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Is Morality Real A Debate 1st Edition
Matt Lutz & Spencer Case
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In this book, Spencer Case and Matt Lutz debate whether objective moral facts exist. We often say that actions like murder and institutions like slavery are morally wrong. And sometimes people strenuously disagree about the moral status of actions, as with abortion. But what, if anything, makes statements about morality true? Should we be realists about morality, or anti-realists?
After the authors jointly outline the major contemporary positions in the moral realism debate, each author argues for his own preferred views and responds to the other’s constructive arguments and criticisms. Case contends that there are moral truths that don’t depend on human beliefs or attitudes. Lutz maintains that there are no moral truths, and even if there were, we wouldn’t be in a position to know about them. Along the way, they explore topics like the nature of common sense, the meaning of moral language, and why the realism/anti-realism debate matters. The authors develop their own arguments and responses, but assume no prior knowledge of metaethics. The result is a highly accessible exchange, providing new students with an opinionated gateway to this important area of moral philosophy. But the authors’ originality gives food for thought to seasoned philosophers as well.
Key Features
• Gives a comprehensive overview of all the main positions on moral realism, without assuming any prior knowledge on the subject
• Features both traditional and original arguments for each position
• Ofers highly accessible language without sacrifcing intellectual rigor
• Draws upon, and builds on, recent literature on the realism/ anti-realism debate
• Uses only a limited number of technical terms and defnes all of them in the glossary
Matt Lutz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wuhan University, where he has worked since receiving his PhD in philosophy from the University of Southern California in 2015. He works on metaethics and epistemology, with a particular focus on moral epistemology and moral skepticism.
Spencer Case received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2018, and teaches online classes there. He is also a freelance writer and podcaster.
Little Debates About Big Questions
About the series:
Philosophy asks questions about the fundamental nature of reality, our place in the world, and what we should do. Some of these questions are perennial: for example, Do we have free will? What is morality? Some are much newer: for example, How far should free speech on campus extend? Are race, sex and gender social constructs? But all of these are among the big questions in philosophy and they remain controversial.
Each book in the Little Debates About Big Questions series features two professors on opposite sides of a big question. Each author presents their own side, and the authors then exchange objections and replies. Short, lively, and accessible, these debates showcase diverse and deep answers. Pedagogical features include standard form arguments, section summaries, bolded key terms and principles, glossaries, and annotated reading lists.
The debate format is an ideal way to learn about controversial topics. Whereas the usual essay or book risks overlooking objections against its own proposition or misrepresenting the opposite side, in a debate each side can make their case at equal length, and then present objections the other side must consider. Debates have a more conversational and fun style too, and we selected particularly talented philosophers—in substance and style—for these kinds of encounters.
Debates can be combative—sometimes even descending into anger and animosity. But debates can also be cooperative. While our authors disagree strongly, they work together to help each other and the reader get clearer on the ideas, arguments, and objections. This is intellectual progress, and a much-needed model for civil and constructive disagreement.
The substance and style of the debates will captivate interested readers new to the questions. But there’s enough to interest experts too. The debates will be especially useful for courses in philosophy and related subjects—whether as primary or secondary readings—and a few debates can be combined to make up the reading for an entire course.
We thank the authors for their help in constructing this series. We are honored to showcase their work. They are all preeminent scholars or rising-stars in their felds, and through these debates they share what’s been discovered with a wider audience. This is a paradigm for public philosophy, and will impress upon students, scholars, and other interested readers the enduring importance of debating the big questions.
Tyron Goldschmidt, Fellow of the Rutgers Center for Philosophy of Religion, USA
Dustin Crummett, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
Selected Published Titles:
Is There a God?: A Debate
Kenneth L. Pearce and Graham Oppy
Is Political Authority an Illusion?: A Debate
Michael Huemer and Daniel Layman
Selected Forthcoming Titles:
Should We Want to Live Forever?: A Debate
Stephen Cave and John Martin Fischer
Do Numbers Exist?: A Debate
William Lane Craig and Peter van Inwagen
What Do We Owe Other Animals?: A Debate
Bob Fischer and Anja Jauernig
Consequentialism or Virtue Ethics?: A Debate
Jorge L.A. Garcia and Alastair Norcross
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Little-Debates-about-Big-Questions/ book-series/LDABQ
The right of Matt Lutz and Spencer Case to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-032-02388-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-02387-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-18317-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003183174
Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To William James (Bill) McCurdy (October 4, 1947–October 4, 2021)
—Spencer
For Auron
—Matt
Acknowledgements
For annoying bureaucratic reasons, Lutz had to be listed as a coauthor before Case. Nonetheless, this book was a joint efort, with equal work from each. We’d like to thank all those who have given us helpful comments on this manuscript, whether in whole or in part: Tim Perrine, Peter Finocchiaro, Terence Cuneo, Steven Finlay, Mike Huemer, J. P. Andrews, Jim Skidmore, Justin Kalef, Graham Oddie, Eric Sampson, Tyler Paytas, Tyron Goldschmidt, Stephen Herrod, Stephanie Wong, Laurie Lutz (thanks, Mom!), and an anonymous referee. We’d also like to thank the staf at Devils’ Brewery in Wuhan, China, where we hashed out many issues with the manuscript over “work beers.” Thanks to Xingzhu Chen and Qingyuan Gu for compiling the index. Last, but certainly not least, we’d like to thank our wives, May (Spencer’s wife) and Taddy (Matt’s wife), for their patience and support throughout this project. We give our apologies to anyone we’ve omitted. All of the faws remaining in this book are the fault of the authors. Each of us prefers that you blame the other.
Foreword
Neil Sinhababu
This book showcases two of the best-developed views in contemporary metaethics, advocated by two of the feld’s rising stars. Spencer Case defends non-naturalism, according to which many of our ordinary moral judgments are true because they correspond with moral facts existing beyond natural reality. Matt Lutz defends error theory, according to which moral judgments as uncontroversial as “lying is wrong” and “pleasure is good” are false because there are no moral facts to make our judgments true.
Today’s most popular metaethical theories are non-naturalist theories like Spencer’s, and naturalistic anti-realist views supported by arguments like those Matt presents for error theory. Spencer’s non-naturalism and Matt’s error theory may be the best contemporary versions of these views. The debates between them take place at the cutting edge of contemporary metaethics.
Despite their stark diferences, non-naturalism and error theory share important presuppositions regarding the psychological states constituting moral judgment. Both theories agree that moral judgments are beliefs about objective moral facts. If these beliefs correspond with objective facts, they’re true. If they fail to correspond, perhaps because there are no objective moral facts, they’re false and should be given up like other false beliefs.
Because Spencer and Matt agree about the nature of moral judgment, their disagreements regarding moral facts stand out more starkly. They disagree about the ontological questions of whether and how moral facts ft into reality. Spencer believes that there are objective moral facts that science can’t discover, while Matt denies the existence of moral facts on grounds that there is no good evidence for them. This disagreement has signifcant consequences for normative ethics. Spencer regards lying as having the non-natural
property of wrongness, which makes it wrong. Matt doesn’t believe that lying is wrong, because he thinks beliefs in wrongness take us beyond the scientifc evidence.
Metaethics is concerned with a number of theoretical issues regarding morality. These issues include whether moral facts exist and what they’re like if they do, whether and how we can get evidence about them, and what sort of psychological state constitutes a moral judgment. To explain why these issues matter, I’ll describe how metaethical questions relate to the normative ethical questions that our ordinary moral judgments aim to answer—which actions are right and which are wrong? Which character traits are virtues and which are vices? Which events are good and which are bad? Judgments like “lying is wrong,” “honesty is a virtue,” and “pleasure is good” address these three normative ethical questions.
Here are four metaethical questions we might ask about our three normative ethical answers—“lying is wrong,” “honesty is a virtue,” and “pleasure is good”:
(1) If we judge that they’re true, are we believing them, or having some other mental state regarding them like emotion or desire?
(2) If the judgments are beliefs, are they beliefs that objective wrongness, virtue, and goodness exist?
(3) If they’re beliefs in objective moral properties, are these properties really out there making our beliefs true, or are our beliefs systematically false because they’re absent?
(4) If they do exist, are they empirically accessible things we might discover within space and time?
Five of the most-discussed metaethical views can be illustrated in terms of when and whether they answer “no” to one of the four above questions. Non-cognitivists hold that moral judgments aren’t beliefs, but instead are something like emotion or desire. Relativists hold that moral belief can be true about non-objective wrongness, virtue, and goodness, which consist in relations to an individual or culture’s attitudes. Error theorists (like Matt) hold that moral beliefs are all false because they’re about objective moral facts, which don’t exist. Non-naturalists (like Spencer) hold that many moral beliefs are true, because there are moral facts that science can’t discover. Naturalistic realists (like me) hold that many moral beliefs are true, because there are moral facts that science can discover.
Most metaethical views can be mixed and matched with normative ethical views, without generating any contradiction. If you judge that lying is wrong, you can be a noncognitivist and take your judgement to be a desire or emotion. You can be a relativist and regard it as a belief that will be true if your culture feels that lying is wrong. You can be a non-naturalist and regard wrongness as a property of lying that isn’t empirically observable within space and time. You can be a naturalist and regard this wrongness as something that is empirically observable within space and time.
Only error theory contradicts the judgment that lying is wrong. It entails that nothing is wrong, and that all judgments of wrongness are false beliefs. It contradicts any moral judgment (apart from judgments with negations like “lying isn’t wrong”). Error theory therefore has the most radical implications for normative ethics, contradicting all our intuitive judgments that things are right, good, or virtuous.
Matt explains why he holds this position: “Moral facts are strange and hard to square with a naturalistic picture of reality. And we have no evidence that moral facts exist. So we should not believe that they do” (119). He joins other error theorists in accepting moral skepticism, the view that we aren’t justifed in believing that there are any moral facts. No science has discovered moral wrongness, and as it’s not clear how the objective reasons that it seems to require could ft into a scientifc picture of the world, our overall scientifc evidence suggests that there is no moral wrongness. That means that nothing is wrong, including lying.
If we give up all moral belief as Matt suggests, where does that leave us? Error theorists can ofer ways to retain morality in a diminished form, perhaps by maintaining social fctions of rightness and wrongness, and regarding “lying is wrong” as a truth about fction like “Gandalf was a wizard.” But it’s not clear how mere fctions could retain the signifcance that objective moral facts are supposed to have. Matt ofers the more sensible suggestion that giving up our moral beliefs wouldn’t change our lives all that much. We’d still care about others because do so regardless of whether it’s morally right. We would generally avoid lying because honesty is the best policy, because we don’t want to hurt others with lies, and because we just don’t like to lie.
While Matt seems right that much of what we consider moral behavior could go forward without moral belief, moral facts might make their absence felt on specifc issues like the possibility of great
moral heroism. Works of epic fantasy like The Lord of the Rings draw some appeal from the vast moral signifcance of the heroes’ goals. The hobbits’ quest is heroic because saving their world from destruction is of great moral value. Those of heroic dispositions in our world might seek quests of such vast moral signifcance. But if error theory is right and heroic moral signifcance is as unreal as hobbits, it can’t be achieved even by saving all life on this planet from destruction. Those seeking a quest of great moral signifcance won’t fnd it in saving all life on this planet, any more than in being good at bowling. The impact of error theory and the importance of surprising metaethical conclusions might be felt on a variety of issues like this.
The other metaethical views have more subtle efects, shaping normative ethical discourse to make diferent conclusions more or less plausible. Non-cognitivism and relativism deny the existence of objective moral facts as error theory does, but regard moral judgment as a state of mind that need not correspond to objective moral facts. They therefore generally permit us to retain our present moral judgments, and make it hard to justify fundamental changes in these judgments. Non-naturalism and naturalistic realism agree that objective moral facts exist, and disagree about their epistemological and ontological status. While they can be articulated to support intuitive normative ethical theories, distinctive commitments regarding the nature of moral facts can lead these theories to surprising normative ethical conclusions. The rest of this foreword will consider these various metaethical views and their normative ethical implications.
Non-cognitivists regard moral judgment as a state of mind other than belief—perhaps desire or emotion. Cognitivism is the view that moral judgments are beliefs, and non-cognitivism is the only one of the fve metaethical theories discussed here that denies it. Non-cognitivists can regard judging that lying is wrong as desiring that people not lie or having an emotion like guilt about lying. Since the clearest linguistic expressions of belief are declarative sentences, non-cognitivism suggests that moral judgments are more clearly expressed by exclamations or commands like “Hooray!” or “Go away!” Non-cognitivists might take “Lying is wrong”, which seems to attribute the property of wrongness to lying, as better expressed by “Don’t lie!” or “Boo lying!” Non-cognitivist avoidance of ontological commitment makes it impossible for moral judgments to be true or false in any robust sense, as emotions, desires, “Hooray!”
and “Go away!” aren’t true or false. These mental states and linguistic expressions need not correspond with reality as beliefs and declarative sentences should, leading non-cognitivism to a “no” answer to the titular question of Is Morality Real? Non-cognitivism makes the idea of real moral rightness and wrongness hard to understand, since reality doesn’t make desires or emotions true by corresponding with them.
Even after we accept its implication that there are no moral facts, non-cognitivism lets us continue making moral judgments as we always did. It treats moral judgments as things that need not change to correspond better with reality, leaving few constraints on normative ethical theory. What one may believe is constrained by evidence and reality; desire and emotion need change with our evidence or correspond with reality. Perhaps non-cognitive mental states constrain each other in some way, or perhaps some other states constrain them. Non-cognitivism eliminates an important kind of justifcation for changing our moral judgments or adopting a new normative ethical theory, letting us judge what is right and wrong the same way we always have.
Relativists deny that moral facts have to be objective, and regard actions as morally wrong if some individual or culture has the right sort of negative attitudes towards these actions. Many forms of nonmoral value have a relativist character, depending on individual or cultural attitudes. Which foods are delicious is relative to individual taste. Which clothes are fashionable is relative to a culture’s fashion sense. Beauty is proverbially in the eye of the beholder. Opponents of relativism often hold that moral value must be universal and objective, unlike fashionability, deliciousness, and beauty. Universal and objective moral standards would be useful for judging whether the values of one’s society should reformed, and resolving disputes between cultures. Metaethical debates between relativists and their opponents often concern whether morality must be universal and objective, or whether value relative to individual or cultural attitudes is enough to make morality real.
Relativism guides us to normative ethical theories that correspond with individual or cultural moral attitudes. Theories invoking individual attitudes treat the moral facts as diferent for diferent people depending on individual taste, making them easy for each individual to know, like facts about which foods are delicious. These theories can resemble non-cognitivism in denying the possibility of moral improvement that corrects errors in our most fundamental moral
attitudes. Theories invoking cultural attitudes make morality like fashion—difering between cultures, accessible to those who know a culture well, and potentially under the control of the powerful. A theory of what’s fashionable in a culture must correspond with the culture’s fashion sense; a relativist theory of what’s morally right in a culture must similarly correspond with the culture’s moral sensibilities. Reformers seeking to change their culture’s most fundamental moral values then are automatically wrong, since morality is defned by these values, and to reject them is to be immoral.
Those who reject noncognitivism and relativism, as Spencer, Matt, and I do, regard moral judgments as beliefs about objective moral facts. We therefore face the question of whether morality is real—whether there are objective moral facts, which would make moral judgments true. If morality isn’t real, Matt is right and error theory follows. The true normative ethical theory then will be a purely negative one: nothing is right or wrong.
If morality is real, the true normative theory will be a description of the moral facts. Both Spencer’s non-naturalism and my naturalistic realism treat morality as real in this way. Both can be articulated to allow preservation of current moral judgments, but if the moral facts have a surprising structure, they can suggest that a deeply counterintuitive moral theory is true. Contemporary non-naturalists like Spencer articulate their theory to support intuitive normative ethical theories, though distinctive assumptions about the nature of non-natural facts could give normative ethics a diferent and perhaps counterintuitive structure. Naturalistic moral realism is more likely to lead to surprising discoveries about morality that contradict ordinary intuition, as the empirical facts about many things can surprise us.
Non-naturalists like Spencer hold that many ordinary moral judgments are true, because they’re right about moral facts that empirical investigation of the universe can’t discover. Wrongness is a property of lying, making it a fact that lying is wrong. While some things about lies are empirically observable within space and time—when and where a lie was told, and how loudly the liar told it—non-naturalists regard wrongness as diferent. Scientifc examination of lies can reveal when, where, and how loudly they’re told, but it can’t reveal their wrongness. The wrongness of lying isn’t discovered by empirically investigating lies using our senses or scientifc instruments, but by reason itself. When we think about whether lying is right or wrong, it intuitively seems to us that it’s
wrong. Many other facts of philosophical interest are widely held to be known by intuition, including facts about mathematics and about what would happen under diferent laws, as it’s hard to see how these facts can be empirically observed in space and time. Non-naturalists hold that moral facts are similar.
Since contemporary forms of non-naturalism take the moral facts to be discovered by ordinary intuition, they support a highly intuitive normative ethical theory. Spencer’s view seems to be along these lines, as he avoids any especially distinctive commitments regarding the structure of non-natural moral reality. Past non-naturalists like Immanuel Kant had distinctive views about moral reality that suggested moral theories with occasionally counterintuitive commitments. Kant argued that our autonomy was the source of all our moral obligations, and that one could never be truly autonomous in telling a lie. He believed that lying is wrong even to deceive a murderer and save someone’s life, which many people in his time and ours fnd surprising. Instead of deriving all moral truth from a single source like autonomy of the will, Spencer and other contemporary non-naturalists allow for a plurality of fundamental moral facts, giving them the fexibility to accommodate more of our intuitions. They can therefore say that lying is generally wrong, but that the rightness of saving a life can outweigh the wrongness. Since intuition provides our knowledge of all these moral facts, the resulting normative ethical theory will be highly intuitive.
Naturalistic realists think that there are objective moral facts, and regard them as empirically observable in space and time. They difer about how these facts are known. Analytic naturalists think the true moral theory can be discovered by analyzing moral concepts, and empirically investigating the world to see what corresponds with the analyses. Some recent synthetic naturalists suggest that the moral facts can be known by discovering what systematically causes our use of moral terms, as this will be what our terms refer to. My own view is that we should study which psychological processes reliably lead us to true belief and which don’t, discover which processes generate our moral beliefs, and retain only those beliefs formed by reliable processes.1 A common feature of
1 Sinhababu, Neil (2022). The reliable route from nonmoral evidence to moral conclusions. Erkenntnis (doi:10.1007/s10670-022-00631-w).
all these naturalistic realist views is that they don’t make moral knowledge depend simply on intuition. There is some suitably empirical method for discovering the moral truth—analyzing moral concepts and seeing what they apply to, studying the causal relations to moral concepts, or assessing the reliability of the processes generating moral belief.
Whether naturalistic realism provides an intuitive normative ethics will depend on whether these empirical methods deliver intuitive results. Some naturalistic realists make intuitive results more likely by treating intuition itself as a process of belief-formation that empiricism can allow. Maybe intuition is simply part of conceptual analysis, or perhaps it’s some other type of empirical process that is reliably correlated with the moral truth. But if we empirically discover that many processes generating intuitive moral beliefs are unreliable, perhaps by discovering that they generate lots of false nonmoral beliefs, we might accept a counterintuitive moral theory that gives up these intuitively appealing but dubious moral claims. I regard the emotional processes generating many of our intuitive moral beliefs as unreliable, and think the only independently reliable process generating moral belief is introspection of immediate experience, which reveals that pleasure is good and displeasure is bad. This leads me to ethical hedonism, with all its counterintuitive consequences.
Metaethics is interesting partly because of its consequences for normative ethics. What sorts of things goodness, rightness, and virtue are, and what sort of methodology will reveal them to us, depends on the answers to metaethical questions. Non-cognitivism and contemporary intuitionist non-naturalism agree with current normative ethical methodology in favoring ordinary intuition. Relativism treats individual or cultural moral attitudes as constitutive of morality, and can therefore render the moral principles intuitive to an individual or culture immune to fundamental challenge. Some forms of naturalistic realism favor intuition, while others can support counterintuitive theories. Error theory has the most counterintuitive consequences, requiring us to give up all our moral beliefs.
The answers to metaethical questions shape the methodology of normative ethics. In doing so, they suggest diferent answers to questions about what is good, right, and virtuous. Those interested in the answers to these normative ethical questions, as well as those interested in metaethics for its own sake, are encouraged to read this book.
Part I Introducing Metaethics
Fact or Opinion?
Matt Lutz and Spencer Case
Suppose that Francis and Judith disagree about abortion. Francis thinks that a fetus is morally a person, so that killing fetuses unjustifably is literally murder. Abortion should be illegal in all but the most extenuating circumstances, such as when it’s necessary to save the life of the mother. Judith, on the other hand, doubts that fetuses have the same moral status as born infants. Moreover, even if fetuses have such status, their right not to be killed doesn’t override the woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body. Judith concludes that abortion isn’t essentially diferent from other forms of healthcare and that there should be few legal restrictions placed on it, if any. Perhaps the government should even subsidize abortion providers.
Let’s say that Francis and Judith are discussing abortion—civilly, if that doesn’t shatter believability—in a public space like a cofee shop. Russ and Sharon, who are seated at a nearby table, overhear them. This inspires a new conversation. Rather than taking sides with Francis or Judith, Russ and Sharon debate the nature of the conversation that they overhear. Russ thinks that Francis and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003183174-2
Judith are disagreeing over a matter of fact that isn’t determined by anyone’s feelings or beliefs. Their moral judgments are attempts to describe the world. Given that they’re disagreeing, at least one person must be wrong, and perhaps they both are—a moderate position on abortion might be correct. But it’s also possible that Francis or Judith has got the issue pretty much right. Sharon disagrees. She thinks that morality is “all just a matter of opinion.” The disagreement between Francis and Judith could continue indefnitely without resolution even if neither is making any errors in reasoning, and each fully understands the other’s position. There’s no objective fact of the matter.
The dispute between Francis and Judith is a “frst-order” moral disagreement, or rather a cluster of frst-order disagreements. That’s to say they disagree about what ought to be done. Should pregnant women be allowed to terminate their pregnancies if they desire? Should we prefer “pro-life” politicians or candidates who are more supportive of “reproductive freedom”? The debate between Russ and Sharon, by contrast, concerns “second-order” moral questions, or “metaethical” questions, which are about the nature of frst-order moral disputes and the assumptions behind them. Examples include: are moral assertions like “abortion is wrong” and “the rich ought to aid the poor” supposed to describe reality or do something else (e.g., express the speaker’s emotions)? If they do attempt to describe reality, then do any of them describe it accurately? How could we know, and what would make those assertions true? Russ is inclined toward moral realism, while Sharon is disposed toward anti-realism.
The terms moral realism and moral anti-realism seem to have originated in the twentieth century in Anglo-American philosophy. That’s relatively recent by the standards of the history of Western philosophy, which goes back thousands of years. Nevertheless, the positions that these terms refer to have been debated since at least the ffth century BCE in ancient Greece. Some scholars believe that ancient Egyptians discussed metaethical questions even earlier (DeLapp 2020). Metaethical questions have also been independently considered in non-Western philosophical traditions—in Chinese, Indian, and Islamic philosophy, for example (Liu 2007; Kjellberg and Ivanhoe 1996; Davis 2013; Al-Attar 2010). The status of moral truths seems to be one of the perennial questions of philosophy, alongside questions about the existence of God, and how (and whether) we’re able to acquire knowledge. It’ll probably
continue to be debated as long as there are humans, and maybe intelligent beings of a diferent sort, alive in the universe. We aren’t conceited enough to think that our discussion will settle the issue once and for all, but we’re confdent that this book can deepen your understanding of the issue.
The debate between moral realists and anti-realists is a debate about the nature of morality: are there real answers to ethical questions that don’t depend on human opinions or not? It’s one of the oldest and most universal debates in the history of philosophy.
1.1 What Is Morality?
We’ll give a fuller characterization of moral realism and antirealism shortly. Before we do that, though, we need to say a bit about what morality is. Here we have to tread carefully. If we say too much, then we’ll prejudge the investigation. What morality is ultimately depends on the outcome of the moral realism/antirealism debate. On the other hand, if we say too little, it won’t be clear what the debate is about. Presumably, you already have some notion of morality since ‘morality’ is an ordinary language word and not some bit of academic jargon. In this section, we want to draw attention to a number of important features of our ordinary concept of morality that realists and anti-realists mostly agree on.
One preliminary terminological note: some professors make a fuss about the distinction between ethics and morality. We don’t. We’ll use ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ interchangeably throughout the book. This is how they’re used in ordinary discourse, and in a lot of scholarship, too.
1.1.1 Morality Is Normative
Philosophers studying metaethics typically distinguish between normative and descriptive claims. To a frst approximation, descriptive claims say how the world is (while descriptive facts are facts about the way the world is), and normative claims say how the world ought to be (while normative facts are facts about the way
the world ought to be). However, realists insist that some normative claims accurately describe the world, so we can’t assume that “descriptive” and “normative” are exclusive categories without prejudging this debate against realism. Nonetheless, we intuitively recognize a diference between normative and descriptive terms. ‘Ought’ is a paradigmatic normative term; ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘right,’ ‘wrong,’ and ‘rational’ are normative terms as well. These terms seem diferent from paradigmatic descriptive terms like ‘large,’ ‘pink,’ and ‘shiny.’ Some words, such as ‘happy’ and ‘courageous’ don’t clearly belong on either list. Perhaps we should say that they’re partly normative and partly descriptive. Some philosophers call such words “thick” normative terms (Väyrynen 2021b).
Is there any other way to defne normativity other than by giving putative examples of normative terms? Unfortunately, we don’t see one. Normativity is a difcult concept to explain, not because it’s complicated but because it’s apparently basic. To say that someone ought to do something, or that he has a reason to do it, isn’t to say that he will do it. It’s to say … well, that he ought to do it, or that he has a reason to do it. We’re close to conceptual bedrock here. It’s hard to say much more than this without simply saying the same thing in diferent words, or adding emphasis, e.g., that he really should do it. Sometimes philosophers say that normative terms are “action guiding,” though we think that this amounts to another way of saying the same thing. The concept just has to be grasped with the aid of examples, and by getting clear on what it isn’t (see Parft 2011, ch. 24).
Descriptive morality refers to the moral practices and beliefs of a group of people, as an anthropologist might document them. For instance, it might be true that members of a certain community believe that walking on sacred land is morally forbidden and that participation in seasonal warfare is required for adult males. Group members who fout these norms are punished. The claims made in the last two sentences are claims about descriptive morality, not normative moral claims. They don’t purport to say how anyone ought to behave. Suppose that one of this community’s rules is that during seasonal warfare male warriors should rape female captives. You probably think this rule is immoral and that the warriors should disregard it even if they’re shamed for doing so. If so, that’s a belief about normative morality, and normative morality is what interests moral philosophers. Note that the word “normative” has diferent specialized meanings in diferent disciplines. Social
scientists sometimes use the word to refer to what is considered normal within a community. This is simply a description of the community’s norms. So when a social theorist calls an action normative, she’s making a descriptive claim, not a normative one. This can be confusing!
Understanding the descriptive/normative morality distinction heads of a common source of confusion. Philosophy students often say that “what’s moral in one culture might not be moral in another culture.” This remark is perilously ambiguous. It could be interpreted to mean that moral beliefs difer between cultures. So understood, it’s an uncontroversial observation about descriptive morality. It could also be interpreted as the normative claim that there’s no right or wrong beyond what our respective cultures label as such. That position is a form of relativism, which we’ll discuss in Chapter 2. The danger lies in confating these two claims and thinking that the fact that the world contains diverse descriptive moralities entails that relativism is true. It entails no such thing.
1.1.2 Morality Is Authoritative
Morality purports to be important. Many philosophers accept moral overridingness, the idea that moral considerations trump all competing considerations about what to do (Stroud 1998). The play Fiddler on the Roof, which is set in a Jewish village in Czarist Russia, dramatizes the idea of overridingness. When confronted with difcult choices, the main character, Tevye, thinks to himself (audibly, so that the audience can hear): “On the one hand… but on the other hand…” metaphorically weighing the reasons until he thinks they’ve been fully considered. At a pivotal point in the plot, he considers whether to accept the marriage of one of his daughters to a Christian, which he didn’t authorize. But this would compromise his commitment to his religion: “If I try and bend that far, I'll break. On the other hand … There is no other hand. No, Chava! No!” (Stein 1964, 94–95). In Tevye’s mind, his religious obligations are overriding. Likewise, for those who accept moral overridingness, when we’re deliberating about what to do and we discover that one and only course of action is permissible, then that settles it. We must obey morality; there’s no “other hand” to consider.
The TV series Breaking Bad provides a more recent example from pop culture. The story details the moral decline of anti-hero Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who decides to “cook” and
sell methamphetamine to help his family fnancially (or at least that’s how he rationalizes his actions). In an early episode, White fnds himself in a predicament when a vicious drug supplier called “Krazy-8” ends up imprisoned in a basement. White can’t keep him there indefnitely, and so he has to decide whether to release Krazy-8 or kill him. Krazy-8 insists that White has no choice but to release him since the alternative would be “cold-blooded murder.” White, who hasn’t yet descended into depravity, is reluctant to kill Krazy-8 but fearful of the consequences of releasing him. He makes a list of considerations for and against killing Krazy-8. Beneath “Let him go” he writes: “It’s the moral thing to do,” “Judeo-Christian principles,” and “You are not a murderer.” Beneath “Kill him” he writes: “He’ll kill you and your entire family if you let him go” (Gilligan et al. 2008).
If morality is overriding, and if killing Krazy-8 would be wrong, then Krazy-8 is right: White has no (acceptable) choice but to release him. As with Tevye, there’s no “other hand” to consider. If we take this view, then we might see the roots of White’s moral decline in his willingness to consider reasons “on the other hand” when he already knows what morality demands of him. Another possibility is that White’s initial assessment that letting Krazy-8 go would be “the moral thing to do” is mistaken and killing Krazy-8 wouldn’t be wrong in these circumstances. Perhaps the killing would be a justifable act of self-defense, albeit of an unusual kind. A third possibility is that killing Krazy-8 would be morally wrong, but White’s non-moral reasons to protect his family and himself outweigh his moral duty not to kill Krazy-8. White morally shouldn’t kill Krazy-8, but all things considered White should kill him. Only this last interpretation is incompatible with moral overridingness.
We take no stance on whether morality is overriding. But we do insist that morality purports to have signifcant authority, even if moral requirements don’t override competing considerations in every circumstance. Moral concepts have a certain intuitive “feel” to them. Part of this “feel” is a sense of their gravity. Morality matters. A psychopath who generally knows how to use words like “right” and “wrong” in ordinary ways, but who doesn’t think that rightness or wrongness should weigh very heavily in his own or anyone else’s decision making, seems to not grasp these concepts. Perhaps moral requirements can be overridden by competing considerations, but if so, it takes a lot to trump them, and this doesn’t happen very often. Morality doesn’t exist unless moral obligations are usually
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BITUMINOUS CONCRETE PAVEMENT
Note.—The phrase, Bituminous Concrete Pavement, has been applied to a large variety of roadway surfaces differing materially from each other in composition, construction and utility. Some of these are covered by United States patents, the scope and limitations of which are not yet fully determined or understood. The necessity of avoiding infringement of these patents has to be kept in mind in framing specifications for public use, and this consideration does not permit the presentation here of specifications which, in the opinion of the author, would secure an ideal pavement of this general character.
Bituminous concrete pavements constructed in substantial conformity with these specifications have been laid on a number of city and town streets and country roads and have proved satisfactory and fairly durable in use. It is believed that they do not infringe any existing patents.
Our rather limited experience with pavements of this character seems to indicate that if good materials are used and the work properly done, they are suitable for use on city streets of light travel, and on suburban streets and country roads carrying an amount of travel considered heavy for these classes of roadways. Where the results have been unsatisfactory, the cause can generally be traced to unsuitable materials or unskillful construction, the result of ignorance or carelessness on the one hand, or of the attempt to reduce first cost below normal figures on the other. Many people are searching for a pavement or roadway that will have all the good qualities of the standard pavements but can be built about as cheaply as a common macadam road. It is possible that something of the kind may be discovered; but in the present state of the art it is chimerical. High quality and low first cost do not go together in street paving. The question to be considered is, rather, how can we
invest a dollar in street or road building so that it will, in the long run, yield the best return upon the investment. The pavement provided for in these specifications is not a cheap pavement, but where it is suitable for the conditions to be met, it will be well worth its cost.
SPECIFICATIONS
103. Sub-grade.—The sub-grade except where old pavement is utilized for foundation shall be prepared in accordance with Section 26 of these general specifications.
104. Foundation.[56]—The foundation for bituminous concrete pavement shall be a properly prepared old pavement, or hydraulic concrete, or compressed broken stone, as determined by the engineer.
105. Old macadam pavement or road to be utilized for foundation, shall be prepared in the following manner:
All high places or humps shall be dressed down to a plane two (2) inches below the pavement datum, the work being done with care so as to disturb as little as possible the macadam that is to remain. Depressions in the old macadam shall be carefully cleaned out so as to remove all earth and other débris and loose material, and filled with hydraulic concrete. Newly dug or filled trenches and holes extending through the macadam shall be excavated and cleaned out so as to admit the use of at least four (4) inches of hydraulic concrete. The hydraulic concrete for thus leveling up the roadway shall be composed of one (1) part of approved Portland cement, four (4) parts of clean sand and nine (9) parts of sound, hard crushed stone, well mixed into a wet concrete. After placing, the concrete shall be well tamped so as to form a compact body, conforming to a plane two (2) inches below the pavement datum. The concrete shall be protected from travel and allowed to become well set before the surface of bituminous concrete is applied.
106. Old stone block or brick pavement may be utilized for foundation, provided that the blocks or bricks do not require to be taken up and reset, or, if so taken up and reset, that the joints shall be completely filled with grout composed of one (1) part Portland
cement and two (2) parts of good sand. Depressions, trenches and holes shall be treated as specified in Section 105.
107. Hydraulic concrete foundation shall be constructed in compliance with the requirements of Sections 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37 of these specifications. Its depth or thickness shall be ... inches.
108. Broken stone foundation shall be ... inches in thickness after completion. It shall be constructed in accordance with Section 40 of these specifications.[57]
109. When completed the upper surface of the foundation shall nowhere be more than two and one-half (2½) inches nor less than one and three-fourths (1¾) inches below the pavement datum. No travel shall be permitted upon the foundation until the bituminous concrete shall have been laid.
110. Bituminous Concrete.—The bituminous concrete shall be composed of crushed stone, sand, pulverized stone, and asphaltic cement.
A typical composition for the bituminous concrete, to be as closely approximated as practicable, is as follows, the percentages being by weight:
The crushed stone shall be trap rock, granite, or hard, sound, durable limestone. It shall be crushed to such sizes that all will pass through a screen with two meshes to the linear inch and shall be of such assorted sizes of fragments as will, when incorporated with the sand, pulverized stone, and bitumen, produce a mixture substantially
conforming to the percentages of each named in the preceding paragraph.
The stone shall be freshly crushed, clean and free from clay, loam, organic matter and refuse of every kind.
The sand shall be silicious, and free from clay, loam and refuse of all kinds. The grains shall be of such sizes that approximately twentyfive per cent. (25%) of the whole will pass the number eighty (80) sieve, fifty-eight per cent. (58%) shall pass the No. 40 sieve and not more than seventeen per cent. (17%) will pass the number 10 sieve, when used in the order named. The pulverized stone shall conform to the requirements of Sect. 49. Portland Cement may be substituted for not more than twenty per cent. (20%) of the pulverized stone if the Engineer so directs, in which case the Portland Cement actually so used shall be paid for extra at the prevailing market price, to be agreed upon in advance. The asphaltic cement shall comply with the requirements of Sects. 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, and 50, except that it may have a somewhat higher penetration, as may be determined by the Engineer.[58]
111. Mixing.—The materials composing the concrete shall all (except the pulverized stone and Portland cement) be uniformly heated to a temperature not exceeding three hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit (350° F.) and not below three hundred degrees Fahrenheit (300° F.), and while at such temperature shall be incorporated and mixed in a mechanical mixer. The stone, sand, and pulverized stone shall be placed in the mixer in the order named and well mixed together, after which the asphaltic cement shall be added and the mixing continued until each fragment is thoroughly coated with cement.
112. Laying on the Street.—The mixed concrete shall be taken to the street as soon as practicable after leaving the mixer. It shall be unloaded on the street, properly spread and truly graded with asphalt rakes to such a depth that after compression by rolling it will have a thickness of not less than two inches. The concrete when unloaded on the street shall be at a temperature not below two hundred and eighty degrees Fahrenheit (280° F.). In spreading and grading, all material must be moved from the pile into which it was unloaded. As soon as practicable after the concrete shall be graded, the surface shall be thoroughly rolled with a ten-ton asphalt roller
and the rolling continued until the roller makes no further impression on the concrete surface. When completed the surface must conform closely to the pavement datum so that there will be no depressions or elevations exceeding one-fourth inch above or below the pavement datum.
HYDRAULIC CONCRETE ROADWAY
PAVEMENT[59]
113. The sub-foundation for hydraulic concrete pavement shall be prepared as specified in Section 26.
114. The pavement shall be constructed in two courses called the bottom course and the top course, as hereinafter specified.[60]
115. Bottom Course.—The bottom course shall be four (4) inches in thickness[61] and shall be composed of the materials specified in Sects. 29, 30, and 31. The concrete shall be composed of one part Portland cement, three parts sand and six parts of broken stone, and shall be mixed and placed as specified in Sects. 35 and 36, but its top surface when properly compacted shall be parallel to and not less than two (2) nor more than two and one-half (2½) inches below the pavement datum.
116. Top or Surface Course.—The top course shall be composed of the Portland cement specified in Sect. 29, the sand specified in Sect. 30 except that it shall be especially clean, and the grains shall be of such size that at least seventy-five per cent. (75%) of the mass will fail to pass a screen having thirty (30) meshes to the linear inch, and shall be of superior quality for making concrete; and of crushed Trap Rock,[62] or of stone equally hard, strong and durable.
The trap rock shall be crushed to such sizes that all will pass through a screen having meshes one and one-fourth (1¼) inch square and that none will pass through a screen having meshes onehalf (½) inch square,[63] and it shall be free from clay, refuse or other foreign substances.
117. The surface-course concrete shall be composed of one part Portland cement complying with Sect. 29, one and three-quarters (1¾) parts of sand, and, generally, three and one-half (3½) parts of
crushed stone, but the ratio of crushed stone shall be such that in the completed concrete the volume of mortar in the compressed mass shall exceed by about fifteen per cent. (15%) the voids in the stone.[64] The cement and sand shall be thoroughly mixed together dry, enough clean water then added to make a rather wet mortar and the mixing continued until the materials are thoroughly incorporated into a homogeneous mass. The crushed stone shall then be added, and the mixing continued until every fragment of stone is completely covered with mortar. Sufficient water shall be added during the mixing, if necessary, to make a “wet” concrete, but not so wet that free water will flow from the mixed mass. In handling and adding the stone to the mortar care must be taken to prevent the stone segregating into masses of different sizes. The concrete for the top course shall be made with special care and thorough work, the intention being to secure a superior quality of concrete.[65]
118. The concrete thus prepared shall be placed upon the bottom course before the latter has begun to set[66] and carefully graded so that when properly compacted its top surface will coincide with the pavement datum. The concrete will then be well rammed by rammers having a face of 6 by 6 inches and weighing not less than twenty (20) pounds after which the surface will be completed by rolling with a power roller of the asphalt type weighing not less than five (5) tons.[67] All these operations must be completed before any of the concrete in either course shall have begun to set. The surface shall not be plastered with neat mortar nor shall it be trowelled.
119. The completed surface must coincide with the pavement datum to the extent that a properly formed template when applied to the surface shall show no departure from the pavement datum exceeding three-sixteenths (³⁄₁₆) inch.
120. After the laying of the pavement has been completed it shall be allowed to stand until the concrete of both courses shall be fully set, which period shall be not less than ten (10) days, or longer, if conditions make a longer time necessary, as the engineer may direct, of which he shall be the sole judge. During this period the concrete shall be kept in a moist condition throughout, by sprinkling with hose or otherwise. No travel shall be allowed upon the street until the engineer shall open it for public use. The concrete shall not be laid during rain storms or when the thermometer is below forty-five (45)
degrees F., and in case there may be danger from frost the whole surface of the concrete shall be covered by straw or hay. Manure must not be used for this purpose.
121. Expansion Joints.[68]—An expansion joint along the curbing on each side of the street shall be provided in accordance with Sect. 101. Expansion joints shall also be provided and constructed as follows: Wherever the width of the pavement exceeds twenty (20) feet between curbs there shall be a expansion joint along the longitudinal center of the street; expansion joints shall also be made, at right angles to the street and extending continuously from curb to curb, at distances apart not exceeding twenty (20) feet. These expansion joints in the body of the pavement shall be made by cutting entirely through both courses of concrete along a straight line, using a special straight-edged cutter not more than threesixteenths (³⁄₁₆) inch thick, when the concrete is laid in hot weather and not more than three-eighths (⅜) inch thick if the concrete is laid when the thermometer is below sixty (60) degrees F. The cutting of the expansion joints shall be carefully and skillfully done, and after each joint is cut a special T-shaped smoother, the stem of which is one inch deep and of the same thickness as the cutter shall be worked back and forth in the joint until the edge of the concrete adjoining the joint shall be well and smoothly compacted. The smoother shall be so formed as to round off the corners of the concrete to a circular form having a radius of one-fourth (¼) inch. All these operations shall be completed before the concrete has begun to set. After the concrete has set and before the street is opened to travel all expansion joints shall be poured full of bituminous cement, as specified in Section 90.[69]
122. Bituminous Coating.[70]—After the concrete shall have become fully set as determined by the engineer and before the street is opened to travel the whole surface of the pavement shall be covered by a finishing coat of bituminous road oil as hereinafter specified.
The road oil shall be prepared from native asphalt or from a crude oil having an asphaltic base. Not less than 95 per cent. of the oil shall be soluble in cold carbon di-sulphide, and it shall contain not less than thirty (30) per cent. of solid asphalt, nor more than ten per cent. of fixed carbon. It shall be of such consistency as to flow freely at a
temperature of seventy-five degrees (75°) F. The oil shall not be applied except when the road surface is perfectly dry and when the temperature of the air is not below 60° F.
The oil shall be evenly distributed over the whole surface of the street at the rate of one-half (½) gallon of oil per square yard of surface, and well worked over the surface with squeegees or other suitable devices.
Not less than twenty-four hours after the application of the oil the surface of the pavement shall be evenly covered to a depth of onefourth inch with clean, dry stone screenings or coarse sand, after which the street may be opened to travel.
GENERAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR EXPERIMENTAL OR UNTRIED PAVEMENTS[71]
123. Contractors or promoters submitting proposals for the construction of new, experimental, or special street pavements, the merits of which have not been established by experience in the city of ..., must submit with their proposal a full and complete set of specifications for the construction of the pavement. If contract shall be awarded under said proposal, said specifications will be made a part of the contract entered into. The Engineer will enforce compliance with these specifications, as the construction work proceeds, without assuming or incurring any responsibility for the character, quality, serviceability or durability of the resulting pavement. But the Contractor shall be subject to and shall comply with the requirements and stipulations of Sects. 1 to 25, inclusive, of these specifications.
124. Special Guaranty.[72]—Inasmuch as the pavement to be constructed under the special specifications submitted by the Contractor is more or less of an experimental character, having not been heretofore used in the city of ... to an extent sufficient to establish its value, the Contractor shall be held wholly responsible for the utility, serviceability and durability of the pavement so constructed; and he shall enter into a guaranty to the effect as follows:
That the pavement will fulfill all the usual and legitimate requirements of a satisfactory roadway pavement upon the street upon which it is to be laid.
That the pavement will successfully serve and endure the travel to which the street may be subjected for a period of ... years next following the date of the certificate of its completion and acceptance,
and shall be in good condition at the end of that period, ordinary and reasonable wear and tear, and accidental or other injuries not due to defects in the pavement itself, excepted.
That the Contractor will, at his own cost, keep the said pavement in satisfactory repair during said period of ... years, and will leave it in a condition of satisfactory repair at the end of that period.
That the Engineer, or his successor or successors in office, shall be the sole and final judge as to whether the conditions of this guaranty shall be, or shall have been complied with.
That in case the pavement shall not, in the judgment of the Engineer, fulfill the terms and conditions of this guaranty at any time during said period of ... years, or upon its expiration; or in case the Contractor shall fail to make all or any of the repairs that may in the judgment of the Engineer be or become necessary during said period of ... years, within a reasonable period to be determined by the Engineer, but not to be less than twenty (20) days after notice to make such repairs has been given him by the Engineer, he (the Engineer) may proceed to make or to have made such repairs, or to repave the street, in any manner that he may deem necessary or advisable, and to charge the cost of such repairs or repavement to the Contractor, provided, that the sum or sums so charged against the Contractor shall not, in the aggregate, be more than the amount paid to the Contractor for the construction of the pavement.
125. Bond.—The Contractor shall give bond with sureties satisfactory to the Engineer in a sum not less than the estimated cost of the pavement at the contract prices, the term of the bond to extend over the entire period of ... years, for which the pavement is guaranteed.
126. During the said period of ... years the Contractor shall, upon being notified by the Engineer so to do, make any repairs to the pavement that may become necessary by reason of cutting into it for the purpose of constructing or repairing pipes, conduits or other underground structures, or street railroad tracks, or by reason of accidental or unusual causes, or of any causes other than those due, in the opinion of the Engineer, to the failure of the pavement to meet and fulfill the terms of the guaranty stipulated in Section 124. And for making such repairs the Contractor shall be paid the price of ... per square yard for the repairs actually so made. Repairs so made
shall be subject to the terms of the guaranty, stipulated in Section 124, until the expiration of the said term of ... years after the date of the original certificate of completion and acceptance. In case the Contractor shall neglect or fail to make such repairs within a period of twenty (20) days after he shall have received notice to do so, the Engineer may proceed to make or to have made such repairs, and he shall charge to and collect from the Contractor the cost of the repairs so made.
HYDRAULIC CONCRETE COMBINED CURB AND GUTTER[73]
127. Hydraulic concrete combined curb and gutter shall be constructed in accordance with general plan No. ... attached to and made a part of these specifications, but the rise from the gutter to the top of the curb may be varied so as to facilitate drainage.[74]
128. Excavation.—All excavation required for the curb and gutter shall be completed and trimmed to the proper lines as shown by the drawing. The drainage trench under the curb and gutter shown on the drawing shall have the top width and general form shown in the drawing but its depth may be varied to secure proper drainage, as the engineer may direct, provided that its depth below the base of the concrete shall not be less than nine inches nor more than two feet.
129. Broken Stone Drainage.[75]—After the excavation shall have been completed the trench shall be filled up to the level of the base of the concrete with sound, durable broken stone, or coarse gravel, from which the small fragments shall have been removed by screening over a wire screen having openings not less than one inch square. The stone or gravel shall be thoroughly tamped in the trench in layers not more than six (6) inches thick by the use of rammers weighing not less than thirty (30) pounds and having a face area not exceeding thirty-six (36) square inches, and its completed top surface shall conform truly to the designed base of the concrete. These drains shall be connected at suitable intervals with sewers, drains or other outlets to keep them free from standing water. The trench filling shall be completed at least twenty-five feet in advance of placing the forms for the concrete.
130. Concrete.[76]—The concrete shall be made of one (1) part Portland cement, one and three-fourths (1¾) parts of sand and three (3) parts of crushed stone or clean gravel. The Portland cement shall
comply in all respects with the requirements of Section 29 of these specifications.
The sand shall be clean, sharp silicious sand made up of grains of such size that not more than fifteen per cent. (15%) will pass a number thirty (30) sieve. It shall not contain more than five per cent. (5%) of clay or loam nor more than two per cent. (2%) of organic matter or other refuse. The stone shall be sound, hard, durable, and freshly broken, free from clay, loam, organic matter, or other impurities. Trap rock or granite will be preferred, but limestone, if hard and sound, may be used with the approval of the engineer. Only those fragments of the crushed stone that pass a screen with openings three-fourths inch square and those that are held on a screen with openings one-fourth inch square shall be used in the concrete.
131. Mixing and Placing Concrete.—The concrete shall be mixed in accordance with Section 35 of these specifications. Very thorough mixing will be required.
The mixed concrete shall be handled so as to prevent as far as practicable any separation or segregation of the stone and mortar. When in place it shall be compacted by tamping and where placed against forms, forking or other effective means must be used to bring mortar to the surface and to secure complete contact between mortar and forms, so as to leave a solid, homogeneous and unbroken surface when the forms are removed. Where the concrete may not be laid against forms, all exposed surfaces must be troweled to a true surface conforming accurately to the lines shown by the plans, templates and straight-edges being used where necessary.
132. Weather.—Concrete in combined curb and gutter shall not be laid in freezing weather nor shall frozen materials be used in the work. Completed work must be securely protected from frost for at least seven days after it is laid. Any concrete curb and gutter that may become frozen within that period shall be wholly removed and replaced with new work.
133. Expansion Joints.—The combined curb and gutter shall be divided into blocks or panels not more than twelve feet long, by clear, open expansion joints perpendicular to the face of the curb, extending entirely and continuously through the whole mass of the concrete. These expansion joints shall be three-eighths inches wide
and may be formed either by cutting through the completed curb and gutter with a suitable tool, or by the use of iron forms or partitions, but in either case the corners at the ends of the blocks must be made solid and dense and troweled with a suitable tool.
134. Circular Corners.—At the intersections of streets, circular corners, having a radius equal, generally, to one-fifth of the width of the roadway of the narrower street, shall be constructed of the same dimensions and quality as on the body of the street, and the curb and gutter will be extended along the line of the cross street back to the front lot-lines. Properly curved circular curb and gutter shall also be constructed at all angles exceeding five degrees in the line of the curbing.
135. Corner Protection.—Galvanized steel corner protectors or nose-pieces shall be used to protect the upper and outer corner of the curb at all circular corners and angles in the street. This steel protection may be of any pattern or section procurable in the market and approved by the engineer. It shall be firmly anchored and secured into the concrete.
136. Finishing.—After the forms have been removed and before the concrete has set up too hard to be affected by the brush, the face and top of the curb shall be lightly scrubbed by a suitable wire brush so as to completely remove any glazed surface and to produce a surface of uniform texture and appearance. Dry cement or neat cement mortar shall not be used for dressing up exposed surfaces.[77]
137. Forms.—The forms used may be of dressed lumber or of metal as the contractor may prefer. But they shall have sufficient strength and rigidity to hold the concrete firmly in place, and to preserve the correct dimensions, alignment and levels of the curb and gutter.
138. Protection.—The completed curb and gutter shall be protected from fracture, deformation or spalling until the concrete has fully set. The concrete must be kept moist for at least five days after it has been laid. Any part of the curb and gutter that shall have become injured before it is accepted or the street is opened for travel shall be taken up and replaced by the contractor.
139. Payment.—Concrete combined curb and gutter will be paid for by the linear foot in place, the measurement to be made along the
upper and outer corner of the curb. The price per linear foot named in the contract will cover all the excavation or grading required and all the materials and labor, including all necessary forms, for constructing the curb and gutter complete. But the crushed stone used for drainage will be paid for by the cubic yard measured in place, and steel corner protection will be paid for by the linear foot in place, at the prices named in the contract.
HYDRAULIC CONCRETE SIDEWALKS
Note.—These specifications conform to the common practice of laying the sidewalk in two courses.
In the author’s judgment this is neither necessary nor desirable. He believes that it would be better and somewhat cheaper to use a single course of concrete four inches in thickness. He suggests for this concrete the ratios of one cement, two sand, and three and onehalf stone, the latter to be crushed to pass a screen with five-eighths inch square openings.
Tamping will bring a sufficient quantity of mortar to the surface to permit of satisfactory finishing. While the materials for such a single course of four inch concrete would cost somewhat more, the saving in cost of labor would, at usual prices of material and labor, make the single-course construction somewhat cheaper, while the solid four inches of richer concrete would make the walk much stronger. In fact, a single course of such concrete three inches thick would be sufficient in a great majority of cases. While the surface might not have the glazed appearance common in the two-course work it would be really better for use—a polished and slippery surface on sidewalks is not desirable.
SPECIFICATIONS[78]
140. The hydraulic concrete sidewalk shall be ... feet in width and its outer edge shall be ... feet from the outer face of the street curbing. It shall be constructed with two courses of Portland cement concrete as hereinafter specified.
141. Excavation and Grading.—The ground to be occupied by the sidewalk shall be excavated or filled to a sub-grade which after being compacted shall be ... inches[79] below the finished surface of
the sidewalk. The sub-grade shall be neatly dressed to a plane surface sloping downward toward the street one-fourth inch in one foot horizontal, and to such longitudinal gradients as the engineer may prescribe. The completed sub-grade shall project four (4) inches in excavation and eighteen (18) inches in embankment on each side beyond the edges of the completed sidewalk. After the grading is completed the surface shall be compacted by rolling or ramming.
142. Drainage Course.—Upon the sub-grade prepared as specified in Section 141 a drainage course composed of broken stone, gravel or boiler-plant cinders, ... inches[80] in thickness shall be laid. Broken stone for this purpose may be of any durable stone crushed to such size that all will pass through a screen with two inch openings. Crusher-run material may be used unless it contains an excessive quantity of fine material. Gravel for the purpose may be any sound durable gravel all of which will pass through a two inch screen and be retained upon a one-fourth (¼) inch screen. If cinders are used they must be good boiler-plant cinders from which the ashes have been screened out. The cinders must be thoroughly drenched with water at least one week before they are placed in the sidewalk.[81]
143. This drainage material shall be placed on the sub-grade and properly graded. After grading it shall be thoroughly compacted by ramming or rolling, and its surface shall be brought to a plane parallel to and ... inches below the designed surface of the sidewalk, after which the surface inequalities may be leveled up with screenings or small gravel.
The bottom of the drainage course shall be connected with the street drains or sewer inlets by three-inch hard drain pipe at such points, not more than three hundred feet apart, as will drain all standing water out of the drainage course.
144. Concrete, Bottom Course.—The bottom course of concrete ... [82] inches in depth, shall be constructed and placed in accordance with Sections 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 and 36 of these general specifications, except that the maximum size of the crushed stone shall not exceed one-half the thickness of the bottom course of concrete and the concrete shall be uniformly composed of one part Portland cement, three parts sand and six parts of crushed
stone. Its upper surface shall be brought to a plane parallel to and one inch below the designed sidewalk surface.
145. Surface or Finishing Course.—The surface or finishing course shall be of concrete, one inch thick, composed of one part Portland cement, one and one-half parts sand and two and one-half parts of hard, durable stone, crushed to such sizes that all will pass through a screen having openings one-half (½) inch square and none will pass through a screen having openings one-eighth (⅛) inch square.[83] This concrete shall be made as specified in Sections 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 and 36 except in the particulars named in the preceding paragraph. Care must be taken to make the mixing very thorough. The quantity of water used in this concrete shall be just sufficient to make a moderately wet mixture, and care shall be taken to make the different batches as nearly as practicable of the same consistency.
The surface concrete shall be spread over the bottom-course concrete before the latter has begun to set,[84] properly graded, well compacted by ramming, and its upper surface brought to the true designed plane and surface of the sidewalk by the use of straightedges and troweling,[85] after which the surface shall be lightly gone over with a wire broom or brush to slightly roughen the surface. The finished plane of the sidewalk shall have a transverse downward slope toward the street of one-fourth (¼) inch to one foot of horizontal width. At no place shall the thickness of the surfacecourse be less than three-fourths of one inch. The outer top corners of the sidewalk shall be rounded off with a suitable tool to a radius of three-fourths (¾) inch.
146. Forms.—Substantial and suitable forms of wood or iron shall be furnished and used by the contractor to support the concrete until it is hard set, when they shall be removed at his expense.
147. Expansion Joints.—After the laying of both courses of concrete is completed expansion joints at right angles to the sidewalk, and not more than four (4) feet apart shall be constructed in the sidewalk in the following manner: the joint will be located by a line on the surface of the sidewalk and a straight-edged cutting tool one-fourth (¼) inch thick will be used to cut entirely through both courses of concrete, accurately along the line marked out, entirely across the sidewalk, after which a T-shaped trowel or tool shall be
used to smooth and compact the cut surfaces for a depth of one inch, and to round off the corners of the sidewalk blocks to a radius of onefourth (¼) inch.[86]
Where the ends of the sidewalk abut against the curbing a clear expansion joint one and one-fourth (1¼) inches wide shall be left between the sidewalk and the curb.
148. After the concrete laying is completed it shall be protected from use or injury until the concrete is set hard enough to withstand travel, and it shall be kept continuously damp for at least five days after the concrete is laid.
149. Weather.—Concrete in sidewalks shall not be laid in freezing weather nor shall frozen materials be used in the work. Completed work must be securely protected from frost for at least seven days after the concrete is laid. Any concrete sidewalk that shall become frozen within that period of time shall be wholly taken up and replaced with new work, at the expense of the contractor.
150. Regrading.—Directly after the concrete is completed, the forms removed, and the work inspected by the engineer, the space between the outer edge of the sidewalk and the street curb shall be excavated or filled up and dressed to a plane one inch below the top of the sidewalk and the top of the street curb; and the space on the inner side of the sidewalk shall be graded to a plane one inch below and parallel to the surface of the sidewalk for a distance of two feet back from the edge of the sidewalk and completed with a slope of one and one-half to one to the natural surface of the ground. Where this regrading requires filling up the filling material, for a depth of four inches from the surface, shall be good, rich surface soil.
151. Should any defects due to faulty material or workmanship develop in the sidewalk within one year after the completion of the same the contractor shall repair or reconstruct all such defective places at his expense, doing the work in accordance with these specifications.
152. Measurement and Payment.—Concrete sidewalk will be measured and paid for by the square foot of completed sidewalk surface, and the unit price per square foot shall cover the entire cost of the work, including grading, drainage work, all material and labor, forms, and the regrading or dressing up after the completion of the
