A SOLUTION TO AN ETHICAL PARADOX

Abstract

LET us say that a moral non-dogmatist is a man who holds that: (1) Everyone ought to do what he thinks he ought to do, and who holds, as well, some other moral principle, e.g. that: (2) Everyone ought not to be sexually promiscuous. Miss Brenda Cohen devotes her paper, ' An Ethical Paradox' (MIND, lxxvi (1967), 250-259), to an attempt to discredit moral nondogmatism. She argues, in particular, that holding non-dogmatism involves one in a contradiction. In a more recent paper, Another Ethical Paradox (MIND, lxxviii (1969), 598-599), Carl R. Kordig has given Cohen's argument a neat formulation. He goes on to suggest that, if non-dogmatism is to be tenable, it must be given a foim different from that which it is given above.2 When an argument is neatly formulated, its flaws may become more obvious. Fastening on Kordig's formulation of Cohen's argument, I shall argue that non-dogmatism may be held without logical contradiction. Following Kordig, let us assume that there is some person, S, whom the non-dogmatist knows to think that he (S) ought to be sexually promiscuous. This knowledge, combined with (1), forces the non-dogmatist to hold: (3) S ought to be sexually promiscuous, which, in turn, forces the non-dogmatist to hold: (4) Someone ought to be sexually promiscuous. But holding (4) and (2) together appears to involve the non-dogmatist in a contradiction. It is easy for the non-dogmatist to avoid the contradiction. It is common knowledge among moral philosophers that it frequently happens that two of one's moral principles will appear to come into conflict with one another. Most of us hold, for example, both that: (5) Everyone ought not to steal, and that: (6) Every parent ought to preserve the lives of his children. Faced with a case in which a man must steal in order to preserve the lives of his children we shall permit, or even demand, that the man steal. But we shall avoid the appearance of paradox by pointing out that, since (6) expresses a higher moral principle than does (5), (6), in this case, takes precedence over (5). We might say that all statemenits of the form: