Wow. This bloggingheads.tv interview between Will Wilkinson and UNC's Geoff Sayre-McCord is incredibly good. Sayre-McCord is a wonderfully clear and careful thinker, and Will asks him excellent, probing questions. (Can you imagine seeing such a philosophically astute discussion on regular TV? It's times like these that I really love the internet!)
One recurring issue concerns the extent to which moral statements are simply redescriptions of natural facts. Does 'Hitler was evil' say anything over and above the fact that he had a callous disregard for others' welfare, etc.? Does the goodness of our social institutions consist in anything more than the descriptive fact that they are conducive to [such-and-such specification of] human flourishing?
The problem with the negative (reductionist) answer is that it risks turning normative disputes into mere semantic disputes. Suppose one were to say: "I grant that Western freedoms are more conducive to personal development, happiness, and all that jazz, but nonetheless they are bad, because it is more important to promote obedience, piety, etc." We don't want to say they've contradicted themselves, as we must if 'good' just means 'conducive to [...]'. Their error is not linguistic. It seems there's a substantive moral question at stake here, viz. how we should organize society, or what is of ultimate value, or some such.
Granted, the tricky thing is to say what this further element of disagreement amounts to. I'm inclined to think it is the question of what moral viewpoint is most reasonable, or what all ideally rational agents would ultimately converge on at the end of inquiry. Depending on our theory of rationality, this might be further reduced to the question of what set of desires/evaluative beliefs is the most internally coherent, unified, and so forth. I think this is some sort of progress. At least it is difficult to re-raise the Open Question Argument at this level: "I grant that X is approved by the maximally coherent evaluative system, and indeed I would endorse it if I were more rational, but nonetheless I think X is wrong!" sounds pretty self-contradictory to me. But in some sense I've just passed the buck from meta-ethics to meta-epistemology, so this picture is still not entirely satisfactory.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Metaethics Diavlog
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Grasping Normativity
Some people (most commonly, economists) appear to have lost their grasp of the concept of normativity. Their use of the word 'should' is tempered by scare quotes, and appears to refer to mere conventional morality (i.e. whatever norms happen to actually be accepted by society) rather than philosophical morality (i.e. the norms we really ought to have). What do you think is the most effective way to help them reclaim their grasp of the latter concept? Here are a few possibilities...
(1) Reassure them that nothing 'spooky' is required. (I assume such fears are what motivated them to banish the concept in the first place.)
(2) Offer cognate terms. Scrap 'morality'. Try talking about what you really ought, all things considered, to do. What matters. Or consider what would be best, or what you have most reason to do; what's reasonable, or rational.
(3) Quote Sidgwick (1890: 39)
Even, finally, if we discard the belief, that any end of action is unconditionally or "categorically" prescribed by reason, the notion 'ought' as above explained is not thereby eliminated from our practical reasonings: it still remains in the "hypothetical imperative" which prescribes the fittest means to any end that we may have determined to aim at. When (e.g.) a physician says, "If you wish to be healthy you ought to rise early," this is not the same thing as saying "early rising is an indispensable condition of the attainment of health." This latter proposition expresses the relation of physiological facts on which the former is founded; but it is not merely this relation of facts that the word 'ought' imports: it also implies the unreasonableness of adopting an end and refusing to adopt the means indispensable to its attainment.
(4) Go procedural. Consider the possibility that a reflective equilibrium process might lead one to change their values/preferences in ways that could only be described as an improvement. For example, one might iron out any inconsistencies, reduce the number of ad hoc/arbitrary distinctions, add more general principles that enhance the overall coherence and unity of one's desire set, etc.
(5) Offer examples of irrational preferences, e.g. future-Tuesday indifference, only caring about your future self's interests up until 1/1/09, altruistically caring about all and only persons whose names begin with the letter 'A', etc. Intransitive preferences. Failure to pursue the necessary means (ceteris paribus) to some endorsed end. Preferring the acknowledged lesser good to the greater. And so on.
(6) Draw attention to their agency. These skeptics usually presuppose a kind of naive Humeanism, according to which preferences are 'given' and automatically combine with beliefs to yield action. But that can't possibly be right, because it leaves no room for the familiar phenomenon of deliberation. We are agents with the capacity for practical reasoning, i.e. the assessment of reasons that count for or against various courses of action. This is a self-consciously normative process of decision: just as theoretical reasoning addresses the question what should I believe?, so practical reasoning addresses the question what should I do? Insofar as you think of yourself as a rational agent at all, you must be engaging with these normative questions; the alternative is to be a mere automaton, a reflexive stimulus-response machine. Most of us are more deliberative; but deliberation is inherently normative: it addresses a question for which there may be better or worse answers.
(7) Compare epistemic normativity. For some reason, people seem to be more skeptical of practical reason than theoretical (epistemic) reason. Even the most hard-nosed science-cheering skeptic usually thinks that Creationists, say, are going wrong in their beliefs. This is not just to say that their beliefs are likely false, or that they are unsupported by evidence (though this is part of it); in response to someone who invokes practical reasons for belief (say religion makes them happy), the skeptic may make the further claim that they are being unreasonable. (Cf. Sidgwick in #3 above.) Practical normativity is like that, only applied to actions rather than beliefs. Performing bad actions is kind of like believing contradictory things. People manage it all the time, but they're cognitively malfunctioning in doing so.
An additional point of analogy: skeptics may initially be inclined to an inadequately narrow conception of rationality. Deductive logic gives us no reason to believe that the Sun will rise tomorrow, as per the famous problem of induction. But we clearly do have good reason to believe this, and indeed it would be unreasonable not to. This points the way to a broader conception of rationality which invokes considerations of coherence, etc., much as Future Tuesday Indifference and similar examples (#5 above) show the need to go beyond mere instrumental rationality in the practical sphere.
Any other suggestions?
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Non-spooky Moral Realism
I suspect that many people are tempted towards moral skepticism/nihilism (i.e. the meta-ethical view that there are no objective moral truths) because they don't want to be committed to the existence of 'queer' moral entities (as per Mackie's famous objection).
But I think that's a misleading way to frame the issue. The central question of meta-ethics is not about the world and whether it contains entities of a special sort. Instead, it concerns our practical reasoning, and whether some answers to normative ethical questions ('What am I to do?' 'How to live?') are better than others. So we do best to approach meta-ethics from an epistemic, rather than ontic, angle.
Put most simply, the question is whether our moral judgments can be improved. There's nothing particularly 'spooky' about answering in the affirmative. On the contrary, it seems entirely plausible that my evaluative beliefs (just like the rest of my beliefs) are not as coherent and unified as they possibly could be. My idealized self would see room for improvement -- inconsistencies to iron out, etc. So we can make sense of there being a gap here between belief and truth, i.e. between what my actual moral views are, and what they ought to be -- what they would be if I were to reflect more carefully.
So, don't worry about whether moral entities "exist". We don't need any such things in order to secure the kind of objectivity or 'moral realism' that matters. All we need is for there to be more or less reasonable answers that could be given to moral questions. As I like to say:
Philosophical truth just is the ideal limit of a priori inquiry; it does not answer to the sort of independent reality that might sensibly be considered beyond all epistemic reach. Whereas physical facts are made true by existing things in the world, philosophical facts are made true simply by the fact that they are what ideally rational agents would believe.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Can Railton Avoid the Conditional Fallacy?
In 'Moral Realism' (1986), Railton suggests a form of ideal agent theory (of one's non-moral good) designed to avoid the conditional fallacy:
Give to an actual individual A unqualified cognitive and imaginative powers, and full factual and nomological information about his physical and psychological constitution, capacities, circumstances, history, and so on. A will have become A+, who has complete and vivid knowledge of himself and his environment, and whose instrumental rationality is in no way defective. We now ask A+ to tell us not what he currently wants, but what he would want his non-idealized self A to want - or, more generally, to seek - were he in the actual condition and circumstances of A. (pp.173-4, bold added.)
In class yesterday, Dave came up with a wonderful example to suggest that even this double-counterfactual creates interference. Suppose that A's strongest desire is that his cognitive capacities never decline. He desires that, if at any future moment he becomes stupider than he previously was, he dies. (This is just a more extreme version of the common preference many of us have to die rather than succumbing to Alzheimer's or similar mental degeneration.) Given Railton's merely instrumental conception of rationality, there's no reason why this desire couldn't survive idealization, and so be shared by A+. But now the indexical character of the desire is latching on to a new content, given by A+'s context rather than A's. Given that A+'s strongest desire is to be no stupider, what he would want were he to find himself "in the actual condition and circumstances of A" is simply to die! This clearly does not reflect what is in A's objective interest at all, since A has not actually suffered any degeneration. The problem is merely an artifact of the counterfactual scenario.
Liz Harman then suggested a couple of clever solutions. The problem, recall, is that the counterfactual context changes the content of A's indexical desires. So one solution would be to construct the idealization according to the (actual) content rather than character (meaning) of A's desires. That is, even in the idealized context, we treat the desires as referring to A and his actual circumstances. Then A+'s strongest desire is merely to be no stupider than A.
A second option, which I like even more (though I'm not sure how much of it is a reconstruction on my part) would be to bring A's context over to A+. That is, ask A+ to assess an indicative rather than subjunctive conditional: not "what would you want if you were to find yourself in A's condition", but "under the hypothesis that you are in A's actual condition, what do you want?" (Very 2-D!) I think that should work, right?
(Mind you, it's a bit of a mystery why Railton appeals to this idealization process at all. Given that he only builds in full information + instrumental rationality, it doesn't seem that A+ is allowed to revise any of A's ultimate ends. So what work is he doing? Why not just directly identify A's objective interest with whatever would best fulfill his ultimate desires in fact? Presumably that's what is supposed to be guiding A+'s decision. Smith mentioned Railton's "wants/interests mechanism" as going beyond mere instrumental rationality, by tending to bring our motivations more into line with our affective responses, but this alignment does not seem to be included in the idealization process quoted above. Can anyone think of a case where A+ would appropriately choose something other than what would best fulfill A's ultimate desires? Divergence - as in the 'degeneration' case above - seems to indicate precisely that the idealization has gone wrong!)
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Rational Force: science vs. ethics
It's a widespread view that science, but not ethics, has rational force. Creationists are irrational, whereas fascists are merely nasty. Is this alleged asymmetry defensible? I'd recommend rejecting the instrumental conception of rationality, so I think both have rational force. But Railton suggests the opposite approach in his 'Moral Realism' (1986, pp.166-7):
From the standpoint of instrumental reason, belief-formation is but one activity among others: to the extent that we have reasons for engaging in it, or for doing it one way rather than another, these are at bottom a matter of its contribution to our ends. What it would be rational for an individual to believe on the basis of a given experience will vary not only with respect to his other beliefs, but also with respect to what he desires. From this it follows that no amount of mere argumentation or experience could force one on pain of irrationality to accept even the factual claims of empirical science... Unfortunately for the contrast Ayer wished to make, we find that argument is possible on scientific questions only if some system of values is presupposed.
This need not imply epistemic relativism, since "epistemic warrant may be tied to an external criterion - as it is for example by causal or reliabilist theories of knowledge." (p.171) Still, on this account we cannot say that creationists are irrational. They merely fail to adhere to the objective, external norms we would hold them to -- same as the fascists. In either case, we (generally) have plenty of good reasons to care about those external norms. So what grounds are there for thinking the rational status of ethics and science differ?
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Reporting "morals"
*sigh*. Not this old equivocation again:
Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
It seems to be the great new trope for ignorant reporters. Conflate descriptive inquiry into sociological norms with normative inquiry proper, and then marvel at how scientists are breaking new ground in contrast to those doddery old philosophers and theologians and whatnot. Please stop.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Explaining Beliefs
Why do we believe the things we do? Fans of evolutionary psychology might be tempted to construct an evolutionary story about how such-and-such a belief might have proven beneficial to our ancestors on the African savannah. (Freudians and others might construct other stories.) But this is usually the wrong level to focus on. Evolution has equipped us with reliable general faculties of sense and reason. This means that the specific conclusions we reach are better explained by what's justified than by what's adaptive. In other words, if a belief is justified then no further explanation is necessary. It is only blatantly unreasonable beliefs that call out for special explanation -- perhaps in terms of evolved biases, developed disorders, social pressures, or the like.
This is important because people often treat evolution (and causal explanations in general) as an argument for moral skepticism: whatever caused our beliefs, it presumably isn't the abstract moral facts themselves!* But such arguments are question-begging, for they presuppose the skeptical view that our moral beliefs aren't justified.** Indeed, I think there's an important sense in which our philosophical beliefs are caused by the facts: we are responsive to considerations of rational coherence, which is precisely what the truth itself consists in.
* = It's also suspicious that only moral philosophy is singled out here. Logic is no less abstract, after all. Not to mention the belief in skepticism itself.
** = It works better as an argument against Platonism, though.
Here's the vital point: if philosophical truth just is what's maximally reasonable, then the skeptic needs to show that no moral views are more reasonable than their competition (for this would suffice to explain our knowing them). But of course merely pointing to Darwin does no such thing.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Values and Factual Beliefs
Bryan Caplan asks: "How would the world change if everyone shared your factual beliefs?" He adds: "In the hypothetical, values remain unchanged."
However, one of my factual beliefs is that our values are responsive to reason, so that others would ultimately share my values if only they thought a bit more carefully about it. (Or vice versa, in cases where I am the mistaken one. But naturally I don't believe that this is so in any particular case!) Part of sharing all my factual beliefs is to believe that you would - on further reflection - share my values.
But there's something incoherent about believing something that you think you would reject on further reflection. The latter meta-belief implies that your original belief is unjustified. And as soon as you appreciate that fact, you can no longer hold the belief. (To believe something is to judge that it's true; you can't do that if you've just judged that it's probably false, or at least that you have no grounds for thinking it true.)
So, anyone who shared all my factual beliefs would be rationally compelled to also share my normative beliefs (values)!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Context and Relativism
Peter discusses 'kinds of relativism': "surely every ethical theory recommends different actions in different circumstances, and so in a way their recommendations are relative." I think it is helpful to distinguish such context-sensitivity -- whereby the truth is fixed by the particular circumstances -- from relativism strictly speaking. As I wrote in this essay:I take relativism to be the view that the truth-value of a token claim varies depending on who assesses it. This should be distinguished from contextualism, according to which different tokens of a sentence type may have different contents, say depending on the speaker. Indexical content, for instance, is context-dependent in this way. But the resulting claims are typically not relative, because any token utterance will be absolutely true or false, no matter who assesses it. “I am RC” may be true when spoken by me but not you, yet even you must agree that my token utterance is a true one. So it is not 'relative' in the above sense. Similarly, whether bright colours (for example) enhance an artwork may depend on context, i.e. the rest of the work. But this aesthetic quality will only count as a relative value if a token instance of it varies in value across viewers – say, if two critics can, without error, disagree over the qualities of a single painting.
Similarly for ethics: any adequate theory must be sensitive to the morally relevant features of a situation. It would be morally obtuse to claim that lying (for example) is always wrong, no matter the specific context. But this isn't relativism, so long as we agree that there's an objective fact of the matter in any particular case. Some lies are permissible and others aren't; but there's no one particular (token) act of lying that is at once both right and wrong, "relative" to different observers.
Note that, on this understanding, the claim that people ought to abide by the norms of their culture is not actually a form of relativism. It's presumably an objective fact what your cultural norms are, after all. So even if someone in a different culture would - due to the change in context - be bound by different norms, they won't (if they accept the above claim) dispute which norms apply in your particular situation.
Cultural relativism should be understood differently. In contrast to the above "cultural command theory", relativists will claim that cultures have no special authority over their members. They simply provide one standard of assessment, and others may provide alternatives, and there's nothing to decide between them (after all, any such assessment would itself be made from some arbitrary perspective or other). The mark of relativism, recall, is that one and the same particular act merits conflicting assessments. It is both right (from one viewpoint) and wrong (from another).
[Of course, we should reject both these views. Arbitrary opinions don't magically become true simply because they're endorsed by "the culture" in general. And, contra the relativist, some perspectives are more reasonable than others -- differences aren't necessarily arbitrary.]
In sum, I agree with Peter that "there are some objective facts about societies that ethics must take into account when making recommendations as to how individuals should act." Context matters, and cultural context is part of that. But I don't think we should consider this any kind of relativism, "bounded" or otherwise.
[See also my old post on 'objective moral relativism'.]
Thursday, June 07, 2007
The Idea of God - who needs the reality?
Clayton makes a nice point:
According to Anselm, I'm a fool. I believe God exists only in the imagination. But even Anselm grants that God does exist in my imagination and that I have a grasp of what things would have been like had there been a God. Had there been a God, for example, God would have been very displeased with Hitler and commanded him to stop.
More generally, it's daft to think that God's existence is necessary to ground normative ideals, because the whole point of ideals is that they float free from the mess of our actual reality. The question of how things should be does not fundamentally depend on how things in fact are. Ideal standards can be grounded in counterfactuals, e.g. facts about what an ideal spectator would recommend; whether such an ideal spectator actually exists in the here and now is, quite simply, irrelevant. (This is a familiar point: one may ask, "What would Jesus do?" without requiring that Jesus actually be in that situation.)
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Moral Judgment ≠ Moral Fact
Oh dear. William Saletan of Slate magazine reports the latest neuroscientific breakthrough: to make judgments, people use their brains! Shocking, I know. But you won't believe the philosophical implications:
According to the neuroscientists, philosophers on both sides are wrong, because morality doesn't come from God or transcendent reason. It comes from the brain... The war of ideas is a war of neurons.
It seems a little conflation goes a long way when you're a journalist.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Is Normativity Just Semantics?
I'm over a year late responding to this one, but Computational Truth had an interesting post about whether disagreements over well-being are substantive. Suppose that we all agree on the empirical facts: Alan experiences more pleasure, but Betty has fulfilled more of her heartfelt desires. What are hedonists and desire theorists disagreeing about, then, when they dispute which of the two is "better off"?
The problem: According to analytical reductionism (or "descriptivism"), normative terms like 'wellbeing' simply mean whatever wellbeing reduces to -- happiness, desire fulfilment, or whatever the case may be. This would seem to suggest that the dispute is merely terminological. Either one of the theorists is confused about what their words mean, or else they're speaking subtly different idiolects. In that case, we can translate the apparent dispute:
H. "Alan is better off!"
D. "No, Betty is better off!"
into...
H. "Alan is happier!"
D. "No, Betty has fulfilled more of her desires!"
so that they're not really in disagreement at all. (At most, they disagree about what the term 'better off' means. But words aren't worth arguing over. It's the proposition, or what is said with the words, that really matters. We mean to argue about the world, not just the language used to describe it.)
This seems like a pretty good reason to reject analytical reductionism. Normative disputes, e.g. between theories of wellbeing, are surely more substantive than is allowed for by this account.
A proposed solution: recall my recent claim that philosophical truth just is the idealized limit of a priori inquiry. If we grant this rational normativity as primitive, I've previously suggested that we can use this to define our other normative terms. So, for example, 'wellbeing' means something like "what it is ideally rational to value for a person's own sake".
This yields the happy result that disagreements about wellbeing can be substantive after all. Hedonists and desire theorists disagree about what to value (or what it would be ideally rational to value for a person's own sake). That sounds right to me, at least.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Meta-ethics Quiz
Here (HT: Siris). My results:Naturalism
You scored 55 Objectivism, 63 Naturalism, and 91 Cognitivism!
There are moral facts, they can be reduced, and they can be the subjects of true or false propositions. You are probably a Naturalist. "Different philosophical doctrines travel under the heading of “naturalism.” We can usefully distinguish two broad and important categories: methodological (or M-naturalism) and substantive (or S-naturalism) (Leiter 1998; cf. Railton 1990 and Goldman 1994). Naturalism in philosophy is most often a methodological view to the effect that philosophical theorizing should be continuous with empirical inquiry in the sciences. Such a view need not presuppose a solution to the so-called “demarcation problem”—i.e., the problem of what demarcates genuine science from pseudo-science—as long as there remain clear, paradigmatic cases of successful sciences. Some M-naturalists want “continuity with” only the hard or physical sciences (Hard M-naturalists); others seek “continuity with” any successful science, natural or social (Soft M-naturalists). Soft M-naturalism is probably the dominant strand in philosophy today."
Friday, January 05, 2007
Constructivism and Intuitions
A major issue in philosophical methodology concerns the use of "intuitions" -- perhaps as foundational premises, or else the initial data points which our theories then aim to systematize. The difficulty, as Alex recently pointed out, is that we don't have any obvious reason to think that such intuitions are in tune with the facts. Philosophers occasionally speak of a faculty of "rational intuition", which is supposed to somehow detect ("intuit") moral, mathematical, or other abstract truths of the Platonic realm. But it all sounds a bit wacky. (How is this mysterious faculty supposed to work, exactly?)
But perhaps the problem is not so bad if we reject Platonism. I tend to think that philosophical (as opposed to material) facts are not really things that exist out in the world. Though objective enough, their ontological status is better seen as that of a rational construction. According to this view -- call it "Conceptualism" [Update: "Constructivism" seems a better label] -- philosophical truth "just is the ideal limit of a priori inquiry; it does not answer to the sort of independent reality that might sensibly be considered beyond all epistemic reach." Whereas physical facts are made true by existing things in the world, philosophical facts are made true simply by the fact that they are what ideally rational agents would believe. For example: the truthmaker for "the cat sat on the mat" is a particular physical event involving a cat and a mat in the appropriate arrangement. The truthmaker for "2+2=4" is that ideal rational reflection would lead one to endorse the belief.
So what does all this mean for the reliability of our intuitions? Well, if they no longer have to answer to an independently existing realm of facts, perhaps they're not in such bad condition as we thought. Note that I'm not denying that there is an objective truth of the matter for many philosophical questions, so that our intuitions may in fact lead us astray (if ideal rational reflection would cause us to revise them, for example). Our intuitions must answer to this rational construction; the point is that the construction may not be wholly independent of them in the first place.
In short: the views we hold now, which are prima facie coherent and plausible, are reasonable - if fallible - guides to what we would find coherent and plausible on ideal rational reflection (which, for philosophical questions, is simply to say what is true). Intuitions have justificatory force because they're already on the road to constituting truths. Sure, obstacles might arise on further reflection that prevent the initial beliefs from being true after all. But otherwise, they're home free.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Utility Comparisons and Disagreement
In the comments at Agoraphilia, I outline a rough specification of the sorts of objective facts that could serve as truthmakers for interpersonal utility comparison (IUC) claims, in hope of making them less mysterious. (Some people hold such comparisons to be impossible in principle. I want to claim that the difficulty is merely epistemic.) In short, my strategy is to convert the IUC into a hypothetical intra-personal utility comparison, by appealing to the global preferences of an idealized agent who gets to experience both lives sequentially. (Like my God, say.)
This seems clearly unproblematic at least for simple hedonistic theories of welfare. Our hypothetical agent can easily compare two experiences across the lifetimes, and determine which is the more pleasurable. But will it still work once we bring in other values? If the two original individuals had very different global preferences, with what "common currency" can we compare them? How could our idealized agent choose between them fairly? (To adopt either preference system would seem to unfairly exclude the other.) We might worry that the two are simply incommensurable.
Indeed, the same problem arises within a single life, if the person endorses different value systems at different times. Perhaps the young idealist most wants to have a positive impact on the world, whereas his older self would prefer to live a comfortable life and look out for his family. Each thoroughly rejects the values of the other. Which lifestyle would be "best" for this person? Here I learn towards the Parfitian response of considering them to be two distinct persons. That allows us to say what is best for each, but it remains unclear how we are to weigh the relative costs and benefits between them, so as to determine what would be best overall.
The problem could be overcome if we assume convergence of idealization. If there is just one maximally coherent and unified desire set, just one value system that an idealized (perfectly rational and fully informed) agent could hold, then the ideal agent could adjudicate the dispute. We could ask him: "Supposing that you will experience this life, first from the young man's perspective and then from the elder's, how do you want it to go?" This yields a determinate answer which can be used to weigh the conflicting interests authoritatively. The idealized young man and the idealized old man would both agree, for we have supposed that idealization would cause their preferences to converge.
But what if such ideal convergence would not, in fact, occur? The two idealized selves would continue to disagree about how to weigh the various tradeoffs. In cases of such persisting disagreement, it seems we must conclude that there is no absolute fact of the matter about which harm or benefit is the greater. In those -- perhaps rare -- cases, the welfare facts would be agent-relative (but in a sophisticated way).
That seems an odd result. Perhaps it arises because I am conflating the distinction between one harm "factually outweighing" another (i.e. being a greater harm) versus "morally outweighing" it (i.e. being the more important harm). Perhaps the appeal to idealized preferences really latches on to the latter kind of assessment. But then how are we to get a grip on the former class of facts? Suggestions welcome...
[Thanks to Blar for bringing these problems to my attention.]
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Why We Need to Idealize Ethics
Naive moral relativism is the view that 'X is wrong' is true for you iff you disapprove of X (or something along those lines). I don't think very highly of this view, largely because it entails infallibilism: the mere fact of your holding any (arbitrary) moral attitude suffices to make it "right for you". This makes moral progress impossible, and hence reflection superfluous. I find that repugnant. It implies that I'm already as morally discerning as I can possibly be. (What a depressing thought! I could've sworn there's much more for me to learn yet.)
Naive relativists sometimes ask what objective moral facts are meant to do. Abstract objects can't prevent murders, for example. (Of course, being causally impotent, they can't do anything. That's our job.) But I've explained before that this misses the point. We need objective morality not to causally influence the world, but to provide an ideal standard to which we may aspire. (Much like historical truths provide an ideal for historians to pursue.) Moral objectivism offers us a goal, not the means to get there. Note also that the reason for idealizing ethics is primarily to enable the (personal or collective) endeavour of rational self-improvement, not the political project of influencing others.
[Doctor Logic once objected: "The only basis you have for selecting an absolute morality is your subjective opinion." But, as my response explained, this is either trivial or false. It's trivial that our beliefs reflect what we ("subjectively") judge to be the case. But it's false -- or at least question-begging -- to claim that there are no reasons for concluding one thing rather than another. Morality is no different from any other form of inquiry in this respect. Unfortunately, the good Doctor continues to advance that argument, neglecting to note that he might just as well ask what historical truths are "really good for".]
Curiously, there is a more sophisticated form of moral relativism which can avoid these woes, as I learned from Andy Egan's pre-talk this afternoon. The key is to introduce idealization without removing the agent-relativity. The resulting view goes something like: 'X is wrong' is true for you iff your idealized self would disapprove of X. (The relevant idealization might concern what you would conclude under ideal rational reflection, if you had full factual knowledge and perfect reasoning skills, unlimited cognitive capabilities, etc.) It's similar to the kinds of constructivist non-cognitivism I favour, though Andy explicated it in a rather novel way:
Some (esp. indexical) statements are not about the world, but rather your location in it. By saying "I am in Canberra," you locate yourself as one of the in-Canberra people. The claim is not about which possible world is actual, but rather where (or who) you are within the actual world. Similarly, moral claims aspire to locate yourself according to attitudes that would be held under idealization. To say "Theft is wrong!" is to locate yourself as one of those people whose idealized selves would share that moral attitude.
The great advantage of this view (over naive relativism) is that it grants us moral fallibility. Being non-ideal ourselves, we might be mistaken about what conclusions our idealized selves would reach. (And surely we must, in theory, defer to their superior judgment? I'm puzzled by why anyone would hold naive relativism over this view.)
It also allows for genuine moral disagreement, on the assumption that the disputants' idealized judgments would converge. The question effectively becomes the shared one of what we (rather than just "I") would think under idealized conditions. Though on the contrary assumption, i.e. of idealized divergence, apparently conflicting claims could in fact be mutually compatible. (It might be that my idealized self would approve of theft but yours wouldn't. Then 'theft is wrong' would be true for you but not for me. You could affirm it while I deny it, and we could both be right.)
The base view seems pretty hard to deny, actually. After all, if we add the assumption that all rational agents would ultimately converge to the same moral attitudes, then we arrive at the sort of moral universalism Michael Smith advances, and to which I'm very sympathetic. Moreover, it seems right that universalism requires this convergence fact. If the convergence claim is false, and even fully informed and ideally rational agents could disagree morally, then there would seem to be no basis for universal moral truths. (The same plausibly holds for all a priori endeavours, e.g. metaphysics.) The most we could get, in cases of divergence, would be agent-relative truths. Is this better than no truth at all?
At least sophisticated relativism is still "objective" in the sense that it upholds the distinctions between belief and truth, appearance and reality, or -- most importantly -- between actual and ideal judgments. Recognizing the possibility of defects in our present perspective, idealized conceptions of ethics carve room in logical space for a sort of moral progress that is impossible under naive relativism or subjectivism. And I think that's what is really important for a meta-ethics we can live with. The possibility that others might have different ideal ends seems rather less of a worry in comparison to the sort of nihilism which admits of no ideality whatsoever.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
The Problem of Normativity
One of the most fundamental questions of philosophy -- and perhaps the fundamental question in meta-ethics -- is that of how normativity ("ought"-ness) fits into the natural order.
It's clear that any normative facts must supervene on the descriptive facts. And I've previously argued that this connection must be conceptual rather than synthetic, a priori rather than a posteriori. But then we seem to end up with mere "descriptivism", according to which normative claims are just shorthand for certain descriptive claims. Their evaluative aspect seems to have been eliminated in the reduction process.
I think Kit Fine states the problem especially well in his excellent article (which I keep returning to!), 'The Varieties of Necessity' (Modality and Tense, p.251):If there is a correct analysis of good, say, as what promotes pleasure over pain, then something's being good must consist in nothing more than its promoting pleasure over pain. But we have a strong intuition that it does consist in something more. Here we are not relying on the purported epistemic status of a correct analysis, as Moore does, but on its metaphysical consequences.
This argument, moreover, can be strengthened. For suppose one merely takes it to be a conceptual necessity that something is good if it promotes pleasure over pain. Now, if this is true, then presumably it must also be true that something is good in virtue of promoting pleasure over pain. Indeed, it is only because something is good in virtue of promoting pleasure over pain that there is the conceptual connection between the one and the other. But now what is this in-virtue-of relationship that accounts for the conceptual connection? The only possible answer, it seems, is that it is the relationship of one thing consisting in no more than some other; for this would appear to be the only in-virtue-of relationship capable of sustaining a conceptual connection. But if this is right, then the argument can also be taken to apply to statements of conceptual implication, and not merely to analyses.
Tricky! I'd replace the hedonism with a welfarist account of the good. But even then, aren't we saying two different things when we call something either "good" or "conducive to general welfare"? The former seems to come with an evaluative force that the latter, merely "descriptive" phrase lacks.
If there is a conceptual connection between ethics and ideal rationality -- as seems plausible -- then perhaps this could provide the requisite normative force. Supervenience would then arise because rationality requires treating like cases alike (and identical cases identically). Nevertheless, it is a substantive ('synthetic'?) fact just which values would survive ideal rational reflection. It is still a priori in the sense that an ideally rational agent wouldn't need to know which world he's in in order to come to the right conclusions. But this doesn't seem to be a merely analytic fact about the meaning of the word "rational". So perhaps there can be synthetic a priori truths along these lines. (If so, I should retract my earlier opposition to synthetic ethical naturalism. All my arguments show is that it's not a posteriori. If a priori synthetic statements are possible, then that's fine.)
If we accept this kind of "constructivist non-cognitivism", then it seems we are able to find room for supervening ethics within a naturalistic framework. An act's "rightness" holds in virtue of its promoting welfare, but it does not merely consist in this descriptive fact. Rather, it consists in its being the ideally rational action.
Sound plausible?
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Against Synthetic Ethical Naturalism
The synthetic ethical naturalist holds that there is an a posteriori identity between various moral and natural properties, much like that which holds between table salt and NaCl. I used to think this analogy sufficed to refute Moore's open question argument, but insights from two-dimensionalism shed doubt on this.
Synthetic naturalism entails that moral terms differ in their primary and secondary intensions. That is, there is a possible world whose moral properties differ depending on whether we conceive of the world as actual or as counterfactual. Perhaps an action there fits the "good-making role", but fails to qualify as truly "good" because its underlying natural properties differ from those natural properties which play the actual good-making role. (Compare: XYZ plays the watery role in Twin Earth, but fails to count as truly "water" because the latter term rigidly designates whatever actually plays the water role, namely, H2O.)
But that just seems transparently absurd. Moral properties aren't to be held hostage to actual world contingencies. Ethics isn't a matter of natural kinds and rigid designators. If something satisfies the "good-making role" in a world, then that is good; it doesn't matter if its underlying properties differ from those of its functional analogue in our world. The primary and secondary intensions of 'good' ought to coincide. So if some moral truths are necessary truths, they must also be a priori.
Now, moral facts clearly supervene on the natural, if they exist at all, and hence give rise to necessary conditional truths. So it follows that these truths must be a priori. Hence, the only adequate realist meta-ethics is analytic ethical naturalism. The challenge remains to provide the conceptual analysis in question, or at least indicate how a reduction of the normative to the natural might go.
(See also the relevant section of my old essay on the fact/value gap, and the reference to related arguments in Michael Smith's excellent article, 'Moral Realism'. He points out that synthetic naturalists still need to provide an a priori analysis of the "good-making role", prior to rigidification under this role. He also reinforces the crucial point that Moore's open question argument merely shows that no reductive analysis of moral terms is obvious, not that none is possible.)
Monday, April 10, 2006
Parfit on the Birth of Ethics
Some people believe that there cannot be progress in Ethics, since everything has been already said. Like Rawls and Nagel, I believe the opposite. How many people have made Non-Religious Ethics their life's work? Before the recent past, very few... Buddha may be among this few, as may Confucius, and a few Ancient Greeks and Romans. After more than a thousand years, there were a few more between the Sixteenth and Twentieth centuries. Hume was an atheist who made Ethics part of his life's work. Sidgwick was another. After Sidgwick, there were several atheists who were professional moral philosophers. But most of these did not do Ethics. They did Meta-Ethics. They did not ask which outcomes would be good or bad, or which acts would be right or wrong. They asked, and wrote about, only the meaning of moral language, and the question of objectivity. Non-Religious Ethics has been systematically studied, by many people, only since the 1960s. Compared with the other sciences, Non-Religious Ethics is the youngest and the least advanced...
[In the long-term future,] there could be higher achievements in all of the Arts and Sciences. But the progress could be greatest in what is now the least advanced of these Arts or Sciences. This, I have claimed, is Non-Religious Ethics. Belief in God, or in many gods, prevented the free development of moral reasoning. Disbelief in God, openly admitted by a majority, is a recent event, not yet completed. Because this event is so recent, Non-Religious Ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in Mathematics, we will all reach agreement. Since we cannot know how Ethics will develop, it is not irrational to have high hopes.
-- Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp.453-454.
See also my post: Moral Diversity and Skepticism.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Moral Obligation
Susan Wolf gave another interesting talk the other week, this time on the concept of 'moral obligation'. (We may take this as equivalent to notions of what is 'morally required', or what it would be 'morally wrong' not to do.) The most natural way to explicate the idea is in terms of what one has decisive moral reason to do, but Wolf suggested that this doesn't work.
The problem is that we often have decisive moral reason to do things which (seemingly) aren't morally obligatory. Wolf appealed to the example of not driving an SUV. The environmental and safety disadvantages of SUVs count against them, and for typical urban usage there really aren't sufficient favourable reasons to counterbalance these and make driving an SUV around town a reasonable thing to do. Sure, it's not the end of the world, but the moral reasons here do count conclusively against driving an SUV. It's not something a perfectly reasonable agent would do. Now, despite this, we do not typically think people are obligated or required to drive more sensible cars. While their decision may be morally imperfect, it is not "immoral" in the strong sense (which we may align with blameworthiness and social censure). So decisive moral reasons are insufficient to establish moral obligation.
I wonder whether decisive moral reasons are at least necessary for obligations to be incurred. Perhaps this must be so, in order to leave room for supererogatory actions. We can say that an action is supererogatory when the strong moral reasons that count in its favour are nevertheless not decisive (perhaps due to strong prudential disadvantages).
This leaves us with a tripartite moral structure. An agent might reasonably fail to perform supererogatory actions, though it would be very nice if they did manage them. Then there's the important middle layer where one has decisive moral reasons, and so is at least unreasonable (in the weak sense of "less than ideally reasonable") if one fails to act accordingly. And then we have the base level of moral obligation, or what is required to meet minimal standards of moral decency. This reminds me of the "ethical minimalism" Paul Studtmann argued for once back at Canterbury. Though I got the impression that Wolf considers the second level to be more important (and appropriate to aspire to) than the minimalist base.
But I digress. Returning to Wolf's talk: she pointed out that we need to set aside a small subset of the morally desirable actions as 'obligatory' for pragmatic reasons. There are too many morally desirable actions, and we can't expect everyone to satisfy them all. That would make morality too demanding. So it is useful for society to be able to point to a subset of the most important actions and say, "you must at least do those!" It is the binding force of this 'must' which distinguishes moral obligation from the weaker sense of moral desirability in which you ought not to drive an SUV.
The crucial question now arises: how are we to draw this distinction? What makes some morally desirable actions obligatory, and not others? One might initially think to appeal to the 'weightiness' of the moral reasons. (The SUV case seems non-obligatory precisely because it is relatively trivial. The reasons are decisive, but decisively small.) But that won't do, because we can have trivial moral obligations, such as the obligation not to steal a paperclip.
Wolf proposed a modified "social command theory" of obligation, such that X is morally obligatory only if X is commanded by society (and backed by adequate moral reasons). But that strikes me as unacceptably arbitrary, despite the parenthetical constraint. Surely the facts about moral obligation must be determined solely by morally relevant facts, i.e. facts about welfare, not anyone's arbitrary "commands". It also has the odd consequence that we can change what's truly obligatory, simply by influencing opinions or expectations, and hence altering "what society commands".
Besides, it isn't clear that anything else in Wolf's argument leads to this particular theory of obligation. In light of her pragmatic motivations, all she needs is some way or other to draw a distinction. Arbitrariness doesn't matter for her purposes, because she doesn't believe there's any principled basis upon which to draw the distinction in any case! So we might just as well adopt the Coin Theory of Obligation: for any morally desirable act-type A, flip a coin. If the coin lands heads, then A is morally obligatory. Otherwise it is not. (It's no more arbitrary than appealing to societal "commands", after all!)
In fact, given the pragmatic motivations, Wolf really should be led to an indirect utilitarian theory of obligation. Since our aim is to draw a distinction which will help promote more moral behaviour in practice, the obvious basis for this distinction is to identify that class of actions which, if recognized as 'moral requirements', will have the morally best consequences. There is certainly some fact of the matter about which such classes would have the best results, and so we have a principled basis for determining (in the metaphysical sense; whether we can know these facts is another question!) which actions are morally obligatory.
