Locating the benefit of future-directed desires

Inspired by Princeton's recent (and very interesting) "Workshop on Well-being", I've been thinking about the debate between Bradley and Dorsey over the question: Where in time should Desire Theorists "locate" the benefit of a satisfied future-directed desire? At the time (t1) of the person's having the desire, or the later time (t2) where the object of the desire, i.e. the desired "good", is located?

I'm not sold on the idea that harms and benefits must be temporally located at all.  But supposing we do want to locate the benefit here, the former option -- locating it at the time of the state of desire -- seems to me to make most sense.  This may be illuminated by translating welfare talk into 'for the sake of' talk.

Justification and Explanatory Normalcy

In his very interesting 'Justification, Normalcy and Evidential Probability', Martin Smith argues that justification requires one's belief to be normally true, rather than just very likely true, given one's evidence.  The relevant sense of 'normalcy' is explanatory rather than statistical: for the belief to turn out false would call out for explanation.  Beliefs based on perception, for example, are generally "normically supported" in this way -- for the belief to be false, something weird must have happened (perhaps the agent hallucinated, or was tricked somehow -- there must be some further explanation).  By way of contrast, the belief that your lottery ticket is going to lose might be as likely as can be (stretch the odds of the lottery as much as you like), still it would require no special explanation were this ticket to turn out to be the winning one -- some or other ticket must win, after all, it's just a matter of random chance.

Testing Google+ Comments System

The good folks at Blogger have released a new commenting platform that's integrated with Google+, which I'm curious to try out.

The main advantages seem to be:

• Any public discussions of the blog post on Google+ will also show up on the blog itself
• Comments get a "+1" button, and can be sorted by rating so the best comments drift to the top.
• More privacy options: you can post non-public comments, only shared with certain "circles" of friends, if you prefer.
• Commenters can easily "share" their comments on Google+, encouraging more people to join in the discussion.

Potential disadvantages:

• Google account required to comment
• Limited threading of comments (only nests 1 reply deep, it seems?)

What do you think?

Update: reverted to the old commenting system, for two main reasons.  (1) I don't seem to be notified in any way of new comments, unlike old system where I receive email notifications (and readers can likewise subscribe for email or RSS updates to a particular thread).

(2) As a reader pointed out, there are real concerns about the long-term accessibility of comments using the new system.  The old system seems more stable.  (For example: the old comments still appear when you switch to the new system.  But new Google+ comments do not remain if you switch back to the old one.  They thus seem more "fragile".)

If these two problems are addressed in some future update, I may later make the switch.

Robin Hoodery

Robin Hood is a popular figure: stealing from the rich, to give to the poor -- what could be more just?  So consider a modern-day Robin Hood, who hacks into your bank account (you do realize that you're extremely rich by global standards, right?) and transfers your life savings to GiveWell's top charities.  Do you think that Hood acts wrongly, in this case?  Would you consider him blameworthy?

It's a nice test case, I think, of whether you really think you have a stronger moral claim to your holdings than the desperately needy do.  (I find that I don't.  Of course, I don't want to lose all my savings.  But I couldn't honestly blame an agent of the global poor who simply took them.  It'll make much more of a difference to them than to me, after all.)

If you're worried about Hood breaking the law (or generally accepted rules of social cooperation necessary for the flourishing of society), suppose that he's an outsider -- a Martian -- rather than a fellow member of our society.  Would Martians have any (non-instrumental) moral reason to respect our property claims?  Do you really deserve your great wealth, in any deep sense?  I find such claims hard to believe.  But I'd be curious to hear others' reactions...

Moral Supervenience

A curious new piece in Analysis from Gerald Harrison argues that 'The moral supervenience thesis is not a conceptual truth' -- or, for that matter, an obvious a priori truth.  I think it is at least the latter, so I was interested to read what Harrison has to say against it.

Moral supervenience (S) is the thesis that the moral truths supervene on the "natural" (read: "non-normative") truths.  This seems self-evident: moral facts cannot "float free" of the underlying natural facts -- there could not be a world just like ours, but where Hitler was actually a virtuous fellow.  Such a radical moral difference would need to be grounded in a corresponding natural difference in the world -- say where Adolf never become a fascist, and instead dedicated himself to the peaceful pursuit of philanthropic ends.  To expand upon this intuitive point:

Immoral Nihilism?

It's often thought that one's metaethical views are more or less independent of one's first-order moral views.  Anti-realists can still value other people's welfare, want to prevent the innocent from suffering, etc.  But is this enough?  An argument I owe to Helen suggests it may not be.  Anti-realists can of course have benevolent preferences, and be disposed to blame people who act malevolently, but there is something they're missing: They can't accommodate the moral datum that other people really matter -- matter simpliciter, "from the point of view of the universe", as opposed to merely mattering to them, personally, in light of their contingent preferences.  And, the argument goes, there's something morally disreputable about the more superficial attitude to which (consistent) anti-realists are limited.  Positive regard should not be something we choose to bestow upon others; it is something they are owed, in light of the kinds of beings they are.  The worry is, in other words, that anti-realists must regard their good will as too... optional.  They fail to really see people as mattering in themselves.

Does that seem right?  Expressivists and "quasi-realists" seem likely to want to deny it, insisting that they can endorse all the same first-order norms as moral realists.  "People do matter, and deserve to be regarded with respect," they will say, by which they mean that they endorse norms of treating people as if they matter and deserve to be regarded with respect.  But going through the motions is surely not the same as really believing these things, and it seems plausible that morality (or genuine respect for persons) calls for the latter, over and above the former.

What do you think?

The Possibility of Moral Realism

I've been wondering whether the non-contingency of moral realism (it's either true in all possible worlds, or false in all possible worlds) undermines parsimony-based objections to it.

We can explain all our observations without appeal to moral facts.  So, the argument goes, that's precisely what we should do -- why multiply entities beyond necessity?  Of course, I'm inclined to start with a broader conception of the philosophical data to be explained, but parsimony is surely worth something, and it isn't difficult to get into a skeptical mindset of wondering whether the theoretical "costs" of positing moral properties shouldn't lead us to instead take anti-realism as the "default" position.

Forthcoming in Noûs

... is my paper, 'Value Receptacles'.  The abstract:

Utilitarianism is often rejected on the grounds that it fails to respect the separateness of persons, instead treating people as mere "receptacles of value". I develop several different versions of this objection, and argue that--despite their prima facie plausibility--they are all mistaken. Although there are crude forms of utilitarianism that run afoul of these objections, I advance a new form of the view--'token-pluralistic utilitarianism'--that does not.

This is my favourite of my papers to date, so I'm especially glad that it found such a good home!

The Weakest (Philosophical) Link

Which of your philosophical views are you least confident of?  What do you think are the most compelling objections -- the ones you really take seriously, and are closest to being convinced by?

Grading with gDocs: Updated

If anyone's interested, I've updated my Grading with Google Docs python scripts to work with the latest gdata library from Google.

So, after setting up the scripts correctly, I can create individualized google docs for each student in my class, just by typing "python CreateDocs.py".  The student is automatically emailed the link to their new google doc, and when the due date for the paper has passed, I can remove student access to the papers while I grade, by simply typing "python RemovePermits.py".  And then, once all the grading is complete, return the papers instantly with "python ReturnDocs.py".

It's pretty neat.  Anyone else tempted to try it?  (Though I'd probably only recommend it if you have at least some background in programming, in case you run into any bugs that I haven't foreseen.)