PH3203 Essay

3. What is Michael Smith's view on whether amoralists can make moral judgments? Is he right or wrong? In reply to Brinks amoralist challenge, Smith clearly thinks that amoralists cannot really make moral judgements. He presents us an analogy of someone, blind from birth, who is able to judge colours using a machine. He claims that amoralists are like this blind person as it explains how amoralists can tell what is right and wrong without being motivated by it, just like how the blind person can tell which colour is which without knowing how colours actually look like. He asserts that to count as making moral and colour judgements they need to be motivated under the appropriate conditions and have the visual experience of colours respectively but his opponents assert the opposite. From there, he wants to claim that amoralists cannot really make moral judgements, but he recognizes that he would need an independent reason to accept his view of what counts as making moral judgements over his opponents view first in order to do so. He derives the reason by first coming to the conclusion that the externalist has to take that the good person is motivated to do what she believes right which I think makes sense. However, he goes on to say that it is a rather implausible claim by appealing to commonsense that good people care non-derivatively about things they judge as right. Whereas for the externalist, good people only care non-derivatively about one thing: doing what they believe to be right. This is where he starts making some questionable moves. It is not good enough to justify something simply by saying that it is commonsense. Furthermore, it is not even clear that it is true. A counter example would be this. Imagine someone who is overwhelmed with the desire to kill the murderer of his loved ones for revenge but stops himself because he knew it was not the right thing to do. Is he a good person? By our common standards, I would think so.

PH3203 Essay
However, this person does not care non-derivatively about not killing the murderer of his loved ones; he wishes to kill him! Instead, he cares only derivatively about not killing him the thing he judged as right, derived from caring non-derivatively about doing the right thing. If we still consider him as a good person despite not caring nonderivatively about the things he judges as right, then it is clearly not commonsense that good people care about things they judge as right non-derivatively. Even if we grant that what he claims is true, the fact that it is does not imply ought. Just because good people care non-derivatively about things they judge as right does not mean that they ought to do so. This is something Smith needs to give us - a reason why good people ought to care for things they judge as right non-derivatively, and he attempts to in the following paragraphs. He argues that that by only caring derivatively about the things one judges as right, it provides the morally good person with one thought too many and it is wrong. It is actually an argument borrowed from Bernard Williams who considers a case where a man is faced with a choice to save his wife or a stranger deliberates What would be the right thing to do in this case? Saving my wife or the stranger? Williams objects that this is wrong as the wife rightly wants and expects feelings of direct love and concern for her and if any further motivation were required then that would simply indicate that he does not have the feelings of direct love and concern for her that she rightly wants and expects. I disagree. The fact that the wife rightly expects something does not automatically mean that the husband is in the wrong if he does not give her that. For example, the wife may rightly expect roses from her husband for Valentines Day as he has promised her. However, the husband gets robbed of all his money and valuables on his way to buy them. He has no way to bring home roses to her unless he steals them. It is unclear that he is in the wrong if he does not steal the roses to fulfil

PH3203 Essay
what her wife rightly expects of him. We need to know why it is wrong to not have feelings of direct love and concern for her or to have one thought too many, but the reason we have been given is inadequate.
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Overall, according to Smith, if he could show that it is wrong to not care non-

derivatively for things you judge as right, then we would have to accept the practicality requirement of internalism. Following that, we must conclude that to count as making moral judgements one must be motivated under the appropriate conditions and accept that amoralists cannot make moral judgements. I disagree. Even if Smith was successful in showing that, thus leading us to accept his view of what counts as making moral judgements, we cannot simply accept that amoralists cannot make moral judgements. This is because he has only provided a possible coherent solution to Brinks challenge. He still needs to show that the amoralist indeed operates internally similar to the blind person in his analogy for us to accept that amoralists cannot make moral judgements, just like how those who claim that amoralists do not exist need to show that there are indeed no amoralists. Otherwise we could accept any coherent solution, including one that claims that amoralists do not exist. Thus, the best we can say is that if Smiths analogy is correct, then amoralists cannot make moral judgements. However, so far he has only attempted to show, unsuccessfully, that his analogy is able to provide a solution to Brinks challenge. As Smiths arguments are largely inadequately justified and others erroneous, he is wrong to say that amoralists cannot make moral judgements.

Smith concludes his argument with several unqualified claims but I will not critique them here due to word constraints.