The following has the ring of truism: belief aims at truth, and preference/desire aims at the good. But Liz Harman argues against the latter claim on the grounds that loving a person as they actually are may lead us to prefer this actual state even to an alternative that would be better in every important respect. (Suppose you have a disabled child, now grown up. You love this person as they are, and so do not wish that their disability had been cured at birth -- even assuming this would have been better for them and everyone else too -- because then they would have grown up to be a radically different person from the one you actually know and love.)
My initial response is to simply bite the bullet and insist that love makes us irrational in these respects. It is not, strictly speaking, rationally warranted to be biased towards the actual, worse state. The better state is always preferable (it warrants preferring). It's just that the contrary bias is one we may be happy to have. It's fortunate that we prefer our loved ones as they actually are. Indeed, these biases are reflectively endorsable in a way that is familiar to sophisticated consequentialists: we do better to be biased in these ways rather than single-mindedly pursuing the good. But that doesn't mean the attitudes in question are rationally warranted (in the strictest sense). It just shows that sometimes we foreseeably do well to be irrational.
One conclusion you might draw from this is that we shouldn't be too concerned about having warranted attitudes. I think that's exactly right. My writing sample defended a form of 'rational holism', according to which we are instead advised to reason according to those norms which we can reflectively endorse. I thus agree with Julian Nida-Rumelin that it would be perfectly advisable to "refrain from point-wise optimization because you do not wish to live the life which would result." (He actually says it would be 'perfectly rational', which I earlier endorsed too, but for now I want to draw a sharper distinction between advisability and rational warrant.)
Further: if rationality and warrant and so forth are meant to be action-guiding -- concerned with reasons we can follow -- then perhaps we should simply identify these with 'advisability', and give up on the notion that preference aims at the good, as Liz suggests. That's compatible with a continued insistence that it's the impartial good which is the ultimate normative source. It's just that we end up with a neater and more coherent framework overall if we tie rationality more closely to reflective endorsement, rather than identifying it with the strict and alienating impartial ideal.
Anyway, I'm basically just thinking aloud here, and I'm not even too sure what my question is. (Perhaps: "What is the best way to think about rationality?") But if anyone else can shed some light on the issue, that would be immensely helpful...
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Rationality and Reflective Endorsement
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Valoric Consequentialism
Rather than focusing on the deontic categories of 'right' and 'wrong' action, Railton* suggests that an evaluative theory - what he calls "valoric utilitarianism" - better captures "the guiding utilitarian idea that no sort of act or motive or institution has intrinsic moral value and that whatever value it has from a moral point of view depends in the final reckoning upon how it affects human well-being." (p.409) Assessments of what is more or less morally fortunate (i.e. better or worse) form the core of the valoric consequentialist's theory, which may be applied quite generally to acts, motives, rules, and so on.
The binary distinction between right and wrong has no fundamental significance, and we are free to construct this component of our moral theory in a much more "indirect and intricate" manner (p.411). Railton thus suggests:
a valoric utilitarian account of rightness might deem an action right if it would conform to normative practices - comprising rules, motivations, dispositions, etc. - that would be morally fortunate. (p.412)
Note, however, that in any given case the most morally fortunate act may conflict with what would be permitted by morally fortunate normative practices, or what someone with a morally fortunate character would do. Railton explains:
This may seem puzzling. "What am I to do," an agent seeking moral advice in such circumstances may ask, "that which is most fortunate or that which is right?" Shouldn't there be a definite answer as to which evaluation to follow? There are definite answers, but there is no one question. If the agent wants to know which acts, of those available to him, are most highly valued from a moral point of view, he receives one answer. If he wants to know which acts are right or wrong, he receives another...
Perhaps, however, the agent is asking a different question still. He may want to know whether he has more reason to do what is morally fortunate or that which is morally right. This, however, is not a question to refer to moral standards or even to the moral point of view. For it is the office of practical reason to answer questions about the place of morally fortunate -- or morally right -- action in a rational life. (p.412)
Is this an adequate response? Shouldn't a moral theory at least be able to tell us what we have most moral reason to do? Abstracting away from the other domains and demands of a rational life, what reasons are given to us simply from a moral perspective?
A better answer, I think, would hark back to the "guiding utilitarian idea" that obtaining better consequences is fundamentally what matters. This suggests a simple formula: we have most reason to do what is best. Hence:
Q. What motives should I have?
A. Whatever would do the most good, i.e. the most morally fortunate motives.
Q. What act should I do?
A. The most morally fortunate act.
Q. What decision procedure should I employ in deciding how to act?
A. The most morally fortunate decision procedure.
Q. But I can't aim at all of these at once!?
A. Who ever said that you should? You should have whatever aims would be most morally fortunate!
* All references are to Railton's (1988) 'How Thinking about Character and Utilitarianism Might Lead to Rethinking the Character of Utilitarianism' Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XIII.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Railton on Moral Political Demands
By altering social and political arrangements we can lessen the disruptiveness of moral demands on our lives, and in the long run achieve better results than freelance good-doing. A consequentialist theory is therefore likely to recommend that accepting negative responsibility [i.e. for all the harms we let happen] is more a matter of supporting certain social and political arrangements (or rearrangements) than of setting out individually to save the world. Moreover, it is clear that such social and political changes cannot be made unless the lives of individuals are psychologically supportable in the meanwhile, and this provides substantial reason for rejecting the notion that we should abandon all that matters to us as individuals and devote ourselves solely to net social welfare. Finally, in many cases what matters most is perceived rather than actual demandingness or disruptiveness, and this will be a relative matter, depending upon normal expectations. If certain social or political arrangements encourage higher contribution as a matter of course, individuals may not sense these moral demands as excessively intrusive.
-- Railton, 'Alienation' (in Facts, Values and Norms), p.172.
I couldn't agree more: cf. Ego-Depletion and Moral Demands and Value, Alienation and Choice.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Maximizing over Infinite Time
Mathew Wilder asks:
Consequentialism aims at maximizing the good in the long term, or on the whole. But what if the universe is infinite, temporally speaking? Then it seems that there are no actions that maximize the good (or that every action does so) because there will always be an infinite amount of good (and bad) in the future (and in the past as well, if the universe is truly infinite).
I recall reading once about how the notion of a multiverse where every action/decision results in another universe seems to make moral choices worthless, from a consequentialist view-from-nowhere, since every good and bad possibility is an actuality. [Yup - RC.] However, it seems plausible that we could focus the scope of our consideration on the universe in which we live without being open to an accusation of arbitrariness.
But, even if we keep our focus on the only universe which we experience, if it is infinite, then how are we to non-arbitrarily judge what maximizes the good? Should it be what maximizes the good in ten years, or one hundred, or a million? Why should the tenth year matter, but not next year, or all of the infinite years to come?
Now, it is clearly disputable that the universe will continue infinitely, but it certainly seems plausible. Do you think I have hit on an interesting problem, or has this been dealt with before?
Sounds interesting. (If anyone is familiar with the literature on this topic, feel free to provide references in the comments!) Cf. my post on the infinite spheres of utility paradox.
My initial thought is to clarify that what the consequentialist wants to do is to bring about the best world practically possible. And it seems that even when comparing worlds that contain (equally) infinite value, we can judge that some are better than others. For a simple example, consider a case of 'domination', i.e. where one world is (finitely) better than another at each of the infinite moments in time. Clearly, this world is also better overall, even though we cannot attribute a higher quantity of value to it (since both are just countably infinite).
[N.B. This is a puzzle for value theory generally, not anything peculiar to consequentialism -- cf. R.M. Hare.]
Anyway, I'll throw open the comments for anyone else who wants to chip in...
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Regulating Aims
Railton offers some interesting thoughts on the paradox of hedonism (and self-defeating consequentialist aims more generally) in his 'Alienation' paper (Facts, Values, and Norms, p.156):
However, it is important to notice that even though adopting a hedonistic life project may tend to interfere with realizing that very project, there is no such natural exclusion between acting for the sake of another or a cause as such and recognizing how important this is to one's happiness... while the pursuit of happiness may not be the reason he entered or sustains the relationship, he may also recognize that if it had not seemed likely to make him happy he would not have entered it, and that if it proved over time to be inconsistent with his happiness he would consider ending it.
So the sophisticated hedonist (SH) may take the goal of hedonism to regulate his other ends, but nevertheless regards those first-order contingent desires as non-instrumental for as long as he retains them. Railton continues (p.157):
It might be objected that one cannot really regard a person or project as an end as such if one's commitment is in this way contingent or overridable. But were this so, we would be able to have very few commitments to ends as such. For example, one could not be committed to both one's spouse and one's child as ends as such, since at most one of these commitments could be overriding in cases of conflict. It is easy to confuse the commitment to an end as such (or for its own sake) with that of an overriding commitment, but strength is not structure.
I don't think that is an "easy" confusion to make at all. It would be downright silly for someone to think that a desire must be instrumental merely because it was overridable. As I see it, the worry here is not that hedonistic concerns may outweigh SH's other desires; it is that they may extinguish them utterly. (Non-hedonistic ends seem to be treated as in some sense providing merely prima facie rather than pro tanto reasons.) We do not find this in ordinary cases of conflict: a parent will still care about their spouse, even as they favour their child. But SH, on my favoured reading, would cease to recognize an end if it proved clearly detrimental to his long-term happiness. So the structural relations of these desires is unusual, and this should be recognized.
We do not here have two first-order desires (on a structural par) weighing against each other. Nor - it is argued - do we have derived desires that are merely instrumental to one's hegemonic "true aim" of hedonism. Rather, in the case of SH we have first-order desires that are largely non-hedonistic, yet - despite being non-instrumental - they are contingent on the 'regulating aim' (let us call it) of hedonism. Hedonism is treated as a higher-order desire. It does not guide one's actions directly, but it guides the acquisition and maintenance of one's first-order desires. That's how I would want to explicate the idea, at least.
Railton's most vivid explication comes on p.159:
An individual could realize that his instrumental attitude towards his friends prevents him from achieving the fulles happiness friendship affords. He could then attempt to focus more on his friends as such, doing this somewhat deliberately, perhaps, until it comes more naturally. He might then find his friendships improved and himself happier. If he found instead that his relationships were deteriorating or his happiness declining, he would reconsider the idea. None of this need be hidden from himself: the external goal of happiness reinforces the internal goals of his relationships. The sophisticated hedonist's motivational structure should therefore meet a counterfactual condition: he need not always act for the sake of happiness, since he may do various things for their own sake or for the sake of others, but he would not act as he does if it were not compatible with his leading an objectively hedonistic [i.e. maximally happy] life. Of course, a sophisticated hedonist cannot guarantee that he will meet this counterfactual condition, but only attempt to meet it as fully as possible.
Discussing this in Michael Smith's seminar today, it was initially suggested that this 'counterfactual condition' - by implying that SH would never act on his non-hedonistic desires when doing so would be inoptimal - required a kind of overdetermination: although actually motivated by concern for others, SH's stronger hedonistic desire is waiting there in the background, ready to override the others just in case they fail to fall into line. But this just looks much like the simple hedonist. So I think we do better to interpret the sophisticated hedonistic desire as a purely higher-order one, which does not have any direct motivational force at all. (Note that the counterfactual condition may still be true due to finkish dispositions. Though it probably calls for a slightly looser interpretation in any case, i.e. SH may act inoptimally at times, so long as this doesn't too greatly undermine the happiness of his life as a whole.)
This is vital for seeing the difference between Railton's characters of John and Juan. Both feel great affection for their respective wives, and recognize the impersonal demands of utilitarianism as having ultimate moral weight in some sense. But John justifies his good treatment of his wife in directly utilitarian terms: "I've always thought that people should help each other when they're in a specially good position to do so. I know Anne better than anyone else does, so I know better what she wants and needs." (p.152) He thus seems troublingly 'alienated' from his personal concerns and relationships. Juan, on the other hand, responds simply: "I love Linda... So it means a lot to me to do things for her." (p.163) He adds the utilitarian justification only when further asked how in principle his marriage fits into the greater scheme of things.
Due to the assumption of structural parity, and thus motivational overdetermination, many in our class concluded that John and Juan were much the same, differing only in which of their two aligned desires were causally operative. But I don't think that's the right way to look at it. Juan isn't directly motivated by impersonal utilitarian considerations at all (we may say) -- not even waiting inoperative in the background. He has a quite different motivational structure, full of deeply personal and non-alienated concerns; it is just that these concerns are regulated by (or contingent on) a higher-order requirement that they align with the impersonal goals of morality.
Sound plausible?
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Value, Alienation and Choice
The ever-calculating consequentialist is incapable of commitment, and is thus deprived of a good life (which arguably requires stable life projects, relationships, etc.). So we shouldn't want people to be ever-calculating. Still, even when consequentialism is understood only as providing a criterion of rightness, rather than a decision procedure, the threat of alienation remains. According to maximizing utilitarianism, we are obliged to sacrifice our own lives and interests entirely, becoming (say) an aid worker in Africa if doing so would in fact bring about the greatest net benefits.
But perhaps it wouldn't. Worries about excessive demands aside, it seems plausible that some greater degree of self-investment is required for many to maintain their capacity to create value in the long term. Pure altruism is unsustainable; as human beings we need our personal projects and relationships. Like they say on airplanes: it's only once you have your own oxygen mask secured that you're in a position to help others. Moreover, it is largely through these personal commitments that we succeed in bringing value into the world!
Still, as Vanessa points out to me, this is not enough to get one off the hook. Even granting the necessity of having life projects, we can go back a step and question one's initial choice of vocation. Maybe it would do more harm than good to wrench a person off their established path, but we might still say that they ought to have chosen a different path in the first place. (Compare Unger's claim that young philosophers should go off and become rich lawyers instead -- effectively farming themselves for charitable donations. Ben Miller is similarly skeptical of the value of philosophy.) If one could form a stable and meaningful commitment to aid work, that would be pretty great.
Still, we shouldn't want everyone to do the same thing. One thing that bothers me about these kinds of discussions is that the alleged obligations sometimes seem to be herding everyone into the same restrictive mold -- as though there was only one way for a person to lead a good life. Such a world doesn't sound at all appealing to me. I think a world with artists, clowns, and all the rest, is actually better - more valuable - than one where everyone is working directly to relieve suffering. Partly this is because these other vocations indirectly enrich the lives of many people, and it's hard to estimate the run-on effects of this for creating a happier future. But it's not just instrumental: perfectionist values and "civilization" are arguably the greatest goods we could hope to see advanced in the world -- and this is more important, I think, than merely removing the bad.
So, given that the world I want to live in is one that contains such vocational plurality, ethical holism then implies that it's morally permissible to pursue any one of them. (An individual may fill any role that is part of the best structure. You can't promote a general structure without permitting its specific implementation.) The globally optimal framework will not necessarily demand optimality from each individual who is part of it. So it is enough to fill a needed or desirable role, even if it is not the most important role in the system. Still, not everything is permitted: there may be some roles (producing manipulative advertising springs to mind) that have no place in a good world. But my position is less demanding than some consequentialists would have it.
This fits in with my general view that the most demanding work of morality should be done at the level of politics and institutional structure, leaving individuals with a very broad space of moral autonomy within which they may shape their personal lives. Such freedom is likely the best way to encourage the passionate pursuit of the diverse values we would hope to see realized in the world, and also seems good in its own right.
So I'm not at all sympathetic to claims that people are morally obliged to pursue one or other particular vocation "for the greater good". Such alienating, impersonal motivations cannot sustain us for long, and the best world has room for our diverse passions in any case. It is important that our chosen vocations have a legitimate place in the good world (or play some role in bringing such a world about); but beyond that requirement, the choice is rightly ours.
Ego-Depletion and Moral Demands
Despite my consequentialism, I have a fairly lax view of our moral obligations. I don't think we're obliged to directly help the less fortunate, or anything like that. If someone lives a basically decent life, I'm not about to criticize them for failing to do more. (It'd be great if they did, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect or demand it.) If a moral theory implies otherwise, then I think that's a count against it. The "demandingness objection" is, I think, a fair one.
But it's important to be clear on precisely what the complaint is against. It is not that large costs are being imposed on the wealthy, or anything so object-centered as that. (There's nothing inviolate about the advantages held by the most fortunate, and nothing intrinsically problematic about redistributing these advantages.) Systematic redistribution is just fine. What's problematic, to my mind, is the very act of demanding action from another, and the psychological burden this imposes.
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!
It's worth noting the contingency of this concern. If we can make it cognitively easier for people to do good, then we could reasonably expect more from them. Habitual behaviours are less demanding, for example. Best of all would be to free them of the burden entirely: replace opt-in schemes with opt-out ones, automate charitable redistribution via taxation, etc. Don't demand, just take. (Liberty concerns may be mitigated by the opportunity to exercise one's agency in the deliberative-democratic processes behind this policy decision.)
My account of the demandingness objection thus leads to the rejection of Liam Murphy's constraint against imposing unrequired sacrifice. Brian Berkey introduces it:
The intuitive idea behind such a constraint is that if a person is not herself required to make a sacrifice, then it would be inappropriate for others to force her to make it.
This only makes sense on an object-centered view of demands. On my psyche-centered version, we see that it is less burdensome to dispose of another's material holdings appropriately than to demand that they do so themselves. The latter involves both material sacrifice and ego-depletion. If you can instead find your way to my wallet without bothering my mind, then that's just fine. (Unless you're acting within a context where this would qualify as 'theft', of course.)
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Imperfectly Right
Maximizing consequentialists claim that the right action is that which maximizes the good (e.g. aggregate human welfare). So it's impermissible - morally wrong - to do anything less than what's perfectly optimal. Probably, then, everything that everyone has ever done was immoral. That seems bizarre. Railton puts it nicely in his 'How Thinking about Character and Utilitarianism Might Lead to Rethinking the Character of Utilitarianism' (Midwest Studies 1988):
Now it seems inconsistent with anything like our ordinary understanding of 'morally right' to say that the boundary separating the right from the wrong is to be sharply drawn infinitesimally below the very best action possible. 'Wrong' does mark a kind of discontinuity in moral evaluation, but one associated with with unacceptability. For this reason 'right', though not itself a matter of degree, covers actions that are entirely acceptable given reasonable expectations as well as those that are optimal. 'Wrong' comes into clear application only when we reach actions far enough below normal expectations to warrant real criticism or censure. (p.407)
So I've always preferred satisficing consequentialism: an action is right if it is good enough. This view has its own problems, though. Start with any action that is good enough. If we modify it, such as to increase the net benefits, the result is better and so (a fortiori) also good enough. So suppose I modify my initial action by, in addition, gratuitously murdering one person but saving two others (by giving to OXFAM, say). Surely I have not then on balance acted rightly!
But can we really say that this was all one act? On a more fine-grained individuation, we can say that my initial act and the charitable giving were both right acts (good enough), whereas the murder plainly wasn't. So there are responses available to the satisficer. But I'm not too sure how to assess them.
In any case, I'm skeptical that obligations and the like are fundamental to moral theory. At the base, there are only relations of value: better and worse states of affairs. From there we can ask about what 'practical morality' (dispositions of character, etc.) would tend to best promote the good. Moral obligation is constructed at this level: it is that minimal baseline against which individuals are properly subject to blame and social censure if they fall short. In this sense I see deontic assessments ('right' and 'wrong') as akin to rights talk. An important part of our moral practice, perhaps, but not so deep in theory.
That's a rough outline, anyway. Which parts of this picture do you think stand most in need of further attention?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Conservative Progressivism
Looking at the 'big picture', should utilitarians care less about (present) welfare? John Broome argues [PDF] that the population effects of global warming will ultimately dwarf any direct suffering caused. More generally, impacts on present people dwindle to near insignificance when one considers the indefinitely many people that are yet to come. A dangerous thought. For example, does it mean that we should care less about temporary suffering, so long as an end is in sight?
Consider the vegetarian's arguments against factory farmed meat. The present system causes huge and unnecessary suffering to animals. But, we may think, it's only a matter of time until the industry is replaced by bioengineered meat (no animal required). If so, perhaps vegetarianism isn't the pressing moral issue Peter Singer says it is. Factory farming causes massive suffering today, but very little in the grand scheme of things.
The most pressing issue, on this way of looking at things, is to promote 'viral' or compounding goods (e.g. wealth and education) and the social/moral infrastructure that will support continued progress.
There's a sense in which this 'progressivism' is deeply conservative. We should be less concerned about making progress ourselves, than in ensuring that progress may continue to be made in future. Procedural liberalism trumps social justice. We should care more about improving the state of public debate than pushing our particular agendas. (The two aren't necessarily exclusive, of course.)
Further, perhaps we should embrace some degree of perfectionism, and prioritize excellence over mere welfare (assuming that high attainment is more likely to benefit future generations -- think scientific breakthroughs).
Plausible?
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Moral Asymmetries of Existence
The NDPR on Benatar's Better Never to Have Been is very interesting (HT: Siris). But I'm skeptical of the moral asymmetry proposed in the following example:
Suppose you can, as a package, bring seven lives into existence. Six will be good, one will be very bad. You might think it would be wrong to go ahead. Other things equal, starting good lives is permissible, but not starting bad lives is required. We can't justify starting this bad life by appeal to the good in other, separate, lives.
Predictably enough, I'm inclined to go 'indirect utilitarian' on this one, and grant it as a merely contingent moral principle. Context is all. As it happens, we have a high normal baseline: most lives in our society are pretty good. So, creating a good life is nothing exceptionally good, whereas creating a bad life is exceptionally bad. Given the more fundamental principle that exceptionally good or bad actions have greater moral significance (in virtue of their impact on the general form of society), we find that the contingent asymmetry in social circumstances leads to the above moral asymmetry.
But things could have been different. If we imagine a dystopian world where the normal 'baseline' is much lower, i.e. where most lives are rather awful, then it seems to me the moral asymmetry would be likewise inverted. Given the opportunity to bring about an exceptionally good life, people ought to do so. To prevent another typically bad one would be permissible -- good, even -- but not required. So, dystopians ought to embrace the 'package deal' of six good lives and one more bad one.
Benatar argues from the original asymmetry principle to the conclusion that no lives are worth living. (Even a mostly good life has some bad in it, so we are like the 6:1 package deal, squashed into one body.) But, ironically, his asymmetry principle only holds in the first place because of all the good lives that (future) people will have. In light of this contingency, Benatar's use of the principle is self-undermining. The prescribed "zero birthrate" would remove the grounds of its own justification.
In sum: the asymmetry principle derives whatever force it has from the more fundamental value of promoting the general welfare. So it cannot be used to subvert this very goal.
Friday, January 26, 2007
What is "collectivism", and why is it bad?
I've noticed that ideological libertarians tend to denounce utilitarian interventions (e.g. redistributive taxation) as "collectivist", or favouring "the group" over "the individual". I can't make the slightest sense of this charge. Can anyone help me out?
The obvious problem is that "group", in this context, means nothing more than "several individuals". There's nothing obviously anti-individualistic about harming one individual in order to benefit many other individuals. On the contrary, it's hard to see what could possibly be more pro-individual than the utilitarian's desire to maximally benefit every individual in the world!
When libertarians talk about "the individual", I can only charitably interpret this as a definite, rather than generic, description. As established above, their claims would make no sense in relation to individuals in general. They must be talking about that particular individual - call him Bob - who is being harmed for the benefit of others. When they call utilitarians "anti-individual", they just mean we're "anti-Bob" -- in the weak sense that we give greater weight to the interests of multiple people than we do to Bob alone. But then what sort of criticism is this? Who in their right mind wouldn't think that, say, one life could be outweighed by a million? So if this -- the denial of deontological absolutism -- is all that they mean by "collectivism", it's a charge without bite.
A more intuitive definition of the term, I think, would invoke the notion that the group is somehow more than just the sum of its parts. On this understanding, a collectivist would elevate abstractions over real people, pursuing the glory of the group at the expense of the actual people who make it up. Now, I can understand why this anti-human ideology might be thought pernicious -- I'd probably agree, in fact. (Even worse is when an authoritarian leader dishonestly appeals to the "greater good" merely as a smokescreen for consolidating their own power. But I don't imagine anybody supports that!) But of course none of this bears any relation at all to the utilitarian trade-offs that some libertarians seek to slur.
Or am I missing something?
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Writing Sample: Global Rationality
[Here's the writing sample I'm using for my grad school applications. It's a revised version of an earlier draft I once posted here.] Introduction We typically conceive of rationality in atomistic terms, as a matter of doing what seems best from the local perspective of the moment, or maximizing expected utility. I want to explore an alternative – more holistic – way of thinking about rationality, which applies primarily at the global level of the whole, temporally extended person, in contrast to the local level of each momentary person-stage. This distinction may be motivated by noting that global optimality can – for various reasons – require us to do other than what seems optimal within the confines of a moment. Holistic rationality, as I envisage it, tells us to adopt a broader view, transcending the boundaries of the present and identifying with a timeless perspective instead. Of course, even atomists will want to go beyond the present by including knowledge about the future in their decision procedure. But I wish to make the stronger claim that the procedure itself should be, in an important sense, time-invariant. We might think of this as a kind of universalization constraint: to assess a decision procedure or form of practical reasoning, you should consider the consequences, not just of employing it at this momentary stage, but at all your relevantly similar stages. Julian Nida-Rumelin has suggested: “It is perfectly rational to refrain from point-wise optimization because you do not wish to live the life which would result.”1 Yet refraining from optimization might seem to violate the principle that one rationally ought to do what seems best. To reap the rewards of global rationality, we must be willing to treat the dictates of the broader perspective as rationally authoritative, no matter how disadvantageous it may seem from the particular perspective of our local moment.2 This amounts to an intrapersonal analogue of the ‘social contract’: each of our momentary stages abdicates some degree of rational autonomy, in order to enhance the rationality and autonomy of our person as a whole. The challenge here is to make sense of the normative status of the advice issuing from these conflicting perspectives. What, for instance, should consequentialists say about those particular instances in which following the globally optimal strategy would actually have worse consequences? I will draw on – and further develop – the theoretical apparatus of contemporary philosophy of normativity in order to diagnose, clarify, and assess the various ways such conflicts may arise, and to rebuff charges of inconsistency or paradox. Overall, this essay seeks to establish two things. First, the distinction between local and global levels of rationality can be fruitfully applied, as an extension of the standard framework, to help us understand the puzzles discussed by Parfit and others. Secondly, we would do well to favour the global level in cases where the two conflict. First, let us distinguish the objective and subjective modes of normativity, as reflected in contemporary philosophical use of the terms ‘reasons’ and ‘rationality’.3 Reasons are provided by facts that count in favour of an action. For example, if a large rock is about to hit the back of your head, then this is a reason for you to duck, even if you are unaware of it. As this example suggests, the objective notion I have in mind is largely independent of our beliefs: p can be a reason for you, in this sense, even if you do not believe that p.4 As inquiring agents, we try to discover what reasons for action we have in virtue of our actual situation, and hence what we should do. Such inquiry would be redundant according to subjective accounts, which restrict reasons to things that an agent already believes. So I use the term exclusively in its objective sense. Consequentialism implies that we have reason to bring about good states of affairs, and to prevent bad ones from obtaining.5 I take it as analytic that we have most reason to do what would be best. I will follow Parfit’s terminology in saying that this is what one ought, in the reason-implying sense, to do.6 There is another sense of ‘ought’, tied to the subjective or evidence-based notion of rationality rather than the objective or fact-based notion of ‘reasons’. As Kolodny puts it, rationality is “about the relation between your attitudes, viewed in abstraction from the reasons for them.”7 Sometimes the evidence can be misleading, so that what seems best is not really so. In such cases, we may say that one rationally ought to do what seems best, given the available evidence. But due to their ignorance of the facts, they would not be doing what they actually have most reason to do. Though they couldn’t know it, some alternative action would have been better. This raises the question of what to say when reasons and rationality diverge. Suppose that someone ought, in the reason-implying sense, to X, but that they rationally ought to Y. If innocent people have been convincingly framed, for instance, then the (unknown) facts provide reasons for acquittal, though it may be rational for a jury to condemn them based on the available evidence. Which takes precedence? What is it that the jury really ought to do? There is some risk of turning this into a merely terminological dispute. But we can make some substantive observations here. In particular, I think that the reason-involving sense of ‘ought’ is arguably the more fundamental normative concept. This is because it indicates the deeper goal, or what agents are ultimately seeking. The purpose of deliberation is to identify the best choice, or reach the correct conclusion. In practice, we do this by settling on what seems to us to be best. But we do not think that the appearances have any independent force, over and above the objective facts. We seek to perform the best action, not merely the best-seeming one. Of course, from our first-personal perspective we cannot tell the two apart. That which seems best to us is what we take to truly be best. Belief is, in this sense, “transparent to truth”. Because our beliefs all seem true to us, the rational choice will always seem to us to also be the best one.8 We can thus take ourselves to be complying with the demands of both rationality and fact-based reasons. Nevertheless, it is the latter that we really care about. One way to bring this out is to consider the advice that would be given by a helpful third party: recognizing your false beliefs, they would surely advise you to do what was truly best, rather than what merely seemed to you to be so.9 This is especially clear in epistemology. We seek true beliefs, not justified ones. Sure, we would usually take ourselves to be going wrong if our beliefs conflicted with the available evidence. Such conflict would indicate that our beliefs were likely false. But note that it is the falsity, and not the mere indication thereof, that we are ultimately concerned with. More generally, for any given goal, we will be interested in evidence that suggests to us how to attain the goal. We will tend to be guided by such evidence. But this does not make following the evidence itself our ultimate goal. Ends and evidence are intimately connected, but non-identical. Normative significance accrues in the first instance to our ends, whereas evidence is merely a means: we follow it for the sake of the end, which we know not how else to achieve. Applied to the particular case of reasons and rationality, then, it becomes clear that reasons are closer to the real goal, whereas rationality is merely the guiding process by which we hope to achieve it. Since arriving at the intended destination is ultimately more important than faithfully following the guide, we may conclude that the reason-implying sense of ‘ought’ takes normative precedence.10 I will use this as my default sense of ‘ought’ in what follows. Indirect Utilitarianism and Blameless Wrongdoing Act Utilitarianism claims that our actions ought to maximize the good. Paradoxically, if people tried to act like utilitarians, this would plausibly have very bad consequences. For example, authorities would engage in torture or frame innocent persons whenever they believed that doing so would cause more good than harm. Such beliefs might often be mistaken, however, and with disastrous consequences. Let us suppose that attempts to directly maximize utility will generally backfire. Utilitarianism then seems to imply that it is wrong to be a utilitarian. But the conclusion that utilitarianism is self-defeating only follows if we fail to distinguish between criteria of rightness and decision procedures.11 We typically conceive of ethics as a practically oriented field: a good moral theory should be action-guiding, or tell us how to act. So when utilitarianism claims that the right action is that which maximizes utility, it is natural for us to read this as saying that we should try to maximize utility. But utilitarianism as defined above does not claim that we ought to try to maximize utility. Rather, it claims that we should achieve this end. If one were to try and fail, then their action would be wrong, according to the act-utilitarian criterion. This seems to be in tension with the general principle that we rationally ought to aim at the good. The utilitarian criterion instead tells us to have whatever aims would be most successful at attaining the good. This difference will be clarified in the section on ‘object- and state-based modes of assessment’, later in this essay. For now, simply note that the best utilitarian consequences might result, say, from a steadfast commitment to respect human rights no matter how expedient their violation might appear. In this case, the utilitarian criterion tells us that we should inculcate such anti-utilitarian practical commitments. This indicates a distinction between two levels of normative moral thought: the intuitive and the critical.12 Our intuitive-level morality consists of those principles and commitments that guide us in our everyday moral thinking and engage our moral emotions. This provides our moral decision procedure. It is often enough to note that an action would violate our commitment to honesty, for instance, to settle the question of whether we should perform it. This is not the place for cold calculation of expected utilities. They instead belong on the critical level, when it comes time to determine which of our intuitive principles and commitments are well-justified ones. For the indirect utilitarian, honesty is good because being honest will do a better job of improving the world than would being a scheming, opportunistic, direct utilitarian. The general picture on offer is this: we use utility as a higher-order criterion for picking out the best practical morality, and then we live according to the latter. Maximizing utility is the ultimate goal, but we do well to adopt a more reliable indirect strategy – and even other first-order “goals” – in order to achieve it.13 What shall we say of those situations where the goal and the strategy conflict? Consider a rare case where, say, framing an innocent person really would have the best consequences. Such an act would then be right – or what we have most reason to do – according to the utilitarian criterion. Yet our practical morality advises most strongly against it, and ex hypothesi we ought to live according to those principles. Does this imply a contradiction: the right action ought not to be done? Only if we assume a further principle of normative transmission: (T) If you ought to accept a strategy S, and S tells you to X, then you ought to X.14 This is plausible for the rational sense of ‘ought’, but not the reason-involving sense that I am using here. We might have most reason to adopt a strategy – because it will more likely see us right than any available alternative – without thereby implying that the strategy is perfect, i.e. that everything it prescribes really is the objectively best option. S might on occasion be misleading, and then we could have more reason to not do X, though we remain unaware of this fact. So we should reject (T), and accept the previously described scenario as consistent. To follow practical morality in such a case, and refrain from expedient injustice, would constitute what Parfit calls “blameless wrongdoing”.15 The agent fails to do what they have most moral reason to do, so the act is wrong (objectively suboptimal). But the agent herself has the best possible motives and dispositions, and could say, “Since this is so, when I do act wrongly in this way, I need not regard myself as morally bad.”16 Parfit’s solution may be clarified by appealing to my earlier distinction between the local and global levels. Our ‘local’ assessment looks at the particular act, and condemns it for sub-optimality. The ‘global’ perspective considers the agent as a whole, with particular concern for the long-term outcomes obtained by consistent application of any given decision-procedure. From this perspective, the agent is (ex hypothesi) entirely praiseworthy: their psychological makeup will in fact lead to better consequences overall than any available alternative.17 The apparently conflicting judgments are consistent because they are made in relation to different standards or modes of assessment. I have illustrated this with the example of indirect utilitarianism, but the general principle will apply whenever some end is best achieved by indirect means. More generally than “blameless wrongdoing”, we will have various forms of (globally) optimal (local) sub-optimality. Meta-coherence and Essential By-products The above discussion focused on the objective, reason-involving sense of ‘ought’. Let us now consider the problem in terms of evidence and what one rationally ought to do. Rationality demands that we aim at the good, or do what seems best, i.e. maximize expected utility. But the whole idea of the indirect strategy is to be guided by reliable rules rather than direct utility calculations. One effectively commits to occasionally acting “irrationally” (in the local sense), though it is rational – subjectively optimal – to make this commitment. Parfit thus calls it “rational irrationality”.18 But we may question whether expected utility could really diverge from the reliable rules after all. 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.19 This principle has important application to our current discussion, potentially unifying the two levels of local and global rationality. We adopt the indirect strategy precisely because we recognize that our direct first-order calculations are unreliable. The utilitarian sheriff might think that framing an innocent subject would have high expected utility. But if he recalls his own unreliability on such matters, he should lower the expected utility accordingly. As a good indirect utilitarian, he believes that in situations subjectively indiscernible from his own, to follow a strict policy of never framing innocent persons will generally yield the best results. Taking this higher-order information into account, he should revise his earlier judgment and instead reach the all-things-considered conclusion that seeing justice done maximizes expected utility even for this particular act.20 This seems to collapse the distinction between local and global rationality. When all things are considered, the former will come to conform to the latter.21 This will not always be the case, however. A crucial feature of the present example is that one can consciously recognize the ultimate goal at the back of their mind, even as they employ an indirect strategy in its pursuit. But what if the pursuit of some good requires that we make ourselves more thoroughly insensitive to it? Jon Elster calls such goods “essential byproducts”, and examples might include spontaneity, sleep, acting unselfconsciously, and other such mental absences.22 Such goods are not always susceptible to momentary rational pursuit, even with indirect strategies. The problem is no longer mere ignorance of how best to achieve the good. Rather, to achieve these goods we must relinquish any conscious intention of doing so. As we relax and drift off to sleep, we cannot concurrently conceive of our mental inactivity as a means to this end. One cannot achieve a mental absence by having it “in mind” in the way required for the means-ends reasoning I take to be constitutive of rationality. In the event of succeeding, one could no longer be locally rational in their pursuit of the essential byproduct, for they would not at that moment be intentionally pursuing it at all. Nevertheless, there remains an important sense in which a person remains perfectly rational in having their momentary selves abdicate deliberate pursuit of these ends. If we attribute the goal of nightly sleep to the whole temporally extended person, then this abdication is precisely what sensible pursuit of the goal entails. In this sense, we can understand the whole person as acting deliberately even when their momentary self does not. So the distinction is upheld: global rationality recommends that we simply give up on trying to remain locally rational when we want to get some rest. Object- and State-based modes of assessment Odd as it may seem, even local rationality recommends surrendering itself in such circumstances. From the local perspective of the moment, pursuit of the goal is best advanced by ensuring that one’s future self refrains from such deliberate pursuit. The puzzle arises because mental states are subject to two very different modes of assessment: one focusing on the object of the mental state, and the other focusing on the state itself.23 Suppose an eccentric billionaire offers you a million dollars to believe that the world is flat. The object of belief, i.e. the proposition that the world is flat, does not merit belief. But this state of belief would, in such a case, be a worthwhile one to have. In this sense we might think there are reasons for (having the state of) believing, which are not reasons for (the truth of) the thing believed.24 It seems plausible that desire aims at value in much the same way that belief aims at truth. Hence, indications of value could provide object-based reasons for intention or desire – much as indications of truth provide object-based reasons for belief – whereas the utility of having the desire in question could provide state-based reasons for it.25 This is the difference between an object’s being worthy of desire, and a desire for the object being a state worth having. There are various theories about what reasons we have for acting, and hence what objects merit our pursuit. For example, we may call “Instrumentalism” the claim that we have reason to fulfill our own present desires, whatever they may be. Egoism claims that we have most reason to advance our own self-interest. And Impartialism says that we have equal reason to advance each person’s interests. I propose that for any such account of reasons, we can pair it with a corresponding account of object-based local rationality, based on the following general schema: (G) Rationality is a matter of pursuing the good, i.e. being moved by the appearance of those facts ____ that provide us with reasons for action. Let us say that S has a quasi-reason to X, on the basis of some non-normative proposition p, when the following two conditions are satisfied: (i) S believes that p; and (ii) if p were true then this would provide a reason for S to X. Note that on my above account, S need not recognize that the truth of p would provide reason to X. We may then understand (G) as the claim that one rationally ought to do what one has most quasi-reason to do. This clarifies the proposed relation between reasons and rationality, as distinct from an alternative view that holds simply that one is rationally required to do whatever they believe they have most reason to do. The different theories mentioned earlier posit different reasons, so different quasi-reasons, and hence different specifications of rationality in this sense. For example, according to Egoism, agents are rational insofar as they seek to advance their own interests. There is a sense in which the theory thereby claims this to be the supremely rational aim.26 But let us suppose that having self interest as one’s dominant local aim would foreseeably cause one’s life to go worse, as per “the paradox of hedonism”.27 Egoism then implies that we would be irrational to knowingly harm ourselves by having this aim. This conclusion seems to contradict the original claim that this aim is “supremely rational”. On this basis, Dancy claims that such theories are flatly inconsistent: they “say… that there is a single rational aim which it is not rational… to aim at.”28 The distinction between object- and state-based assessments may help resolve this problem. We might say that an aim embodies rationality in virtue of its object, in that it constitutes supreme sensitivity to one’s quasi-reasons. Or the aim might be recommended by rationality, in the sense that one’s quasi-reasons tell one to have this aim, in virtue of the mental state itself. As before, the apparent incoherence can be traced to the conflation of two distinct modes of assessment. The aforementioned theories should be interpreted as claiming that their associated aims supremely embody rationality, even though it might not be rationally recommended to embody it so. This reflects the coherent possibility that something might be desirable – worthy of desire – even if the desire itself would, for extrinsic reasons, be a bad state to have. It is worth noting that this distinction appears to hold independently of the local/global distinction. We might imagine a good – perhaps sainthood29 – that would be denied to anyone who ever entertained it as a goal. If one sought it via the standard “globally rational” method of preventing one’s future momentary selves from deliberate “locally rational” pursuit, it would already be too late: this initial plotting would suffice to disqualify one. There is no rational way at all, on any level, to pursue the good. Still, being of value, the good might merit pursuit. It might even provide reasons of sorts, even though one could never recognize them as such.30 So although the object/state distinction may recommend a shift from local to global rationality, it further establishes that even the latter may, in special circumstances, be transparently disadvantageous. Reasons and rationality may come apart, even when no ignorance is involved, because it may be best to achieve a good without ever recognizing it as such. This would provide reasons that elude our rational grasp, being such that we ought to act unwittingly rather than by grasping the reason that underlies this very ‘ought’-fact. Rational Holism We have seen how various distinctions, including that between the local and global levels of rationality, can help us to make sense of the indirect pursuit of goods. If we know our first-order judgments to be unreliable, then meta-coherence will lead us to be skeptical of those judgments. Indirect utilitarianism stems from recognizing that expected utility is better served by instead following a more reliable – globally optimal – strategy, even if this at times conflicts with our first-order judgments of expedience. Global rationality paves the way for utilitarian respect for rights, and meta-coherence carries it over to the local level. Essential by-products re-establish the distinction, as we may understand a goal as being rationally pursued at the level of the temporally extended person, if not at the level of every momentary stage or temporal part. Although the object/state distinction implies that even global rationality may be imperfect, the preceding cases suggest that we would do well at least to prize the global perspective over the local one. I now want to support this conclusion by considering a further class of problems that could be fruitfully analyzed as pitting the unified agent against their momentary selves. Consider Newcomb’s Problem:31 a highly reliable predictor presents you with two boxes, one containing $1000, and the other with contents unknown. You are offered the choice of either taking both boxes, or else just the unknown one. You are told that the predictor will have put $1,000,000 in the opaque box if she earlier predicted you would pick only that; otherwise she will have left it empty. Either way, the contents are now fixed. Should you take one box or both? From the local, momentary perspective, the answer seems clear: the contents are fixed, it’s too late to change them now, so you might as well take both. Granted, one would do better to be the sort of person who would pick only one box. That is the rationally recommended dispositional state. But taking both is the choice that embodies rationality, according to the local view. This atomistic reasoning predictably leads to a mere $1000 prize. Suppose that one instead adopted a more holistic perspective, giving weight to the kinds of reasoning that, judging from the timeless perspective, one would want one’s momentary stages to employ. This globally rational agent is willing to commit to being a one-boxer, and so will make that choice even when it seems locally suboptimal. This predictably leads to the $1,000,000 prize, which was unattainable to the atomist. Similar remarks apply to Kavka’s toxin puzzle.32 Suppose that you would be immediately rewarded upon forming the intention to later drink a mild toxin that would cause you some discomfort. Since you will already have received your reward by then, there would seem no narrowly local reason for you to carry out such an intention. Recognizing this, an atomist about rationality cannot even form the intention to begin with. (You cannot intend to do something that you know you will not do.) Again we find that atomistic reasoning disqualifies one from attaining something of value. The rational holist, by contrast, is willing to follow through on earlier commitments even in the absence of temporally local reasons.33 She wishes to be the kind of person who can reap such rewards, so global rationality leads her to behave accordingly. In both these cases, the benefits of global rationality require that one be disposed to follow through on past commitments. One must tend to recognize one’s past reasons as also providing reasons for one’s present self. This allows one to overcome problems, such as the above, which are based on a localized object/state distinction.34 But occasional violation of this disposition might allow one to receive the benefits without the associated cost. (One might receive the reward for forming the sincere intention to drink the toxin, only to later surprise oneself by refusing to drink it after all.) So let us now consider an even stronger sort of case that goes beyond the object/state distinction and hence demands more than the mere disposition of global rationality. Instead, the benefits will accrue only to those who follow through on their earlier resolutions.35 Pollock’s Ever Better Wine improves with age, without limit.36 Suppose you possess a bottle, and are immortal. When should you drink the wine? Atomists could never drink it, for at any given time they would do better to postpone it another day. But to never drink it at all is the worst possible result! Or consider Quinn’s Self-Torturer, who receives $10,000 each time he increases his pain level by an indiscernible increment.37 It sounds like a deal worth taking. But suppose that the combined effect of a thousand increments would leave him in such agony that no amount of money could compensate. Because each individual increment is – from the narrowly local perspective of the moment – worth taking, rational atomism will again lead one to the worst possible result. A good result is only possible for agents who are willing to let their global perspective override local calculations. The agent must make in advance a rational resolution to stop at some stage n, even though from the local perspective of stage n he would do better to continue on to stage n+1. It seems clear that the global perspective is rationally superior. The agent can foresee the outcomes of her possible choices. If she endorses the local mode of reasoning then she will never have grounds to stop, and so will end up stuck with the worst possible outcome. It cannot be rational to accept this when other options are open to her. If she is instead resolute and holds firm to the choice – made from a global or timeless perspective – to stop at stage n, then she will do much better. Yet one might object that this merely pushes the problem back a step: how could one rationally resolve to choose n rather than n+1 in the first place? The problem of Buridan’s ass, caught between two equally tempting piles of hay, shows that rational agents must be capable of making arbitrary decisions.38 It cannot be rational for the indecisive ass to starve to death in its search for the perfect decision. Indeed, once cognitive costs are taken into account, it becomes clear that all-things-considered expected utility is better served by first-order satisficing than attempted optimizing.39 (“The perfect is the enemy of the good,” as the saying goes.) Applying this to the above cases, we should settle on some n, any n, that is good enough. Once we have made such a resolution, we can reject the challenge, “why not n+1?” by noting that if we were to grant that increment then we would have no basis to reject the next ones, ad infinitum, and that would lead us to the worst outcome. Though our reasoning activity takes place at particular moments, the perspective we adopt at that time need not be so limited. We can, in the present, reason as if from a global perspective – and the above cases suggest that this is precisely what we rationally ought to do. Hence I propose the following negative principle of rational holism: (H-) In any given situation: one rationally ought not to employ any decision procedure that could not be endorsed from a global perspective (i.e. abstracting away from one’s present temporal location or momentary stage). The above discussion shows that point-wise optimization is not temporally universalizable in some cases. If one endorses the arbitrary shift from n to n+1, parity of reasoning would lead one’s future selves to never stop. The consequences of universalizing that method of reasoning would be clearly undesirable, so (H-) requires us to reject it. The atomist’s “local rationality” is in fact not rational at all. Instead, the way we should reason at a moment derives from the methods we would endorse from a timeless perspective. Of course, in unproblematic cases, the locally optimal option may happen to coincide with what is truly (globally) rational. Our idealized timeless selves might endorse our present use of the decision procedure. But as the diverging cases show, it is the global perspective that takes precedence. Hence the positive holistic principle: (H+) In any given situation: one rationally ought to act and reason as one would recommend from a timeless perspective. It is not enough simply to determine that n+1 is better than n, and hence take that step before determining what to do next. In cases where local and global optimality diverge, one must instead look at the “big picture”, resolve where one wants to end up, and act accordingly. Of course, in reality our reasoning always takes place within a specific temporal context. But we may nevertheless adopt a timeless perspective by abstracting away such details, and thus refusing to employ methods of reasoning that we recognize as non-universalizable. Thus localized decisions may be governed by global norms. Conclusion The standard picture of rationality is thoroughly atomistic. It views agents as momentary entities, purely forward-looking from their localized temporal perspective. In this essay, I have presented an alternative, more holistic view. I propose that we ascribe agency primarily to the whole temporally extended person, rather than to each stage in isolation. This view allows us to make sense of the rational pursuit of essential by-products, as we may ascribe deliberate purpose to a whole person even if it is absent from the minds of some individual stages. Moreover, global rationality sheds light on the insights of indirect utilitarianism, though meta-coherence allows that these conclusions may also be accessible from a temporally localized perspective. I have shown how to develop Parfit’s framework to better accommodate these puzzling cases, in response to charges of outright inconsistency. Finally, I have argued that there are cases where reasoning in the atomistic manner of point-wise optimization leads to disaster. Such disaster can be avoided if the agents embrace my holistic conception of rational agency, acting only in ways that they could endorse from a global or timeless perspective. Persons are more than the sum of their isolated temporal parts; if we start acting like it then we may do better than traditional decision theorists would think rationally possible. 1 Nida-Rumelin, p.13. 2 Harsanyi, p.122, seems to be getting at a similar idea in his discussion of the “normal mode” of playing a game. 3 See, e.g., Kolodny, pp. 509-510, and Parfit (ms.), p.21. 4 Of course we can imagine special circumstances whereby one’s holding of a belief would itself be the reason-giving ‘fact’ in question. If I am sworn to honesty, then the fact that I believe that P may itself provide a reason for me to assert that P. 5 I leave open the question whether such value is impersonal or agent-relative. 6 Parfit (ms), p.21. I also follow Parfit’s use of the term “rationally ought”, below. 7 Kolodny, p.509, italics omitted. 8 Cf. Kolodny’s “transparency account” of rationality’s apparent normativity (p.513). 9 I owe this idea to Clayton Littlejohn. 10 Of course, the agent may not know of any more reliable option than to follow the guide. As noted above, we must move beyond the first person perspective before this distinction will seem significant. 11 This is a familiar distinction, see e.g. the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on ‘Rule Consequentialism’, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism-rule/#4 [accessed 21/6/06]. 12 The following is strongly influenced by R.M. Hare. 13 Hare, p.38. This is distinct from “rule utilitarianism”, which I take to be the claim that whatever the rules advise is ipso facto what we ought to do. The example below should make the difference clearer. 14 This is a generalization of the sorts of transmission principles that Parfit (1987) rejects. 15 Parfit (1987), pp.31-35. Cf. my section on ‘meta-coherence’ below, where I argue that this is not really “wrongdoing” at all from the perspective of subjective rationality. However, the current section is concerned with the objective, fact-based sense of ‘ought’, independent of what the agent happens to know. 16 Ibid., p.32. (N.B. Here I quote the words that Parfit attributes to his fictional agent ‘Clare’.) 17 This arguably means that the so-called “locally optimal” action isn’t optimal at all: the closest possible world where the agent so acts is a worse world overall, because in that world she acts worse in other situations. But this raises complicated issues about the appropriate comparison class for the relevant counterfactuals, which goes beyond the scope of this essay. See Dancy, pp.9-10. 18 Parfit (1987), p.13. Though the more radical (non-epistemic) cases he discusses are better covered by my treatment of “essential byproducts” below. 19 I owe the idea of “meta-coherence” to Michael Huemer. 20 Of course, an injustice might in fact yield the best results. But this section is discussing the evidential question, i.e. expected, rather than actual, utility. 21 Two further points bear mentioning: (1) We might construct a new distinction in this vicinity, between prima facie and all things considered judgments, where the former allows only first-order evidence, and the latter includes meta-beliefs about reliability and such. This bears some relation to ‘local’ vs. ‘global’ considerations, and again I think the latter deserves to be more widely recognizReasons and Rationality