What Are Reasons and Why Do They Matter to Ethics - Essay Example

Ethics and Reasons School Every action that a human being conducts definitely has some reasons behind it. Such reasons might be either logically justified or unconscious. One way or another each action requires reasoning; otherwise, without reasons, it would not happen. However, when people deal with ethical actions and make certain decisions about what to do in different situations, the reasons that they have behind their decisions might be multiple and rather contradictory. Thus people often face with certain obstacles that make them think of the reasons why they should follow this or that ethical rule while making their decisions, which puts up the main question of the entire ethics: whether there are objective reasons that would make people chose decency or all the reasons are subjective and ethics is not the matter of objective moral imperative. Hence, the issue of reasons that stand behind people’s actions and decisions in fact defines the main roots of the entire ethical laws. The very first aspect where reasons work in terms of ethics is in justifying and assessment of either one’s own or somebody else’s actions. People estimate others using universal principles of reasoning, which allows them to explain other people’s conduct. First of all, it helps them to understand others’ behavior and evaluate it on the matter of right and wrong ways of acting. Hence, people usually apply so-called explanatory reasons in order to justify different actions and make them transparent for their own interpretation. Explanatory reasons make actions and attitudes understandable and logical, or, to make it simpler, they literally explain why people act this or that way. Even though explanatory reasons make people’s actions intelligible, usually it is not enough to know why people do this or that action in order to evaluate whether the action is right or wrong in terms of ethics. Thus justificatory or normative reasons evaluate an action on the matter whether it is in accordance with certain moral imperative that detects good and bad actions and their ethical appropriateness (Crisp 2006). Although a person might consider some actions having them analyzed on the matter of logic, moral norm and rationality, the reason that actually operate the person in the action might appear to be absolutely opaque for both the agent of the action and the observer of the person doing this action. Of course, dealing with ethics people should also analyze their actions, as well as estimate the actions of others, taking into consideration that moral action requires involvement of other people. It frequently happens that different people have their own, different from each other, normative reasons. Thus it turns out that their evaluations of their own and others’ actions also differ. For instance, Ann decides to have some rest during the work time. Even though she knows that she can’t do it apart from the lunch time, she decides to go get some fresh air and drink some coffee; the reason for this is that she feels sick and can’t keep working. The explanatory reason here is that Ann is sick and is not able to do her job, which justifies her conduct; however, regarding her working responsibilities, she does a wrong action, which contradicts working ethics. Her colleagues notice Ann going out and estimate her decision as wrong. They start considering her as the person who skips her responsibilities. Later, when they figure out that Ann was sick they justify her action and accept it because the reason for doing it was reasonable enough to understand it and re-estimate Ann’s action. Thus there is a great gap between a person’s consideration of one’s own actions and the consideration of these actions by their observers. It may later turn out that the reasons that different people see behind the same action would be totally contradictory. Moreover, the main question is whether people can explain an action of a person in terms of reason that the person oneself doesn’t recognize as reasons (Moran 2001). This is the situation when normative and operative reasons are totally different and may not correspond to each other. Notwithstanding the fact that operative reasons might be different from the ones that seem (for others) to direct a person’s actions, an agent of the actions may not even acknowledge one’s own operative reasons. Anna might explain her leaving of the workplace in the middle of the work time by her disease; however, she might not realize that she uses the disease as an excuse in order to skip her responsibilities and procrastinate. The operative reason is not being acknowledged by Anna but it is transparent for her colleagues, so their estimation of her action as unethical and unfair appears to be truthful. However, for any person one’s reasons that stand behind their actions are truthful and relevant in the particular situation interpreted by the person. Moreover, if a person makes a decision concerning some action, one is pretty sure that the decision is being made in accordance with his beliefs and his own consideration of truth, which are quite significant reasons to justify the person’s personal decision. Thus if every action has a personal reason behind it, then it is difficult to estimate reasons and their objectivity in order to apply them to ethical laws. Hence, the problem of objectivity vs. subjectivity appears in the issue of reasons and their relation to ethics. Subjective reasons are those that an individual has behind one’s actions, which seem to be justified by his own construal of a particular situation. For instance, if Ann avoids wearing fur coats because she believes that they might contain harmful insects, her normative reason is definitely subjective. Obviously, many people wear fur coats totally safely. Hence there are no objective reasons in favor of avoiding wearing them. However, addition of a piece of moral justification to Ann’s decision not to wear fur coats makes Ann’s argument more objective. For instance, claiming that she doesn’t wear fur coats because they are made of dead animals (which is bad) makes the normative reason that stands behind her rejection of fur coats totally objective. Thus addition of moral values into justification of an action makes it more difficult to define objective and subjective in terms of reason (Crisp 2006). As far as ethics is supposed to concern all people and be a kind of universal moral law, subjective reasons can’t be its roots. The point is that subjective roots of ethics would lead to variety of truths which would not allow creating any universality in the moral law. It turns out that the roots of real moral imperative must be objective reasons, so that all people could understand them and accept their relevance. In order to acquire the impersonality of ethical laws, moral actions should be conducted with reference to reason (Nagel 1970). Such rationalist position doesn’t require a person to give up on one’s personal beliefs and act according to objective reasons. However, in order to stay moral, a person might make one’s personal decisions as long as they don’t contradict objective reasons. The differentiation between objective and subjective reasons causes the dilemma of discerning of the reasons that stay behind people’s operative reasons. Nevertheless people indeed can analyze their further actions on the matter of different reasons still many of the reasons may not be motivating enough to start acting. There are two basic opinions on the matter. Some claim that a person’s normative reasons are also the operating reasons for actions, because it is a logical conclusion from the fact that human beings are rational creatures, so that they are supposed to justify their actions logically (Korsgaard 1986). However, others argue that moral obligations are just facts of right and wrong, so they exist separately from the real motivating reasons for people’s actions (Dancy 2000). In order to define what reasons are operative it is important to figure out what are reasons and how they appear. Externalists claim that normative reasons are in fact human beliefs and are the results of human cognitive activity (Dancy 2000). Thus it turns out that people know what is right and what is wrong because they are taught to discern the oppositions, which means that ethics is just something that people learn from the environment they have been raised in. If to presuppose that people’s personalities are being constructed according to what they learn throughout their lives, then normative reasons are the inner factors that are supposed to limit people in their actions so that they could cohabitate with other people. Such reasons look like the cores of social contract that people pass through generations in order to preserve social stability. Thus in terms of such assumptions about normative reasons, ethics is the inner authoritative force that holds people’s desires within some scopes, which means that there are no profs that what people learn about good and bad actions is the objective truth about good and bad themselves. Hence, in order for ethics to be legitimate, the normative reasons of people’s actions must be objective and display objective values. Otherwise, it would be possible to say that if values are being taught, they appear to be artificial and forced, so people don’t make decisions but decide in accordance with what they’ve been taught to choose. Thus some assert that normative reasons result from human desires (Smith 2004), which makes them operative reasons as well, as far as people are usually directed by their desires to do something. Such desire-based theories consider desires as normative basics and make them not purely subjective but also possible to be corrected by moral education. If desires are the roots of people’s reasons and lie behind human decisions, then people indeed make their own decisions concerning their actions. However, the controversial position might assert that people’s desires are also taught and people choose what they were taught to want. For instance, if Ann lives in the family where, since childhood, she have been taught to value animals’ lives, then the fact that she refuses wearing fur coats because of her moral values consistently displays that her desire to preserve animals’ lives is the consequence of her moral education. Although people’s desires may come from their environment as the consequences of their cognitive perception, people also may change their preferences and desires along with new incoming circumstances. The point is that human beings are rational creatures and they process all the incoming information through their rationality, so they form their normative reasons according to their experience. However, ethical principles are universal and recognizable, which means that people usually are able to discern good and bad and they come to the same conclusions concerning these two antipodes. Hence, it is important to note that people base their reasons on the comparison of these reasons with certain ethical norms. This allows them to define whether the reasons, that operate their actions, are ethical or not and whether they accept the ethical norms regarding the actions they are going to perform (Gibbard 1990). Thus when Ann considers the norm that claims that wearing fur coats maintains animal killing, she accepts the fact that killing animals is bad, so she makes the decision not to wear fur coats in order not to accept the wrong actions of animals’ killers. Ann bases her assumptions concerning the norm on the fact that killing is bad; however, the question is where did the assumption come from? As far as the reasons that stand behind people’s actions are based on understanding of ethical norms, the norms are universal for everyone. Hence, all people agree that killing is a bad thing and this norm exists for everyone. Even though there are a lot of people that kill others, still each of them makes the decision to kill by reference to the norm that claims that killing is something negative. Thus the normative reason that stands behind the actions of murderers is in fact the negation of the ethical norm, which means that the person oneself accepts this norms and makes the decision to kill someone in order to contradict it. The point is that reasons matter to ethics because they are based on following of universal norms or their denial. Hence, a murderer kills someone because he knows that if he happened to become a victim of a murder, his perspective of dying would be terrifying and definitely negative for himself. Thus he decides to kill because he knows that this action will hurt someone. As far as he wants to hurt the person, the reasons that make him kill are based on his desire to hurt the exact person. This, in fact, proves all the positions concerning relation between ethics and reasons, because indeed people make their decisions according to the reasons that stand behind them; this reasons are based on people’s analysis of ethical norms and either their accepting or refusal. The defining mechanism and estimation of actions works according to the universal ethical principle (the Golden Rule of ethics) which claims: do as you would be done by. In fact this principle makes it possible to define clearly whether a person’s further actions are good or bad according to the possible outcomes that they could cause. This is what Kant meant by his categorical imperative (Kant 2005). Kantian deontology that is build on the principle of categorical imperative claims that people make certain actions because they have their will to make decisions that in turn are their rational reflections on the basis of principles (norms). Hence, moral people act according to the stable moral imperative, which is universal and is based on the Golden Rule of ethics. The Golden Rule in fact is based on human ability to discern good and bad and decide according to which maxima either good or bad people are going to operate their actions. Moreover, using this rule, people construct their ethical principles and apply them in order to make judgments concerning their own actions and make their evaluations of somebody else’s actions as well. As far as the reasons that stand behind people’s actions are based on their desires, experience, and analysis, people tend to use the Golden Rule during their analysis of norms. This process apparently works the same way concerning all people, as they all come to the conclusion that indeed ethical norms exist and they are objective. It proves that ethics is not just a list of the rules that helps people to coexist and force them to act this or that way, but the moral law that exists because of people’s natural ability to discern good and bad. Thus the reasons for people’s conduct often become recognizable because of their universality, which makes it possible for people to evaluate both their own actions and the actions others. References Kant, I. (2005) Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals. tr. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (1829-1913), edited with revisions by Lara Denis . Peterborough, Ont.; Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press. Crisp, R. (2006). Reasons and the Good. Oxford University Press. Moran, R. (2001). Authority and Estrangement. Princeton University Press. Nagel, T. (1970). The Possibility of Altruism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Korsgaard, C. (1986). “Skepticism About Practical Reason”. Journal of Philosophy, 83, 5–25. Smith, M. (2004). “Humeanism, Psychologism and the Normative Story”, in Ethics and the A Priori. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.146–154. Dancy, J. (2000). Practical Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gibbard, A. (1990). Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Read More