§ 3. MORAL SENSE INTUITIONALISM
So far, our conclusions are (1) that the province of reason is to enable us to generalize our concrete ends; to form such ends as are consistent with one another, and reënforce one another, introducing continuity and force, where otherwise there would be division and weakness; and (2) that only social ends are ultimately reasonable, since they alone permit us to organize our acts into consistent wholes. We have now, however, to consider how this conception takes effect in detail; how it is employed to determine the right or the reasonable in a given situation. We shall approach this problem by considering a form of intuitionalism historically prior to that of Kant. This emphasizes the direct character of moral knowledge in particular cases, and assimilates moral knowledge to the analogy of sense perception, which also deals directly with specific objects; it insists, however, that a different kind of faculty of knowledge operates in the knowledge of acts from that which operates in the knowledge of things. Our underlying aim here is to bring out the relation of immediate appreciation to deliberate reflection, with a view to showing that the reasonable standpoint, that of the common good, becomes effective through the socialized attitudes and emotions of a person's own character.
Moral Sense.—This theory holds that rightness is an intrinsic, absolute quality of special acts, and as such is immediately known or recognized for what it is. Just as a white color is known as white, a high tone as high, a hard body as existent, etc., so an act which is right is known as right. In each case, the quality and the fact are so intimately and inherently bound together that it is absurd to think of one and not know the other. As a theory of moral judgment, intuitionalism is thus opposed to utilitarianism, which holds that rightness is not an inherent quality but one relative to and borrowed from external and more or less remote consequences. While some forms of intuitionalism hold that this moral quality belongs to general rules or to classes of ends, the form we are now to consider holds that the moral quality of an individual act cannot be borrowed even from a moral law, but shines forth as an absolute and indestructible part of the motive of the act itself. Because the theory in question sticks to the direct perception of the immediately present quality of acts, it is usually called, in analogy with the direct perception of eye or ear, the moral sense theory.
Objections to Theory.—The objections to this theory in the extreme form just stated may be brought under two heads: (1) There is no evidence to prove that all acts are directly characterized by the possession of absolute and self-evident rightness and wrongness; there is much evidence to show that this quality when presented by acts can, as a rule, be traced to earlier instruction, to the pressure of correction and punishment, and to association with other experiences. (2) While in this way many acts, perhaps almost all, of the average mature person of a good moral environment, have acquired a direct moral coloring, making unnecessary elaborate calculation or reference to general principles, yet there is nothing infallible in such intuitively presented properties. An act may present itself as thoroughly right and yet may be, in reality, wrong. The function of conscious deliberation and reasoning is precisely to detect the existence of and to correct such intuitive cases.[163]
I. Direct Perception as Effect of Habits.—It must be admitted, as a result of any unprejudiced examination, that a large part of the acts, motives, and plans of the adult who has had favorable moral surroundings seem to possess directly, and in their own intrinsic make-up, rightness or wrongness or moral indifference. To think of lying or stealing is one with thinking of it as wrong; to recall or suggest an act of kindness is the same as thinking of it as right; to think of going after mail is to think of an act free from either rightness or wrongness. With the average person it is probably rare for much time to be spent in figuring out whether an act is right or wrong, after the idea of that act has once definitely presented itself. So far as the facts of moral experience in such cases are concerned, the "moral sense" theory appears to give a correct description.
(1) But the conclusion that, therefore, moral goodness or badness is and always has been an inherent, absolute property of the act itself, overlooks well-known psychological principles. In all perception, in all recognition, there is a funding or capitalizing of the results of past experience by which the results are rendered available in new experiences. Even a young child recognizes a table, a chair, a glass of milk, a dog, as soon as he sees it; there is no analysis, no conscious interpretation. Distance, direction, size, under normal circumstances, are perceived with the same assurance and ease. But there was a time when all these things were learning; when conscious experimentation involving interpretation took place. Such perceptions, moreover, take place under the guidance of others; pains are taken indelibly to stamp moral impressions by associating them with intense, vivid, and mysterious or awful emotional accompaniments.[164]
Anthropological and historical accounts of different races and peoples tell the same story. Acts once entirely innocent of moral distinctions have acquired, under differing circumstances and sometimes for trivial and absurd reasons, different moral values:—one and the same sort of act being stamped here as absolute guilt, there as an act of superior and heroic virtue. Now it would be fallacious to argue (as some do) that because distinctions of moral quality have been acquired and are not innate, they are therefore unreal when they are acquired. Yet the fact of gradual development proves that no fixed line exists where it can be said the case is closed; that just this is henceforth forever right or wrong; that there shall be no further observation of consequences, no further correction and revision of present "intuitions."
(2) Our immediate moral recognitions take place, moreover, only under usual circumstances. There is after all no such thing as complete moral maturity; all persons are still more or less children—in process of learning moral distinctions. The more intense their moral interests, the more childlike, the more open, flexible, and growing are their minds. It is only the callous and indifferent, or at least the conventional, who find all acts and projects so definitely right and wrong as to render reflection unnecessary. "New occasions teach new duties," but they teach them only to those who recognize that they are not already in possession of adequate moral judgments. Any other view destroys the whole meaning of reflective morality and marks a relapse to the plane of sheer custom. Extreme intuitionalism and extreme moral conservatism; dislike to calculation and reflection, for fear of innovations with attendant trouble and discomfort, are usually found to go together.
II. Direct Perception No Guarantee of Validity.—This suggests our second objection. The existence of immediate moral quality, the direct and seemingly final possession of rightness, as matter of fact, is not adequate proof of validity. At best, it furnishes a presumption of correctness, in the absence of grounds for questioning it, in fairly familiar situations. (a) There is nothing more direct, more seemingly self-evident, than inveterate prejudice. When class or vested interest is enlisted in the maintenance of the custom or institution which is expressed in a prejudice, the most vicious moral judgments assume the guise of self-conscious sanctity. (b) A judgment which is correct under usual circumstances may become quite unfit, and therefore wrong, if persisted in under new conditions. Life, individual and social, is in constant process of change; and there is always danger of error in clinging to judgments adjusted to older circumstances. "The good is the enemy of the better." It is not merely false ideas of the values of life that have to be re-formed, but ideas once true. When economic, political, and scientific conditions are modifying themselves as rapidly and extensively as they are in our day, it is reconstruction of moral judgment that needs emphasis, rather than the existence of a lot of ready-made "intuitions." When readjustment is required, deliberate inquiry is the only alternative to inconsiderate, undirected, and hence probably violent changes:—changes involving undue relaxation of moral ties on one side and arbitrary reactions on the other.
Deliberation and Intuition.—It is indeed absurd to set immediate recognition of quality and indirect calculation of more or less remote consequences, intuition and thought, over against each other as if they were rivals. For they are mutually supplementary. As we saw in a previous chapter, the foresight of future results calls out an immediate reaction of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, of happiness or dislike. (See p. 272.) It is just as false to say that we calculate only future pains and pleasures (instead of changes in the world of things and persons) as it is to say that anticipations of the changes to be wrought in the world by our act are not accompanied by an immediate emotional appreciation of their value. The notion that deliberation upon the various alternatives open to us is simply a cold-blooded setting down of various items to our advantage, and various other items to our disadvantage (as Robinson Crusoe wrote down in bookkeeping fashion his miseries and blessings), and then striking an algebraic balance, implies something that never did and never could happen. Deliberation is a process of active, suppressed, rehearsal; of imaginative dramatic performance of various deeds carrying to their appropriate issues the various tendencies which we feel stirring within us. When we see in imagination this or that change brought about, there is a direct sense of the amount and kind of worth which attaches to it, as real and as direct, if not as strong, as if the act were really performed and its consequence really brought home to us.