A critique of Talbott's "Moral Philosopher"

In the Philosophy of Human Rights class that I am taking the professor (William J. Talbott) has recently written a book entitled Which Rights Should Be Universal? Parts of the book are required reading for the class (which he fortunately provides to us free of charge), and as such I decided to buy it in order to have a more comprehensive perspective on my professor’s thoughts. After having read a portion the book, I made an observation which I thought required the sorting out of my own thoughts on the issue, and hence I have chosen to do that here. Since my space is short I will not use any more of it on introductory issues.

In the very beginning of the book Professor Talbott makes an observation regarding the nature of what he calls “moral philosophy” that will later play a crucial role in the “Moral Discovery Paradigm,” the advocacy of which appears to be the theme from chapter two onward. “Moral philosophers” are defined within a particular context that gives succinct designation to their role within Talbott’s moral discovery theory. The context is religious societies or religions, and moral philosophers are essential those people whose moral judgments have not been derived from understanding someone or some text within their respective religions to be infallible. Having said this much, I will now quote a section from the book because it both does the explaining for me and provides the material which I was intending to critique. Here is what Talbott has to say about moral philosophers:

“Suppose we take the defining feature of a religion to be its identification of a moral authority, a person or a text, typically regarded as infallible. On this definition, all of the major religions qualify as religions, but some movements not usually thought of as religions–for example, various twentieth-century Marxist movements–also qualify. In this book, I will use the term religion in the broader sense that includes Marxist movements, because I believe their commonalities are more important than their differences.
At least initially, religions typically admonish their adherents to follow the directives of the relevant moral authority unquestioningly, and not to exercise their own moral judgment. Nonetheless, these religious traditions tend to produce at least some people with a capacity for independent moral judgment. People who exercise this capacity will not regard any other person or text as a source of unquestionable moral truth. They can regard people or texts as sources of moral wisdom, to be seriously considered in deciding what to do. However, the ultimate decision about what to do will always depend on their own moral judgment. I will refer to people who develop and exercise their own moral judgment as moral philosophers.” (Emphases original, Talbott 2005, Pp. 4).

To begin, any conclusions that I draw will depend most significantly upon the correct understanding of what Talbott is here saying, so I will start by elucidating how I have read this quotation and the surrounding material. First, when Talbott says that religious authorities do not encourage their adherents to exercise “their own moral judgment,” this statement seems clear in a very generalized way of understanding it. That is, it is unlikely to be debated as a matter of historical fact that religious authorities have not appreciated nor desired any person who made moral decisions that went against the accepted infallible text or person. However, it is not at all clear that accepting a text or person as infallible automatically makes one incapable of rendering his “own moral judgment.” In the sense in which a religious adherent makes his “own” decisions because it is his mind which has done the cognitive evaluating, then certainly it is a moot point that his judgments are going to be “his own.” They are his because he has made them, and it would seem difficult to read Talbott as saying that decisions which individuals make in a religious community are collective property because of the religion, regardless of the fact that each individual is making the decisions. Instead, we could perhaps propose that it is more likely to read him as saying that members of religious communities do not in fact make judgments when they appeal to infallible sources of moral revelation. This, as well, raises difficulties, as the following judgment will perhaps demonstrate:

P1) The Holy Koran is an infallible source of moral knowledge.
P2) The Holy Koran says that “X” is bad.
C) Therefore “X” is bad.

However limited, naive, or perhaps epistemically unwarranted we might consider the first premise to be, it seems to nonetheless yield a judgment when combined with the second premise and the resulting conclusion. On this view, it is also difficult to read Talbott as saying that members of religions do not make judgments, as this appears to be a case of simple reasoning no less adequate than the following, which is a classic example of logic used in logic classrooms nationwide:

P1) All men are mortal.
P2) Socrates is a man.
C) Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Hence, given the above illustrations, it seems most reasonable to conclude that Talbott is creating a very specific sense in which “moral philosophers” render their “own judgments.” But what, specifically, could he be intending to say?

We seem to find an answer in the next two lines where he says, “Nonetheless, these religious traditions tend to produce at least some people with a capacity for independent moral judgment. People who exercise this capacity will not regard any other person or text as a source of unquestionable moral truth.”

It now appears clear that when Talbott has said that religious do not allow members to make their “own” judgments, a belief on the part of the individual in an infallible authority has been the intervening factor. What is necessary for us to make our own judgments is a lack of such a belief. With this particular belief absent, judgments can be reached which are truly our own. Indeed, this is why a requisite of being a moral philosopher is to not regard any source of moral information as infallible.

Now what remains unclear, and what Talbott has left unexplored, is why belief in an infallible authority makes it impossible for an individual to render his own judgments. I have already shown that in the normal usage of these terms a religious adherent can both make decisions and that they will in fact be his own, i.e. not someone else’s. Furthermore, if we are indeed capable of making judgments while holding beliefs in infallible authorities, then Talbott has not yet justified the need for the particular kind of moral decision makers which he designates – that is, those who do not adhere to any infallible source of moral knowledge. Unless he is presupposing the non-existence of such texts or persons (which would render religious beliefs untrue and therefore inferior), or the superiority of non-belief in them, then there seems little to recommend being a “moral philosopher” over not being one.

Lastly, I am slightly confused as to how one should read these few lines on the following page:

“Since you are reading this book, I assume that you are a moral philosopher, in the sense in which I use the term – that is, you have developed and exercise your own moral judgment. Does this mean you are areligious? No, but it does imply that if you are religious, you are not blindly submissive to a moral authority.” (Talbott, 2005, Pp. 5)

In the first quotation we saw that Talbott defines “religious” belief as that which holds a text or a person to be infallible. We also saw that Talbott defines a moral philosopher as a person who does not hold to such a belief. Hence, it seems reasonable to conclude that to be a moral philosopher one can be a member of a religion, but that they cannot actually believe the claims of their text or authorities. This seems to demonstrate that, of necessity, one must not be religious in the sense that Talbott intends if they are going to be a moral philosopher in the sense which Talbott intends.