RULE, Bikramdutt

RULE, Bikramdutt

Social rules must be able explain how rule-based reasons can generally override, and yet be somehow responsive to, the other kinds of normative reasons we consider in our deliberations.  If this is required of an account purporting to explain how social rules can be rational, what is required of an account that purports to explain their specifically moral character?

The key concern here is what the normative authority of moral rules consists in.  Gaus identifies two conditions that such rules must satisfy:

1) The justification condition: the rule must pass justificatory muster from the perspective of free and equal persons addressing each other; and
2) The minimal effectiveness condition: the rule must already command some degree of compliance among a significant number of members of the group to which it is taken to apply.

The requirement that a moral rule satisfy both conditions, in turn, places certain constraints on the business of moral theorizing.  Gaus has already claimed that especially austere and rigorist forms of deontological ethics that neglect what we might call the holistic character of moral deliberation – the ways in which deontic (rule-based) reasons interact with other species of normative reasons (here Gauss focuses primarily on reasons of the instrumentalist/consequentialist variety; a full account would presumably specify the role of aretaic reasons as well) in context of our reasoning on ethical and political matters.  At the same time, his account of the "strong" character of the relevant rules signals a concern about ethical theories that reduce certain moral concepts to how they are understood within the concept of a particular conceptual scheme, cultural order, or set of social conventions.

Moral rules, and the deontic reasons they generate, must be exhibit some degree of responsiveness to the traditions and practices of a given group:

Unless our analysis of "true morality" connects up with what actual agents see as morality, our philosophical reflections will not address our pretheoretical worries. We come to philosophy worried about the nature of morality, moral relations between free and equal people, and the justification of moral claims. If we develop a philosophical account of morality that tells us what is "right and wrong" that treats moral and conventional rules the same, or sees morality as just another form of prudence, or insists that morality is entirely a matter of reason and so emotion is simply a threat to sound moral judgment – then our account is too far distant from our actual moral concepts to enlighten us about our initial concerns.

Yet such rules cannot be understood as mere codifications of existing practice; part of the business of making such norms explicit and subjecting them to rational scrutiny from the perspective of free and equal persons addressing each other is to "test" their justificatory adequacy.