I have finally managed to get my hands on McKeever and Ridge's book Principled Ethics, and am both quite excited and a bit worried by their approach. The reason I am quite excited is that it mirrors what I am already trying to do. The reason I am a bit worried is because I fear they may have already done what I was trying to do, and made my line of thought redundant. I suppose I will simply have to study in depth and see if I can pick up on anything they have missed!
The sensibly begin their work by separating out terms in the way I had previously intended to, and in particular getting straight (to them!) what is meant by a moral principle. They initially have 6 divisions into the term which they use for analysis (p8-14). Additionally they want to talk about the scope of operation for moral principles. They discuss hedged and un-hedged principles (p21) and he way in which a principle can be moral, non-moral or intra moral. I wanted to here discuss the distinctions they makes regarding principles, though I will later return to the interesting topic of scope. I seems both must be important if we want to talk about principles.
They begin by saying that one might simply see principles as standards. The authors characterise this sense of 'principle' as being something which provides sufficient condition for the application of a moral concept (p7). These are supposed to be necessary truths which might found any contingent principles, and are exemplified by notions such as the categorical imperative or the principle of utility.
Part of their discussion of this particular characterisation is to do with an argument about supervenience. Even particularists might generally agree that moral facts about a case supervene upon the non-moral facts. If there is a physical difference in the facts of the case then this difference may make a moral difference to the case as well. According to McKeever and Ridge this alone means that we might generally describe moral concepts in physical terms, and so that a comprehensive physical description of the possible world in which that case occurs (including all the facts) would give a sufficient condition for the application of a moral concept. Of course if this were true, principles as standards would be physically true.
They mention this only to flesh out what they mean by 'generalisation'. They do not mean a comprehensive physical description of the physical world, as this would be a very very long description indeed. Also many things in such a 'supervenience function' are irrelevant to moral thought, just as many physical facts seem irrelevant in any case.
So a standard is less that a supervenience function (it is shorter) and must be useful if it is to qualify as a principle. This interesting distinction is useful, and one I intend to make use of.
The idea of discounting supervenience function's as candidates for moral principles seems a bit strange to me. An example of a principle, like the principle of maximum utility, seems like a physical law. It is a generalised proposition which can be applied in a uniform way (if we could know the consequences, of course!) and would arguable give us an idea of what course of action would be correct. The idea that a comprehensive description of the physical world might qualify as the same kind of thing seems bizarre, and obviously quite different from this. For a start it is much longer, and far more complicated, and may come as a string of data capturing the position and momentum of fundamental particles.
If we are to consider both the short, and the nearly infinite as candidates for principles, then why simply rule out a complete description of the given possible world? Why not just use a complete physical description of a given case?
I notice that the authors make use of the notion of a 'moral concept' which is separate from a moral principle. This term is used throughout the chapter, and I am not certain what it means. As I understand particularism, it is largely a negative thesis, and I am not sure that the sort of morality it might promote requires anything so clear as a concept. At present I struggle to see what could be a moral concept, other than something like a principle like "do not lie" or "do not kill". Perhaps further reflection will shed some light upon this, but it is a possible problem with the discussion.
I will add to this tomorrow with some thoughts about their next distinction,; principles as guides.
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