Response to Michael Davis : the Cost Is Minimal and worth It

Davis’ essential claim is that moral theory, however useful to moral theorists and applied ethicists, is of value neither to students in classes in practical and professional ethics nor to practitioners, such as physicians, lawyers, or engineers. For students and practitioners, the benefits of bringing in moral theory are not worth the costs. Davis finds a number of types of cost in my approach. Some of them are the time it takes to present the theory in an adequate manner, the difficulties that non-philosophers might have in presenting moral theory, the less intuitively plausible nature of moral theories (as opposed to his tests), and the fact that theory tends to put off both students in practical ethics and practitioners, primarily because it is supposed to be too far removed from their practical concerns. Instead of moral theory or even tests derived explicitly from moral theory, Davis maintains that students and practitioners will find it more useful to assess a course of action by means of a series of common-sense questions, whose content I shall mention shortly. The common-sense quality of these tests, Davis maintains, makes them more immediately and intuitively plausible to students and practitioners, so that they need no elaborate defense. He also thinks they will take less time to present and are easier for teachers who are not philosophers to master. In my paper I did not make a distinction between professional practical ethicists on the one hand and students in applied ethics courses and practitioners on the other. Nevertheless, I believe moral theory has value to these latter groups, so I must answer Davis’ arguments. Before I do this, however, I must say that Davis’ argument prompts me to wonder what reading material he assigns to his students in his courses in practical ethics. Some of these papers appeal to moral theories: RP theory, utilitarianism, virtue theory, natural law and so forth. While I am the first to admit (as I explicitly say in my paper,) that some discussions in practical