The primary challenge of moral philosophy is not to presume the moral status of a particular kind of entity (this would violate the principle of sufficient reason and therefore the law of non-contradiction), but to prove that moral status is a true property of a particular entity for other entities. A moral status is true only if it is binding on moral agents irrespective of their knowledge of the moral status being true.
Philosophers struggled for centuries and ultimately failed to prove that humans (let alone anything else) have a true moral status. Consequently, human rights were never proven but only assumed, so when governments violate human rights they confess to having rejected the underlying assumption - that humans have moral status that is binding on the rulers. I have shown elsewhere (Kowalik 2020) that this rejection caries metaphysical consequences for the offenders irrespective of their moral knowledge. Nevertheless, it remains of utmost importance to prove the moral status of humans and how it underpins the normative validity of specific human rights. At the end of this article I will summarise my main contribution to this project.
Retracing the philosophical attempts at proving the moral status of humans will reveal the magnitude of this challenge and the logical limitations of morality as a normative principle.
By the late XVIII century Immanuel Kant examined some logical consequences of the seemingly universal commitment to self-interest. If I value my own existence and the capacity for rational action, does that rationally commit me to act in a privileged way towards other rational beings? It is generally understood that “when Kant refers to our humanity, he has our rational capacities in mind. Our humanity, according to Kant, simply is our (distinctively human) capacity for self-directed rational behaviour” (Markovits 2014, 83). In the words of Kant (1998, 4:389): “when [moral philosophy] is applied to the human being it does not borrow the least thing from acquaintance with him (from anthropology) but gives to him, as a rational being, laws a priori…” Christine Korsgaard (2009), building on the work of Kant, has developed a system of ethics combining the premise that rational agency is conditional on social-reflexivity (seeing others as beings of the same ontological kind) and the idea of ‘integrity’ of consciousness. “The function of the normative principles of the will”, writes Korsgaard (1996, 229), “is to bring integrity and therefore unity – and therefore, really, existence – to the acting self.” The relevant sense of the term ‘integrity’ combines both ethical and ontological aspects: the integrity of conduct and the self-integration of a unified, individual being. “When an action cannot be performed without loss of some fundamental part of one’s identity” (Ibid. 102) we dis-integrate, become fragmented and thus progressively lose our capacity for conscious, rational action. The relevant normative imperative is therefore: if we value our existence as conscious rational agents then we are rationally committed, in self-interest, to act in such a way as to avoid losing our integrity.
The second step is Korsgaard’s argument was to show that we identify as Human (in the Kantian sense specified above) only by regarding humanity of others in the same way we regard our own humanity. Social-reflexivity and reciprocal recognition of personal value is then of ontological importance to all agents, creating a system of mutually dependent interests. This still essentially Kantian approach was inadequate in at least one respect: the causative link between moral action and the degree of existence as a conscious rational agent was not analytically defined. This does not undermine Korsgaard’s theory but calls for refinement of the argument from 'integrity' in practically meaningful terms. Incidentally, earlier work in phenomenology has already demonstrated that the condition of social-reflexivity applies to every aspect of conscious identity; an idea that goes back to the ancient etymological roots of the word ánthrōpos (‘man’): ‘one who is alike’.
Thomas Nagel (1974, 436) has argued that for an organism to have “conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism.” More generally, the question of ‘what it is like to be me’ exemplifies a fundamental property of self-consciousness, and it cannot be meaningfully answered just in terms of the atomic ‘me’, as ‘I am me’ or ‘I am like me’, without falling prey to circular reasoning, solipsism or triviality. Unless I can compare myself to something else there is literally nothing like ‘being me’, or at least no sense to the belief that I am a definite something. Moreover, every meaningful aspect of my identity entails awareness that in that particular respect I am in fact like someone or something else. This is a permanent feature of being a conscious individual, a Subject. Consequently, if my actions or attitude would negate any common property or the moral status of other individuals who are like me, I would be undermining my ontological integrity and my own moral status. Another way, whatever I value about myself I am rationally committed to respect in others, or I stand to lose it myself. This is the essence of moral status based on the socially-reflexive ontology of rational agents, which I have formally developed in Ontological-Transcendental Defence of Metanormative Realism (Kowalik 2020). The argument includes a semi-formal proof of the intrinsic value of humanity having the normative force of ‘true moral status’.
In summary, the moral status of an entity is true for a conscious agent only if the intrinsic value of the agent would be negated by his indifference to the intrinsic value of the entity, and the intrinsic value of the entity would be negated by its indifference to the intrinsic value of the agent. Moral status is socially reflexive; it is necessarily held in common by entities capable of moral reciprocity. These properties are demonstrable only for conscious rational agents.
The moral status of an entity cannot be true for a moral agent just because the entity’s existence is a necessary condition of the agent’s existence. For example, the set of premises: a) conscious agency has intrinsic value; b) humans are conscious agents; c) Calcium is necessary to human existence; does not entail that Calcium has a true moral status for humans. More generally, it is not logically necessary for a necessary condition of value to be valuable, let alone intrinsically valuable.
References:
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Korsgaard, Christine. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Kowalik, Michael. Ontological-Transcendental Defence of Metanormative Realism. Philosophia, 2020.
Markovits, Julia. Moral Reason. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Nagel, Thomas. What is it Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, 1974.
It seems to me this project is very much on the right track, and Korsgaard's theory sounds very intriguing.
One old issue remains (Bernard Williams' amoralist, or parasite), in connection with:
'“When an action cannot be performed without loss of some fundamental part of one’s identity” (Ibid. 102) we dis-integrate, become fragmented and thus progressively lose our capacity for conscious, rational action. The relevant normative imperative is therefore: if we value our existence as conscious rational agents then we are rationally committed, in self-interest, to act in such a way as to avoid losing our integrity.'
"Another way, whatever I value about myself I am rationally committed to respect in others, or I stand to lose it myself."
The problem is that of moral force: accepting the theory put forward here, why shouldn't I act against my own self-interest for short-term benefit (i.e. treating other human beings as mere objects to advance my agenda)? Especially if my values are different, like if I don't care about disintegrating and fragmenting? Or worse, if I actually *want* to disintegrate and fragment? After all, being relieved from the burden of rationality, and therefore responsibility, seems to be very appealing for many!
Put another way, the concept of self-interest here seems to already contain a value judgement: that it is somehow better to avoid disintegration and fragmentation.
You might object that if enough people follow that route, humanity will end. But humanity can still survive with quite a few parasites, so that doesn't give the individual any good reason to choose otherwise.
Personally, I don't think this is a problem for moral realism, if we don't include a binding character in its definition. Rather, what follows is something that various spiritual traditions have intuited: that there are basically two paths, one leading "up" -- towards further integration -- and one leading down -- towards disintegration and fragmentation. Both paths are open to us, and neither is objectively preferable: it's a choice. While that might be disappointing for some, it just means that the choice must be grounded in the individual's intrinsic, reasoned, conscious orientation as opposed to fear of punishment or immediate consequences.