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Fact, Value, and Yormn in
Stevenson's Ethics'
KURT BAIER
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
139
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140 NOdS
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON'S ETICS 141
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142 NOUS
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON S ETHICS 143
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144 NOUS
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON S ETHICS 145
agreement. For if Mrs. Jones does not mean or believe what she
says, then though her words express disagreement, she does not
really disagree. In one sense, there is of course a perfectly real
and genuine disagreement, quite irrespective of whether Mrs.
Jones is sincere or insincere: in that sense she disagrees with any-
one who denies (and agrees with anyone who affirms) that she
has an obligation to save up for Jack. For this sense of disagree-
ment, her mental state is simply irrelevant; what counts is what
she says. All the same, in another sense, she does not really dis-
agree but merely says she does. I shall not therefore challenge
Stevenson's claim that where ethical disagreement is insincere, it
is not typically ethical.
I now turn to Stevenson's argument which implies that rela-
tivization and insincerity are the only features which turn a con-
text from a typically ethical one into one which is not. Stevenson
argues (FV 206/7, EF 206) that a person involved in typically
ethical disagreement with another but not disagreeing with him in
attitude would be involved in absurdity.
Suppose a person says, 'I approve of segregation and it is
wrong' (EF 206) or 'Jones ought not to insult Smith but I approve
of his doing so' (FV 206/7). Such a person, Stevenson claims, is
guilty of the same sort of absurdity as one who says, 'Jones in-
sulted Smith but I don't believe he did' (FV 206/7). "We want
to ask 'But if you really approve of it, what's the point of saying
that it's wrong?' And we would be likely to use the same indig-
nant tone of voice that we would use, for the parallel example
from science, in asking, 'But if you really believe that it's the
case, what's the point of saying that it isn't?"' (EF 206).
Now, in his various explorations of this argument (FV 204-
214, EF 206), Stevenson implies that, unless the context is one of
relativization or insincerity, a person having an ethical disagree-
ment with another but not disagreeing with him in attitude is
necessarily involved in absurdity. I conclude that Stevenson rec-
ognizes only these two contexts as being not typically ethical. But
then the disagreements of the Jones family really are counter ex-
amples to Stevenson's analysis of 'ethical disagreement', provided
only that these disagreements can conceivably occur in contexts
not characterized by relativization or insincerity. It does, however,
seem perfectly clear that this proviso is satisfied in the situation as
I described it. Mrs. Jones may really think that she ought to save
up, and not merely that her society considers she ought. Simi-
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146 NOUTS
larly, she may at the same time be perfectly sincere in what she
says. She may mean and believe what she says. And she need not
be in the least bit "muddled" or "guilty of absurdity" (EF 206),
for there is a perfectly good point to what she says. In saying
that she knows she has an obligation to save up for Jack, she
acknowledges among other things that anyone is entitled to take
an unfavorable attitude towards a mother not saving up for her
son in such a case, that any mother not saving up deserves to be
condemned, that any son of such a mother would be entitled to
treat her with lack of respect and gratitude, and that she, too, de-
serves such treatment if she acts in this way. At the same time,
she expresses a favorable attitude towards ignoring her obligation
and urges her husband to take the same attitude. She acknowl-
edges the justice of the principle but expresses a desire for, and
urges on her husband, the making of an exception in their case.
This is not at all absurd or muddled. It is only uncommonly can-
did. Unlike Mrs. Jones, people do not readily admit that they
are unwilling to make the sacrifices they know they ought to
make; that they are selfish, undutiful, unmotherly, and so forth;
and that they are therefore morally at fault. Mrs. Jones would in-
deed contradict herself, if she maintained that she was a moral
(virtuous) person, that she had an obligation to do x, and that
she wanted her husband to cooperate with her in not doing x.
If she maintained all that, then if she did not notice the contra-
diction, she would indeed be muddled, and if she persisted after
it was pointed out to her, this would be quite absurd. But her
unusual candor about her own immorality saves her from any
contradiction, muddle or absurdity.
Stevenson might perhaps argue that ethical disagreement in
the narrow sense involves, not indeed disagreement in attitude of
any and every sort, but only disagreement in attitude of a certain
sort. What sort of attitude might that be?
We must, to begin with, note that the sort cannot be "domi-
nant attitude"; the sort whose defining characteristic is that it
prevails in the circumstances in question. For our example shows
clearly that the ethical disagreement between Mrs. Jones and her
son is compatible with agreement in dominant attitude. Mrs. Jones'
behavior shows that one may conceivably resolve to act, and ex-
hort (invite-so-to-speak) others to act in a way which conflicts
with the moral attitude expressed in one's moral judgment. If by
'disagreement in attitude' Stevenson means 'disagreement in dom-
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON'S ETHICS 147
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148 NOUS
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON S ETHICS 149
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON S ETHICS 151
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it, and so surely imply that one should accept it; since presumably
one should not do that which would constitute a mistake. Of course
a logician who points out that a piece of reasoning is valid is
not "exhorting" anyone to use it (though if he says that it is
invalid, he comes pretty close to exhorting a person not to use
it); but that shows only that the use of "normative terns" does
not necessarily amount to exhortation, it does not show that
'validity is not a "normative term."
Why t-hen does Stevenson reject this apparently sound ob-
jection? Well, if he admits that 'valid' is a normative term, and if
he adheres to his own criteria for applying 'validity' (what he
might want to call the "descriptive meaning" of 'validity'), then
we have here a case of a conclusive argument from a nonnorma-
tive premise to a normative conclusion. For here we move from
some premise to some conclusion and, having checked that move
by the rules of logic, we conclude that our argument was valid;
and this surely is a normative conclusion, for it tells us that we
.would be misguided, and so ought not, to reject such an argu-
ment. If this is sound, we must either give up the theory that
we cannot deduce normative conclusions from non-normative
premises or must refuse the epithet 'valid' to logically certified
arguments. But of course neither of these alternatives is open to
Stevenson.
The weakness of Stevenson's position becomes apparent if
we examine the grounds on the basis of which he draws the line
between the areas to which the concept of validity applies, and
the areas to which it does not apply. In his opinion, it applies to
logic and science, and it does not apply to ethics. But why draw
the line there? Why not rather between logic on the one hand,
and science and ethics on the other? Are not our techniques for
ensuring thfat scientific laws and theories "hold" for the phenomena
which they are used to explain, analogous to our techniques for
ensuring that universal moral principles "hold" for the variety of
circumstances and agents who use them as guides? Do we not
use in much the same way the concepts of boundary conditions
and of prima facie validity to preserve some of the advantages of
unapplied systems after we have applied them to circumstances
which, from the nature of the case, must always remain incom-
pletely and inadequately explored? Is not, then, the difficulty of
arguing from 'is' to 'ought' in ethics comparable to the difficulty of
arguing from 'is' to 'is' in the empirical sciences? And since these
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON S ETHICS 153
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154 NOUS
II
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON'S ETHICS 155
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156 NOUS
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON S ETlICS 157
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FACT, VALUE, AND NORM IN STEVENSON'S ETIICS 159
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