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tell us what kinds of situations described in descriptive, non-moral terms warrant what kinds of description in ethical
terms: if an act is an intentional killing, then normally it is wrong; pain is bad; I cut, you choose is a fair procedure;
and so on. The internal role clauses of folk morality articulate the interconnections between matters described in
ethical, normative language: courageous people are more likely to do what is right than cowardly people; the best
option is the right option; rights impose
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duties of respect; and so on. The output clauses of folk morality take us from ethical judgements to facts about
motivation and thus behaviour: the judgement that an act is right is normally accompanied by at least some desire to
perform the act in question; the realization that an act would be dishonest typically dissuades an agent from
performing it; properties that make something good are the properties we typically have some kind of pro-attitude
towards, and so on. Moral functionalism, then, is the view that the meanings of the moral terms are given by their
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place in this network of input, output, and internal clauses that makes up folk morality.
Although moral functionalism gets its name because of the parallel with common-sense functionalism in the
philosophy of mind, there are at least two important respects in which moral functionalism differs from common-
sense functionalism. First, its principles are not causal principles. The principle that a fair division of some good is,
other things equal, morally better than an unfair division, does not say that being fair typically causes things to be
morally better. Again, the principle that acts that cause suffering are typically wrong is not the principle that the
suffering causes the wrongness of the act. An act may be wrong because it causes suffering, but the because is not a
causal one. (The act does not become wrong a moment after it causes the suffering.) The principles of folk morality tell
us which properties typically go together, but not by virtue of causing each other.
Secondly, the principles of folk morality are more controversial than the principles of common-sense functionalism a
point that calls for a little discussion.
The principles of folk morality are what we appeal to when we debate moral questions. They are the tenets we regard
as settling our moral debates: All right, you've convinced me. It would be a betrayal of friendship not to testify on
Jones's behalf, so I'll testify. The appearance of phrases like this marks that some tenet in this
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There is a distinction between giving the meaning and fixing the reference familiar from Kripke, Naming and Necessity. My phrasing may suggest that moral functionalism is
wedded to a term's place in the network giving the meaning in Kripke's sense. In fact, however, I take moral functionalism to be neutral on whether place in the network
gives the meaning in Kripke's sense or fixes the reference in Kripke's sense. This question is addressed further in the next chapter.
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case, that it is wrong to betray friendship is a part of our shared folk moral theory. However, this does not mean that
it is unrevisable. The dispute settling nature of such a tenet shows that at the time in question and relative to the audience with
whom we are debating, the tenet is part of our folk morality. If there were not such benchmarks in our discussions of
moral questions, we could not hold a sensible moral discussion with our fellows. Nevertheless, these benchmark tenets
are far from immutable, and are in fact in the process of being revised in the ongoing moral debate as carried out in
the newspapers, universities, between consenting adults, and so on and so forth. Folk morality is currently under
negotiation: its basic principles, and even many of its derived ones, are a matter of debate and are evolving as we argue
about what to do.
What is, though, true is that there is a considerable measure of agreement about the general principles broadly stated. We
agree that, by and large, promises ought to be kept; we agree that killing people is normally wrong; we agree that
people who claim to believe that something is very wrong but show not the slightest inclination to refrain from doing it
are in some sense insincere; we agree that certain character traits associated with the virtues are intimately connected
with persons' dispositions to do what is right; and so on. And if we did not share a good number of opinions of this
sort, it is hard to see how we could be said to have a common moral language. Genuine moral disagreement, as
opposed to mere talking past one another, requires a background of shared moral opinion to fix a common, or near
enough common, set of meanings for our moral terms. We can think of the rather general principles that we share as
the commonplaces or platitudes or constitutive principles that make up the core we need to share in order to count as
speaking a common moral language. What we disagree about are the fundamental underpinnings of these generally
agreed principles, and, accordingly, we disagree about the nature and frequency of the exceptions to them. For
example, consequentialists and deontologists mostly agree that promises ought to be kept, that killing people is wrong,
and that there are exceptions to both principles; but they disagree sharply about the nature and frequency of the
exceptions. Again, most of us agree that informed consent is to be preferred to uninformed consent,
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but there is a great deal of disagreement about exactly why this is so.
This means that it is still very much up in the air where we will be after the dust has settled. We are currently seeking
some kind of consensus about the nature and frequency of the exceptions to the general principles we share. If John
Rawls's influential account is right, systematic moral thinking involves the attempt to balance compelling general
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principles against considered judgements about how various options should be characterized. We can think of this
story as one story about how folk morality should evolve over time: we modify folk morality under the constraint of
reconciling the most compelling general principles with particular judgements. In this way we hope to end up with
some kind of consensus.
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