Topics Justice

Question I've been thinking about how people generalize all the time when trying to figure out if something is moral. Let's say I enact some form of vigilante justice, like shooting some criminal at large whom I know will repeat heinous acts if unstopped. Naturally I would find myself on trial and would face some variation of the argument: so do you believe, then, that everyone should take the law into their own hands? It seems that this generalizing argument/question flows naturally from the demands of logic. But I think it's a perversion of thought and distortion of morality. Why would Justice be so limited a concept that it must bow in all instances to some simply statable, spiffy sounding, ostensibly proceeding from almighty logic claim like the generalizing one? I feel that I can answer "no" to this question without surrendering my belief that what I did was right. It shouldn't involve me in any contradiction (nor would it be a huge deal if it did) to claim: what I did was right, but I don't believe that everyone should be taking the law into their own hands. Perhaps because there would be too many mistakes, for example. But I know that I didn't make a mistake. I'm positive of it. Can you, as a philosopher, believe me, without trying to slam dunk me away with a spiffy sounding "how can you be sure, if others can't be sure?" or some other spiffy sounding logical argument?

Accepted:
June 8, 2007

Comments

You are right that the generalizing argument you criticize is invalid. The claim that some particular act is permissible cannot be defeated merely by pointing out that this act falls under a more general type and that not all acts of this type are permissible.

The argument involves two kinds of generalization. It generalizes from one particular agent (token) to a type of agent and it generalizes from one particular act (token) to a type of act. Yesterday, I encountered someone who ordered me to open my bag. I could have asked her many generalizing questions: Do you think that any middle-aged woman may give orders to others? Do you think that any New Yorker may go through other people's luggage? And so on. It's absurd to think that the answer to all such questions must be affirmative for her conduct to be permissible.

This shows that, when challenged by a generalizing question, one always has at least two options. One can try to support an affirmative answer, or one can reject the generalization. Had I asked the woman yesterday: "Do you think that all airport security guards may demand to examine the luggage of air travellers seeking to enter a terminal?", then she would likely have answered yes and given me reasons why this practice is needful these days. Other generalizations, such as those of the preceding paragraph, she would plausibly have rejected as irrelevant.

Generalizing arguments are perhaps best understood then as moves in a moral dialogue. They are not conclusive, but they do pose a challenge that requires a response. In the case you present, you agree with your challenger that not everyone should be permitted to take the law into their own hands. To defend your action, you must then take issue with this being an appropriate generalization of your conduct. To do this, you must show how this generalization goes wrong -- either in generalizing from you to everyone or in generalizing from your particular act to any act of taking justice into one's own hands.

Showing this requires that you offer a counter-generalization that you are willing to endorse. For instance: "I believe that every adult citizen who has not had a felony conviction should be permitted to shoot when s/he has good reason to believe that doing so is the only way to prevent a heinous crime." Or: "I believe that everyone who has exactly my DNA should be permitted to engage in vigilante action."

Such a counter-generalization puts the ball back into your challenger's court. It leaves your challenger with two options (analogous to the ones you had earlier) for persisting in her challenge. She can deny the generalization or reject it. Denying it looks most plausible in the first case, where your challenger would seek to show that it is not a good idea to permit every adult citizen who has not had a felony conviction to shoot when s/he has good reason to believe that doing so is the only way to prevent a heinous crime. Rejection looks plausible in the second case, where your challenger might reasonably ask why having or not having exactly your DNA should be deemed relevant for whether someone is permitted to engage in vigilante justice.

To conclude. Generalizations are important but inconclusive moves in moral conversation. They challenge an agent to present a description under which s/he is willing to defend her or his conduct as permissible.

Let me add just one small point to Thomas’ very helpful discussion of the role of generalization in moral argument. Why is it that people engage in this odd behavior of challenging your actions by asking you whether you would accept the generalization that all people of type T are entitled to engage in actions of type A? Presumably, it’s because, if true, such generalizations are supposed to reveal some explanatory relationship between certain facts—namely, that it’s in virtue of being of type T that you are entitled to engage in actions of type A. So when a person challenges you with such a generalization, she is really asking you in a roundabout way whether your action has the properties that make it true that it is morally permissible. To respond to the challenge, you must either accept that the properties she picks out really are sufficient to justify the action (such that all actions of that type are morally justified), or pick out other properties of your action that you believe are sufficient to justify it.