Nonmoral statements are very different.
They do not affirm that an action is right or wrong or that a person is good or bad. They assert that a state of affairs is actual (true or false) but do not assign a moral value to it. Most of the statements
that we encounter every day are nonmoral. Of course, nonmoral statements may assert nonmoral normative judgments, such as “This is a good library” or “Jack ought to invest in stocks,” but these are clearly not moral statements. They may also describe a state of affairs that touches on moral concerns—without being moral statements. For example:
• Many people think that capital punishment is wrong.
• Jena did not lie.
• You treated him as he treated you.
• Tania tries to be a good person.
• Animals are treated cruelly.
Now we can be more specific about the struc- ture of moral arguments. A typical moral argu- ment consists of premises and a conclusion, just as any other kind of argument does, with the conclu- sion being a moral statement, or judgment. The premises, however, are a combination of the moral and nonmoral. At least one premise must be a moral statement affirming a moral principle or rule (a general moral standard), and at least one premise must be a nonmoral statement about a state of affairs, usually a specific type of action. Beyond these simple requirements, the structure of moral arguments can vary in standard ways: there may be many premises or few; premises may be implicit not overt; and extraneous material may be present or absent. Take a look at this moral argument:
1. Committing a violent act to defend yourself against physical attack is morally permissible.
2. Assaulting someone who is attacking you is a violent act of self-defense.
3. Therefore, assaulting someone who is attacking you is morally permissible.
Premise 1 is a moral statement asserting a gen- eral moral principle about the rightness of a cate- gory of actions (violent acts in self-defense).
CHAPTER 3: EVALUATING MORAL ARGUMENTS Á 51
213006_03_039-064_r1_el.qxp:213006_03_039-064_r1_el 8/3/15 9:46 AM Page 51
Premise 2 is a nonmoral statement about the char- acteristics of a specific kind of action (violent acts against someone who is attacking you). It asserts that a specific kind of action falls under the gen- eral moral principle expressed in Premise 1. Prem- ise 3, the conclusion, is a moral judgment about the rightness of the specific kind of action in light of the general moral principle.
Why must we have at least one premise that is a moral statement? Without a moral premise, the argument would not get off the ground. We can- not infer a moral statement (conclusion) from a nonmoral statement (premise). That is, we cannot reason that a moral statement must be true because a nonmoral state of affairs is actual. Or as philoso- phers say, we cannot establish what ought to be or should be solely on the basis of on what is