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Amoralism-on the limits of moral thinking by PETER SAND0E University of Copenhagen THERE are two tasks that one might reasonably expect a method of moral thinking to fulfil. First it should enable each of us to make up his own mind about what he thinks is morally right and wrong. Secondly, it should help us to sort out moral disagreements. It is of course a matter for debate to what extent a method of moral thinking can fulfil this last task. The most ambitious expectation would be that a correct method of moral thinking, if properly employed, should guarantee moral agreement. In the past Immanu- el Kant has tried to present a method which could provide such a guarantee. Today not many philosophers think that Kant succeed- ed. But the ambition to find a watertight method of moral argument is not dead. Thus in his book, Moral Thinking, Richard Hare presents a method of moral thinking which allows him to claim that if we face the facts and think clearly we must all agree on a version of utilitarianism. The only way out according to Hare is to stop thinking in moral terms altogether, i.e. by becoming an amoralist. Hare does not think that he can prove the amoralist wrong; but he thinks that he can give a number of pragmatic or prudential reasons telling against amoralism. These reasons I shall discuss in the second part of the paper. But first I shall discuss whether amoralism is really the only way out. What about the fanatic, can he, given Hare’s method, really be shown wrong? I shall argue that Hare’s method leaves more room for fanaticism of a non-utilitarian sort than he himself in some places is willing to recognize. Instead of drawing any final conclusions I shall end each part of the paper with a list of questions to Professor Hare. I am sure that he must have heard these questions many times before; and that he has some very good answers to them. And therefore I hope that at least my paper will serve as an opportunity for Hare to clear away

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Amoralism-on the limits of moral thinking

by

PETER S A N D 0 E University of Copenhagen

THERE are two tasks that one might reasonably expect a method of moral thinking to fulfil. First it should enable each of us to make up his own mind about what he thinks is morally right and wrong. Secondly, it should help us to sort out moral disagreements. It is of course a matter for debate to what extent a method of moral thinking can fulfil this last task. The most ambitious expectation would be that a correct method of moral thinking, if properly employed, should guarantee moral agreement. In the past Immanu- el Kant has tried to present a method which could provide such a guarantee. Today not many philosophers think that Kant succeed- ed. But the ambition to find a watertight method of moral argument is not dead. Thus in his book, Moral Thinking, Richard Hare presents a method of moral thinking which allows him to claim that if we face the facts and think clearly we must all agree on a version of utilitarianism. The only way out according to Hare is to stop thinking in moral terms altogether, i.e. by becoming an amoralist.

Hare does not think that he can prove the amoralist wrong; but he thinks that he can give a number of pragmatic or prudential reasons telling against amoralism. These reasons I shall discuss in the second part of the paper. But first I shall discuss whether amoralism is really the only way out. What about the fanatic, can he, given Hare’s method, really be shown wrong? I shall argue that Hare’s method leaves more room for fanaticism of a non-utilitarian sort than he himself in some places is willing to recognize.

Instead of drawing any final conclusions I shall end each part of the paper with a list of questions to Professor Hare. I am sure that he must have heard these questions many times before; and that he has some very good answers to them. And therefore I hope that at least my paper will serve as an opportunity for Hare to clear away

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some (hopefully not too obvious) misunderstandings of his views concerning the limits of moral thinking as a means of sorting out moral disagreements.

Z

Very few people will, if they are presented with a standard text- book account of utilitarianism, recognize themselves as utilitarians. They will say that according to their view justice and rights should be respected-even at the cost of not maximizing utility. And they will say that utilitarianism is also much too demanding. Acting so as to maximize utility may involve great personal sacrifices-one may for example have to spend most of one’s income on aid to people in the poor countries. And even if such self-sacrifice is praise-worthy it is, they will say, not one’s duty.

Why do people react in this way to utilitarianism? One answer might be that most people are, what Hare in his book Freedom and Reason called ‘fanatics’. They are so wedded to certain moral ideals that they are willing to prescribe a moral code that gives less than full weight to the pursuit of happiness and the reduction of misery. And they are willing to accept this prescription even for the imag- ined situation where roles are reversed, e.g. situations where they themselves suffer from poverty which could be relieved by help from people living in the so-called developed countries.

However, according to what Hare says in M T and other of his more recent writings this is a very bad answer. The most obvious reason why people reject utilitarianism is that the view has not been presented to them in a proper way. Standard accounts of utilitarian- ism suffer from among other things a failure to distinguish different levels of moral thinking. And as soon as the distinction between the critical and the intuitive level of moral thinking has been invoked it is possible to argue that utilitarianism, properly understood, is compatible with the sort of moral attitudes cited above.

When we use the utilitarian principle to decide a moral question we are, according to Hare, at the critical level of moral thinking. However, if we always conducted our moral thinking at the critical level, the result would be very bad, measured by utilitarian stan-

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dards. We often lack the time and intellectual resources needed to arrive at a correct moral judgment, and we suffer from a number of other human weaknesses which in many cases would distort our judgments and lead to bad results. To avoid these consequences the perfect utilitarian thinker would choose a number of prima facie principles or virtues which, if inculcated in us, would give the best overall moral result. We decide at the critical level of moral think- ing, in so far as we manage to think as the perfect utilitarian would do, that we should try to inculcate these principles in ourselves, our fellow-men and our children, and that in most cases we should conduct our moral thinking in the light of these principles or virtues. As long as we conduct our moral thinking in this way we are at the intuitive level of moral thinking.

On the basis of this distinction between the two levels of moral thinking it is possible to argue that the moral attitudes cited above are not really incompatible with utilitarianism. Take the concern for justice. It is not unreasonable that a perfect utilitarian thinker, if he was asked to choose a number of prima facie principles suited for people like us living in a world like the one we live in, will come up with principles of justice of the sort often appealed to in arguments against utilitarianism. Let me quote a little bit from Hare to illus- trate how the utilitarian thinker might reason:

Prima facie moral principles are needed for the conduct of those who administer the law, and critical thinking has to select these principles. In selecting them it will have, as always, to observe formal justice, giving equal weight to the equal interests of all the parties affected, without favouring any individual as such. Thus the grounds of selection will be utilitarian; but the principles selected may not themselves look utilitarian at all. They are likely to be, rather, of the sort dear to deontologists and intuitionists; they will insist on things like not punishing the innocent, not condemning people unheard, observing procedures in court which are calculated to elicit the truth from witnesses and cause the jury to attend to it, and so on. These prima facie principles of substantial, including proce- dural, justice in the administration of the law will be selected by critical thinking because their general acceptance is likely to further the interests of those affected, all in all, considered impartially, i.e. with formal justice. So, though the principles may accord with those defended by intuitionists, their justification is utilitarian ( M T , p. 162).

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So it might turn out that most of the ordinary people who are inclined to reject utilitarianism are not genuine fanatics. They are what Hare now calls “impure fanatics”. They adhere to the prima facie principles which according to utilitarianism are appropriate for them, given their psychology and given the society and period in which they live. And in this there is nothing fanatical. What makes them look like fanatics is the fact that, since they are not clearly aware of the distinction between the two levels of moral thinking, they treat the prima facie principles as if they were fundamental to all moral thinking. However, it might turn out that these people, when forced to do some critical thinking will think in utilitarian terms. For example, if two of their principles get into conflict they might try to solve the dilemma by means of utilitarian thinking.

I agree with Hare that only if they have grasped the distinction between the levels of moral thinking will people be able to judge whether or not their moral views are compatible with utilitarianism. And I also agree that a lot of people, when they have grasped the distinction between the two levels of moral thinking, will think of utilitarianism as a plausible moral theory-at least this is what happened to myself. However I suspect that a lot of people will not think this way. They will go along with the intuitionist trend in recent moral philosophy and say that, even though there is some sort of distinction between intuitive and critical moral thinking, utilitarianism is not a satisfactory moral theory, even for the critical level. They will say that at the critical level of moral thinking we must among other things appeal to moral convictions of a non- utilitarian sort.

I am aware that Hare will say that what such people call critical thinking does not deserve this title: “To insist on the prior authority of the moral intuitions that one starts with is simply to refuse to think critically” ( M T , p. 179). However, I think that it might be replied that even though moral intuitions form the material on the basis of which critical thinking is done no one intuition has been rendered immune to criticism. Critical thinking in ethics is accord- ing to the view of these people analogous to theoretical thinking within science. The aim is to find a coherent theory which satisfies ordinary constraints on theory construction such as simplicity, ex-

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planatory power etc. And we cannot know in advance which parts of our previous theories will fall by the wayside.’

I am not, however, going to pursue this line of discussion here. Rather I shall discuss a potentially much more forceful reply which Hare can give to these people. This is an argument which has as its premise that facts of a non-moral sort, together with the logic of the moral concepts, will entail utilitarianism. And therefore the alleged fanatic will be caught in a dilemma: Either he will have to express his views without using the moral concepts and thus become an amoralist, or he will have to endorse utilitarianism. If this is a valid argument it follows that pure fanaticism, given the non-moral facts, is either incoherent or not a moral view (i.e. a view which can be expressed by means of the moral concepts). And since the non- utilitarian fanatic clearly wants to present his view as a moral view he is bound to be incoherent.

I am aware that some people will doubt that this argument can be ascribed to Hare. So let me quote a bit from chapter 10 of M T in which, as far as I can see, this argument is endorsed:

“It is only the fully-informed and logically impeccable fanatic that would present a difficulty for our theory if he were able to reject our utilitarian prescriptions. I shall now proceed to show that he cannot.

It is clear that he cannot, if the argument of chh. 5 and 6 is correct. For the steps in that argument from universal prescriptivism to utilitarianism were all based on the concepts involved. The fanatic is not rejecting this logic; he is not the amoralist with whom we shall be dealing later in this chapter. So if the steps are really all conceptual, he cannot refuse them” ( M T , p. 176).

I am, I think, not the only one, who finds this passage somewhat confusing. It is reasonable to conclude on the basis of what Hare says here that utilitarianism can be derived logically from proposi- tions reporting non-moral facts, the logic of the moral concepts and nothing else. He does not explicitly say that the argument is based purely on the logic of the moral concepts; he just talks about the logic of the concepts involved. But this follows, given his further claim that the only way out is to become an amoralist; i.e. someone

Cf. Daniels, 1979, pp. 256-282, see especially pp. 264-273.

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who refuses to use the moral concepts. If a non-moral concept were involved, then it would be possible to avoid utilitarianism without becoming an amoralist.

But if Hare thinks that he can derive a moral principle, viz. utilitarianism, on the basis of only non-moral facts and the logic of the moral concepts, he seems now to have embraced the sort of ethical naturalism which elsewhere he is very concerned to distance himself from. Take for example the following passages from chapter 10 of Freedom and Reason:

“The essence of naturalism is to say ‘If you understand the meaning of such and such a moral word, you cannot deny such and such a moral assertion’. . . . The most fundamental objection against naturalism is that it makes moral questions depend upon conceptual ones - whereas we feel that to adopt a certain conceptual apparatus is one thing, and to adopt a certain system of moral principles another . . .” (Hare, 1963, p. 187).

”On my view, there is absolutely no content for a moral prescription that is ruled out by logic or by the definition of terms” (Hare, 1963, p. 195).

My theory . . . allows for our normal use of non-moral facts as part of the ingredients of a moral argument . . .; but, unlike naturalism, it says that they cannot be the sole ingredient besides logic. If a man is to be compelled to a moral conclusion, he must assent to, or be unable to assent to, certain singular prescriptions (and this will depend on what desires he has), and must treat the desires of others as if they were his own. The essential other ingredient is (to use an old-fashioned term) something volitional (Hare, 1963, p. 198).

There are also passages in Moral Thinking where Hare seems to confirm these anti-naturalist views. So it seems reasonable to take closer a look at chapters 5 and 6 to see whether Hare’s argument in favour of utilitarianism really is of a naturalist nature or whether it relies on something more than just non-moral facts and the logic of the moral concepts. Is there also on top of this some other premise which presupposes the assent of our will, viz. an independent prescriptive premise? As far as I can see there is.

Roughly speaking Hare in these chapters argues in two steps: The conclusion of the first step is that I cannot know, in a full sense of ‘know’, other people’s preferences without having the same prefer- ences for the hypothetical situation where I am in their shoes with

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all their preferences and none of my own. In the second step he argues that universalizability, which is part and parcel of the moral concepts, forces me to give the same moral weight to the situation where I am myself as I give to any of the hypothetical situations where I am in the shoes of each of the other people affected by my action.

It is clear that any supposed non-moral prescriptions which may go into the argument must come in the first step. And as a matter of fact Hare himself claims that one of the crucial concepts used in that part of his reasoning is in part prescriptive. This is the concept denoted by the word ‘1’:

0 ’ . . . I IS not wholly a descriptive word but in part prescriptive. In identify- ing myself with some person either actually or hypothetically, I identify with his prescriptions. In plainer terms, to think of the person who is about to go to the dentist as myself is to have now the preference that he should not suffer as I believe he is going to suffer. In so far as I think it will be myself, I now have in anticipation the same aversion as I think he will have ( M T , pp. 96-97).

“. . . by calling some person ‘I1, I express at least a considerably greater concern for the satisfaction of his preferences than for those of people whom I do not so designate” ( M T , p. 98).

But if the use of the word ‘I’ about other people is an essential part of Hare’s argument, wouldn’t it then be possible for someone to avoid the conclusion of the argument either by not using the word about other people or by using it only in ‘inverted commas’-that is in a purely descriptive manner? I can’t see that this is logically impossible. It may for many of us be psychologically impossible- given our nature and upbringing. But this is not relevant to the present argument which is about whether or not it is in theory possible for the fanatic to resist Hare’s argument against utilitarian- ism. And it seems to follow that at least it is logically possible to be a fanatic of the sort who either does not use the word ‘I’ about other people or uses it only in inverted commaes. Let me call this charac- ter an ego-fanatic.*

It should be noted that the ego-fanatic is not necessarily an egoist. He may for

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I have now said enough, I think, to be able to formulate my first list of questions to Professor Hare: Do you agree that it is not possible both to reject ethical naturalism and to deny that there could be a fully-informed and logically impeccable f a n a t i ~ ? ~ Am I right in thinking that you still want to reject ethical naturalism? Do you then agree that ego-fanaticism is at least a logical possibility? If so, do you think that ego-fanaticism is a genuine threat to the solution of our moral problems?

The ego-fanatic is, I think, not the only kind of fanatic who can slip through the logical net wowen by Hare’s method of moral thinking. But I shall not here pursue the subject of fanaticism any further. Instead I shall go on to discuss amoralism as a way of avoiding the conclusions of our moral thinking. I should perhaps stress that I am not criticizing Hare’s utilitarian conclusions. My aim is rather to find out how and at what price those who want to reject utiltarianism can do so. I hope that Hare will agree with me that this is a question of some importance for those of us who try to help people making up their minds about what is morally right and wrong.

example be a nationalist who gives special weight to the preferences of his country- men and who is therefore not willing to use the word ‘I’ about foreigners.

The fully-informed and logically impeccable fanatic seems closely related to the character whom Hare in M T calls the ‘pure fanatic’. The pure fanatic would according to Hare “be someone who was able and willing to think critically, but somehow survived the ordeal still holding moral opinions different from those of the utilitarian” (p. 171). Hare goes on to argue that according to his theory it is at least a logical possibility that there could exist a pure fanatic. For example one could imagine a doctor who has an unalterable preference for keeping people alive which is so strong that even on the utilitarian calculus it overrides the preference of the patient not to be kept alive at the cost of great suffering. I do, however, think that it is rather confusing to call this doctor or any other imagined person with similar “quite fantastically strong preferences” (pp. 181-182) a pure fanatic. Had such a person existed - which as a matter of fact he does not - then we would have been pure fanatics if we had not allowed his preferences to override ours. Since the moral views of such a person are not inconsistent with utilitarianism I see no reason to classify him as a fanatic. And my question should therefore be read in the following manner: ‘Do you agree that it is not possible both to reject ethical naturalism and to deny that there could be a fully informed and logically impeccable fanatic who thinks that it is morally right to act contrary to the prescriptions of utilitarianism?’

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I1

According to Hare moral judgments have two essential properties. The first is that they are prescriptive and-in the case of moral judgments made at the critical level of moral thinking-even over- riding. The second essential property is that they are universaliza- ble. By this Hare means that if a thing or an action is said to be morally right or wrong one is bound to say the same about any other thing or action which is like the first one in all its universal proper- ties. Together these two essential properties guarantee that moral judgments are at the same time both practical (because of their prescriptivity and overridingness) and susceptible to reasoning (be- cause of their universalizability).

These two properties are according to Hare built into the moral words, ‘morally right’, ‘ought morally’ etc., or to be more precise into the moral words as used in their primary moral senses. So when we use these or other synonymous words to express our views about what to do in moral situations we must, on pain of being irrational, engage in moral reasoning and act on what comes out of this reasoning.

There is, however, an obvious counter to this ‘argument from the meaning of the moral words’. It is possible to grant all the premises of the argument and still reject the conclusion simply by refusing to use the relevant words. Hare is, of course, fully aware of this strategy. Thus in M T he anticipates the following objection:

. . . it might be objected that by claiming that the moral words have certain logical properties, and then founding a theory of moral reasoning on them, we have put out of the range of our artillery the person who says ‘I agree that what you call “the moral words” have these properties, and that, if they have, a system of “moral reasoning” can be founded on them which will lead to certain conclusions; but for that very reason I am not going to use those words, or not in those senses, because I do not intend to be forced to those conclusions’ ( M T , p. 188).

Hare does, it seems, agree that a consistent amoralist may pursue this strategy. And he even grants that as an amoralist one may get away with using the moral words in their ordinary senses and still not make any moral judgments4xcept ones of indifference. How-

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ever, in order not to complicate the discussion I shall only discuss the kind of amoralist who either does not use the moral words at all or else uses them in senses different from what according to Hare are their primary senses.

Since moral judgments according to Hare are both prescriptive (overriding) and universalizable one can imagine three sorts of amoralist responses to the argument from the meaning of the moral words. The simple response will be not to use the moral words at all. But there are two alternative, and somewhat more sophisticated ways of going along, which allow one to make judgments that look very much like moral judgments. The one is by using the moral words only in a special sense so that ‘moral’ judgments, though universalizable, are not prescriptive. And the other is by allowing ‘moral’ judgments to be prescriptive but not universalizable. Both manoeuvres have been proposed by well-known philosophers, the first by Philippa Foot (1972) in her famous claim that moral judg- ments are hypothetical imperatives, the second by among others D. H. Monro (1967, ch. 17)-though of course neither of the two will describe what they are doing as defining special senses for the moral words. They will rather say that they report the real or primary meanings of the moral words. Since I am personally not very interested in verbal questions I shall not pursue this matter any further.

I think it is much more fruitful to admit, as Hare has done in Moral Thinking, that amoralism is a genuine, logical, possibility and then ask which reasons of a non-logical sort we can give people to convince them that amoralism is not a good option.

All the mentioned sorts of amoralism are, I think, worth consid- ering. But I shall here only consider the kind of amoralist who refuses to universalize the prescriptions on which he thinks that he should act in moral situations. What reasons does Hare give for not indulging in this kind of amoralism? As far I can see, he argues in two steps. First he tries to show that if one decides to become an amoralist one must do so universally; it is not a viable option to be an amoralist in some cases and not in others. Secondly he presents a number of prudential reasons telling against universal amoralism. Let me go through the steps in order.

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The first step is contained in the following passage:

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It is not difficult to imagine the state of mind of someone who has no universal, and therefore no moral, desires at all. But I find it hard to imagine that of someone who has universal desires concerning cases in which his own interests are not affected, but has none for cases where they are, both actual and hypothetical. Whence could come the difference, if not from a differentiation of cases where his interests were concerned? Since he is not claiming to have universal desires about those cases, this does him no harm in the argument. But the same move which separates off those cases by an individual reference to himself, also separates off the other lot of cases about which he claims to be making moral judgements. If these latter are distinguished-by an individual reference (as they must be, if the former, their complementary class, are) then the judgements cannot really be moral ones after all.

I do not see, therefore, how such a person can avoid becoming an amoralist universally, i.e. refraining from making moral judgments alto- gether. Nor can I see anything logically inconsistent in his position, if that is what he does. (MT, pp. 185-186).

I do not want to disagree with this argument. But I want to point out that it shows less than may initially seem. It shows that one cannot on pain of inconsistence in one case (e.g. a case in which one’s own interests are not affected) apply a universal principle and then in another case to which the universal principle also applies (but in which one’s interests are affected) say that the principle does not apply. But the argument does not show that one cannot think in terms of principles which are not universal-and do so universally.

To be universal a principle must not contain ineradicable refer- ences to particular individuals or groups of individuals. However, a lot of the principles in terms of which people conduct their moral thinking do contain such references. For example many people think that it makes a difference when a human organism is affected by our actions-rather than for example a non-human animal. Thus at the time being in my country we discuss to what extent scientists should be allowed to conduct experiments with human embryos. Sometimes I have allowed myself in discussions of this issue to claim that most of the animals used in experiments-unlike the human embryos-suffer during the experiments; and that therefore it is better from a moral point of view to use human embryos than

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animals for experimentation. The claim is normally met with strong moral indignation.

Of course, this indignation may be defended by reference to universal principles-or people may after a while see my point and then reject their initial reaction. But in most cases this is not what is going on. Rather a lot of people will justify their view by reference to a principle like the following: ‘It is morally wrong to use human beings, actual or potential, in experiments; or at least it is wrong to do so if the results we are looking for can be achieved through experiments with non-human animals.’

It is not difficult to show that this principle, as understood by most of the people I have in mind, is not a genuinely universal principle. If you ask these people what according to their view is the relevant difference between humans and non-human animals they will find the question completely misplaced. And if you start asking them hypothetical questions about non-human animals which can think and feel just the way we do they will reply that they have no policy for hypothetical cases. They only have the principle that in this world human beings, just because they are human being^,^ are entitled to a different and better treatment than non-human ani- mals.

Couldn’t these people turn out to be amoralists of a sort who act on principles which are not universal, and who do not think it proper, even at the critical level of practical thinking, to justify their principles by reference to principles which are genuinely universal. Personally, I think it is a real possibility that a lot of people are amoralists of this sort. They use a moral vocabulary which looks very much like the one on which Hare bases his method of moral thinking; but it turns out to belong to a different idiolect.

I am fully aware that there may be’other ways of explaining the reactions of ordinary people so that they do not come out as amoralists of the sort just outlined. They may be sticking to the intuitive level of moral thinking, or they may fail to think clearly. But here I only want to argue that at least it is a logical possibility

I take it that the word ‘human’ here serves as a rigid designator and not as a name for a universal property.

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that they are, or decide to become, amoralists who universally follow principles which are not genuinely universal. Such principled urnorulists may for example follow a principle which discriminates members of the species homo sapiens because they are members of this particular species and not because of any universal properties which distinguish members of this species from other creatures. One can also imagine similar principles of a nationalist, racist or sexist sort. Or one can imagine a principle which gives more weight to the preferences of human beings who actually exist than to the preferences of potential humans.

So I will grant to Hare that the only viable amoralist option is to become an amoralist universally, but I want to claim that someone who is an amoralist universally can at the same time be a principled amoralist. And the question then is what sort of prudential o r other reasons Hare can provide in favour of sticking to the moral concepts as he interprets them rather than becoming a amoralist, e.g. of the principled sort?

Hare’s main reason in favour of morality appeals to the well- being of our children. Given facts as they are, including social facts, the best thing we can do for a child is to bring it up with a morality like the one favoured by Hare’s method of moral thinking. And to be able to bring a child up in a certain way we have to think and act in the same way ourselves. Since most of us strongly want that our children should have as good lifes as possible this prudential argu- ment will weigh strongly with most of us.

It is, however, not clear that this argument will favour morality against principled amoralism. I can’t see how bringing a child up as a consistent speciesist should make it more probable that he will get a life which is less good than it could otherwise be. As far as I can see, Hare doesn’t even try to address this problem. He only com- pares the moral life with the life of the person who only pursues his own narrow prudential interests. And if this is taken to be the only other alternative it may not be too difficult to show that morality is the best alternative-even viewed from a purely prudential point of view.

Let me conclude by formulating my second list of questions for Professor Hare: Do you agree that it is possible to be an amoralist

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universally and at the same time be what I have called a principled amoralist? If so do you think that it is possible to show that it would be in the interest of our children to educate them to think in moral terms rather than to become principled amoralists? Can you think of other good non-logical reasons which will tell against principled a m ~ r a l i s m ? ~

I am grateful to Troels Engberg-Pedersen for helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper and to the Carlsberg Foundation for financial support giving me the time to write it.