ON MORAL THINKING

...Cooney's behavior in this affair was reprehensible...

...Similarly, Cooney's distinction between morality and opinion strikes a crucial nerve of moral debate...

...As Timothy J. Cooney writes, "everyone . . . had a piece of the answer...

...Neither of these is explicitly stated in the hybrid itself, which is a kind of shorthand—like a joke, but not funny...

...genuine moral disagreements among people who equally value the survival of society...

...But hairline fractures in the theory emerge along the way: when he concedes, for example, that a child's stealing a pencil is wrong, or that certain practices (such as bribery) do not directly violate the primary code, but interfere with its enforcement...

...UNFORTUNATELY, ANY DISCUSSION OF THIS WORTHY volume must also mention its ironic notoriety...

...but that do not directly threaten the social organism as a whole...

...520 Like many contemporary theorists, Cooney begins by examining moral language...

...Implicit in it is an extensive background argument, the notational form of which might be: given a wide desire for x, and a set of factual conditions y, the proper course of action is z. Thus, in Cooney's example, if an embezzler named Jones is being considered for a job as an accountant, "Jones is the wrong man for the job" is a (prudential) hybrid statement...

...Unlike the primarycode acts, these "would not cause the destruction of the group if we allowed one person to do them freely or everyone to do them once...

...Without these ultimate limitations on human conduct, civilized life, based upon interlocking and overlapping forms of community and autonomy, would yield to chaos...

...IT IS TOO BAD THAT COONEY didn't add a political chapter to this book...

...Nevertheless, these theories have all proven inadequate or incomplete as foundations for morality...

...It seeks, for all the right reasons, to demolish a number of unsound moral constructs left behind by the system-building of the past century: relativism, utility, emotivism, intuitionism, and any sort of religious ethics...

...Proscriptions against gambling, abortion, and capital punishment are all false hybrids—opinions disguised as moral judgments— as are "statements concerning alcohol, homosexual acts, vivisection, interracial marriage, premarital sex, prostitution, number of wives, divorce, freedom of speech," and so forth...

...In 1983 the author, an independent scholar whose background was in press relations, not philosophy, forged a letter of recommendation from an eminent philosopher...

...One is what he calls the primary code: a set of hybrid statements that is a common denominator of all moral systems, and includes elemental injunctions against murder, robbery, arson, assault, and other grave misdeeds...

...secondary codes disguised as morality threaten to engulf us...

...Much of what passes for morality is not the genuine article...

...The protection of mutual expectations, of implicit rights and duties, simple fairness and truth—these are precious things, and while their violation does not summon the apocalypse, they are still what much of morality is about...

...In keeping with much of classical philosophy from Plato onward, they shed useful and often brilliant light, but do not answer all of the questions they lead us to discern...

...The most important and problematic conclusion is that, beyond the narrow confines of the primary code, anything goes—and likewise anything may be proscribed...

...His provocative thesis is that the basis of morality is a single universally shared desire: the desire that life—social, if not biological—not be destroyed...

...There is no room for lesser moral injunctions, no margin of ambiguity surrounding the primary code itself...

...His theory, like theirs, shows the fine line between insight and absurdity that makes abstract thinking such a splendid adventure...

...Cooney cites the Greenland Eskimos who allowed their members one free murder before punishment, and were on the verge of extinction before coming under Danish jurisdiction...

...Cooney boldly claims that we can put all of these disputes behind us...

...it is how and where he draws it...

...In Cooney's view, that is precisely the problem...

...And like many of those who have sought to describe the moral elephant in its true dimensions, his report is highly compelling in certain respects, but downright implausible in others...

...This is true enough on its face...

...he argues his case forcefully, and with a refreshing enthusiasm...

...Random House dropped the book when the forgery was discovered...

...Telling Right from Wrong is full of acute observations and delightfully provocative, even outrageous, assertions...

...but it would not, if generalized, destroy society, or even scholarly publishing...

...The structure of morality is arguably more complicated, and its boundary with opinion more elusive, than the author supposes...

...Yet the blithe consignment of many urgent social questions to the realm of opinion seems less a normative position than one of perverse indifference...

...However, his aggressive neutrality toward anything outside of the primary code invites absurdity—implying, for example, that there is no moral difference between capitalism and socialism, or between tolerance and oppression...

...the other includes the various secondary codes that consist of mere opinion or custom...

...As it is, despite the generally liberal and iconoclastic timbre, his very narrow view of the scope and function of morality initially suggests the libertarian conservatism of a latter-day Hobbes...

...The primary code is, in fact, a rough common denominator of moral systems and theories...

...There are degrees of moral certainty, and of moral gravity...

...Hybrids are inevitable: without them, groups and group decision-making would be impossible...

...Over the past century, philosophers have posited a variety of conceptual frameworks for moral thinking, including utilitarianism, intuitionism, and emotivism...

...IF HYBRIDS ARE THE STUFF OF MORALITY, false hybrids are the scourge...

...This does nothing to dispel the paradox, that an amateur philosopher could write a rewarding and useful book about "telling right from wrong," yet, in his eagerness to make his views known, be incapable of doing the right thing...

...Genuine imperatives, he argues, are "hybrid statements": propositions that combine, in highly elliptical form, a factual or conditional assertion that is demonstrably true, and a widely shared opinion or desire...

...one could almost infer that he would do it again...

...We live in an interesting age in the history of ethics...

...There is more than a grain of truth in this account...

...but Cooney's 521 eventual claim turns the idea of moral neutrality inside out: ". . . a society that allows prostitution, homosexuality, abortion, premarital sex, gambling, pornography, alcohol, birth-control devices, and free expression is not morally superior to one that forbids all these acts...

...Thus, what seem on the whole like sound metaethical positions staked out in the first half of the book lead to very questionable conclusions in the second, where secondary codes are examined...

...Those questions are hotly debated in our political culture...

...Each of these metaethical theories has captured some important aspect of the moral enterprise...

...But Cooney's alternative, for all its shock value, ultimately lacks the theoretical depth and subtlety—what might be called the metaphysical commitment to the unobvious— that animates a radical or even a liberal worldview...

...The problem is not with Cooney's distinction between morality and opinion—one on which morality itself depends...

...Society can absorb a lot of immorality before being destroyed, or even yielding to a new form of government...

...Prometheus Books brought it out last year...

...it might have provided a clearer target for both criticism and appreciation...

...subtle as well as palpable forms of moral injury...

...Most hybrids, according to Cooney, are noncontroversial inductive statements about the probability of some pattern of events recurring in the future...

...It would seem hard to deny that hybrids, or something like them, do figure in imperative language...

...But Cooney is making a stronger and more dubious claim: that true morality, as revealed through hybrid statements, consists of nothing but the primary code, and has no other ultimate purpose than preventing the destruction of society...

...However, beware of false hybrids...

...As Cooney aptly notes, it is partly because each one generates the primary code that the various ethical doctrines of the past century have all enjoyed a certain cachet...

...Recounting the episode in an afterword, Cooney seems at best mildly contrite...

...With Telling Right from Wrong, Cooney joins this eminent tradition...

...even many Christian believers may doubt whether Holy Scripture, as interpreted by fundamentalist preachers, is the true moral code for all humankind...

...I suspect that scores of other examples could be multiplied from these, of acts that are socially undesirable (such as pollution), unfair (such as exploitation), or indecent (lying, breaking promises, causing unnecessary pain, etc...

...The great error of previous ethical doctrines, Cooney contends, is the confusion of the two, and "the failure to recognize that two substantively different matters pass under the heading of morality...

...Based on the joinder of commonly known facts or probabilities and shared values or beliefs, they tell us "how to satisfy our shared desires...

...Welcome to the moral Twilight Zone, where opinion reigns...

...All else is mere opinion...

...the difference is to be found in the background argument...

...COONEY IS RAISING THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL ethical questions here in a direct and pointed way...

...Like earlier moral philosophers from Mill and G. E. Moore to A. J. Ayer and R. M. Hare, Cooney captures certain important functions and aspects of morality, but not all...

...Even genocidal groups such as the Nazis must observe the primary code internally in order to survive...