Why Belief is No Game

In 'The Game of Belief', Barry Maguire and Jack Woods nicely set out a broadly "pragmatist" understanding of normativity.  In this post, I'll try to explain why I think it is misguided, and what alternative understanding we should adopt instead.

The gist of M&W's view is that practical reasons (including for belief and other attitudes) are the only truly authoritative normative reasons, but there are also all kinds of (non-authoritative) practice-relative normative reasons that provide "standards of correctness" -- e.g. for playing chess "correctly" (i.e. strategically well) or even for believing "correctly" (i.e. in line with purely epistemic standards).  We will often, but not always, have practical reasons to do things "correctly"--that just depends upon circumstantial details.

My biggest complaint about this sort of view is that it completely divorces reasons from rationality.  They conceive of reasons as things that support (either by the authoritative standard of value, or some practice-relative standard of correctness) rather than as things that rationalize.  As a result, they miss an important disanalogy between practice-relative "reasons" and epistemic reasons: violating the latter, but not the former, renders one (to some degree) irrational, or liable to rational criticism.

What's at Stake in the Objective/Subjective Wrongness Debate?

A decade ago I wrote an introductory essay on 'Objective and Subjective Oughts', and the theoretical role of each. In short: the objective ought identifies the best (most desirable) decision, or what an ideal observer would advise and hope that you choose. The subjective or rational ought identifies the wisest or most sensible decision (given your available evidence), departures from which would indicate a kind of internal failure on your part as an agent.  Both of these seem like legitimate theoretical roles.  (Beyond that, various more-subjective senses of ought -- derived from instructions that any agent could infallibly follow -- risk veering into triviality, and are best avoided.)

Now, Peter Graham's Subjective versus Objective Moral Wrongness (p.5) claims that there's a single "notion of wrongness [either objective or subjective] about which Kantians and Utilitarians disagree when they give their respective accounts of moral wrongness."  This strikes me as a strange claim, as the debate between Kantians and Utilitarians seems entirely orthogonal to Graham's debate between objectivists and subjectivists.  More promisingly, Graham continues: "And that notion of wrongness is the notion of wrongness that is of ultimate concern to the morally conscientious person when in their deliberations about what to do they ask themself, 'What would be morally wrong for me to do in this situation?'."

My worry about the latter approach is that our assertoric practices reveal the deliberative question to be ill-formed (in that "correct" answers do not correspond to any fixed normative property).  It doesn't truly ask about the objective or the subjective/rational 'ought', but instead a dubious relativistic (or expressivist) construct. As I summarize (in the linked post):

The Aim(s) of Practical Deliberation

My new paper on 'Deontic Pluralism' argues for "a maximizing account of the ought of most reason, a satisficing account of obligation, and a scalar account of the weight of reasons."  One question that emerges towards the end of the paper is whether we really need all of this.  Can we identify a sense of 'ought' that has primacy in virtue of its special relevance to first-personal deliberation—i.e., as the sense of ‘ought’ that a conscientious agent has in mind when they ask themselves, “What ought I to do?”

I've previously cast doubt on the idea that the deliberative question has a suitably fixed and determinate meaning. But even just focusing on the choice between the ought of most reason and the ought of minimal decency (or blamelessness), we aren’t obviously forced in either direction here, e.g. by the constitutive norms of agential deliberation. Some agents in some contexts are particularly concerned to at least meet the standards for minimal decency, whereas others are more morally ambitious. We can certainly say that it’s better for agents to do better. But it isn’t clear that there’s much more we can say beyond this trivial evaluative observation. In particular, I see no clear basis for insisting that there is just one proper aim of deliberation.

Good Motives, Act-Features, and What Matters

Commenting on my 'Right Wrong-Makers' draft, Doug Portmore suggested to me that (i) virtuous agents should care about what ultimately matters, and (ii) this is not the same as any feature of actions, and so in particular isn't the same thing as an action's right- (or wrong-)making features.

That seems literally correct, but I think needn't really threaten the intended meaning of the suggestion that there's an intimate connection between virtuous motivation and right-making features. We perhaps just need to be a bit more careful in articulating the relevant connection.

Consequentialism, Moral Worth, and the Fitting/Fortunate Distinction

In 'Consequentialism and Moral Worth' (forthcoming in Utilitas), Nathaniel Sharadin discusses the idea that acts done for the "right reason" have a special normative status (moral worth / praiseworthiness).  The "right reasons" here are usually assumed to be the right-making reasons, but Sharadin argues that consequentialists should reject this assumption, and instead consider the "right reasons" to be whatever motivations would be best to have (and hence are recommended by the theory).  This strikes me as deeply confused, neglecting the distinction between fitting and fortunate character.  As I put it in my recent paper on right-makers:

Final Value and Fitting Attitudes

An interesting new paper forthcoming in Phil Studies, 'The pen, the dress, and the coat: a confusion in goodness' by Miles Tucker, argues against the (now widely accepted) Conditionalist thesis that intrinsic value and final value are separable.

Consider, e.g., the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.  Intuitively, it would seem to have final (non-instrumental) value in virtue of its extrinsic properties (i.e., its historical significance / relation to emancipation).  But, interestingly, Tucker argues that standard accounts of final value cannot accommodate this verdict.

Against the "Sufficiency Principle" of Agential Promotion

Eden Lin recently got me thinking about (agential) promotion. By way of background: many views hold that we have reason to act a certain way iff so acting serves to promote a certain kind of outcome (e.g. valuable state of affairs, or the satisfaction of the agent's desires, or whatever).  Promotion of this kind might be thought to consist in probability-raising, for example, but there are disputes about the details, such as what the relevant "baseline" probability is for comparison purposes.  Eden's paper, 'Simple Probabilistic Promotion', (mentioned here with permission) identifies the following Sufficiency Principle as a commitment of many -- perhaps most -- of the philosophers in the literature:

Sufficiency Principle: S’s doing A promotes p if it causes p to obtain.

For example, Behrends & DiPaolo (p.4) offer the following case, where Julie supposedly "promotes" her desire by pressing the button, even though it's no more likely to be fulfilled than if she did nothing (it is guaranteed either way):

Buttons 2. Julie has some desire. There is one button in front of her. She knows that if she pushes the button, her desire is guaranteed to be fulfilled. However, unbeknownst to Julie, if she does not push the button, Black will ensure that her desire is fulfilled.

Eden convincingly argues that we needn't accept the sufficiency principle.  I'm inclined to think, stronger still, that we positively should not accept it.  Here's why.

Puzzles re: Kant on the Good Will

Two puzzling arguments from Chapter 1 of Kant's Groundwork:

(1) He begins by suggesting that the only thing "good without qualification" is the good will.  Why? Because (i) anything else could turn out to be instrumentally bad, in the hands (or head) of one who lacked good will, and (ii) undeserved happiness lacks positive value.

The first consideration is very puzzling, because a good will could also turn out to be instrumentally bad (e.g. for a person who is anti-reliable at achieving their goals).  So if to be "good without qualification" is to mean that it can't possibly be of instrumental disvalue then a good will is not good without qualification either.  On the other hand, if we are instead merely concerned with whether something is unconditionally pro tanto good, then his primary argument against other putative goods (e.g. intelligence, courage, and wellbeing) collapses.

Moral Theories and Fittingness Implications

A very common initial response to my interest in character/"fittingness"-based objections to consequentialism is to question whether consequentialism has any implications for fitting attitudes or character at all (and if not, then a fortiori it doesn't have any troublesome implications). For example, I typically introduce "fittingness" talk in terms of what’s rationally warranted from the “point of view” of a moral theory, but you might well wonder whether moral theories are really the sorts of things that can have points of view.

I have two broad replies to this line of concern.  My first (and more ambitious) response is to try to make the case that moral theories do have positive fittingness implications.  But I also have a more conciliatory backup option in case this fails.

Thoughts on 'Non-Consequentialism Demystified'

'Non-Consequentialism Demystified' is a really interesting new paper in Phil Imprint by Nye, Plunkett & Ku.  It makes two moves, in particular, that I want to focus on in this post.

First, it proposes an interesting analysis of distinctively moral normativity (something that has puzzled me before) in terms of the fittingness of feelings of obligation.  While there's clearly an intimate connection here, it's natural to wonder about the direction of explanation: If you are morally obligated to Φ, that would provide a straightforward explanation of why it's fitting to feel obligated thus. On the other hand, if the distinctive phenomenology is meant to explain what it is to be morally obligated, we might feel that some other explanation is needed of when and why such phenomenology is fitting.  Insofar as emotions (like fear) have fittingness conditions, these seem derivable from their cognitive content: the implicit claim being made by the emotion in question (e.g. that you're in danger).  But what is the cognitive content of a feeling of obligation?  Surely not just the vacuous reflexive thought that this very feeling is fitting.

Are "Internal Reasons" Normative?

Bernard Williams, in his 'Internal and External Reasons', introduces the internal interpretation of 'A has a reason to ϕ' as "impl[ying], very roughly, that A has some motive which will be served or furthered by his ϕ-ing, and if this turns out not to be so then sentence is false: there is a condition relating to the agent's aims, and if this is not satisfied it is not true to say, on this interpretation, that he has a reason to ϕ."  On the external interpretation of the reasons-claim, by contrast, "there is no such condition."

General and Particular Moral Explanations

In 'Recalcitrant Pluralism', Philip Stratton-Lake draws on Korsgaard's Symmetry Thesis -- that the reason why a good-willed person does an action, and the reason why the action is right, are the same -- to argue against Consequentialism.  He's making the kind of character-based objection that I think is worth taking seriously, but I think that PSL goes importantly astray in how he understands the fitting (good-willed) consequentialist agent.

Genetics and Moral Responsibility

In the NYTimes (via Leiter):

Judges who learned that a convicted assailant was genetically predisposed to violence imposed lighter sentences in a hypothetical case than they otherwise would have, researchers reported on Thursday, in the most rigorous study to date of how behavioral biology can sway judicial decisions.... Defense lawyers now commonly introduce brain scans of convicted clients as mitigating evidence in appeals of death sentences, experts said.

How in the world is "my brain made me do it" an excuse?! Obviously any difference in our cognitive dispositions (including, say, an immoral indifference towards others' suffering) will be reflected in our brains somehow. And learning that this difference has a partly genetic cause certainly shouldn't make any moral difference. ("No, your honour, he didn't have a traumatic childhood; he was born that way! Isn't that so much better?")

Really the only consistent positions to hold when it comes to the question of moral responsibility are that either (i) no-one is responsible, due to the impossibility of pure self-creation, or else (ii) bad people should be punished, regardless of how they got to be that way. In neither case is genetics relevant. (Brain scans may be, on the second view, if they can show the harmful behaviour to due to mere temporary insanity or the like, rather than a lack of good will on the part of the agent.)

Confucian Moral Psychology

Inspired by recent lectures from Kwong-loi Shun, I want to explore a number of interesting structural concepts and distinctions in ethics and moral psychology. (Note: As a total neophyte, I may have misremembered or misunderstood parts of Shun's interpretation of Confucian moral psychology. So I make no claims to historical accuracy here. I just think that there are some interesting concepts in this vicinity worth exploring.)

Natural Agents and Status-Quo Bias

Carolina Sartorio argues that ordinary morality is committed to a kind of status quo bias, or what she calls 'moral inertia' [pdf]. The basic idea is that we need stronger reasons to justify interfering in a process (e.g. deflecting a trolley) than to justify abstaining from such involvement. The intuitive force of this claim is illustrated in two cases:

(1) The 1/1 trolley: a trolley is going to kill X unless you switch it to the side track, where it would kill Y. All else is equal. Sartorio claims it is impermissible to pull the switch, though it would do no more harm than leaving things be.

(2) The 5/3/1 trolley: a trolley is going to kill 5 people, unless you switch it to one of two other tracks. Side track A would kill 3 people, whereas side track B would kill just 1. Sartiorio claims that it is impermissible to switch to track A, but permissible to either switch it to B or do nothing (even though this leads to more harm than switching to A).

Cosmic Injustice is Bad, Mmkay?

In Chapter 11 of On What Matters, Parfit defends the following form of skepticism about moral responsibility:

We cannot justifiably have ill will towards [...] wrong-doers, wishing things to go badly for them. Nor can we justifiably cease to have good will towards them, by ceasing to wish things to go well for them. We could at most be justified in ceasing to like these people, and trying, in morally acceptable ways, to have nothing to do with them.

This strikes me as a pretty unappealing view (especially if we extend it to the positive reactive attitudes: is gratitude likewise never warranted?). Parfit defends it by assuming that desert-involving moral responsibility requires the impossible, namely ultimate sourcehood: "To be responsible for our acts in some way that could make us deserve to suffer, we must be responsible for being in the relevant ways how we are."

Desires based on false beliefs

Philosophers often claim that 'actual desire' theories (of welfare or reasons) are refuted by various cases involving ignorance or false beliefs, so that we need to move to an 'informed desire' view instead. This has always struck me as a mistake. (We might need to idealize in some more radical way, but that's another matter.) It's easy enough to show how the standard cases are accommodated by actual desire views: ignorantly ingesting a poison would have the effect of thwarting many of your actual desires, and pursuing some instrumentally ineffective means would fail to achieve your actual (ultimate) goal, etc. Parfit seems to agree with this much, but then he presents a trickier case:

In some cases, however, our telic [i.e. ultimate] desires or aims depend on false beliefs. I might want to hurt you, for example, because I falsely believe that you deserve to suffer, or because I want to avenge some injury that I falsely believe you have done me.

'Agential' and 'Outcome' Responsibility

Randolph Clarke writes:

1) John sees a child struggling in the water but decides not to bother saving the child. The child drowns. Unbeknownst to John, a strong man standing at the shore was watching him. Had John run toward the water to attempt a rescue, the strong man would have tackled him and prevented him from saving the child. As it turned out, the intervention wasn't necessary...

Most people, I think, will say that in case 1 John isn't responsible for not saving the child.

Let's distinguish two questions. First, we can ask whether John is a 'free', morally responsible agent. Was he in control of himself, and hence answerable for his decisions during this episode, or was he temporarily brainwashed, hypnotized, or otherwise under some compulsion that prevents his behaviour during this episode from really being attributable to him as an agent? In other words: was John exercising his agency? Call this the 'agential' question. (I take it the answer to this question is straightforwardly 'yes'.)

Forms of "Being Active"

An interesting excerpt from Matthew Boyle's NDPR review of Lucy O'Brien and Matthew Soteriou (eds.), Mental Actions:

Expecting Better of the Ignorantly Unreasonable

Suppose that Mr. Potter falsely and unreasonably believes that it's morally permissible to advance one's own interests, no matter the harm done to others. As a result, he happily harms others for his own gain, without the slightest twinge of conscience. (He's never done anything he thinks is wrong.) Is Potter blameworthy? Neil Levy claims not. In 'Culpable Ignorance and Moral Responsibility: A Reply to FitzPatrick', Levy argues that we can't reasonably expect any better of Potter, as it would be irrational (by his lights) for him to act any differently: