Selim Berker is an Assistant Professor in the philosophy department at Harvard. "Particular Reasons"
published in Ethics vol. 118 (October 2007): pp. 109-139
an online version can be found here:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~phildept/files/Faculty%20Papers/berker_p-reasons2.pdf
Berker begins this paper by reviewing 3 major categories of moral theories: Monism, Pluralism, and Particularism.
Monism
Monism is the idea that there is one underlying moral principle that we can use to guide our actions. He says the two most representative of this view are Kant with his "categorical imperative" and the idea of Utilitarianism. Kant's Categorical Imperative, as I understand it, is basically a variation on the Golden Rule. When we are about to take an action, we should stop and ask ourselves "What if everyone in my situation took this same action? What if this was the imperative way that all people act? Is that the kind of world I would want to live in?" If the answer to that question is Yes, then the action is morally correct. If the answer is No, then it is not. Utilitarianism is the idea that our actions should work for the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Pluralism
Pluralism is the idea that there is not one, but several fundamental virtues that we can use to guide our behavior, but which may come into conflict with each other sometimes. Berker mentions the work of W.D. Ross as representing a pluralistic view of morality. I had never heard of Ross or his theory, which he apparently outlined in his 1930 work The Right and the Good. Below is a table of his core virtues and the philosophical tradition that each was derived from.
| Prima Facie Duty | Related Theory or Analysis |
| Fidelity | Kantian Ethics |
| Justice | Justice, John Rawls |
| Respect for Freedom | Libertarianism, Capability Theory, John Rawls |
| Beneficence | Utilitarianism, Capability Theory, Virtue Ethics |
| Non-Injury | Same as for Beneficence |
| Self-Improvement | Capability Theory, Virtue Ethics, Egoism |
| Non-Parasitism | Kantian Ethics |
| Reparation | (Compensatory) Justice |
Particularism
Particularism in ethics is the view that there can never be any fundamental virtues to guide our behavior. That every particular situation that we are in is just that: a particular situation. It is this position that Samir Berker critiques in this paper. He tries to show through logical arguments (including an extensive use of symbolic logic) that particularism is not tenable. I can't pretend that I was able to follow all of his arguments, but by the end of he article he was pretty confident that he had exposed some serious problems. I culled a few quotes from the article below.
Also, drawing on a partial analogy with chemistry that has become standard in the particularist literature, let us say that a reason for action has a positive or negative valence depending on whether it is a reason for or against action, respectively.
-Berker used this language throughout his article, which I thought was an interesting way to think about actions and decision making. What I got out of it is that in a particular situation, there are possibly hundreds of circumstances which are all pulling us in one direction or another. With respect to a particular action, some things in the environment are pulling us toward that action, while others are pulling us away from that action.
According to Ross, which of the various, possibly competing prima facie duties is most binding in a particular situation depends upon “the circumstances of the case,” since “for the estimation of the comparative stringency of these prima facie obligations no general rules can ... be laid down.”
-This is in regards to Ross's pluralist theory of morality, which I outlined above. He is basically saying that there is no way to lay down any general rules for which virtue supersedes another in a given situation, since every situation is characterized by many different circumstances.
But then particularistic reasons for action would appear to be free-floating cogs in the normative machinery, and it becomes difficult to understand what particularists even mean when they call something a “reason for action” or a “reason against action.”
The particularist view of morality seems very much like the postmodern view of man: that we are cogs in a machine, at the mercy of our external circumstances. If this is the case, then where does "free-will" or "choice" come into play? I think this is what Berker is expressing here: how can you speak of a man having a "reason" for some action, if he is at the mercy of his environment?
[C]onsider a case in which I am thinking of doing something for a friend. My action, were I to do it, would be good, and partly good because it is an expression of our friendship. But now, if I were to be doing the action and not doing it for a friend, I would presumably be doing it for someone who is not a friend, and it might be that doing it for someone who is not a friend is even better than doing it for a friend. ... [O]ur friendship seems to be a reason to do the action even though if we were not friends I would have even more reason to do it.
-This is a quote from Jonathan Dancy. Food for thought :)
One of the main forces driving some philosophers to become particularists is a general suspicion about the usefulness and value of the traditional quest for true and exceptionless moral principles
-Berker, on the other hand, does seem to think that such a quest is possible. I'm not sure where I stand. I would like to think that it is possible. Still, in a world apparently devoid of any objective meaning, how can we ever know that what we've found are the true morals? How can we know that without knowing the purpose and reason for the universe's existence? How can an ethical code be anything more than pragmatic and practical at this point without first answering those more fundamental questions?
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