How Much is Enough?

For sceptics, who link moral standards and rules, and hence moral, non-legal rights, to contingent human sentiments, feelings, passions and evaluations, it is quite obviously crucial to decide whether — however contingently — there is evinced a broad uniformity in any of those sentiments, feelings, passions and evaluations.

There can be no a priori answers to this. One must look to the natural, causal world for evidence of any convergence of human sentiments. If an extensive convergence happens to be manifested then that convergence sets a criterion. Conduct will generally be expected (to the extent of the convergence and, because extensive, even from those who lack the widespread sentiment) to meet that criterion. It will be the measure of acceptability. Its foundation, its validity, will be the raw fact of happening to be widespread.

On this factual question (of just how uniform human evaluations of what is ‘proper’ and ‘acceptable’ are) I acknowledge, and indeed have placed some weight on the fact, that there is clearly a great variety throughout time, place, era and culture of standards and criteria for judgements. But nevertheless on some general matters,⁵⁹ like the need to look after one’s children, the revulsion from watching and hearing intense suffering, or the pleasure involved in hearty laughter, certain sentiments are very regularly found. And there are other causal regularities like the need for rules in order to live in groups larger than the family and the desire to be free from external constraints. Widespread uniformity of response, in my opinion, does cut across cultures and epochs in certain respects. This should not be too surprising if evolutionary explanations be largely correct. I do not presume to say, however, precisely how uniform human responses and sentiments happen to be; I just remark that in some basic ways there appears to me to be great standardisation and uniformity.

This observed uniformity permits even the moral sceptic to talk sensibly of ‘good’ and ‘beneficial’ consequences in more than an egoistic sense. ‘Good’ consequences are those that promote, respond to and enhance regularly shared sentiments. Qualities can be ‘good’ in this sense on account of their being felt to be, to adopt Hume’s terminology,⁶⁰ useful or agreeable by enough people to pass some test of uniformity. Likely consequences⁶¹ would, of course, affect determinations of what conduct is ‘good’ or ‘beneficial’, but only in the sense of how these perceived consequences would weigh against and influence the standard established by uniformity of sentiment.

To approach the question in another way, in terms of non-legal rights, standards of conduct can emerge or exist fairly uniformly amongst people whether or not these standards be embodied in positive laws. These standards create expectations, albeit not those guaranteed by law. Given these expectations it is not inappropriate or misleading to talk of rights — rights connected to such standards or regularities. This is what the sceptic must mean by non-legal rights — rights (not recognised or guaranteed by law) which ‘exist’ because sentiments about appropriate criteria or standards happen to be fairly uniformly shared by human beings.

Having asserted that non-posited⁶² standards can exist on no other basis than a contingent uniformity in human nature, I must again emphasise that such standards are not unconditional or objective; they do not rise above experienced or exhibited human feelings, needs or responses; they are not mind-independent nor authoritatively prescriptive. They cannot be pointed to in the same way statutes, stone tablets, or even traditional social canons can be. Human beings as a species happen to share, more or less completely, certain responses but nothing more fundamental can be said — save to give a causal explanation for the shared response. The shared standards appear objective, or unconditionally right, or authoritatively prescriptive, or mind-independent, partly because the evaluator happens to share the sentiment.

But where most others approve of slavery, a dissenting moral sceptic can make no claims to non-legal rights against slavery save as part of a strategy to try to change or alter sentiments. Hence to the pessimist X who says that she finds the established criteria, or near-uniform sentiments of other humans, to be generally and commonly quite wicked the sceptic Y would reply that these are only X’s own feelings. To the further query of why X should take these widely shared feelings as a guide or prescriptive rule the sceptic would reply that X has misinterpreted Y’s position. X need not take these criteria, or any other established norms, as prescriptive save in a prudential sense (as with law). Y only points out that in a radically subjective world existing standards are better than nothing and will take time and patience to change.

Notice that contingent but actual uniformity no more proves the case for moral realism than experienced relativity proves moral scepticism. (Consequently, a shared aversion to torture cannot, mysteriously, be transformed into a claim that torture is ‘absolutely’ or ‘timelessly’ or ‘unconditionally’ wrong.) The moral sceptic can admit contingent uniformity and still be consistent just as easily as the moral realist can likewise admit observed relativity. The sceptic admits that some elements of human nature are widely shared. He also notes and observes whole areas where values, standards and responses differ — where they are relative to time and place. So while humans do share some very basic similarities, and while these similarities allow standards to be set up on nothing more than the fact of a virtual uniformity in human nature, just as clearly, in many respects, uniformity is absent across cultures and stages of development.

Unfortunately the typical claims made for universal human rights, if they are to be taken literally, need to claim more than the sceptic allows. Firstly, in extreme circumstances, perhaps where murdering an innocent person would save the world or where torturing a suspect might save millions of lives, normally observed human sentiments against torture and murder frequently lapse.⁶³ Thus, the most basic of ‘human rights’ are contingent in this way.

Secondly, the sceptic’s empirically observed regularities and widespread uniformities are distinct from unwavering universalities; they are not unconditional. The sceptic is stuck with what happens to be the case (including her own sentiments of course) whereas the objectivist could say something more like ‘Sexism is wrong, whatever be existing practices and attitudes’ and say it believing he expresses more than his own feelings. The moral sceptic could never say this; there is nothing more for her to believe in except what prevails. Hence, again, the sceptic’s claims are limited in a way absolutist or universalist rights claims are not.

To summarize my position, I accept that objective-seeming standards can be established on the basis of general uniformities in human nature. However, caveats are necessary. Apparently uniform responses change with time (as is evidenced, say, by people’s feelings about slavery), with culture (as evidenced, say, by the treatment of animals or the position of women), with religious belief, etc. In addition, even quite uniform human sentiments may alter in extreme circumstances. Together these seem to me to destroy any hope there might be for absolute universal rights. Yet after having insisted on her caveats and having noted the fundamental contingency of her foundations, the sceptic can cling to certain standards of ‘good’ (at least if she be fortunate enough not to disapprove of most or all existing standards). They will never be absolute; they are no more fundamental than the shared human sentiments on which they rely; they cannot transcend or contradict the empirical evidence; but yet in most situations within a particular culture and time, and perhaps some few situations not so limited, the objectivist’s universalities and nonlegal rights are not much different from the sceptic’s uniformities and non-legal rights.⁶⁴ Moreover, as I said earlier, what is really important in most circumstances is making non-legal rights legal and enforceable.

That, at any rate, is the optimistic sceptic’s account. Others may worry that according moral standards, and hence non-legal rights, such a watered-down status — one that cleanses them from any truck with objectivist error — will deaden, or at least cripple, their ability to go on and maintain a vigorous first-order moral committment. This is a balancing trick, in other words, that many people may fear they cannot manage. My response⁶⁵ to such anxieties is to re-iterate what I said in section d) of chapter six, and especially in the imaginary catechism. Man is bom to judge. Nihilism is a chimera which nature will not allow.

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Source: Allan James. A Sceptical Theory of Morality and Law. Peter Lang,1998. — 277 p.. 1998

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