ARGUMENT AND MORAL ARGUMENT

A PAOE-NUMBEE in this note indicates that I am contradicting a

doctrine mentioned by Mrs. Foot on that page of her article on
' Moral Arguments' in MIND for 1958.
In what ways can the positions of two persons be irreconcilable
(p. 502)? (1) They are both dead ; and at the time of their deaths
they were holding contrary positions. There is no possibility of
reconciling them now. (2) They are still alive ; but they are both
such obstinate old codgers that no one has the faintest hope of
changing the view of either of them.

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I see no third way in which their positions can be irreconcilable
as opposed to unreconciled. Of course they can be in fact unrecon-
ciled because neither has yet in fact produced an argument which
convinces the other and makes him change his mind. Cook Wilson
died unreconciled with the geometers, because he had not produced
any argument which convinced them of his view that Euclid's
fifth postulate is true and its contraries are false. But we cannot
say that such an argument cannot ever be invented; and hence
we cannot say that Cook Wilson and the geometers are in principle
irreconcilable.
If your first principle and my first principle conflict, we shall not
be reconciled as long as they remain our first principles. But they
need not remain always our first principles. Tomorrow you may
think of some ulterior principle from which to deduce your erstwhile
first principle, which will now be a middle principle ; and I may be
convinced by your new first principle, and by your argument there-
from to the contrary of what I believe today.
No one need accept the conclusion of any argument, whether a
moral argument or any other kind, unless he happens to hold par-
ticular views (p. 602). This is because every argument consists in
presenting a certain premiss (or combination of premisses) as adequate
evidence for a certain conclusion, so that it is always possible to say
either ' I do not accept the premiss ', or ' I deny that the premiss is
adequate evidence for the conclusion ', or both.
What is the force of the words ' no one need' in this statement
that no one need accept the conclusion of any argument unless he
happens to hold particular views? They express a covert reference
to reasonableness. The statement is equivalent to the statement
that a reasonable man, acting reasonably, can still reject the
conclusion of an argument, unless he happens to hold particular
views.
These particular views, which will prevent the reasonable man
from rejecting the conclusion of a particular argument, are the
views that the premiss of this particular argument is true and that
it is adequate evidence for the conclusion, held together. He
cannot reasonably deny the conclusion if, and only if, he accepts the
premiss and accepts that it is adequate evidence for the conclusion.
426
 ARGUMENT AND MORAL ARGUMENT 427
But he can reasonably deny (until some further argument is produced
to prevent him) that the premiss is true or that it is adequate
evidence for the conclusion. There is no difference in this respect
between moral arguments and other arguments.
It followB that opposite views can often both be reasonably held.
' X ia good ' and ' X is bad ' can be equally well founded and reason-
able opinions (p. 502), provided they are not held by the same person
at the same time. If this seems false, it seems false because we are
assuming t h a t ' well founded and reasonable ' entails ' true '. Two
contrary opinions cannot both be true; but they can be both well
founded in the minds of their more rational believers. A well
thought out case, a well argued case, a well founded case, is not

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necessarily a true case. If it were, the regrettable oonsequence
would follow that Ptolemy never had a well founded judgement
that the sun goes round the earth. Whereas he certainly had a
much better founded judgement that the sun goes round the earth
than most of us have that the earth goes round the sun.
It ia odd language to talk of arguments ' breaking down'. Argu-
ments are not automobiles that run for a time and then break down
and cease to run. They are not temporal entities at all, but eternal
like the propositions of which they are composed. ""
A man's attempt to state an argument may break down. For
example, after stating his premisses he may be unable to remember
what conclusion he intended them to prove. A man's use of an argu-
ment may become less successful as the years go on, either because
he puts it worse or because his audiences become more aware of the
errors in it; and if his audiences finally come to jeer whenever he
again trots out the old argument, we may just possibly say that the
argument has now finally ' broken down '.
These, however, are not the ways in which this curious metaphor
has been intended by those who have recently contemplated what
they call the possibility that ' moral arguments may always break
down'. What they seem to have meant by it is that it is always
possible for someone to deny the conclusion of a moral argument
without forfeiting his title to reasonableness. This is true ; but it
has been put forward in a way that seemed to imply the falsehood
that there exists some other type of argument whose conclusion it is
not possible to deny without being unreasonable. No such type of
argument exists. Every type of argument could in certain circum-
stances be denied without unreasonableness. We cannot guarantee
that no one will ever have a good reason for denying Euclid's con-
clusion that there is an infinity of primes. Mathematical proposi-
tions have been thought to be established beyond reasonable doubt
and then disestablished, and this may happen again. No argument
is logically ' impregnable ' or ' invulnerable' (p. 503), unless we
hypothesize that its premisses are true and together entail its
conclusion, in which case we make it ex hypothcsi an analytic tnith
that the argument is ' im pregnable '.
428 R. KOBIN8ON :

There is no generally agreed defence for our moral beliefs

(p. 512). Sir David Boss defends them as self-evident to intuition.
John Stuart Mill defends them as conducing to the greatest hap-
piness of the greatest number. Kant defends them as inherent
in the nature of a reasonable being. Many defend them as the
commands of a god ; and some of these explicitly reject all other
defences.
Every man must decide for himself what is evidence for lightness
and wrongness, or for monetary inflation, or for a tumour on the brain
(p. 505). For example, the surgeon attending a patient must decide
for himself whether these symptoms are adequate evidence that this
patient has a tumour on his brain. And later, when he writes a

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book on brain-surgery, he must decide for himself what general
statements he will make as to what is good evidence for a tumour
on the brain. This is not to say that he should pay no attention
to what his predecessors have written and his teachers have said,
or to what he has observed. It is to say that, after paying careful
attention to all these matters, he still has a decision to make, even
if it is so easy as not to look like a decision. If he made no decision
he would not be responsible for the statements he publishes; but he
is responsible for them.
Similarly in morals. Every one of us must decide for himself
whether the fact that this man intends to murder is good evidence
that it is right for me to lie to him, or, as Kant is said to have believed,
not good evidence for that. Far from its being reasonable not to
decide this for oneself, it is an essential part of a moral being to decide
such thingB for himself; and he who merely adopts a decision ' laid
down' (p. 604) by his confessor on the matter is not yet a fully
moral or reasonable being..
This is an aspect of a very general moral decision that each of us
ought to make, namely whether the ' harm ' or ' advantage ' (p. 510)
likely to result from an act or from a practice is anything to do with
the lightness or reasonableness of that act or practice.
We all have to make this kind of decision because evaluative terms
do not carry as part of their meaning a sufficient criterion for their
application. They often carry a necessary criterion, but never a
sufficient one. Thus for an act to be called wrong it is necessary
that it be voluntary; but we cannot mention any criterion which
is always sufficient to justify us in calling an act wrong. (Apart, of
course, from words which, by entailing wrong as part of their meaning,
give us an analytic truth.) If causing offence by indicating lack of
respect is sufficient always to justify us in calling the act rude
(p. 507), then ' rude ' is not an evaluative term, and its application
merely tells us that the agent indicated his lack of respect and thereby
caused offence. A judge justifiably rebuking a justifiably convicted
criminal might be rude in this sense. When, to a lout who said' get
our hair cut', Augustus John replied with ' get your throat cut',
J e certainly indicated lack of respect, and quite likely caused offence
 ARGUMENT AND MORAL ARGUMENT 429
thereby ; but we are not to call him rude if that is ' condemnatory'
(p. 507).
It follows that' the ' rules as to what shall count as evidence for a
moral judgement (p. 510) do not exist. There are some striot roles
as to what shall count as evidence against a moral judgement,
e.g. the rule that the act must be voluntary before a moral judgement
may be passed on it. But there are no strict rules entitling us
automatically to say that ' X is wrong ' is true whenever such and
such evidence is given. If there were, the making of moral judge-
ments would not t>e such a grave responsibility as it is.
RICHABD ROBINSON

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Oriel CoOege, Oxford

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