Pragmatism, Utilitarianism, and the Stagnation of Analytical Moral Theory

Abstract

This paper addresses the failure of analytical moral theory to recognize social conflict as driving perceptions of utility, the necessity of convergence of opposing positions to produce a consensual viewpoint, and of the transformation of moral reasoning for successful resolutions. Law provides an empirical context for understanding normative inquiry as an extended, dispute-driven inductive process. Leading utilitarian conceptions view the calculus of normative reasons as static, picturing all expected consequences as if visible at once, through a lens displaying prospective utility. Utilitarianism is blind to the revision of reasons that must take place if opposing positions are to converge. Pragmatism stresses the necessity of retirement of incommensurable reasons for success in conflict resolution. Derek Parfit has argued that all three “secular moral traditions” of mainstream philosophy (consequentialism, Kantianism, and contractualism) are “climbing the same mountain.” If so, all three are situated on a momentary, stationary conceptual landscape, attempting to perform what Parfit calls “moral mathematics” from a synchronic viewpoint. The analytical lens is blind to the often precarious world of engagement with specific moral problems, from which public acceptance and compliance must constantly be wrought, and on a piecemeal basis, not through a static global analytical rationale.