Ⅲ．On Moral Agreements Among Individuals and Why People Should Believe in The Moral Postulate

i．Method of Reaching Moral Agreement: The Scientific Method

On the level of the individual, people can resolve moral disagreements,and this guarantees a fruitful outcome of the moral postulate. In other words, moral agreements are achievable, and hence the moral postulate is achievable. The moral postulate can be achieved on the level of individuals,as Holmes notes, because morality offers a universal method for individuals to transcend cultural differences and definite perspectives. By using the same methods, people can form an agreement under a particular moral context. The method is a continuous testing process of the consequences,which Dewey characterizes as “the scientific method” and I have characterized it as inference to the best explanation.

The scientific method is an ongoing inquiry that tests a hypothesis under different situations. It does not treat knowledge as a definite,objective truth, but only as a hypothesis that needs to be constantly tested.This is associated with the notion of the “inference to the best explanation”or induction. That is, no one possesses the ultimate truth, and what a person has is only an explanation that is applied to a particular situation. The inference to the best explanation implies that morality, just like natural science, is an empirically verifiable conduct. “If you want p, then do q.”The hypothetical imperative, the way that moral motivation and moral consequences link together, is in principle verifiable. A hypothetical imperative states the practical necessity of a possible action as a means of achieving something else that one wishes, under rational conditions. We need a reason to doubt a belief just as we need a reason to believe. As long as a belief, including values, is reliable, we maintain the belief. Only when a belief becomes unreliable that we have a reason to doubt. “Trueness” and“wrongness” refer to experience, and hence a person can verify a moral judgement by testing the hypothesis in his/her experience. For instance,researchers discover a positive relationship between “counting kindnesses”and people's subjective happiness. The conclusion states that the positive reinforcement of conducting kind behavior helps to make a person happier.The positive reinforcement of “kindness” is empirically verifiable.

Morality is a mixture of the agent's will and verification of the consequences in empirical experience. The scientific method provides an objective vertification method to morality. Science relies on the same method, which treats scientific discoveries as a hypothetical explanation but not the actual truth. As long as no evidence refutes the explanation, the explanation is reliable knowledge to possess. In morality, if one's proposal successfully solves the problem, it is a valid moral action. When distinct proposals contradict, according to the Inference to the Best Explanation, the proposal that most successfully solves the problem wins. IBE is actually a large set of which the scientific method is one member. Moral, practical,and religious reasonings are all forms of IBE.

It is essential to note that the scientific method is not a dogmatic method with a definite form of inquiry. It has a flexible form in specific inquiries, and it has two traits. Firstly, the scientific method allows for investigation of the causal conditions and consequences of a moral decision, and this investigation of consequences provides a condition for the generalizations of the moral agreements. Applying the scientific method to morality, a valid moral decision is one that can effectively solve the existing moral problems, and people can decide whether an action is valid or not by directly investigating the consequences of their action. Secondly, the scientific method requires a precondition for inquirers: the scientific attitude. That is, the scientific attitude requires inquirers to regard their beliefs as being hypothetical and to stay open to possibilities of fallibility. By applying the scientific attitude, moral inquiry is based on a relatively neutral ground that is free from cultural limitations.

It is noticeable that the pragmatist's experimental method is not constrained by culture that causes people to disagree. In fact, the scientific method, with two characteristics (“scientific attitude” and “scientific logic”), requires a moral agent to make decisions from a point of view that is accessible to any person, and this, by nature, constructs an objective ground. The method is objective and provides objective findings. When we say,“Jack is wrong,” it is not merely because Jack's practice is not allowed or understood in our own cultural environment but because we are confident in saying that the conduct and its implications fail to solve the particular moral problem.

Thus, moral agreements can be achieved because the scientific method provides an effective means for people to form moral agreements.

ii．Fundamental Moral Disagreements

The presented method, however, does not fully address an extreme form of moral disagreement: the intractable moral disagreements that are based on distinct values. Steven Fesmire notes, “Mediation of intelligence will not always discover a channel for contending values, no matter how critically reflective and socially responsible. Real incompatibles emerge and this is the source of tragic situations”. When two people hold two incompatible values and hence form moral disagreements, it appears to be impossible to solve the tension by using the intellectual methods since the values themselves are equally valid, and the moral judgements derived from the values are also equally valid and incompatible.

Moral dilemmas appear to be irresolvable since they are based on incompatible values. Philosophers have argued for a long time in order to solve the problem of capital punishment, but the debates generated by the capital punishment persist today. It seems that any act that attempts to solve the dilemma is not successful.

Furthermore, recent studies suggest that the emergence of an intractable moral disagreement does not necessarily need two fundamentally incompatible values. What the emergence of an intractable moral disagreement requires is only a condition that two distinct values form two proposals. In “Moral Disagreements and Moral Semantics,” Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe illustrate an interesting situation in ordinary language:

(a) Cody: Let's get a coffee.

(b) Sally: No, let's get a beer.

I begin with a practical disagreement, and it is analogous to a moral disagreement. In this case, Sally disagrees with Cody about whether to get a coffee, but the disagreement is not best understood in terms of exclusionary content. Since neither speaker makes any assertion, there are no claims here whose contents could be exclusive.

However, according to our ordinary language, it is natural to say that proposition (a) and proposition (b) are incompatible. The authors suggest that, although the two propositions do not genuinely oppose each other since there is no exclusionary content, the two propositions are still incompatible in our ordinary language because they become proposals,and the participants can only choose one option for action. This convention of ordinary language is empirically tested by experiments: people report that they believe that proposition (a) and proposition (b) are sufficient to form a disagreement. Similarly, two moral propositions that do not contain genuinely exclusive contents may form irresolvable disagreements if they become proposals that determine an action. For instance, “you should not lie” and “you can lie under some situations” are not mutually exclusive, but they appear to be incompatible in action from the perspective of ordinary language.

Two positions, one extreme and one moderate, both advocate that there are fundamental moral disagreements that cannot be rationally resolved,no matter how reflective the moral imagination is and how effective the conversation is. If there are rationally irresolvable moral disagreements,then one's interest may not be identical to others 'interest, otherwise, there should be no rationally irresolvable moral disagreements. Therefore,the moral postulate is a false ideal because it cannot be achieved by reasoning.

I will address the two challenges together. The mistake of the two refutations that argue that moral disagreements are intractable is that they argue from a fixed perspective, which is the standpoint of the present, and then they argue that some moral disagreements cannot ever be resolved.This assumption is not true. Dewey argues, “Conflict of individual happiness with social welfare is just the incomplete conduct of morality”.In the meantime, we go with the best we have, the actionably right and tenable. with time passing by and especially with the ongoing of the conversation, people can decide to change or alter their values when they think reflectively.

iii．Why Should People Believe in The Moral Postulate:A Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Even though people cannot know whether moral dilemmas are resolvable by reasoning, it is still justifiable and essential to believe that they can be solved because the moral postulate is the foundation of morality. The response can be summarized by the following argument:

1．For propositions that reason alone cannot resolve, it is in the meantime rationally justifiable to have faith in one or the other.

2．The moral postulate is a proposition that reason alone cannot resolve.

3．One has the right to believe what one wishes to believe, according to 1.

4．Moreover, according to the self-fulfilling prophecy, believing that it is so helps to realize the moral postulate.

5．The moral postulate makes morality possible.

6．All things being equal, we should believe what makes morality possible.

7．Therefore, people can and should have faith in moral postulate.

William James points out that, in Pascal's wager, a person can either believe in God or not do so, and clearly there is no evidence that can prove the existence of God or evidence that disapproves the existence of God,since God is inconceivable. Therefore, should a person believe in God?Pascal's wager suggests that there are situations which reason cannot deal with since the decisive evidence that directly proves the existence of God does not and will not exist, but a person must make a decision: either to believe in God or not. Therefore, it is actionably justifiable for a person to believe in God as long as no evidence contradicts with this faith.

Moral dilemma is a belief that rationality cannot as yet successfully resolve. William James argues, “Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof...The question of having moral beliefs or not having them at all is decided by our will”. No definite justification proves that moral disagreements are fundamentally intractable, nor is there evidence that decisively suggests that moral disagreements are resolvable. Thus, according to James, it is an open question for each of us to answer and then decide whether to have faith in the moral postulate. Adopting James 'argument for the moral postulate, it is justifiable to have faith in the moral postulate, and premise 1 and premise 2 are valid.

Having the faith of the moral postulate is not only justifiable, but essential, because this faith is the foundation of morality. Dewey argues,“The basis, in a word, of moral conduct, with respect to the exercise of function, is a faith that moral self-satisfaction means social satisfaction...Now such faith or conviction is at the basis of all moral conduct, not simply of the scientific or artistic”. The very idea of the moral postulate is rooted in morality, and moral conduct stems from the moral postulate. Without this presupposition, the individual is isolated from the community, and hence morality is impossible since morality necessarily requires a horizon.Therefore, in order to establish morality, people need to have the faith in the moral postulate. Doing so can help make it true.

Faith in the moral postulate is nothing mysterious. Rather, it is similar to the faith in science. Scientists hold a conviction of the “permanent unity of objects known”. Natural sciences also require a faith that goes beyond pure reason itself. The problem of the naturalistic fallacy in ethics is similar to the hasty generalization fallacy that underlies the problem of induction of science. Faith in science and faith in ethics are analogous to each other, and there is good reason for people to accept the latter if they generally accept the former.

Moreover, having the faith in the moral postulate causes an actual difference in action, which may bring the ideal of the moral postulate to reality. Holmes suggests in “John Dewey's Moral Philosophy in Contemporary Perspective” a self-fulfilling prophecy in which believing that it is so helps to make it so.

That is, it (the moral postulate) represents the claims of a group as a whole upon the respective individuals in the group. These claims have overt expression in the de facto rules of a society and have their basis in the cultural ties which integrate into a society that otherwise would be a mere collection of individuals.

We need to recognize the relationship between the belief and its following action. Only if people hold the moral postulate, and hence to adopt the point of view that recognizes that the interest of others is the interest of ourselves, is moral conduct possible. On the other hand, moral conduct confirms the validity of the moral postulate in practice by solving moral disagreements. Thus, even if there are existing debates regarding some moral issues in our current ethical climate, people still have good reason to believe and to act upon this faith. Only if people believe that differences between individuals are resolvable, and hence conduct active discourses according to the moral postulate, is moral disagreement resolvable in the long run. Otherwise, people simply give up the discourse and hence reject the possibility of solving moral disagreements.

Therefore, it is not only rationally justifiable to have faith in the moral postulate because its very concept transcends the limit of the reason, but it is also essential to hold this faith in order to justify the establishment of morality. Moreover, holding the faith and then acting in accordance with the faith can realize the moral postulate in the long run. All things being equal,people can and should believe what makes the moral postulate and hence the morality.