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reflective equilibrium can figure in both. And these debates profoundly
affect the interpretation of the dualism of practical reason, since the ques-
tion of what to make, epistemologically speaking, of the conflict between
utilitarianism and egoism depends in part on how one construes the intu-
itional support for the axioms undergirding these views. Unfortunately,
much of this previous debate seems rather ungenerous and anachronistic
in its depiction of Sidgwick, failing to grasp his fallibilistic, multicriterial
approach in anything like its true complexity. Despite his evident com-
mitment to fallibilism, there has been a remarkably persistent tendency to
interpret his intuitionism on the “searchlight” (or “radar”) and “hotline”
model, taking it as a form of perceptual intuitionism involving the mental
inspection of ontologically suspect esoteric qualities yielding indefeasible
convictions. Yet it is plain that his notion of intuitive truth works quite
differently. And as Schneewind has shown, the first edition of the Methods
contained a uniquely helpful statement suggestive of just how Sidgwick
typically argued. Commenting on Clarke, he explains, in connection with
benevolence and the similarity of its justification to the justification of
equity, that
we must start with some ethical judgment, in order that the rule may be proved:
and, in fact, the process of reasoning is precisely similar in the two cases. There,
an individual was supposed to judge that a certain kind of conduct was right and
fit to be pursued towards him: and it was then shewn that he must necessarily
conceive the same conduct to be right for all other persons in precisely similar
circumstances: and therefore judge it right for himself, in like case, to adopt it
towards any other person. Similarly here we are supposed to judge that there is
something intrinsically desirable – some result which it would be reasonable for
each individual to seek for himself, if he considered himself alone. Let us call this the individual’s Good or Welfare: then what Clarke urges is, that the Good of
any one individual cannot be more intrinsically desirable, because it is his, than the equal good of any other individual. So that our notion of Ultimate Good, at the
realization of which it is evidently reasonable to aim, must include the Good of
every one on the same ground that it includes that of any one. (ME ) Thus, as Schneewind glosses the passage,
all four axioms may be viewed as obtained by the procedure of eliminating arbitrary
limitations on ethical propositions one is prepared to assert. If someone says that
some consideration is a reason for him to do a specific act, he may be brought to
see that the limitation to himself is arbitrary and unfounded: it cannot be a reason
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for him to act unless it would equally be a reason for anyone similar to act in the
same way in relevantly similarly circumstances.
The inferences typically demanded are therefore, as hinted earlier, gen-
eralizing ones, which at least suggests a certain affinity with the Kantian
orientation; for all of the differences that Sidgwick insisted on and all of
the changes to later editions, this remained part of his argument, giving
it a different flavor from “demonstrations” of intuitive truth less sensitive
to the dialectical demands of any defense of practical reason.
Schneewind also notes another singularly helpful passage that figured in
the first edition – a brief but quite explicit statement concerning the nature
of rationality, in which Sidgwick discusses how a reasonable person could
deem a desire unreasonable if it conflicts with, or cannot be subsumed
under, a general rule of conduct:
But again, general rules and maxims may in their turn be found mutually in-
consistent, in either sense: and here too conduct appears to us irrational or at
least imperfectly rational, not only if the maxims upon which it is professedly
based conflict with and contradict one another, but also if they cannot be bound
together and firmly concatenated by means of some one fundamental principle.
For practical reason does not seem to be thoroughly realised until a perfect order,
harmony, and unity of system is introduced into all our actions. (ME –)
Bearing these various points in mind, one must conclude that Sidgwick
was hardly a naive Victorian – or Cartesian – who simply took it for granted
that ethics could be rationally justified because one “just saw” ethical truths
courtesy of the natural light. His account of reason is far more complex. As
Roger Crisp puts it, “Intuition for Sidgwick is a doxastic faculty, nothing
more, or less, than a capacity for forming beliefs of a certain kind, with
the possibility thereby of acquiring knowledge.” And Sidgwick, “unlike
Whewell perhaps, need not be seen as committed to any form of ‘Platonist’
metaphysics, but merely to the idea that there are reasons for action.”
If one wishes to be anachronistic, one could read his commitments as no
more objectionable than those of Rawls or McMahan, Parfit or Scanlon,
when they urge that it makes sense to talk about reasons for action that are
not purely instrumental, even if Sidgwick seems to have a keener sense of
the need for unity and for a Socratic faith in common sense in general.
This is important. Sidgwick was unmoved by worries that he was at odds
with the more reductive and/or materialistic forms of naturalism, but he
kept his metaethics so minimal – in the Methods, at least – that Deweyan
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pragmatists as well as Moorean Platonists could find his attitude congenial.
In metaethics as in theology, he simply left the door open for any number
of possible developments.
Continuing developments, of course. So much so that Crisp can argue
that because of Sidgwick’s “insight, impartiality, and exactingness, he
was able to produce a version of intuitionism which, its boundaries duly
drawn, and cleared of a misconception, should find more agreement among
contemporary thinkers than the views of any of his predecessors, and
is at least a serious contender for the strongest version of intuitionism
yet developed.” Put more exactly, on Crisp’s rehabilitation of Sidgwick’s
approach:
Moral intuition is the capacity to form non-inferential, self-evident beliefs that<
br />
certain actions, rules, or whatever are right or reasonable, and moral intuitions are such beliefs. The claim that we possess such a capacity should be kept apart from
any other thesis, such as the radar view, the hotline view, or non-naturalism. So
understood, the view that we have moral intuition is likely to be widely accepted.
Still, some have argued that Sidgwick cannot have it all, that the com-
plexity of his system ultimately renders it inconsistent, and that the appeal
to Aristotle’s distinction between logical priority and priority for any given
individual is not apt in his case. In an important essay, Brink gives what
is perhaps the reflective upshot of the earlier debates about Sidgwick and
reflective equilibrium:
[I]t is hard to make sense of the idea that moral claims could be self-evident; asymmetrical epistemic dependence seems very troublesome. What is puzzling
about philosophical intuitionism is that it reasonably insists that we can and should seek an inferential justification of moral beliefs about action tokens and types, even when they are indubitable or nearly so, but claims that the more abstract and more
dubitable principles we produce as justifications do not admit of justification in
terms of anything else. But how can a more abstract and more dubitable proposition
be self-evident if a less dubitable one is not? Given that we permit the demand for
explanation and justification in the first place, as Sidgwick allows we must if ethics is to contain debate and dialogue at all, philosophical intuitionism seems to limit
the demand in an arbitrary and perverse way. In fact, moral philosophy, past and
present, does assume that first principles are discursively justified; we challenge
and defend moral theories by comparing their implications about particular cases
with our independent moral beliefs about those cases. And this . . . is Sidgwick’s other view about the justification of first principles; they are to be justified by
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showing that they are in dialectical equilibrium with beliefs that take common-
sense morality as input.
Thus, whereas I do think that this interpretation of Aristotle’s distinction al-
lows us to reconcile asymmetrical metaphysical dependence with symmetrical
epistemic dependence, it does not help Sidgwick resolve his dilemma, because it
does not allow us to reconcile asymmetrical and symmetrical aspects of epistemic
dependence. Sidgwick’s epistemological views are not fully consistent; he must
choose between his intuitionist and dialectical accounts of the justification of first principles.
In effect, Brink is urging that there is a vicious circularity in the in-
tuitionistic side of Sidgwick’s argument, and that his appeal to Aristotle
confutes the metaphysical and the epistemological. That is, on this ac-
count, Sidgwick is convicted of inconsistency, of deploying two funda-
mentally contrasting epistemological approaches: a dialectical or discur-
sive one (systematizing common sense in the manner of Rawlsian wide
reflective equilibrium) and a rational intuitionist form of foundationalism
that disallows any “probative value or evidential role to common-sense
morality.” On the first, the “epistemic dependence between first princi-
ples and particular moral beliefs can be bi-directional,” with the principle
subsuming and explaining the particular judgment, and the particular
judgment providing evidence of the principle. But on the second, “these
first principles cannot be justified by their relation to anything less gen-
eral, and, ex hypothesi, there is nothing more general than first principles
in terms of which they might be justified.” The appeal to natural pri-
ority and priority for us is hard to make out in the epistemic way that
Sidgwick uses it: “knowledge or justification seems precisely something
that cognizers have (or lack); a cognizer’s beliefs are justified or count as
knowledge if they meet certain conditions. It is hard to understand what
is being asserted if it is claimed that certain propositions are known (or
justified) but by (or for) no one.” It is fine to talk about the metaphysical
priority of first principles, since this “does not show that our evidence for
what first principle is true cannot include our (defeasible) beliefs about
what acts are right.” But one cannot sensibly ask, of a first principle taken
to be true, what further property makes it true.
Yet Brink does seem to be attributing to Sidgwick a view about intu-
itionism that he simply did not hold. Indeed, Brink seems not to appreciate
either the force of Sidgwick’s conception of self-evidence as a matter of de-
gree or the point of his distinction between the (more limited) criterion of
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self-evidence and the larger justificatory process, including other tests for
achieving a higher degree of certainty through the elimination of sources
of error.
In part, the proper Sidgwickian response would seem to be that the
process of reflection itself persuades the moral theorist that the “more du-
bitable” proposition is “less dubitable” – in other words, that it is possible
to progress toward an ideal limit of self-evidence by grasping how one
had not properly cognized the genuinely self-evident component of one’s
beliefs, which is to say, apprehended what real clarity involves. Hence, the
special work of the moral theorist (or the Apostolic seeker). This is the in-
tuitionist’s equivalent of finding one’s true faith, the core truth contained
within a larger set of beliefs, some of which turn out to be adventitious or
the result of one’s being imperfectly receptive. And if the work of differ-
ent theorists is such as to inspire confidence that they are approximating
some common truth, as yet imperfectly formulated, then intuitionism can
be taken as a promising research program. Brink’s account would simply
rule out from the start any claims to fundamental intellectual progress
within an intuitionist – or for that matter, rationalist – epistemological
framework. Admittedly, such projects have often been accused of in-
coherence, circularity, and much else besides, but one would never guess
from Brink’s critique how vigorous and impressive their defense has been.
Brink admits that it is puzzling that Sidgwick himself seemed to an-
ticipate so many of these concerns, and he seems somewhat troubled that
his argument would disallow any effort to enhance the certainty had by
intuition through discursive justification or the consensus of experts. In
effect, he is charging Sidgwick with grotesque inconsistency, despite what
would seem to be Sidgwick’s perfectly clear apprehension of
the issues.
Notice, for a start, how in “Utilitarianism” Sidgwick concisely explains:
It may be said that it is impossible to ‘prove’ a first principle; and this is of
course true, if by proof we mean a process which exhibits the principle in ques-
tion as an inference from premisses upon which it remains dependent for its
certainty: for these premisses, and not the inference drawn from them, would
then be the real first principles. Nay, if Utilitarianism is to be proved to a man who already holds some other moral principles, say to an Intuitional or Common-Sense
moralist . . . or an Egoist . . . the process must be one which establishes a conclusion actually superior in validity to the premisses from which it starts. For the Utilitarian prescriptions of duty are primâ facie in conflict, at certain points and under certain circumstances, both with Intuitional rule, and with the dictates of Rational
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Egoism: so that Utilitarianism, if accepted at all, must be accepted as overrul-
ing Intuitionism and Egoism. At the same time, if the other principles are not
throughout taken as valid, the so-called proof does not seem to be addressed
to the Intuitionist or Egoist at all. How shall we deal with this dilemma? and
how is such a process (certainly very different from ordinary proof ) possible or
conceivable? It seems that what is needed is a line of argument which, on the one
hand, allows the validity, to a certain extent, of the principles already accepted, and on the other hand, shows them to be imperfect – not absolutely and independently
valid, but needing qualification and completion.
Now, what Sidgwick says here about taking the other principles “as
valid” is quite significant. As Rob Shaver has urged, a short but nonetheless
compelling counter to Brink’s criticism is simply to interpret Sidgwick,
as seems plausible, as allowing that such contending beliefs have an ini-
tial credibility without claiming that they are self-evident. Common sense
does play more than a heuristic role in Sidgwick’s arguments, but between
heuristic value and self-evidence there are forms of initial credibility that