There is much disagreement about what, exactly, constitutes a moraltheory. Some of that disagreement centers on the issue ofdemarcating themoral from other areas of practicalnormativity, such as the ethical and the aesthetic. Somedisagreement centers on the issue of what a moraltheory’s aims and functions are. In this entry,both questions will be addressed. However, this entry is about moraltheories astheories, and is not a survey of specifictheories, though specific theories will be used as examples.

• 1. Morality
  • 1.1 Common-sense Morality
  • 1.2 Contrasts Between Morality and Other Normative Domains
• 2. Theory and Theoretical Virtues
  • 2.1 The Tasks of Moral Theory
  • 2.2 Theory Construction
• 3. Criteria
• 4. Decision Procedures and Practical Deliberation
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Morality

When philosophers engage in moral theorizing, what is it that they aredoing? Very broadly, they are attempting to provide a systematicaccount of morality. Thus, the object of moral theorizing is morality,and, further, morality as a normative system.

At the most minimal, morality is a set of norms and principles thatgovern our actions with respect to each other and which are taken tohave a special kind of weight or authority (Strawson 1961). Morefundamentally, we can also think of morality as consisting of moralreasons, either grounded in some more basic value, or, the other wayaround, grounding value (Raz 1999).

It is common, also, to hold that moral norms areuniversalin the sense that they apply to and bind everyone in similarcircumstances. The principles expressing these norms are alsothought to begeneral, rather than specific, in that they areformulable “without the use of what would be intuitivelyrecognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions”(Rawls 1979, 131). They are also commonly held to beimpartial, in holding everyone to count equally.

1.1 Common-sense Morality

… Common-sense is… an exercise of the judgment unaidedby any Art or system of rules : such an exercise as we mustnecessarily employ in numberless cases of daily occurrence ; in which,having no established principles to guide us … we must needsact on the best extemporaneous conjectures we can form. He who iseminently skillful in doing this, is said to possess a superior degreeof Common-Sense. (Richard Whatley,Elements of Logic, 1851,xi–xii)

“Common-Sense Morality”, as the term is used here, refersto ourpre-theoretic set of moral judgments or intuitionsor principles.^[1] When weengage in theory construction (see below) it is these common-senseintuitions that provide a touchstone to theoryevaluation. Henry Sidgwick believed that theprinciples of Common-Sense Morality were important in helping usunderstand the “first” principle or principlesof morality.^[2] Indeed, some theory construction explicitly appeals to puzzles incommon-sense morality that need resolution – and hence, need tobe addressed theoretically.

Features of commons sense morality are determined by our normalreactions to cases which in turn suggest certain normative principlesor insights. For example, one feature of common-sense moralitythat is often remarked upon is the self/other asymmetry in morality,which manifests itself in a variety of ways in our intuitivereactions. For example, many intuitively differentiate moralityfrom prudence in holding that morality concerns our interactions withothers, whereas prudence is concerned with the well-being of theindividual, from that individual’s point of view.

Also, according to our common-sense intuitions we are allowed topursue our own important projects even if such pursuit is not“optimific” from the impartial point of view (Slote1985). It is also considered permissible, and even admirable, foran agent to sacrifice her own good for the sake of another even thoughthat is not optimific. However, it is impermissible, and outrageous,for an agent to similarly sacrifice the well-being of another under thesame circumstances. Samuel Scheffler argued for a view in whichconsequentialism is altered to include agent-centered prerogatives,that is, prerogatives to not act so as to maximize the good (Scheffler1982).

Our reactions to certain cases also seem to indicate a common-sensecommitment to the moral significance of the distinction betweenintention and foresight, doing versus allowing, as well as the viewthat distance between agent and patient is morally relevant (Kamm2007).

Philosophers writing in empirical moral psychology have been workingto identify other features of common-sense morality, such as how priormoral evaluations influence how we attribute moral responsibility foractions (Alicke et. al. 2011; Knobe 2003).

What many ethicists agree upon is that common-sense is a bit of amess. It is fairly easy to set up inconsistencies and tensionsbetween common-sense commitments. The famous Trolley Problemthought experiments illustrate how situations which are structurallysimilar can elicit very different intuitions about what the morallyright course of action would be (Foot 1975). We intuitivelybelieve that it is worse to kill someone than to simply let the persondie. And, indeed, we believe it is wrong to kill one person tosave five others in the following scenario:

David is a great transplant surgeon. Five of his patients need newparts—one needs a heart, the others need, respectively, liver,stomach, spleen, and spinal cord—but all are of the same,relatively rare, blood-type. By chance, David learns of a healthyspecimen with that very blood-type. David can take the healthyspecimen's parts, killing him, and install them in his patients, savingthem. Or he can refrain from taking the healthy specimen's parts,letting his patients die. (Thomson 1976, 206)

And yet, in the following scenario we intuitively view it entirelypermissible, and possibly even obligatory, to kill one to savefive:

Edward is the driver of a trolley, whose brakes have just failed. Onthe track ahead of him are five people; the banks are so steep thatthey will not be able to get off the track in time. The track has aspur leading off to the right, and Edward can turn the trolley onto it.Unfortunately there is one person on the right-hand track. Edward canturn the trolley, killing the one; or he can refrain from turning thetrolley, killing the five. (Thomson 1976, 206).

Theorizing is supposed to help resolve those tensions in aprincipled way.Theory construction attempts to provideguidance in how to resolve such tensions and how to understandthem.

1.2 Contrasts Between Morality and Other Normative Domains

1.2.1 Morality and Ethics

Ethics is generally understood to be the study of “living wellas a human being”. This is the topic of works such asAristotle’sNicomachean Ethics, in which the aim ofhuman beings is to exemplify human excellence of character. The sensein which we understand it here is that ethics is broader than morality,and includes considerations of personal development of oneself andloved ones. This personal development is important to a life welllived, intuitively, since our very identities are centered on projectsthat we find important. Bernard Williams and others refer tothese projects as “ground projects”. These are thesources of many of our reasons for acting. For Williams, ifan agent seeks to adoptmoral considerations, or be guided bythem, then importantethical considerations are neglected,such as personal integrity and authenticity (Williams 1977; Wolf1982). However, Williams has a very narrow view of what hefamously termed “the morality system” (Williams 1985).

Williams lists a variety of objectionable features of the moralitysystem, including theinescapability of moral obligations, theoverridingness of moral obligation,impartiality, andthe fact that in the morality system there is a push towardsgeneralization.

There has been considerable discussion of each of these features ofthe morality system, and since Williams, a great deal of work on thepart of standard moral theorists on how each theory addresses theconsiderations he raised. Williams’ critique of themorality system was part of a general criticism of moral theory in the1980s on the grounds of its uselessness, harmfulness, and even itsimpossibility (Clarke 1987). This anti-theory trend was promptedby the same dissatisfaction with consequentialism and deontology thatled to the resurgence of Virtue Ethics.

A major criticism of this view is that it has a very narrow view ofwhat counts as a moral theory. Thus, some of these approachessimply rejected some features of William’s characterization ofthe morality system, such as impartiality. Others, however,Williams’ included, attacked the very project of moraltheory. This is the ‘anti-theory’ attack on moraltheorizing. For example, Annette Baier argued thatmorality cannot be captured in a system of rules, and this was a verypopular theme amongst early virtue ethicists. On this view, moraltheory which systematizes and states the moral principles that ought toguide actions is simply impossible: “Norms in the form ofvirtues may be essentially imprecise in some crucial ways, may bemutually referential, but not hierarchically orderable, may beessentially self-referential” (Baier 220).

Robert Louden even argued that the best construal of virtue ethicsis not as an ethical theory, but as anti-theory that should not beevaluated as attempting to theorize morality at all. (Louden1990). According to Louden, moral theories are formulatedto a variety of reasons, including to provide solutions to problems,formulas for action, universal principles, etc. Louden notes that thischaracterization is very narrow and many would object to it, but heviews anti-theory not so much as a position againstany kindof moral theorizing, but simply the kind that he viewed as predominantprior to the advent of Virtue Ethics. This is a much less severeversion of anti-theory as it, for example, doesn’t seem to regardweightiness or importance of moral reasons as a problem.

Some of the problems that Williams and other anti-theorists haveposed for morality, based on the above characteristics, are:

1. Morality is too demanding and pervasive: that is, the view thatmoral reasons are weighty indicates that we should be giving thempriority over other sorts of reasons. Further, they leach intoall aspects of our lives, leaving very little morally neutral.

2. Morality is alienating. There are a variety of ways in whichmorality can be alienating. As Adrian Piper notes, morality mightalienate the agent from herself or might alienate the agent from others– impartiality and universality might lead to this, for example(Piper 1987; Stocker 1976). Another way we can understandalienation is that the agent is alienated from the true justificationsof her own actions – this is one way to hold that theories whichopt for indirection can lead to alienation (see section 4 below).

3. Morality, because it is impartial, makes no room for specialobligations. That is, if the right action is the one that is impartialbetween persons, then it does not favor the near and dear. On thispicture it is difficult to account for the moral requirements thatparents have towards their own children, and friends have towards eachother. These requirements are, by their nature, notimpartial.

4. Morality is committed to providing guides for action that canbe captured in a set of rules or general principles. That is, moralityis codifiable and the rules of morality are general.

Morality requires too much. The basic worry is that the moralitysystem is voracious and is creeping into all aspects of our lives, tothe detriment of other important values. The worry expressed by 4 takesa variety of forms. For example, some take issue with apresupposition of 4, arguing that there are no moral principles at all if wethink of these principles asguiding action. Some arguethat there are no moral principles that are complete, because moralityis not something that iscodifiable. And, even ifmorality was codifiable, the ‘principles’ would beextremelyspecific, and not qualify as principles at all.

Since Williams’ work, philosophers have tried to respond tothe alienation worry by, for example, providing accounts of the ways inwhich a person’s reasons can guide without forming an explicitpart of practical deliberation. Peter Railton, for example,argues in favor of a form of objective consequentialism,Sophisticated Consequentialism, in which the rightness of anaction is a function of its actual consequences (Railton 1984). On Railton’s view, one can be a good consequentialist withoutbeing alienated from loved ones. Though not attempting to defend moraltheoryper se, other writers have also provided accounts ofhow agents can act on the basis of reasons – and thus performmorally worthy actions, even though these reasons are not explicitlyarticulated in their practical deliberations (Arpaly 2002; Markovits2014). Deontologists have argued that autonomous action needn’tinvolve explicit invocation of, for example, the Categorical Imperative(Herman 1985). Generally, what characterizes these moves is theidea that the justifying reasons are present in some form in theagent’s psychology – they are recoverable from theagent’s psychology – but need not be explicitly articulatedor invoked by the agent in acting rightly.

One way to elaborate on this strategy is to argue that the morallygood agent is one who responds to the right sorts of reasons, eventhough the agent can’t articulate the nature of the response(Arpaly 2002). This strategy makes no appeal to codifiable principles,and is compatible with a wide variety of approaches to developing amoral theory. It relies heavily on the concept, of course, of“reason” and “moral reason,” which many writerson moral issues take to be fundamental or basic in any case.

There has also been debate concerning the proper scope of morality,and how moral theories can address problems relating toimpartiality. Kant and the classical utilitarians believed that moralreasons are impartial, what others have termed agent-neutral. Indeed,this is one point of criticism that virtue ethics has made of thesetwo theories. One might argue that moral reasons are impartial, butthat there are other reasons that successfully compete with them– reasons relating to the near and dear, for example, orone’s own ground projects. Or, one could hold that moralityincludes special reasons, arising from special obligations, that alsomorally justify our actions.

The first strategy has been pursued by Bernard Williams and other“anti-theorists”. Again, Williams argues thatmorality is a special system that we would be better off without(Williams 1985). In the morality system we see a special sense of“obligation” – moral obligation – whichpossesses certain features. For example, moral obligation isinescapable according to the morality system. A theorysuch as Kant’s, for example, holds that wemust act inaccordance with the Categorical Imperative. It is notoptional. This is because morality is represented as havingauthority over us in ways that even demand sacrifice of our personalprojects, of the very things that make our lives go well for us. This seems especially clear for Utilitarianism, which holds that wemustmaximize the good, and falling short of maximization iswrong. A Kantian will try to avoid this problem byappealing to obligations that are less demanding, the imperfect ones.But, as Williams points out, these are stillobligations, andas such can only be overridden by other obligations. Thus, thetheories also tend to present morality aspervasive in thatmorality creeps into every aspect of our lives, making no room forneutral decisions. For example, even decisions about what shoesto wear to work becomes a moral one:

Once the journey into more general obligations has started, we maybegin to get into trouble – not just philosophical trouble, butthe conscience trouble – with finding room for morallyindifferent actions. I have already mentioned the possible moralconclusion that one may take some particular course of action. That means that there is nothing else I am obliged to do. But if we haveaccepted general and indeterminate obligations to further various moralobjectives…they will be waiting to provide work for idlehands… (Williams 1985, 181)

He goes on to write that in order to get out of this problem,“…I shall need one of those fraudulent items, a duty tomyself” (Williams 1985, 182). Kantian Ethics does supplythis. Many find this counterintuitive, since the self/otherasymmetry seems to capture the prudence/morality distinction, butKantians such as Tom Hill, jr. have made strong cases for at leastsome moral duties to the self. In any case, for writers suchas Williams, so much the worse formorality.

Other writers, also concerned about the problems that Williams hasraised argue, instead, that morality does make room for our partialconcerns and projects, such as the norms governing our relationships,and our meaningful projects. Virtue ethicists, for example, areoften comfortable pointing out that morality is not thoroughlyimpartial because there are virtues of partiality. Being a goodmother involves having a preference for the well-being of one’sown children. The mother who really is impartial would be a verybad mother, lacking in the appropriate virtues.

Another option is to hold that there are partial norms, but thosepartial norms are themselves justified on impartial grounds. Thiscan be spelled out in a variety of different ways. ConsiderMarcia Baron’s defense of impartiality, where she notes thatcritics of impartiality are mistaken because they confuselevels of justification: “Critics suppose thatimpartialists insisting on impartiality at the level of rules orprinciples are committed to insisting on impartiality at the level ofdeciding what to do in one’s day-to-day activities” (Baron1991). This is a mistake because impartialists can justifypartial norms by appealing to impartial rules or principles. Sheis correct about this. Even Jeremy Bentham believed, for example,that the principle of utility ought not be applied in every case,though he mainly appealed to efficiency costs of using the principleall the time. But one can appeal to other considerations. Frank Jackson uses an analogy with predators to argue that partialnorms are strategies for maximizing the good, they offer the bestchance of actually doing so given our limitations (Jackson 1991). Similarly, a Kantian such as Tom Hill, jr., as Baron notes, can arguethat impartiality is part of an ideal, and ought not govern ourday-to-day lives (Hill 1987). Does this alienate people fromothers? The typical mother shows the right amount of preferencefor her child, let’s say, but doesn’t herself think thatthis is justified on the basis of promoting the good, forexample. A friend visits another in the hospital and also doesnot view the partiality as justified by any further principles. But this is no more alienating than someone being able to make goodarguments and criticize bad ones without a knowledge of inferencerules. Maybe it is better to have an awareness of the underlyingjustification, but for some theories even that is debatable. Foran objective theorist (see below) it may be that knowing the underlyingjustification can interfere with doing the right thing, in which caseit is better not to know. For some theorists, however, such asneo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists, a person is not truly virtuouswithout such knowledge and understanding, though Rosalind Hursthouse(1999) doesnot make this a requirement of right action.

Recently consequentialists have been approaching this issue throughthe theory of value itself, arguing that there are agent-relative formsof value. This approach is able to explain the intuitions thatsupport partial moral norms while retaining the general structure ofconsequentialism (Sen 2000). Douglas Portmore, for example,argues for a form of consequentialism that he terms “commonsenseconsequentialism” as it is able to accommodate many of oureveryday moral intuitions (Portmore 2011). He does so by arguingthat (1) the deontic status of an act, whether it is right or wrong, isdetermined by what reasons the agent has for performing it – ifan agent has a decisive reason to perform the act in question, then itis morally required. Combined with (2) a teleological view ofpractical reasons in which our reasons for performing an action are afunction of what we have reason to prefer or desire we are led to aform of act-consequentialism but one which is open to accepting that wehave reason to prefer or desire the well-being of the near and dearover others.

Though much of this is controversial, there is general agreementthat moral reasons areweighty, arenot egoistic– that is, to be contrasted with prudential reasons, and areconcerned with issues of value [duty, fittingness].

1.2.2. Morality and Aesthetics

Moral modes of evaluation are distinct from the aesthetic in termsof their content, but also in terms of their authority. So, forexample, works of art are evaluated as “beautiful” or“ugly”, and those evaluations are not generally consideredas universal or as objective as moral evaluations. Thesedistinctions between moral evaluation and aesthetic evaluation havebeen challenged, and are the subject of some interesting debates inmetaethics on the nature of both moral and aesthetic norms and thetruth-conditions of moral and aesthetic claims. But, consideredintuitively, aesthetics seems at leastless objective thanmorality.

A number of writers have noted that we need to be cognizant of thedistinction between moral norms and the norms specific to othernormative areas in order to avoid fallacies of evaluation, and muchdiscussion has centered on a problem in aesthetics termed the“Moralistic Fallacy” (D’Arms and Jacobson 2000).

One challenge that the anti-theorists have raised for morality wasto note that in a person’s life there will be certain normclashes – including clashes betweentypes of norms suchas the moral and the aesthetic. It is giving too much prominenceto the moral that judges a person’s life as going well relativeto the fulfillment or respect ofthose norms. Can’t ahuman life go well, even when that life sacrifices morality foraesthetics?

This sort of debate has a long history in moral theory. Forexample, it arose as a form of criticism of G. E. Moore’s IdealUtilitarianism, which treated beauty as an intrinsic good, andrendering trade-offs between behaving well towards others and creatingbeauty at least in principle justifiedmorally (Moore1903). But the anti-theorists do not pursue this method ofaccommodating the aesthetic, instead arguing that it is a separatenormative realm which has its own weight and significance in humanflourishing.

2. Theory and Theoretical Virtues

There is agreement that theories play some kindofsystematizing role, and that one function is to examineimportant concepts relevant to morality and moral practice and theconnections, if any, between them. For example, one very common viewin the middle of the 20^th century, attributed to JohnRawls, was to view moral theory as primarily interested inunderstanding the ‘right’ and the ‘good’ andconnections between the two (Rawls). Priority claims are often acentral feature in the systematizing role of moral theory. Related tothis is the issue of explanatory, or theoretical,depth. Thatis, the deeper the explanation goes, the better.

Theories also strive forsimplicity,coherence,andaccuracy. The fewer epicycles the theory has to postulatethe better, the parts of the theory should fit well together. Forexample, the theory should not contain inconsistent principles, or haveinconsistent implications. The theory should cover the phenomenain question. In the case of moral theories, the phenomena inquestion are thought to be our considered moral intuitions orjudgements. Another coherence condition involves the theory coheringwith a person’s set of considered judgments, as well.

One last feature that needs stressing, particularly for moraltheories, isapplicability. One criticism of some normativeethical theories is that they are not applicable. For example,Virtue Ethics has been criticized for not providing an account of whatour moralobligations are – appealing to what thevirtuous person would do in the circumstances would seem to set a veryhigh bar or doesn’t answer the relevant question about how weshould structure laws guiding people on what their social obligationsare. Similarly, objective consequentialists, who understand“right action” in terms of actual consequences have beencriticized for rendering what counts as a right action in a givencircumstance unknowable, and thus useless as a guide to action. Both approaches provide responses to this worry, but this supports theclaim that a desideratum of a moral theory is that it beapplicable.

2.1 The Tasks of Moral Theory

One task (though this is somewhat controversial) of a moral theoryis to give an account of right actions. Often, this will involvean explication of what counts as good – some theories then getspelled out in terms of how they approach the good, by maximizing it,producing enough of it, honoring it, etc. In addition, sometheories explicate the right in terms of acting in accordance withone’s duties, or acting as a virtuous person would act. Inthese cases the notions of ‘duty’ and ‘virtue’become important to the overall analysis, and one function of moraltheory is to explore the systematic connections between duty or virtueand the right and the good.

Moral theories also have both substantive and formal aims. Moral theories try to provide criteria for judging actions. Itmight be that the criterion is simple, such as right actions maximizethe good, or it may be complex, such as the right action is the onethat gives adequate weight to each competing duty. Sometimes, in recognition that there is not always “the”right action, the theory simply provides an account of wrongness, orpermissibility and impermissibility, which allows that a range ofactions might count as “right”.

In addition to simply providing criteria for right or virtuousaction, or for being a virtuous person, a given moral theory, forexample, will attempt to explainwhy something, like an actionor character trait, has a particular moral quality, such as rightnessor virtuousness. Some theories view rightness as grounded in orexplained byvalue. Some view rightness as a matter ofreasons that are prior to value. In each case, toprovide an explanation of the property of ‘rightness’ or‘virtuousness’ will be to provide an account of what thegrounding value is, or an account of reasons for action.

In addition, moral theories may also providedecision-procedures to employ in determining how to actrightly or virtuously, conditions on being good or virtuous, orconditions on morally appropriate practical deliberation. Thus,the theory provides substance to evaluation and reasons. However,moral theories, in virtue of providing an explanatory framework, helpus see connections between criteria and decision-procedures, as well asprovide other forms of systemization. Thus, moral theories willbe themselves evaluated according to their theoretical virtues:simplicity, explanatory power, elegance, etc. To evaluate moraltheoriesas theories, each needs to be evaluated in terms ofhow well it succeeds in achieving these theoretical goals.

There are many more specialized elements to moral theories aswell. For example, a moral theory often concerns itself withfeatures of moral psychology relevant to action and character, such asmotives, intentions, emotions, and reasons responsiveness. Amoral theory that incorporates consideration of consequences into thedetermination of moral quality, will also be concerned with issuessurrounding the properaggregation of those consequences, andthescope of the consequences to be considered.

2.2 Theory Construction

There’s been a long history of comparing moral theories toother sorts of theories, such as scientific ones. For example, inmeta-ethics one issue has to do with the nature of moral“evidence” on analogy with scientific evidence. On what Ronald Dworkin terms the “natural model” thetruths of morality are discovered, just as the truths of science are(Dworkin 1977, 160). It is our considered intuitions that provide theclues to discover these moral truths, just as what is observable to usprovides the evidence to discover scientific truths. He comparedthis model with the “constructive model” in which theintuitions themselves are features of the theory being constructed andare not analogous to observations of the external world.

Yet, even if we decide that morality lacks the same type ofphenomena to be accounted for as science, morality clearly figures intoour normative judgments and reactions. One might view these– our intuitions about moral cases, for example – toprovide the basic data that needs to be accounted for by a theory oneither model.

One way to “account for” our considered intuitions wouldbe to debunk them. There is a long tradition of this in moralphilosophy as well. When scholars providedgenealogies ofmorality that explained our considered intuitions in terms of socialor evolutionary forces that are not sensitive the truth, for example,they were debunking morality by undercutting the authority of ourintuitions to provide insight into it (Nietzsche 1887 [1998], Joyce2001, Street 2006). In this entry, however, we consider the ways inwhich moral theorists have constructed their accounts by taking theintuitions seriously as something to be systematized, explained, andas something that can be applied to generate the correct moraldecisions or outcomes.

Along these lines, one method used in theory construction wouldinvolve the use of reflective equilibrium and inference to the bestexplanation. For example, one might notice an apparent inconsistencyin moral judgements regarding two structurally similar cases and thentry to figure out what principle or set of principles would achieveconsistency between them. In this case, the theorist is trying tofigure out what best explains both of those intuitions. But one alsomight, after thinking about principles one already accepts, or findsplausible, reject one of those intuitions on the basis of it notcohering with the rest of one’s considered views. But fulltheory construction will go beyond this because of the fullytheoretical virtues discussed earlier. We want a systematic accountthat coheres well not only with itself, but with other things that webelieve on the basis of good evidence.

3. Criteria

Consider the following:

Malory has promised to take Chris grocery shopping. Unfortunately, asMalory is leaving the apartment, Sam calls with an urgent request:please come over to my house right now, my pipes have broken and Ineed help! Torn, Malory decides to help Sam, and thus breaks a promiseto Chris.

Has Malory done the right thing? The virtuous thing? Malory has broken a promise, which ispro tanto wrong, but Samis in an emergency and needs help right away. Even if it is clearthat what Malory did was right in the circumstances, it is aninteresting question as to why it is right. What can we appeal to inmaking these sorts of judgments? This brings to light the issueof how onemorally justifies one’s actions. Thisis the task of understanding what the justifying reasons are for ouractions. What makes an actionthe thing to do in thecircumstances? This is the criterion of rightness (orwrongness). We will focus on the criterion of rightness, thoughthe criterion issue comes up with other modes of moral evaluation, suchas judging an action to be virtuous, or judging it to be good in somerespect, even if not right. Indeed, some writers have argued that‘morally right’ should be jettisoned from modern secularethics, as it presupposes a conceptual framework left over fromreligiously based accounts which assume there is a God (Anscombe1958). We will leave these worries aside for now, however, andfocus on standard accounts of criteria.

The following are some toy examples that exhibit differingstructural features for moral theories and set out differentcriteria:

Consequentialism.
The right action is the action thatproduces good amongst the options open to the agent at thetime of action (Singer). The most well-known version of thistheory is Classical Utilitarianism, which holds that the right actionpromotes pleasure (Mill).

Kantian Deontology.
The morally worthy action is inaccordance with the Categorical Imperative, which requires an agentrefrain from acting in a way that fails to respect the rational natureof other persons (Kant).

Rossian Deontology.
The right action is the action that bestaccords with the fulfillment and/or non-violation of one’sprima facie duties (Ross).

Contractualism.
An action is morally wrong if it is an act thatwould be forbidden by principles that rational persons could notreasonably reject (Scanlon).

Virtue Ethics.
The right action is the action that a virtuousperson would characteristically perform in the circumstances(Hursthouse 1999).

These principles set out thecriterion orstandardfor evaluation of actions. They do not necessarily tell ushow to perform right actions, and are not, in themselves,decision-procedures, though they can easily be turned into decisionprocedures, such as: you ought to try to perform the action thatmaximizes the good amongst the options available to you at the time ofaction. This might not be, and in ordinary circumstance probablyisn’t, a very good decision-procedure, and would itself need tobe evaluated according to the criterion set out by the theory.

These theories can be divided, roughly, into the deontological,consequentialist, and virtue ethical categories. There has been alively debate about how, exactly, to delineate these categories. Some have held that deontological theories were just those theoriesthat were not consequentialist. A popular conception ofconsequentialist theories is that they are reductionist in a particularway – that is, in virtue of reducing deontic features of actions(e.g. rightness, obligatoriness) to facts about an agent’soptions and the consequences of those options (Smith 2009). Ifthat is the case, then it seems that deontological approaches are justthe ones that are not reductive in this manner. However, thisfails to capture the distinctive features of many forms of virtueethics, which are neither consequentialist nor necessarily concernedwith what weought to do, ourduties as opposed towhat sorts of persons we should be.

One way to distinguish consequentialist from deontological theoriesis in terms of how each approaches value. Philip Pettit hassuggested that while consequentialist theories requiredpromotion of value, deontological theories recommend thatvalue behonored orrespected. On each ofthese views, value is an important component of the theory, andtheories will be partially delineated according to their theory ofvalue. A utilitarian such as Jeremey Bentham believes that hedonism isthe correct theory of value, whereas someone such as G. E. Moore, autilitarian but a pluralist regarding value, believes that hedonism ismuch too narrow an account. A Kantian, on the other hand, viewsvalue as grounded in rational nature, in a will conforming to theCategorical Imperative.

Because of the systematizing function of moral theory discussedearlier, the simplest account is to be preferred and thus there is amove away from endorsing value pluralism. Of course, as intuitivepressure is put on each of the simpler alternatives, a pluralisticaccount of criteria for rightness and wrongness has the advantage ofaccording best with moral intuitions.

Reasons-first philosophers will delineate the theories somewhatdifferently. For example, one might understand goodness as amatter of what we have reason to desire, in which case what we havereason to desire is prior to goodness rather than the other wayaround. Value is still an important component of the theories, itis simply that the value is grounded in reasons.

Another distinction between normative theories is that betweensubjective and objective versions of a type of theory. Thisdistinction cuts across other categories. For example, there aresubjective forms of all the major moral theories, and objectiveversions of many. An objective standard of right holds that the agentmust actually meet the standard – and meeting the standard issomething ‘objective’, not dependent on the agent’spsychological states – in order to count as right orvirtuous. Subjective standards come in two broad forms:

1. Psychology sensitive: are the justifying reasons part ofthe agent’s deliberative processes? Or, more weakly, are they“recoverable” from the agent’s psychology [perhaps,for example, the agent has a commitment to the values that provide thereasons].
2. Evidence sensitive: the right action isn’t the onethat actually meets the standard, but instead, is the action that theagent could foresee would meet that standard. [there are manydifferent ways to spell this out, depending on the degree of evidencethat is relevant: in terms of what the agent actually foresees, whatis foreseeable by the agent given what the agent knows, is foreseeableby someone in possession of a reasonable amount of evidence, etc.]

Of course, these two can overlap. For theorists who areevaluational internalists, evidence-sensitivity doesn’tseem like a plausible way of spelling out the standard, except,perhaps, indirectly. The distinction frequently comes up inConsequentialism, where the Objective standard is taken to be somethinglike: the right action is the action that actually promotes thegood and the Subjective standard is something like: the rightaction is the action that promotes the good by the agent’s ownlights (psychology sensitive) or the right action is the action thatpromotes the foreseeable good, given evidence available at the time ofaction (evidence sensitive standard). It is certainly possiblefor other moral standards to be objective. For example, the rightaction is the action that the virtuous person would perform, eventhough the agent does not realize it is what the virtuous agent woulddo in the circumstances, and even if the person with the best availableevidence couldn’t realize it is what the virtuous person would doin the circumstances.

We certainly utter locutions that support both subjective andobjective uses of what we ‘ought’ to do, or what is‘right’. Frank Jackson notes this when he writes:

…we have no alternative but to recognize a whole range ofoughts – what she ought to do by the light of her beliefs at thetime of action, …what she ought to do by the lights of one oranother onlooker who has different information on the subject, and,what is more, what she ought to do by God’s lights…thatis, by the lights of one whoknows what will and would happenfor each and every course of action. (Jackson 1991, 471).

For Jackson, the primary ought, the primary sense of‘rightness’ for an action, is the one that is “mostimmediately relevant to action” since, otherwise, we have aproblem of understanding how the action is the agent’s. Thus, the subjective ‘ought’ is primary in the sense thatthis is the one that ethical theory should be concerned with (Jackson1991). Each type of theorist makes use of our ordinary languageintuitions to make their case. But one desideratum of a theory is thatit not simply reflect those intuitions, but also provides the tools tocritically analyze them. Given that our language allows forboth sorts of ‘ought,’ the interesting issue becomes which,if either, has primacy in terms of actually providing the standard bywhich other things are evaluated? Moral theory needn’t onlybe concerned with what the right action is from the agent’s pointof view.

There are three possibilities:

1. neither has primacy
2. the subjective has primacy
3. the objective has primacy

First off we need to understand what we mean by“primacy”. Again, for Frank Jackson, the primarysense of ‘right’ or ‘ought’ is subjective,since what we care about is the ‘right’ that refers to aninward story, the story of our agency, so to speak. On this view,the objective and subjective senses may have no relationship to eachother at all, and which counts as primary simply depends upon ourinterests. However, the issue that concerns us here is whether ornot one sense can beaccounted for in terms of theother. Option 1 holds that there is no explanatoryconnection. That is not as theoretically satisfying. Option 2holds either there really is no meaningful objective sense, just thesubjective sense, or the objective sense is understood in terms of thesubjective.

Let’s look at the objective locution again “He did theright thing, but he didn’t know it at the time (or he had no wayof knowing it at the time)”. Perhaps all this means is “Hedid what someone with all the facts and correct set of values wouldhave judged right by their own lights” – this would beextensionally the same as “He performed the action with the bestactual consequences”. This is certainly a possible account ofwhat objective right means which makes use of a subjectivestandard. But it violates the spirit of the subjective standard, sinceit ties rightness neither to the psychology of the agent, or theevidence that is actually available to the agent. For that reason, itseems more natural to opt for 3. An advantage of this option is thatgives us a nice, unified account regarding the connection between theobjective and the subjective. Subjective standards, then, arestandards of praise and blame, which are themselves evaluableaccording to the objective standard. Over time, people are in aposition to tell whether or not a standard actually works in a giventype of context. Or, perhaps it turns out that there are severalstandards of blame that differ in terms of severity. For example,if someone acts negligently a sensible case can be made that the personis blameworthy but not as blameworthy as if they had actedintentionally.

As to the worry that the objective standard doesn’t provideaction guidance, the objective theorist can hold that action guidanceis provided by the subjective standards ofpraise/blameworthiness. Further, the standard itself can providewhat we need for action guidance through normative review (Driver2012). Normative review is a retrospective look at what does in factmeet the standard, and under what circumstances.

Now, consider a virtue ethical example. The right action isthe action that is the actual action that a virtuous person wouldperform characteristically, in the circumstances, rather than theaction that the agent believes is the one the virtuous person wouldperform. Then we evaluate an agent’s “v-rules”in terms of how close they meet the virtuous ideal.

4. Decision Procedures and Practical Deliberation

Another function of moral theory is to provide a decision procedurefor people to follow so as to best insure they perform rightactions. Indeed, some writers, such as R. M. Hare hold action guidanceto be the function of the moral principles of the theory (Hare1965). This raises the question of what considerations are relevant tothe content of such principles – for example, should theprinciples be formulated taking into account the epistemic limitationsof most human beings? The requirement that moral principles be actionguiding is what Holly Smith terms the “Useability Demand”:“…an acceptable moral principle must be useable forguiding moral decisions…” (Smith 2020, 11). Smithenumerates different forms satisfaction of this demand can take, andnotes that how one spells out a principle in order to meet the demandwill depend upon how the moral theorist views moral success. Forexample, whether or not success is achieved in virtue of simply makingthe right decision or if, in addition to making the right decision,the agent must also have successful follow-through on thatdecision.

There has been enormous debate on the issue of what is involved infollowing a rule or principle, and some skepticism that this is in factwhat we are doing when wetake ourselves to be following arule. (Kripke 1982) Some virtue theorists believe that it is moralperception that actually does the guiding, and that a virtuous personis able to perceive what is morally relevant and act accordingly(McDowell 1979).

As discussed earlier in the section on criteria, however, this isalso controversial in that some theorists believe that decisionprocedures themselves are not of fundamental significance. Again,objective consequentialist who believes that the fundamental task oftheory is to establish a criterion for right argues that decisionprocedures will themselves be established and evaluated on the basis ofhow well they get us to actually achieving the right. Thus, thedecision-procedures are derivative. Others, such as subjectiveconsequentialists, will argue that the decision-proceduresspecify the criterion in the sense that following thedecision-procedure itself is sufficient for meeting thecriterion. For example, an objective consequentialist will holdthat the right action maximizes the good, whereas the subjectiveconsequentialist might hold that the right action is totry tomaximize the good, whether or not one actually achieves it (Mason 2003and 2019).Following the decision-procedure itself,then, is the criterion.

The distinction between criterion and decision-procedure has beenacknowledged and discussed at least since Sidgwick, though it was alsomentioned by earlier ethicists. This distinction allows ethicaltheories to avoid wildly implausible implications. For example,if the standard that the theory recommends is ‘promote thegood’ it would be a mistake to think that ‘promote thegood’needs to be part of the agent’sdeliberation. The consequentialist might say that, instead, it isan empirical issue as to what the theory is going to recommend as adecision-procedure, and that recommendation could vary from context tocontext. There will surely be circumstances in which it would bebest to think in terms of meeting the standard itself, but again thatis an empirical issue. Likewise, it is open to a Virtue Ethicistto hold that the right action is the one the virtuous agent wouldperform in the circumstances, but also hold that the agent’sdeliberative processes need not make reference to the standard. Pretty much all theories will want to make some space between thestandard and the decision-procedure in order to avoid a requirementthat agent’s must think in terms of the correct standard, inorder to act rightly, or even act with moral worth. There is adistinction to be made between doing the right thing, and doing theright thingfor the right reasons. Doing the right thing forthe right reasons makes the action a morally worthy one, as it exhibitsa good quality of the will. It is possible for a theory to holdthat the ‘good will’ is one that understands the underlyingjustification of an action, but that seems overly demanding. Ifconsequentialism is the correct theory, then demanding that people mustexplicitly act intentionally to maximize the good would result in fewermorally worthy actions than seems plausible. The ‘for theright reasons’ must be understood as allowing for no explicitinvocation of the true justifying standard.

This has led to the development of theories that advocateindirection. First, we need to distinguish two ways thatindirection figures into moral philosophy.

1. Indirection in evaluation of right action.
2. Indirection in that the theory does not necessarily advocate thenecessity of aiming for the right action.

To use Utilitarianism as an example again, Rule Utilitarianism is anexample of the first sort of indirection (Hooker 2000),Sophisticated Consequentialism is an example of the secondsort of indirection (Railton 1984). One might hold that someversions of Aristotelian Virtue ethics, such as RosalindHursthouse’s version, also are of the first type, sinceright action is understood in terms of virtue. One could imaginean indirect consequentialist view with a similar structure: theright action is the action that the virtuous person would perform,where virtue is understood as a trait conducive to the good, instead ofby appeal to an Aristotelian notion of human flourishing.

The second sort relies on the standard/decision-proceduredistinction. Railton argues that personal relationships are goodfor people, and explicitly trying to maximize the good is not a part ofour relationship norms, so it is likely good that we developdispositions to focus on and pay special attention to our lovedones. The account is open to the possibility that people whodon’t believe in consequentialism have another way of decidinghow to act that is correlated with promotion of the good. If thecriteria a theory sets out need not be fulfilled by the agent guidingherself with the reasons set out by the criteria, then it is termedself-effacing. When a theory is self-effacing, it hasthe problem of alienating a person from the justification of her ownactions. A middle ground, which is closer to Railton’sview, holds that the correct justification is a kind of“touchstone” to the morally good person – consultedperiodically for self-regulation, but not taken explicitly intoconsideration in our ordinary, day-to-day lives. In this way, thetheory would not be utterly self-effacing and the agent would stillunderstand the moral basis for her own actions.

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