Language and Understanding in Morality

Abstract

It is significant that one of the influential books on the philosophy of morality in recent years was called “The Language of Morals”. The title is significant because it overtly expresses the two-fold short-sightedness of many British moral philosophers in the 20th century. First, it assumes that there is just one language of morality, presumably the same for all human persons, which is distinct and separable from other sorts of language. This is the thesis of the linguistic autonomy of morals; and it ignores the possibility that there are many different sorts of moral language correlated in part with different patterns of culture; and that moral language often cannot be separated out, as an autonomous universe of discourse, from other sorts of language. Second, it assumes that the primary or even sole concern of philosophers is with the language of morality, thus ignoring the behavioural, cultural and experiential aspects of morality which may be equally, or more, important features of the total human phenomenon with which moral philosophers are concerned. These two assumptions, as my statement of them implies, seem to be highly disputable, if not plainly mistaken. It is the main purpose of this paper to throw doubt on them, and consequently on the sorts of philosophy which embody them.