Are moral principles just generalisations?

It seems to me that sometimes moral rules are generalizations that guide moral thinking and action and sometimes they are universal/absolute principles applicable in all situations. The distinction between the two may well be related to the distinction between high-order and low-order moral judgements, I'm still trying to work through this distinction.

I need to clarify what I mean by universal/absolute. I think that morality is a human construct. As an atheist I do not think that my morality is derived from a supernatural being but that moral facts exist by virtue of human nature and human rationality.

We naturally tend to agree (perhaps it is fairly self evident or maybe it is through many years of debate and experience) that we are in favour of certain moral principles and against others. Principles such as justice, avoiding pain, putting right our mistakes, being grateful for assistance, treating everyone as valuable, equality etc. are the outcome of this process.

I think that as societies have 'matured', they have tended to adopt these moral principles more widely (e.g. abolishing slavery, treating men and women more equally etc.) but because human beings are flawed (our adrenal glands are too big) and politics is involved, there are always going to be conflicts and disagreements.

I do therefore think that it is a feature of a moral truth that it is universal. If it isn't universally true for all mankind then it isn't a moral truth but a political or cultural point of view.

The Golden Rule as a high-order moral principle

The Golden Rule says that we should treat others as we would like to be treated. I think this is a candidate for an absolute moral principle.

The clever thing about the Golden Rule is that in a sense it makes every action altruistic while at the same time being selfish. If we are obliged to treat other people as we would like to be treated, the distinction between altruism and selfishness seems to dissolve away.

It is true as you suggest that application of the Golden Rule effectively leads us to impose our morals on other people and I think this is a valid criticism. I can envisage a situation where for example a doctor is against abortion on moral grounds and therefore refuses to help patients who chose to have an abortion.

Some people might think it is not a bad thing if we impose our morals on others (absolutists) whereas others would find this abhorrent (relativists).

In this example I think you would still want to say that the doctor believed himself to be acting morally. Perhaps the Golden Rule inevitably results in moral absolutism. For me this is not a problem as I voted for high order absolutism in the course poll . The choices were:

I am an individual relativist.	I am a cultural relativist.	I am a lower order moral absolutist.	I am a higher order moral absolutist.	I am a particularist absolutist.

Denial of moral particularism

If it were true that there are no moral principles then I'm not sure how society would function. It seems to me that we need moral rules in order to help us to learn how to behave and to attribute praise or blame on others' behaviour. Moral principles function in the realm of moral behaviour in the same way that rules of the road function for drivers. Would Dancy argue that there are no rules of the road, and in every instance the choices are context specific?

Attempting another analogy, could it be the case that our moral code is a bit like a recipe - if we follow the recipe then we end up with the outcome that we seek. In the case of cooking, we end up with a meal. In the case of normative behaviour, we end up with a functioning society.
No recipe should ever be followed in every circumstance, we have to allow for many factors such as the preferences of the guests, the temperature of the oven, the nature of the ingredients. The fact that we have to use judgement in the way we follow the recipe clearly can't lead us to conclude that the recipe doesn't exist.

Generalism v particularism

Our first assignment is to read an article written by Jonathan Dancy in which it is argued that there are no moral principles, everything in morality is situation or context dependant.

My response to this challenge is as follows:

I agree with Dancy that it's difficult to formulate moral principles that apply in all circumstances, but I do not think that we must conclude that there are no moral principles just because it is not easy to formulate them.

There are two possible solutions to this problem:
1. We need to formulate the rules in a way that allows for exceptions and special pleading
2. There are in fact rules which are universal

Approach 1, might say that for every rule we add an addendum which states "unless to follow the rule would lead to more harm than not following the rule". I do not think it is unreasonable to develop a rule which allows for exceptions in certain circumstances and by doing so I don't think this means that the rule isn't a rule. Alternatively, we could make the rule more complex and thereby allow for unusual situations.

Approach 2 - what about the 'golden rule' that we should always treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves? I am struggling to think of a situation where this doesn't apply.

I have been thinking about how we apply rules in other circumstances and came up with the example of the rules of golf. When we agree to play a game by a set of agreed rules, those rules apply in all circumstances. There is no special pleading. Maybe the problem is that often the way we frame moral rules is too simplistic - the rules of golf run to many pages and thereby try and take account of special circumstances, such allowing for inclement weather and lightning.

Ethics: An Introduction

My latest online philosophy course begins today and runs for 10 weeks.

The subject this time is an introduction to ethics. From the OUDCE Philosophy website:

"In this introduction to ethics, the philosophy of morality, we shall be considering questions of both practice (is lying wrong? Must we keep our promises?) and theory (what makes an action wrong? Is it only human who worry about morality? How do we apply moral theory to society?). We shall examine four important ethical theories (Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Kant’s deontologiy, Hume’s expressivism and Mill’s utilitarianism) and we shall apply them to two practical questions: the rights of animals and euthanasia. There will be plenty of opportunity to engage in debate and to test your own moral theories."

I will try and post regularly. Comments are welcome.