Abstract
Many contemporary ethicists use case-based reasoning to reach consistent beliefs about ethical matters. The idea is that particular cases elicit moral intuitions, which provide defeasible reasons to believe in their content. However, most proponents of case-based moral reasoning are not very explicit about how they resolve inconsistencies and how they abstract principles from judgments about particular cases. The aim of this article is to outline a methodology—called Consistency Reasoning Casuistry—for case-based reasoning in ethics. This methodology draws on Richmond Campbell and Victor Kumar’s naturalistic model for the resolution of inconsistencies between the content of intuitions about particular cases. I argue that reasons similar to those that motivate their model also support a more abstract form of moral reasoning that goes beyond mere resolutions of inconsistencies between case judgments and demands the formulation of more abstract moral norms. Consistency Reasoning Casuistry, it is argued, is a good candidate for a methodology for case-based moral reasoning that is in harmony with paradigms of contemporary moral psychology and that can accommodate the methodology implicit in the work of many contemporary ethicists.
Highlights
Many contemporary ethicists use case-based reasoning to reach consistent beliefs about ethical matters
There is no inconsistency of beliefs, emotions or motivations in the sense required for Moral Consistency Reasoning (MCR), namely such that one feels one should change one moral response in order to be an authentic moral agent or in order to show integrity
Consistency Reasoning Casuistry (CRC) builds on MCR and casuistry, and it borrows from legal theory
Summary
Let us consider the real-life example Campbell and Kumar use to illustrate their model of Moral Consistency Reasoning (MCR): Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian resistance fighter whose mission has gone awry and who, pursued by the Nazis through mountainous terrain, collapses snow blind and near death at the door of a Norwegian family. This line of interpersonal reasoning between Marius and his mother is an instance of MCR, because the mother’s initial response to surrender Jan is inconsistent with her judgment that, in a morally similar case, Marius should not be surrendered. She formed the belief that, when there are no morally relevant differences, both cases should be judged alike Because she is much more certain about the Oslo scenario, she comes to believe that Jan should not be sacrificed. The case is more naturally explained in terms of practical inconsistency: The mother’s initial response to the case of Jan is emotionally and motivationally opposite to her response to the Oslo scenario involving her son I will argue, that MCR only covers a limited range of moral problems and that reasons very similar to those behind MCR suggest a broader methodology of case-based moral reasoning that goes beyond mere resolutions of inconsistencies between case judgments
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