational impera­ tives. The rational imperatives would then constitute the

Imperatives 47 ethical critique. Lewis had this view clearly in mind when he wrote An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, as can be seen from the following passages: the most nearly final kind of valuation of an object (or an action], which comes nearest to indicating an unqualified imperative for rational action, is valuation of a thing [or an action] as eventually contributory to some satisfaction in some whole life or lives. Final imperatives belong to ethics, and no valuation is un­ qualifiedly final until it is subjected to the ethical critique.4

Actions that are objectively right are, therefore, only quali­ fiedly imperative, and the unqualified imperatives, the uni­ versal rational imperatives, must have a gound that is inde­ pendent of any empirical considerations. It is Lewis' position "that the [unqualified] imperative­ ness of what is [unqualifiedly] imperative is not the same fact as the value of it; and that the value of it is not what constitutes its [unqualified] imperativeness. . . ." 5 It must be noted that although the value of the consequences of an act does not constitute its unqualified imperativeness, no act can be unqualifiedly imperative unless it is objectively right -unless it is justifiably expected to lead to valuable conse­ quences. Lewis' position is, then, that "it is the good aimed at which makes the right right," that is, qualifiedly imperative; 6 not that it is the good aimed at which makes the right unqualifiedly imperative. On this interpretation, the answer to the question, Ought I, is it unq ualifiedly im­ perative that I, do that which it is right to do?, is, "'Not al­ ways." It is unqualifiedly imperative that we never do any­ thing that is objectively wrong, but it is not unqualifiedly imperative that we do everything that is objectively right. 5

P. 540 . Manuscripts, Proseminar, Lecture VIII, "Modes o f Evaluation," p .

6

Ibid., p. 8.

4

12.

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THE ETI-IICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IR VING LEWIS

Although in context Lewis' usage is usually clear, he uses 'right' ambiguously. As we have seen, an act is prudentially or morally right if it is objectively right and will maximize the value of the doer's whole life or will maximize the social value, respectively. This sense of 'right,' which was distin­ guished in the preceding chapter, is its evaluative sense, and it holds an imperative for action. In saying that the "good aimed at . . . makes the right right" 7 what Lewis is claim­ ing is that, in our terminology, it is the good aimed at that makes a right act qualifiedly imperative. An act, as we have seen, may also be judged unqualifiedly imperative or un­ qualifiedly right. In these last two cases 'right' means 'im­ perative,' but, because there are two senses in which the doing of an act may be imperative, the question, "is it im­ perative to do that which it is imperative to do?" is not al­ ways a tautology; it is only a tautology if 'imperative' is used in the same sense throughout. To distinguish these two imperative senses of 'right,' we will use the following termi­ nology: we will say that the doing of an act is qualifiedly im­ perative if it is imperative to do the act because it is objec­ tively right, and that the doing of an act is imperatively right if it is unqualifiedly imperative to do the act. To illustrate the distinction between qualified and un­ qualified imperatives, let us consider the following exam­ ples. First, let us consider an example in which an action is morally and objectively right and, thus, qualifiedly impera­ tive, and yet morally and imperatively wrong. Assume that by enslaving five per cent of the population we can create a situation in which the social value can be maximized. Using our terminology, then, the institution of slavery in such cir­ cumstances would be morally and objectively right and, thus, morally and qualifiedly imperative. The institution of slavery, however, would be unjust because it would contra­ vene what Lewis calls the unqualified moral imperative and 1

Ibid.

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thus would, in the final analysis, be morally and impera­ tively wrong, or morally and imperatively forbidden . Second, let us consider an example in which an action i s prudentially and obj ectively right, and thus prudentially and qualifiedly imperative, and yet morally and impera­ tively wrong. Assume it is the case that I want more than anything to acquire the land upon which my neighbor's house stands and that doing so will be contributory to the maximization of the value in my whole life. I can afford the land, but not the land and the house. It occurs to me that my neighbor has failed to insure his house, and if I were to set it afire he would have to sell his land in order to feed himself and his family. Assuming I am not caught and that I suffer no bad consequences from the act, such as pangs of conscience, the act, since it will contribute to the maximiza­ tion of value in my whole life, is prudentially and obj ec­ tively right and, therefore, prudentially and quali fiedly im­ perative. This fact, however, does not make the act finally and unqualifiedly imperative, because it also contravenes the moral imperative. According to Lewis, then, such an act would be morally and imperatively wrong or morally and imperatively forbidden. The exact nature of the rational imperatives, in general, and the unqualified moral imperative, in particular, is the subject of this chap ter and the next. The following discus­ sion will use the distinction we have drawn between quali­ fied and unqualified imperatives, and, at the same time, demonstrate that, and why, such a distinction is necessary for a proper understanding of Lewis' ethical theory. We must turn now to a consideration of the rational or unqualified imperatives. These imperatives cannot be based on knowledge because j udgments of validi ty, cogency, and consistency are themselves normative j udgm ents. There could be no knowledge if there were not correct and ration­ ally imperative ways of coming to conclusions; that is, if there were no antecedent criteria in terms of which state-

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ments are to be judged to be true or false and by which ar­ guments are to be judged to be correct or incorrect, valid or invalid. As a result, any attempt to found the unqualified imperatives of consistency and cogency on knowledge would be circular and, therefore, entirely misconceived. In specific opposition to Hume, Lewis argues that The question is not how basis of an is, but how, conviction as to objective presumption of the valid

can we validate any ought on the or whether, we can validate any matters of fact without antecedent convictions of the normative. 8

The answer to the last question is that we cannot. Without "valid convictions of the normative," there would be no dis­ tinction between knowledge and "baseless fancy." 9 Without the normative warrant, there is no science and no ground for the constraint of belief to the scientifically sup­ ported as against astrology or the reading of tea leaves. 10

If there is to be knowledge at all, it must be the case that there is an antecedent, unqualified, rational imperative to be consistent and cogent. Since judgm ents of value and rightness are forms of knowledge, they too are normative s Manuscripts, Pragmatism and the Roots of the Moral, a lecture pre­ sented to the Claremont Philosophical Discussion Group, November 5 , 195 6, Reel II, p . 3. Compare the following passage from Lewis' reply to Roderick Chisholm: "That knowing, like deliberate doing, is subject to critique, and knowledge is a normative category; that the vital func­ tion of knowledge is the normative function of guiding our activities in accord with our justified convictions and warranted expectancies; that the capacity to govern himself, in thinking and believing, and in the doing which is consequent upon it, is the distinctive capacity of the human animal; that logic and ethics represent two correlative aspects of the human critique of such self-governable procedures; that intention in doing and intension in thinking-before-doing represent the directive character of such critique, and are intrinsically connected; these convictions come near to being what I have most wanted to bring to attention to all that I have written-in logic or epistemology or ethics." (Manuscripts, " Replies To My Critics," Reel III, pp. 1 3-14.) 9 Lewis, Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p. 3. 10

Ibid., p. 4.

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and subj ect to the antecedent imperatives that establish the criteria of correctness. It is the case, therefore, that every area of our self-government-the technical, prudential, and moral, as well as the cognitive-must be governed by an an­ tecedently and independently grounded imperative, but the grounding of such imperatives must be more than a pre­ sumption. The important question is, Are there imperatives which are independently grounded and what is their ground? Lewis devoted his later years to answering this question, but the answers appearing in his published writ­ ings were never sufficiently satisfactory, because the argu­ ments provided were never developed. Our intent in this chapter is to elucidate the arguments Lewis used to ground the rational imperatives. To do this, we will draw on both his published and unpublished works. Before turning to this task, we should be completely clear about what it was Lewis was trying to do. His claim was that knowledge itself depended for its validity upon the an­ tecedent validity of the rational imperatives of consistency and cogency. Any ground provided for these imperatives, therefore, cannot include an appeal to knowledge. It is not, however, only the rational imperatives relating to the cogni­ tive that require such a ground, but also the rational imper­ atives which comprise the ethical critique-the unqualified technical, prudential, and moral imperatives. To facilitate matters, in the rest of the book we shall, generally, omit the words 'rational,' 'universal,' 'antecedent,' and 'unqualified,' and refer only to 'imperatives' ; any other use of the word 'imperative' will be appropriately modified. Although we have stated that Lewis was attempting to find an independent ground for the imperatives, this is not what he seems to be doing in his published writings. For ex­ ample, in The Groun d an d Nature of the Righ t, he states that "The ground of validity of imperatives must somehow lie in our human nature." 11 But how is this possible? If the 11

Pp. 85-86.

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ground of imperatives lies in our human nature, and our knowledge of our human nature, being empirical, rests on the antecedent validity of the imperatives of •consistency and cogency, then is this not a begging of the question? In addition, as William Frankena points out, Lewis never ex­ plicitly states what he means by 'human nature.' To be sure, it is man's rationality. This term, however, is no less ambig­ uous than the other. Frankena asks: Is "rationality" or "objectivity" the basic imperative of right because man is inevitably rational or objective? But in one sense he is inevitably only as rational and objective as he in fact is, and why then should anyone be more rational or objective than he already is? ls man inevitably rational only in the sense that being rational is one of the features that are bound to appear in men? But other attitudes and qualities are also inevitable in this sense and could as well be appealed to. Is rationality imperative for us because it is "distinctive" of man, as one or two passages suggest ([The Ground] pp. 86, 88) ? Then would not any other characteristics which hap­ pened to be distinctive, for example, laughing, also constitute the basis of a moral imperative? Or is it only that the valid moral principle is that which appeals (with a sense of neces­ sity) to some distinct attitude or drive in human nature (first or "second" nature) , for example, sympathy, a commitment to rationality, sociability, and so forth? If so, what constitutes such an element in our nature as moral rather than another? 12

These questions are raised in regard to the moral impera­ tive, but most of them are equally relevant to imperatives in general. The nature of rationality and the justification of isolating certain qualities and assigning the term 'rational' to them are central to Lewis' analysis. We shall argue that imperatives are not grounded on rationality and that Fran­ kena's questions are therefore not applicable to Lewis' posi­ tion. In addition, we will try to show that Lewis' theory provides a definition of 'rationality' in terms of the antece­ dently grounded imperatives. If we are successful, then the 12 William Frankena, "Review of The Ground and Nature of the Right," Philosophical Review, LXVI (1957), pp. 401-402.

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most significant word in Lewis' claim that "The ground of validity of imperatives must somehow lie in our human nature," 13 will be shown to be "somehow." With this introduction in mind, we must turn to Lewis' analysis. As we have reconstructed his position, Lewis presents two different arguments, each of which is designed to demonstrate the ground upon which imperatives rest, that is, the imperativeness of imperatives. In developing these arguments, our attention will be confined to the im­ peratives of consistency and cogency. The first argument Lewis calls a 'deduction'; the second he calls a reductio ad absurd um. What the grounding of imperatives requires, claims Lewis, is what "Kant called a 'deduction'; a demonstration that there are practical principles which apply to human ex­ perience because, in the absence of them, there would be no fully human experience. " 14 This is the approach he adopted in Chapter Five of The Ground and Na ture of the Right, and to which Frankena refers. Basic to human expe­ rience, claims Lewis, is the necessity for decision, for delib­ eration which will lead to deliberate action. "Refusal to de­ cide would itself be a decision." 15 This is only the case for the animal who consciously decides what he is going to do, however, not for the animal that acts on immediate impul­ ses and inclinations. It is only for an animal who so decides that there can be any question of what to do; and it is only such an animal that can be called rational. An animal who decides what he shall do decides on the basis of possible fu­ ture experience. Such a decision requires apprehension of the absent past and the absent future. This apprehension, which Lewis calls intelligence, is "contrasted with [the pres­ ent] feeling induced by the sense organs, and perhaps induc­ ing automatic response." 16 1a The Ground, pp. 85-86.

Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p. 21 . Lewis, The Ground, p. 86. 16 Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p. 23. 14

15

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Intelligence is sterile or useless unless it is used to govern action. The governing of action by the use of intelligence is rationality : "The government of behavior by what we know to be objective fact, and not according to how we feel, is the essence of what we call rationality." 17 Rationality so con­ ceived is distinctive to all creatures or beings who are capa­ ble of governing their behavior as opposed to just behaving. So far as we know, rationality is distinctive of man. Laugh­ ing may be distinctive of man also, but without the ability to laugh man would still be able to direct his life; an ani­ mal with the ability to laugh, for example, a parrot or a laughing hyena, is no further along the road, for that rea­ son, to self-conscious government than is an ant. The essen­ tial factor here is not what is distinctive to man, but what is distinctive to the type of life man leads. The answer to this is found in "man's capacity for self-direction and self­ government." 18 There are two ways in which this argument may be viewed. First, it can be seen as the result of an empirical in­ vestigation, the conclusion of which is a clear distinction be­ tween man, his way of living, and other animals. Second, it can be seen as an attempt to discover the minimal condi­ tions necessary for a being to have "fully human experience," 19 namely, the ability to govern his life and thus to be subject to rules and imperatives. The reference Lewis makes to 'deduction,' and his explanation of it, sug­ gest this second alternative as being the one he adopted. Without granting that man has the capacity to govern his thinking and behavior, that is, that he is intelligent and ra­ tional, one could never discuss, inquire into, or know any­ thing. This is a prerequisite for all our knowledge. It may be asked, Why is man subject to rules or impera­ tives merely because he governs his life? The answer is that only by generalizing from past experience to a future or 17 Ibid. i s Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, p . 77 . 19 Lewis, Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p. 21.

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present experience can he deliberately alter his environ­ ment. As Lewis states, We know how to bring about only what we can expect to happen in the present case because it is what has happened in past like instances. In consequence, a directive which failed to have such generality; failed to be of the form "In cases such and such, do so and so" would be quite impossible for any human mind to frame or utilize. We act according to some implicitly formulatable rule or we do not direct our action to foreseeable ends at all. 20

The imperative to which any self-governing being must ad­ here is to treat similar or like cases in similar or like ways, that is, be consistent. This imperative entails more than consistency, however. A being capable of self-government must also, if he is to govern his life successfully, be cogent in his thinking; that is, any assignment of objective reference he makes to respresentations must be justified. The imperatives to be cogent and consistent are not de­ rived from the fact that man is rational. They are derived, rather, from the possibility of man's rationality and are im­ perative only to the extent that man, or any particular man, is capable of adhering to them. Man need not be conceived as inevitably rational; rationality, the self-governing of be­ havior in accord with the conclusions of thought, is some­ thing that a man develops. It is imperative to be as consist­ ent and cogent as one can in one's thinking, but particular men may differ in their abilities, just as one man may differ in his ability at different periods of his life. Let us hope that the child is not as consistent or cogent as the man he later turns out to be; in fact, he does not even have an obligation to be. For the individual who does not admit the need for self-government, who acts only on the basis of immediate in­ clinations or feelings, nothing is imperative and rationality is not inevitable. If inevitable at all, intelligence and ration­ ality are inevitable in the sense of being the sine q ua non of 20

Ib id., pp. 27-28.

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knowledge, self-government, and imperatives, that is, of human life and human experience. The second approach is a kind of reductio ad absurdum. This approach is used against the Cyrenaic in A n A nalysis of Knowledge and Valuation,21 is mentioned in regard to the Cynic in The Groun d and Nature of the R ight,22 re­ ferred to in a footnote in Our Social lnheri tance, 23 and used in the Claremont Lecture, 24 but it does not have the import­ ance in any of these references that i t seems to have in the later Wesleyan Lectures. 25 In these lectures, although human nature is important and plays a role, the emphasis of the argument is not on a kind of 'deduction' but rather on a reductio ad absurdum directed against certain individ­ uals and, for this reason, on an ad hominem. The issue arises in connection wi th the skepti c who is arguing for the position that there are no valid imperatives. To so argue, states Lewis, involves the skeptic in a prag­ matic self-contradiction ; the purpose of his argument i s to convince us while at the same time he i s arguing that there is no reason to be convinced about anything. He has, in his conclusion itself, repudiated all valid impera­ tives constraining anybody to do anything, and encouraged us to think that he himself rejects constraint by any rules of right upon his conduct. Why, then, should he expect us to be abashed of our previous conviction and, in the light of his argument, give it up? 26

If it is necessary that we accept the conclusion of a well-con­ structed, valid argument, then there are imperatives. If, on the other hand, it is not necessary, then no argument could constrain us to believe either that there are imperatives or that there are no imperatives. One who acts as if there were Pp. 481-482. P. 85 . 23 P . 100. 21

22

Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p. 33. Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV. 26 Ibid., p. 92.

24 25

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such an argument would convict himself of a pragmatic self-contradiction. His statement becomes absurd or ludi­ crous and, to the extent that he takes himself and his state­ ment seriously, so does he. It is important to be clear about the exact nature of this pragmatic self-contradiction. This argument seems to be an attempt to avoi d the conclusion that the ground of impera­ tives lies in our human nature. Lewis is arguing here that there can be no logical tru th or logical con tradiction unless there is, antecedently, what he calls a pragmatic self-contra­ diction. That is, knowledge itself rests on the possibility of the pragmatic self-con tradiction. He explicitly states that such a contradiction is not a logical contradiction implied by a proposition as­ serted; instead it is an incompatibility of the predictable consequences of asserting this proposition with the presump­ tive purpose of this act of assertion. 27

To illustrate his point, Lewis offers us the example of Epi­ menides, the Cretan who is credi ted wi th having said "All Cretans are liars." This statement itself is not a logical con­ tradiction. "The paradox lies in the fact that the presump­ tive purpose of making any statement is that the hearers should believe it." 28 But the predi ctable consequences of Epimenicles' assertion is that no one will take him seriously. "If intended to induce belief," points out Lewis, "the act of asserting or im plying 'I am a liar' is an essentiaily self-frus­ trating act." 29 Such statements as Epimenides' must be distinguished from statements such as " Everything I say is false," 30 which are logical contradictions. What exactly is the nature of this distinction? Al though Lewis provides us with no answer, I Ibid., p. 94. Ibid. 2 9 Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV, pp. 94-95. ao Ibid., p. 94. 21

28

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think the following considerations will bring out his intent. Of first importance is the fact that we cannot generate a log­ ical contradiction from the statement "All Cretans are Liars" and the statement "Epimenides is a Cretan." The conclusion that can be deduced from these two statements is "Epimenides is a liar," which is a statement of fact and true or false. Second, from the statements "All Cretans are liars" and "I am a Cretan," said by Epimenides, the conclusion to be drawn is "I [Epimenides] am a liar." This conclusion is a logical contradiction, however, because it implies the state­ ment "Everything I say is false," if we mean by liar someone who never tells the truth. In syllogistic form, it would be as follows: A liar is someone whose every statement is false; I am a liar; therefore, I am one whose every statement is false. Lewis' point is that the logical contradiction is what Epi­ menides is actually implying, but the fact that he does not explicitly state it keeps his statement from being a logical contradiction and makes it merely a self-frustrating state­ ment. The reason why it is self-frustrating is that the hearer brings to the situation the knowledge that Epimenides is a Cretan and that when someone makes a statement his pre­ sumptive purpose is that it be believed. For the hearer, the statement is a self-contradiction in the context of the situa­ tion in which it was asserted. He must then assume that ( l ) Epimenides is joking, or (2) he is serious and doesn't real­ ize what he has said and has thus made a slip of some kind, or (3) he realizes what he has said but thinks it will accom­ plish the purpose of convincing his hearers. In the first case, he is to be applauded; in the second, excused; but in the third, he is to be accounted a fool, in the literal sense of that word. In the same way, anyone who should assert or imply that there is no valid imperative to be logical, consistent, cogent, similarly gives notice that nothing he says is to be regarded as governed by any intention to adhere to the cogent and believable, and to avoid what is fallacious and warrants no credence. And he also gives notice that either he misreads his own nature or

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there is no reason to consider his conclusion seriously on the ground of his advancing or arguing for them. 31

In arguing that there is no criterion by which to evaluate an argument as right or wrong, one cannot claim his argument right or wrong, or valid or invalid, without repudiating his own conclusion. One who would claim that there is no prin­ ciple by which thought can be self-governed would be equally guilty of a pragmatic self-contradiction. He would implicitly be claiming that his principle was the principle by which thought should be self-governed. As we have seen, essential for the self-governing of thought, or deliberation, is the adherence to the Rule of In­ duction : treat all similar cases similarly. Or, more generally, self-government of thought entails the adherence to prin­ ciples or rules, and a rule is by definition a principle that applies equally to all cases which fall under it. The formal requirements of being a rule are universality and imperson­ ality. Let us return to Lewis' statement "either he misread his own nature." 32 It warrants attention, for it directs us to the fact that this approach, like the first, appeals to facts about the common nature of man wh ich are open to all of us in a reflective examination of the kind of creatures we are, and which I think that any such examina­ tion which is judicious must compel us to recognize as a truth about ourselves. The reductio ad absurdum which proceeds by exposing an implicit pragmatic contradiction must, in the end, appeal to such self-consciousness of active and self-gov­ erning creatures. 33

The use, in this passage, of such terms as "judicious," " com­ pel," and "facts about the common nature of man" should cause some consternation. How are we compelled? By what? What are the criteria we should use to determine whether our reflective examination is judicious or not? How are we 31 32 33

Ibid., p. 95. Ibid.

Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV, pp. 1 1 1-1 12.

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to discover a common human nature merely through intro­ spection? If, as we have said, this approach is designed to avoid appealing to facts that depend for their validity upon imperatives, how can we reconcile the first sentence of this quote with the argument presented? These questions depend for their answers upon the na­ ture of self-consciousness. To be able reflectively and judi­ ciously to examine the kind of creature I am, to be com­ pelled by imperatives to govern my activities in any way whatsoever, I must first be conscious of myself. Self-con­ sciousness, the awareness of oneself, requires deliberation or consideration of that of which one is aware. To be conscious of oneself is itself proof that one is capable of activity, at least mental activity. I submit that Lewis' point in the last quote is something like this : no one could possibly make the statement "I am not conscious of myself" without in­ volving himself in a pragmatic self-con tradiction, because the very acts of saying something aloud or to oneself or of inspecting, in any way, one's own consciousness are self-gov­ erned and thus self-conscious activities. Any being who is capable of denying this must be actually governing his own behavior. His denial is, therefore, pragmatically self-contra­ dictory. The imperativeness of im peratives rests, then, on the self­ consciousness of the individual. A being who is not capable of being self-conscious is not subj ect to pragmatic self-con­ tradiction and thus not subject to imperatives_ It may be ob­ jected that Lewis introduces his lecture with a statemen t which contradicts this in terpretation, namely : all the different senses of 'right' and 'wrong' have a ground in common ; that this ground lies, on the one side, i n facts about the way the world is and, on the oth er, in the nature of man as an active being, capable of sel f-government, and one who determines whatever he does deliberately by reference to what he thinks, and what he expects as consequences of what he chooses to do. 34 34

Ibid., pp. 87-88 .

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I take it, however, that what he means is that although the nature of the different evalua tive senses of right, the cogni­ tive, technical, prudential, and moral, rest upon factual consideria tions, the final imperatives, far from resting on empirical knowledge, rest finally on the pragmatic self-con­ tradiction and thus on a reduct io ad absurdum and an ad hominem. The nature of consistency is not determinable until we begin to govern our lives and learn about the world. It is from experience that we learn that to be incon­ sistent is to thwart our purposes, whether they be merely in­ tellectual or also practical . It is through experience and knowledge of our world and ourselves that such concepts as consistency, cogency, and rule become developed; that we learn to use the Rule of Induction instead of the Rule of In­ verse Induction . It is also, as we have seen, through experi­ ence that we come to know men have a common nature-a fact which is essential to the moral imperative. It is possible to obj ect to Lewis' analysis by claiming that in fact we are not self-directing and self-governing beings at all. Our every act is determi ned ; we are not free to decide, thi nk, or deliberate. As a resul t, there are no imperatives which govern our actions, merely descri ptions. If it is imper­ ative for us to do or think anything, the obj ection con­ tinues, it is imperative only in the sense that it is deter­ mined. So far as I can tell, Lewis does not raise this issue in this context, nor does he specifically answer it. I n his manu­ scri pts, however, there are some pages devoted to the topic of free will. His method of answeri ng such an obj ection seems to be, first, to grant the plausibility of the assertion that we are determined or predestined in some sense, psy­ chologically and/or physiologically; and then to argue that even if this were the case, it could make no practical differ­ ence as long as we believed, or though t, that we had free will . A creature which can even suppose himse lf free, is free. That is, a creature whose every act is psychologically predestined,

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but who thinks of himself in his present situation as being able to choose, or having to choose, must "make up his mind." He can choose; in fact, he must choose. Whether what he is going to choose is predestined, already on its way to being chosen, is beside the point. It will happen by way of his choosing; and right now he is choosing, and must choose, because he doesn't already know what it is which he is going to choose, and will only find out when he has made up his mind. His choosing is real choosing. . . . 35

Neither of Lewis' arguments, the 'deduction' or the re­ ductio ad absurdum, is deductive. If he had offered a deduc­ tive proof, he would have been guilty of a petitio prin cipii. As he points out, there is no proof for what is most general, most comprehensive in its scope, most nearly ultimate, concerning any topic . . . unless by some manner of observation or some reductio ad absurdum of denying it. And though it may not have been generally remarked, it is nevertheless the fact that even such proof by the method of reductio ad absurdum, whe n addressed to ultimates, must be, in a queer kind of way, a begging of the question. 36

What does he mean when he claims his second argument must be guilty in a "queer kind of way" of begging the question? Lewis uses logic as an example to illustrate the point he has in mind. The only way to prove any first prin­ ciple of logic is to show that the contradiction of such a principle is itself a contradictory statement. But to do this one would have to use the principles of logic themselves. One who denied the validity of logic could never be con­ vinced that logic was valid merely by showing him that his position was logically incogent. Lewis' claim seems to be that any attempt to ground im­ peratives must be as circular as an attempt to ground the Lewis, Man uscripts, Reel II, p. nn., after page headed "Kant Free "\iVill." Compare Lewis' position with David P. Gauth ier's in his article " How Decisions Are Caused" in The Journal of Philosophy, LXIV ( 1 9 67) , pp . 1 47-151 . 36 Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV, pp. l l 3-114 . 35

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first principles of logic. Within logic or a system of impera­ tives this is surely the case, but the example he gives does not make the nature of the alleged circularity inherent in the reductio ad absurdum clear. Logical principles them­ selves depend upon the imperative of consistency and, thus, upon a pragmatic contradiction. The 'proof' of their valid­ ity must therefore be as circular as the 'proof' of the validity of imperatives; if we were to understand the circularity in one case, we would understand it in both. It appears as if Lewis' problem is that he cannot escape the conclusion that "there is no final proof of the validity of any species of norms except by appeal to what is involved in being human, and an active, self-governing being," 37 and that when he attempts to define 'humanity' and 'self-govern­ ing,' he discovers that he must define them in terms of rules and imperatives, that is, in terms of norms. If this is the case, his argument certainly is circular and not in any queer way. This may not have been Lewis' problem, and I will later suggest another reason why the argument may appear to be circular. Perhaps it will be helpful to approach this problem from another direction. First, it is important to remember that neither of the arguments Lewis presents is deductive; if they were, he could accuse himself of a petitio principii but not of a queer kind of one. Second, it should be noted that nei­ ther of his arguments proves, or in any way demonstrates, that there are human beings, or that there is human nature and human experience. The first argument, that is, the 'de­ duction,' merely states that if there is human experience, then such and such must be the case, including the fact that human beings exist. This fact follows by definition, for a human being is simply that which has the experience called human. If you will, no entity or substance need be sup­ posed, but only some kind of a continuing consciousness or awareness. The second argument merely states that if there 31

Ibid., p. 1 1 5.

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is any being who can generate a pragmatic contradiction, then that being is subject to imperatives. Although his expe­ rience will most likely be called human, it need not be. De­ pending upon the world in which he lives and his nature, his experience will be more or less like ours. The decision to call it human experience or to apply another term is, of course, a pragmatic decision. The final appeal that this sec­ ond argument makes must be made to individuals them­ selves: Are you self-conscious? Can you generate a pragmatic contradiction? Do you think? It seems that the telling ques­ tion would be, Could any answer to the above questions be No? The only valid negative answer to the above questions, that is, the only negative answer not generating a pragmatic self-contradiction, would be silence, a lack of response or understanding. On this interpretation, no questions are begged. Human experience and human nature are not assumed. Before we can have human experience, we must be conscious, or aware, of ourselves; the criterion by which self-consciousness is determined is the pragmatic self-contradiction, the reduc­ tio ad absurdum . Logically, the next step is the imperative to be consistent in thought and all it entails, then the im­ perative to be consistent in action. The end product is fully human experience. The individual who is aware of contra­ dictions he generates pragmatically and who realizes that such contradictions are to be avoided, in thought and ac­ tion, is rational. A definition of 'rationality' is, then, a result of this approach, rather than a presupposition of it. If this argument still seems circular, perhaps the reason is that in actual practice we advance through these steps in the re­ verse of the logical order. The philosophical quest for the ground of first principies only comes after a sufficient amount of experience has allowed us to pose the question. But it is not the biological or historical fact that is of inter­ est or relevance for the grounding of imperatives. The ground of imperatives is, and must be, discovered through logical and philosophical investigations.

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On the basis of these considerations, we are now in a posi­ tion to provide a final answer to Frankena' s series of questions. The answer is that Lewis does not presuppose a concept of rationality. The 'deduction' and reductio ad ab­ surdum provide the criteria in terms of which rationality­ the ability to govern one's life in accord with what one knows to be objective fact-is defined. The imperative to be consistent is not based on the fact that man is rational; in­ stead, rationality is defined in terms of consistency, cogency, and objective rightness, all of which are shown to be impera­ tive before a concept of rationality is developed. Man is ra­ tional, therefore, only insofar as he adheres to rational im­ peratives. In answer to Frankena, then, (1) man is not inev­ itably rational; (2) it is self-government that is essential for human experience, not those characteristics that "happen to be [empirically] distinctive" 38 of man; and (3) as we shall see, the force of the moral imperative is not the result of "some distinct attitude or drive in human nature. " 39 We must now turn to a second objection that may be ad­ vanced against the reductio ad a bsurdum. It may be sug­ gested that a possible way to obviate the difficulty resulting from pragmatically self-contradictory statements would be to distinguish between an object-language and a meta-lan­ guage. A pragmatically self-contradictory statement in the object-language-for example, "There are no valid rules" -would then be a statement in the meta-language describ­ ing a particular state of affairs in the object-language-for example, "There are no valid rules in the obj ect-language." Lewis introduces this objection himself and answers it briefly. He says: There may be some who will at this point be minded to introduce considerations of logical type-theory. But the sup­ position that such an interjection is really pertinent, would amount to nothing more than the observation that assertion 38 39

Frankena, "Review of The Ground," p. 401 .

Ibid., pp. 401-402.

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can always keep a step ahead of criticism; which is true but irrelevant, since it is likewise true that any order of assertion can be critically caught-up with, and none has attested valid­ ity until it is included in the same universe of discourse with all that it presupposes or implies. 40

This, to the best of my knowledge, is Lewis' only reference to this possible objection. Unfortunately, its brevity makes it difficult to understand his intent. There seem to be at least three possible interpretations. First, let us consider the above statement, "There are no valid rules in the obj ect-language." The intent of such a statement in the meta-language seems to be not that there are no rules in the object-language, but rather that the rules there are invalid. Invalid would mean, I assume, that they are either inconsistent with one another or self-contra­ dictory. The question would then be, what is wrong with rules that are self-contradictory or inconsistent with one an­ other? The answer would be that they would lead to contra­ dictory conclusions and, thus, any conclusion whatsoever. The meta-language, in denying validity to the rules of the object-language, is asserting that there are valid rules and that these are not adhered to in the obj ect-language, but are adhered to in the meta-language. The conclusion that there are valid rules is, of course, the conclusion Lewis' analysis is designed to support. If, on the other hand, it is claimed that the statement in the meta-language is false, then the conclu­ sion to be drawn is that the rules in the obj ect-language are valid rules, which, again, is the conclusion Lewis seeks to support. The claim that the rules in both obj ect- and meta­ language might be false would be a statement in a meta­ meta-language; this type of situation is considered in the third interpretation. Second, let us consider the statement "All Cretans are liars." Whether this statement is in an object-language or a meta-language, or a meta-meta-language, etc., makes no dif­ ference. Within the language in which it is stated, if it is as40

Manuscripts, Reel II, 6/26/ 53 , p. 1 8.

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serted by a Cretan, i t will be pragmatically self-contradic­ tory. This is perhaps part of what Lewis means when he states that no order of assertion "has attested validity until it is included in the same universe of discourse with all that it presupposes or implies." 41 Third, consider the statement " Everything I say is false." This statement asserted in any language will be logically contradictory in that language. If, however, we rewrite it in the meta-language as " Everything I say in the object-lan­ guage is false," it will not be logically contradictory. In this form it is true or false depending upon the statements I have made in the object-language. The tru th of the state­ ment itself, however, is not determinable within the meta­ language. I t is an empirical statement whose truth or falsity is determined by whether or not it correctly reports the state of affairs existing in the obj ect-language. This cannot be de­ termined except by examining every statement I have made in the object-language to see whe ther it is contradictory or analytic or, if it is empirical, whe ther it is true or false. For the meta-statement to be true, all my object-statements would have to be either con tradictory or false. Considera­ tions pertaining to the truth or falsehood of a meta-state­ ment must be discussed in a language which includes both the meta-language and the object-language, that is, a meta­ meta-language . And the truth of a meta-meta-statement must be discussed in a meta-meta-meta-language, and so on. Although we could catch up, given the time, to any particu­ lar statement, the obvious difficulty is that we could only catch up to all such statements if we had an infinite amount of time. This seems to be Lewis' intent when he states that the supposition that such an interjection would be pertinent, would amount to nothing more than the observation that assertion can always keep a step ahead of criticism; which is true but irrelevant, since it is likewise true that any order of 42 assertion can be critically caught-up with. 41 42

Ibid. Ibid.

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I do not know which of these three interpretations Lewis had in mind, but all of them taken together seem to bring out the points he was trying to make in the passage quoted. It is important to note that although their natures differ, the two arguments Lewis presents, the 'deduction' and the reductio ad absurdum, have the same conclusion. Both show under what conditions and why cogency and consist­ ency are imperative. Given consistency, cogency, and experi­ ence, we have the bases of empirical knowledge-the nature of which has already been considered in Chapter I. We have argued that, properly interpreted, Lewis' two arguments are valid, that the second is the stronger of the two, and that the objections that have been brought against them have been answered. It will suffice here to point out that if, as we have argued, Lewis' arguments are valid, in whatever sense of 'validity' would be applicable to them, 43 then he is now free to draw upon that which is known a priori and that which is known a posteriori. As a result, any appeal in the following arguments to either analytic or empirical state­ ments will not be subject to the charge of circularity. It is, perhaps, also relevant to note that, on the basis of the two arguments, we can conclude that knowledge is normative and, further, that the pursuit of knowledge is imperative. The task before us is to demonstrate that, and in what sense, it is imperative to do those acts that are technically, prudentially, and/or morally right. We shall turn first to consideration of the ground of the imperative to do that which is technically right. Again, Lewis presents us with two arguments. The first is based on human experience, 'Nhich can now be treated as a fact. We have seen that human experience differs from that of other animals in that it is not inevitable; that is, man can determine which expe­ riences he will have by governing his behavior according to rules. The technically right thing to do is that which in sim­ ilar past experiences has proved to be the best means to a The sense in which Lewis' arguments and ethical theory may be said to be valid wi1l be considered in the conclusion . 43

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specific desired end. The determination of the best, or most efficient or effective, means is the function of intelligence. To be rational is to govern one's behavior in accord with the dictates of intelligence. In one sense, the imperative to be rational is merely an extension to action of the impera­ tive to be consistent, namely, treat similar cases similarly. In another sense, in demanding that we govern our action not according to how we feel but according to what we know, it goes beyond consistency. Nevertheless, it is consistency and cogency that provide the criteria for valid knowledge, and it is knowledge that enables man to predict the future. Acting on the basis of what we know is imperative because it is the only method open to us by which we can control or govern our behavior and, thus, our experiences. Rationality is im­ perative; and all non-rational behavior is instinctive, impul­ sive, irrational, and/or perverse. The formulation of the im­ perative to be rational, to do the technically right thing, Lewis calls the Law of Objectivity: So conduct and determine your activities of thinking and of doing, as to conform any decision of them to the objective actualities, as cognitively signified to you in your representa­ tional apprehension of them, and not according to any im­ pulsion or solicitation exercised by the affective quality of your present experience as immediate feeling merely. 44

Or, more simply, it commands us to govern behavior according to what we know and not simply according to how we feel; that is, to govern behavior and not merely allow ourselves to be moved by impulse and emotion. 4 5

The force of this argument rests on two points: ( I ) if we do not direct our behavior in accord with the dictates of intelli­ gent deliberation, then we do not direct our behavior at all, and (2) it is only insofar as we direct our behavior that our experience is to be called human. 44 4;,

The Ground, p. 89. Lewis, Manu scripts, Pra gma tism, p. 25 .

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The second argument is based on a reductio ad absur­ dum. The individual who would argue that there are no rules by which we should govern our behavior to achieve certain desired ends would be guilty of a pragmatic self-con­ tradiction, because he would implicitly be claiming that there was a rule, namely, "Do not act according to rules." The conclusion to be drawn from this argument is the same as the conclusion drawn from the first: that to govern our behavior according to rules, that is, in terms of past experi­ ence, is imperative. Although this argument, so far as I am aware, is not specifically stated by Lewis, he certainly could subscribe to it. His claim that the ground of all imperatives is the same substantiates this view. The prudentially right must be objectively right. The ex­ pected consequences of actions proposed, or done, must be justifiably expected to lead to the doer's own good. We have seen that this prudential good is the summum bonum, a life good in the living of it. The question that we must now consider is: why is it imperative to be prudent? There are, as was the case with the cognitive and technical imperatives, two arguments presented. The first argument is not strictly a 'deduction.' Instead, its validity rests on the previous 'deductions' presented in the arguments for the cognitive and technical imperatives. One result of these previous arguments is the conclusion that it is legitimate to appeal to, and base arguments upon, statements of empirical fact. The argument in support of the prudential imperative appeals to the fact that all men seek their own good. The prudential end is by definition the doer's own good. It may, therefore, seem unnecessary to show that it is imperative to do that which everyone in fact does. This would be a mistaken view, however, for in dem­ onstrating the imperativeness of prudence we are at the same time explicating the meaning of 'seeking one's own good.' That is, we are demonstrating that prudence is im­ perative in a particular sense of 'prudence.' The imperativeness of prudence follows straightfor-

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wardly from the fact that it is imperative to adhere to the cognitive and technical imperatives in achieving desired ends. In the case of prudence, this end is our own good; it is therefore imperative that, in seeking our own good, our thought be cogent and consistent and our action be ra­ tional. In other words, in making a prudential judgm ent we are subject to the Law of Objectivity, the critique of objec­ tive rightness directed to our own good. It may be objected that an argument designed to ground the imperative of prudence ought to be one that does not appeal to empirical facts. The only answer is that there is no such argument. It is possible to construct an argument that would appeal to one fact only-that human beings de­ sire their own good or that in order to retain one's human powers one must seek his own good; but it would not be possible to construct an argument resting solely on the pos­ sibility of human experience-unless, of course, one's own good were part of what was meant by 'human experience.' Human experience, as it has been presented, however, is limited to experience dependent upon self-government. An individual who, in accord with the dictates of the cognitive and technical imperatives, methodically sought his own mis­ fortune might be an anomaly but would not be a contradic­ tion. If it is argued that such a being would eventually de­ stroy his ability to govern his life as a result of his adopted attitude and would at that point be less than human and in­ capable of human experience, then it must be objected that such a statement is itself empirical. The imperative of prudence, in commanding an individual to seek his own good, also commands the crea ture who must decide his specific acts . . . [to attempt some archi tectonic pl an or rational rela tionship among his purposes, a nd a rational organization of his plans of action. 46

This command is based upon two £acts : first, the fact that any action has consequences that are not immediate, but fu46

Lew is, Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p . 29.

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ture, and that may far outweigh the advantages or disadvan­ tages of the immediate consequences of an act-The Law of Objectivity dictates that these consequences be considered; and, second, the fact that the adoption of one action pre­ cludes the adoption of a number of other alternative ways of directing our behavior. The choice of an act and all its foreseeable consequences precludes some class of present and future actions and permits another class of other ac­ tions. It is necessary that an individual making a decision, especially if it is what is called a major decision, decide which action open to him will allow him to achieve most or the most important of his purposes. Which purposes are to be thwarted and which fulfilled is not easy to decide; it must be emphasized, however, that this is an empirical con­ sideration that requires a judgment of comparative contrib­ utory value.47 The exclusive character of choice and the non-terminating character of consequences make it impera­ tive for one to plan his life. The imperative to plan one's life is the imperative to adopt purposes and actions that are consistent, or more accurately, that are compatible, and to avoid those that are incompatible. As Lewis notes, "pur­ poses are incompatible whenever the attainment of one un­ avoidably results in the frustration of another-when you can't have it both ways." 48 It is practical consistency or com­ patibility among purposes, thoughts, and actions that is pri­ mary and based on man's ability to govern his thought and action. Such consistency is dictated by the cognitive, techni­ cal, and prudential imperatives, and, as we shall see, by the moral ; but it is practical consistency or compatibility of "purposes, ends, actions, and the precepts of actions" 49 that is the basis of logical consistency. To be logically consistent, in co ncluding and believing, is merely to be practically se lf-consistent in concluding and believing . . . . To be consistent in belief is simply to avoid 47

48 49

See Lewis, An Analysis, pp. 508-51 0. Manuscripts, Prag matism, p. 30.

Ibid.

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such motive commitments which conflict. Don't take such a commitment in one case if you take an incompatible commit­ ment in the same premises another time. 50

To be practically self-consistent in thought and action is im­ perative. The basis of practical self-consistency is a fact of human nature, namely, man's self-government directed to his own good life. Practical self-inconsistency frustrates a man's purposes. Although to this extent the argument may seem to rest on a reductio ad absurdum , the important point here is that if a man is self-inconsistent he denies himself the summum bonum, the life good in the living of it, and thus full human experience. 51 We shall now consider the second argument, the ground­ ing of the pruden tial imperative by the use of a reductio ad absurdum. The Cyrenaics repudiated concern for the fu­ ture, recommending that we heed the command " 'Have no concern for any future : tomorrow is another day.' " 52 What they were advi sing was that we adopt as a continuing atti­ tude the policy to have, i n the future, no concern 53 for the Lewis, Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p. 31. It is appropriate to note here that the two approaches or argu­ ments Lewis uses, which we have carefully distinguished, are not so clearly distinguished in his writings. In fact, they are often intertwined and presented as one argument. We have noted that both arguments are used, or referred to, in his various published works . To the best of my knowledge, his first clear statement of their distinctness was written in 1953. He then wrote that two considerations were relevant to the grounding of imperatives: [I] It can be shown that without admission of valid imperatives, fundamental characteristics of our h uman mentality and human life do not make sense. . . . [2] Or somewhat similarly but perhaps more pointedly, one may indicate a kind of reductio ad absurdum to which moral cynicism, repudiating imperatives of conduct, must be subject. (Manuscripts, Reel II, 6/26/53, p. 12.) It is, perhaps, because Lewis believed the second approach to be more pointed that he relied more upon it in his later writings. 5 2 Lewis, An Analysis, p. 481. 5 3 It should be evident that 'concern' means 'concern for the good or bad in experience.' This argument presupposes that man's concern is to bring about the good and avoid the bad . This presupposition is not 50

51

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future. Such a recommendation, however, is pragmatically contradictory. The Cyrenaic resolves that in future he will heed no resolution which could constrain his momentary inclination to immediate pleasure. But this directs that in future he should never be constrained by any antecedent resolutions he may have previously taken. So if he heeds this resolution, he must at once repudiate it if, at any later date, his having taken it should threaten to have any influence upon his conduct. 54

The predicament of the Cyrenaic is the same as that of Epi­ menides. "The principie of having no princi pies . . . , the imperative to heed no imperatives . . . , [and] the resolu­ tion to disregard all resolutions," 55 are a.II equally pragmat­ ically self-contradictory. It is because it is not possible to re­ pudiate the prudential imperative, "Be concerned about yourself in the future," 56 without implicitly affirming con­ cern about the future, that the prudential imperative is im­ perative. As has been argued previously, this impemtive en­ tails that concern be extended to the future on the whole, that is, to our whole life. The dictate of prudence may also be expressed as a corollary of the Law of Objectivity: Conduct yourself, with reference to those future eventualities which cognition advises that your activity may affect, as you would if these predictable effects of it were to be realized, at this moment of decision, with the poignancy of the here and now, instead of the less poignant feeling which representa­ tion of the future and possible may automatically arouse. 5 7

Adherence to this dictate demands that we consider the con­ tributory value of experiences as well as the compatibility of actions; it demands that we plan our whole life so as to have the life that will have the greatest contributory value. entertained hypothetically; it is a fact, the fact that "no one fails to desire the prudential end of a good life for himself ." (Lewis, Manu­ scripts, Foundations, Lecture IV, p. 1 03.) 5 4 Lewis, Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV, p. 102. 55 Ibid., p. 1 03. 5 6 Lewis, An Analysis, p. 481. 57 Lewis, The Ground, p. 89.

Imperatives 75 Insofar as this is its intent, it demands that we do only those acts we judge to be prudentially, and thus objectively, right. The moral imperative cannot be considered apart from the social character of human life. Moral problems are predicated on the presumption that a human life is to be lived in a society of one's fellows, in which acts of each affect the lives of others. And the sense and meaning of 'fellow' here is that of another who is like ourselves in standing under the necessity to determine his own acts deliberately and self-critically, having and respect­ ing his own prudential end, and obliged to consider, and in some measure formulate, his own maxims for his own self­ governmen t. 58

Our discussion of knowledge has shown that the existence of others who are like ourselves, that is, of fellows, is a mat­ ter of empirical knowledge and determinable only on the basis of immediate experience. By observing the behavior of others, we are able to come to the conclusion that they, like ourselves, are active beings capable of joy and sorrow, of self-governed behavior, and of self-criticism; that is, that they, like ourselves, are human beings. Insofar as men are alike, it is necessary that what is obligatory for one is obliga­ tory for all, or, in other words, that any rule which is valid for one individual is valid for all individuals. This is an im­ plication of the universal character of rules and an applica­ tion of the imperative to be consistent. The imperative to consider the interests of our fellows in the same way that we consider our own interests is what Lewis calls the moral or categorical imperative. Lewis presents at least five different formulations of the moral imperative. The first is the Golden Rule, the second Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative, and the last three are Lewis' own. [ 1] Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you.59 58 Lewis, Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV, p. 104. 59 Ibid., p. 105 .

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[2] So act that you could will the maxim of your conduct to become a universal law. 60 [3] Remember your social situation; and remember that noth­ ing can be a way of acting which is justified for you to adopt unless it is equally a justified way of acting for any other to adopt, fronting this problem which you face and in the same premises of action. 61 [4] Do no act which contravenes any rule which you would call upon other men to respect and conform to. 62 [5] . . . govern one's activities affecting other persons, as one would if these effects of them were to be realized with the poignancy of the immediate-hence, i n one's own person. 63

This last formulation Lewis divides into the Law of Com­ passion and the Law of Moral Equality : [The Law of Compassion] Recognize in your action affecting any sentient being, that claim upon your compassion which comports with its capacity to enjoy and suffer. 64 [The Law of Moral Equality] Take no decision of action which is a member of any class of decisions of doing all members of which you would call upon others to avoid. 65

The validity of the categorical imperative depends upon two empirical facts: ( 1 ) that others exist, and (2) that they are our fellows. It is ultimately grounded, as is the pruden­ tial imperative, on the cognitive and technical imperatives. As a result, the two arguments we have distinguished, the 60

Ibid. Ibid. 62 Ibid. 61

63 64

Lewis, The Ground, p. 91 . Ibid., p. 92 . Lewis points out in his Proseminar Lecture No tes

(Manuscripts, Lecture XI, "The Social Contract and the Good Will," p. 9) that 'compassion' is perhaps not the right word; but neither are such words as 'sympathy' and 'charity.' These words connote a su­ periority on the part of the compassionate, sympathetic, or charitable person. Lewis' intent in using the word 'compassion' is to signify "em­ pathetic appreication of the value and disvalue experience of oth­ ers . . . ." (Ibid.) He suggests that the above words have taken on their present meaning because in our dealings with our equals we are generally "not called upon to go beyond mutual respect. . " (Ibid.) 65 Lewis, The .Ground, p. 93 .

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deduction' and the reductio a d absurdum, are arguments in support of the moral imperative. The question we must now consider is, What was Lewis' conception of the moral imperative? He admitted that it is, to a certain extent, •'empty, , ; empty in that it does not tell us which action to initiate in specific situations. 1

What is required to be fundamental and all-comprehensive cannot be at the same time concrete and particular. The fundamental principle can provide only the criteria of mor­ ally justified action. What will satisfy these criteria and what will contravene them, it does not and cannot say, but must leave that to be determined by . . . the particularities of cases. 66

Lewis does not consider this emptiness to be an objection; any principle which applies to all actions must be general and empty in this sense. The importance of the moral im­ perative lies in its nature as setting the "cri teria of morally justified action." 67 What are these criteria? In O ur Social In heritance Lewis states that the categorical principle of morals sets two criteria of right [ im­ perative] action; one formal and explicit, the other content­ ual and implicit. [I] The formal requirement is that of uni­ versality and impersonality: whatever is a right [imperative] way of acting is right [ imperative] in all instances ; right [im­ perative] for anybody to adopt, in the same premises of action. And that is merely the formal requirement of being a valid rule, . . . . [2] The second and contentual criterion is what is implicit in the reference to what we could be sa tisfied with as a universally prevailing practice.68

The formal criterion, or the Law of Equality, states that similar individuals should be treated similarly in similar circumstances, or, in other words, that what is right for one individual, A, is right for any other individual, B, in the same premises of action. Unfortunately, Lewis does no more 66 61

68

Lewis, Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p. 14. Ibid.

Pp. 98-99.

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than state this criterion. As a result, he leaves to the reader the task of explicating the meanings of 'similar (or rele­ vantly similar) individuals,' and 'similar circumstances, ' or 'in the same premises of action.' It is this task to which we must now turn. Our analysis will be based upon Lewis' anal­ yses of action and human nature which, we will contend, are sufficient for the required explications. First, we shall consider 'similar' as it applies to individuals. There are two senses in which men may be said to be similar: (I) they may be relevantly similar in terms of the moral imperative, and (2) they may be relevantly similar in terms of particu­ lar moral judgments. I) Lewis' position is that men are similar if, or insofar as, they have the characteristics necessary to lead a pecul­ iarly human life and dissimilar if they do not. They are not dissimilar, however, if they differ in such accidental charac­ teristics as skin or hair color, height, weight, possession of money, age, ability to see, etc. , because the absence or pres­ ence of these characteristics does not necessarily prevent them from governing or directing their own lives, experi­ encing value, and so on; in other words, the absence or pres­ ence of those characteristics does not prevent them from leading a peculiarly human life. 69 The attribution of this view to Lewis is based upon the two arguments he presents in support of the rational imperatives and his definition of the word 'fellow.' It follows from these considerations that, as human beings, all men are equally subject to the moral 6 9 Compare Bernard Williams, "The Idea of Equality," Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Po litics and Society, Second Series (Oxford : 1 962) , pp. 1 10-1 3 1 , and especially: "The assertion that men are alike in the possession of these characteristics [capacities to speak a language, feel, live in a society, etc.] is, while indisputable and (it may be) even necessarily true, not trivial. For it is certain that there are political and social arrangements that systematically neglect these characteristics in the case of some group of men, while being fully aware of them in the case of others; that is to say, treat certain men as though they did not possess these characteristics, and neglect moral claims that arise from these characteristics and which would be admitted to arise from them." (Ibid., p. 1 12.)

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imperative, and that there are no degrees of humanity-ei­ ther an individual is capable of governing his life and is, therefore, human, or he is not. 2) Nevertheless, it does not follow from the fact that all men are equally subject to the moral imperative that al l men are equally subject to particular moral judgments. Par­ ticular moral judgments are assertions that certain acts or types of acts should or should not be done or allowed, that, for example, A has a moral and imperative obligation to do x, or that A has a moral and imperative right to do x. We have already seen that no individual can have an obligation to do that which he cannot physically or mentally do. It fol­ lows from this that individuals who are capable of self-gov­ ernment, but incapable of performing a certain act or type of act because of some accidental characteristic such as blindness, illness, age, etc., cannot have an obligation to perform that act, even if everyone who is not correspond­ ingly disadvantaged does have such an obligation. Acts, as we have seen, are specifiable in terms of their purposes and intentions. In accordance with the above considerations, then, we can say that as far as particular or concrete moral judgm ents are concerned, individuals are relevantly similar if they have certain accidental characteristics that other peo­ ple do not have enabling them to accomplish the purposes of the acts commanded or permitted by concrete moral judgments, and that individuals are relevantly dissimilar if they have certain accidental characteristics that make them incapable of performing the acts commanded or permitted by concrete moral judgments. It follows from this that the specification of an act sets the criteria in terms of which ac­ cidental characteristics are to be considered relevant in the context of any particular decision and, thus, the criteria in terms of which individuals are to be considered to be simi­ lar or dissimilar in any given situation. We must now turn to the second explication, the mean­ ing of 'similar' as applied to circumstances. The explication of this concept is similar to that provided in (2) above, be-

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cause, as we shall argue, the specification of an act in terms of its purposes and intent is also the specification of the rele­ vant circumstances. As Lewis notes, the circumstances in which an act is done are never a part of the act, even though they may materially affect what will follow the commitment taken; first, because nothing antecedent to taki ng the commitment could be i n­ cluded in what is to be done, and second, because whatever the occasion and the nature of it, any corrigible act is one amongst some set of alternative ways of ac ting which the doer might have adopted on this occasion. 70

The circumstances in which an act is done are relevan t) however, if they "materially affect what will follow the com­ mitment taken." 71 If, for example, an individual's purpose in doing a certain act was to save a person from drowning, he must be situated in such a way that his purpose could be realized--otherwise his contemplation of the act would be mere fantasy. Likewise, a man must be located in a position of authority if the purpose of his act is to pardon, and thus free, a criminal. The specification of an act, then, is also a specification of the relevant circumstances (or premises) in which the act is done. Circumstances are relevant insofar as they affect, or will affect, the consequences of an act-for in affecting the consequences of an act, they affect its nature. It follows that any circumstances that do not affect the conse­ quences of an act need not be taken into account and are ir­ relevant. On the basis of these considerations, we may conclude that in any given situation, when a decision is to be made as to whether a proposed act or type of act is morally and im­ peratively forbidden, commanded, or permitted, those cir­ cumstances and accidental characteristics to be considered as relevant will be those whose presence or absence will af­ fect the consequences and, thus, the nature of the act or type of act in question. The specification of an act is also 10

T he Ground, pp. 46-47.

1 1 f bid.,

p. 46 .

Imperatives

81

the speci fication of the criteria in terms of which individu­ als are to be accounted relevantly similar or dissimilar. It follows from these considerations that if everyone is capable of performing a particular act or type of act, such as lying or governing his own behavior, etc., then, although cir­ cumstances may still have to be taken into account, acciden­ tal characteristics will not have to be, when deciding whether to do these types of acts in any particular situation. These analyses will become clearer in the next chapter, where we shall consider them as they function in hypotheti­ cal applications of the moral imperative. The contentual criterion, which Lewis also formulates as the Law of Compassion, requires that the consequences of an act or activity as they affect the value experiences of indi­ viduals involved be taken into account. This may be done in either one of two ways: first, by determining the social value of the act's consequences, and, second, by judging an act from the point of view of those affected by its conse­ quences. The assessment of the social value of an act and the judgment of it as objectively and morally right have al­ ready been considered and need not be reconsidered here. It is the second manner of assessing the value character of the consequences of acts that we must consider. This meaning is expressed in the formulations of the moral imperative by the reference to 'you'-what could you will to be a univer­ sal law, how would you like others to do that to you, etc.? This reference to 'you' is not, however, completely free from ambiguity. In fact, the ambiguity inherent in most for­ mulations of the categorical imperative centers around this reference. It is necessary, therefore, to achieve a clear under­ standing of Lewis' use of this reference in his formulations of the moral imperative. Lewis argues that this reference is not personal. Its intention is not "Any act you approve of, and would willingly see everybody do, is a morally justified way of acting." Tha t is, it is not the case that because an in­ dividual prefers a room temperature of 40 ° C and desires cornflakes for breakfast every day and is willing to see these

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attitudes prevail universally, that he is therefore justified in imposing his desires on others. Formulations of the moral categorical imperative have often been criticised for allow­ ing such interpretations. Lewis was aware of this and at­ tempted to eliminate personal reference in his formulations of the moral imperative. He realized that "The problem of statement is to eliminate what is personal in the manner of the weigh ing without eliminating what may be personal in what is to be weighed." 72 The "personal in w ha t is to be weighed" is the good or bad accruing in experience to those individuals affected by the act. The "personal in the man­ ner of the weigh ing" is the j udging of an action as right or wrong from only one point of view-that of the individual doing the judging. It is, thus, the exclusion from the judg­ ment of the interest of others. It is Lewis' claim, and it follows from the formal crite­ rion, that the interests of all individuals affected by an act must be considered equally in deciding whether an act is morally justified and, thus, morally and imperatively com­ manded or permitted. We are not to judge an .act solely from our own vantage point; rather, we are to think of our­ selves as suffering the consequences of the act from our own point of view as well as that of others. We are required to predict the consequences of a proposed act, conceive our­ selves as suffering them, and empathetically imagine how they will affect all the others concerned. 73 This procedure is illustrated by Lewis in the Wesleyan Lectures. Lewis, Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV, p. 1 06. Lewis discusses empathetic imagination in An A nalysis of Knowl­ edge and Valuation on page 54 5. He argues there that "we have to 'put ourself in the place of' the other person-wh atever the epistemo­ logical hazards in so doing-and gauge value as realized by him on the supposition of whatever fundamental likeness to ourself seems justified by the evidence of his behavior and other pertinent circum stances . We do not, of course, need to assume that our conclusion so arrived a t concerning the value realized b y another, is indubitably correct. The judgment is one reached through inductive reasoning by analogy and subject to the hazards of inductive conclusions in general, as well as to some which affect this kind of problem in particular. But while it is the other person's experience which determines the correctness of this judgment, the problem of j udging it as best we can is our problem ." 72

73

Imperatives

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Let us suppose, for simplicity, that the act in question will affect only three persons, John and Mary and oneself. To state fully the problem to be weighed, set down under the heading 'John' and under 'Mary' and under 'Myself' every­ thing pertinent to each which is a relevant consideration for the doing or not doing of this kind of act. Then substitute the letters, A, B, and C, for the personal designations. Your test, then, for determining whether this act is right [impera­ tive] for you to do, is the question whether you would equally approve it whether your position in the matter should be that of A or of B or of C.74

Strictly speaking, the contentual criterion only states that the value of the consequences of an act as it accrues to indi­ viduals must be taken into account. From this requirement and the formal criterion requiring that all men, insofar as they are human beings or "fellows," are to be treated and considered similar in terms of the moral imperative, it fol­ lows, on the one hand, that to attach more weight to the value experiences of one individual or group of individuals than to those of another or another group would be to treat similar cases differently and thus contravene the formal cri­ terion of the moral imperative, and, on the other hand, that to treat all individuals similarly but to fail to take account of their value experiences would be to contravene the con­ tentual criterion. Such treatment, then, is morally and im­ peratively forbidden. It should be noted that while the formal and contentual criteria may be separated for the purposes of analysis, they are actually inseparable. This can be seen most clearly by considering the formulations presented as the Laws of Com­ passion and Equality. Explicitly stated in the Law of Com­ passion is the command that we must recognize the claim that any sentient being has upon our compassion. Since the word 'any' could be replaced by the word 'every' without changing the sense of the command, and since, as Lewis argues, all men, as men, are alike in being able to experi­ ence the good and bad in experience, it follows that all men 74

Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV, pp. 1 06-1 07 .

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must be treated equally. This is not surprising, however, be­ cause the Law of Compassion, if it is a valid rule, must apply universally. Likewise, Lewis' formulation of the Law of Equality includes the -contentual criterion in the phrase "which you would call upon others to avoid." 75 Even if the formal criterion were stated more generally-for example, what is right for A is right for all individuals similar to A­ the contentual criterion is still smuggled in, this time in the word 'right.' This is so because no action can be correctly judged to be right or wrong unless the value character of its consequences is taken into account. According to Lewis, then, the moral imperative sets the criteria in terms of which an act is to be judged to be mor­ ally and imperatively commanded, forbidden, or permitted. Any act that is morally imperative in one of these senses must be one that is morally imperative in the same sense for all similar individuals in the same premises of action, and one that is morally right or whose consequences could be accepted from the point of view of everyone affected by the act. The moral imperative, so conceived, is the major prem­ ise of what Lewis calls the moral syllogism. The contentual criterion provides the middle term for the moral syllogism and connects the "empty" major premise to the factual minor premise-the empirical judgment that an act is objectively and morally right. Detailed consideration of the moral syllogism will be reserved for the next chapter. It should be noted here that the conclusion of the moral syllo­ gism is itself an imperative and commands, permits, or for­ bids an action or type of action; it is a judgment that A, and thus anyone similar to A, has a moral and imperative obli­ gation to do or refrain from doing x, or that he has a moral and imperative right to do x. It is what we shall call a deriv­ ative and unqualified imperative, since it is ultimately de­ pendent upon the moral imperative for its force. In addi­ tion, its imperativeness is universal, since it applies to all 75

The Ground, p. 93.

Imperatives 85 relevantly similar actions and to al l relevantly similar indi­ viduals. Our analysis in this chapter has centered upon discover­ ing the ground of imperatives and providing an explication of them. We have seen that a moral judgment, such as A has a moral and imperative obligation to do x, or A is morally and imperatively commanded to do x, is the conclusion of a moral syllogism. The reasons given for A's obligation are the moral imperative and a statement of the relevant empir­ ical considerations. What we have not yet done is to account for the felt force of the imperatives and the judgments de­ rived from them. We have not yet answered the question, Are we, and if so why, compelled to adhere to the rational imperatives? It should be noted here that if the imperatives are valid antecedently to the validity of knowledge and val­ uation, the compulsion we feel must be unconditioned by impulses, inclinations, or desires. If it were not, the impera­ tiveness attaching to the rational principles would be hypo­ thetical and no different from the imperativeness which at­ taches to the qualified imperatives. How, then, can we account for the force the rational im­ peratives have? Lewis himself does not consider this prob­ lem. The reason he does not, I suggest, is that he felt he had considered and solved it by providing a ground for the im­ peratives. The position that we will attribute to Lewis, therefore, is not one he explicitly held, but rather one that we believe his theory directly implies and that he could have maintained. Lewis could have accounted for the felt force of the ra­ tional imperatives in either, or both, of two ways. The first and strongest rests on the possibility of a self-conscious and active-if only mentally-being. Such beings would be ca­ pable of assenting and denying. If such beings existed, it is clear that any denial they made of the validity of the ra­ tional imperatives would convict them of a pragmatic self­ contradiction. The only alternative they would have would be to assent to the validity of the rational imperatives-an

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assent that would be a commitment to accept and adhere to the requirements the imperatives set down for the govern­ ment of activities. The force the imperatives have, there­ fore, is a result of the individual's commitment to adhere to them. It is not imposed from without, nor does it derive its strength from psychological factors; it is self-imposed and pragmatically necessary, since the individual has no choice but to assent to the imperatives. As Lewis notes, any creature who talks to himself about that [the moral imperative which tells us how to act toward our fellows] will find himself in the predicament of pragmatic contradiction, if he says to himself that there is a way of acting which is right [imperative] for him, but wrong [imperative] in the same premises of action, for another who likewise decides to talk to himself. 76

The reason he would be pragmatically contradicting him­ self is that in saying "there is a way of acting which is right for him" 7 7 he is implicitly acknowledging the validity of the imperative to be consistent, and in claiming that it is wrong for another in the same premises of action he is im­ plicitly denying the validity of the imperative to be consist­ ent. It should be clear that there are exceptional cases. Any creature, for example, who was neither self-conscious nor able to govern his thought or actions would not be com­ pelled in any way whatsoever, and would be under no neces­ sity to assent to the validity of the rational imperatives. The same would be true also of any individual who was incapa­ ble of grasping the nature of the pragmatic self-contradic­ tion. The second way in which Lewis could account for the compulsion or felt force of imperatives rests on the possibil­ ity of human experience and, thus, on the 'deduction' con­ sidered earlier. We have seen that human experience depends upon self-government; the individual who governs his own life must be consciously adhering to the rational imper76 Manuscripts, The Categorical Imperative, Reel III, a lecture given at Michigan State University, July 24, 195 8, p . 3 5.

17

Ibid.

Imperatives

87

atives. An individual who unconsciously and, therefore, accidentally adheres to the rational imperatives is not gov­ erning his life at all. Only the individual who realizes that conscious adherence to the rational imperatives is necessary for self-government is capable of human experience. This argument rests, then, on the analytic statement: insofar as we are human beings, we realize the necessity to govern our lives; and we realize that the only way we can govern our lives is to adhere to the requirements set down by the ra­ tional imperatives. This statement is not refuted by the fact that we sometimes respond automatically on the basis of in­ clinations or impulses, because, when we behave in this manner, we are not governing our lives. In addition, its va­ lidity is not dependent on the hypothetical imperative that if I want to be human, then I must govern my behavior, be­ cause, whether we want to be or not, we are human. The force of this argument, therefore, lies in our existential sit­ uation; we are human beings, we must make decisions and govern our behavior, and we are therefore subject to the ra­ tional imperatives. Again, the individual who is under no necessity to decide is not subject to imperatives. These considerations should not be taken to imply that everyone who realizes that to fail to adhere to the impera­ tives is to be pragmatically self-contradictory will, in fact, adhere to them. Men often act irrationally or foolishly (for one reason or another) and thereby do what they know they imperatively ought not to do. It is true that the compulsion or felt force of imperatives is often insufficient to make an individual adhere to them. In fact, it is often necessary to introduce a system of rewards and punishments to induce and force people to do what they imperatively ought to do. This fact, however, neither lessens the felt force the impera­ tives have nor casts doubts upon their validity. It merely shows that the felt need to be rational and pragmatically consistent is not as strong for some individuals as are the psychological factors which drive them to do what they know is imperatively wrong for them to do. There are a number of other considerations remaining.

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Before turning to them, however, it wi'll be helpful if we di­ rect our attention to the relationship that obtains among the technical, prudential, and moral imperatives. The rela­ tion between the moral and prudential imperatives will be considered in the next chapter also, and for that reason our inquiry will be brief. We have said that the technical, pru­ dential, and moral imperatives are all unqualified. They are, as we have argued, unqualified because their validity does not depend upon empirical considerations. The fact that they are all unqualified, however, should not be taken to mean that they are all equally final. An act that is techni­ cally right and not objectively right is neither prudentially nor morally imperative. Acts whose consequences affect others, and are prudentially right or morally right but con­ travene the formal criterion of the moral imperative, are morally and imperatively forbidden. For the individual liv­ ing entirely alone, the final imperative is the prudential. This is also true of any prudential acts whose consequences affect only the doer. For the individual living in society, however, the situation is different; the prudential critique is always subordinated to the moral in those areas in which the consequences of actions affect the value experiences of others. No act whose consequences affect the value experi­ ences of others can be morally and imperatively right or commanded if it contravenes either of the two criteria estab­ lished by the moral imperative. A prudentially or morally right act that contravenes the formal criterion is morally and imperatively forbidden; and any act that adheres to the formal criterion but contravenes the contentual is, there­ fore, morally wrong and likewise morally and imperatively forbidden. The application of the moral imperative will be considered in the next chapter. What we should point out here is that it is because the moral imperative is also the principle of justice or equality that it is the final imperative and that, as we noted earlier, it is incorrect to say "It is al­ ways unqualifiedly imperative to do that which is morally and objectively right."

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It is only when the ethical critique is distinguished from the empirical critiques of the right and the good that Lewis' position in ethics can be clearly seen. When his ethical the­ ory is presented as it is here, it becomes evident that the ra­ tional imperatives, the basic ethical principles, are neither analytic nor empirical. Lewis' division between value and ethical theory can be attributed, in part, to his desire to avoid the pitfalls of naturalistic ethical theories, and, in part, to Kant, whose writings in ethics greatly influenced Lewis. It is clear, for example, that, like Kant, Lewis sought to establish the validity of unqualified imperatives without appealing to empirical considerations, and that he accepted Kanfs first formulation of the categorical imperative as a valid moral principle. In examining Kant's first formula­ tion, " 'So act that you can will the maxim of your conduct to become a universal law,' " Lewis states that it but repeats the thought of that simplest and clearest of all moral directives, the Golden Rule. 78 It says nothing can be right for you to do unless you would also recognize it as right for any other if he should stand in your shoes and you in his: The moral law is no respecter of persons. It sets impersonality as the arch-criterion of right[imperative] . And that, as we may observe on reflection, is merely the character of anything we would recognize as a valid rule. So far it says only "A rule is a rule is a rule." 79

That is, it establishes the formal requirement of being a valid rule. But, according to Lewis, it does more than that, and it is here that Lewis and Kant part company--partly because they have basically different conceptions of human beings and partly because Lewis wishes to avoid certain dif­ ficulties in the interpretation of the criterion of impersonal­ ity. For Lewis, the criterion of impersonality requires that the interests, the value findings, of all individuals affected 7 s Kant, of course, denies that the categorical imperative and the Golden Rule are equivalent because the latter takes the value conse­ quences of acts into account. 1 9 Manuscripts, The Categorical Imperative, p. 7.

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by the act must be taken into account. No act is right if the agent could not approve it from the position of all those af­ fected by the act. Kant, on the other hand, holds that an act is wrong if an individual, as a pure rational being, could not will that its maxim become a universal law. For him, the value character of the consequences of an act are not to be taken into account in judging its maxim to be right or wrong, because as rational beings we do not have impulses, inclinations, or desires. Only as animals are we affected by the value characteristics of an act, and as animals we are not capable of being rational. This conception is not acceptable to Lewis, because he refuses to bifurcate human nature into rational and animal elements; man is a rational animal and must be treated as such. Without entering into an exigesis of Kant's writings, which would take us beyond the scope of this book, we may briefly summarize the difference between his and Lewis' positions by saying that, for Kant, if a ra­ tional being could not will the maxim of his act to become a universal law, regardless of the value character of the con­ sequences of the act as they affect him and others, then that maxim is immoral; whereas for Lewis, an act is immoral if a human being could not approve it from the point of view of those affected by it, because of the value character of its con­ sequences. Both philosophers agree, however, that no act is morally and imperatively right merely because the doer desires to bring about its consequences or because i t will maximize the value of his whole life or the social value. For both Kant and Lewis, any decision to do must be subjected to the final critique of universality and impersonality, the categorical or moral imperative. The decision that the act is morally and imperatively right is a cognitive decision and correct or incorrect; i t does not rest solely (for Kant, it does not rest at all) on the doer's personal approval of the act. We have seen that in order to decide what it is we ought, imperatively, to do, we construct a moral syllogism. In prac­ tice, however, we do not do this for every decision, nor is it

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always necessary. W e often appeal t o what Lewis calls moral precepts or secondary maxims, such as "Tell no lies," "Keep your promises," "Do not kill," etc. These statements are de­ rivative imperatives. They are, i n effect, i nductive state­ ments based upon past applications of the moral impera­ tive : in past applications of the moral imperative, we have found that telling lies has been, generally, morally and im­ peratively forbidden; that keeping promises has been, generally, morally and imperatively commanded, etc.; there­ fore, in the present and future, tell no lies, keep your prom­ ises, etc. Moral precepts, then, are non-terminating j udg­ ments which are general and apply to a wide variety of cases, and which are derivatively imperative because the data upon which they are based are the body of imperative conclusions of past applications of the moral imperative. In a sense, moral precepts replace the moral syllogism ; in de­ ciding what to do, we appeal to them instead of appealing to the moral imperative. To illustrate the inductive character of moral precepts, Lewis likens them to similar statements in economics, which are acknowledged to be generalizations from past experi­ ence. When investing money, an individual "may avail him­ self of secondary maxims, specifically directed to problems of i nvestment: 'Don ' t buy in a boom market,' 'Don't sell in a depressed one,' 'Don' t sell the U.S. economy short,' etc." 80 The value of using such rules of thumb or secondary max­ ims is that they facilitate the making of many decisions and make it possible for us to make decisions on the spur of the moment. The one shortcoming of moral precepts is that they are not completely dependable guides to action. There are situ­ ations in which they fail us: when two or more of them con­ flict; and when, because of the nature of a particular sit­ uation, we cannot find one which is applicable. Cases of conflict arise as a result of the generality of such precepts. so M anuscripts, Pragmatism, p. I 7.

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Precepts deal with classes of actions and are applicable only to most actions in each class, not to all. In addition, since any action is specifiable in a number of different ways, it is subject to different moral precepts. Conflict situations oc­ cur, then, when one or more of the secondary maxims ap­ pealed to are applicable to the same action under different descriptions, or different parts of the same description. If actions were to be completely specified, however, many would not fall under any of the moral precepts, and in such cases the moral precepts are inapplicable. On the other hand, to amend precepts in such a way as to make them ap­ plicable to all actions in a class would be to restrict them so severely that they would lose their character of being gen­ eral princi pies. When the moral precepts fail us, therefore, we must abandon them. In cases of conflict, or when there are no applicable sec­ ondary principles, what it is morally imperative to do can only be decided through the construction of a moral syllo­ gism in which the minor premise is a statement of specific empirical considerations relevant to the case in question. In Our Social Inheritance, Lewis states that sometimes we arrive at the case where specific rules [precepts] fail us altogether. . . . At such a point, we have to fall back upon the ultimate principle itself, implemented by such judgment of the individual case and such wisdom of life as we can muster. 81

This passage is deceptive because it implies that when pre­ cepts do not fail us, the moral imperative, the ultimate principle, is inapplicable. This is not Lewis' intention; the moral imperative is always applicable. Perhaps what Lewis had in mind was that in practice we rely on specific rules taking their moral imperativeness for granted, and that it is only in cases where moral precepts fail us that we are forced to return to the ultimate principle itself. 81

P. 103.

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It should be evident that there is, or could be, a pruden­ tial syllogism corresponding to the moral. The prudential principle "Be concerned about yourself in future and on the whole" 82 also has formal and contentual criteria. The formal criterion requires no discussion. The contentual is i mplied by the words "concerned about yourself in future and on the whole." 83 One's concern is about the conse­ quences of his actions and the value quality of the experi­ ences dependent upon them. Lewis sometimes writes as if these considerations regard­ ing the moral imperative are insufficient to restrict the ego­ ist and emotivist. In Th e Ground and Nature of the Right, he states that "the egoist as well as the social utilitarian can plausibly claim conformity to the principle of Equality under the Moral Law." 84 In the Wesleyan Lectures, he ex­ tends this list to include the emotivists who, he says, could also crawl under the Kantian tent , and recognize the Categorical Imperative as implicit in his interpretation of right and wrong. If "X is right" means "I approve of X as a way of doing and an active attitude: do so as well," the same cautionary observation is implicit as that which attends any application of the Golden Rule: "Approve only of such doing as you would willingly see others approve as well. " 85

The only consideration constraining the egoist and emotiv­ ist here is the question " 'How would you come off, and how would you like it, if everybody should behave as you suggest?' " 86 Lewis states that this is the case because the "Law of Moral Equality does not delineate the con tent of justice." 87 We have seen that the moral imperative and Kant's categorical imperative do set a contentual criterion and do as a result delineate, to some extent, the content of 82 83

Lewis , An Analysis, p. 481 .

Ibid.

P . 95. Manuscripts, Foundations, Lecture IV , pp. 108-1 09. ss Ibid., p. 109. 81 The Ground, p. 95.

84

85

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justice. It is perhaps in order to note here that, strictly speaking, the contentual and formal criteria set by the moral imperative cannot be separated. The only way our ac­ tions can affect other people is by affecting their experience. If the consequences of our actions never touched on the lives of others, there would be no need to take their inter­ ests into account. On the basis of our previous argument and these considerations, we must conclude that Lewis' statements regarding the emotivist and egoist contradict his own arguments. What could be the reason for his error? First, it must be observed that much of the material we have drawn upon in presenting Lewis' arguments was never published and, to a certain extent, never organized by him. It is possible, there­ fore, that at the time he wrote the Wesleyan Lectures and The Gound and Na ture of the Right he had not sufficiently sorted out his thoughts. Second, in the published works from which we have quoted, Lewis emphasizes the formal requirement; in fact, he does not even seem to realize there is a contentual criterion at all until his last book, Our Social Inheritance. The seeming contradiction could then be ex­ plained as a development of thought. This explanation is not very satisfactory, however, because he makes this dis­ tinction in his Seminar Lectures three years before The Ground and Nature of the R igh t was published, and he fails to make it in the Wesleyan Lectures, which were given two years after he published Our Social Inheritance. Third, it is possible that due to time- or space-limitations he ex­ cluded detailed consideration of the nature of the moral im­ perative from the Wesleyan Lectures, The Ground and Na­ ture of the Righ t, and O u r Social Inheritance. Perhaps he wished to devote his time to the book he was writing on eth­ ics and used the provocative thoughts quoted as a heuristic device to get the reader thinking along lines similar to his. Whatever the reason, these few references do not seem suffi­ cient support for the conclusion that Lewis was inconsistent on this point, since all of his other writings support the in­ terpretation we have given.

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This claim addressed to the social utili tarian is also con­ tradictory to the position we have attributed to Lewis. The reasons it is, I suggest, are those given above. Our considera­ tion of utili tarianism, the problem raised by Charles A. Baylis, will be taken up in the next chapter. Before we proceed to the next chapter, let us, in conclu­ sion, consider Lewis' statement that "the basic principle [the moral imperative] must be in some sense a priori. " 88 This claim cannot be confined to the moral imperative. All imperatives have the same ground; if the moral imperative is in some sense a priori, then all imperatives are. To begin with, we can eliminate three possible interpretations of Lewis' use of 'a priori' or 'prior.' It is not the case (1) that the imperatives are analytic statements and, thus, "true by reference exclusively to the meaning of the expressions used 89 • • •" in them; nor is it true (2) that historically i t is the case that the imperatives are prior to empirical knowledge, experience, or action, or (3) that there can be any argu­ ment for the validity of the imperatives before we under­ stand (or prior to our understanding) the words we use. It is not, therefore, in any of these senses that imperatives may be said to be a priori. In what sense, then, are imperatives a priori? Lewis' state­ ment that they are in some sense a priori must be inter­ preted as meaning that there could be no knowledge or meaningful discourse if consistency and cogency were not imperative, or at least not practiced. We acquire knowledge and unknowingly adhere to the cognitive imperatives in so doing. It is not until we are conscious of our knowledge, and perhaps our errors, that we begin to investigate its na­ ture and seek its foundations. Such an investigation, how­ ever, leads to ei ther one of two mutually exclusive results: ( I ) the acknowledgment of and, thus, conscious adherence to the cognitive imperatives and the three other imperatives that are based upon them, or (2) the commitment of a pragmatic self-contradiction. Lewis' position is, I submit, 88 89

O ur Social Inheritance, pp. 99-100. Lewis, A n A nalysis, p. 35 .

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that imperatives, being pragmatically non-self-contradic­ tory, are therefore pragmatically necessary or pragmatically a priori. They are, that is, a priori in a special sense which Lewis' analysis, as we have presented it in this chapter, is de­ signed to isolate and explicate. This is the conclusion at which William Frankena ar­ rived in his perceptive article entitled "C. I. Lewis on the Ground and Nature of the Right." Frankena's position is that, on Lewis' view, the rule, "Be inconsistent," is not analytically false or logi­ cally inconsistent, partly just because it is an imperative. But it cannot be consistently adopted as a rule of thought and action by a human being. It is self-defeating or pragmatically contradictory. . . . And hence its opposite is a priori, but it is pragmatically a priori. 90

It therefore follows that the rational imperatives are neither analytic nor empirical statements and, in accord with Lewis' analysis of knowledge, are not a form of knowledge.91 As a result, continues Frankena, Lewis' theory is a form of noncognitivism, even if he did not see this himself. But having said this, I must at once add something which will take the sting out of such a position from Lewis' point of view, even though it also introduces a paradox, namely, that Lewis was holding an imperativist theory, and hence a non­ cognitivist one, but one which maintains that there are a William Frankena, The Journal of Philosoph y, LXI (1 964) , p. 495. It must be remembered that although all the rational imperatives are pragmatically a priori, the technical, prudential, and moral im­ peratives do presuppose certain empirical truths. Both the prudential and moral imperatives, for example, depend upon the fact that men seek the good and avoid the bad in experience, and the moral impera­ tive depends upon the existence of others like ourselves, that is, of 'fellows.' Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to say that they are grounded on empirical statements. Frankena fails to take account of this distinction and, although it is not necessary for him to do so to support his thesis, it is necessary for an adequate understanding of Lewis' theory. 90

91

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priori imperatives (which are not analytic) and that the basic principle of ethics is one of them. 92

In claiming that Lewis' position is a noncogmt1v1st one, Frankena is not claiming that the rational imperatives are grounded on some emotion, feeling, or attitude and that their acceptance by others is to be obtained through persua­ sion or an appeal to these emotions, attitudes, or feelings; 'noncognitive,' as Frankena uses the word, means only 'nei­ ther empirical nor a priori and, thus, not a form of knowl­ edge. ' It is important that this form of noncognitivism be distinguished from that which relates to emotions and feel­ ings. In conclusion, Frankena states that this position "com­ mits Lewis to a kind of noncognitivism which he did not seem to recognize, but one with which he might well have been content." 93 Our considerations have shown that Lewis did recognize that the rational imperatives were not a form of knowledge. As we have seen, he explicitly stated that the validity of knowledge depends upon the antecedent validity of the rational imperatives. Perhaps Lewis would not have classified his position as noncognitivism, but this, I suggest, would be because of his desire to disassociate himself from emotivism rather than a desire to claim that the rational imperatives represented a form of knowledge. Lewis claimed that his ethical theory was a combination of "ethical naturalism and ethical rationalism," with the proviso that " 'rationalism' . . . [may not be] the right word . . . . " 94 The naturalistic or empirical part of his the­ ory is represented by his analysis of the right and the good; the rational part, by his analysis of the rational imperatives. If we are to apply the terms 'naturalism' and 'rationalism' to his theory, however, they must first be qualified. A natu­ ralistic theory is generally understood to be one which de92 93 94

"C. I. Lewis,"

fbid., p. 496.

p. 494.

The Ground, p. 97.

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fines good in terms of some other property, such as happi­ ness, pleasure, etc. As we have seen, Lewis does not do this; in fact, he is careful to avoid such a definition, claiming that intrinsic goodness represents a dimension-like mode. In calling Lewis' theory of the right and the good naturalistic, therefore, we must not think that, as a result, he commits what G. E. Moore called the "naturalistic fallacy." On the other hand, the word 'rationalism' traditionally refers to ethical theories which claim that that which it is right to bring about can be determined through the use of reason alone-without appealing to the empirical-and, further, that it should be so determined. If this is what 'rationalism' means, then it is clear that Lewis' theory is not a form of ra­ tionalism. The determination of the right is the conclusion of an empirical inquiry; for Lewis, it is in the determina­ tion of the imperatives that his theory is rationalistic. As a result, if 'rationalism' is to be correctly and intelligibly ap­ plied to Lewis' theory, it must have essentially the same meaning as 'noncognitivism' has in Frankena's account.

CH A P T ER

I V

Equality and Social Value The moral imperative sets the ultimate or final cri­ teria in terms of which all actions are to be judged to be im­ perative. The first criterion states that all individuals must be treated equally; the second states that the social value, or that value as it accrues to all individuals affected by an act, be taken into account. Our task in this chapter is to expli­ cate further the moral imperative and the manner in which it is to be applied. To do this, it will be necessary to attrib­ ute to Lewis ideas and positions that he himself did not for­ mulate or advance. Our attribution of these ideas and posi­ tions to Lewis will not be arbitrary, however, since they will be based upon, and consistent with, his analyses of the right and the imperative. We have already observed that any concrete moral judgment requires two kinds of premises. There is the basic principle which achieves universality and sets the final criteria of the moral by freeing itself from entanglement with all specificities of concrete cases and any­ thing dependent on the empirical and the informational [that is, the moral imperative] . And there is the further required premise-or rather vast set of premises, squeezed into such generalizations as we can compass and are pertinent-which concern the predictable good and bad consequences of alter­ native ways of acting in the particular case. 1 1

Lewis, Manuscripts, Pragmatism, p. 20.

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These two premises, together with the conclusion, which is a moral judgm ent, form the moral syllogism. What we have not observed is that Lewis presents two distinct types of moral syllogisms: first, one whose minor premise includes a reference to social value, and second, one whose minor premise includes a reference to the value character of the consequences of a prudentially motivated act. The purpose of both these syllogisms is the same-to enable us to deter­ mine what it is we imperatively ought to do in any particu­ lar situation. We shall consider both these syllogisms. 1) Our consideration of the morally right demonstrated the need for some degree of individual freedom within a human society. Two arguments were given to support the conclusions: (a) that only within a society can men lead a peculiarly human life, (b) that only if men are allowed cer­ tain freedoms can there be a human, as opposed to an ant­ like, society, and (c) that the maintenance of this society requires a certain degree of co-operation. Only in such a so­ ciety, it was argued, could there be any individual or social value. The question we did not answer is, what are the cri­ teria for determining whether and when freedom should be allowed and co-operation commanded? Lewis' answer to this question is that the moral imperative sets the criteria in terms of which we are to make such judgm ents and that the first moral syllogism enables us to make judgm ents of what it is imperative for us to do. The major premise of this syl­ logism states, first, that all individuals must be treated equally-that what is allowed for one individual must be al­ lowed for every other similar individual in similar circum­ stances, and, second, that it is imperative to bring about that social arrangement which does not contravene the first or formal criterion and which maximizes the social value. Ac­ cordingly, if allowing everyone to pursue his own pruden­ tial ends in a certain area of activity would result in the maximization of social value, then it is morally imperative that everyone be permitted so to act. On the other hand, if commanding everyone to perform a certain act or type of

Equality and Social Value

IOI

act, such as paying taxes, or forbidding everyone to perform certain types of acts, such as committi ng murder, would maximize the social value, then it is morally imperative that these types of acts be commanded or forbidden, respectively. The essential requirement here is that all individual mem­ bers of the community be accorded equal treatment and be given equal opportunity to pursue their own ends when that pursuit is morally and imperatively permitted, and that if one individual is forbidden (or commanded) to do a particular act, then all similar individuals should also be forbidden ( or commanded) to do that act. 2) The second moral syllogism is designed to enable in­ dividual men to determine whi ch prudentially right actions are also morally and imperatively right, commanded, or for­ bidden. The conten tual cri terion requires that the value character of the consequences of the act be taken into ac­ count; the formal criterion requires that the value character of the consequences of the act be taken into account as they affect the experiences of everyone affected by the conse­ quences of the act. Once the assessment of everyone's value experiences is made, the doer must imagi ne himself si tuated in the positions of all the other persons affected by the act and empathetically evaluate their probable experiences. Only those acts of which he could approve from the point of view of all those affected by the value character of the act's consequences are morally and imperatively right. Ac­ cordingly, in terms of the second moral syllogism, an action is morally and imperatively commanded if to fail to do it would be to do something of which you could not approve, if posi tioned in the places of all those affected by the act; it is morally and impera tively forbidden if, positioned in the places of all those affected by the act, you could not approve it; and it is morally and imperatively permi tted i f, posi­ tioned in the places of all those affected by the act, you would not disapprove it. Both syllogisms terminate in ei ther one of three types of j udgments: j udgments of obligation, judgments of prohibi-

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THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

tion, or judgments of permission or permissibility. Each of these judgments is derivatively and universally imperative. These judgments are derivatively and thus unqualifiedly imperative because, being the conclusion of a moral syllo­ gism, they derive their force from the moral imperative it­ self. They are universal because all members of the class of actions to which they apply, and all relevantly similar indi­ viduals, are subject to them. The judgment that an act is permitted is the same as the judgment that it is morally and imperatively right. This is brought out by Lewis in the fol­ lowing passage: 'Morally right[imperative] ' means 'Morally [and imperatively] permitted,' not 'morally [and imperatively] required.' And the same will hold of 'right' in any other sense. That alone is wrong which is forbidden, and the negation of 'forbidden' is 'permitted' ; not 'commanded.' That, and that only, is com­ manded to do which is forbidden not to do: forbidden to avoid or fail to do. 1) commanded to do = forbidden not to do 2) permitted to do == not forbidden to do 3) permitted not to do = not commanded to do 4) forbidden to do = not permitted to do.2

It should be dear that acts judged to be morally permitted, forbidden, or commanded, in the sense in which Lewis is using these terms, have already been judged to be so in terms of the moral imperative. In order to avoid confusion, we shall indicate this fact by using the terminology we have developed. Thus, actions or activities that are judged to be right in terms of the moral imperative will be said to be morally and imperatively right or permitted, and actions that are similarly judged to be commanded or forbidden will be said to be morally and imperatively commanded, or morally and imperatively forbidden, respectively. One factor regarding morally and imperatively permitted acts remains to be considered. We have seen that any pru2

Lewis, Manuscripts, Reel I, Chapter I, no title, 8/14/61 , p. 1 7 .

Eq uality and Social Value

1 03

dentially right act that contravenes the cri teria established by the moral imperative is morally and imperatively forbid­ den, but we must note that a prudentially right act is not morally and imperatively forbidden merely because the con­ sequences of an individual's doing it might or would be in­ convenient to others. The reason for this should be clear: if it can be shown that allowing everyone to do prudentially right acts of this type will lead to more social good than any alternative social arrangement, then even though some or all individuals are slightly inconvenienced, it is morally im­ perative that everyone be permi tted to pursue his own pru­ dential ends in this area of activity. 'Inconvenienced,' as it is used here, does not mean 'denied freedom commensurate wi th that of others.' The meaning of 'inconvenienced' can be made clearer if we consider what might be called cases of "maximum par­ ticipation." Maximum participation occurs when all or a great majority of those who have a moral and imperative right to do something do it at the same time-when, for ex­ ample, all persons wi th cars travel on the public roads, or all residents of a state attend the public beaches and parks. Such cases seldom, if ever, arise, but if they did, the traffic would move very slowly and the beaches and parks would be extremely crowded. No one, perhaps, would enjoy him­ self as much as he would in different circumstances; he would find himself extremely inconvenienced. To a lesser degree, activities on the part of others m ay bother, annoy, or offend us. Insofar as such activities are open to all, how­ ever, such unpleasant consequences must be borne, or the freedom from which they result must be rescinded. Wi thin the areas in which freedom is allowed, the end of our actions is, according to Lewis, generally prudential. In­ sofar as we are rational, we do that which is prudentially right within those areas, but in so acting, we must govern our behavior so that we do not encroach upon the rights of others. The moral imperative commands us to respect others and their ends as we respect ourselves and our own

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THE ETHICAL THEORY OF CLARENCE IRVING LEWIS

ends. Freedom, so conceived, is not restricted to individuals; families and groups have interests that their members have in common and that can be served best by autonomous and co-operative group action. Insofar as autonomy for such groups is socially more valuable than any other social ar­ rangement, it is morally and imperatively commanded. In Chapter I, we noted that since it was impossible to as­ sess the comparative value of different individuals' experi­ ences, it was also impossible to determine when the social value was maximized. Our consideration of relevantly simi­ lar individuals and equality in the preceding chapter, how­ ever, has provided us with the tools necessary to obviate this difficulty. Lewis, as far as I can determine, did not consider this problem in detail, but he did suggest a way to deal with it. In regard to social value he cautions us not [to] confuse the problem of assessing the value of an object, in this or any other manner, with the ethical question, " What manner of giving weight to the value-experiences of others, in comparison with our own, is morally imperative in determining our own conduct?" As we have observed before, this ethical question is distinct from any question of valua­ tion-which last is always a question of empirical facts of some kind. Probably we should not quarrel with the ethical dictum, "Each to count for one, and none for more than one." 3

The point Lewis is making here is that which we empha­ sized in the preceding chapter, that is, that insofar as men experience value and disvalue, they 'are similar, and that in­ sofar as they are similar, the formal criterion of the moral imperative requires that equal weight be assigned to the value experiences of each individual. The assignment of equal weights to the value experiences of each individual is not dependent, therefore, on empirical considerations, but, rather, is based upon the moral imperative which delineates the concept of equality. Delineating the concept of equality 3

An Analysis, pp. 545-546.

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is an ethical inquiry directed toward explicating the formal criterion of the moral imperative. The fact that we are required to give equal weight to each individual's value experiences, however, does not ob­ viate all the difficulties involved in assessing social value. As Lewis notes, the assessment of the social value of an action, practice, or object, depends upon the assessment of the value experiences of all the individuals affected by it. Since this is the case, the social value can be assessed by consider­ ing preferences of all individuals affected by a proposed ac­ tion. Although this was Lewis' position, he failed to realize, or, if he did realize, failed to state or emphasize, that there are a great number of problems involved in assessing the so­ cial value, or the majority preference. The simplest of these is illustrated by the paradox of voting which assumes that a natural way of arriving at the collective preference scale would be to say that one alternative is preferred to another if a majority of the community prefer the first alternative to the second, i.e., would choose the first over the second if those were the only two alternatives. Let A, B, and C be the three alternatives, and I , 2, and 3 the three individuals. Suppose individual I prefers A to B and B to C (and therefore A to C) , individual 2 prefers B to C and C to A (and therefore B to A) and individual 3 prefers C to A and A to B (and therefore C to B) . Then a majority prefer A to B, and a majority prefer B to C. We may therefore say that the community prefers A to B and B to C. If the community is to be regarded as behaving rationally, we are forced to say that A is preferred to C. But in fact a majority of the community prefer C to A .4

This paradox points out one of the difficulties involved in any assessment of social value that is based upon assess­ ments of individual values or preferences. Since Lewis' ethi­ cal theory rests upon the claim that social value depends on individual values, his failure to consider the problems in­ volved in assessing social value makes his theory incomplete.

4 Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1 951) , pp. 2-3 .

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The difficulties involved in assessing the social value are not confined to developing a method for determining the social value on the basis of individual values. Also essential for any final determination of social value is an analysis of the different modes of activities that take place, or may take place, in, between, and among societies, such as competi­ tion, conflict, and co-operation, as well as an analysis of the nature of different types of value in terms of transferability and conservation. Values are said to be transferable if they can be passed from one individual to another, and they are said to be conservative if they maintain their original value during transfer. The nature of values as transferable and/or conservative is important in analyzing different modes of ac­ tivity. If values are transferable and conservative, then co­ operating individuals or groups can divide the values gained through co-operative activity among themselves; and if values, or some values, are neither transferable nor con­ servative, then division of them, and activities which depend upon such division, would not be possible. These considerations, although admittedly brief, point out some of the problems that Lewis failed to consider. In order for his ethical theory to be applicable to actual situa­ tions, these difficulties must be overcome. Perhaps the rea­ son Lewis did not attempt to deal with them is that doing so would have sidetracked him from an inquiry he consid­ ered to be more important, namely, grounding and expli­ cating the rational imperatives. Whatever the reason, however, the difficulties involved in assessing social value remain. Although the above analysis is, in substance, Lewis', he does not provide any examples of the application of the moral imperative. To this extent, his presentation is inade­ quate and in need of supplementation. To correct this inad­ equacy, we will apply the moral imperative to some hypo­ thetical situations. It should be remembered that the applications and considerations which we will present do not necessarily represent Lewis' views, but, rather, views we

Equality and Social Value

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believe Lewis' theory, as it has been presented, entails. The applications of the moral imperative will deal with alterna­ tives whose consequences are assumed to be either good or bad. In this way we will be able to apply the moral impera­ tive without having to face the difficult problems involved in assessing the probable social value of alternative ways of acting. Again, we should note that the following examples and considerations, unless otherwise stated, are not Lewis', but our own. We have seen that everyone has an obligation to do (or refrain from doing) certain types of actions if their doing (or not doing) so would maximize the social value without contravening the formal criterion of the moral imperative. There are many activities, however, that, although essential for the maximization of the social value, would not achieve this end if everyone were to engage in them. If everyone, for example, were to serve in the armed forces, practice medi­ cine, produce food, and so on, the social value would not be maximized; nor would it be maximized if no one were to serve in the armed forces, practice medicine, or produce food. It is obvious that in such situations some, but not all, should perform these tasks if the society is to be maintained and individuals are to realize any value in their lives. The question is, then, how do we decide who is to do these things and who is not to do them? This, of course, is a diffi­ cult question and depends for its answer upon the specific situations in which it is to be answered. Nevertheless, it is important that we consider it, for it is when we are faced with these types of situations that we find it difficult to make decisions. The reason that we find the making of such decisions difficult is that we lack the criteria in terms of which such decisions are to be made. It is Lewis' contention that he has provided those criteria in the form of the mor