Moral Principles
Many arguments, including those that I will cover in this guide, center around general principles. Since I’ll be primarily focusing on moral arguments, I’ll provide advice on constructing moral principles before I go over specific types of arguments. Moral principles are, roughly, claims about how we ought, morally, to live. Moral principles usually have two components, what I’ll call the type of moral principle it is and the scope of the principle. There are a variety of types of moral claim you might be dealing with. The most common types of moral principles are principles of:
(1) Obligation (it is morally obligatory to act or refrain from acting in some way just in case just in case one has strong moral reasons to act or refrain from acting in that way and those reasons are not easily outweighed by other moral reasons).
(2) Wrongness (it is morally wrong to act in some way just in case not acting in that way is morally obligatory), and
(3) Permissibility (it is morally permissible for one to act in some way just in case that action is not morally wrong).
So, a moral principle has to tell you if an action is morally obligatory, wrong, or permissible. When you’re presenting your own moral principle, be sure to be explicit about what type of moral principle you’re proposing. You should do this right in the principle itself by saying something like: “it is morally wrong to kill persons.” So, a moral principle has the form of: “it is morally (obligatory/wrong/permissible) to _______.”
Moral principles can be narrower or wider in scope. You can think of a principle as narrower or wider in scope, roughly, depending on how many instances of that kind of action the principle classifies as morally obligatory/wrong/permissible. Take the previous moral principle: “it is morally wrong to kill humans.” The scope of this principle is quite wide: it classifies a lot of cases of killing as wrong. But the principle would be wider if it classifies more cases of killing as obligatory/wrong/permissible. For instance, someone can make the principle wider by changing it to “it is morally wrong to kill animals.” Notice that this principle of killing classifies many more cases of killing as wrong; the first principle was limited to claims about the wrongness of killing humans, whereas this second claim includes not only persons, but animals as well. In a similar way, we can make the principle narrower by making the principle more specific. For instance, if we revise the principle to say that “it is morally wrong to kill innocent persons.” This principle of the wrongness of killing classifies many fewer cases of killing as wrong. It does not make any claim about the wrongness (or permissibility) of killing animals or non-innocent persons.
All I’ve done so far is give some sense of what the type and scope of a moral principle is; I’ve said nothing about whether or not the scope of the principle affects its plausibility. In fact, I think the scope of the principle does affect its plausibility, but not in a straightforward way. In oneway, narrower principles are more plausible: they are less likely to overgeneralize and misclassify instances of a particular type of action as obligatory/wrong/permissible. The examples I presented above are instructive here. Consider the widest scope principle: it is morally wrong to kill animals. This principle overgeneralizes because it misclassifies cases of permissible killing as wrong. There are, surely, at least some cases in which it is morally permissible to kill animals. It may, for instance, be morally permissible to kill animals for food if that is the only way to survive in an emergency situation. The principle “it is morally wrong to kill humans” is more plausible because it does not misclassify killing an animal in this case as wrongful killing. However, it misclassifies other cases of permissible killing as morally wrong. For example, many people would agree that killing a person in self-defense is morally permissible, but the principle “it is morally wrong to kill humans” does not allow for killing in self-defense. The narrowest principle – which claims that it is morally wrong to kill innocent persons – does not misclassify killing non-innocent persons as morally wrong, at least not in all cases. So, narrowing a moral principle increases its plausibility in the sense that a narrower principle will guard against overgeneralizing in this problematic way.
Alas, as I’ve been at pains to show throughout this guide, things are more complicated than they initially appear; it wouldn’t do just to make all our moral principles as narrow as possible. If that were the case, we would have principles like: “It is wrong to kill Joe, an innocent bystander, with a candlestick, in the lounge, at 4:21 P.M. EST…”. Well, what’s wrong with this principle? It’s actually so specific that it becomes less plausible in a different sense than what I described above: a principle this specific cannot explain why most other cases of (intuitively) impermissible killings are wrong and, the less a moral principle can explain, the less reason we have to think it’s a fundamental moral principle. For instance, the previous moral principle wouldn’t explain why it’s wrong to kill Sam with the wrench in the ballroom at 3:39 P.M. EST. Now, I’ve made these principles extremely specific, but that’s on purpose to show you that moral principles can be too specific. I hope I’ve gotten the general point across with these fanciful examples: the more specific we make our moral principles, the less they’re able to explain about why certain actions are obligatory, wrong, or permissible. And, generally, the less a moral principle can explain, the less reason we have to endorse that moral principle as one that is fundamental to the correct moral theory.
So, what’s the take away here? When constructing the moral principles relevant to your argument, your goal, generally, is to increase the scope of your moral principle(s) as much as possible without misclassifying instances of a particular type of action as obligatory, wrong, or permissible when they are (intuitively) not.
Before I conclude this section, I want to give you one final piece of advice. Up until this point, I’ve been discussing moral principles, but, in your paper, you might not really be concerned with moral principles at all. Perhaps you’re really concerned with principles concerning professional or legal obligations, wrongs, and permissibility. In your thesis and throughout your paper, pick one type of principle and defend that one. Don’t start by talking about one type of claim (e.g., abortion is morally impermissible) and switch later to discussing a different claim (e.g., abortion ought to be legal). Why? Because moral principles are importantly different from professional and legal claims. In this course, do NOT write about legal claims. This is a course in moral philosophy, not political philosophy or the law. When you’re discussing your topic, write about either the moral or professional obligations, wrongs, and permissibility (but not both!). If you choose to discuss professional obligations/wrongs/permissibility, the same advice I gave above about moral principles will apply to whatever professional principles you propose and defend.