Scepticism about our authority to make moral claims
To many people it seems a bit off to go around saying who's right and who's wrong. Yet that's what you're expected to do when you start doing political or moral philosophy. I think that this is one of the biggest sources of unease for students. So, below, I list some of the things that you might say to articulate your unease, and then I give a brief reply. Click on any that seem to capture your concerns to see why I don't think that there's a problem.
You're just imposing your values on other people ⇨
What kind of concern this is depends on what kind of 'imposing' you have in mind. In one sense, to impose one's values on others is to force them to live as one thinks they should live, regardless of whether they want to live that way or not. In this sense, we impose our values on people when we put them in prison for behaviour that is contrary to our values.
But this can't be the kind of imposing you have in mind. No one in a course on political philosophy is imposing their values in that sense on anyone. (Well, there's a little bit of social pressure to conform to norms of politeness and non-violence, but that's not what you had in mind.)
For example, when we argue that there's a duty to give aid to needy foreigners, we don't force anyone to give such aid. We just explain why we think that it's morally wrong not to, and perhaps why it would be morally permissible for the state to coerce people to comply with the duty. (And we're always open to objections!) But we don't do any forcing ourselves even if we conclude that it should be done.
Perhaps, though, your worry is precisely that we shouldn't be making claims about what it's okay to force people to do, even if we don't do it ourselves. Perhaps you think that forcing people to do anything is always wrong.
The first thing to note about this is that it's a moral claim in itself, so your objection can't be to making moral claims in itself. The second thing to note is that this moral claim needs defending. Why is it always wrong to force people to do anything? We force people not to murder each other, and that doesn't seem wrong.
So, you need to do more than just assert the wrongness of forcing. You need to explain why we should agree with you. And then you're doing political philosophy—and making moral claims along with everyone else.
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People should be allowed to live as they please ⇨
The idea here, presumably, is that people shouldn't interfere with each others' lives. Now, there's no getting around the fact that this is a moral claim once again.
It's not only a moral claim, but a controversial one. To illustrate: I think that we're not only allowed but required to interfere with genocidal maniacs' lives. The way that genocidal maniacs choose to live isn't a way that they should be permitted to live. They should be forced to live non-genocidal lives. It's pretty controversial to deny this, isn't it?
Either way, you can't consistently object to my making moral claims if you're going to make them yourself. Instead, the thing to do is to show me why your moral claims are true. And it's precisely the point of political (and moral) philosophy to work out which moral claims are true and which ones aren't. So, jump in!
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It's not for you / me / us to judge ⇨
Why not? Is the thought that it's wrong to judge? But that in itself is, once again, a moral claim, like "It's wrong to lie" and "It's wrong to steal". Someone who says that we shouldn't judge can't object to the making of moral claims in general, since she herself is making one.
But perhaps the idea is that this is the only moral claim that it's okay to make: you may judge judgers, but you shouldn't judge anyone else. Now, I think that this needs defending (why can't I judge liars and thieves?). It doesn't stand by itself.
One defence is that everyone has faults, so it's hypocritical to go around pointing out other people's. But rather than going into that issue, I want to point out instead that political philosophy isn't really about pointing out people's faults in the first place. It's about working out what counts as a fault, as a wrongdoing, as an injustice. Whether or not we should take our conclusions from political philosophy and use them to start pointing out faults, wrongdoings, and injustices is a separate question. We could always just keep quiet.
I myself think that we should be pointing out at least some faults, wrongdoings, and injustices. (It's surely wrong to stay silent in the face of grave injustices, for example.) That's one more moral claim to argue about. But in any case, trying to figure out the moral truth is one thing and appealing to what we've figured out in order to point out other people's faults and wrongdoings is another. So, an objection to the pointing isn't an objection to the figuring, and political philosophy lives to fight another day.
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It's oppressive to say who's wrong and who's right ⇨
Sometimes it's argued that when people make claims about what's wrong or right, there's something oppressive about that in itself. Claims to know the moral truth, the thought goes, are often attempts to dominate or silence others.
Now, just as with the worry that moral claims are just expressions of opinions, it's important to note that there's no inconsistency between this and the thought that moral claims sometimes actually are true. No doubt, people sometimes make moral claims in order to assert power or dominate or silence others. But that doesn't mean that their claims can't at the same time be true.
Since someone whose main intention is to assert power probably doesn't really care about the moral truth, it might be more common that their moral claims are false. But either way, none of this makes it misguided to analyse and defend moral claims as we do in political philosophy. It surely matters, after all, which are true and which are false.
Moreover, if you're worried about oppression or domination, that's presumably because you think it's wrong to oppress or to dominate people. But—once again—that's a moral claim! If you're prepared to object to certain behaviours for that reason, then that suggests that you aren't sceptical about our authority to make some moral claims, at least.
Of course, you might still be resistant to much of the rest of the practice of political philosophy, on the basis that it's oppressive. That seems to me an interesting concern, and one that's well worth exploring. But the exploration (and any defence) is going to involve you, if perhaps tentatively, in political philosophy and the practice of making moral claims. So, you may as well join in now!
Perhaps you're worried that there's simply no objective truth—only his truth and your truth and my truth, or something like that. If so, your worry isn't so much about authority as about moral realism. In that case, click here.
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As you'll have seen from my answers, the concerns above are all moral objections to making moral claims. In each case, my answer was more or less the same: you can't object to making moral claims in general if you're going to do so by making a moral claim yourself. What you have to do, then, is get your hands dirty and start examining and defending your own moral claims and arguing against others—which is just what we do in political philosophy.
The objection below is different. It isn't a moral objection to making moral claims, and so it's immune from that reply, anyway. I still reject it, though. Click to see why.
Who gets to decide what's right and what's wrong? ⇨
The simple answer is: you get to decide!
What we're trying to do in moral and political philosophy is work out how we should live. We analyse a range of different theories and then we pick the theory that seems the closest to the truth. Ideally, of course, we'd all agree about which theory that is. But that's not typically how it turns out: what happens is that each theory in the range of different theories has its own advocates. So, it's up to you, ultimately, to decide which you find most plausible; no one can force you to decide one way or the other. That's the simple answer.
The slightly more complex answer is: no one gets to decide, because it's not a matter of decision at all.
What we're trying to do is work out how we should live, and what fundamentally determines when we've succeeded is simply the truth of the matter.
Asking who gets to decide in political philosophy is like asking who gets to decide in mathematics or in science. No one decides whether every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers, for example. What we do is try to discover whether that's true. And the same goes for moral claims.
Just as mathematicians and scientists are assisted by the tools of their trades (experiments, differentiation, statistical analysis, etc.), so we're assisted in working out what the moral truth is by the tools of analytic philosophy: logic, systematicity, the use of examples, clarity, and so on. Some people are better than others at using these tools, to be sure. But then the thing to do is to try to become good at using them yourself. That's what your course is for.
You might not buy any of this if you're sceptical about the possibility of truth for moral claims in the first place. If that's what's really driving you, then your real objection isn't 'who gets to decide?' but something else. Try clicking here.
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By the time you read this paragraph, I hope that I've convinced you that you and I have just as much authority to make moral claims as most people (at least if moral claims can be true). Perhaps some moral experts, people who are morally impeccable, have a bit more authority than us, in the sense that they're more likely to see to the truth of moral matters. But that shouldn't stop doing moral and political philosophy altogether—apart from anything else, we need to know how to identify those experts.
If you're still sceptical, perhaps your scepticism is in fact based on scepticism about the possibility of truth, or about the point of making moral claims. In that case, head back and see why I'm not sceptical in those ways either. Otherwise, click on 'I'm still not satisfied' below.