WRITING AND SPEAKING ABOUT MORAL ISSUES
A common view about ethics is that arguing about morality is unproductive, unenlightening, frus- trating, unsatisfying—and therefore pointless. A typical moral disagreement can go like this:
“The university should ban alcohol everywhere on campus,” says X. “Drinking is immoral, whether on campus or off.”
“You sound like the administration hacks. They’re all idiots!” says Y.
X: “They’re not all idiots. Some are nice.”
Y: “Wrong. They’re idiots, and they drink plenty of alcohol every day. Alcohol helps them for- get they’re idiots.”
X: “What about Professor Jones? She doesn’t drink.”
Y: “Yeah, but she’s boring. And for a college pro- fessor, being boring is the worst moral failing imaginable.”
This exchange really is pointless; it’s going nowhere. It’s the kind of conversation that gives moral discourse a bad name. As we’ve seen, proper discussions about moral issues—whether in written or oral form—are not at all pointless. They are often productive, thought-provoking, even enlightening. You may not always like where the conversation ends up (what conclusions are arrived at), but you will likely think the trip is worthwhile.
Good moral essays or conversations have sev- eral essential elements, without which no progress could be made in resolving the issue at hand.
1. A claim to be proved. Almost always, the point of writing or speaking about a moral issue is to
60 Á PART 2: MORAL REASONING
’ QUICK REVIEW begging the question—The fallacy of arguing in
a circle—that is, trying to use a statement as both a premise in an argument and the conclu- sion of that argument. Such an argument says, in effect, p is true because p is true.
equivocation—The fallacy of assigning two differ- ent meanings to the same term in an argument.
appeal to authority—The fallacy of relying on the opinion of someone thought to be an expert who is not.
slippery slope—The fallacy of using dubious premises to argue that doing a particular action will inevitably lead to other actions that will result in disaster, so you should not do that first action.
faulty analogy—The use of a flawed analogy to argue for a conclusion.
appeal to ignorance—The fallacy of arguing that the absence of evidence entitles us to believe a claim.
straw man—The fallacy of misrepresenting some- one’s claim or argument so it can be more eas- ily refuted.
appeal to the person—The fallacy (also known as ad hominem) of arguing that a claim should be rejected solely because of the characteristics of the person who makes it.
hasty generalization—The fallacy of drawing a conclusion about an entire group of people or things based on an undersized sample of the group.
In the first argument, a conclusion is drawn about all people with pro-life views from a sample of just three people. When it is spelled out plainly, the leap in logic is clearly preposterous. Yet such preposterous leaps are extremely common. In the
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resolve it—that is, to determine whether the cen- tral moral claim or statement (a judgment, princi- ple, or theory) is true. Is it the case that same-sex marriage is wrong (or right)? Is it true that Maria’s action is morally permissible (or impermissible)? Should actions always be judged right or wrong according to the consequences they produce? To answer such questions is to resolve the issue at hand, and resolving the issue at hand is the point of the written or spoken discourse. Without a clear idea of the claim in question, the essay or conver- sation will meander, as it does in the previous example.
In an essay, the claim should be spelled out (or sometimes implied) in the first one or two para- graphs. In a conversation, it is most often men- tioned (or understood) at the beginning. In either case, it is by grasping the claim that we come to understand the point of it all and to follow the thread of the discussion.