Moral Theory and the Plasticity of Persons

Abstract

There is a hoary tradition in moral philosophy that assumes we cannot determine which moral theory is acceptable or correct unless we have available a correct theory of human nature, or, in its more modern form, of the person.2 With such a theory of the person, however, we could at least narrow down the choice among competing ethical theories. A more recent tradition, at least in one of its standard interpretations, agrees it would be necessary to have a correct theory of the person before we could determine an acceptable moral theory, but it denies there is a determinate nature of the person to be captured in such a theory. The plasticity of the person, according to this strand of Marxist theory, rules out the possibility of there being uni versal moral theory at all. In this paper, I would like to explore a view that treads an intermediate path. It agrees with the Marxist denial that there is a determinate nature of the person, a deep fact of the matter, that can be abstracted from the social matrix and made the subject of a (non-moral) theory of the person. And, it agrees with both traditions that moral theory de pends on and embodies a theory of the person. But, by making the problem of arriving at an acceptable view of the person itself something that depends on overall theoretical considerations, including moral ones, the intermediary <, view may be able to avoid the type of moral relativism associated with the Marxist view. The immediate source of the view I discuss is an exchange between John Rawls and Derek Parfit3 on the connection between criteria of personal identity and moral theories. The focus on personal identity is of some in terest, because, at least at first sight, it seems to be a less morally loaded no tion than other concepts usually dealt with in the theory of the person, such as autonomy and rationality. I will support what I take to be the the thrust of Rawls' remarks4: even here, in the heart of echt philosophy of mind, we find a feature of the concept of the person that is in an important sense indeter minate without input from moral theory. First, however, I will examine Par fit's claims about the connection between two views of personal identity, which he calls the Simple and the Complex, and competing moral theories. I will then look at Rawls' argument that philosophy of mind underdetermines theory selection in ethics. Pursuing the thrust of Rawls' remarks will lead me to the intermediary view just noted and to the connection of this issue to a coherentist or holist view of theory acceptance in ethics.