It takes them to inhere in the external world and thus to exist independently of their being perceived. For moral realism, ethics is an objective discipline, a discipline that promises discovery and confirmation of objective truths. At the same time, moral realists differ fundamentally on the question of the character of ethical properties. Some, such as Plato and Moore, regard them as purely intellective and thus irreducibly distinct from empirical properties. Others, such as Aristotle and Mill, regard them as empirical and either reducible to or at least supervenient on other empirical properties. The second view, moral subjectivism, denies the real existence of ethical properties. On this view, to predicate, say, goodness of a person is to impose some feeling, impulse, or other state of mind onto the world, much as one projects an emotion onto one’s circumstances when one describes them as delightful or sad. On the assumption of moral subjectivism, ethics is not a source of objective truth. In ancient philosophy, moral subjectivism was advanced by some of the Sophists, notably Protagoras. In modern philosophy, Hume expounded it in the eighteenth century and Sartre in the twentieth century. Regardless of approach, one (and perhaps the central) problem of metaethics is how value is related to fact. On the epistemological approach, this problem is commonly posed as the question of whether judgments of value are derivable from statements of fact. Or, to be more exact, can there be a logically valid argument whose conclusion is a judgment of value and all of whose premises are statements of fact? On the metaphysical approach, the problem is commonly posed as the question of whether moral predicates represent properties that are explicable as complexes of empirical properties. At issue, in either case, is whether ethics is an autonomous discipline, whether the study of moral values and principles is to some degree independent of the study of observable properties and events. A negative answer to these questions affirms the autonomy of ethics; a positive answer denies ethics’ autonomy and implies that it is a branch of the natural sciences.
Moral psychology. Even those who affirm the autonomy of ethics recognize that some facts, particularly facts of human psychology, bear on the general studies of goodness and right action. No one maintains that these studies float free of all conception of human appetite and passion or that they presuppose no account of the human capacity for voluntary action. It is generally recognized that an adequate understanding of desire, emotion, deliberation, choice, volition, character, and personality is indispensable to the theoretical treatment of human well-being, intrinsic value, and duty. Investigations into the nature of these psychological phenomena are therefore an essential, though auxiliary, part of ethics. They constitute the adjunct field of moral psychology.
One area of particular interest within this field is the study of those capacities by virtue of which men and women qualify as moral agents, beings who are responsible for their actions. This study is especially important to the theory of duty since that theory, in modern philosophy, characteristically assumes a strong doctrine of individual responsibility. That is, it assumes principles of culpability for wrongdoing that require, as conditions of justified blame, that the act of wrongdoing be one’s own and that it not be done innocently. Only moral agents are capable of meeting these conditions. And the presumption is that normal, adult human beings qualify as moral agents whereas small children and nonhuman animals do not. The study then focuses on those capacities that distinguish the former from the latter as responsible beings.
The main issue is whether the power of reason alone accounts for these capacities. On one side of the issue are philosophers like Kant who hold that it does. Reason, in their view, is both the pilot and the engine of moral agency. It not only guides one toward actions in conformity with one’s duty, but it also produces the desire to do one’s duty and can invest that desire with enough strength to overrule conflicting impulses of appetite and passion. On the other side are philosophers, such as Hume and Mill, who take reason to be one of several capacities that constitute moral agency. On their view, reason works strictly in the service of natural and sublimated desires, fears, and aversions to produce intelligent action, to guide its possessor toward the objects of those desires and away from the objects of those fears. It cannot, however, by itself originate any desire or fear. Thus, the desire to act rightly, the aversion to acting wrongly, which are constituents of moral agency, are not products of reason but are instead acquired through some mechanical process of socialization by which their objects become associated with the objects of natural desires and aversions. On one view, then, moral agency consists in the power of reason to govern behavior, and being rational is thus sufficient for being responsible for one’s actions. On the other view, moral agency consists in several things including reason, but also including a desire to act rightly and an aversion to acting wrongly that originate in natural desires and aversions. On this view, to be responsible for one’s actions, one must not only be rational but also have certain desires and aversions whose acquisition is not guaranteed by the maturation of reason. Within moral psychology, one cardinal test of these views is how well they can accommodate and explain such common experiences of moral agency as conscience, weakness, and moral dilemma. At some point, however, the views must be tested by questions about freedom. For one cannot be responsible for one’s actions if one is incapable of acting freely, which is to say, of one’s own free will. The capacity for free action is thus essential to moral agency, and how this capacity is to be explained, whether it fits within a deterministic universe, and if not, whether the notion of moral responsibility should be jettisoned, are among the deepest questions that the student of moral agency must face. What is more, they are not questions to which moral psychology can furnish answers. At this point, ethics descends into metaphysics. See also BIOETHICS , CONTRACTARIANISM , HEDONISM , JUSTICE , MORALITY , NATURAL – ISM , PERFECTIONISM , UTILITARIANIS. J.D.