Guest Post: Naturalism

[Guest post by Barry.]

Let me begin by saying that these remarks are extremely sketchy, just a recording of a recent whisky-fueled conversation. I have hitherto taken myself to be a naturalist, so these remarks are in the spirit of self-examination. Any help will be very warmly welcomed.

Suppose we take naturalism to be the research project whose goal is the reduction of everything to matter. Reduction is supervenience, say; or something tighter. Everything includes all the troublesome phenomena: modality, mind, normativity, maths. Matter is whatever the theoretical physicists tell us the world is made of (never mind that they consider this a deep mystery).

Now imagine some Fukuyama-esque article of the future, triumphantly announcing the end of metaphysics. In this article it will be demonstrated, compellingly, that every single recalcitrant phenomenon has been reduced. (I do not intend the term 'demonstrated' here to be factive.)

What then?

According to our putatively final metaphysics, the world is one big chunk of matter. I think this leaves us with two questions, which the naturalist lacks the resources to answer. (1) Why is the world made of this stuff, and not some other stuff? (2) Why is there this stuff and not nothing at all?

Our explanans must always be explanatorily broader than our explanandum. You cannot explain alpha with alpha; you must explain it with some beta that may include alpha. (The fact that the girl crossed the road does not explain the fact that the girl crossed the road, but it might explain the fact that the girl crossed some part of the road.) As the Aristotelians say, explanations must involve not just the 'that' but also some 'because.'

The worry is that naturalists can explain a lot in terms of matter, but they cannot explain matter in terms of matter.

Perhaps I am being childish; perhaps explanations do have to come to an end somewhere; perhaps the answer to 'why is there something rather than nothing?' is: 'there just is.' Or perhaps this isn't a meaningful question, or it is incoherent some other way. But it doesn't seem to be. It just seems hard.

And here's a possible diagnosis of the naturalist's error. The privileging of matter is just another manifestation of the human mind's craving for fixity - for an Archimedean point. And its perhaps just as misguided as the Cartesian response to this craving, or the religious.

So should we go back to old-school metaphysics? Or embrace some sort of aesthetic scepticism?

- Barry

[See also: Why does the universe exist? -- RC.]

Open-ended deliberation

As I wrote last month:

These [normative] skeptics usually presuppose a kind of naive Humeanism, according to which preferences are 'given' and automatically combine with beliefs to yield action. But that can't possibly be right, because it leaves no room for the familiar phenomenon of deliberation. We are agents with the capacity for practical reasoning, i.e. the assessment of reasons that count for or against various courses of action. This is a self-consciously normative process of decision: just as theoretical reasoning addresses the question what should I believe?, so practical reasoning addresses the question what should I do? Insofar as you think of yourself as a rational agent at all, you must be engaging with these normative questions; the alternative is to be a mere automaton, a reflexive stimulus-response machine. Most of us are more deliberative; but deliberation is inherently normative: it addresses a question for which there may be better or worse answers.

Robin Hanson responded that he has no problem reflecting on what he wants. But I think that is insufficient to capture all practical deliberation.

One way to bring this out is to note how constrained deliberation on Robin's question must be. If our 'wants' or desires are given prior to deliberation, then an answer to the question 'what do I most want?' is limited to the contents of your pre-existing desires. Your ends are already fixed; all that remains to be determined is which desires are strongest (a mechanistic process which does not seem to call for any kind of choice or decision in any case), and then the instrumental question how to fulfill them.

But as agents with fully general rational capacities, it is possible for us to engage in open-ended deliberation. Our practical conclusions are no more determined by our prior states of desire than our theoretical conclusions are determined by our prior states of belief. (Though both will be of significant influence, for sure.) Regardless of my prior ends, if you can convince me that some new end is more worth pursuing, I must -- on pain of irrationality -- come to adopt that end myself.

The desire theorist may insist that this just shows that you have come to have a new desire, and it's still this desire which is responsible for motivating your eventual action. But this is an empty claim: the desire was a product of your rational deliberation, rather than an input to it. So it is your reason which is the ultimate source of motivation in this case.

The Claims of Emotion

When you are angry, for example, the anger you feel contains the thought that (e.g.) some other person has done you an injury... and ought to be made to suffer in return. If your reason thinks differently... you are internally not just pulled in different directions; you are thinking ultimately contradictory thoughts, one through your anger [and] the other through your reason.

So writes John Cooper in 'Some Remarks on Aristotle's Moral Psychology' (Reason and Emotion, p.245, bold added). He continues:

For reason to persuade anger (in this particular case, or in general) is for it to get its own view of what is good to prevail, in the sense that this conception comes to be adopted by the nonrational part itself, as well. To cause this to happen, even intermittently, may require practice and training, of course, but in that process reason is not just exercising brute force, as one might in training an animal. it is, among other things, addressing one's anger, trying to direct its attention to features of the situation that will show one's anger... that it would be, or was, wrong to feel in that way. [If this process is successful...] The way you then feel about what has happened and about what should be done about it, is exactly also the way you think, for reasons, about it.

Further, on pp.246-7:

Now because Aristotle thinks that the truth about such matters -- matters of value in general -- is properly settled by reasoning, he thinks that this is the direction that the resolution of such contradictions should take. Your anger was caused not by what you rationally thought, nor by what you would rationally think if you gave reason a chance, but by (possibly obscure) causes lying in your recent or distant past experience. ... There is no good reason to think that your anger reflects the truth about the matters about which it is making claims...

However, it is important to bear in mind that the resolution can go in the other direction, both in individual cases an in general orientation. Faced with a conflict between how you feel about things in some respect and how you think about them, especially if this persists for a long time despite efforts on your part to adjust the way you feel, you will, faute de mieux, tend to adjust it in the other direction, by adopting in your rational thoughts a view about good and bad and right and wrong that conforms to the way you habitually feel: it is as if, under pressure from your stubborn desires, you decide on reflection that the correct way to determine what is good is simply to accept as authoritative how you feel. (Perhaps you then figure out some reasons to suit.) What forces us to take one of these two alternatives is the central fact that being rational creatures we cannot very readily or contentedly let the contradiction stand. We are moved, because we are rational, to resolve it in one direction or another.

But are there limits to the claims reason may make against our emotions? Cf. Moral Roots and Alienating Aspirations

Is Knowledge (Ever) Indefeasible?

My old thread on the surprise examination paradox has seen an interesting revival of discussion. Along the way, Pablo claims:

If someone knows that Q, that person cannot be thrown into a state of epistemic confusion regarding Q.

I doubt this. It seems that in many cases knowledge can be undercut when we acquire further (perhaps misleading) beliefs. I may see (and hence know) that the widgets are red, until I form the defeating belief that they are irradiated by red light. Similarly, if an apparently infallible source ('God') tells me that I can't know that Q, his assertion may be self-fulfilling, by raising doubts and plunging me into a state of epistemic confusion and uncertainty that is incompatible with full-blown knowledge.

On the other hand, the unrestricted claim that epistemic doubts are self-fulfilling leads to contradiction when combined with other plausible assumptions (introspection and closure under known entailment). Perhaps the two most promising options are then:

(1) Allow only justified doubts to act as defeaters; or
(2) Restrict the claim, so that only undoubted doubts are automatic defeaters. If you come to believe that your doubts [about your belief that p] are unjustified, then those doubts no longer undercut the justification for your belief. (The defeater is itself defeated.)

Remaining questions: Which of these options is right? If (1), will that make some knowledge indefeasible after all? Or is the doubt and confusion raised by God's testimony justified, so that it may defeat your knowledge in any case?

Williamson on Telescopes

Philosophers who refuse to bother about semantics, on the grounds that they want to study the non-linguistic world, not our talk about that world, resemble astronomers who refuse to bother about the theory of telescopes, on the grounds that they want to study the stars, not our observation of them. Such an attitude may be good enough for amateurs; applied to more advanced inquiries, it produces crude errors. Those metaphysicians who ignore language in order not to project it onto the world are the very ones most likely to fall into just that fallacy, because the validity of their reasoning depends on unexamined assumptions about the structure of the language in which they reason.

-- Timothy Williamson, 'Must Do Better' [pdf], p.9.

Doing/Allowing and Effortful Willing

In 'Natural Baselines' I discuss a way to ground (a revisionary version of) the doing/allowing distinction in modal facts. Another suggestion I've heard is to consider the ratio of possible physical movements that are open to you: if most ways of moving lead to X, and fewer to not-X, then this means that you would be 'making' not-X true, and merely 'allowing' X to happen. Neither of these distinctions seems to have much ethical import, though. So in this post I'd like to suggest a more morally relevant distinction in this vicinity, based on the idea of willpower or ego-depletion:

Humans have limited executive cognitive control or 'willpower' (cf. the psychological literature on ego-depletion). Decision-making and conscious action is draining. It's hard work. The immediate concerns of everyday life can be burdensome enough without adding all the world's ills to one's plate. Again, so long as one is leading a basically decent life, it just doesn't seem reasonable to condemn them or demand that they attend to more pressing concerns elsewhere. Most people have more than enough to attend to already!

So perhaps we should say that one would be 'doing'/bringing about X (or 'allowing' not-X) iff the X option requires more effortful decision-making (i.e. is more ego-depleting) than the not-X option. This could make sense of why bringing about harms is more blameworthy than merely allowing them.

Any thoughts? (Counterexamples or problem cases especially welcome!)

Quick Poll

Commenting on Richard Brown's post, GNZ writes:

I honestly am curious if anyone else besides Richard C could actually read all exchanges between the two of you and leave with the impression that Richard C seems to have of what happened.

I guess there's one way to find out.* What do y'all think?

[See also: Zombie Review, Assessing Arguments and Begging Questions.]

* = Then I promise to waste no further time or blogspace on this silly dispute. It just annoys me to be subjected to unjustified insults. Confirmation from impartial spectators might lead the misguided accuser to reconsider. And I know I would want to be corrected if I were ever in the situation of making unjust claims myself.

Judging People

To quote Sebastian out of context:

I don't know if you've ever noticed people fighting, but when they are both screaming at each other you tend to dismiss them both regardless of the merits. When one appears to be acting reasonable you tend to side with them just a touch (even if on the merits they aren't as grounded).

I'm sure this is true (as a general tendency), but it seems kind of unfortunate. I've noted before that it's easier to seem reasonable than to actually be reasonable, i.e. to aptly judge issues on their merits. Further, if we tend to think badly of others for being negative, no matter how warranted their criticisms might be, that creates an unfortunate incentive against critical thought. Negativity is entirely appropriate in response to substantive flaws:

[According to popular subjectivism:] Criticism is mean and nasty, something only bad people engage in. Nice people are always happy and co-operative, appealing to our positive emotions rather than negative ones. So the story goes.

Once we reject subjectivism, however, a better alternative presents itself: not 'be positive', but be reasonable -- do what the situation calls for. If there is good reason to criticise the opposition, then do so. Otherwise, don't. Simple.

The upshot: you can't just complain that the other team is engaging in 'negative campaigning'. There's nothing wrong with negativity per se. The real question is whether their negativity is justified: i.e. whether their claims are important and true.

On the other hand, hysterical screaming does tend to correlate with substantive lunacy, so perhaps it's not wholly unreasonable to be prejudiced against angry-sounding screeds (at least until you're in a position to assess the actual content).

But it would seem rather unjust to think badly of someone who was actually clearly in the right (i.e. clear to anyone who bothered to examine the dispute on its merits). So should one instead suspend judgment if they can't be bothered assessing the matter more carefully? Should our attitudes towards others be governed by the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty'? Better a thousand fools be free of your inner censure, than one good person wrongly maligned? Or should we maximize the likelihood of true belief by engaging in statistical discrimination (generalizations) and using whatever evidence we've got?

Or maybe it doesn't really matter how we judge others? They're just thoughts.

Even so, better to have one's thoughts be accurate, no? (Perhaps it only matters when one will act on said beliefs, e.g. by supporting or condemning a disputant. In that case, it seems much clearer that one should take care to judge the matter aright.)

The Democratic Republic of Michigan

Hillary Clinton is worried that the will of the people is not being upheld (ht):

Hillary Clinton compared the plight of Zimbabweans in their recent fraudulent election to the uncounted votes of Michigan and Florida voters saying it is wrong when “people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.”

Because when you hold a fake election with only one name on the ballot, it would be "undemocratic" not to support the inevitable winner, right? Because there's nothing more to democratic elections than "going through the motions". No need for active campaigning to allow the electorate to make an informed decision. Hell, no need to give them alternative options at all. That's all superfluous. As long as the ballot papers end up with a tick by your name, you are the legitimate elected leader of a "democratic" state, and the global community should recognize you as such.

Structural Incentives in Academic Work

Truepath argues that "Academic philosophy creates a structural incentive to be insufficiently critical and arrive at the wrong answers." I thought I should make a new thread to continue the discussion. His latest comment follows:

Well no, I don't expect us to do without meta-discussions or the like. However, what I'm trying to get at isn't a distinction between substance and non-substance here (though that is where I think lots of philosophy is substantively wrong) but rather a bias towards theories with a certain flavor and complexity.

For instance I think Carnap does a truly excellent job of dealing with many meta-philosophical questions and while he certainly isn't entirely correct about everything (logical probability was a big mistake and he had some problems accepting some of the points Quine got right) I think many of his approaches are a much better choice than the more modern approach of throwing in lots of ambiguous concepts and building complex structures to talk about meta-philosophy.

Now I personally tend to think Carnap's approach of always taking philosophy to be postulating a certain model and then dividing up issues into internal quesitons and external ones is the right approach to take. I'm certainly not saying that others have to agree. However, I'm pointing out that it's odd that the answers a Carnapian approach would give to these problems have such an extremely small mindshare in philosophy today.

Now if I thought that this approach had died out because it had been out argued that would be fine. However, my impression is that it has lost mindshare for exactly the opposite problem: it answers questions to well. The Carnapian answer to the problem doesn't leave you any more interesting philosophy to do. You simply say, "well that's an external question, just pick whatever best suits your purpose," and that's the end of the conversation apart from debating the fundamental validity of the approach.

I probably made an explanatory error in bringing up another example to make my argument. I don't want the focus to be on any particular position because I'm not suggesting one couldn't reasonably disagree with these conclusions. What I am suggesting is that some philosophical analysis provides excellent fodder for others to cite and build upon while other types of analysis leave the problem sterile and dry, and even when the better arguments lie with the latter type of explanation sheer weight of publications will drive consensus opinion toward the earlier one.

Of course you can disagree but the problem is that continuing to have things to say (in general or about the disagreement) isn't evidence of correctness. In fact I think in general it is (weak) evidence against a view (more complex, more places for potential confusion to enter). However, a view which doesn't have anything more to say about an issue will be pushed out of the academic community because you can't keep publishing the same paper over and over again.

My hope with the examples is not that you would say, "hey yah that side is certainly correct" (though I wouldn't mind) but that you would say, "yah that position is not represented in the philosophical world proportionally to it's plausibility."

... Note that once you admit that the [surprise examination] paradox can't be stated formally you can only generate the paradox if I accept some other notion as meaingful/well-defined (rationality etc.). Thus it will always be a perfectly good solution to the paradox to simply be really really stingy and refuse to accept these non-formal notions. But can you see the stingy approach continuing to hold the interest of the philosophical community?

Even if the stingy approach has the better of the argument the approach which offers the opportunity for other philosophers to help build up a logic of announcements for true but unbelievable propositions will be the subject of greater attention by the community. It's this bias towards things which give rise to philosophy papers that troubles me.

Three quick thoughts: (1) Neo-Carnapians are not so rare, in my experience. (2) I doubt conceptual stinginess is ever a good response to anything. And (3) it's not entirely clear why the argument is targeted specifically at philosophy rather than academic publishing in general.

But, on the main point, I just don't think it's true that academic structures are biased against knock-down work that conclusively settles (or dissolves) an issue, leaving no further work to do in its wake. If Jones can successfully close an old and troubling issue X in one paragraph, he could get this published in Analysis and the next time anyone opened their mouth about X their colleagues would all say, "Go read Jones, then find a real issue to work on." Or so I imagine.

The reason this doesn't tend to happen is not because of any structural bias, but because it's not that easy to conclusively settle philosophical problems. Anyway, my core response is as follows: we have plenty of unsolved issues to provide us with "fodder", so there's no incentive to keep plugging away at solved ones.

Arguing by Degrees

Now that I think of it, a better way to make my point may be to replace talk of 'all or nothing' belief with credences or degrees of belief.

Even if you ultimately reject an argument, it may be that you were antecedently disposed to have greater credence in the premises (conjoined) than in the conclusion. Upon having this mild inconsistency pointed out to you by the valid argument, you will presumably revise your credal state by some appropriate combination of reducing your credence in the premises and raising your degree of belief in the conclusion.

If an argument can, in this way, be expected to lead many to rationally revise upwards their degree of belief in its conclusion, then it ipso facto has rational force (and is not question begging), in relation to this community of inquirers. This may be so even if their resulting credal state still falls short of full-blown belief.

I note that this approach also helps to refute a similar claim I addressed last year, namely:

No rational argument then can be constructed to ever change a person’s mind, because we can never get to premises that people must accept.

My earlier points refute it well enough, of course, but 'credence' talk makes it even clearer. For this reminds us that we may change a person's mind even without changing their full-blown beliefs (though we may do that too). Even if we merely sway them from thinking a view wildly implausible to instead thinking it moderately unlikely, that is clearly dialectical progress.

Assessing Arguments and Begging Questions

What does it take to be a good (or at least rationally respectable) argument? Consider the 'zombie argument' against materialism I present here. It has provoked vocal denunciations from some quarters, with Richard Brown insisting that it is "a rotten argument", and more precisely that it is "question begging" and hence not "anything like an argument against materialism."

If you read that last post of his, you'll notice the entire basis of his diatribe is simply that he happens not to accept a premise of the zombie argument. He's quite explicit about this:

A good argument starts from premises that everyone (in the debate) thinks are true and then show[s] that because of that they are committed to some other claim.

Anything else - the slightest hint of controversy - and an argument is ipso facto "crappy". This is a view which calls for no further refutation than its own clear statement.

It is possible to have a good (reasonable, respectable) argument that does not command universal assent. Indeed, it is even possible to respect an argument that you ultimately judge to be unsound. (I hold G.A. Cohen's argument against utilitarianism in high esteem, for example.) So I propose that we should instead assess arguments according to how well they advance the dialectic. So long as there are some opponents who are antecedently disposed to accept the premises of your argument, then it will have some rational purchase on them. A truly question-begging argument, on the contrary, is one that could not reasonably sway anyone who did not already accept the conclusion (because the conclusion is transparently contained within the premises in a way which makes the reasoning vacuous).

It should now be clear that the zombie argument is not, in fact, question begging. It has two controversial premises, but each is accepted by many prominent materialists. Moreover, there are at least a fair number of materialists-by-default, like my past self, who are disposed to find both premises very plausible, and hence to be rationally persuaded by the argument to reject materialism. It isn't vacuous, it begins from premises that many people -- including those who don't antecedently accept the conclusion -- find compelling, and from which the conclusion validly follows. What more could you ask for?

Now, I don't think it's a knock-down argument, since the premises are (as always) open to question. Indeed, I was very explicit in my overview post that I think people can reasonably disagree about whether to ultimately accept the zombie argument or not. But even one who ultimately rejects the argument should be able to recognize that it has some rational force (and certainly isn't 'question-begging' on any sane conception). Apparently that makes me a "fanatical property dualist". Go figure.

Dogville on Punishment

For those who feel some reluctance to affirm negative judgments about other people, the film Dogville really helps to illustrate a more retributivist viewpoint. Consider the following exchange: [spoiler warning]

The Big Man: You do not pass judgement, because you sympathize with them. A deprived childhood and a homicide really isn't necessarily a homicide, right? The only thing you can blame is circumstances. Rapists and murderers may be the victims, according to you. But I, I call them dogs, and if they're lapping up their own vomit the only way to stop them is with the lash... Dogs can be taught many useful things, but not if we forgive them every time they obey their own nature.

Grace: So I'm arrogant. I'm arrogant because I forgive people?

BM: My God. Can't you see how condescending you are when you say that? You have this preconceived notion that nobody, listen, that nobody can't possibly attain the same high ethical standards as you, so you exonerate them. I can not think of anything more arrogant than that. You... you forgive others with excuses that you would never in the world permit for yourself... you must maintain your own standard. You owe them that. You owe them that. The penalty you deserve for your transgressions, they deserve for their transgressions.

Grace: They are human beings --

BM: No, no, no. Does every human being need to be accountable for their action? Of course they do. But you don't even give them that chance.

Of course, even a utilitarian can agree with the first point -- that people must be held accountable for rehabilitative purposes, to shape and improve their character. But what do you make of the second argument, that respect requires us to hold others to the same high standards we would apply to ourselves? 

As Strawson famously noted, to suspend the reactive attitudes altogether would be to no longer treat the other as a (moral/rational) agent at all:

To adopt the objective attitude to another human being is to see him, perhaps, as an object of social policy; as a subject for what, in a wide range of sense, might be called treatment; as something certainly to be taken account, perhaps precautionary account, of; to be managed or handled or cured or trained; perhaps simply to be avoided... But it cannot include the range of reactive feelings and attitudes which belong to involvement or participation with others in inter-personal human relationships; it cannot include resentment, gratitude, forgiveness, anger, or the sort of love which two adults can sometimes be said to feel reciprocally, for each other. If your attitude towards someone is wholly objective, then though you may fight him, you cannot quarrel with him, and though you may talk to him, even negotiate with him, you cannot reason with him. You can at most pretend to quarrel, or to reason, with him.

I'm tempted by the thought that there's not much worse for a person than to have their agency denied, to be stripped of one's dignity or "recognitional respect" as a reasonable person. (On the other hand, the criminal facing punishment probably doesn't appreciate the respect we thereby show him.) What do you think?

Miracle McCain

Inspired by hilzoy's post, I figure a quick renovation of the classic cartoon is in order:

"I think you should be more explicit here in Step Two"

Feel free to create your own variations, and leave a comment to share the link!

The Question of Conservatism: Is Value Fungible?

A common objection to utilitarianism is that it treats people as mere value-receptacles. I never thought this objection made any sense, as explained in the linked post. But G.A. Cohen does a wonderful job (in his 'A truth in conservatism') of clarifying this in terms of fungibility. He writes:

The conservative propensity is to conserve, to not destroy, and, therefore, to not replace, even (within limits) by something more valuable... Conservatism is an expensive taste, because conservatives sacrifice value in order not to sacrifice things that have value.

We all have a bias towards our actual loved ones, and so would not wish for a world in which we somehow had even better relationships with completely different people. I figure that just goes to show that love and personal attachments can distort our preferences in various (fortunate, even if not strictly rational) ways. But Cohen suggests a stronger view, elevating this bias to the status of principle: existing things of value ought to be cherished, conserved and not replaced, not in virtue of any personal connection we may have to them, but simply in virtue of their actual existence.

Hence, for example, even impartial spectators -- and not just the unfortunate teenage mother and others personally involved -- should be glad about her child's existence (once he exists; not, of course, beforehand).

Note that a Cohen-conservative may still be a maxmizing consequentialist of a sort. But what they want to maximize is the quantity of preserved or pre-existing value, rather than value tout court. The objection is thus not to consequentialism per se -- utilitarian sacrifice is unproblematic, so long as it is for the sake of a pre-existing beneficiary. The objection instead concerns the aspect of utilitarianism according to which:

the bearers of value, as opposed to the value they bear, don't count as such, but matter only because of the value that they bear, and are therefore, in a deep sense, dispensable.

This is, without question, the best objection to utilitarianism I have ever encountered. Cohen goes on to press his argument as follows:

1. A thing that has intrinsic value is worthy of being revered or cherished.
2. We do not regard something as being worthy of being revered or cherished if we have no reason to regret its destruction, as such.
3. If we care only about their value, we never have reason to regret the destruction of valuable things, as such.
Therefore:
4. We are right to be biased in favour of existing embodiments of value.

The third premise is analytic: utilitarians (i.e. those who care only about value) may regret the destruction of value insofar as this involves a net reduction in value; it is non-replacement, rather than destruction, that we must regret. The second premise is also very plausible. As Cohen explains:

One can say, quite properly, upon acquiring a valuable thing, "I shall value this until something better comes along", but one cannot in the same way say "I shall cherish this until something better comes along": that could happen to be a correct prediction, but it could not express a decision to cherish... So, for example, you do not cherish a Tintoretto if you happily replace it by a slightly better Picasso: you thereby treat the Tintoretto as something that has the merely instrumental value of being a vessel of aesthetic value.

So the issue really comes down to premise 1, i.e. whether all intrinsically valuable things warrant cherishing in their particularity, or whether, perhaps, only things with 'personal value', i.e. that we love or are otherwise personally attached to, call for such cherishing. 

Related posts:
- Moral Roots and Alienating Aspirations
- Rationality and Reflective Endorsement.  

Update: see also 'Cohen-Conservatism revisited'

'Community' fluff

JJ writes:

The Canadian-based What Sorts of People Should There Be? project, has 61 researchers from 15 different disciplines. The team also includes members of the community.

Members of what community? This sounds like a silly feel-good euphemism for non-academics, though note the unfortunate implication that academics themselves -- those 61 researchers -- are somehow not real members of "the community" (whatever that is).

The project website is also filled with corporatese buzzwords: their "innovative" work is generated by the "interactive synergy" of the project. There's even a Venn diagram of three overlapping circles to prove it.

But I shouldn't poke fun. The project itself actually sounds really interesting. There are many fascinating philosophical questions surrounding eugenics, genetic screening, selective abortion, etc. It's just a pity they felt the need to dress it up in such fluff. (I thought that's what bureaucrats and managers did when they couldn't sell their work on its merits. But perhaps it's universal. That would be unfortunate, because their unclarity makes it harder to tell when an idea or project is really worth attending to. My default response is to assume they're full of bunk, and I assume I'm not alone here.)

Against Moral Mindfulness

More from Janet's post:

Reducing our decisions to dollars and cents keeps us focused on the impacts of our choices to ourselves, financially. It distracts us from the impacts of our choices on other individuals, or on our communities more broadly. Recognizing that those others are of value -- that they have interests that matter, too -- is kind of at the heart of being an ethical human being...

I'd really like to nudge myself, and those around me, to a place where we make more of our choices with a mindfulness about how those choices change the choices available to others (and to ourselves down the road). I don't want it to fall to our water bills to make us be the people we ought to be.

I disagree. Sure, insofar as we are acting qua citizen -- engaging in public debate, political advocacy, voting, etc. -- we should be guided by concern for the general welfare. But we should prefer to avoid needlessly burdening private individuals with additional concerns in their everyday life.

Benign spontaneous order is the ideal: far better to set things up so that ordinary thoughtless actions will tend towards the public good without any special effort or knowledge required on the part of the individual. As I wrote in an old thread:

I'd be delighted if our societal systems were so well-designed that people rarely needed to consider impartial moral reasons at all in their daily living. There is plenty of room for that in the public sphere, and it seems a more personal focus (on one's close relationships, etc.) would do more to enrich the private sphere.

Besides, it strikes me as perverse virtue fetishism to oppose effective institutions (e.g. markets) on the grounds that their good results emerge without requiring private virtue. Policy should be geared towards actually improving the world, not getting people to try to improve the world. (Cf. opposing safe-swimming flags at the beach because they reduce the opportunity for heroic rescues!)

Tax and Redistribute

Janet Stemwedel had a post yesterday on water conservation:

If there's a drought looming, a water district would like water users to cut back their water usage. If they don't, the water district could run out of water, which is bad for everyone.

Ramping up the price of any water usage is one option, but it would fall unfairly on the folks with less money. Water is not something you can opt out of using if the price of using it passes a certain point. We are not a society that openly embraces dessicating the poor.

Since people need to use some water (to drink, to boil ramen noodles, to wash, etc.), a water district wants a policy that acknowledges the necessity of water usage while discouraging water usage that can be avoided.

She goes on to describe how alternative proposals, e.g. charging for relative increases in use, create bad incentives and are unfair on those who had previously "cut their water usage down to the bone." How, then, can a society ration scarce resources effectively without "dessicating the poor"?

Actually, it's easy. Ramp up the (tax) price of all water usage, just as initially suggested, and then redistribute the proceeds among all taxpayers. Those who use more water end up compensating those who use less, so the poor (and other low-consumption users, e.g. conservationists) can actually expect to make a net profit out of this system. (They receive an $(X/n) payout, which is more than enough to pay for their essential water usage, and they can then pocket the rest.)

Really, this should be a no-brainer. And note that the lesson generalizes. Whenever someone complains that an economic disincentive "unfairly burdens the poor", the solution is to redistribute the proceeds. (Example: worried that gas taxes are a burden to the poor? Solution: redistribute the proceeds. The poor will profit, as will the environment.)

Why is this not common knowledge?

Acting on Meta-reasons

Another way to bring out my contrast between 'Moral Roots and Alienating Aspirations' is to consider the practical significance of higher-order evidence.

Suppose it seems to you that you ought to phi, but you also think that your judgment in this case could well be biased or otherwise impaired. You believe that other people in similar circumstances to yours have turned out to be mistaken. Moreover, others you consider to be moral experts -- reliably more insightful than yourself -- are unanimous in insisting that you should not phi. What should you do?

Objectivists must allow that appearances can be misleading, and so higher-order evidence can undermine our first-order beliefs. In the above scenario, it looks like your all-things-considered judgment should be that the totality of reasons that exist weigh against phi-ing, even though you do not currently have access to all those reasons yourself. The reasons in your possession count in favour of phi-ing, but as a realist you acknowledge that there may be other reasons beyond your grasp, and the views of experts can give you some indication of what the totality of reasons really favours.

What of the 'rooted' conservative/subjectivist? Here it is less clear. There may still be some room for overriding your personal judgments, e.g. if they rest on some merely empirical or logical error, and so do not really reflect your core values. But if we accept the Vellemanian position that what fundamentally matters is making sense to oneself, then there seems something deeply problematic about acting on mere "meta-reasons", i.e. the abstract promise of reasons out there that you have not fully grasped. You can't really make sense of your action, because even though there is abstract evidence that you did what is for the best, you do not yourself possess the grounds for this judgment; you don't, in other words, understand why it is for the best. So it may seem that you acted for reasons that are not, in some vital sense, your own.

This practical difference marks a vivid distinction between the two metaethical views. Whether we act for the sake of making internal sense to ourselves, or to make the external world better, will influence our receptivity to meta-reasons, and hence what decisions we make.

I take this to count in favour of objectivism, since it seems clear that we should be receptive to meta-reasons. As Dan Moller writes in 'Meta-reasoning and Practical Deliberation' [pdf] (p.26):

Failing to act on second-level reasoning means, by definition, acting on the basis of flawed deliberations when there is evidence of how improving those deliberations would affect the outcome. To return to the general [who is biased towards cowardice by the recent deaths of his friends], he presumably cares about discharging his duties as a soldier with integrity, so why shouldn’t he pursue every available opportunity to improve his decision-making? It is true that in that pursuit he may cut himself off from ultimate comprehension of the reasoning that leads to the conclusion to send in the troops, but accepting that limitation would in this circumstance express precisely a commitment to his deepest values and identity as a soldier, not any sort of compromise or abdication.

Isn't the alternative a bit solipsistic?

Moral Roots and Alienating Aspirations

Morality is made for man, not man for morality
   -- William K. Frankena.

I'm not sure what to make of Frankena's maxim. It's uncontroversial that human welfare is important. So let's interpret the maxim more strongly, as expressing a form of moral conservatism -- a rebuke of the radical and alienating demands of impartial consequentialism (to name just one example). An ethics for living, we may think, must be more firmly rooted in our actual condition, our personal concerns and interests.

There are many complex issues in this vicinity, but one way in is to ask whether there might be irreconcilable but reasonable conflict. I think not: I tend to conceive of the moral point of view as one that everyone can share, and thereby resolve any conflicts equitably, at least in principle. But if normativity must always be rooted in our particular perspectives, there's no reason to expect such compromises to always be possible. I may despise the frat boy as a boor, and he may despise me as an egghead, in a fundamental clash of values that is not susceptible to any common resolution. (The alternative is to think that one or both of us is making a mistake, and really ought to be more sympathetic to the other and their way of life.)

Rooted ethics implies a kind of relativism, since different people lay their roots in different places. But perhaps that's to be expected, and at the end of the day the most we can hope for is that our own values prevail in the culture wars. The metaethical conservative will not think that those who lay their roots elsewhere from his are in any sense mistaken or irrational. There is no shared ideal viewpoint for all to aspire to,* so those who disagree are not confused or misguided, but stalwart enemies.

* = Note that this abandonment of truth is what saves the metaethical conservative from incoherence

Another approach is to ask whether our prior dispositions (or perceived "common sense") place significant constraints on normative guidance. Could it possibly be the case that I ought to give up my most cherished projects and personal values? If my "idealized self" is radically different from me, so different that I can no longer recognize my self in him, what normative authority do his prescriptions really have over me?

If (the best account of) realism about value leads us to such conclusions as that newborns may be killed harmlessly, and that it would have been better if disabled persons (or children of teen mothers) had not been conceived, then some may wonder whether we'd do better to be anti-realists.

Indeed, this seems to be Velleman's position, in response to the apparent conflict between a parent's love for their particular severely disabled child, and their recognition that the creation of a severely disabled child is lamentable. He writes (in the conclusion to 'Love and Non-Existence'):

The parents experience their emotions as assessing the value of the child's existence in itself, apart from how it is conceived [i.e. under what guise or description], and the emotions cannot be simultaneously correct if so interpreted. But their emotions make perfect sense despite there being no consistent distribution of values that they would reflect, because emotions can only project value, and only when appearing to do so enhances their intelligibility.

The parents should therefore forget about evaluating their child's existence and feel the emotions that clearly make sense for them to feel. What's intelligible in their responses may cast an inconsistent set of shadows on the world, but they are, after all, only shadows.

On Velleman's view, what fundamentally matters is making sense to oneself. Making evaluations is one way of going about this, but one's personal narrative is primary, in line with Frankena's maxim.

But is it right? Or should we be realists about value, and think that what fundamentally matters is making the world a better place?

Aspiring to Objectivity

[Another post I'm working on reminded me of this note from last September that I never got around to posting...]

Is philosophy itself alienating? Excessive concern to achieve the 'view from nowhere' seems like an occupational hazard. Especially if one embraces an 'ideal agent'-type metaethic, this may lead to constantly second-guessing oneself: "would others ideally endorse this?" (Would I?) Perfection is too high a standard to try to live up to. But it's kind of hard to ignore if you spend all day thinking about it!

One worry is that many of our actual sentiments might not be expected to survive the idealization process. Yet ignoring or suppressing them may not be such a good idea. Someone in class today mentioned the 'bad squash loser' case: ideally, the loser should walk over to graciously congratulate the other player. But suppose that, due to his anger, were he to try he would more likely lash out violently. So he really should just walk away and cool off. That at least shows why we can't just ignore our contingent flaws. Is there a similarly clear argument against suppressing unwelcome emotions (e.g. if the squash loser were capable of distancing himself from his anger)? It seems a non-obvious empirical question what the consequences of this are likely to be. [I made a similar point in my recent post on the question whether to attempt to reshape a non-conforming child's gender preferences.]

A second worry arises from the concern for universal convergence. Many of our tastes may be thought idiosyncratic or merely 'subjective', but it would be unfortunate to devalue them for that reason alone. Perhaps we can resolve this by taking tastes as 'given', exempt from rational criticism, and recognize as universalizable the general desire to derive enjoyment from one's tastes (whatever they may be). Or, if such subjectivism is too extreme, at least allow for a plurality of standards of good taste.

Philosophy and Disciplinary Boundaries

Interesting.

Should philosophy have something to say to non-philosophers? Should philosophy be pursued only by those trained in philosophy? Should academic teachers of philosophy consider themselves philosophers in virtue of the fact that they teach philosophy? And should analytic philosophers deny that continental philosophers are philosophers at all, or acknowledge that they represent different modes of philosophizing? Cogito poses some big questions to four prominent British and US philosophers.

That last was a bit of a leading question, though Jonathan Barnes offered an amusing response:

Well, most philosophers who belong to the so-called analytical tradition are pretty poor philosophers. (Most academics who do anything are pretty poor at doing it; and philosophy, or so it seems to me, is a subject in which it is peculiarly difficult to do decent stuff. A modestly competent historian may produce a modestly good history book; a modestly competent philosopher has no reason to publish his modest thoughts.) But there's a big difference between the analyticals and the continentals: what distinguishes the continental tradition is that all its members are pretty hopeless at philosophy.

See also Barry Stroud on alternative written forms:

Poems and aphorisms do not seem to me appropriate forms for carrying out philosophical work, even if they might be used to express or summarize certain philosophical conceptions developed by other means. Dialogue is a very good way to write philosophy, but it is difficult to do convincingly. I don't see much loss in trying to write philosophy in clear, connected, sharply focused prose. I wish more philosophers would try it.

And, on a more serious note, Raymond Geuss discusses the 'compartmentalization' of philosophical sub-fields:

The question is not whether a moral philosopher should or should not be interested in logic. Of course, in an ideal world moral philosophers would pay close attention to what all other philosophers said and wrote. They would also pay close attention to advances in biology, new forms of legislation, world history, economic theory, cosmology, and literature. We do not live in such an ideal world and so for us the real question is: given the limitations on human time and attention, what is the most useful thing for a philosopher who has a primary interest, say in political philosophy, to study? Is it more useful to study logic than economic history? To say that we know that this is the case a priori, by virtue of the fact that logic "belongs" to philosophy and economics does not, is to fetishize disciplinary boundaries that have no absolute standing.

That is one quote I wholeheartedly agree with. I'm no fan of strict distribution requirements, but I suspect many grad students would benefit from faculty advisors encouraging them to take appropriate courses in related "non-philosophy" disciplines. What do you think?

Natural and Projectible Predicates

Rachael remarks on the 'structure and similarity' discussion:

Should we distinguish between predicates that are projectable and predicates that are natural? "Green", "ultraviolety-looking to bees", "owned by Rachael", and "tasty to alpacas" are fairly projectable, but I doubt they're natural. I don't expect a bee to care which objects are green, a mouse to care which objects are owned by Rachael, or a human (who doesn't have a special interest in bees or alpacas) to care which objects are ultraviolety-looking to bees or tasty to alpacas. There's a sense in which all the above concepts are parochial, and are only worth adopting because they're convenient. Furthermore, there's a sense in which there's no conflict between these different ways of carving up the world: I don't think the alpacas are wrong, and I might find it very important to adopt their concepts when interacting with them.

Also, maybe "Having mass m before time t or mass m* after" is an example of a natural predicate that isn't projectable.

That last example sounds gerrymandered (i.e. not a natural way to carve things up) to me. I'd need to hear more about why we'd consider it 'natural'. (Note that complex predicates may invoke natural terms like 'mass' in a gerrymandered or non-natural manner.) On the other hand, I'm also unsure why green and ultraviolet are thought not to be very natural. There is a natural respect -- namely, surface reflectance properties -- in which all green things (or all ultraviolet things) exhibit a genuine similarity.

The other examples are plausibly less natural, but also (and, I imagine, to the same degree) unprojectible. Here I should clarify something that may not have been clear in my first post. 'Projectibility' does not just mean stability across time, i.e. that if something satisfies the predicate now, it will also do so in future. Any tenseless predicate, however gerrymandered -- e.g. 'exists in 1907 or 2008' -- will be temporally stable in this sense. Genuine projectibility is more general, since we can inductively project along dimensions other than time. If a bunch of Fs are green, that may be evidence that other Fs (and not just these same ones in future) are also green. On the other hand, if a bunch of Fs are owned by Rachael, that's probably not enough to justifably project ownership-by-Rachael onto any other arbitrary F.*

Overall, then, I remain of the opinion that 'natural' predicates, i.e. those that carve nature at the joints, or highlight objective similarities, are also those that will tend to support inductive projection.

[* = I'm not sure if that's the best way to explain projectibility. Any suggestions?]

Epistemic Conservatism and Meta-coherence

Some commenters in the thread on 'structure and similarity' proposed that we should work with whatever concepts we happen to start with -- green rather than grue, or vice versa -- and only change if there's a compelling reason to do so: "I do not have to assume that the way I cut up the world now is the best way (in fact I'm pretty sure it isn't), I just have to consider if the [change] that you are proposing has useful consequences."

However, this runs headlong into a problem that I highlighted in a previous post: that principles of metacoherence mean that such humble meta-beliefs rationally undermine our first-order beliefs. Or, as I put it in my comment:

If you think that both inductive arguments are equally reasonable, and that there's no sense in which X is objectively more similar to Y than Z, then you have no grounds for believing one conclusion rather than the other (e.g. that future emeralds will be green rather than grue). By the principle of metacoherence, you should be agnostic.

I introduce this notion in my global rationality paper:

Sometimes we may be in a position to realize that our initial judgments should be revised. I may initially be taken in by a visual illusion, and falsely believe that the two lines I see are of different lengths. Learning how the illusion worked would undercut the evidence of my senses. I would come to see that the prima facie evidence was misleading, and the belief I formed on its basis likely false. Principles of meta-coherence suggest that it would be irrational to continue accepting the appearances after learning them to be deceptive, or more generally to hold a belief concurrently with the meta-belief that the former is unjustified or otherwise likely false.

As I further explain in my post 'Meta-Coherence vs. Humble Convictions':

It's [meta-]incoherent to believe that P whilst also believing that the weight of evidence fails to support P, since this is just to judge both [on the lower level] that P is true and [on the higher level] that P is probably not true after all.

If, faced with alternative possibilities, you nonetheless retain your belief in P, you must represent this to yourself as being because you judge that P is more likely true, and not just because you happened to have the belief in the past and don't feel like revising it. You can't consciously be an epistemic conservative, because the realization that you believe P partly for non-truth-related reasons will instantly lower your degree of belief in P, to match your assessment of the (subjective) probability that P is really true.

Some form of epistemic conservatism may be true nonetheless, in the trivial sense that we think our existing beliefs are true, and it will take positive work to convince us otherwise. But from a first-personal perspective, the reason we hold on to our existing beliefs is not the egoistic fact that they are our beliefs, but rather the "fact" (as it seems to us) that they are true. If you lose your confidence in the truth of a belief, and are "pretty sure" it's mistaken, then you can't sincerely believe it any more. You can't now appeal to epistemic conservatism as a way to hold onto your belief without judging it to be true. That's incoherent.

Brute Desires

We desire things for reasons. Often we want something because we judge it to be good. The desire thus stems from an evaluative belief, which in turn is answerable to reason. In other cases, the reason for our desire is a brute taste, e.g. the fact that we find the taste of chocolate to be pleasant. We desire chocolate for the pleasure it brings us, but this taste (unlike our values) is not further answerable to reason. It is simply given.

Is it possible to have a brute desire? A desire for chocolate, say, not for the pleasure it may bring, nor because there's anything about it you judge to be valuable, but simply because you (inexplicably) want it? I submit that this is not possible. You may be able to program a creature to pursue certain ends for no reason, but it is not really an agent with desires in the fullest sense unless it could make sense of them on reflection.

Consider it from the perspective of the agent in question. You find yourself pursuing some object X, even though you see nothing redeeming about it. You have no taste for X (it does not bring you pleasure). Nor do you judge it to be good or valuable for any other reason. You are, in short, completely indifferent to it. And yet there your hand is reaching out for X. Why is your hand doing that? You can't make sense of it. The behaviour does not stem from your attitudes in any way you can make sense of. It would seem more like your body is possessed, moved by some compulsion outside of your self. Whatever your behavioural outputs, so long as you neither value X nor have a taste for it, there's no way your pursuit of it can be properly characterized as reflecting a "desire" on your part.

The situation seems even more odd when we consider that the alleged "desire" is supposed to govern not just bodily movements, but also internal deliberation. That is, you should find yourself engaging in instrumental reasoning, forming elaborate plans about how best to obtain X. But again: why are you reasoning in such a way? It makes no sense, unless you think that X is worth getting for some reason (hedonistic or otherwise).

If you have a genuine desire that P, then (ceteris paribus) you will accept an offer to make it the case that P even on the condition that this fact is wiped from your memory and so you never get any subjective satisfaction out of it. (If you don't accept this offer, that shows that what you really desire is not P per se, but rather the subjective satisfaction of believing that P.) But, in the above case, can you imagine voluntarily accepting such an offer to secretly bring about X? Such a choice seems incomprehensible (unless you actually valued X, contrary to our stipulated set-up). So brute desires are likewise incomprehensible.

Or am I missing something?

Philosophers' Carnival #69

... is here! Short and sweet. (I especially liked Tomkow's post on Blackburn, Truth and other Hot Topics.)

Sider on Semantic and Metaphysical Intuitions

It is important to separate the two kinds of intuitions. Suppose you are initially inclined to intuit thus: "the property of being a dog is intrinsic". This might well be because you are simply presupposing the worm view [of 4-d objects], and thus presupposing that 'being a dog' refers to the property of being a dog-worm, and metaphysically intuiting that this property is intrinsic. It might well be that, once the question is raised of whether the worm-view or the stage-view is correct, your initial conviction disappears, and is replaced with agnosticism about whether "being a dog is intrinsic", despite your certainty that being a dog-worm is intrinsic and being a dog-stage is extrinsic.

[From his paper on counterpart theory: 'Beyond the Humphrey Objection'.]

Natural Baselines

After my uncharacteristic espousal of some form of metaphysical realism, I feel a more deflationary argument is in order. In particular, I want to explore the idea that there is no objective basis for talk of the 'natural progression of things', or a default outcome which an agent's actions may interfere with. In other words: is there a natural distinction to be made between 'doing' and 'allowing'?

I've been reading Dan Dennett's 'A route to intelligence: oversimplify and self-monitor', in which he discusses the queer idea of "changing the course of history":

How could you change the course of history? From what to what? If history is simply the sequence of events that actually occur, then of course you can't change history. People say you can't change the past, and that's true enough, but then you can't change the future either...

[O]ne has to be thinking of an anticipated history, the way history is going to go ceteris paribus, the way history is going to go unless someone does something, or until someone does something, or in spite of what someone does. These verbs of agency can have no foothold outside the framework of a projected, aniticpated history, even when they are used to characterize the effects brought about by entirely inanimate objects.

He goes on to describe a scenario whereby a meteor is heading towards the earth, and we're all frantic until an unnoticed second meteor deflects the first one, "narrowly averting the catastrophe, preventing calamity." However, given full information, we could have seen that "there was never going to be a catastrophe. It was merely an anticipated catastrophe -- a mis-anticipated catastrophe." Dennett thus suggests that the sense in which the meteor was 'set' to hit earth is merely epistemic, rather than reflecting any natural disposition or 'default outcome' in the world, from which we were narrowly saved.

I'm not sure that's the full answer, though. There seems a sense in which the meteor really was, quite literally, 'on course' to hit the earth. It was 'deflected', which is precisely to say that its course was changed. This may be reflected in the modal fact (if it is one) that in most close possible worlds, the catastrophe indeed occurs. It's an open question whether this modal fact actually holds of the scenario, however. It might if small changes to the course of the second meteor would cause it to miss the first, while equivalent changes to the first meteor would not have caused it to miss earth. Otherwise - if the course of catastrophe was not modally robust in the first place - my modal account implies that the meteor was not really 'set' to hit the earth in any objective sense at all.

Let's see how this modal account applies to the puzzle discussed in my old post on framing thought experiments:

Weatherson notes that "where we set the 'zero-point' or status quo makes a big difference for how we act." But is there really any fact of the matter about what the 'default' outcome is? Kahneman and Tversky's classic example seems to suggest that this is merely a difference in our descriptions, not in reality. Whether you say that 400/600 will die, or that 200/600 will be saved, you describe one and the same fact. But the descriptions differ in their implied baseline, or what they convey as being "the natural progression of things". Could there be a metaphysical fact of the matter regarding where the true baseline lies? What sort of fact could this be, that would tell us whether a survivor was saved from the jaws of death, or whether it was simply a matter of death failing to cut his life tragically short? When faced with branching possibilities, how can we say that one is the "default" path of fate, and the other some kind of unnatural "diversion"? (But if we can't do this, then what is our basis for caring more about "losses" than "forfeited gains"? Doesn't this distinction require a baseline?)

My new suggestion is that the modal facts can provide such a baseline. The baseline is whichever event (dying or being saved) occurs in most close possible worlds. If you are overwhelmingly likely to obtain some benefit, then failure to obtain it in the actual world is properly classified as a loss, and not merely a forfeited gain.

Eh, so much for deflationism. It turns out I'm a "realist" about baselines too! A somewhat revisionary one, though. This certainly doesn't match our common understanding of the doing/allowing distinction, and nor would I expect it to have such (or, perhaps, any) normative significance. What do you think?

The End(s) of Discussion

Life (especially for bloggers) affords limitless opportunities to engage in disputes. Far, far too many to be able to pursue them all. So I guess we just pursue those few discussions which strike us as particularly interesting and enjoyable. Can we say any more than this? Are there distinctive features of a good or worthwhile discussion? Can you identify any rules of thumb you follow in deciding (i) whether to leave a comment, and (ii) whether to continue or quit an ongoing exchange?

No doubt there are many possible ends an online conversation might serve. For example:
(1) Collaborative inquiry, in pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
(2) Asymmetric teaching, or the imparting of knowledge and understanding to others.
(3) Non-epistemic goals, e.g. creating/reinforcing social ties, "winning" an intellectual competition, etc.

Let's just consider epistemic goals. Discussions between epistemic peers (i.e. #1) tend to be the most interesting and rewarding. It's really wonderful to have the opportunity to improve one's understanding, as when others discern potential flaws in one's initial views. But what about the other case? There are plenty of people out there who are not epistemic peers. Arrogant though this may sound, sometimes you can tell that your disputant is in the grip of a certain confusion, or that they don't really understand the issue, so that there's little you can learn from them.*

The main motivation for continuing, then, will be that niggling itch we feel when "someone is wrong on the internet". They're in a bad state, and so we feel some pull to help make this clear to them, to set them right. Moreover, the act of teaching always has some benefit to the teacher's own understanding, as per my footnote below. So it's not a total waste of time. But if this is time that could have been spent engaging with more insightful interlocutors, this opportunity cost may still be sufficient to deter one whose primary goal is to improve their (own) understanding (or even that of the broader community, if the mistake in question is not widespread).

This relates to my old post, 'engaging persons or ideas?' If we're just interested in ideas for their own sake, then many discussions (i.e. with people who lack sufficient understanding of the relevant ideas) will probably not be worth having. If we think the discussions are worthwhile nonetheless, it must be because we value engaging with the other person.

* = But compare R. Porter:

Almost every new way I have to devise to explain a concept (and sometimes these are pretty simple concepts and thick-headed pupils) makes that concept clearer to me. It's not that the students know something useful that I don't; it's that I need to learn a new facet or explore an uncharted avenue in order to teach them.

Structure and Similarity

I once thought that all possible ways of categorizing the world were metaphysically on a par. We may find it more useful to talk of tables and chairs, but objectively speaking this way of dividing up the world is not metaphysically privileged over alternatives that seem "gerrymandered" to us, e.g. combining chairs and cockroaches into a single category.

I now realize that my past self was very silly. Though it may at first seem puzzling that there could be privileged categories, or 'structure' to the world, it seems perfectly obvious that some pairings are objectively more similar than others. Two chairs are more alike -- have more natural properties in common -- than a chair and a cockroach, and this is nothing to do with our words and everything to do with how the world is. (A tribe might have a but a single word X that means 'chair or cockroach', but in that case their language would be objectively inferior to ours in this respect, for it fails to carve nature at the joints.)

One way to bring this out is to think about projectability, or what properties you can reason inductively from. All the emeralds I've seen so far have been green, so I expect the first emerald I see after 2020 will also be green. That seems a perfectly reasonable induction. On the other hand: "All emeralds I've seen so far have been grue, so I expect the first emerald I see after 2020 will also be grue" is clearly not good reasoning. This is because green is a more natural property than grue. It is an objectively better way to categorize reality.

Authentic Development

More from that NPR story:

“If we allow people to unfold and give them the freedom to be who they really are, we engender health. And if we try and constrict it, or bend the twig, we engender poor mental health.” -- Dr. Diane Ehrensaft

I'm sympathetic to this as a developmental approach. But there's something deeply puzzling about the central concept of the authentic self, or "who they really are". It seems intuitive at first, but when you stop and think about it, what does this really mean?

(1) One thing it might mean is that we are all born with a particular Platonic 'form', template, or image of the specific adult we ought to become. We might call this form our "soul", or "true self". Environmental influences which bring our earthly bodies to more closely resemble the ideal form of our souls thereby enhance our "authenticity". We are then "inauthentic" insofar as we come to diverge from the soul's template.

(2) Here's a more sensible, naturalistic alternative: at any given time, we have certain dispositions concerning our future development. We may define the most "natural" developmental path as that which is most supported by our current dispositions. It is, in this respect, the "path of least resistance". You may be able to eventually reprogram those dispositions, in which case the end result will no longer be 'inauthentic' (because you will now have new dispositions which support your new character and lifestyle). But there is some sense to the idea that at the start of the reprogramming process, you were "going against the grain", and not developing in the way that would have been most natural for you at the time.

Does this matter? It's hard to see why it should have any intrinsic import, if things turn out just as well either way. But Ehrensaft's suggestion is, I take it, more pragmatic. She thinks things turn out better when we help people to develop in line with their existing dispositions, rather than trying to shape them against the grain ("bend the twig").

(3) A third view would be to understand 'authenticity' in more extrinsic terms, as a matter of "nourishing one's individuality" in the relational sense of being different from other people. To be authentic, on this view, is to be quirky, eccentric, and unique (perhaps in a way that's in line with your natural dispositions, as per #2 above). Normality is inauthentic.

I feel a little bit of a pull towards this just because the "normal" life in our society is so base. But it's not the normality itself that's the problem. It's what normality here happens to consist in. (Even if everyone else was more nerdy and interesting, I can't really see the newfound "oddity" of being a drunken frat boy as any kind of virtue.) Though perhaps we need to look at this in a more fine-grained way, since there's arguably something about the little quirks in each person that we think expresses their distinctive individuality, and that we value accordingly.

Any thoughts?

Defining (Gender) Dysfunction

Helen drew my attention to a fascinating NPR story on transgender children: young boys who desire to wear dresses, and more generally self-identify as girls. One psychologist (Zucker) recommends trying to socialize them out of it -- take away their dolls and dresses, and pressure them to act more like boys. Another (Ehrensaft) is more liberal, suggesting that it's a non-issue, and children should feel free to develop however they're inclined, so long as it isn't causing other - real - problems. The article notes:

This divide is so intense that there is very little common ground. There is little common ground even in the ways that the issue is conceptualized.

Sounds like a call for philosophy! Only, there's not much room for pure (a priori) ethical theory here. It's clear enough that we should prefer whatever will best serve the interests of the child, and help them to grow into a happy, well-adjusted adult. So it's really an empirical issue: what are the consequences of the two approaches likely to be? How burdensome is it to grow up transgendered, and how does this compare to Zucker's coercive therapy? (Might the cure be worse than the "disease"?)

Any remaining philosophical dispute lies more in what we might call the philosophy of psychiatry, concerning what counts as a mental "disorder", in contrast to "normal" human variation. Ehrensaft likens transgenderism to such "natural" variations as homosexuality, whereas Zucker compares it to racial identity disorder:

If a black kid walked into a therapist's office saying he was really white, the goal of pretty much any therapist out there would be to make him try to feel more comfortable being black. They would assume his mistaken beliefs were the product of a dysfunctional environment — a dysfunctional family or a dysfunctional cultural environment that led him or her to engage in this wrongheaded and dangerous fantasy. This is how Zucker sees gender-disordered kids. He sees these behaviors primarily as a product of dysfunction.

This strikes me as badly confused. Presumably a disorder is to be defined as that which tends to impede one's living a flourishing life. But that's an entirely forward-looking dispositional property; it does not matter how it came about, so this talk of "products of dysfunction" seems confused and irrelevant. Indeed, given a sensible forward-looking conception, it's not clear why adopting a different ethnicity must be a "disorder" at all. (It's not like losing a limb.)

Maybe the thought is that the expressed desire is actually just a symptom of some more deep-rooted unhappiness or self-loathing, which would survive the desired change and cause more psychological problems down the road? That would be an intrinsic or internal problem. Alternatively, one might think that the desire is problematic purely for extrinsic, situational reasons, e.g. if one lives in a community of Xs, the desire to be not-X might make it more difficult for you to flourish in this particular context. This appears to be at least part of Zucker's objection:

He explained that unless Carol and her husband helped the child to change his behavior, as Bradley grew older, he likely would be rejected by both peer groups. Boys would find his feminine interests unappealing. Girls would want more boyish boys. Bradley would be an outcast.

But there's nothing inherently wrong with outcasts. ('Misfit' is a relative term, remember!) The problem is with the society which doesn't accept or accommodate them. So it's really just the social stigma we should be worried about. But then I wonder why Zucker rejects the homosexuality analogy?

A final possibility is that he thinks it is a disorder in virtue of resting on false beliefs, or an inaccurate conception of the situation (in some sense). The black child who wants to be white may have internalized false beliefs about the inherent inferiority of blacks which explain (away) his preference. We may hold that preferences based on false beliefs lack normative weight and fail to qualify as 'true values', so it is better to change the misguided preference than to cater to it. But this normative principle isn't obviously true: we cater to poor taste and religious preferences all the time. Sometimes it's a better idea to just go with the flow rather than to insist on improving people.

But the point is moot because it doesn't seem that transgender-inclined children have false beliefs in any case. They don't, so far as I'm aware, believe that their birth sex is objectively "inferior" or anything like that. They just feel more drawn to the gender norms of the opposite sex. They're not making any error. So, again, I think Zucker's stance doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Blog Navigation Tweaks

You may have noticed I'm still playing around with the blog template a bit.

[Update: I've added a new sidebar list of 'recommended posts' from other blogs, to supplement my 'commenting elsewhere' list.]

(1) I've moved the labels/categories list to the page footer, clearing more room in the sidebar. (The horizontal 'cloud' display is a bit harder to read than a vertical list, unfortunately, but I think it's probably worth the savings in screen space. How often do you use the list anyway?)

I've also made the basic list of 'recent posts' more prominent at the top of the sidebar, since that is probably more useful.

(2) Individual post pages now automatically list "related posts", i.e. recent posts tagged with the same category label. I imagine this could prove useful.

(3) I've upgraded the ratings widget with two new (experimental) features:
- My top rated posts are displayed in a sidebar list.
- By comparing and correlating ratings between posts, the widget automatically generates recommendations. Generic recommendations simply list other posts that were highly rated by the people who liked the present post. But if you have rated several posts yourself, the widget will cleverly offer individually tailored recommendations for you, based on the ratings of "people like you", i.e. who have made similar ratings to you in the past.

The more you (and others) rate, the better the widget will be able to recognize and cater to your 'taste' in posts, so the more useful it will be to you. How cool is that!

Bigoted Moral Intuitions

Some people judge that homosexuality is immoral, because they find it intuitively repugnant. They must also be aware that a few short decades ago people thought that interracial sex was immoral, on the same basis. This suggests that such intuitions provide a very flimsy basis for discrimination. Indeed, I find it completely baffling that homophobic conservatives fail to realize that they are the modern day equivalent of yesterday's racist conservatives. Why are they not humbled by history? What makes them think that their disgust-based moral intuitions are any more reliable than their grandparents' were?

There was some discussion of this on the Missouri philosophy blog a while back. I suggested that actions are "permissible by default", and that constructing a positive argument for the permissibility of homosexual acts is as superfluous as arguing for the permissibility of eating icecream. The onus is on the moral scold. Andrew Moon responded that we may be justified in believing something to be wrong even if we can't immediately produce an argument to support this belief. I clarified my point as follows:

Andrew - I meant the ‘permissible by default’ thesis to be fundamentally metaphysical in nature. That is, an act is permissible unless there is in fact some reason why it’s wrong.

The methodological implication is that we shouldn’t expect any explanation to be given of why permissible acts are permissible (except for the trite “it harms no-one”, etc. — cf. the ice cream case). If we are to engage the moral question philosophically, the only way to do this is to see if there are any arguments for impermissibility that stand up to scrutiny.

As an epistemic point, of course, people don’t always need to do moral philosophy before having justified moral beliefs. But it’s also obviously true that your mere intuition isn’t enough — just look at all the past bigots to whom it “seemed” that interracial marriage was wrong. I’d guess the epistemic question must be settled by factors external to the immediate phenomenology, e.g. whether your moral intuitions are actually reliable, or something along those lines.

That still doesn’t speak to the practical point, of what subjective guidance one can give an agent here. How about this: if it seems to you that X is wrong, then you may tentatively suppose this to be so, BUT if other epistemically responsible agents call this into question, you ought to put aside your mere intuition and see whether there is any actual reason that can ground it. (If, at the end of inquiry, you can find no good arguments for the impermissibility of X, this would seem pretty strong evidence that in fact you are in the same position as the racists of yesterday.)

Unfortunately, no-one ever responded to these suggestions, so I reproduce them here instead. Any thoughts?

Reducing Unnecessary Offense

Infinite Injury writes:

It isn’t racist now because it doesn’t suggest any prejudice or dislike and the last thing we would ever want to do is widen the class of comments that we decide express prejudice. We want to reduce the potential for accidental offense not increase it.

Hypersensitivity is a bad thing, and we'd all be better off without it. If you insist on turning yourself into a victim, perceiving slights at every turn, the world will offer ample opportunities to feed your paranoia. But why on Earth would you want to? Chances are: most people do not, in fact, hate you. But it's unnecessarily burdensome to expect them to constantly reassure you of this. Things would be much better if everyone could simply assume the best by default, and only take offense if someone was very clearly intending to insult them.

(Granted, it's perfectly understandable why someone who has suffered from others' malice in the past might be over-sensitized to it in future. I've had similar experiences myself. But it's still unfortunate, so we should want to help people to overcome their hypersensitivity, rather than encouraging it.)

Compare my response to Paul Gowder's suggestion that levelling down may be justified in cases where tolerating an inequality would express disrespect:

I agree that one shouldn't express disrespect. But we should increase freedom. Hence, to avoid unnecessary conflict here, it would be most inadvisable for us to adopt conventions of social meaning according to which increasing freedoms for some was understood as expressing disrespect for others. If such conventions are already present, we should do what we can to undermine and change them.

In Defence of Impractical Philosophy

A friend passed along the link to this vituperative rant against (a certain kind of) academic philosophy:

What possible use or relevance to human life can a discussion like this have? ... What a terrible waste of brainpower... How selfish. The author apparently feels no obligation towards others on behalf of his abilities. There is a longstanding tradition in several religions and many moral systems that to whom much is given much is expected: people of ability... who nonetheless spend it playing intellectual games are depriving others of what those abilities might be able to accomplish. They are indulging their own narrow and selfish desires, and perhaps flattering their own vanity: but they are allowing their abilities to bear no fruit for others.

The blogger, 'Protagoras', elaborates in comments:

I think that one central justification for theory in the sciences is that it can--and indeed has--proved itself to bear on practical concerns at some point, even if we don't know now how that will come about. My beef with this article, as with much, though not all, of academic philosophy today is that it has no similar justification going for it.

This strikes me as incredibly misguided, for several reasons:

(1) History teaches us that it's very difficult to predict in advance which areas of theoretical inquiry will ultimately yield practical payoffs. Who would've guessed that philosophical theorizing about the limits of formal logic and mathematics would eventually bring us the personal computer? Not every academic can be an Alan Turing, admittedly, but the sophisticated consequentialist will keep in mind the big picture. We should design our academic institutions so as to have the overall effect of producing important knowledge (even if that means that many individual academics end up doing "pointless" work, considered in isolation). This is the basic argument for academic freedom: we can expect the best results if we give academics free reign to inquire as their intellectual curiosity sees fit, rather than limiting them to socially "approved" avenues of inquiry. 

I trust that most academics are the best judges of what intellectual endeavours are worth their time and effort. (Cf. J.S. Mill's arguments for liberty.) But even if not, the few exceptions -- the Turings of the world, whose theoretical passions lead to invaluable insights -- are arguably so momentous as to justify the whole system that enables them.

(2) For this reason, among others, it is not generally 'selfish' or otherwise immoral to pursue your personal passions. On the contrary, I think it is to be encouraged. See my post 'Value, Alienation and Choice' for more detail.  

(3) The particular article in question tackles deeply interesting issues at the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of mind, arguing that:

the best bet for defending an internalist epistemology against Williamson's attack is to take there to be a tight, intimate connection between (to take one example) our experiences and our beliefs upon reflection about the obtaining of those experiences, or between (to take another example) the rationality of our beliefs and our beliefs upon reflection about the rationality of those beliefs.

As an anonymous commenter explained, [edited lightly:] the nature of rationality and our ability to know our own minds are topics 'relevant to human life.' Indeed, they concern our basic condition as humans. One suspects that Protagoras' incredulous response to the paper ("You have to be kidding me") is simply due to his not actually understanding what it says.  

(4) There's something incoherent about the crassly 'utilitarian' (in the non-philosophical sense) stance according to which things must be 'useful' to be of value. Note that useful things must be instrumental to some end or ultimate value. The ultimate ends, on the other hand, need not serve any other purpose, for they are valuable in themselves. They are that for which we do the instrumental act. But the confused instrumentalist is blind to non-instrumental values, and thus the point of the whole endeavour. He will thus criticize the direct realization of the ultimate good because it is not instrumental to something else. How backward!

Now, intellectual inquiry, truth and understanding are arguably among the intrinsic goods (i.e. the things we should value non-instrumentally). It would seem to me base and ignoble to deny this. But if this is so, it is backwards to demand that philosophy serve other purposes. (It happens that it does, as per my #1 above, but one shouldn't demand it.) To end on a provocative note: Depending on how it balances against other values, I think it entirely possible that society ought to be set up to serve philosophy! What say you?