Understanding Moral Discourse: Key Definitions and Importance

1. Assignments • For Tuesday, read Feinberg and Levenbook, ”Abortion” in the text. • On Thursday, we will talk about Don Marquis, “Why Abortion is Immoral” and Sinnott-Armstrong’s response to that paper. • Work on your essay paper. The deadline of the first draft is, as you know, Thursday, March 2. (You should bring two copies in the class session.) • The extra credit assignment of revising a paper (the argument paper or the comprehension paper) for the class is due on March 9.

2. Definition in Moral Discourse 2006 Makoto Suzuki

3. Main Types of ‘Definitions’ in Moral Discourse • Clarifying Definitions: definitions for making clear what participants have been talking about • E.g.: Beauchamp’s definition of suicide • Stating morally or legally relevant characteristics: characterizing the conditions that makes something morally or legally important (in either a positive or a negative way) • E.g.: the characterization of a person in moral sense (i.e., the being who can have moral rights), what a good for an individual consists in; the characterization of punishment, abortion, war, POW etc. in laws • Disambiguating definitions • Their role is to make clear what the speaker means by an ambiguous word, e.g., “modesty”: does the speaker mean by it (1) “not talking much about one’s abilities or possessions”, (2) “not showing one’s body and attracting sexual attention”, or (3) “not so extravagant”? • Precising definitions • Their role is to make a sharp boundary around the things to which a term refers: e.g.: “I stipulate that an adult be over 20 years old.” • Definitions of technical or theoretical terms • E.g.: the definition of utilitarianism, retributivism etc.

4. The Importance of Distinguishing 1 and 2 • It is very important to distinguish 1 and 2. • For example, suppose you mistake Beauchamp in Part 1 (pp.71-83) to engage in 2, i.e., in specifying the conditions that makes self-killings (unjustified) suicides. • Then, you might criticize Beauchamp’s definition for making certain sacrificial deaths cases of (unjustified) suicide as “unfair”, “morally wrongheaded” etc. • However, this criticism is misguided because Beauchamp is just trying to do 1., i.e., clarifying what people have been talking about by “suicide”. Beauchamp does not claim that these sacrificial deaths are unjustified. • In fact, he later argues that they are justified cases of suicide.

5. 1. Clarifying Definitions • The role: to avoid talking past each other between people who talk about an issue, e.g., the moral permissibility of suicide. If the subject is confusing, you need to do so. • How to make: consider and state all the common features of the things the term (“suicide” in this case) applies to, but which are not shared by the things the term fails to apply • The agent’s intention to die is one of the common features of the things that “suicide” applies to, but which are not shared by things the term fails to apply, e.g., accidental deaths; thus, your clarifying definition of “suicide” should mention the agent’s intention. • How to criticize: point out either that the definition applies to things other than what the term (“suicide” in this case) refers to, or that it fails to apply to things that the term actually refers to.

6. Continued • What you should not do: • Give circular definitions or definitions with synonymy • E.g.: “Property rights are rights over properties”; “euthanasia is mercy-killing.” • These definitions neither clarify the subject nor help people avoid talking past each other. • Use evaluative terms in definitions • E.g.: “Lying is an unjustified assertion of falsity”; “Suicide is self-murder”; “Abortion is the murder of fetuses”; “Punishment is the permissible infliction of sufferings”; etc. • There are two problems. (1) Because different people have different ideas about what is (un)justified, (im)permissible etc, they will talk past each other even if they agree with the words of the definitions. (2) More seriously, these definitions beg the questions. Because the clarifying definitions are made for talking about the morality of lying, suicide, abortion, punishment etc., they must not prejudge the answers first.

7. Substantial Issues do not hinge on clarifying definitions. • As far as clarifying definitions do not include evaluative terms, substantial issues do not hinge on how they are defined. • For example, Beauchamp and Margolis disagrees about whether the clarifying definition of suicide should make certain self-sacrifices the cases of suicide. • For example, the definition of Beauchamp makes the following self-sacrifice suicide: the father kills himself in the midst of a famine so that his wife and children have enough to eat. Margolis’ definition excludes the case from the category of suicide. • However, they can agree with the morality of particular actions. • E.g.: Beauchamp and Margolis can agree that the father’s action is morally permissible. Surely, Beauchamp will then say, “that suicide is permissible”, and Margolis says, ”that self-sacrifice is permissible”, but the difference is in expression, not in what is said.

8. 2. Stating morally or legally relevant features • The role: to express a moral or legal criterion. • How to do: give moral or legal arguments for the criterion. • How to criticize: criticize the arguments provided for the criterion, and supply moral or legal arguments against the criterion.

9. Substantial issues hinge on how to state morally or legally relevant characteristics. • For example, if a person in moral sense is necessarily a biological human being, fetuses can have moral rights (while God, angels, ETs, apes, androids etc. cannot have moral rights). On the other hand, if a person in moral sense is necessarily a being with the combination of consciousness, self-awareness, minimal rationality etc., then fetuses probably cannot have moral rights (while the beings mentioned above might be able to have moral rights). • For another example, suppose a person commits crimes but is judged to be incompetent and is confined to medical facility. Because this is not punishment by legal criterion, the due process clause does not apply to his or her case.