Universal Prescriptivism:, An Introduction

Universal Prescriptivism: An introduction.

Universal Prescriptivism is a non-cognitivist, anti-realist theory primarly assosciated with R.M. Hare. He agrees with the is/ought gap, holding the belief that we cannot derive a moral judgement from any facts. But while he does believe moral judgemants are non-descriptive functions (i.e. they do not pick out anything which which is true or false, because it is argued they do not exist such as 'virtue', 'good', 'evil', etc), he does not believe they are just expressions of emoution.

His argumants emphasise particularly on the idea that moral judgemants are used are used to prescribe actions to others. In other words, guiding them on what they should and shouldn't do. Hare argues it is possible to make rational and irrational moral judgements. A key point in prescritivism is we make errors in our moral reasoning. This DOES NOT MEAN that the moral judgemants are true or false or not however.

He argues that though our moral arguments are neither true or false, they none the less need to be universalised and coherent. Let us look at this further:



Universalised:

To say a moral judgement is universalised means that we do not make a judgement to apply to a particular situation. Rather we make a judgement relative to all situations. To take a specific example, if we were to say 'Charatible donations are good', then we must judge that this does not apply to some chartiable donations but all of them.

However, if we were then to say 'We should not donate to Hospice X becuase it is bad', then we would either have to:


A: Reject - Meaning we reject our moral judgement.
B: Refine - Meaning we refine our moral judgements to meet new criteria.

It is important to note this is not an ethical mistake, rather a logical or lingustic one which either needs to be rejected or refined. Hence, it is argued that we should avoid logical errors - not because they are ethically wrong - but because they don't make any sense.



Coherent

By this he means they should be non-contradictory. For example, if we were to say 'everyone has a right to life', but then said 'niggers should be shot without question', then our judgement is incohherant. Again, this does not mean it is a moral error. Rather a lingustic or logical error. So for our moral judgements to be coherent, they would need to be rejected or refined.



According to emotivism, when we change our moral judgements, we are changing our emoutional responces to suit our new moral judgements. Prescriptivism argues meanwhile claims when we change our moral judgements, we change it because it is incoherrant and not universalised. We need to refine or reject it to get our new moral judgement.

Prescriptivists hence argue that when we make alterations to our moral judgements, it is not always to do with changing our emotinal responces, but because our arguments are not universal and are incohherant. Hare argues if we do not react on our moral judgement, we are also behaving incohherantly, contradictory and non-universally.

Finally, if our argumants are cohherant, non-conadictory and universal they have supperiority over those nwho aren't. If we are to value something in an ethical sense, we need to make sure it does not contradict otherwise we have made a moral error.







Thoughts on the theory (I am not for or against it here, I'm just curious to know your take on this idea)?

As I have already said, the is/ought gap is a logical error. Nobody defends it because it is a fallacy. So it is a bit redundant to say that Hare rejects it: everybody rejects it.

This is an illustration of the problem I have with your approach, and why I find it difficult to engage with you in this series. If we are to consider different moral positions we need to fit them into a coherent whole. As I understand it Hare was developing his position in response to earlier ones such as emotivism. So my contribution to the emotivist thread includes some of his thinking.

To me, a moral principle is necessarily universalisable (or generalisable, if you prefer). So, for example, "everyone should love their mother" is general: "everyone should love my mother" is not, though it seems to take the same form. But this is not confined to moral statements. Laws of physics are similarly universal. They are no more "true" than moral statements are, in this sense. We cannot know that the law of gravity is universally applicable, in the sense that you seem to use the word "know": there are possible universes where it does not apply. So if you seek to say that there is no moral knowledge then you must also reject all other types of knowledge. And this is what I find puzzling about your whole approach: you seem to demand a standard of certainty for morality which does not exist in any field at all.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you? But honestly, ex nihilo, a list of approaches to moral thinking without comment or any attempt to decide what you accept from the propositions is stamp collecting, to my mind.

I am not as of yet demanding a certainty in morality. Merely, I am geting though the argumants which appouse the idea of moral knowledge. Going off topic, we do not know if there is certainty or not, or at least have not disscussed it so I would not go that far to suggest that there is no certainty on any subject. There might be, but we just don't know. If you wish to know my views on morality, I do not think moral truths can be gained from the physical world as Ayer suggests. I do not also think that moral judgements have to be logical and coherant. So both argumants are bad.

Simmilarly, isn't it wishful thinking to think that everybody rejects the is/ought gap. I for instance (currently) do not reject it. I may be wrong in my assumptions but still, this doesn't mean everybody rejects it.

Interesting. If you do not reject the is/ought gap then you take the view that from the existence of certain facts one can derive directly what we should do. I had not understood that was your position. I honestly thought you believed the opposite, as I do. I thought that because it was my impression that we were agreed it was an error of logic. Clearly that is not the case, either because you do not think an error in logic is fatal to a position: or you do not think there is a logical error at all. I will be interested to hear which it is, and why you hold the view that you do. I am inclined to guess that it is the former because you go on to say that you do not thinkmoral judgements have to be logical and coherent: so it seems to follow that logical flaws are not fatal in the field of morality. But I do not wish to follow that line in case I am misunderstanding you again, so I will say no more till I can be sure I have followed you correctly

My appoligies. I do not tend to make myself 'clear' on these matters (I'm working on it, but it might take a while for me to master. And as you already know, I do seem to - at least on here - act quite rashly).

If one was to view morality as a advantous system for our self-intrest, I would perhaps say that moral judgements are derived from certain facts. However, morality I feel in my own personal opinion goes deeper than that. It is diffucult for me to question what morality qua morality is. I just personally. But to me I do not feel as though there is moral truth. Rather just moral opinion. Or at least for now lets us say there is no moral truth to be gained from the empirical world. Moral judgements however can, but they are neither true or false in the ethical sense.

You are correct when you assume however that moral judgements don't need to be logical or coherant. Morality in my view is seperate from this. That is why I do not think morality is nessesarily benificial to people.