Literature, Science, and Reflection

Abstract

scientific ways of thinking to what may properly be called human understanding, for reasons that will become clear shortly I shall begin by saying something about the branch of my own subject called moral philosophy. What I will say about moral philosophy is strongly influenced by some recent, and unfortunately still unpublished, work by Judy Baker and Paul Grice. Grice and Baker take the question to be the simple three-word question to live. I like starting point, not only because it seems fresh and unhackneyed in comparison with the usual academic ways of beginning the investigation of ethical topics, but because it has the effect of making ethics at once a branch of practical knowledge, and I think that is a very important idea. However, can one rationally discuss the question to live? Of course, someone who has a morality, at least in the sense of having arrived at a or set of habits of life, and even someone who has reflected on his style of life, and who is conscious of having what we call a character, and who accepts or thinks he ought to accept certain kinds of criticism of his character, e.g., that he is being irrational or stupid in his choice of means to certain ends, may reject any more fundamental criticism of his own morality or character by simply saying well, that's how I feel like or this way of living suits me. If most people blocked any but the most superficial means-ends criticism in way, such an institution as morality would not and could not ever arise. It seems to me to be a very important psychological fact, although unfortunately not the sort of fact that psychologists very often talk about, that people reflect on their own character and also that people generally try to justify their character to other people, at least when it is criticized. We are, most of us, interested in justifying at least some features of our own style of life, in the sense of giving a defense of them that would appeal to others as a justification. Of course, there are limits to this. As Baker and Grice also point out, we want not only to have a morality of wide appeal, we want at the same time to have a morality that leaves us plenty of discretionary space. A morality that dictated a duty to us in every conceivable circumstance would be unlivable. Yet the fact is that once we see that moral reasoning does not take place in a Cartesian vacuum, that it takes place in the context of people trying to answer criticisms of their character, and in the context of people try-

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