Suppose Bob does the objectively right thing -- what he has most reason to do -- but he does it for the wrong reason. (Say he defends an innocent person from a violent attacker, but only because it gives him an excuse to be violent himself.) Bob is clearly blameworthy here: he acted maliciously, after all. But we might ask more specifically whether he is blameworthy for the action, or just for the malicious desire that motivated the action. Doug Portmore, in Commonsense Consequentialism (and at PEA Soup) opts for the latter. Even more strongly, he claims (2.11) S is blameworthy for freely performing X only if S does not have sufficient reason to perform X, all things considered. (Note that there's no requirement here that the agent be aware of the reasons in question. Their mere existence suffices to excuse his action.)
I have two objections to this view:
(1) If the agent is merely blameworthy for having the malicious desire, then it shouldn't matter (so far as their blameworthiness is concerned) whether they act on it or not. But this clearly does matter a great deal. Having malicious desires might make you a bad person, but questions of blameworthiness concern a subtly different kind of evaluation, more concerned with what you've done. Bob is blameworthy for acting on his malicious desire, not just for having it.
(2) Whether an agent's X-ing is blameworthy or not is surely an intrinsic matter, i.e. depending only on the internal states (including volitions) of the agent, not on purely external matters. Two intrinsic duplicates, who make all the same decisions (and enact all the same volitions) must thereby be ['originally'] blameworthy for all the same volitional exercises (actions).
[N.B. This is compatible with moral luck affecting what external consequences their blameworthy action renders them 'derivatively' liable for, and hence the degree to which they are blameworthy -- see my tripartite analysis of responsibility.]
Portmore seems committed to denying this platitude, since external differences could make it so that there was sufficient objective reason for Dupe1 to X but not for Dupe2 to do so. In that case, (2.11) implies that even if both agents were enacting exactly similar murderous volitions, only Dupe2 would be blameworthy for exercising his agency in this way, for Dupe1's action unwittingly aligned with "sufficient reasons" -- roughly, what God would advise, given the broader situation.
Why does Portmore make this claim? He points out that (i) the capacity to respond appropriately to reasons is a precondition for moral responsibility, and (ii) it makes no sense to blame someone for flawlessly executing a capacity that's a precondition for moral responsibility. So an agent can't be blameworthy when they flawlessly execute their capacity to respond appropriately to reasons. But I'm not sure how Portmore gets from here to the conclusion that an agent can't be blameworthy when they perform an act for which there happens to be sufficient reasons. After all, an agent might perform the advisable act from sheer luck, rather than as a result of competently exercising their rational capacities. If they act from malice, and it's just luck that their action conforms to the demands of reason, why couldn't it still make perfect sense to blame them for their flawed exercise of agency? Things may have turned out well, but damn, they did a poor job as an agent. (One may exercise incompetence in a job or role, even if this fortuitously causes the 'goals' of the role to be better achieved.)
P.S. I should note that while Portmore uses the premise 2.11 in a larger argument for moral rationalism -- the view that it can't be morally wrong to do what you have sufficient reason to do -- he might do just as well with an appropriately modified version of the premise, guaranteeing blamelessness for X-ing to agents who not only have sufficient normative reason to X, objectively speaking, but furthermore act from those very reasons, i.e. as their motivating reason. Anti-rationalists seem likely to fall afoul even of this weakened principle.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Top Ten Philosophy Blogs
Brian Leiter compiled this interesting list for blogs.com, which includes a flattering mention of Philosophy, et cetera. Though I probably would've included the Arche Methodology blog as one of the best out there (alongside PEA Soup and Certain Doubts).
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Philosophers' Carnival #94
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Rational and Moral Demands
Quick poll: supposing that morality and practical (all things considered) reasons can come apart, which of the following two claims sounds more plausible?
(1) Morality requires you to sacrifice your loved ones if this would promote the impartial good, but it would be unreasonable to do so.
(2) Rationality requires you to sacrifice your loved ones if this would promote the impartial good, but it would be immoral to do so.
In other words: Is impartial consequentialism more plausible as a theory of morality or of practical reason? In Commonsense Consequentialism, Doug Portmore suggests that utilitarianism is widely recognized to be 'unreasonably demanding', in the sense that it asks us to do things that we lack sufficient reason to do. So, he suggests, if we come to accept 'moral rationalism' -- the view that we always have decisive reason to do what's morally required -- we will be led to reject utilitarianism.
But if I had to pick one of the above claims as a starting point, I'd sooner endorse (2) than (1). Impartial consequentialists may endorse Parfit's suggestion that the view constitutes an "external rival to morality". At bottom is the idea that there's no principled reason for favouring your own welfare over others', and so even if radical impartiality bears little resemblance to ordinary "moral" thought, such absence of personal bias is nonetheless what's rationally required, strictly speaking (just as we're rationally required not to be temporally biased, e.g. in favour of the near future).
Whilst taking the fundamental normative requirements to be impartial in this way, the utilitarian might follow Railton in constructing a more commonsensical and moderate "practical morality" that people would do well to follow. Given the familiar pragmatic reasons for introducing norms of partiality (an efficient division of moral labour insofar as we tend to be more motivated and able to help those who are closer to us), this constructed "morality" could plausibly allow for more partiality than the fundamental norms. It might even make it obligatory to look out for your family, even when this means passing up apparently greater benefits to others. This shows one route to claim (2) above.
On this view, we have every reason to prefer the impartially best outcome. It's just that we can't call it 'morally obligatory'. More than that: falling short of perfection is not sufficient grounds for social censure, so in this sense it would be unreasonable to demand that people meet the strict requirements of utilitarianism. But take care: it is the third party's demanding that is unreasonable, not the act thereby demanded. It'd be perfectly reasonable for the agent to act with perfect impartiality. It just isn't reasonable for others to ask him to do this -- a vital difference!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Neurology vs. Psychology
Wired has an article exploring the seemingly ill-formed question whether Body Integrity Identity Disorder is psychological or neurological in origin:
I wonder what he means? Are psychological and neurological explanations supposed to be competing, mutually exclusive explanations? Psychological events are grounded in brain events, after all, so why don't these fMRI studies simply indicate how the psychological disorder is realized in the brain?
Or is it more of a chicken and atoms-arranged-chickenwise (or "forest and trees") problem? Perhaps we could pin down a point of substantive disagreement if we focused on a single 'level' of explanation, say the neural level, throughout. Perhaps the point is that the neurologists are claiming that the disorder has a simple neural manifestation, whereas the psychiatrists think that the neural manifestation will be much more complex (effectively claiming that deficits in the "brain region responsible for body image" were caused by prior neural events that are best integrated and understood if we 'zoom out' to the level of psychology).
Simply put: if your mind is not how it ought to be, then neither is your brain, since the one gives rise to the other. So every psychological disorder is, in some broad sense, also a neurological disorder. But we can still draw important distinctions here. In particular, a disorder may be apparent as such at the level of the brain, i.e. in a way that's recognizable when looking at it "as" a brain, using purely neurological vocabulary. Or the problem may instead reside in more complicated neural patterns that are better captured using psychological vocabulary. There's a real question which of these two levels of explanation better captures and unifies the relevant phenomena.
So we can understand 'psychology vs. neurology' debates substantively if they concern this question of what level of abstraction unifies the disorder. Are the causes of BIID alike in respect of their superficial neurological form, or must we pull back to the level of psychology before their commonality comes into view? In effect, we may then call 'neurological' the problems that have a relatively simple neural manifestation, and reserve the competing term 'psychological' for disorders that are more unified at the higher level of abstraction offered by psychology.
Does that sound right?
The disorder is the subject of a debate between psychiatrists and neuroscientists about whether the brain physiology causes the psychiatric condition or whether the causality runs in the other direction...
Columbia University psychiatrist Michael First helped pioneer the identification of the disorder and his latest research suggests it’s just a subset of a larger psychiatric condition in which people become fixated on being disabled. On the other hand, Paul McGeoch’s recent work... seems to explain the disorder as a purely neurological disease resulting from a malfunctioning right parietal lobule, which appears to maintain the mind’s body map. His lab used fMRI to determine that four self-reported BIID patients’ right parietal lobules didn’t light up when their unwanted limbs were touched. Normal people’s did.
"Oh, this is certainly a breakthrough. We were stunned by the results," David Brang, a graduate student who co-authored a paper on the study with McGeoch, said recently on the Australian television show on which Vickers told his amazing story. "It’s very clear that this is a neurological phenomenon when it always been thought of as a psychological issue."
I wonder what he means? Are psychological and neurological explanations supposed to be competing, mutually exclusive explanations? Psychological events are grounded in brain events, after all, so why don't these fMRI studies simply indicate how the psychological disorder is realized in the brain?
[Dr. First] is, however, not yet convinced that a deficit in the right parietal lobe causes BIID. It's also possible that a strong desire to amputate a limb could transform neural circuitry in a brain region responsible for body image, he says. "There's a chicken-and-egg problem here."
Or is it more of a chicken and atoms-arranged-chickenwise (or "forest and trees") problem? Perhaps we could pin down a point of substantive disagreement if we focused on a single 'level' of explanation, say the neural level, throughout. Perhaps the point is that the neurologists are claiming that the disorder has a simple neural manifestation, whereas the psychiatrists think that the neural manifestation will be much more complex (effectively claiming that deficits in the "brain region responsible for body image" were caused by prior neural events that are best integrated and understood if we 'zoom out' to the level of psychology).
Simply put: if your mind is not how it ought to be, then neither is your brain, since the one gives rise to the other. So every psychological disorder is, in some broad sense, also a neurological disorder. But we can still draw important distinctions here. In particular, a disorder may be apparent as such at the level of the brain, i.e. in a way that's recognizable when looking at it "as" a brain, using purely neurological vocabulary. Or the problem may instead reside in more complicated neural patterns that are better captured using psychological vocabulary. There's a real question which of these two levels of explanation better captures and unifies the relevant phenomena.
So we can understand 'psychology vs. neurology' debates substantively if they concern this question of what level of abstraction unifies the disorder. Are the causes of BIID alike in respect of their superficial neurological form, or must we pull back to the level of psychology before their commonality comes into view? In effect, we may then call 'neurological' the problems that have a relatively simple neural manifestation, and reserve the competing term 'psychological' for disorders that are more unified at the higher level of abstraction offered by psychology.
Does that sound right?
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Philosophical Moves
I find it interesting to learn new philosophical 'moves' or strategies that can be applied in a range of circumstances. Examples I've previously discussed include:
(1) Scanlon's strategy (in Moral Dimensions) for disarming the apparent significance of intent in moral principles (e.g. the doctrine of double effect).
(2) Arpaly's shift from explicit judgments to implicit, deep-rooted responsiveness (in assessing moral character, blameworthiness, rationality, etc.).
(3) Noticing 'Derivative Objections', e.g. when people object to consequentialism on the basis of paradoxes in axiology.
(4) The moves and countermoves available when theorists make use of certain idealizations or counterfactual conditionals in their analyses (potentially falling afoul of the "conditional fallacy").
What (more or less general) philosophical strategies do you find most useful and/or interesting?
(1) Scanlon's strategy (in Moral Dimensions) for disarming the apparent significance of intent in moral principles (e.g. the doctrine of double effect).
(2) Arpaly's shift from explicit judgments to implicit, deep-rooted responsiveness (in assessing moral character, blameworthiness, rationality, etc.).
(3) Noticing 'Derivative Objections', e.g. when people object to consequentialism on the basis of paradoxes in axiology.
(4) The moves and countermoves available when theorists make use of certain idealizations or counterfactual conditionals in their analyses (potentially falling afoul of the "conditional fallacy").
What (more or less general) philosophical strategies do you find most useful and/or interesting?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Psychological Inputs
Brian Parks has a puzzling post over at GFP. He invites us to consider the following manipulation scenario:
This makes it sound as though one's psychological "inputs" don't exhaust the facts about one's psychology. Perhaps we can draw a distinction between input states or internal stimuli (feelings, etc.), on the one hand, and processes (dispositions to make certain inferences, or to be moved in certain ways by certain stimuli) on the other. We can thus make sense of the idea of controlling one's psychological 'inputs' whilst leaving free their ability to choose. (Different people process their feelings in different ways, after all.)
Unfortunately, this does not appear to be what Parks has in mind. Here is how he describes the upshot of using the device to imprint you with Madoff's psychological inputs: "In physical terms, I put your brain in the exact same neurological state that his brain was in, and I let things go from there to see what happens." So, contrary to my initial interpretation, the device doesn't just fix some subset of your psychological makeup (namely, the "inputs", leaving be the "processes"). Rather, it fixes your entire psychology -- decision procedures and all.
This seems like an important distinction to me. At least, if we want to draw on the intuitive picture of psychological 'inputs' as contrasted with 'choices', then we need to take care to interpret the 'inputs' sufficiently narrowly as to not exhaust our minds in their entirety. In physical terms: our brains include not only 'input' states, but also the mechanisms for processing these states so as to yield decisions.
But I guess it's a further question whether we should draw on the intuitive distinction I've elucidated here. My old post 'Agency and the Will' offers a quick argument to suggest that at least if we understand the inputs to be exhausted by 'beliefs' and 'desires', understood in some fairly stable sense, there's got to be more to our brains than just that. (Again, two people might have all the same beliefs and desires, but come to different decisions depending on all sorts of other factors -- attention, distraction, salience, not to mention brute differences in their habits of thought. It at least isn't obvious that all such differences can be traced to a difference in belief or desire.) But perhaps there's no principled reason to consider those other factors to be 'procedural' psychological elements rather than 'inputs'?
What do you think -- is there a principled distinction to be made here? If so, what is the best way to draw it?
I implant in your brain a radio-controlled neurological device that allows me to manipulate all of the psychological forces (PFs for short) that guide you in your choices—that is, all of the feelings, emotions, sensitivities, motivations, dispositions, desires, aversions, beliefs, and so on that hold sway in your mind. Using the device, I can make you feel pleasure, pain, guilt, pride, calm, anxiousness, anger, compassion, and so on, each in response to whatever stimuli I specify. I can make you love a certain kind of food, I can make you hate members of a certain race, I can make you romantically attracted to a certain person, I can do all of that. More importantly, I can control the degree and intensity of each of your states of mind.
The one thing that the device does not allow me to control, however, is your ability to choose. You retain that ability. Though I determine your psychological inputs, you determine the choices that follow from those inputs.
This makes it sound as though one's psychological "inputs" don't exhaust the facts about one's psychology. Perhaps we can draw a distinction between input states or internal stimuli (feelings, etc.), on the one hand, and processes (dispositions to make certain inferences, or to be moved in certain ways by certain stimuli) on the other. We can thus make sense of the idea of controlling one's psychological 'inputs' whilst leaving free their ability to choose. (Different people process their feelings in different ways, after all.)
Unfortunately, this does not appear to be what Parks has in mind. Here is how he describes the upshot of using the device to imprint you with Madoff's psychological inputs: "In physical terms, I put your brain in the exact same neurological state that his brain was in, and I let things go from there to see what happens." So, contrary to my initial interpretation, the device doesn't just fix some subset of your psychological makeup (namely, the "inputs", leaving be the "processes"). Rather, it fixes your entire psychology -- decision procedures and all.
This seems like an important distinction to me. At least, if we want to draw on the intuitive picture of psychological 'inputs' as contrasted with 'choices', then we need to take care to interpret the 'inputs' sufficiently narrowly as to not exhaust our minds in their entirety. In physical terms: our brains include not only 'input' states, but also the mechanisms for processing these states so as to yield decisions.
But I guess it's a further question whether we should draw on the intuitive distinction I've elucidated here. My old post 'Agency and the Will' offers a quick argument to suggest that at least if we understand the inputs to be exhausted by 'beliefs' and 'desires', understood in some fairly stable sense, there's got to be more to our brains than just that. (Again, two people might have all the same beliefs and desires, but come to different decisions depending on all sorts of other factors -- attention, distraction, salience, not to mention brute differences in their habits of thought. It at least isn't obvious that all such differences can be traced to a difference in belief or desire.) But perhaps there's no principled reason to consider those other factors to be 'procedural' psychological elements rather than 'inputs'?
What do you think -- is there a principled distinction to be made here? If so, what is the best way to draw it?
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Read Anything on Kindle
After a year of use, I must say that my Kindle [reviewed here] has turned out to be even more useful than I'd expected. I used to read a lot on my (backlit, eye-straining) laptop screen, but I've now found ways to shift pretty much all my heavy reading on to the Kindle. Here are some of the most useful (non-obvious) tricks and tips I've found for extracting online content:
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Wanting to Improve (but not artificially)
Robin Hanson recently wrote what strikes me as a rather misleading post, claiming that according to this paper, "the more people considered a feature to be a key part of their identity, the less they wanted to improve it." Various commenters on his blog offer cynical explanations for why this might be so, and other bloggers have since linked to Hanson's post, repeating the claim that "few people want to improve their empathy." Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the scientific paper in question does not support this claim at all. Read the abstract:
Now, while transhumanists may not think there's any normatively significant difference between 'artificial' enhancement and 'natural' improvement (through better nutrition, training, etc.), it must be acknowledged that the vast majority of people do see things differently here. So the mere fact that they aren't willing to take drugs to artificially enhance their empathy is not at all the same thing as not wanting to improve their empathy.
I don't see anything here to suggest that people wouldn't be willing to improve their empathy by (what they consider to be) more 'natural' means. (The paper even explicitly notes that people are happy to improve their empathy again so long as this is framed as "enabling" their true self to shine through, rather than externally imposing a new personality on them.) Am I missing something, or are some people just way too keen to be cynical?
Update: Note that according to Table 3 (at the end of the paper), only 25% of subjects reported that they "do not even wish to be better on this trait."
Four studies examined young healthy individuals' willingness to take drugs intended to enhance various social, emotional, and cognitive abilities. We found that people were much more reluctant to enhance traits believed to be highly fundamental to the self (e.g., social comfort) than traits considered less fundamental (e.g., concentration ability)... Ad taglines that framed enhancements as enabling rather than enhancing the fundamental self increased people's interest in a fundamental enhancement, and eliminated the preference for non-fundamental over fundamental enhancements.
Now, while transhumanists may not think there's any normatively significant difference between 'artificial' enhancement and 'natural' improvement (through better nutrition, training, etc.), it must be acknowledged that the vast majority of people do see things differently here. So the mere fact that they aren't willing to take drugs to artificially enhance their empathy is not at all the same thing as not wanting to improve their empathy.
I don't see anything here to suggest that people wouldn't be willing to improve their empathy by (what they consider to be) more 'natural' means. (The paper even explicitly notes that people are happy to improve their empathy again so long as this is framed as "enabling" their true self to shine through, rather than externally imposing a new personality on them.) Am I missing something, or are some people just way too keen to be cynical?
Update: Note that according to Table 3 (at the end of the paper), only 25% of subjects reported that they "do not even wish to be better on this trait."
Monday, July 06, 2009
Philosophers' Carnival #93
Welcome to the 93rd Philosophers' Carnival!
A new blog, 'Rational Imperative', introduces itself and what the contributors see as The Role of Philosophy. (Though they unfortunately repeat the common misconception that "academic philosophy [has abandoned] metaphysical and ethical questions." Grr.)
Russell Blackford argues against banning the burka -- and also, for that matter, bans on public nudity -- on grounds of individual liberty. (Though, as he notes towards the end, this begs the question how many burka-wearing women have a genuine choice in the first place.)
Kevin Lande explores how to understand people who affirm contradictory beliefs. Should we say that they really have inconsistent beliefs, or are they simply misreporting what they believe?
Avery Archer criticizes Setiya On Intentional Action, on the grounds that a theory of intentional action should extend beyond persons to also include goal-directed behaviour by non-linguistic animals.
Heine Holmen presents 'Knowledge in Explanation: A Reply to Avery Archer'.
Kenny Pearce posts a draft paper on 'The Homonymy of Predicative Being':
Meanwhile, Thom Brooks seeks feedback as he re-drafts his popular Publishing Advice for Graduate Students.
The blog 'Minds and Brains' offers A Jaynesian Perspective on Language and Thought, describing an anthropological study supporting the conclusion that "changes in language, culture, and metaphor have profound psychological ramifications."
The Experimental Philosophy blog discusses experimental logic:
More intuition-probing experimental philosophy can be found over at Public Reason, on 'Distributive Justice in the Abstract and Concrete', which concludes with an interesting methodological question:
Finally (inspired by a post from Tamler Sommers), I ask, what are the philosophical 'data' to be explained? Is it enough to explain the psychological fact of our having certain intuitions (e.g. that it's wrong to torture babies for fun), or might the content of the intuition -- the [putative] fact that it's wrong to torture babies for fun -- itself be a datum that requires explanation?
That's it for this edition of the carnival. If you have a philosophy blog, be sure to submit a post for the next edition, to be hosted by Parableman Jeremy Pierce. Oh, and we need more volunteers to host subsequent editions, so do email me if you're interested!
A new blog, 'Rational Imperative', introduces itself and what the contributors see as The Role of Philosophy. (Though they unfortunately repeat the common misconception that "academic philosophy [has abandoned] metaphysical and ethical questions." Grr.)
Russell Blackford argues against banning the burka -- and also, for that matter, bans on public nudity -- on grounds of individual liberty. (Though, as he notes towards the end, this begs the question how many burka-wearing women have a genuine choice in the first place.)
Kevin Lande explores how to understand people who affirm contradictory beliefs. Should we say that they really have inconsistent beliefs, or are they simply misreporting what they believe?
Avery Archer criticizes Setiya On Intentional Action, on the grounds that a theory of intentional action should extend beyond persons to also include goal-directed behaviour by non-linguistic animals.
Heine Holmen presents 'Knowledge in Explanation: A Reply to Avery Archer'.
Kenny Pearce posts a draft paper on 'The Homonymy of Predicative Being':
Aristotle famously claimed that "being is said in many ways." This has traditionally been understood as a claim about existence. However, the interpretation of Aristotle's theory of being under this assumption has proven problematic. In this paper, I argue for an alternative reading which identifies the core uses of 'being' as copula uses with primary substances as subjects.
Meanwhile, Thom Brooks seeks feedback as he re-drafts his popular Publishing Advice for Graduate Students.
The blog 'Minds and Brains' offers A Jaynesian Perspective on Language and Thought, describing an anthropological study supporting the conclusion that "changes in language, culture, and metaphor have profound psychological ramifications."
The Experimental Philosophy blog discusses experimental logic:
In cases at the vague borderline between 'near' and 'not near,' people felt that it was perfectly acceptable to consider an object 'both near and not near.' In fact, they were just as willing to say that an object was 'both near and not near' as they were to say that it was 'neither near nor not near.'
More intuition-probing experimental philosophy can be found over at Public Reason, on 'Distributive Justice in the Abstract and Concrete', which concludes with an interesting methodological question:
if our intuitions in the abstract case differ from those in the concrete case, which sort of intuition should we trust when we are actually doing philosophy?
Finally (inspired by a post from Tamler Sommers), I ask, what are the philosophical 'data' to be explained? Is it enough to explain the psychological fact of our having certain intuitions (e.g. that it's wrong to torture babies for fun), or might the content of the intuition -- the [putative] fact that it's wrong to torture babies for fun -- itself be a datum that requires explanation?
That's it for this edition of the carnival. If you have a philosophy blog, be sure to submit a post for the next edition, to be hosted by Parableman Jeremy Pierce. Oh, and we need more volunteers to host subsequent editions, so do email me if you're interested!
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Normative Moral Concepts
I'm interested in practical normativity, and hence the concept of what we ought or have most normative reason to want and to do. I generally use moral terms in this "all things considered" normative sense. (On this way of talking, it's analytic that we ought to be moral, but a wide open question what this amounts to.) Sometimes people prefer to use words differently, so that 'morality', like 'etiquette', has a fairly transparent (almost stipulative) content -- making it clearer what's morally required, but at the cost of making the concept non-normative. Is there a better way to understand the concept of 'morality', so that it neither collapses into general practical normativity, nor dwindles into normative irrelevance?
One option would be to define 'moral reasons' as a subset of our normative reasons. For example, we might say that some reasons are 'prudential', in the sense that the reason exerts its force for the agent's own sake, whereas all other reasons will count as 'moral'. I guess that's okay as far as it goes, and maybe there are some contexts in which this distinction could be philosophically useful, but for the most part I don't really see the interest in such stunted normative concepts. Why philosophize about a merely "some things considered" ought? To restrict the content of the fundamental normative concept is also to restrict its interest.
A more intriguing possibility is suggested by Parfit: perhaps there is a second primitive (undefinable) normative concept, besides that of a normative reason, for which Parfit uses the phrase "mustn't-be-done". The thought seems to be that certain acts have the primitive feature that they mustn't-be-done, which may create - rather than merely signal - a (decisive?) normative reason against so acting. The question whether this generated reason is decisive is just the debate over whether morality is overriding -- a debate that seems less substantive on alternative conceptions of 'morality'.
Utilitarians (like Egoists) might be best understood as nihilists about 'morality' in this undefinable sense of mustn't-be-done. Rather than offering a 'moral' theory, they offer a normative theory to rival morality. As Parfit writes (On What Matters, chp 7):
These people may be convinced that it matters greatly how well things go, and they may be strongly motivated and often moved to act in ways that prevent or relieve suffering. But they may be doubtful whether any acts are duties, or mustn't-be-done, and doubtful about blameworthiness, and about reasons for remorse and indignation. That is one way in which this form of Consequentialism might be an external rival to morality.
Some questions: Can you make sense of the indefinable, substantive moral concept of "mustn't-be-done"? If so, do you think it is applicable, i.e. that some acts actually possess this feature? Is this the best way to distinguish 'moral' concepts?
I feel like I have a slippery grasp of the intended idea (it seems very deontological), but perhaps it should ultimately be abandoned as senseless, or at least inapplicable. It may be easily confused with the derivative notion of an act that is prohibited on indirect consequentialist grounds -- i.e. an act that we ought to rule out of consideration. But this isn't a new primitive concept. It instead derives from the ordinary normative concept employed by utilitarians, simply applied to decision procedures.
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