Distinction: Personal Belief and Moral Reasoning | Views of Dr. Piers Benn and Simon Blackburn

 Ethics: Personal Beliefs and Moral Values

The distinction between personal beliefs and moral reasoning is a recurring theme in "Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Simon Blackburn and Ethics by Dr. Piers Benn, which highlight that while personal feelings and cultural influences often shape individual moral views, moral reasoning aims for a more objective and universal foundation.

Personal Beliefs and Opinions

• Subjective and Taste-like: Personal moral convictions can be seen as "judgements of personal taste", similar to preferring a colour like blue or green, where it would be senseless to argue whose taste is more "correct". When people express a moral opinion, they sometimes qualify it as "just an opinion", implying it is no more correct than an opposing view.

• Rooted in Feelings/Passions: Personal moral commitments are often intimately linked to "attitudes, preferences, needs or desires" or "passions" and "sentiments". They can be driven by "emotive reaction". Hume famously argued that "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions", meaning reason can inform us of facts but cannot form our fundamental desires or motivations.
• Hume, D. A treatise of human nature (1739–40) L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1978).
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• Psychologically Influenced: People's views are often "led by their feelings, or caused by God or their cultural environment". Our moral and political commitments are "partly shaped by factors we tend not to acknowledge", such as cultural heritage and personal interests. Personal biases, perhaps originating in "personal weaknesses", can lead to unjust moral judgements.

• Not Necessarily Justified: The fact that one holds a belief or intuition, or that it "seems" true to them, does not inherently justify it.

• "Conversation-Stopper": The response "Well, that's just your opinion" often serves as a "conversation-stopper" rather than a genuine move in ethical discussion, as it avoids engaging with reasons or counter-reasons.

Moral Reasoning

• Based on Reasons and Justification: Moral judgements are typically "based upon reasons" which people "often hope will seem persuasive to others". Moral deliberation involves "weighing up reasons", and moral convictions are seen as stating "truths which can, however crudely, be based upon reasons". Moral thinking "aims at something", striving to reach "good reasons" that are not merely determined by present desires or beliefs.

• Objective and Universal Aim: Moral reasoning strives for "objective moral truths or binding principles". It seeks to determine if a moral view is "correct, or objectively justified". Kant argued that morality is "objective, in the sense that it makes rationally inescapable demands which do not depend for their validity upon desires or opinions that people just happen to have".

 I.Kan t,Groundwork of themetaphysicof morals, trans. H.J. Paton(London: Harper andRow,1964)

• Transcending Subjectivity: Unlike judgements of taste, moral judgements generally involve taking stances on others' moral judgements, including praise and condemnation. It involves moving from a "private and particular situation" to a "common point of view".

• Logical Consistency and Rationality: A crucial aspect of moral reasoning is the avoidance of "self-contradiction" and "inconsistencies" in moral positions. Principles of "universalizability" mean that "ought" judgements commit the speaker to making the "same ought judgement in all circumstances that share the same universal features". Bad moral convictions are often a result of "lazy and muddled thought".

• Distinction from Causes: Moral reasoning involves providing justifications ("normative" sense of "because") rather than mere causal explanations for actions. While personal desires can cause actions, moral reasons aim to provide objective justification for actions, even if they don't align with an agent's current desires.

• Intellectual Endeavour: Ethical thinking is considered an "intellectual operation", involving "step-by-step inference, the framing and testing of hypotheses, the drawing of analogies and the formulation of general principles". It requires the ability to "see through sophistical rhetoric, to detect fallacies, to resist purely emotional appeals and to avoid self-contradiction".

• "Reasons" (Capital R): Some philosophers, notably Kant, seek "Reasons" (with a capital R) which everyone "must acknowledge to be a reason, independently of their sympathies and inclinations". These Reasons would have "apodictic force", binding all rational agents and implying that their very "rationality is in jeopardy" if ignored. This contrasts with "reasons" (small r) that depend on shared sympathies.

In essence, while personal beliefs stem from subjective feelings, cultural influences, and individual experiences, moral reasoning attempts to move beyond these to establish universally defensible principles and justifications for moral claims, often through logical coherence, impartiality, and an appeal to what rational agents ought to do rather than merely what they desire or feel.

Note: This distinction is extracted from the said two books with Google's AI-powered tool NotebookLM.

Further Reading:

Benn, Piers. Ethics. Routledge, 1997.

Blackburn, Simon. Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2021.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge, Clarendon Press, 1978.

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by H.J. Paton, Harper and Row, 1964.