1) Speaking of carnivals, the next Philosophers' Carnival is but a Monday away. Send in your submissions by the end of this week!
2) Also, I'm looking for new volunteers to host subsequent editions. Email me if you're interested...
3) Now that my workload is starting to ease up, I might take a shot at implementing the grand old idea of a "carnival of citizens". Suggestions welcome, as before...
4) Last but not least, many thanks to Alex Gregory for his stimulating guest posts over the past couple of weeks. These covered Moore on skepticism, vagueness and reality, Occam's razor, and free speech. Don't miss Alex's regular writing over at atopian.org.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Calling all liberals!
I'm pleased to announce that Philosophy, et cetera will be hosting the 25th Carnival of the Liberals, with a meta-politics theme (explained below), on November 8. The deadline for submissions is noon the previous day, my time, which I gather is 9pm EST, Monday 6 November for all you temporally backward Americans. Submissions may be sent in either via the blogcarnival form or by emailing cotl-submissions@carnivaloftheliberals.com with your post details.
Note that CotL is more selective than many carnivals: as host, I'm charged with whittling it down to the best 10 entries from the liberal blogosphere. The choice of topics is largely unconstrained: you're welcome to submit any substantial piece of writing from a liberal perspective. However, I'd like to take this opportunity to especially invite "meta-political" submissions that step back from the fray and instead assess the state of political discourse, or the question of how politics should be conducted. Some examples of specific issues one might explore here include:
That should give you a rough idea of the sorts of questions that qualify as 'meta-political'. I'm sure you can think of more. If you still don't know where to start, the axes of the metapolitics quiz could give you a position to defend. Alternatively, you can always submit an entry on a more "traditional" liberal topic, exposing Bush's latest dastardly deeds, or whatever. (Though note that an insightful analysis is more likely to make it into the final ten than just any old rant!) So: send me your best!
Note that CotL is more selective than many carnivals: as host, I'm charged with whittling it down to the best 10 entries from the liberal blogosphere. The choice of topics is largely unconstrained: you're welcome to submit any substantial piece of writing from a liberal perspective. However, I'd like to take this opportunity to especially invite "meta-political" submissions that step back from the fray and instead assess the state of political discourse, or the question of how politics should be conducted. Some examples of specific issues one might explore here include:
- The relative merits of conventional advocacy, or "working within the system", vs. radical activism.
- Which is more important in politics: means or ends? Liberals are often committed to both first-order ends (e.g. equality) and meta-political ones (e.g. respect for due process, constitutional limits on executive power, and the rule of law). When these conflict, which takes priority?
- Questions of rhetoric and framing: should liberals aim to persuade others through rational arguments or emotional appeals (or both)? Should we focus on dangers or opportunities? Is it important to improve the tone and quality of political discourse and public debate? If so, how might this be achieved?
- What would be the ideal democratic institutions? What reforms can you think of that would improve our current process? Is a two party system better than the alternatives? If you could amend the U.S. Constitution, what would you change? Or, on a more concrete level: how can we best protect against corruption, vote tampering, voter intimidation and disenfranchisement, etc.?
That should give you a rough idea of the sorts of questions that qualify as 'meta-political'. I'm sure you can think of more. If you still don't know where to start, the axes of the metapolitics quiz could give you a position to defend. Alternatively, you can always submit an entry on a more "traditional" liberal topic, exposing Bush's latest dastardly deeds, or whatever. (Though note that an insightful analysis is more likely to make it into the final ten than just any old rant!) So: send me your best!
Monday, October 30, 2006
Idiolectical Indeterminacy
My internal dictionary contains alternative spellings for some words. Sometimes I'll write 'fulfilment', other times, 'fulfillment'; 'defence' or 'defense'; 'realize' or 'realise', etc. I guess there are two ways to interpret this: (1) I oscillate between two dialects of English, each of which has a single correct spelling for each word; or (2) I consistently write in a single dialect in which either spelling is acceptable. Either way, there's some sort of linguistic indeterminacy going on. The only question is where to locate it: at the level of languages, or of spellings within a language.
Is there any substantive difference between these two possibilities? Which is the more appropriate description, and why? If we go with #2, does that mean I can escape charges of inconsistent spelling? After all, I'm consistently following the (perhaps disjunctive) requirements of my language: I always spell the word as either 'realize' or 'realise', and not any other way. So at least I'm not changing linguistic rules mid-sentence. Does that count for much?
Is there any substantive difference between these two possibilities? Which is the more appropriate description, and why? If we go with #2, does that mean I can escape charges of inconsistent spelling? After all, I'm consistently following the (perhaps disjunctive) requirements of my language: I always spell the word as either 'realize' or 'realise', and not any other way. So at least I'm not changing linguistic rules mid-sentence. Does that count for much?
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Exploring Proceduralism
Procedural Liberalism can be clarified by exploring various objections that critics might raise. First, a political process may be inherently unjust, due to the disenfranchisement – whether de jure or de facto – of dissenting groups. Excluded minorities are surely not required to respect the laws that result from such a process. But procedural liberals can agree with this. The procedural liberal’s first priority is to establish and uphold just processes – and they may support radical action to this end, as explained here.
A more serious objection begins from the observation that just procedures may yield horrifically unjust results. Sectarian majorities may democratically decide to engage in genocide, slaughtering a minority group with popular support, and paying no heed to the occasional outraged cries of dissent. Critics may ask: “Is crying really all that a procedural liberal would do in such a situation?” I suggest not. Democratic formalities are insufficient to guarantee a just political system. Procedural justice instead arises from the interaction of political institutions and political agents. Citizens must exemplify civic virtue through their commitment to political cooperation, i.e. deliberating with their fellow citizens in good faith, towards the common good. To unilaterally abandon cooperative politics is – no matter one’s first-order ends – to commit a meta-political (or procedural) injustice. Indeed, such aggressive civic disrespect amounts to an act of civil war. I consider this the strongest argument against vigilantism. But it is worth noting that this also applies to sectarian governments that act entirely within the “law”. A democratic majority might decide to wage war against a disrespected minority. This is unjust as a matter of form, and so may be opposed without constraint by procedural liberals, who may act to restore a just system where civic respect reigns supreme.
Not all gross injustices are assured to take this form, however. Some will be found in the private sphere, and hence outside the scope of civic respect. For example, if – after due consideration of dissenting views – a democratic majority legally decrees that every first-born child will be tortured and sacrificed to appease the gods, this involves no civic disrespect. This is because young children are not public actors or ‘citizens’ as I use the term here. They lack political agency, so cannot be civilly disrespected. But the moral circle is broader than the political circle. We certainly owe children moral respect, and torture surely violates this if anything does! This example highlights that civic respect is but one value among many, and hence may be subject to trade-offs. Whilst the procedural liberal insists on giving it lexical priority, critics may use extreme examples – such as the above – to undermine such civic absolutism.
It seems to me that there are two lines of response open to the procedural liberal. One is to simply bite the bullet, and insist that coercive interference can never be justified in response to purely first-order atrocities. Instead, opposition must be directed through legitimate channels only (including civil disobedience, properly defined), for as long as these remain available. Here the procedural liberal might reiterate my earlier arguments, pointing out that although isolated acts of political vigilantism may seem desirable, in reality acts never occur in isolation. As a general rule, the coercive imposition of first-order morals by private actors will plausibly be misguided more often than not. An holistic conception of rationality – concerned with global rather than local optimality – may then commit us to a blanket ban on such interference.
Alternatively, one might build further restrictions into the account of procedural justice, e.g. requiring that political action be based on “public reasons” whose legitimacy could be appreciated by any reasonable agent. This would prevent citizens from legislating religious dogmas, for instance, precluding the human sacrifice scenario. But such a restriction would arguably rob procedural liberalism of its first-order neutrality,* thus providing the devoutly religious with an excuse to oppose it. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong – or so normative realists would claim. But if we instead hold that norms are grounded pragmatically, then the above point may suggest that we have more reason to endorse my broader conception of procedural liberalism after all. We could reasonably hope for it to attain broader support, and – despite the (remote) risk of civic respect obtaining without its moral counterpart – this result would almost certainly be a good thing.
~~~
P.S. The asterisked point is disputable -– for example, one might argue that civic respect requires not just deliberating with one’s fellow citizens in good faith, but substantively engaging with them in a manner that involves the giving of reasons that they can appreciate (i.e. public reasons). In other words, one might reasonably hold that the exercise of political power over another requires being able to justify it to that person. What do you reckon?
A more serious objection begins from the observation that just procedures may yield horrifically unjust results. Sectarian majorities may democratically decide to engage in genocide, slaughtering a minority group with popular support, and paying no heed to the occasional outraged cries of dissent. Critics may ask: “Is crying really all that a procedural liberal would do in such a situation?” I suggest not. Democratic formalities are insufficient to guarantee a just political system. Procedural justice instead arises from the interaction of political institutions and political agents. Citizens must exemplify civic virtue through their commitment to political cooperation, i.e. deliberating with their fellow citizens in good faith, towards the common good. To unilaterally abandon cooperative politics is – no matter one’s first-order ends – to commit a meta-political (or procedural) injustice. Indeed, such aggressive civic disrespect amounts to an act of civil war. I consider this the strongest argument against vigilantism. But it is worth noting that this also applies to sectarian governments that act entirely within the “law”. A democratic majority might decide to wage war against a disrespected minority. This is unjust as a matter of form, and so may be opposed without constraint by procedural liberals, who may act to restore a just system where civic respect reigns supreme.
Not all gross injustices are assured to take this form, however. Some will be found in the private sphere, and hence outside the scope of civic respect. For example, if – after due consideration of dissenting views – a democratic majority legally decrees that every first-born child will be tortured and sacrificed to appease the gods, this involves no civic disrespect. This is because young children are not public actors or ‘citizens’ as I use the term here. They lack political agency, so cannot be civilly disrespected. But the moral circle is broader than the political circle. We certainly owe children moral respect, and torture surely violates this if anything does! This example highlights that civic respect is but one value among many, and hence may be subject to trade-offs. Whilst the procedural liberal insists on giving it lexical priority, critics may use extreme examples – such as the above – to undermine such civic absolutism.
It seems to me that there are two lines of response open to the procedural liberal. One is to simply bite the bullet, and insist that coercive interference can never be justified in response to purely first-order atrocities. Instead, opposition must be directed through legitimate channels only (including civil disobedience, properly defined), for as long as these remain available. Here the procedural liberal might reiterate my earlier arguments, pointing out that although isolated acts of political vigilantism may seem desirable, in reality acts never occur in isolation. As a general rule, the coercive imposition of first-order morals by private actors will plausibly be misguided more often than not. An holistic conception of rationality – concerned with global rather than local optimality – may then commit us to a blanket ban on such interference.
Alternatively, one might build further restrictions into the account of procedural justice, e.g. requiring that political action be based on “public reasons” whose legitimacy could be appreciated by any reasonable agent. This would prevent citizens from legislating religious dogmas, for instance, precluding the human sacrifice scenario. But such a restriction would arguably rob procedural liberalism of its first-order neutrality,* thus providing the devoutly religious with an excuse to oppose it. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong – or so normative realists would claim. But if we instead hold that norms are grounded pragmatically, then the above point may suggest that we have more reason to endorse my broader conception of procedural liberalism after all. We could reasonably hope for it to attain broader support, and – despite the (remote) risk of civic respect obtaining without its moral counterpart – this result would almost certainly be a good thing.
~~~
P.S. The asterisked point is disputable -– for example, one might argue that civic respect requires not just deliberating with one’s fellow citizens in good faith, but substantively engaging with them in a manner that involves the giving of reasons that they can appreciate (i.e. public reasons). In other words, one might reasonably hold that the exercise of political power over another requires being able to justify it to that person. What do you reckon?
Universal Vigilantism
A key motivation behind procedural liberalism is that society would descend into anarchy if everyone flouted the law whenever they disagreed with it. We generally want others to respect the rule of law, no matter whether they personally agree with the particular laws in question. We wish to condemn religious extremists who bomb abortion clinics, no matter their righteous motives. So it would be hypocritical to make an exception only for ourselves, or the causes we happen to believe in. As stated, this criticism is overly crude, and leaves open an easy answer for the radical: they do not claim moral permission to break whatever laws they like. Rather, they think we should oppose unjust laws – a perfectly universalizable claim – and they implement this general principle as best they can, in relation to the particular laws they believe to be unjust.
We may grant the radical the desirability of universal perfect compliance with the rule ‘flout all and only unjust laws’. But it is not realistic to think that humble mortals are capable of following this rule perfectly. As has long been recognized in relation to naïve utilitarianism, the direct and deliberate pursuit of such a difficult goal is likely to backfire terribly. So we need to take human error into account when assessing moral guidelines, and hence specify them in terms of the decision-procedure that one is to attempt to follow, without presupposing perfect success. I suggest that when we do this, radicalism is no longer universalizable. At least, the decision-procedure ‘flout all and only laws that you consider to be unjust’ is plainly indefensible, since it would serve to legitimize “righteous” terrorism such as abortion clinic bombings. We cannot universalize a decision procedure that would allow one to act coercively whenever they believe it would do the most good. So we cannot rationally act in such a way ourselves; we must first subject our proposals to the same tests that we would reasonably demand of others. This raises the question: can radicals base their decisions on a more reliable procedure?
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Learning, Testing, Living
Peter Levine has a very interesting post on opportunities and outcomes in education, arguing that we should focus more on the former. I'm inclined to agree -- at least, if "opportunity" here is being used as a proxy for "unmeasured outcomes"; I see no reason to care intrinsically about merely offering opportunities in schools, regardless of whether anyone ends up taking them! But I certainly have doubts about the extent to which "assessments" really measure what's important in schooling.
In the worst case, some tests might merely measure one's rote learning skills. Even the more illuminating ones are, in a sense, ultimately just measures of how good you are at tests. (I'm reminded of the scientific definition of IQ: "what IQ tests measure"!) This correlates with various other skills that we're more interested in, of course, but the gap is worth bearing in mind. In any case, the most obvious -- and serious -- problem with all this is the risk of what we might call "assessment fetishism", i.e. caring more about the superficial measurement than the underlying value it's meant to be measuring. Hence we have students who care for nothing in a course besides their grades, and institutions that cater to this demand by "teaching to the test". Education is replaced by accreditation. But hey, so long as it allows employers to sift out the top x% of the workforce, who really cares, right?
Hmm.
Perhaps it's hopelessly idealistic, but I find something awfully appealing about the idea of unassessed education. (There's always blogging, I guess!) It's much more fun that way -- so much so that I have no trouble at all in motivating myself to pursue unassessed learning. I guess assessments do force me to do more concentrated and rigorous work than I otherwise might. But they are a bother. I'd much rather just write blog posts and discuss readings in tutorials all day! (Would it hurt my education? I'm not convinced.)
I've heard rumours that not everyone shares this love of learning. But that can't be natural. Ideally, introducing philosophy to kids before they lose their natural inquisitiveness (and by "lose" I mean "have beaten out of them by bad teachers and tedious curricula") would instantly fix that. Or, if my optimism is misguided and some people are just naturally incurious, perhaps we need to make an earlier split between training and educating institutes. Regardless, I guess the thing to do is increase school choice (via vouchers, basic income, etc.), and trust that parents will eventually find the kind of institution that best suits their child.
Levine concludes:
I'm especially impressed by that final point. So many students just seem... adrift. They don't seem to have reflected much on their core values, or what they want from life. They just float wherever the current takes them. It seems such a shame. We should -- and a philosophical education would -- do more to prepare young people for the toughest question they'll ever run away from: how to live?
[Aside: being "prone to arrest" sounds like an odd disposition. Is this euphemistic for being prone to criminal activity ("justice impaired"?), or am I missing something?]
Oh, another thing: I really liked Levine's second point (go read it) about the sheer negativity of typical outcomes-based approaches. The message is always "don't screw up!". But so long as you don't do badly, no one really cares about your actually doing well -- which makes the educational system long on psychological sticks, and short on carrots ("relief" doesn't count!). Not a pleasant arrangement. And viewing adolescents primarily in negative terms, as "bundles of problems instead of assets" (as Levine puts it), seems a pretty sure way to screw up their self-conception and impede their flourishing.
Say, that reminds me of the greatest essay ever written:
Read the whole thing.
In the worst case, some tests might merely measure one's rote learning skills. Even the more illuminating ones are, in a sense, ultimately just measures of how good you are at tests. (I'm reminded of the scientific definition of IQ: "what IQ tests measure"!) This correlates with various other skills that we're more interested in, of course, but the gap is worth bearing in mind. In any case, the most obvious -- and serious -- problem with all this is the risk of what we might call "assessment fetishism", i.e. caring more about the superficial measurement than the underlying value it's meant to be measuring. Hence we have students who care for nothing in a course besides their grades, and institutions that cater to this demand by "teaching to the test". Education is replaced by accreditation. But hey, so long as it allows employers to sift out the top x% of the workforce, who really cares, right?
Hmm.
Perhaps it's hopelessly idealistic, but I find something awfully appealing about the idea of unassessed education. (There's always blogging, I guess!) It's much more fun that way -- so much so that I have no trouble at all in motivating myself to pursue unassessed learning. I guess assessments do force me to do more concentrated and rigorous work than I otherwise might. But they are a bother. I'd much rather just write blog posts and discuss readings in tutorials all day! (Would it hurt my education? I'm not convinced.)
I've heard rumours that not everyone shares this love of learning. But that can't be natural. Ideally, introducing philosophy to kids before they lose their natural inquisitiveness (and by "lose" I mean "have beaten out of them by bad teachers and tedious curricula") would instantly fix that. Or, if my optimism is misguided and some people are just naturally incurious, perhaps we need to make an earlier split between training and educating institutes. Regardless, I guess the thing to do is increase school choice (via vouchers, basic income, etc.), and trust that parents will eventually find the kind of institution that best suits their child.
Levine concludes:
The other side of the argument is that some of our children cannot read or understand basic math. They are at great risk of failure in life. They will be unable to participate as citizens or create works of art if they are poor and sick and prone to arrest--all of which are consequences of illiteracy. Our urgent priority must be to identify them, help them, and punish those adults who "leave them behind."
Well, maybe. But that strategy is no use if kids hate school and drop out, or if kids pass our reading exams but cannot use written texts for practical purposes, or if kids make it through school but don't know what to do with their lives.
I'm especially impressed by that final point. So many students just seem... adrift. They don't seem to have reflected much on their core values, or what they want from life. They just float wherever the current takes them. It seems such a shame. We should -- and a philosophical education would -- do more to prepare young people for the toughest question they'll ever run away from: how to live?
[Aside: being "prone to arrest" sounds like an odd disposition. Is this euphemistic for being prone to criminal activity ("justice impaired"?), or am I missing something?]
Oh, another thing: I really liked Levine's second point (go read it) about the sheer negativity of typical outcomes-based approaches. The message is always "don't screw up!". But so long as you don't do badly, no one really cares about your actually doing well -- which makes the educational system long on psychological sticks, and short on carrots ("relief" doesn't count!). Not a pleasant arrangement. And viewing adolescents primarily in negative terms, as "bundles of problems instead of assets" (as Levine puts it), seems a pretty sure way to screw up their self-conception and impede their flourishing.
Say, that reminds me of the greatest essay ever written:
I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have been cheerful and eager. They got in fights and played tricks on one another of course (Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully), but they weren't crazy.
As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don't think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they're made to lead... we never had anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the time...
Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society... Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend...
If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.
Read the whole thing.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Free Speech
[By Alex Gregory]
Ok, I should probably step off of Richard's blog now, so I'd like to thank him for letting me post here for last couple of weeks. For this last post, I just wanted to make a brief point on free speech.
I often hear various (not all!) left-wing people attack free speech these days. They often make the point that speech is an act like any other, and, like any other act, can have negative consequences. Shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre seems unacceptable given the injury, or even death, that it might lead to. Likewise, they say, racist, sexist, or other bigoted speech should similarly be supressed. (witness that cartoon controversy).
But I suspect that these same people would be the first to object to the same reasoning when used in the other direction. Over at (the sometimes amusing, sometimes silly) minimum security, Stephanie has a cartoon suggesting that it's terrible that the American government is charging someone because they've made statements that support Al-Qaeda.
Perhaps she's right, I know nothing of the details of this case. But anyone arguing against free speech must really take care to remember that those choosing which speech to supress won't do it perfectly. The choice isn't between free speech and perfectly regulated speech. It's between free speech and imperfectly regulated speech. The latter, especially when those in power are the one's doing the supressing, looks far worse to me.
It might be true that some speech should be regulated in an ideal world, but nonetheless, I don't believe we should trust anyone, including ourselves, with the task of choosing which speech to prohibit.
Ok, I should probably step off of Richard's blog now, so I'd like to thank him for letting me post here for last couple of weeks. For this last post, I just wanted to make a brief point on free speech.
I often hear various (not all!) left-wing people attack free speech these days. They often make the point that speech is an act like any other, and, like any other act, can have negative consequences. Shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre seems unacceptable given the injury, or even death, that it might lead to. Likewise, they say, racist, sexist, or other bigoted speech should similarly be supressed. (witness that cartoon controversy).
But I suspect that these same people would be the first to object to the same reasoning when used in the other direction. Over at (the sometimes amusing, sometimes silly) minimum security, Stephanie has a cartoon suggesting that it's terrible that the American government is charging someone because they've made statements that support Al-Qaeda.
Perhaps she's right, I know nothing of the details of this case. But anyone arguing against free speech must really take care to remember that those choosing which speech to supress won't do it perfectly. The choice isn't between free speech and perfectly regulated speech. It's between free speech and imperfectly regulated speech. The latter, especially when those in power are the one's doing the supressing, looks far worse to me.
It might be true that some speech should be regulated in an ideal world, but nonetheless, I don't believe we should trust anyone, including ourselves, with the task of choosing which speech to prohibit.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Civil Disobedience
I will understand civil disobedience to be non-violent lawbreaking that is conducted publicly in symbolic protest of perceived injustice. It is “public” in two important senses, captured in Martin Luther King’s claim:
First, civil disobedience is public in the sense that the protestors do not hide their identity, and instead accept full responsibility – including any criminal punishment that may be forthcoming – for their lawbreaking. Second, it is intended as a form of communication with one’s fellow citizens, in contrast to vigilantism that seeks to coercively impose one’s desired objectives. Civil disobedience is thus primarily symbolic rather than instrumental. As Rawls explains, “it may be understood as addressing the sense of justice of the majority in order to urge reconsideration of the measures protested and to warn that, in the sincere opinion of the dissenters, the conditions of social cooperation are not being honored.” This means that civil disobedience should be directed at public actors (including the citizenry in general) – the harassment of private actors is more akin to coercive direct action.
These conditions help to protect against the two risks identified in the previous section. The symbolic and non-coercive nature of civil disobedience is consistent with civic respect for one’s fellow citizens and the rule of law generally. The protestors – unlike vigilantes – are not trying to “take the law into their own hands”. Instead, they martyr themselves against the criminal justice system, without causing undue harm to others, in hopes of appealing to the conscience of their fellow citizens. Democratic sovereignty is retained, as political power remains with the majority. The latter are not coerced, but simply invited – with purely moral force – to consider the concerns of the protestors.
By accepting full punishment under the existing laws, the protestors then reinforce their commitment to the rule of law. As Wofford writes, paraphrasing Gandhi, “we so respect the law that when we think it is so unjust that in conscience we cannot obey, then [we say] we belong in jail until that law is changed.” The threat of punishment also serves as a disincentive against unconscientious violations of the law. Together with the humble and fundamentally co-operative goals of civil disobedience as identified above, this helps to protect such protest against abuse, ensuring that little harm is done even by those with deeply mistaken moral convictions.
One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
First, civil disobedience is public in the sense that the protestors do not hide their identity, and instead accept full responsibility – including any criminal punishment that may be forthcoming – for their lawbreaking. Second, it is intended as a form of communication with one’s fellow citizens, in contrast to vigilantism that seeks to coercively impose one’s desired objectives. Civil disobedience is thus primarily symbolic rather than instrumental. As Rawls explains, “it may be understood as addressing the sense of justice of the majority in order to urge reconsideration of the measures protested and to warn that, in the sincere opinion of the dissenters, the conditions of social cooperation are not being honored.” This means that civil disobedience should be directed at public actors (including the citizenry in general) – the harassment of private actors is more akin to coercive direct action.
These conditions help to protect against the two risks identified in the previous section. The symbolic and non-coercive nature of civil disobedience is consistent with civic respect for one’s fellow citizens and the rule of law generally. The protestors – unlike vigilantes – are not trying to “take the law into their own hands”. Instead, they martyr themselves against the criminal justice system, without causing undue harm to others, in hopes of appealing to the conscience of their fellow citizens. Democratic sovereignty is retained, as political power remains with the majority. The latter are not coerced, but simply invited – with purely moral force – to consider the concerns of the protestors.
By accepting full punishment under the existing laws, the protestors then reinforce their commitment to the rule of law. As Wofford writes, paraphrasing Gandhi, “we so respect the law that when we think it is so unjust that in conscience we cannot obey, then [we say] we belong in jail until that law is changed.” The threat of punishment also serves as a disincentive against unconscientious violations of the law. Together with the humble and fundamentally co-operative goals of civil disobedience as identified above, this helps to protect such protest against abuse, ensuring that little harm is done even by those with deeply mistaken moral convictions.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Vigilantism and Civic Respect
I earlier distinguished two approaches to politics, which I ascribed to ‘dogmatists’ and ‘fallibilists’, respectively. But the essential difference between them lies not in their epistemic assumptions, but – more importantly – their civic attitudes. The question that divides them is whether politics is a fundamentally combative or cooperative endeavour. I think it is the latter conception that we ought to adopt. Civic virtue requires that we approach the political arena with a commitment to deliberate with our fellow citizens in good faith. The democratic process establishes the rules by which citizens cooperate to reach political decisions. Hence, the vigilante who violates this process is effectively engaging in a unilateral act of civil war against his fellow citizens. By "taking the law into his own hands", the vigilante assumes that he alone has the moral clarity to "see justice done". Instead of engaging with his fellow citizens, he dismisses them. They are seen as mere obstacles to justice: if he cannot convince them, he will coerce them. The vigilante’s attitude is thus seen to be fundamentally disrespectful towards his fellow citizens, denying them moral autonomy or political agency.
There may be rare occasions when such disrespect is warranted, however. For what are we to do when faced with a dogmatic sectarian majority that seeks to oppress minority citizens? In such a case, the majority has already forsaken civic cooperation. To preserve the value of respect, we must disrespect those who would betray this meta-political value. Hence, civic virtue and respect for humanity should arguably lead us to defend subgroups of our fellow citizens – by whatever means necessary – against those who would aggress against them. If a tyrannical majority has seized control of the democratic process, abusing it for nefarious purposes, then radical action may be legitimated in response. But it’s worth noting that this is not merely a first-order problem: rather, it is the political process itself which needs repair. If there is no hope of engaging the majority in reasoned discussion, then democratic procedures will no longer be responsive to reasons, and hence will fail to qualify as just procedures at all. So this concession to radicalism is consistent with procedural liberalism, understood as the prioritization of process over first-order substance.
Importantly, I hold that civic disrespect is not warranted simply in virtue of first-order political disagreements, no matter their importance. One might consider abortion to be a ‘genocide of the unborn’, or animal experimentation a form of ‘slavery’, and hence consider their defenders to be about as morally misguided as anyone could possibly be. Nevertheless, I suggest, civic virtue requires us to restrain these deeply held beliefs and concomitant attitudes. When engaging politically in the public sphere, we must self-identify as citizens first and foremost. Our commitment to civil society must trump all else. There is a sense in which we must be capable of bracketing our first-order concerns, to become an abstract citizen on a par with all others. This humble self-conception will guide our political action towards principles of cooperative reciprocity. We are led to treat our political opponents the way we would wish them to treat us. So when we believe them to be mistaken – even horrendously mistaken – we must respond with good-faith attempts to convince them of this, for as long as we should retain any respect for them whatsoever. The coercive imposition of one’s moral views is not an option for the virtuous agent who would treat her fellow citizens with basic respect.
The crucial test for legitimate radicalism is thus whether one’s fellow citizens have forsaken good faith and civic virtue, effectively initiating civil war by precluding any hope of reasonable co-operation. If the political sphere becomes a battlefield, then radicalism is justified as the only available form of self-defence. We need not submit to the arbitrary coercion inherent in civilly disrespectful political decisions. That’s no part of any “social contract” that citizens (tacitly or hypothetically) commit themselves to. On the other hand, citizens arguably are committed to abiding by the conclusions of a reasonably co-operative political process. The project of politics as collective decision-making would be fatally undermined if participants could simply refuse to accept any outcome with which they strongly disagreed.
However, even generally well-meaning citizens might prove stubbornly unreasonable on particular issues. If civil war is not justified, then – I claim – neither is political vigilantism. Co-operation is still possible, so citizens ought not to undermine the social fabric through civilly disrespectful direct action. But then what can be done about those particular injustices to which society remains willfully blind? The ideal political system would incorporate a “failsafe” – some means of shocking the populace out of stubborn complacency when all the usual (read: legal) routes fail. Such a proposal faces two major challenges: to protect it against abuse from misguided vigilantes, and to reconcile it with fidelity to the rule of law. In the next section, I will argue that civil disobedience, properly understood, can meet both challenges.
There may be rare occasions when such disrespect is warranted, however. For what are we to do when faced with a dogmatic sectarian majority that seeks to oppress minority citizens? In such a case, the majority has already forsaken civic cooperation. To preserve the value of respect, we must disrespect those who would betray this meta-political value. Hence, civic virtue and respect for humanity should arguably lead us to defend subgroups of our fellow citizens – by whatever means necessary – against those who would aggress against them. If a tyrannical majority has seized control of the democratic process, abusing it for nefarious purposes, then radical action may be legitimated in response. But it’s worth noting that this is not merely a first-order problem: rather, it is the political process itself which needs repair. If there is no hope of engaging the majority in reasoned discussion, then democratic procedures will no longer be responsive to reasons, and hence will fail to qualify as just procedures at all. So this concession to radicalism is consistent with procedural liberalism, understood as the prioritization of process over first-order substance.
Importantly, I hold that civic disrespect is not warranted simply in virtue of first-order political disagreements, no matter their importance. One might consider abortion to be a ‘genocide of the unborn’, or animal experimentation a form of ‘slavery’, and hence consider their defenders to be about as morally misguided as anyone could possibly be. Nevertheless, I suggest, civic virtue requires us to restrain these deeply held beliefs and concomitant attitudes. When engaging politically in the public sphere, we must self-identify as citizens first and foremost. Our commitment to civil society must trump all else. There is a sense in which we must be capable of bracketing our first-order concerns, to become an abstract citizen on a par with all others. This humble self-conception will guide our political action towards principles of cooperative reciprocity. We are led to treat our political opponents the way we would wish them to treat us. So when we believe them to be mistaken – even horrendously mistaken – we must respond with good-faith attempts to convince them of this, for as long as we should retain any respect for them whatsoever. The coercive imposition of one’s moral views is not an option for the virtuous agent who would treat her fellow citizens with basic respect.
The crucial test for legitimate radicalism is thus whether one’s fellow citizens have forsaken good faith and civic virtue, effectively initiating civil war by precluding any hope of reasonable co-operation. If the political sphere becomes a battlefield, then radicalism is justified as the only available form of self-defence. We need not submit to the arbitrary coercion inherent in civilly disrespectful political decisions. That’s no part of any “social contract” that citizens (tacitly or hypothetically) commit themselves to. On the other hand, citizens arguably are committed to abiding by the conclusions of a reasonably co-operative political process. The project of politics as collective decision-making would be fatally undermined if participants could simply refuse to accept any outcome with which they strongly disagreed.
However, even generally well-meaning citizens might prove stubbornly unreasonable on particular issues. If civil war is not justified, then – I claim – neither is political vigilantism. Co-operation is still possible, so citizens ought not to undermine the social fabric through civilly disrespectful direct action. But then what can be done about those particular injustices to which society remains willfully blind? The ideal political system would incorporate a “failsafe” – some means of shocking the populace out of stubborn complacency when all the usual (read: legal) routes fail. Such a proposal faces two major challenges: to protect it against abuse from misguided vigilantes, and to reconcile it with fidelity to the rule of law. In the next section, I will argue that civil disobedience, properly understood, can meet both challenges.
Procedural Liberalism
Violent activism and “direct action”, even if illegal, may appear to be justified in the fight against grave injustices. I wish to argue, on the contrary, that such political vigilantism is generally not justified in a liberal-democratic society. This view derives from procedural liberalism, according to which the metapolitical level of due process has primacy over one’s first-order, substantive political ends.* As citizens, our first loyalty must be to upholding the liberal-democratic institutional order. Consequently, if one is in a sufficiently just and responsive democratic system then one is obliged to work within this system, rather than undermining it through radical action for the purpose of coercively implementing one’s first-order objectives – no matter how important they may seem.
Our pluralistic society is home to various conflicting conceptions of the good. This raises the problem: “How is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?” [Rawls, PL] In order to render the competing theories compatible in practice, we must place strict limits on their public influence. In particular, we must together construct a neutral political sphere, in which these disagreements can be played out peacefully through processes that secure the allegiance of all. A tolerant social contract is of course instrumentally rational for the less powerful groups, who might otherwise be crushed in an all-out battle for dominion. But what shall we say of the powerful? If they could impose their will successfully, to achieve what they believe to be good, why should they refrain? On the assumption that your moral views are correct, why tolerate pluralism at all? Isn’t this effectively to tolerate immorality?
These are hoary old questions. Locke pointed out that coercion cannot reach one’s innermost convictions, so attempts to purify souls or eliminate thought-crime would be in vain. Still, many moral doctrines remain that are concerned with outward behaviour and this-worldly consequences. Here we might better adopt a Millian theme, and defend a pluralism of ideas and experiments of living as the most reliable route to truth and value available to such fallible creatures as ourselves. Of course, one cannot tolerate absolutely everything, or society would soon fall apart. But the preconditions for civil society – including laws against unprovoked violence, and so forth – should prove agreeable to every reasonable political agent, no matter their personal moral views. Even if we disagree about how best to live, still there should be a broad consensus on the minimalistic question of how to live together, i.e. what must be done in order to construct a viable society. Further, we may hope to secure consensus on how to deal with persisting disagreements in a fair and legitimate way – say through a liberal-democratic process that includes public deliberation and the free exchange of reasons.
At this point we may identify two contrasting political ideals. The dogmatist approaches the political arena with pre-defined objectives, and aims simply to see these implemented. On this view, the public sphere is a battleground, and political opponents are the enemy. Their objections are seen as obstacles to be overcome; dissent is to be quashed. The fallibilist, by contrast, approaches the political arena with a more open mind. She may have firm opinions, but she is committed to the possibility of revising them in face of recalcitrant evidence. On this view, public debate is a collaborative endeavour, in which citizens work together towards the common goal of discerning and implementing the common good. Objections and disagreements offered in good faith are to be welcomed as potential learning opportunities in the disinterested pursuit of truth. Again, even fallibilists might well expect others’ objections to be misguided, but the crucial point is that they allow for the contrary possibility, and so are committed to the invitation and fair assessment of opposing reasons – and hence to the possibility of changing their mind.
Fallibilism strikes me as by far the more attractive position of the two. The respect it affords to one’s fellow citizens seems especially admirable. It is also the more epistemically responsible, since we are rarely if ever justified in holding beliefs with absolute certainty. Importantly, upon recognizing our own fallibility, we are arguably obliged to continue moral inquiry and the challenging of our existing views – for it would be most irresponsible to coercively impose our views on others without first taking due care to ensure that we were not mistaken. We should thus seek to establish institutions for guiding political action, which can be recognized in the abstract – without presupposing any particular first-order views – as following reliable procedures for inquiry. The instituted process should, for instance, be responsive to reasons and as unbiased as possible. Given the deeply non-ideal nature of actual reality, it may be that democratic deliberation is the best available option. Without delving into any empirical details, I will simply assume that the admittedly sub-optimal procedures of Western liberal-democratic societies come close enough for our purposes.
This assumption is contestable, so let me offer a brief sketch of what to say if it turns out to be false – i.e. if our current political system is thoroughly corrupted and unreliable (as is plausibly the case for many countries in the developing world). In this case, I suggest that a citizen’s first priority must be the institution of an adequate political process. This may require, and hence justify, full-scale revolution. Procedural liberals should support this, so long as the revolution isn’t used to push in substantive first-order policies by radical (extra-procedural) means. Just institutions must be established first, and then any first-order proposals channeled through them. [If circumstances render this ideal impractical, say during a chaotic transition period, it could be approximated by imposing radical edicts of merely temporary duration that would be subject to procedural oversight and revision at the first available opportunity.]
I should emphasize that the concern here isn’t with legality per se. If a tyrant has the power to pass any laws they want, unbounded by procedural “checks and balances”, this still counts as ‘radicalism’ – in opposition to ‘liberalism’ – as I am using the terms. Also, note that democratic formalities may prove insufficient for procedural justice, if dissent is silenced in practice. Again, procedural liberals could consistently support the replacement of unjust procedures, even by force if necessary. So, assuming they succeed in setting up a legitimate system, we can now return to the question of whether it’s ever justifiable to violate it.
[To be continued...]
* = I mean this definition to be stipulative. Note that this is independent of the question whether justice is purely procedural or partly substantive. One might – and arguably should – agree that just procedures (e.g. fair criminal trials) can occasionally yield unjust results, yet prioritize the former nonetheless.
Our pluralistic society is home to various conflicting conceptions of the good. This raises the problem: “How is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?” [Rawls, PL] In order to render the competing theories compatible in practice, we must place strict limits on their public influence. In particular, we must together construct a neutral political sphere, in which these disagreements can be played out peacefully through processes that secure the allegiance of all. A tolerant social contract is of course instrumentally rational for the less powerful groups, who might otherwise be crushed in an all-out battle for dominion. But what shall we say of the powerful? If they could impose their will successfully, to achieve what they believe to be good, why should they refrain? On the assumption that your moral views are correct, why tolerate pluralism at all? Isn’t this effectively to tolerate immorality?
These are hoary old questions. Locke pointed out that coercion cannot reach one’s innermost convictions, so attempts to purify souls or eliminate thought-crime would be in vain. Still, many moral doctrines remain that are concerned with outward behaviour and this-worldly consequences. Here we might better adopt a Millian theme, and defend a pluralism of ideas and experiments of living as the most reliable route to truth and value available to such fallible creatures as ourselves. Of course, one cannot tolerate absolutely everything, or society would soon fall apart. But the preconditions for civil society – including laws against unprovoked violence, and so forth – should prove agreeable to every reasonable political agent, no matter their personal moral views. Even if we disagree about how best to live, still there should be a broad consensus on the minimalistic question of how to live together, i.e. what must be done in order to construct a viable society. Further, we may hope to secure consensus on how to deal with persisting disagreements in a fair and legitimate way – say through a liberal-democratic process that includes public deliberation and the free exchange of reasons.
At this point we may identify two contrasting political ideals. The dogmatist approaches the political arena with pre-defined objectives, and aims simply to see these implemented. On this view, the public sphere is a battleground, and political opponents are the enemy. Their objections are seen as obstacles to be overcome; dissent is to be quashed. The fallibilist, by contrast, approaches the political arena with a more open mind. She may have firm opinions, but she is committed to the possibility of revising them in face of recalcitrant evidence. On this view, public debate is a collaborative endeavour, in which citizens work together towards the common goal of discerning and implementing the common good. Objections and disagreements offered in good faith are to be welcomed as potential learning opportunities in the disinterested pursuit of truth. Again, even fallibilists might well expect others’ objections to be misguided, but the crucial point is that they allow for the contrary possibility, and so are committed to the invitation and fair assessment of opposing reasons – and hence to the possibility of changing their mind.
Fallibilism strikes me as by far the more attractive position of the two. The respect it affords to one’s fellow citizens seems especially admirable. It is also the more epistemically responsible, since we are rarely if ever justified in holding beliefs with absolute certainty. Importantly, upon recognizing our own fallibility, we are arguably obliged to continue moral inquiry and the challenging of our existing views – for it would be most irresponsible to coercively impose our views on others without first taking due care to ensure that we were not mistaken. We should thus seek to establish institutions for guiding political action, which can be recognized in the abstract – without presupposing any particular first-order views – as following reliable procedures for inquiry. The instituted process should, for instance, be responsive to reasons and as unbiased as possible. Given the deeply non-ideal nature of actual reality, it may be that democratic deliberation is the best available option. Without delving into any empirical details, I will simply assume that the admittedly sub-optimal procedures of Western liberal-democratic societies come close enough for our purposes.
This assumption is contestable, so let me offer a brief sketch of what to say if it turns out to be false – i.e. if our current political system is thoroughly corrupted and unreliable (as is plausibly the case for many countries in the developing world). In this case, I suggest that a citizen’s first priority must be the institution of an adequate political process. This may require, and hence justify, full-scale revolution. Procedural liberals should support this, so long as the revolution isn’t used to push in substantive first-order policies by radical (extra-procedural) means. Just institutions must be established first, and then any first-order proposals channeled through them. [If circumstances render this ideal impractical, say during a chaotic transition period, it could be approximated by imposing radical edicts of merely temporary duration that would be subject to procedural oversight and revision at the first available opportunity.]
I should emphasize that the concern here isn’t with legality per se. If a tyrant has the power to pass any laws they want, unbounded by procedural “checks and balances”, this still counts as ‘radicalism’ – in opposition to ‘liberalism’ – as I am using the terms. Also, note that democratic formalities may prove insufficient for procedural justice, if dissent is silenced in practice. Again, procedural liberals could consistently support the replacement of unjust procedures, even by force if necessary. So, assuming they succeed in setting up a legitimate system, we can now return to the question of whether it’s ever justifiable to violate it.
[To be continued...]
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Uncertain Obligations
My Epistemic Argument against Vigilantism assumes that if the vigilante is probably mistaken in thinking that X is immoral, then they shouldn't coercively interfere. Alex denied this, suggesting that if the stakes are high enough, even a low probability that X is morally outrageous could suffice to justify such coercion. Better safe than sorry, you might think. But I think this is a deeply misguided way of thinking.
First, note that this approach leads to absurd consequences. Suppose I'm 99% sure that abortion is perfectly permissible, or at least not as bad as genocide (as some pro-lifers claim). But I do think that preventing genocide is over 100 times as important as the right to abort. So should my 1% concession to the possibility that abortion might be atrocious therefore commit me to denying women the right to abort? (If blasphemy might be the ultimate sin, should we outlaw it just in case?) Surely not! What's atrocious is to force baseless (or probably mistaken) moral views on others.
There's something bizarre about trying to calculate the "expected value" of possible deontic outcomes. Despite the superficial similarity, it's not really like an expected utility calculation. Let us distinguish real probabilistic reasons from mere probabilities of real reasons. If Chaos Theorists determined that there was a 1% chance that U.S. abortions could cause a real genocide to occur on the other side of the world, then that might justify banning abortion. There is a real reason here that definitely exists, namely the unlikely chance to prevent genocide. But in the earlier ("abortion is genocide") case, it is unlikely that there is any real reason at all. (If abortion is permissible, as I assume is most likely, then there's nothing at all to be said for banning it.)
It's difficult to formalize the exact difference here (suggestions welcome!), but I hope you get the intuitive idea. "Expected utility" and "expected deonty" (for want of a better term) invoke two different moral 'levels'. EU is purely first-order, attempting to determine the one true answer to what we have most reason to do. ED is second-order, weighing up competing responses to the former question, by balancing the likelihood and putative force of merely possible reasons.
But here's the thing: we should do what we have most reason to do. That's all. There's no need to insure ourselves against merely possible reasons. They have no actual normative force. It doesn't matter how incredibly forceful a counterfactual reason is, it pulls no weight in the actual world.
Stronger still: no moral hedging is allowed. We must work with the reasons as we take them to be. Hence, the contribution of moral beliefs to practical reasoning is all or nothing. If I reasonably believe that abortion is permissible, then my moral reasoning will start from the unhedged premise that abortion is permissible. Not "99% likely to be permissible"; just "permissible", simpliciter. Beliefs may come in degrees, but reasons don't, and we base our decisions on the latter.
This shouldn't be confused with dogmatism. We should question our moral beliefs, of course. And as our credence falls, we should become more reluctant to use them as basic premises in our practical reasoning. We may come to doubt that there are real reasons there after all, and hence reject the premise entirely. Nevertheless, it is always a binary decision. We can reason from the assumption that abortion is permissible, or we can refrain from making that assumption. What we can't do is reason from the probability of its permissibility. This is because we must judge what actual reasons we think there are, and work from there. Rational agents cannot reason from what they take to be merely possible reasons.
Hence, if you judge that X is in fact permissible, you should give no weight at all in your practical reasoning to the possibility that X is the gravest evil in the universe. [But don't let English grammar mislead you, that 'should' needs to have wide scope!] Of course, it might influence your theoretical reasoning -- you should take extra care when judging X's permissibility -- you wouldn't want to get this one wrong! But given that I am reasonably sure (I mean, reasonable in being mostly sure) that X is permissible, the alternative possibilities provide me with no reasons whatsoever.
It's worth noting that this theoretical issue has important practical implications. It's not unusual for both pro-lifers and vegetarians to argue from uncertain obligations to actual ones. (That is, they argue from the seriousness of "getting it wrong", to the conclusion that a responsible moral agent will "play it safe" and oppose the killing of fetuses and/or animals.) But if I'm right here, then we should reject such arguments.
First, note that this approach leads to absurd consequences. Suppose I'm 99% sure that abortion is perfectly permissible, or at least not as bad as genocide (as some pro-lifers claim). But I do think that preventing genocide is over 100 times as important as the right to abort. So should my 1% concession to the possibility that abortion might be atrocious therefore commit me to denying women the right to abort? (If blasphemy might be the ultimate sin, should we outlaw it just in case?) Surely not! What's atrocious is to force baseless (or probably mistaken) moral views on others.
There's something bizarre about trying to calculate the "expected value" of possible deontic outcomes. Despite the superficial similarity, it's not really like an expected utility calculation. Let us distinguish real probabilistic reasons from mere probabilities of real reasons. If Chaos Theorists determined that there was a 1% chance that U.S. abortions could cause a real genocide to occur on the other side of the world, then that might justify banning abortion. There is a real reason here that definitely exists, namely the unlikely chance to prevent genocide. But in the earlier ("abortion is genocide") case, it is unlikely that there is any real reason at all. (If abortion is permissible, as I assume is most likely, then there's nothing at all to be said for banning it.)
It's difficult to formalize the exact difference here (suggestions welcome!), but I hope you get the intuitive idea. "Expected utility" and "expected deonty" (for want of a better term) invoke two different moral 'levels'. EU is purely first-order, attempting to determine the one true answer to what we have most reason to do. ED is second-order, weighing up competing responses to the former question, by balancing the likelihood and putative force of merely possible reasons.
But here's the thing: we should do what we have most reason to do. That's all. There's no need to insure ourselves against merely possible reasons. They have no actual normative force. It doesn't matter how incredibly forceful a counterfactual reason is, it pulls no weight in the actual world.
Stronger still: no moral hedging is allowed. We must work with the reasons as we take them to be. Hence, the contribution of moral beliefs to practical reasoning is all or nothing. If I reasonably believe that abortion is permissible, then my moral reasoning will start from the unhedged premise that abortion is permissible. Not "99% likely to be permissible"; just "permissible", simpliciter. Beliefs may come in degrees, but reasons don't, and we base our decisions on the latter.
This shouldn't be confused with dogmatism. We should question our moral beliefs, of course. And as our credence falls, we should become more reluctant to use them as basic premises in our practical reasoning. We may come to doubt that there are real reasons there after all, and hence reject the premise entirely. Nevertheless, it is always a binary decision. We can reason from the assumption that abortion is permissible, or we can refrain from making that assumption. What we can't do is reason from the probability of its permissibility. This is because we must judge what actual reasons we think there are, and work from there. Rational agents cannot reason from what they take to be merely possible reasons.
Hence, if you judge that X is in fact permissible, you should give no weight at all in your practical reasoning to the possibility that X is the gravest evil in the universe. [But don't let English grammar mislead you, that 'should' needs to have wide scope!] Of course, it might influence your theoretical reasoning -- you should take extra care when judging X's permissibility -- you wouldn't want to get this one wrong! But given that I am reasonably sure (I mean, reasonable in being mostly sure) that X is permissible, the alternative possibilities provide me with no reasons whatsoever.
It's worth noting that this theoretical issue has important practical implications. It's not unusual for both pro-lifers and vegetarians to argue from uncertain obligations to actual ones. (That is, they argue from the seriousness of "getting it wrong", to the conclusion that a responsible moral agent will "play it safe" and oppose the killing of fetuses and/or animals.) But if I'm right here, then we should reject such arguments.
Ethical Holism
I'm a holist about rationality. That is, I agree with Julian Nida-Rumelin that it would be "perfectly rational to refrain from point-wise optimization because you do not wish to live the life which would result." Rationality involves abstraction. In particular, the rational decision is one that you would endorse from a timeless perspective. The answer to what you should do at any given moment derives from the broader question of how you want your whole life to go. Now, I want to defend an analogous holism about ethics.
The essence of ethical holism, as I conceive of it, is that individual rights and duties derive from the broader facts about what is desirable for society as a whole. This holistic approach to ethics is exemplified by my "institutional" theory of rights. It extends beyond merely legal rights, however -- indirect utilitarianism may likewise lead us to promote various social norms or duties that cannot be legally enforced.
An interesting application of ethical holism is to the question of 'boycotting the needy'. Let us assume that the institutions of prostitution and sweatshops make the world a better (i.e. slightly less miserable) place. The desperate people employed there are better off than they would be if deprived of this option. But then ethical holism suggests the following principle deriving permissibility from good institutions:
(PGI): If an institution is desirable, then people do not have a general obligation to refrain from participating in (or otherwise supporting) it.
This seems a very plausible principle. There is something incoherent about the views of someone who grudgingly approves of the institution of prostitution (because it makes the women involved better off than they would otherwise be) and yet insists that it is morally impermissible for Johns to do business with them. You know, "he who wills the end, wills the means," and all that. If you support a general policy, you must allow people to implement it. Hence, to condemn the participants, you must first denounce the general policy. It is this broader level that the holist asks us to focus on.
The essence of ethical holism, as I conceive of it, is that individual rights and duties derive from the broader facts about what is desirable for society as a whole. This holistic approach to ethics is exemplified by my "institutional" theory of rights. It extends beyond merely legal rights, however -- indirect utilitarianism may likewise lead us to promote various social norms or duties that cannot be legally enforced.
An interesting application of ethical holism is to the question of 'boycotting the needy'. Let us assume that the institutions of prostitution and sweatshops make the world a better (i.e. slightly less miserable) place. The desperate people employed there are better off than they would be if deprived of this option. But then ethical holism suggests the following principle deriving permissibility from good institutions:
(PGI): If an institution is desirable, then people do not have a general obligation to refrain from participating in (or otherwise supporting) it.
This seems a very plausible principle. There is something incoherent about the views of someone who grudgingly approves of the institution of prostitution (because it makes the women involved better off than they would otherwise be) and yet insists that it is morally impermissible for Johns to do business with them. You know, "he who wills the end, wills the means," and all that. If you support a general policy, you must allow people to implement it. Hence, to condemn the participants, you must first denounce the general policy. It is this broader level that the holist asks us to focus on.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Occam's Razor
[By Alex Gregory]
I'm running with a kind of "philosophical methodology" theme on here so far, so I'll run with that for this post.
---
"entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
"the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better it is."
"preference for the least complex explanation for an observation"
There are various ways in which this ideally needs qualifying. First, we must balance up the theoretical virtue of simplicity against other theoretical virtues, such as predictive power. Are other virtues lexically prior to simplicity, or is simplicity more weighty than that? Second, we need some idea of what counts as simplicity. Often fewer entities entails more complex processes about how those remaining entities provide an explanation. How do we weigh the various facets of simplicity against one-another? Still, despite these problems, Occam's Razor is a popular tool, both in and out of philosophical discourse.
An incredibly dominant atheist suggestion is that it is up to theists to prove that God exists, in exactly the same way that it would be up to someone to prove that Santa Claus, or Fairies, existed, if they were to hold that belief. That is, the burden of proof is assumed to be on the theist. This seems to be the result of Occam's razor type considerations.
But I think this picture is misleading. The theist does not assert everthing the atheist does and more. They assert a whole picture that looks very different. The atheist (I simplify) is often thought to merely assert that natural facts exist, nothing more. In contrast to this, some take the theist to be asserting this picture, plus a God overseeing it all. But this is false, at least as far as my understanding of religion goes. Theists tend to believe that the natural facts are caused by, maintained by, and/or even constitute, God. In other words, I wonder if the natural facts are not something in addition to God for the theist. Both therefore assert the existence of one entity - for the atheist: the natural facts, and everything associated with them; for the theist: God, and everything associated with him.
If this picture is correct, there is no obvious sense in which Occam's razor supports atheism over theism. There is no burden of proof particuarly on the theist. Atheists must provide reasons to think that God doesn't exist just as much as theists must show that she does.
Of course, I think that there are other, very obvious, considerations which do such provide positive reason to think theism false. The problem of evil is an obvious choice, but also other things such as that most major religious texts contain statements that seem flat out false.
There's two reasons why I think this stuff is interesting. First, given the huge numbers of believers in the world, I find it hard to believe that Occam's razor provides such a knockdown refutation of theism as some people like to believe (maybe I'm relying on something related to Richard's epistemic principle here?). Second, I've often thought that the sceptic elsewhere (epistemology, ethics) is wrong to assert that the burden of proof is on the objectivist. I've recently realised that this is at odds with the view that the burden of proof is on the objectivist in the religious case.
I'm running with a kind of "philosophical methodology" theme on here so far, so I'll run with that for this post.
---
"entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
"the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better it is."
"preference for the least complex explanation for an observation"
There are various ways in which this ideally needs qualifying. First, we must balance up the theoretical virtue of simplicity against other theoretical virtues, such as predictive power. Are other virtues lexically prior to simplicity, or is simplicity more weighty than that? Second, we need some idea of what counts as simplicity. Often fewer entities entails more complex processes about how those remaining entities provide an explanation. How do we weigh the various facets of simplicity against one-another? Still, despite these problems, Occam's Razor is a popular tool, both in and out of philosophical discourse.
An incredibly dominant atheist suggestion is that it is up to theists to prove that God exists, in exactly the same way that it would be up to someone to prove that Santa Claus, or Fairies, existed, if they were to hold that belief. That is, the burden of proof is assumed to be on the theist. This seems to be the result of Occam's razor type considerations.
But I think this picture is misleading. The theist does not assert everthing the atheist does and more. They assert a whole picture that looks very different. The atheist (I simplify) is often thought to merely assert that natural facts exist, nothing more. In contrast to this, some take the theist to be asserting this picture, plus a God overseeing it all. But this is false, at least as far as my understanding of religion goes. Theists tend to believe that the natural facts are caused by, maintained by, and/or even constitute, God. In other words, I wonder if the natural facts are not something in addition to God for the theist. Both therefore assert the existence of one entity - for the atheist: the natural facts, and everything associated with them; for the theist: God, and everything associated with him.
If this picture is correct, there is no obvious sense in which Occam's razor supports atheism over theism. There is no burden of proof particuarly on the theist. Atheists must provide reasons to think that God doesn't exist just as much as theists must show that she does.
Of course, I think that there are other, very obvious, considerations which do such provide positive reason to think theism false. The problem of evil is an obvious choice, but also other things such as that most major religious texts contain statements that seem flat out false.
There's two reasons why I think this stuff is interesting. First, given the huge numbers of believers in the world, I find it hard to believe that Occam's razor provides such a knockdown refutation of theism as some people like to believe (maybe I'm relying on something related to Richard's epistemic principle here?). Second, I've often thought that the sceptic elsewhere (epistemology, ethics) is wrong to assert that the burden of proof is on the objectivist. I've recently realised that this is at odds with the view that the burden of proof is on the objectivist in the religious case.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Agents and Nations
Individual agents can't be trusted to refrain from harming others. That's why we need a state, police force, etc. But not just any old political authority will do. After all, those individuals won't suddenly become any more trustworthy once you grant them dictatorial powers. Quite the opposite! So we set up a constitutional democracy instead, with checks and balances, which limits the political power of individual agents. Now: how much of this story applies also to international relations? Are nations self-interested and untrustworthy "agents" the same way that individuals are? They sure behave like it!
It's a familiar enough analogy. We need international legal procedures for all the same reasons we need intra-national ones. And again, investing one agent (e.g. the U.S.) with dictatorial powers is no better an idea in the case of nations than it is for individuals. Unilateralism (read: vigilantism) is a recipe for disaster, as the history of western interventionism makes clear. We desperately need to establish just and effective international institutions instead. Everyone knows that the state of nature is a nightmare, so let's construct a social contract already.
Of course, not just any old system of "democratic" aggregation will do. A tyranny of the majority is no less tyrannical for that. And when multilateral decisions are based on the "bargaining" paradigm, existing inequalities in bargaining power will lead to bullying, exploitation, and unjust outcomes. We should instead aim for the ideal of the "deliberative" paradigm, in which agents reason together in pursuit of the common good. It may sound naively idealistic, but I don't think that's necessarily so. People tend to conform to norms that are considered appropriate in their social context, and that includes deliberative contexts where the norms require one's proposals to be backed by publicly justifiable reasons, rather than unprincipled appeals to special interests or the sheer assertion of one's preferences.
I think those norms are sadly quite weak at present, and one of the most important political challenges facing us today is to strengthen deliberative norms and the public sphere. There sure is plenty of room for improvement. But I do think progress here is possible, and -- if enough of us work at it -- may soon be actual. I look forward to the day when corrupt (i.e. biased, unreasonable, intellectually dishonest, or intentionally partial) political agents are treated like pedophiles, universally denounced, with common folk recoiling from their moral leprosy in disgust. Is this dream really so implausible?
It's worth noting: the corruption of our political leaders causes harm to more children than their [presumably counterfactual] pedophilia ever could. Just think how many lives would be saved if our political process was more impartial and rational. Think of the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the Bush Administration's bungling efforts. (It's probably millions once you factor in the opportunity costs.) Isn't that worth getting emotional about? Doesn't it show that we should care about political vices no less -- and arguably much more -- than private ones? (I don't mean to trivialize the horror of the latter, of course. Rather, I wish people would also appreciate the full horror of the former!) It would only require a glimpse of this for people's attitudes to change, for a "zero tolerance" anti-corruption political culture to develop. It could happen. I remain optimistic.
Back to the question of nations as agents. It's curious how many right-wingers are unapologetic unilateralists about foreign policy. Of course, some right-wingers are unapologetic authoritarians generally. But not all, so what of the others? For the principled libertarian or old-style conservative who trusts constitutional constraints more than an unbounded executive, why are they not so concerned about the very same executive exercising unbounded power on the international stage?
A legitimate reason here demands a disanalogy between individual and national agency. (I assume that a simple lack of concern for foreigners does not count as a legitimate basis for the differing conclusions!) But what could this be?
Perhaps democratic states are supposed to be inherently more trustworthy, because they already incorporate a vast range of perspectives, interests, and so forth, developed rationally through the deliberative norms described above. But foreign policy is not determined through democratic deliberation. Perhaps if it were then democratic states would be more reliably ethical agents. But as things stand, history surely shows that even the so-called "good guys" (Western governments) can't be trusted.
Perhaps the difference is not that an international social contract is less needed, but that it is less viable. The United Nations is certainly far from ideal. But surely it could be reformed in ways that make it less corrupt, more effective and responsive to reasons? Are there grounds for thinking that this cannot be done, or that the global level is essentially harder to govern than the national level? The greater diversity might be a problem, if it reduces the common ground that is essential for developing cooperation. But I wouldn't have thought it completely hopeless.
What else am I missing here?
It's a familiar enough analogy. We need international legal procedures for all the same reasons we need intra-national ones. And again, investing one agent (e.g. the U.S.) with dictatorial powers is no better an idea in the case of nations than it is for individuals. Unilateralism (read: vigilantism) is a recipe for disaster, as the history of western interventionism makes clear. We desperately need to establish just and effective international institutions instead. Everyone knows that the state of nature is a nightmare, so let's construct a social contract already.
Of course, not just any old system of "democratic" aggregation will do. A tyranny of the majority is no less tyrannical for that. And when multilateral decisions are based on the "bargaining" paradigm, existing inequalities in bargaining power will lead to bullying, exploitation, and unjust outcomes. We should instead aim for the ideal of the "deliberative" paradigm, in which agents reason together in pursuit of the common good. It may sound naively idealistic, but I don't think that's necessarily so. People tend to conform to norms that are considered appropriate in their social context, and that includes deliberative contexts where the norms require one's proposals to be backed by publicly justifiable reasons, rather than unprincipled appeals to special interests or the sheer assertion of one's preferences.
I think those norms are sadly quite weak at present, and one of the most important political challenges facing us today is to strengthen deliberative norms and the public sphere. There sure is plenty of room for improvement. But I do think progress here is possible, and -- if enough of us work at it -- may soon be actual. I look forward to the day when corrupt (i.e. biased, unreasonable, intellectually dishonest, or intentionally partial) political agents are treated like pedophiles, universally denounced, with common folk recoiling from their moral leprosy in disgust. Is this dream really so implausible?
It's worth noting: the corruption of our political leaders causes harm to more children than their [presumably counterfactual] pedophilia ever could. Just think how many lives would be saved if our political process was more impartial and rational. Think of the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the Bush Administration's bungling efforts. (It's probably millions once you factor in the opportunity costs.) Isn't that worth getting emotional about? Doesn't it show that we should care about political vices no less -- and arguably much more -- than private ones? (I don't mean to trivialize the horror of the latter, of course. Rather, I wish people would also appreciate the full horror of the former!) It would only require a glimpse of this for people's attitudes to change, for a "zero tolerance" anti-corruption political culture to develop. It could happen. I remain optimistic.
Back to the question of nations as agents. It's curious how many right-wingers are unapologetic unilateralists about foreign policy. Of course, some right-wingers are unapologetic authoritarians generally. But not all, so what of the others? For the principled libertarian or old-style conservative who trusts constitutional constraints more than an unbounded executive, why are they not so concerned about the very same executive exercising unbounded power on the international stage?
A legitimate reason here demands a disanalogy between individual and national agency. (I assume that a simple lack of concern for foreigners does not count as a legitimate basis for the differing conclusions!) But what could this be?
Perhaps democratic states are supposed to be inherently more trustworthy, because they already incorporate a vast range of perspectives, interests, and so forth, developed rationally through the deliberative norms described above. But foreign policy is not determined through democratic deliberation. Perhaps if it were then democratic states would be more reliably ethical agents. But as things stand, history surely shows that even the so-called "good guys" (Western governments) can't be trusted.
Perhaps the difference is not that an international social contract is less needed, but that it is less viable. The United Nations is certainly far from ideal. But surely it could be reformed in ways that make it less corrupt, more effective and responsive to reasons? Are there grounds for thinking that this cannot be done, or that the global level is essentially harder to govern than the national level? The greater diversity might be a problem, if it reduces the common ground that is essential for developing cooperation. But I wouldn't have thought it completely hopeless.
What else am I missing here?
The Epistemic Argument against Vigilantism
I'm currently working on an essay that develops the arguments against political vigilantism initially presented in my post on 'the ethics of activism'. In this post I want to focus on the Epistemic Principle: No matter how awful X seems to you, if you can't rationally convince your fellow citizens then you're probably wrong about it, and so have no business engaging in coercion.
As background, note the fact of widespread first-order moral/political disagreement, which serves to motivate a liberal-procedural metapolitics. We need some way to adjudicate political conflicts, and reach collective decisions about what ought to be done. The best process will be the one that most reliably distinguishes good proposals from bad ones. I will assume that the liberal-democratic process is the best that is realistically available.
Thus, if the process is functioning adequately, we should find that it generally approves good proposals and rejects bad ones. This means that if you cannot rationally persuade your fellow citizens to your position, chances are that this is because you’re in error. Of course, we are engaged in a very high level of statistical abstraction here – in any particular case, there could be reasons that defeat the democratic presumption. For example, the populace might be demonstrably biased or ignorant in some crucial respect. But then, bringing this to their attention should, ideally, suffice to overcome it, unless we are to despair of our fellow citizens as fundamentally unreasonable. Still, the possibility must be granted that a small group of educated radicals might be in a manifestly better epistemic position than the general populace with regard to determining the common good. If they knew this to be so, could that justify radicalism?
The worry, of course, is that many other radical groups mistakenly believe themselves to be in such a position. They are subjectively every bit as certain in their “knowledge” as the correct group is. So the question remains how to distinguish them. However, it’s important to note that, in principle, the ability to distinguish the two situations need not hold symmetrically. Although the justified believer must be able to distinguish their position from that of being unjustified, the converse need not necessarily be the case. As Sosa writes:
Similarly, we may at times be so muddle-headed that we do not even realize it (for example while dreaming). But the possibility of overlooking such a deficit does nothing to undermine our introspective appreciation of wakeful clarity. As a general rule, our positive awareness of an introspective property is not threatened by the fact that we would be unaware of lacking the property. The full force of one’s actual awareness and appreciation suffices to guarantee that the property is really there. It’s no reflection on your actual situation if others (perhaps including your counterfactual selves or counterparts) are less discerning.
Perhaps the justified radical is in a similar position. She has a deep appreciation of the moral-political facts, we may suppose, and it’s not her fault that others lack such discernment. Even though others are in such a poor epistemic position that they don’t even realize it, this fact does not reflect on the epistemic situation of the fully-aware radical. She, at least, is in a position to tell the difference, even if the others aren’t.
But there are generally tests that one can do to confirm one’s positive awareness and clarity of thought. For example, it may help to focus one’s attention on the details of the property allegedly observed – presumably the deluded will find themselves unable to perform this feat, and thereby become aware of their deficit at last. So we should want to put our political beliefs to a similar ‘test’, which they should have no trouble passing if they’re really as self-evident as we believe. The justified radical will be able to specify the justificatory grounds of her proposals with clarity and logical rigour lacking in the attempts of her opponents. Others might offer justifications that they personally find equally convincing, but only because they are unaware of their flaws.
Are these two situations really subjectively discernible though, even asymmetrically? Is fine-grained epistemic justification, or complex rational insight, the kind of property that is open to introspective awareness? Or must the asymmetry argument be restricted in application to more black-and-white cases (e.g. death vs. life, or muddled dreaming vs. wakeful clarity)? Is it really true that moral justification is internally accessible, so that the phenomenal experience or subjective ‘what it is like’ quality of having justified moral-political beliefs is different in kind from what it is like to have prima facie defensible but ultimately unjustified beliefs on these topics? This seems implausible. So the subjective position of the radical – no matter how convinced they may feel that such-and-such is an intolerable moral outrage – is insufficient to justify coercive action. Their beliefs must pass a more objective test. Whatever test is appropriate here is presumably the test that should be instituted in the political system. So this leads us back to procedural liberalism.
Although there does seem to be a problem for radicalism here, it may not be purely epistemic in nature. After all, it seems reasonable to retain one’s political beliefs even in the face of democratic defeat. (On the view I defend, one must abide by the outcome of a just process, but one need not whole-heartedly agree with it.) We might explain this away by suggesting that the high stakes involved in political action demand more stringent justification than is required for mere belief. The differing prescriptions may also be grounded in a utilitarian fashion. Given the fallibility of mainstream opinion, the advancement of social knowledge might be best served by having individuals persist in trying to support their discredited views – even when this is individually “irrational” in the sense that any given dissenter is statistically unlikely to ultimately prove correct.* Such behaviour is at least collectively rational, so we have reason to support epistemic norms that would allow individuals to retain beliefs that are too ungrounded to serve as a basis for coercive action.
* = I've heard of similar defences of dogmatism by philosophers of science. Can anyone provide a reference here?
Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear what others think about (1) my extension of Sosa's asymmetry argument, and its application to political disagreements; and (2) the collectivist explanation for why we think it epistemically acceptable to hold on to democratically discredited beliefs. [Or (3) any other issues that arise from this discussion...]
As background, note the fact of widespread first-order moral/political disagreement, which serves to motivate a liberal-procedural metapolitics. We need some way to adjudicate political conflicts, and reach collective decisions about what ought to be done. The best process will be the one that most reliably distinguishes good proposals from bad ones. I will assume that the liberal-democratic process is the best that is realistically available.
Thus, if the process is functioning adequately, we should find that it generally approves good proposals and rejects bad ones. This means that if you cannot rationally persuade your fellow citizens to your position, chances are that this is because you’re in error. Of course, we are engaged in a very high level of statistical abstraction here – in any particular case, there could be reasons that defeat the democratic presumption. For example, the populace might be demonstrably biased or ignorant in some crucial respect. But then, bringing this to their attention should, ideally, suffice to overcome it, unless we are to despair of our fellow citizens as fundamentally unreasonable. Still, the possibility must be granted that a small group of educated radicals might be in a manifestly better epistemic position than the general populace with regard to determining the common good. If they knew this to be so, could that justify radicalism?
The worry, of course, is that many other radical groups mistakenly believe themselves to be in such a position. They are subjectively every bit as certain in their “knowledge” as the correct group is. So the question remains how to distinguish them. However, it’s important to note that, in principle, the ability to distinguish the two situations need not hold symmetrically. Although the justified believer must be able to distinguish their position from that of being unjustified, the converse need not necessarily be the case. As Sosa writes:
Suppose I could now about as easily be dead, having barely escaped a potentially fatal accident. Obviously, we cannot distinguish being alive from being dead by believing oneself alive when alive, and dead when dead. But that is no obstacle to our knowing ourselves alive when alive.
Similarly, we may at times be so muddle-headed that we do not even realize it (for example while dreaming). But the possibility of overlooking such a deficit does nothing to undermine our introspective appreciation of wakeful clarity. As a general rule, our positive awareness of an introspective property is not threatened by the fact that we would be unaware of lacking the property. The full force of one’s actual awareness and appreciation suffices to guarantee that the property is really there. It’s no reflection on your actual situation if others (perhaps including your counterfactual selves or counterparts) are less discerning.
Perhaps the justified radical is in a similar position. She has a deep appreciation of the moral-political facts, we may suppose, and it’s not her fault that others lack such discernment. Even though others are in such a poor epistemic position that they don’t even realize it, this fact does not reflect on the epistemic situation of the fully-aware radical. She, at least, is in a position to tell the difference, even if the others aren’t.
But there are generally tests that one can do to confirm one’s positive awareness and clarity of thought. For example, it may help to focus one’s attention on the details of the property allegedly observed – presumably the deluded will find themselves unable to perform this feat, and thereby become aware of their deficit at last. So we should want to put our political beliefs to a similar ‘test’, which they should have no trouble passing if they’re really as self-evident as we believe. The justified radical will be able to specify the justificatory grounds of her proposals with clarity and logical rigour lacking in the attempts of her opponents. Others might offer justifications that they personally find equally convincing, but only because they are unaware of their flaws.
Are these two situations really subjectively discernible though, even asymmetrically? Is fine-grained epistemic justification, or complex rational insight, the kind of property that is open to introspective awareness? Or must the asymmetry argument be restricted in application to more black-and-white cases (e.g. death vs. life, or muddled dreaming vs. wakeful clarity)? Is it really true that moral justification is internally accessible, so that the phenomenal experience or subjective ‘what it is like’ quality of having justified moral-political beliefs is different in kind from what it is like to have prima facie defensible but ultimately unjustified beliefs on these topics? This seems implausible. So the subjective position of the radical – no matter how convinced they may feel that such-and-such is an intolerable moral outrage – is insufficient to justify coercive action. Their beliefs must pass a more objective test. Whatever test is appropriate here is presumably the test that should be instituted in the political system. So this leads us back to procedural liberalism.
Although there does seem to be a problem for radicalism here, it may not be purely epistemic in nature. After all, it seems reasonable to retain one’s political beliefs even in the face of democratic defeat. (On the view I defend, one must abide by the outcome of a just process, but one need not whole-heartedly agree with it.) We might explain this away by suggesting that the high stakes involved in political action demand more stringent justification than is required for mere belief. The differing prescriptions may also be grounded in a utilitarian fashion. Given the fallibility of mainstream opinion, the advancement of social knowledge might be best served by having individuals persist in trying to support their discredited views – even when this is individually “irrational” in the sense that any given dissenter is statistically unlikely to ultimately prove correct.* Such behaviour is at least collectively rational, so we have reason to support epistemic norms that would allow individuals to retain beliefs that are too ungrounded to serve as a basis for coercive action.
* = I've heard of similar defences of dogmatism by philosophers of science. Can anyone provide a reference here?
Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear what others think about (1) my extension of Sosa's asymmetry argument, and its application to political disagreements; and (2) the collectivist explanation for why we think it epistemically acceptable to hold on to democratically discredited beliefs. [Or (3) any other issues that arise from this discussion...]
Monday, October 16, 2006
Experience and Testimony
People commonly talk about "private" evidence, had on the basis of personal experiences that aren't accessible to other people. But I'm not convinced that there is any such thing. Suppose that a subject S has an experience E, and thereupon concludes that C. ('E' might be a religious experience, for instance, and 'C' the proposition that God exists.) If S then tells me about her experience in sufficient detail, and I trust that she is sincere, then surely I have just as much evidence as S does for C. We both recognize the objective fact: (O) "S had an experience E". So where's the asymmetry? We may state this as a dilemma: either O is good evidence for C, or it is not. If it is, then I (and S) should believe C. If it isn't, then S (and I) should not believe C. Either way, there's no epistemic difference between S and I. There's no "private" evidence that she cannot share through testimony.
Few of us would think it epistemically justified to believe in aliens or deities on the basis of your neighbour's "experience" of being abducted by aliens or visited by God. But your neighbour has no further, private evidence, and hence is in the same epistemic position as you. That is, they shouldn't believe in these things on their basis of their experiences either. What everyone alike should conclude is that the neighbour was hallucinating, dreaming, or some such.
I assume here that justification is a relation between propositions. When we say that a conclusion is justified by experience, this is really shorthand for saying that it's justified by the proposition that one had such an experience. There's nothing essentially "private" about such propositions, of course; knowledge of them can be transmitted through testimony just as for any other proposition. I can come to know that S had experience E, simply by S telling me so!
The defender of private evidence will need to claim that justification can be non-propositional. They will want to say that it is the first-personal event of having experience E, rather than the objective fact that this event occurred, which justifies one's belief in C. But that sounds bizarre to me. What is it about the subjective "having" of experiences that's so special, or that's of evidential import?
Few of us would think it epistemically justified to believe in aliens or deities on the basis of your neighbour's "experience" of being abducted by aliens or visited by God. But your neighbour has no further, private evidence, and hence is in the same epistemic position as you. That is, they shouldn't believe in these things on their basis of their experiences either. What everyone alike should conclude is that the neighbour was hallucinating, dreaming, or some such.
I assume here that justification is a relation between propositions. When we say that a conclusion is justified by experience, this is really shorthand for saying that it's justified by the proposition that one had such an experience. There's nothing essentially "private" about such propositions, of course; knowledge of them can be transmitted through testimony just as for any other proposition. I can come to know that S had experience E, simply by S telling me so!
The defender of private evidence will need to claim that justification can be non-propositional. They will want to say that it is the first-personal event of having experience E, rather than the objective fact that this event occurred, which justifies one's belief in C. But that sounds bizarre to me. What is it about the subjective "having" of experiences that's so special, or that's of evidential import?
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Beards, Race and Sexuality
[By Alex Gregory]
One hair on your chin does not make a beard.
If you do not have a beard, growing one additional hair will not give you a beard.
...
Conclusion: No-one have ever grown a beard.
That's Sorites paradox. Some predicates are vague; it isn't clear where they start and end. Still, we want to maintain, the predicates do still apply: Some people are bearded, some are not, regardless of whether there's a murky uncertainty in the center of the scale. That's why its called Sorites paradox: it's hard to square the above argument with our deep conviction that some people really are bearded.
It might be the case that in some cases of this form, we really do conclude that the predicate in question in not "real". But hopefully the above shows that the mere fact of vagueness is not sufficient to draw the conclusion that the predicate is not real.
So here are two other arguments which I think are secretely of this form I've heard from time to time:
There aren't really "black" or "white" people, because it's really only a scale between various skin colours
There aren't really "heterosexual" or "homosexual" people, everyone is really some degree of bisexual.
In both cases, I think we need more evidence to draw the supposed conclusion. Again, the mere fact of vagueness need not propel us into thinking that the terms in question are not real.
Does anyone think that there really is some additional evidence available in support of the conclusions above?
Can anyone name an argument of this form that we do seem to take at face value to show that the predicate in question is not real?
One hair on your chin does not make a beard.
If you do not have a beard, growing one additional hair will not give you a beard.
...
Conclusion: No-one have ever grown a beard.
That's Sorites paradox. Some predicates are vague; it isn't clear where they start and end. Still, we want to maintain, the predicates do still apply: Some people are bearded, some are not, regardless of whether there's a murky uncertainty in the center of the scale. That's why its called Sorites paradox: it's hard to square the above argument with our deep conviction that some people really are bearded.
It might be the case that in some cases of this form, we really do conclude that the predicate in question in not "real". But hopefully the above shows that the mere fact of vagueness is not sufficient to draw the conclusion that the predicate is not real.
So here are two other arguments which I think are secretely of this form I've heard from time to time:
There aren't really "black" or "white" people, because it's really only a scale between various skin colours
There aren't really "heterosexual" or "homosexual" people, everyone is really some degree of bisexual.
In both cases, I think we need more evidence to draw the supposed conclusion. Again, the mere fact of vagueness need not propel us into thinking that the terms in question are not real.
Does anyone think that there really is some additional evidence available in support of the conclusions above?
Can anyone name an argument of this form that we do seem to take at face value to show that the predicate in question is not real?
Saturday, October 14, 2006
The Ubiquity of Apriority
Some philosophers are skeptical of whether there can be a priori (non-empirical) justification. But I'm not sure how they can avoid it. For any instance of empirical justification, it seems like we can construct a parallel instance of a priori justification simply through conditionalization. Suppose that empirical evidence E would justify your drawing conclusion C. Then presumably you could justifiably believe the conditional "if E then C" prior to experiencing E. We can repeat this procedure to conditionalize out all empirical grounds for belief, and the result will be a conditional statement that is justifiable a priori.
Bonjour suggests something similar in In Defense of Pure Reason, p.5:
What response can the radical empiricist make to this?
Bonjour suggests something similar in In Defense of Pure Reason, p.5:
Could an argument of any sort be entirely justified on empirical grounds? It seems clear on reflection that the answer to this question is "no." Any purely empirical ingredient can, after all, always be formulated as an additional empirical premise. When all such premises have been explicitly formulated, either the intended conclusion will be explicitly included among them or it will not. In the former case, no argument or inference is necessary, while in the latter case, the needed inference clearly goes beyond what can be derived entirely from experience. Thus we see that the repudiation of all a priori justification is apparently tantamount to the repudiation of argument or reasoning generally, thus amounting in effect to intellectual suicide.
What response can the radical empiricist make to this?
Friday, October 13, 2006
Thesis Conclusion [draft]
[The concluding summary of my honours thesis. Links to the earlier chapters are interspersed with the text...]
It’s natural to expect that what can be known without needing to look at the world is closely tied to how the world metaphysically could or must have been. If we can only learn a fact a posteriori, through empirical investigation, we may expect that this is because there are other possible worlds in which the fact in question fails to hold. Assuming that possible worlds are wholly self-contained, we would not expect that examining the actual world could tell us anything informative about other, non-actual possibilities. Modal rationalism draws on these intuitive ideas by positing an intimate link between apriority and necessity, according to which an ideally rational agent could in principle grasp modal space – or apprehend what is possible and what is not – through the exercise of reason alone.
Kripke’s discovery of the necessary a posteriori casts doubt on this picture. There are some necessary truths – e.g. ‘water is H2O’ – which can only be known after empirical investigation. But the modal rationalist suggests that the problem here is merely semantic. We can know a priori how all the various possible worlds are in themselves; what we don’t always know is how to apply our words to them. Some terms, like ‘water’, are not semantically neutral – their application to counterfactual worlds is contingent on how the actual world turns out. That’s why empirical inquiry may be required before we can accurately assess various modal claims. The extra work is required to grant us semantic, not metaphysical, knowledge. We may avoid this need by restating a claim in neutral terms, for which the semantic values are unaffected by whether we consider a world “as actual” or “as counterfactual”. Chapter One thus established that the Kripkean challenge to modal rationalism is toothless after all; the link between apriority and necessity may be restored by restriction to semantically neutral vocabulary.
What’s needed to refute modal rationalism are “strong necessities”, i.e. claims that are true in all worlds considered as actual, despite being conceivably false. This requires that there be coherent scenarios that would not be verified by any possible world. Chapter Two explored this idea further, and assessed Yablo’s arguments for the claim that modal rationalists must recognize such strong necessities. Arguments from meta-modal conceivability provide the greatest challenge here, but I proposed that modal rationalists should respond by treating scenarios as epistemically fundamental, so that meta-modal conceivability is then uniquely determined by the sum of individually conceivable scenarios. Other arguments assume that there are unknowable necessities – an assumption we have no reason to grant, but that at least suggests the intuitive need for a non-epistemic foundation to modality.
Chapter Three set about exploring this idea further. I presented a metaphysically ‘realist’ understanding of metaphysical modality, and defended it against the conceptualist’s skepticism by highlighting its connection to our intuitive ideas about physical indeterminism, objective chance, and the open future. The realist’s primitive conception of modality forces us to take seriously the idea of strong necessities, but they need not give up on modal rationalism altogether. I suggest two principles of modal expansion – the presumption of possibility, and the consistency principle – which together serve to ground modal rationalism on a realist foundation. The end result is, I think, an attractive and defensible view, which preserves many of the intuitive claims we would wish to make about modality. And although it is arguably the conceptualist’s epistemic space that matters for key theoretical purposes, many would dispute this claim – which cannot be fully defended here – so it is worth establishing the viability of realist modal rationalism for those who would place greater weight on this metaphysical modal space.
It’s natural to expect that what can be known without needing to look at the world is closely tied to how the world metaphysically could or must have been. If we can only learn a fact a posteriori, through empirical investigation, we may expect that this is because there are other possible worlds in which the fact in question fails to hold. Assuming that possible worlds are wholly self-contained, we would not expect that examining the actual world could tell us anything informative about other, non-actual possibilities. Modal rationalism draws on these intuitive ideas by positing an intimate link between apriority and necessity, according to which an ideally rational agent could in principle grasp modal space – or apprehend what is possible and what is not – through the exercise of reason alone.
Kripke’s discovery of the necessary a posteriori casts doubt on this picture. There are some necessary truths – e.g. ‘water is H2O’ – which can only be known after empirical investigation. But the modal rationalist suggests that the problem here is merely semantic. We can know a priori how all the various possible worlds are in themselves; what we don’t always know is how to apply our words to them. Some terms, like ‘water’, are not semantically neutral – their application to counterfactual worlds is contingent on how the actual world turns out. That’s why empirical inquiry may be required before we can accurately assess various modal claims. The extra work is required to grant us semantic, not metaphysical, knowledge. We may avoid this need by restating a claim in neutral terms, for which the semantic values are unaffected by whether we consider a world “as actual” or “as counterfactual”. Chapter One thus established that the Kripkean challenge to modal rationalism is toothless after all; the link between apriority and necessity may be restored by restriction to semantically neutral vocabulary.
What’s needed to refute modal rationalism are “strong necessities”, i.e. claims that are true in all worlds considered as actual, despite being conceivably false. This requires that there be coherent scenarios that would not be verified by any possible world. Chapter Two explored this idea further, and assessed Yablo’s arguments for the claim that modal rationalists must recognize such strong necessities. Arguments from meta-modal conceivability provide the greatest challenge here, but I proposed that modal rationalists should respond by treating scenarios as epistemically fundamental, so that meta-modal conceivability is then uniquely determined by the sum of individually conceivable scenarios. Other arguments assume that there are unknowable necessities – an assumption we have no reason to grant, but that at least suggests the intuitive need for a non-epistemic foundation to modality.
Chapter Three set about exploring this idea further. I presented a metaphysically ‘realist’ understanding of metaphysical modality, and defended it against the conceptualist’s skepticism by highlighting its connection to our intuitive ideas about physical indeterminism, objective chance, and the open future. The realist’s primitive conception of modality forces us to take seriously the idea of strong necessities, but they need not give up on modal rationalism altogether. I suggest two principles of modal expansion – the presumption of possibility, and the consistency principle – which together serve to ground modal rationalism on a realist foundation. The end result is, I think, an attractive and defensible view, which preserves many of the intuitive claims we would wish to make about modality. And although it is arguably the conceptualist’s epistemic space that matters for key theoretical purposes, many would dispute this claim – which cannot be fully defended here – so it is worth establishing the viability of realist modal rationalism for those who would place greater weight on this metaphysical modal space.
Chapter Three [draft]
[The third chapter of my thesis, modulo footnotes. See also intro, chapter one, chapter two, and the conclusion. Comments welcome... Post updated 17/10/06]
§3.1 Metaphysical Realism and Conceptualism
Modal rationalism links metaphysical necessity to a priori knowability. We may wonder what this implies about the metaphysical status of modal discourse: can it still be fully mind-independent? The modal rationalist grants that many modal facts will never be actually known – and perhaps even cannot be known by creatures with our cognitive limitations. So the modal facts are genuinely objective, in that they are completely independent of our minds, and may transcend at least the evidence that is practically available to us. Nevertheless, modal rationalists hold that the sum of all possible rational evidence, including that which is accessible only to more cognitively advanced agents, suffices to settle the modal facts. At the end of the day, all (semantically neutral) necessary truths must be knowable on ideal rational reflection. There are no such necessary truths besides those that are so knowable. Modal reality cannot transcend all possible rational evidence.
Why not? Here modal rationalists may split into two camps. Conceptual modal rationalists, e.g. Chalmers, seek to epistemicize modality by claiming that so-called “metaphysical necessity” is really nothing over and above a priori knowability (subject to the 2-D semantical complications discussed in Chapter One). On this view, there is an analytic link – perhaps identity – between the concepts of possibility and ideal conceivability that precludes any gap between the two. That way, modal truth just is the ideal limit of a priori inquiry; it does not answer to the sort of independent reality that might sensibly be considered beyond all epistemic reach. Modal reality is thus a kind of (non-contingent) rational construction. Rather than addressing the metaphysical question of how reality is in itself, modal facts may be considered more fundamentally normative in nature: they tell us what should be concluded at the ideal limit of a priori rational reflection.
Metaphysical Realists about modality, in contrast, wish to uphold the conceptual distinction between necessity and apriority, whereby the former is taken to be a genuinely metaphysical notion – about the world as it is in itself, rather than our (even idealized) beliefs about it. Realists will be more sympathetic to the previous chapter’s conclusion (§2.3) that we can make sense of a ‘gap’ between the two concepts, according to which even ideally rational agents might be inescapably mistaken about the breadth of modal space. Realist modal rationalists must simply insist that there is no such gap as a matter of fact. Further, this fact about modal space will be necessary if true at all (cf. §2.2), so the modal rationalist is also committed to its apriority. But whereas the conceptualist takes the connection to be analytic, realists will instead propose that it is a substantive, synthetic claim about the metaphysical nature of reality. It is this ‘realistic’ version of modal rationalism that I will seek to elucidate and defend later in this chapter. First, we must depart from the conceptualists by taking seriously the idea of primitive metaphysical modality that underlies the radical challenge from strong necessities.
Note that metaphysical realism puts modal rationalism at risk by opening the door to strong necessities. If – contrary to my arguments – there are indeed some strong necessities, then the inference from ideal conceivability to metaphysical possibility is jeopardized. Even so, this might not leave philosophers quite as hamstrung as typically supposed. It is arguably the fundamentally rational notion, rather than the metaphysical one, that we employ in our philosophical theorizing. That is, for the standard theoretical uses of modality, it may be the conceptualist’s space of coherent scenarios that we really need. But I think we have a grip on an independent metaphysical notion in any case, so I will try to bring this out in the sections that follow. My subsequent defense of realist modal rationalism will be of greater significance to those who dispute the theoretical primacy of epistemic space proposed above.
§3.2 Content-Based Modalities vs. Metaphysical Modality
I wish to distinguish two very different ways of specifying a modal space. In the first case, philosophers may isolate and identify the particular modal space they wish to work with by offering a (more or less) formal specification of the contents they wish to include or exclude. That is, they begin with some framework F of rules or limitations, and then define the space of F-possibilities as simply a matter of what is not ruled out by F. [Cf. Van Inwagen: “It hardly follows that, because a certain thing cannot be proved to be impossible by a certain method, it is therefore possible in any sense of ‘possible’ whatever.” What I here call “content-based” kinds of possibility are, for Van Inwagen, mere pseudo-possibilities.] I will say that a specification is “content-based” if its delimiting rules are directly and exclusively concerned with the internal contents of possible worlds, so that one may determine whether or not to allow a world-candidate solely on the basis of descriptions of what that world contains.
For example, nomological possibility is sometimes understood as simply consisting in the non-violation of the actual laws of nature. [Other times it may be understood as ‘compossibility’ with the laws of nature, in which case something that is metaphysically impossible would be considered “nomologically impossible” even if the laws of nature alone provide no grounds for ruling it out.] This specification is content-based insofar as it can be applied simply by examining a complete description of the internal workings of a candidate world, and determining whether any of the described events contravene our laws of nature. Conceptual possibility can similarly be settled simply by determining whether a candidate world-description contains any overt or implicit self-contradictions. This might not be purely formal: if rational insight cannot be captured algorithmically, there will be no finite set of rules that can determine a priori coherence. So the latter may need to be taken as a primitive in its own right. Nevertheless, this modality is “content-based” as I use the term, for it serves to directly fix the breadth of the modal space.
In this chapter, I wish to explore the proposal that metaphysical possibility is not to be understood in such content-based terms. Instead, this modal space is, in a sense, "world-oriented". It is to be characterized first and foremost in terms of its metaphysical nature, thus leaving its breadth of content to be fixed by reality rather than building it explicitly into the concept. This aims to connect with our intuitive notion of ‘metaphysical possibility’ as reflecting ways the world really could have been – a concept whereof our primitive grasp leaves open, at least initially, what breadth of content this modal space contains. The answer is fixed by reality, not our concepts alone. The question of what really could have been is here assumed to be a question fundamentally about the world – or reality in itself – that admits of an objective and exclusive answer. Though philosophers might propose whatever content-based restrictions suit their purposes, the world itself provides just one space of real possibilities.
Of course, this space of metaphysically possible worlds must have some or other breadth, and so be specifiable in terms of restrictions on content. Perhaps it includes all the conceptually possible worlds. Or perhaps it includes only the actual world, as would be the case if things never really had any genuine opportunity to be different. If all else fails, one could simply give an exhaustive specification of each and every world that it includes, and construct their disjunction as the content restriction. Any of these “spatial breadth” properties are prima facie consistent with the concept I’m trying to point to, because its fundamental character lies in a different dimension. Unlike the other modal concepts, we don’t immediately characterize it in terms of breadth or restrictions on content. The criterion for a world’s inclusion in this space is instead its brute modal nature. We don’t ask: “Does this world contain anything which violates such-and-such content restrictions?” Instead we ask the irreducibly modal question: “Is this a world that had the opportunity to be actualized?” Or, equivalently: “could it really have come about?”
Once we have a grasped metaphysical modal space by way of the above questions, we can go on to inquire into the space’s breadth of content – as below. But for now I emphasize that the concept must be initially grasped in these primitive modal terms. You cannot begin by characterizing metaphysical modal space in terms of its contents, because those are not included in the concept as it initially presents itself to us. If you begin with them, you are really grasping a different concept altogether. After all, for any space of worlds characterized in terms of their content, one can still coherently ask: “but might they really have been actualized?” It wrongly remains an open question, unless one builds this modal requirement right into the fundamental conceptual character of metaphysical modality.
Note that this conception makes no explicit demands on what content must be found within candidate worlds. Metaphysical modality, thus understood, is not to be analyzed in terms of any collection of formal rules or laws that must be satisfied, nor even a primitive content restriction such as “rational coherence”. Rather, what matters is simply whether the candidate world is one that really could have been actualized. So long as this external modal property is satisfied, we need not worry about what is in the candidate world. This makes the specification of metaphysical modal space significantly different in kind from the content-based spaces mentioned earlier.
§3.3 Identifying Metaphysical Modality
It might be wondered what, exactly, this notion of “really could have been actualized” involves. (Merely emphasizing the “really” will do little to help one who lacks an antecedent grasp of the concept.) Since it is presented as a primitive or bedrock concept, no reductive analysis can be offered to explicate it. But some general remarks may help bring the intuitive notion to light.
Chalmers expresses his skepticism as follows:
I think both challenges may be answered by pointing to a familiar – and metaphysically ‘realist’ – concept of possibility that is sometimes relegated to the merely “nomological”. The concept I have in mind naturally relates to commonplace ideas about objective chance, indeterminism, and the open future. Many people think that the future is metaphysically open, in that it really could turn out in any one of a number of different ways – the truth of the matter hasn’t been decided yet. Each open possibility has some non-zero objective chance of eventuating. Note that this isn’t just a claim about our epistemic situation, or even the rational ideal: it’s about how reality is in itself. This has nothing to do with any actual or possible minds. As a rough heuristic: if God were to rewind time and play it back again, things would unfold differently. Admittedly, this commonsense belief assumes indeterminism. If, instead, the future is already determined, then – given the present state of affairs – there is only one way that things can really turn out. No matter how many times God “replays” history from this point, he’ll never get a different result.
Of course, metaphysical possibility cannot simply be identified with non-zero objective chance. The past is presumably now fixed, so there’s no chance it will suddenly change on us. But even though the past certainly won’t be different, nevertheless we might still think that it could have differed. Perhaps there were open alternatives at a time in the even more distant past. In extending our intuitive notion of the open future back into the past, we will find various (now closed) branches that really were, at one point, dynamically open possibilities. Our concept of metaphysical possibility should at least include the entire history of such dynamic possibilities. They are all ways that the world really could have turned out. Hopefully it is now intuitively clear what I mean by this.
It’s worth pausing here for a moment to clarify what we have established. In exploring the metaphysical specification of modality, we have thus far reached a space of worlds that could be given the content-based specification of “nomological possibilities given the initial starting conditions of the universe”. But such content-based descriptions fail to capture the metaphysical significance – the idea that the world really could have turned out in any of those ways. (Though readers might implicitly project significance on to it, in light of their background knowledge that anything satisfying this content restriction would in fact have had an objective chance of eventuating.) I wish to draw attention to this modal primitive – the one we invoke when thinking about objective chances, physical indeterminism, and open futures – and how natural it is for us to be Metaphysical Realists about it. This seems to be a species of modality that is no mere rational idealization, but rather is truly in the world, as a basic component of reality.
It might be objected that what I’ve pointed to here just is “nomological modality” in some sense. Non-Humeans, at least, could be expected to imbue some form of natural necessity with the primitive metaphysical significance proposed above – in which case the end result will be much the same. Whatever you want to call it, once we have a grip on this ‘realist’ modal primitive, we may ask: could the laws of nature themselves have been different, in this primitive sense? It seems a reasonable question, though of course the nomological impossibility of it is trivial. This suggests that the primitive notion in this vicinity is not, strictly speaking, nomological possibility after all – at least, it doesn’t seem built into the very concept that the laws of nature must be necessary in this primitive sense. We can always stipulate such a content-based restriction later, if we need it for other purposes. But the core concept here is – prima facie – potentially broader than that. So I think ‘metaphysical possibility’ is the more fitting term.
We have here a metaphysically ‘realist’ modal concept that has worldly application: at the very least, it spans the entire history of dynamic possibilities or “open futures”. This undermines the skeptical basis for conceptualism – we should be realists about metaphysical possibility instead. But how far does it extend? We are now faced with the awesome questions of why our universe exists at all, and whether a wholly different universe – say with alternative laws of nature or initial conditions – could have existed in its place. This provides the focus for the next section. Could absolutely any coherent scenario really have been actualized, as the modal rationalist proposes? Or are some rationally apparent possibilities necessarily excluded by the nature of reality, creating “strong necessities” that fall outside the 2-D framework and falsify modal rationalism?
§3.4 Two Principles of Modal Expansion
To recap: we have a space of scenarios, each of which represents a way for the world to be. We might think of each of those “ways” as being a maximal property, just one of which is instantiated by the actual world, and hence is “the way the world is”. That these various properties exist is, it seems, a merely ontological fact. What we’re interested in is the modal fact concerning which of these rival properties (scenarios) had a real chance to be instantiated (actualized). The answer will yield our space of metaphysically possible worlds. Any leftover scenarios will be coherent ways for a world to be, but nevertheless the world could not really have been such a way. They are the ways that “never stood a chance”, so to speak. It might already be thought that there’s something very strange about the idea of such leftovers. Let me offer further grounds for such skepticism.
The above discussion frames the modal question in terms of a positive demand for some reason to think that a scenario had the opportunity to be actualized. This presupposes that scenarios are “modally inert” by default. Their being is merely ontological, and some further modal property or relation needs to be added to them in order to make them “really possible”. They must be targeted by some potentially world-actualizing mechanism – perhaps a Leibnizian God who surveys the space of possible worlds before deciding which to bring into actual existence. But this notion of an atemporal process of worldly “becoming” is of dubious coherence. There is no time before time began, during which such a process of selection could take place. We might take this to indicate the metaphysical necessity of our actual laws and initial conditions – thus contradicting modal rationalism. Or we might reframe the question in a way that escapes these problems. Here I seek to explore the latter option.
We might achieve this by framing the question in negative terms, or asking whether there is any reason why a described world-candidate could not have been actualized. Here we treat possibility as the default assumption: absent any reasons to the contrary, we assume that each way for a world to be is indeed a way that the world really could have been. So long as there is nothing necessarily preventing a candidate from being actualized, it should thereby be considered possible. It does not require any positive mechanism that could have brought it about, or “given it a chance”. No such chance need be given; rather, it comes for free. We might say that a candidate’s natural state is possibility – additional reasons are required to preclude its possibility, not to grant it. Let us call this principle the presumption of possibility. It may allow us to pursue modal inquiry whilst avoiding the confusion inherent in positive demands for a world-creating mechanism.
The negatively framed question also seems more susceptible to being answered. The question of what might bestow metaphysical possibility on a world-candidate seems hopelessly mysterious. But if we ask what kind of thing could preclude a claim from being possible, we find an obvious answer, namely, inconsistency (or a priori incoherence). The consistency principle claims that this is the only answer available, i.e. that a priori incoherence is the only barrier to possibility. After all, we have no trouble granting that an inconsistent state of affairs could not have obtained. But why think that a coherent scenario could not really have been actualized? Such a proposal would seem entirely unmotivated – there is nothing intrinsically disqualifying about the scenario, and there doesn’t appear to be anything external necessarily preventing it from being actualized either. So it seems most reasonable to conclude that any coherent scenario really could have been actualized after all. The combined effect of my two “expansionist” principles – the presumption of possibility, and the consistency principle – is to lead us back to modal rationalism, only this time with a realist metaphysical foundation.
Although the proposed principles seem quite plausible to me, they could reasonably be denied. Of particular concern is the idea that nothing is “necessarily preventing” coherent scenarios from being actualized. Given that a scenario is in fact not actualized, we might wonder why that is. Whatever the actual reason why some other conceptually possible universe does not exist in place of ours, perhaps this very same reason holds of necessity, so that the other universe could not really exist in place of ours. If we take actual existence to be a matter of brute fact, why not metaphysically possible existence likewise? (Perhaps they come down to one and the same fact, viz. our universe’s origin.) Whereas I formulated the above principles in order to sidestep unanswerable questions about ultimate origins, critics might consider stopping right there to be the more appropriate response. As indicated earlier, the metaphysical realist might conclude that the origin of our universe could not really have been any different. I have shown how modal rationalists might hope to avoid this result, by formulating plausible principles of modal expansion. But a more thorough defense of these principles awaits further work.
§3.1 Metaphysical Realism and Conceptualism
Modal rationalism links metaphysical necessity to a priori knowability. We may wonder what this implies about the metaphysical status of modal discourse: can it still be fully mind-independent? The modal rationalist grants that many modal facts will never be actually known – and perhaps even cannot be known by creatures with our cognitive limitations. So the modal facts are genuinely objective, in that they are completely independent of our minds, and may transcend at least the evidence that is practically available to us. Nevertheless, modal rationalists hold that the sum of all possible rational evidence, including that which is accessible only to more cognitively advanced agents, suffices to settle the modal facts. At the end of the day, all (semantically neutral) necessary truths must be knowable on ideal rational reflection. There are no such necessary truths besides those that are so knowable. Modal reality cannot transcend all possible rational evidence.
Why not? Here modal rationalists may split into two camps. Conceptual modal rationalists, e.g. Chalmers, seek to epistemicize modality by claiming that so-called “metaphysical necessity” is really nothing over and above a priori knowability (subject to the 2-D semantical complications discussed in Chapter One). On this view, there is an analytic link – perhaps identity – between the concepts of possibility and ideal conceivability that precludes any gap between the two. That way, modal truth just is the ideal limit of a priori inquiry; it does not answer to the sort of independent reality that might sensibly be considered beyond all epistemic reach. Modal reality is thus a kind of (non-contingent) rational construction. Rather than addressing the metaphysical question of how reality is in itself, modal facts may be considered more fundamentally normative in nature: they tell us what should be concluded at the ideal limit of a priori rational reflection.
Metaphysical Realists about modality, in contrast, wish to uphold the conceptual distinction between necessity and apriority, whereby the former is taken to be a genuinely metaphysical notion – about the world as it is in itself, rather than our (even idealized) beliefs about it. Realists will be more sympathetic to the previous chapter’s conclusion (§2.3) that we can make sense of a ‘gap’ between the two concepts, according to which even ideally rational agents might be inescapably mistaken about the breadth of modal space. Realist modal rationalists must simply insist that there is no such gap as a matter of fact. Further, this fact about modal space will be necessary if true at all (cf. §2.2), so the modal rationalist is also committed to its apriority. But whereas the conceptualist takes the connection to be analytic, realists will instead propose that it is a substantive, synthetic claim about the metaphysical nature of reality. It is this ‘realistic’ version of modal rationalism that I will seek to elucidate and defend later in this chapter. First, we must depart from the conceptualists by taking seriously the idea of primitive metaphysical modality that underlies the radical challenge from strong necessities.
Note that metaphysical realism puts modal rationalism at risk by opening the door to strong necessities. If – contrary to my arguments – there are indeed some strong necessities, then the inference from ideal conceivability to metaphysical possibility is jeopardized. Even so, this might not leave philosophers quite as hamstrung as typically supposed. It is arguably the fundamentally rational notion, rather than the metaphysical one, that we employ in our philosophical theorizing. That is, for the standard theoretical uses of modality, it may be the conceptualist’s space of coherent scenarios that we really need. But I think we have a grip on an independent metaphysical notion in any case, so I will try to bring this out in the sections that follow. My subsequent defense of realist modal rationalism will be of greater significance to those who dispute the theoretical primacy of epistemic space proposed above.
§3.2 Content-Based Modalities vs. Metaphysical Modality
I wish to distinguish two very different ways of specifying a modal space. In the first case, philosophers may isolate and identify the particular modal space they wish to work with by offering a (more or less) formal specification of the contents they wish to include or exclude. That is, they begin with some framework F of rules or limitations, and then define the space of F-possibilities as simply a matter of what is not ruled out by F. [Cf. Van Inwagen: “It hardly follows that, because a certain thing cannot be proved to be impossible by a certain method, it is therefore possible in any sense of ‘possible’ whatever.” What I here call “content-based” kinds of possibility are, for Van Inwagen, mere pseudo-possibilities.] I will say that a specification is “content-based” if its delimiting rules are directly and exclusively concerned with the internal contents of possible worlds, so that one may determine whether or not to allow a world-candidate solely on the basis of descriptions of what that world contains.
For example, nomological possibility is sometimes understood as simply consisting in the non-violation of the actual laws of nature. [Other times it may be understood as ‘compossibility’ with the laws of nature, in which case something that is metaphysically impossible would be considered “nomologically impossible” even if the laws of nature alone provide no grounds for ruling it out.] This specification is content-based insofar as it can be applied simply by examining a complete description of the internal workings of a candidate world, and determining whether any of the described events contravene our laws of nature. Conceptual possibility can similarly be settled simply by determining whether a candidate world-description contains any overt or implicit self-contradictions. This might not be purely formal: if rational insight cannot be captured algorithmically, there will be no finite set of rules that can determine a priori coherence. So the latter may need to be taken as a primitive in its own right. Nevertheless, this modality is “content-based” as I use the term, for it serves to directly fix the breadth of the modal space.
In this chapter, I wish to explore the proposal that metaphysical possibility is not to be understood in such content-based terms. Instead, this modal space is, in a sense, "world-oriented". It is to be characterized first and foremost in terms of its metaphysical nature, thus leaving its breadth of content to be fixed by reality rather than building it explicitly into the concept. This aims to connect with our intuitive notion of ‘metaphysical possibility’ as reflecting ways the world really could have been – a concept whereof our primitive grasp leaves open, at least initially, what breadth of content this modal space contains. The answer is fixed by reality, not our concepts alone. The question of what really could have been is here assumed to be a question fundamentally about the world – or reality in itself – that admits of an objective and exclusive answer. Though philosophers might propose whatever content-based restrictions suit their purposes, the world itself provides just one space of real possibilities.
Of course, this space of metaphysically possible worlds must have some or other breadth, and so be specifiable in terms of restrictions on content. Perhaps it includes all the conceptually possible worlds. Or perhaps it includes only the actual world, as would be the case if things never really had any genuine opportunity to be different. If all else fails, one could simply give an exhaustive specification of each and every world that it includes, and construct their disjunction as the content restriction. Any of these “spatial breadth” properties are prima facie consistent with the concept I’m trying to point to, because its fundamental character lies in a different dimension. Unlike the other modal concepts, we don’t immediately characterize it in terms of breadth or restrictions on content. The criterion for a world’s inclusion in this space is instead its brute modal nature. We don’t ask: “Does this world contain anything which violates such-and-such content restrictions?” Instead we ask the irreducibly modal question: “Is this a world that had the opportunity to be actualized?” Or, equivalently: “could it really have come about?”
Once we have a grasped metaphysical modal space by way of the above questions, we can go on to inquire into the space’s breadth of content – as below. But for now I emphasize that the concept must be initially grasped in these primitive modal terms. You cannot begin by characterizing metaphysical modal space in terms of its contents, because those are not included in the concept as it initially presents itself to us. If you begin with them, you are really grasping a different concept altogether. After all, for any space of worlds characterized in terms of their content, one can still coherently ask: “but might they really have been actualized?” It wrongly remains an open question, unless one builds this modal requirement right into the fundamental conceptual character of metaphysical modality.
Note that this conception makes no explicit demands on what content must be found within candidate worlds. Metaphysical modality, thus understood, is not to be analyzed in terms of any collection of formal rules or laws that must be satisfied, nor even a primitive content restriction such as “rational coherence”. Rather, what matters is simply whether the candidate world is one that really could have been actualized. So long as this external modal property is satisfied, we need not worry about what is in the candidate world. This makes the specification of metaphysical modal space significantly different in kind from the content-based spaces mentioned earlier.
§3.3 Identifying Metaphysical Modality
It might be wondered what, exactly, this notion of “really could have been actualized” involves. (Merely emphasizing the “really” will do little to help one who lacks an antecedent grasp of the concept.) Since it is presented as a primitive or bedrock concept, no reductive analysis can be offered to explicate it. But some general remarks may help bring the intuitive notion to light.
Chalmers expresses his skepticism as follows:
It seems to me that we do not even have a distinct concept of metaphysical necessity to which the second primitive [besides rational coherence] can answer. The momentary impression of such a concept may be a residue from initial impressions of the Kripkean distinction between epistemic and metaphysical modality. But once we recognize that this distinction can be explained with one modal primitive, and that there are constitutive ties between the Kripkean modalities, the grounds for this impression disappears. The only concept of a "metaphysical possible world" that we have is that of a logically possible world. If someone thinks they have a distinct concept here, there is no reason to believe that anything answers to it.
I think both challenges may be answered by pointing to a familiar – and metaphysically ‘realist’ – concept of possibility that is sometimes relegated to the merely “nomological”. The concept I have in mind naturally relates to commonplace ideas about objective chance, indeterminism, and the open future. Many people think that the future is metaphysically open, in that it really could turn out in any one of a number of different ways – the truth of the matter hasn’t been decided yet. Each open possibility has some non-zero objective chance of eventuating. Note that this isn’t just a claim about our epistemic situation, or even the rational ideal: it’s about how reality is in itself. This has nothing to do with any actual or possible minds. As a rough heuristic: if God were to rewind time and play it back again, things would unfold differently. Admittedly, this commonsense belief assumes indeterminism. If, instead, the future is already determined, then – given the present state of affairs – there is only one way that things can really turn out. No matter how many times God “replays” history from this point, he’ll never get a different result.
Of course, metaphysical possibility cannot simply be identified with non-zero objective chance. The past is presumably now fixed, so there’s no chance it will suddenly change on us. But even though the past certainly won’t be different, nevertheless we might still think that it could have differed. Perhaps there were open alternatives at a time in the even more distant past. In extending our intuitive notion of the open future back into the past, we will find various (now closed) branches that really were, at one point, dynamically open possibilities. Our concept of metaphysical possibility should at least include the entire history of such dynamic possibilities. They are all ways that the world really could have turned out. Hopefully it is now intuitively clear what I mean by this.
It’s worth pausing here for a moment to clarify what we have established. In exploring the metaphysical specification of modality, we have thus far reached a space of worlds that could be given the content-based specification of “nomological possibilities given the initial starting conditions of the universe”. But such content-based descriptions fail to capture the metaphysical significance – the idea that the world really could have turned out in any of those ways. (Though readers might implicitly project significance on to it, in light of their background knowledge that anything satisfying this content restriction would in fact have had an objective chance of eventuating.) I wish to draw attention to this modal primitive – the one we invoke when thinking about objective chances, physical indeterminism, and open futures – and how natural it is for us to be Metaphysical Realists about it. This seems to be a species of modality that is no mere rational idealization, but rather is truly in the world, as a basic component of reality.
It might be objected that what I’ve pointed to here just is “nomological modality” in some sense. Non-Humeans, at least, could be expected to imbue some form of natural necessity with the primitive metaphysical significance proposed above – in which case the end result will be much the same. Whatever you want to call it, once we have a grip on this ‘realist’ modal primitive, we may ask: could the laws of nature themselves have been different, in this primitive sense? It seems a reasonable question, though of course the nomological impossibility of it is trivial. This suggests that the primitive notion in this vicinity is not, strictly speaking, nomological possibility after all – at least, it doesn’t seem built into the very concept that the laws of nature must be necessary in this primitive sense. We can always stipulate such a content-based restriction later, if we need it for other purposes. But the core concept here is – prima facie – potentially broader than that. So I think ‘metaphysical possibility’ is the more fitting term.
We have here a metaphysically ‘realist’ modal concept that has worldly application: at the very least, it spans the entire history of dynamic possibilities or “open futures”. This undermines the skeptical basis for conceptualism – we should be realists about metaphysical possibility instead. But how far does it extend? We are now faced with the awesome questions of why our universe exists at all, and whether a wholly different universe – say with alternative laws of nature or initial conditions – could have existed in its place. This provides the focus for the next section. Could absolutely any coherent scenario really have been actualized, as the modal rationalist proposes? Or are some rationally apparent possibilities necessarily excluded by the nature of reality, creating “strong necessities” that fall outside the 2-D framework and falsify modal rationalism?
§3.4 Two Principles of Modal Expansion
To recap: we have a space of scenarios, each of which represents a way for the world to be. We might think of each of those “ways” as being a maximal property, just one of which is instantiated by the actual world, and hence is “the way the world is”. That these various properties exist is, it seems, a merely ontological fact. What we’re interested in is the modal fact concerning which of these rival properties (scenarios) had a real chance to be instantiated (actualized). The answer will yield our space of metaphysically possible worlds. Any leftover scenarios will be coherent ways for a world to be, but nevertheless the world could not really have been such a way. They are the ways that “never stood a chance”, so to speak. It might already be thought that there’s something very strange about the idea of such leftovers. Let me offer further grounds for such skepticism.
The above discussion frames the modal question in terms of a positive demand for some reason to think that a scenario had the opportunity to be actualized. This presupposes that scenarios are “modally inert” by default. Their being is merely ontological, and some further modal property or relation needs to be added to them in order to make them “really possible”. They must be targeted by some potentially world-actualizing mechanism – perhaps a Leibnizian God who surveys the space of possible worlds before deciding which to bring into actual existence. But this notion of an atemporal process of worldly “becoming” is of dubious coherence. There is no time before time began, during which such a process of selection could take place. We might take this to indicate the metaphysical necessity of our actual laws and initial conditions – thus contradicting modal rationalism. Or we might reframe the question in a way that escapes these problems. Here I seek to explore the latter option.
We might achieve this by framing the question in negative terms, or asking whether there is any reason why a described world-candidate could not have been actualized. Here we treat possibility as the default assumption: absent any reasons to the contrary, we assume that each way for a world to be is indeed a way that the world really could have been. So long as there is nothing necessarily preventing a candidate from being actualized, it should thereby be considered possible. It does not require any positive mechanism that could have brought it about, or “given it a chance”. No such chance need be given; rather, it comes for free. We might say that a candidate’s natural state is possibility – additional reasons are required to preclude its possibility, not to grant it. Let us call this principle the presumption of possibility. It may allow us to pursue modal inquiry whilst avoiding the confusion inherent in positive demands for a world-creating mechanism.
The negatively framed question also seems more susceptible to being answered. The question of what might bestow metaphysical possibility on a world-candidate seems hopelessly mysterious. But if we ask what kind of thing could preclude a claim from being possible, we find an obvious answer, namely, inconsistency (or a priori incoherence). The consistency principle claims that this is the only answer available, i.e. that a priori incoherence is the only barrier to possibility. After all, we have no trouble granting that an inconsistent state of affairs could not have obtained. But why think that a coherent scenario could not really have been actualized? Such a proposal would seem entirely unmotivated – there is nothing intrinsically disqualifying about the scenario, and there doesn’t appear to be anything external necessarily preventing it from being actualized either. So it seems most reasonable to conclude that any coherent scenario really could have been actualized after all. The combined effect of my two “expansionist” principles – the presumption of possibility, and the consistency principle – is to lead us back to modal rationalism, only this time with a realist metaphysical foundation.
Although the proposed principles seem quite plausible to me, they could reasonably be denied. Of particular concern is the idea that nothing is “necessarily preventing” coherent scenarios from being actualized. Given that a scenario is in fact not actualized, we might wonder why that is. Whatever the actual reason why some other conceptually possible universe does not exist in place of ours, perhaps this very same reason holds of necessity, so that the other universe could not really exist in place of ours. If we take actual existence to be a matter of brute fact, why not metaphysically possible existence likewise? (Perhaps they come down to one and the same fact, viz. our universe’s origin.) Whereas I formulated the above principles in order to sidestep unanswerable questions about ultimate origins, critics might consider stopping right there to be the more appropriate response. As indicated earlier, the metaphysical realist might conclude that the origin of our universe could not really have been any different. I have shown how modal rationalists might hope to avoid this result, by formulating plausible principles of modal expansion. But a more thorough defense of these principles awaits further work.
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