Rousseau and Freedom

[The following is an essay I wrote last year for PHIL 239: History of Political Thought.]

In what respects could a Rousseauian citizen be said to truly be free?

The “fundamental problem” explored by Rousseau’s political theory is to devise social and political institutions such that “each [citizen], uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself, and remains as free as before”.[1] It is not immediately clear whether his theory achieves this goal. Indeed, at times Rousseau sounds distinctly totalitarian, demanding the “total alienation” of all an individual’s rights to the community, and asserting that uncooperative citizens “shall be forced to be free”.[2] However, further examination – and sympathetic interpretation – of Rousseau, reveal insights into the necessary political conditions for such social and yet individual creatures as ourselves to realize genuine freedom.

Rousseau distinguished between various types of freedom. The most basic sort is the natural liberty that abounds in the state of nature: a man’s “unlimited right to anything which tempts him and which he is able to attain”.[3] This negative conception of freedom captures our pre-philosophical intuitions of freedom as mere absence of constraint. Any political institutions will necessary encroach upon an individual’s freedom in this sense. Rousseau is quite happy to admit that we give up our natural freedom in joining the social contract. What we gain by doing so is civil liberty – the security of having our (remaining) rights defended by the entire community. ‘Natural’ rights, lacking such security, are practically worthless by comparison. As Hobbes put it, “the effects of this right are the same, almost, as if there had been no right at all. For although any man may say of every thing, this is mine, yet he could not enjoy it, by reason of his neighbour, who having equal right and equal power, would pretend the same thing to be his.”[4]

Rousseau then identifies moral liberty as a form of positive freedom, whereby one’s actions conform to one’s own true will: “for the impulsion of mere appetite is slavery, and obedience to the law one prescribes to oneself is freedom”.[5] Moral freedom would thus be realized if each individual has himself willed the laws of his polity. This might be achieved through the general will – a central concept of Rousseau’s philosophy. Just as a single person plays many different roles in life, and has a different set of interests with respect to each role, he similarly can have a distinct will corresponding to these different roles and interests. Rousseau identifies our general will as that which we will in our role as a citizen, according to the common interests of our society.[6] This is both a part of each individual’s own will, and yet shared by every other member of the society, since the interests in question are common to them all. Any law enacted according to this general will, will thus be a law prescribed by (a part of) the will of each individual. So, the argument goes, to constrain a person to follow the law, can be understood as forcing him to be free.

This sort of justification strikes us as rather implausible, however, for it simply ignores an individual’s particular will and self-interests – which we expect to greatly outweigh his interest in the general will. The above argument requires that citizens have such a strong civic feeling and homogeneity of purpose that their common interests align with, and perhaps even outweigh, their particular (self) interests. Only then could an individual truly embrace the general will.[7] Failing that, he does not truly affirm the laws he is forced to live by, and so does not attain genuine moral freedom.

Rousseau apparently recognised this problem, for he outlined a political programme to effect dramatic cultural change, or ‘denaturing’, so that “each Citizen is nothing, and can be nothing, except in combination with all others”.[8] But most of Rousseau’s thought is not so extreme as that passage would suggest. It would be a mistake to interpret Rousseau as destroying all individuality, for he explicitly recognises that individuals have a sphere of private interests which complement their public role as citizens,[9] and laments the modern loss of individuality in “this herd called society”.[10]

The problem, as Rousseau saw it, was that the required degree of social cohesion could not, in practice, be achieved merely through appeal to rational self-interest. His solution was the cultural programme: promoting patriotism and civic feeling through the power of irrational influences such as symbolism, music, ceremony and religion.[11] Before denouncing this programme as manipulative and inimical to freedom, one must recognise that it was “simply one form of socialization over the others that have prevailed”.[12] The programme sought not to strip citizens of their individuality, but rather to invest them with a civil spirit strong enough to bind a society of individuals together into a genuine community.

An aspect of this community which modern readers may find particularly disturbing is Rousseau’s compulsory ‘civil religion’, and particularly his prescription of the death penalty for religious hypocrisy.[13] But discarding this unacceptably bloodthirsty oddity,[14] much of Rousseau’s remaining thought here is remarkably liberal and tolerant. The so-called ‘civil religion’ which all must espouse is not so much a religion itself, as list of pragmatically inspired requirements that any socially-acceptable belief system must meet. The liberality at the core of Rousseau’s thought is evidenced by his insistence that “one should tolerate all those [religions] which tolerate the others, so far as their dogmas have nothing contrary to the duties of the Citizen”.[15]

Rousseau did suggest some additional positive requirements, such as belief in a benevolent deity, but all such suggestions were made for purely practical reasons. Rousseau explicitly states that the articles of the civil religion are “not…dogmas of religion, but…sentiments of sociability, without which it is impossible to be a good Citizen”, going on to say that those who refuse to accept the tenets should be banished, “not as impious, but as unsociable”.[16] So although Rousseau (like his contemporaries) believed those tenets necessary for social cohesion, his wider argument would allow for their exception, should his empirical belief about their social utility prove misguided.[17] Thus, despite initial appearances, Rousseau’s theory should actually entail significant religious freedom.

Even supposing that we accept the cultural programme for the sake of strengthening the general will, moral freedom is not yet assured. It might be objected that the aristocratic government Rousseau advocates is antithetical to moral freedom, which requires that people are the rulers of themselves. As a purely theoretical point, such an objection would be mistaken. Rousseau distinguishes between government and sovereign, insisting on the supremacy of the latter.[18] The people are the legislators, and their sovereignty is inalienable.[19] Their role is to draw up those general laws by which the society is to function. The government magistrates, by contrast, are simply there to apply these general laws to “particular acts”.[20] In practice, a corrupt magistrate might use his powers for his own – rather than society’s – ends.[21] But at least in theory, it truly is the Rousseauian citizens who decide the laws of their own society.

Focussing on the individual as an active citizen rather than passive subject leads to an alternative understanding of freedom in the Rousseauian society. Rousseau’s conception of moral freedom could perhaps be seen as similar to Benjamin Constant’s description of “the liberty of the ancients, which consisted in an active and constant participation in collective power”.[22] Such freedom would be a necessary consequence of the general will existing only in the present – an analysis which is strongly supported by a passage from Rousseau’s Geneva Manuscript (the first version of The Social Contract):

[I]t is contrary to the nature of will, which has no dominion over itself, to engage itself for the future. One can obligate oneself to do, but not to will; and there is a great difference between executing what one has promised, because one has promised it, and continuing to will it, even when one has not previously promised to do so. Today’s law should not be an act of yesterday’s general will, but of today’s, and we have engaged ourselves not to do what everyone has willed, but what everyone now wills… (Geneva Manuscript, II,ii,10, emphasis added).[23]

This is the basis of Affeldt’s interpretation of Rousseau’s moral freedom as continuous political participation. He argues that blind obedience to established law, far from being an obligation of the social contract, is actually an evasion of one’s duties as a citizen.[24] Rousseau stated that law “is only the declaration of the general will”,[25] so genuine law can be no more established than the will within which it consists. To treat the laws of the past as set in stone, is to dissolve the general will of the present. Thus the central duty of a citizen is not to obey established laws, but rather, to “participate in the continuous constitution of a general will”.[26] As Pericles put it millennia ago, “we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.”[27]

These considerations lead to a much more liberal interpretation of Rousseau’s phrase ‘forced to be free’ – for coercive power is “perfectly powerless” to replace submissive or compliant attitudes with genuine political participation.[28] Instead, Affeldt envisages a sort of philosophical force[29] which compels us through eliciting “attraction or desire… for the currently unrealized state of ourselves”[30] – that is, our desire to attain genuine moral freedom. We are reluctant to acknowledge our current servitude, so it is up to our fellow citizens to persist in their efforts to teach us the truth. Once we see it, our own desire for freedom will compel us to act in such a way as to achieve it. Hence, according to Affeldt’s evangelical-democratic reading of Rousseau, “what forces us to be free is just… the power of freedom itself”.[31]

Thus far, we have examined conceptions of liberty whereby freedom is embodied by the general will. However, Rousseau is also concerned with types of freedom which result from the general will. Immediately subsequent to his ‘forced to be free’ phrase is the following appeal to external justification: “for such is the condition which, giving each Citizen to his Fatherland, guarantees him against all personal dependence”.[32] Psychological and economic dependencies are particularly relevant here.

Central to Rousseau’s psychological theory is his distinction between two forms of self-regard – amour de soi, and amour propre:

Love of self [amour de soi] is a natural feeling which leads every animal to look to its own preservation, and which, guided in man by reason and modified by compassion, creates humanity and virtue. Amour-propre is a purely relative and factitious feeling, which arises in the state of society, leads each individual to make more of himself than of any other, causes all the mutual damage men inflict one on another, and is the real source of the ‘sense of honour’.[33]

Hiley’s interpretation of freedom-as-independence focuses on this distinction. He characterises amour de soi as authentic self-regard, in contrast to the artificial social-regard of amour propre. The latter causes us to become dependent on others for our self-esteem, leading Hiley to conclude that “the person motivated by amour propre is enslaved by the opinions of others”.[34] He argues that this result implies the necessity of a positive conception of freedom, because mere non-interference is insufficient to guarantee citizens will attain the authentic self-regard of amour de soi.[35]

It is less than clear how Rousseau’s society is supposed to achieve any better, however. Hiley notes that our capacity for pity and sympathy can help moderate amour propre.[36] Perhaps we could argue from this, and the psychological fact that we tend to be more sympathetic towards those who are similar to us, that the social equality and homogeneity of purpose in Rousseau’s society would help inhibit amour propre. At the very least, the social contract provides individuals with a formal equality of respect, allowing them to develop a sense of themselves as citizens equal to any another in the eyes of the society at large.[37] They can thus partially satisfy their drive for amour propre, without becoming psychologically dependent on particular others for this sense of worth. So although amour propre may be ultimately ineliminable, Rousseau’s theory at least offers to moderate it somewhat, and so allow us a greater degree of “moral freedom”.[38]

What Hiley here identifies as positive moral freedom, could perhaps be better characterized in a negative sense. In his Letters from the Mountain, Rousseau wrote: “Liberty consists less in doing one’s will than in not being subject to that of another”.[39] Neuhouser takes this approach, viewing the previously discussed psychological freedom to be a part of civil freedom, broadly understood as relief from personal dependence. It would be a mistake to conflate freedom with total independence, for dependence is a fundamental feature of human existence. As Rousseau recognised, the perfectly independent beings of his original state of nature were not human beings.[40]

The crucial task of Rousseau’s social contract is thus not to secure us pure independence, but rather, to find a form of association wherein our mutual interdependence is compatible with freedom. For Rousseau, the only way to achieve this was to transform our social dependency from resting on individuals, to instead rest on the community as a whole, “so that each Citizen should be in a perfect independence of all the others, and in an excessive dependence on the City… because only the force of the State secures the liberty of its members”.[41] Neuhouser argues that this is best understood in terms of social institutions and laws which mediate our irreplaceably personal relations of dependence, in order to make them “less injurious to freedom”.[42]

Perhaps the most obvious form of dependence in need of relief is the economic dependency which can arise out of severe wealth inequalities. To overcome this, Rousseau recommends that “no citizen should be so opulent as to be able to buy another, and none so poor as to be constrained to sell himself”.[43] Of course, there remains a broad economic interdependency within society, due to the material division of labour. But the crucial change is the alleviation of personal dependency. General equality of wealth will help to prevent situations whereby those less well-off must submit to the will of (richer) others in order to satisfy their material needs.[44]

This focus on personal dependency requires justification. Prima facie, there may appear no relevant difference between being constrained by individuals and being constrained by collective law. Either way, we might complain, we are being equally constrained and so must be equally unfree. Rousseau anticipates this complaint in an unpublished fragment, which refers back to the previously discussed matter of moral freedom, but also engages the present issue of equality:

One is free, although subject to laws, and not when one obeys a man, because in the latter case I obey the will of another but in obeying the Law I only obey the public will which is as much mine as it is anyone else’s. Besides, a master can permit to one person something that he prohibits to another, whereas the law, in making no exceptions renders equal the condition of all and in consequence there is neither master nor servant.[45]

In the latter part, Rousseau argues that law guarantees us a level of freedom equal to that of all other citizens. But we may wonder just how high a level that is; for even if servant to no man, we are surely servant to the law. What we must discern, then, is whether there is some threat to freedom present in personal dependency, which law may overcome.

Neuhouser argues that personal dependency poses a unique threat to autonomy due to the potentially capricious character of an individual’s will. Unpredictable or arbitrary decisions must eventually conflict with the wills of those subject to the capricious superior – such is the nature of randomness. Citizens may be shielded from the worst of this chaos through the order-imposing mechanism of universal law.[46] Rousseau’s approval of our formal equality before the law is evident in his judgement that “the worst of laws is worth even more than the best master, because every master has preferences and the law never does”.[47]

It is important to note here that the law is universal not only in that it applies equally to all, but also in that it derives from all. This feature of genuine law, that it is an embodiment of the general will which we all possess, further protects us from capriciousness by precluding the possibility of arbitrary or discriminatory laws. Such legislation would not be permissible, because it could not be rationally consented to by large portions of the population. Lacking universality in this sense, it could not possibly be part of the general will, and thus, a genuine law.[48]

These three considerations – psychological dependence, economic dependence, and the necessity of law to shield us from capriciousness – suggest that the Rousseauian State is a necessary precondition to bringing about civil freedom. That is to say that the general will wills those means which are necessary to prevent our subjection to a foreign will. For an individual will to not be self-negating, its most fundamental feature must be that it wills its own freedom. If we accept the principle that to will an end is to will the means to that end, it follows that a fundamental feature of our own true will is that it coincides with the general will – regardless of whether we recognise it as such.[49]

This somewhat counter-intuitive result identifies an objective relation between the general will and ourselves, for it holds true quite independently of our beliefs or conceptions about the matter. This feature of civil freedom may be contrasted with moral freedom, which is inherently subjective in nature, being that form of freedom which arises from our conscious affirmation of the laws we live our lives by. This contrast leads Neuhouser to conclude that there are two independent conditions for the attainment of full political freedom: that the laws must be objectively liberating, in that they bring about civil freedom; and that citizens must consciously embrace the laws as their own, so that the laws embody moral freedom.[50]

This essay has highlighted the many respects in which a Rousseauian citizen may be said to have attained genuine freedom. Like all contractarian theories, a measure of natural freedom is sacrificed for the security of civil freedom. Unique to Rousseau’s theory is the possibility of moral freedom – living by laws we have ourselves prescribed. According to the simplest interpretation, this is achieved by way of the general will, strengthened through a cultural programme which encourages social cohesion and a shared view of the common interest. Rousseau’s characterization of the general will also embodies the continuous political participation required by a classical view of liberty. The egalitarian nature of Rousseau’s society may help to moderate our tendency toward amour propre, instead encouraging the development of genuine self-regard. Lastly, the social contract produces those objective conditions necessary to reconcile our general interdependence with individual autonomy.

Bibliography

Affeldt, S. ‘The Force of Freedom’ Political Theory Vol.27 No.3 (1999) 299-333.

Bertram, C. Rousseau and The Social Contract, London: Routledge, 2004.

Constant, B. ‘The Liberty of the Ancients and the Liberty o the Moderns’ in M. Rosen & J. Wolff (eds.), Political Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Evans, M. ‘Freedom in Modern Society: Rousseau’s Challenge’ Inquiry Vol.38 No.3 (1995) 233-255.

Hiley, D. ‘The Individual and the General Will’ History of Philosophy Quarterly Vol.7 No.2 (1990) 159-178.

Neuhouser, F. ‘Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will’ Philosophical Review Vol.102 No.3 (1993) 363-395.

Pericles, ‘The Democratic Citizen’ in M. Rosen & J. Wolff (eds.), Political Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Rousseau, J. ‘A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’ in S. Cahn (ed.), Classics of Modern Political Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Rousseau, J. ‘Of the Social Contract’ in S. Cahn (ed.), Classics of Modern Political Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

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[1] J. Rousseau, ‘Of the Social Contract’ [henceforth, SC], p.425.

[2] Ibid, pp.425, 427.

[3] Ibid, p.427.

[4] (From Hobbes, De Cive,) Quoted in C. Bertram, Rousseau and The Social Contract, pp.85-86.

[5] Rousseau, SC, p.427.

[6] Ibid, p.426. Note that this focus on common interests ensures that the general will is distinct from the mere “will of all”, and so – in theory – protects minorities against the ‘tyranny of the majority’.

[7] M. Evans, ‘Freedom in Modern Society: Rousseau’s Challenge’, p.235.

[8] Rousseau, SC, p.436. Here Rousseau is actually describing the idealized aims of the ‘Law-giver’ – a somewhat mysterious figure whose role in Rousseau’s political philosophy is beyond the scope of this essay. The important point to note is that it may be inappropriate to take him literally here.

[9] Ibid, p.431, “But beyond the public person, we have to consider the private persons who compose it, and whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it”. See also Bertram, p.143.

[10] (From Rousseau’s “First Discourse”,) Quoted in Affeldt, ‘The Force of Freedom’, p.309.

[11] Bertram, pp.139-140,178, 188-189.

[12] Evans, p.246.

[13] Rousseau, SC, p.480, “If anyone, after publicly acknowledging these dogmas, behaves as though he does not believe them, he should be punished by death […] he has lied before the laws.”

[14] Bertram, p.187, notes that in his other writings, Rousseau expresses severe reservations about imposing the death penalty for religious nonconformity. In any case, the deadly prescription serves no purpose within Rousseau’s wider philosophy, and can safely be discarded.

[15] Rousseau, SC, p.481.

[16] Ibid, p.480.

[17] Bertram, p.186.

[18] Ibid, p.198.

[19] Rousseau, p.429. This is in stark contrast to earlier contractarian thinkers. The government does not represent the people; it does the people’s bidding.

[20] Ibid, p.443.

[21] See Bertram, p.198-199, for a discussion of the potential for corruption in Rousseau’s government.

[22] B. Constant, ‘The Liberty of the Ancients and the Liberty of the Moderns’, p.122.

[23] Quoted in Affeldt, p.307.

[24] Ibid, pp.307-8.

[25] Rousseau, SC, p.461.

[26] Affeldt, p.311. This is what Affeldt suggests it means to ‘obey the general will’.

[27] Pericles, ‘The Democratic Citizen’, p.155. It is surprising that Affeldt never mentions this historical link, given how closely his conception of moral freedom mirrors that which Constant identified as “the liberty of the ancients” (see note 22).

[28] Affeldt, p.312. As Affeldt mentions in his note 28 (p.330), coerced participation, though possible, would obviously fail to provide the genuine contribution to the general will which Rousseau requires.

[29] Specifically, “philosophy understood as transformative education or instruction” – Ibid, p.318.

[30] Ibid, p.323.

[31] Ibid, p.324.

[32] Rousseau, SC, p.427.

[33] Rousseau, ‘A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’, p.418 (note 3).

[34] D. Hiley, ‘The Individual and the General Will’, p.174. See also Bertram, p.25.

[35] Hiley, p.176.

[36] Ibid, p.172.

[37] F. Neuhouser, ‘Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will’, p.391.

[38] At least, what Hiley calls moral freedom: “Moral freedom is the achievement within society of amour de soi and its opposite is… amour propre” (Hiley, p.173). It is clearly quite different from the moral freedom discussed previously (which I consider more faithful to Rousseau’s intended meaning).

[39] Quoted in Bertram, p.83.

[40] Neuhouser, pp.374, 384.

[41] Rousseau, SC, p.442.

[42] Neuhouser, p.386.

[43] Rousseau, SC, p.441.

[44] Neuhouser, p.387.

[45] (From Rousseau’s Fragments Politiques,) Quoted in Bertram, p.89.

[46] Neuhouser, p.389.

[47] (From Rousseau’s Oeuvres Completes,) Quoted in Ibid, p.389.

[48] Ibid, p.390

[49] Ibid, pp.391-2.

[50] Ibid, pp.392-5.

Free Will

Peter Van Inwagen presents an argument suggesting that free will, if understood as requiring that we could act otherwise than we do, is incompatible with determinism. This is a very significant claim, since if it were true, the only option for compatibilists would be to deny the widely-accepted thesis that freedom requires such an ability.[1] Many compatibilists have favoured a hypothetical analysis of ‘S could have done otherwise’, interpreting the phrase as meaning something along the lines of ‘S would have done otherwise if he had wanted to’. However, if Van Inwagen is correct that any genuine analysis of ‘could have done otherwise’ is incompatible with determinism, then the compatibilist tradition of the hypothetical analysis would be shown to be mistaken. It is the purpose of this essay to examine Van Inwagen’s argument, and assess whether his claims are justified.

In a sense, the argument is actually rather superfluous, for its conclusion will either be plainly true or plainly false, depending on our interpretation of the word ‘could’. If future states of affairs are precisely determined by past ones, then we obviously cannot (categorically) bring about any state of affairs other than that one which is necessitated. It would hardly be worth writing up a complex argument for this undisputed triviality.

Alternatively, if we adopt the hypothetical analysis of ‘could’, then Van Inwagen’s conclusion is simply, undeniably, false. It is entirely consistent with determinism to recognise that if, contrary to fact, a different past state of affairs had obtained, then, via the deterministic laws of nature, a different current state of affairs would inevitably result. But to say ‘S would have done otherwise if he had wanted to’ is just to say that if, contrary to fact, S’s past desires had been different, then S’s current behaviour would likewise differ. Thus the hypothetical analysis is undeniably consistent with determinism, and any proposition to the contrary is undeniably false. Nevertheless, the premises of Van Inwagen’s argument all have a certain prima facie plausibility. Since the argument is logically valid, the only way the conclusion could be false is if it contains a false premise. So it remains a worthwhile – and far from trivial – exercise, to identify the fallacious premise(s).

We also face a further challenge of far greater import. Van Inwagen concedes that the hypothetical analysis may entail the falsity of some premise of his argument.[2] He then suggests that, because his premises are all true, the ‘falsified’ premise would merely stand as a counterexample to the hypothetical analysis. In other words, Van Inwagen is arguing that because his premises are all more plausible than the hypothetical analysis of the word ‘could’, if they come into conflict, we should conclude that the hypothetical analysis must have been mistaken. Thus, if we are to find a flaw in his main argument, it is not enough to merely show a premise to be false according to the hypothetical analysis of ‘could’. We must go further, and give a convincing general explanation which dispels the initial plausibility of the premises. If their certainty can be cast into doubt, they will no longer serve as counterexamples to the hypothetical analysis, so Van Inwagen’s claims would prove to be unfounded.

Van Inwagen’s ‘main argument’ follows:

I shall use ‘T0’ to denote some instant of time earlier than J’s birth, ‘P0’ to denote the proposition that expresses the state of the world at T0, ‘P’ to denote the proposition that expresses the state of the world at T, and ‘L’ to denote the conjunction into a single proposition of all laws of physics…

1) If determinism is true, then the conjunction of P0 and L entails P.

2) If J had raised his hand at T, then P would be false.

3) If (2) is true, then if J could have raised his hand at T, J could have rendered P false.

4) If J could have rendered P false, and if the conjunction of P0 and L entails P, then J could have rendered the conjunction of P0 and L false.

5) If J could have rendered the conjunction of P0 and L false, then J could have rendered L false.

6) J could not have rendered L false.

Therefore, 7) If determinism is true, J could not have raised his hand at T.[3]

To summarise the argument in more general terms: ‘J could have done otherwise’ implies that ‘J could have rendered the current state of affairs (P) false’. But according to determinism: the past state of the universe (P0), in conjunction with the laws of nature (L), together necessitate the present state of affairs (P). So to render P false, you must render false either P0 or L. But surely J could not change the state of the universe before he was born, nor break the laws of nature. So J could not render P false. Therefore, determinism implies that J could not have done other than he did.

As an initial observation, I want to highlight the fact that according to the most natural interpretation of ‘render’ (as meaning something along the lines of ‘make’ or ‘cause to be’),[4] premise #4 is quite definitely mistaken. It rests upon the patently false assumption that to cause something, you must be the ultimate cause of it. For if you are in the middle of the causal chain, you will cause (‘render’) the later events, but not the earlier ones. Thus we have ourselves a simple counterexample: Suppose the conjunction of P0 and L is false independently of J’s actions (i.e. it is false, though J did not render it false). It is nevertheless entirely possible for J’s actions to causally contribute to the falsity of P (i.e. render P false). Indeed, this is precisely what a determinist would expect to happen: different past conditions would cause J to have different desires, which in turn cause J to act differently.[5] So the causal chain ~(P0 & L)-> J -> ~P stands as a counterexample to the natural interpretation of premise #4, because here J can render P false, though he cannot render false the conjunction of P0 and L (because it was already false).

Van Inwagen, however, intends his use of the word ‘render’ to be understood differently. According to his definition, someone can render a proposition false if it is “within his power to produce any set of conditions sufficient for the falsity of this proposition”.[6] This does not require any connection between the actor and the proposition’s contents, beyond a merely logical one. This leads to some highly counterintuitive results. Particularly, it means that for any false proposition P, anyone can ‘render P false’ by doing anything at all.[7] For example, he would say that I can render 1 + 1 = 3 false, just by blinking, and by clapping my hands I can render it false that Al Gore is president of the USA. So we should recognise that Van Inwagen is using the word ‘render’ in a non-standard way. This in itself is not necessarily a problem,[8] but it does mean that Van Inwagen has forfeited the right to appeal to our intuitions regarding the word ‘render’ in defence of his later premises. Taking ‘render’ as Van Inwagen intended, then, results in premise #4 being an analytic truth,[9] as unassailable as the first three premises. Let us move on to considering the next premise instead.

Van Inwagen takes it as analytic that S cannot render false any “true proposition that concerns only states of affairs that obtained before S’s birth”.[10] The initial plausibility of this depends upon our intuition that we cannot change the past. Using the natural interpretation of ‘render’, it strikes us as obvious that we cannot presently ‘render false’ any proposition wholly about the past. However, recall that Van Inwagen is using the term in a non-standard way. In particular, note that all it would take for us to ‘render false’ a past proposition, would be for that proposition to be false. So this premise (#5) is not really about whether we can render false past propositions (since we obviously can), but rather, whether we can render false true propositions.

If ‘can’ is understood categorically, then Van Inwagen may well be correct in suggesting that it is analytic that we cannot ‘render false’ true propositions wholly concerning the past. For, if understood categorically, it seems analytic that we cannot render false any true proposition at all.[11] Suppose the proposition Q: ‘Tomorrow, S will perform act A’ is true. Then we cannot (categorically) do anything which would entail the falsity of Q, because it is not false, and we surely cannot (categorically) bring about a logically inconsistent state of affairs.

This does provide some reason to doubt the usefulness of categorical interpretations of ‘could’. But my main point here is that the special distinction Van Inwagen wants to draw between past and future propositions cannot be achieved on purely logical grounds. In rejecting the natural interpretation of ‘render’ as he does, Van Inwagen has lost the ability to justify this distinction, as it rests so heavily on the asymmetrical directionality of causal notions;[12] the very notions he must ignore in order to preserve premise #4. So it seems that if he is to be consistent, Van Inwagen is committed to a form of fatalism – a commitment he would very much want to avoid.[13]

But just as fatalist arguments can be undone by noting the conceptual distinction between future event and inevitable future event,[14] so Van Inwagen’s defence of premise #5 can be undone by distinguishing truth from necessary truth.[15] It is entirely possible that the past could have been different from how it was. The proposition P0, though true, could have been false. Thus, it is entirely reasonable to say that J could (understood hypothetically, of course) render P0 false. I should emphasise that this is not the preposterous claim that J could change the past. Rather, I am observing the undeniable fact that the past could have been different, which would be a sufficient condition for J’s ‘rendering’ P0 false, according to Van Inwagen’s definition. This seems to be a perfectly legitimate use of the word ‘could’, which implies the falsity of premise #5.[16] At the very least, I have shown that the premise is not so certain as to disprove the compatibilist’s hypothetical analysis of ‘could’.

Ultimately, Van Inwagen’s argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism, is little more than rhetorical window-dressing for his ‘categorical’-leaning intuitions regarding the analysis of ‘could’. He misleadingly appropriates the word ‘render’ to bolster the intuitive plausibility of his later premises. But once interpreted in terms of his non-standard use of the word, they become much less convincing. This casts significant doubt on Van Inwagen’s assertion that the inconsistency between his premises and the hypothetical analysis of ‘could’ demonstrates the falsity of latter. The argument is unsound according to the compatibilist’s hypothetical analysis, and it offers precious little reason to suggest that this analysis is wrong. The gulf which separates the intuitions of compatibilists from incompatibilists has proven too wide for Van Inwagen’s argument to cross.

Bibliography

Dennett, D. ‘I Could Not Have Done Otherwise – So What?’ in R. Kane (ed.) Free Will, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

Horgan, T. ‘Compatibilism and the Consequence Argument’ Philosophical Studies 47 (1985) 339-356.

Jubien, M. Contemporary Metaphysics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.

Mackie, P. ‘Fatalism, Incompatibilism, and the Power To Do Otherwise’ Nous 37: 4 (2003) 672-689.

Narveson, J. ‘Compatibilism Defended’ Philosophical Studies 32 (1977) 83-87.

Schnieder, B. ‘Compatibilism and the Notion of Rendering Something False’ Philosophical Studies 117 (2004) 409-428.

Taylor, R. Metaphysics (4^th ed.), Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1992.

Van Inwagen, P. ‘Reply to Narveson’ Philosophical Studies 32 (1977) 89-98.

Van Inwagen, P. ‘The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism’ Philosophical Studies 27 (1975) 185-199.

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[1] For an example of such a denial, see D. Dennett, ‘I Could Not Have Done Otherwise – So What?’.

[2] P. Van Inwagen, ‘The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism’ [henceforth, IFD], p.197.

[3] Ibid, p.191.

[4] B. Schnieder, ‘Compatibilism and the Notion of Rendering Something False’, pp.418-421, convincingly argues that an appropriate interpretation of ‘render’ must involve an explanatory relation. That is, to say that ‘J renders P false’ is to say that ‘P is false because of J’. Sure, we causally interact with the world, not with propositions. But even if the latter are seen as eternal and immutable (see note 11), their truth values can nevertheless be explained by reference to real world states of affairs at some particular time.

[5] As J. Narveson put it in ‘Compatibilism Defended’, p.85, “if J had raised his hand at T, then that would show that either P0 or L is false; but it would not ‘render’ either of them false. It would show that one had been false all along”.

[6] Van Inwagen, IFD, p.190.

[7] Van Inwagen is quite explicit on this point, indeed he later clarifies his definition of ‘S can render p false’ as: “Either p is false or, if p is true, then there is some state of affairs A such at (a) S can (i.e. has it within his power to) bring about A, and (b) A entails the falsity of p” – Van Inwagen, ‘Reply to Narveson’, p.93 (bold added).

[8] Ibid, p.94, “it may be that I have chosen a misleading name for this relation. Well, anyone who does not like my name for it is free to call it ‘Charley’”.

[9] Van Inwagen, IFD, p.192, “if Q entails R, then the denial of R entails the denial of Q. Thus, any condition sufficient for the falsity of R is also sufficient for the falsity of Q.” In the present case, we simply substitute Q = “the conjunction of P0 and L”, and R = “P” into this general analytic principle.

[10] Ibid.

[11] As M. Jubien (Contemporary Metaphysics, p.127) reminds us: “Platonic propositions are entities located outside of spacetime… only entities that are located in time can undergo change”. [N.B. despite initial appearances, this poses no threat to the ‘natural interpretation’ of render – see note 4.] This is the basis of the famous “argument from truth” for fatalism. For a (sympathetic) general discussion, see R. Taylor, Metaphysics, pp.54-67. An explication of the argument is given in Jubien, p.126.

[12] Causation is a ‘one way street’, so to speak. This, I think, is the basis of the past/future distinction.

[13] Especially since he thinks the arguments for it are demonstrably refutable – see Van Inwagen, IFD, p.198 (footnote 6). I suppose he could dodge my objection here if he were willing to give up the ‘law of the excluded middle’, and claim that propositions about the future have no truth value whatsoever (i.e. are neither true nor false).

[14] Jubien, p.128, offers an elegant argument to this effect.

[15] I should note that P. Mackie, ‘Fatalism, Incompatibilism, and the Power To Do Otherwise’ also notices the “striking similarity” (p.672) between the fatalist and incompatibilist arguments discussed here – though she takes her analysis in an entirely different direction than that of mine in this essay.

[16] Throughout this essay, I have understood the ‘hypothetical’ situation to be one whereby J’s different desires were caused by the past being slightly different (i.e. P0 is false, though L remains true). This interpretation leads, as I have shown, to the denial of Van Inwagen’s premise #5. Alternatively, the hypothetical situation may be understood in terms of an identical past which diverges from reality due to a miraculous suspension of the laws of nature (i.e. L is false, but P0 remains true). In this case, analogous reasoning will lead to the denial of premise #6. I have not explicated this parallel argument here, due to space limitations, but it is largely redundant anyhow. A full explication of the analogous arguments provided by the ‘altered-past compatibilists’ and the ‘divergence-miracle compatibilists’ can be found in T. Horgan, ‘Compatibilism and the Consequence Argument’, see especially pp.342-3.

Utility, Equality and Priority

Is inequality somehow intrinsically bad? Derek Parfit has a wonderful article called 'Equality and Priority' where he explores some common intuitions on the subject. I want to describe and elaborate on some issues he raises.

There's no question that inequality can be instrumentally bad, e.g. by causing people to feel envious or otherwise unhappy. But that's not what is at issue here. To avoid such confounding influences, Parfit asks us to imagine a Divided World, where the two halves have no contact or knowledge of each other. Now consider two possible states of affairs, where numbers refer to 'utiles' or units of well-being:

(1) Half at 100, Half at 200.
(2) Everyone at 145

Which world is better? It's important to note that the numbers refer to utility, not money or resources, and thus have already been adjusted for diminishing marginal utility. ($100 has more utility to a homeless man than to a millionaire.) So try not to let intuitions about DMU influence your judgment.

I'm happy to go with pure utilitarianism here and say that (1) is better. But many people would disagree with me. So let's look at what such a judgment would commit us to.

Many people prefer (2) because they believe that it's more important to benefit those who are badly off than those who are well-off already -- even if the latter person would benefit slightly more. They are concerned with people's prior level of welfare. But there are two ways this could be understood. We might be concerned with relative levels of welfare (egalitarianism), or we might instead care about their absolute level of welfare (prioritism).

The Priority View says that "Benefiting people matters more the worse off these people are." Note that prioritists do not care (intrinsically) about equality. Unlike egalitarians, they do not claim that inequalities are intrinsically bad.

It may be difficult to see the difference here. It is subtle but important. Relative inequalities can be remedied by making everyone suffer equally (this is known as the "Leveling Down Objection"). But this does nothing to help anyone's absolute well-being. Compare the following two possibilities:
(3) Everyone at 100
(4) Half at 100, Half at 200

Egalitarians would say that there is some respect in which (3) is better than (4). They can still agree that (4) is best overall, since the benefits to utility may outweigh the harm of inequality. But they still think there is some element of harm in moving from (3) to (4). This is not plausible. We should accept the Person-affecting View: "nothing can be bad if it is bad for no one." Egalitarianism is inconsistent with this claim, and should be rejected.

Now, let us distinguish two forms of moral concern: the 'good' (i.e. value which adheres in states of affairs), and the 'right' (i.e. what action someone ought to take). This is important because, although Consequentialists claim that it is right to maximize the good, not everyone accepts this claim. So the two judgments could come apart. It would be good if one person died [by coincidence, say] so five could live. But it would not be right to kill that person for the sake of the five.

If we think that (2) is better than (1), that is a claim about the good. If we think that, given a choice to bring about one or the other, we ought to choose (2), this is a claim about what is right.

Telic egalitarians/prioritists claim that equality/priority affects the value of a state of affairs. Deontic egalitarians/prioritists deny this and instead claim that equality/priority only affects what is the right thing to do.

If we accept the person-affecting view, then the value of a state of affairs is a function of the well-being of the people in it. But there are various different aggregation principles we might use. Utilitarians simply sum up the total, counting all individuals equally. Telic Prioritists, by contrast, hold that the value of a unit of well-being is proportional to how well-off the person is. They think that the pair (10, 10) yields more value than (2, 20).

We might formalize this by adding a 'disvalue' that is proportional to the reciprocal of someone's well-being value. This would capture numerically the idea that the suffering of those with poor welfare matters very much. For example, the pair (10,10) adds priority disvalue proportional to 1/10 + 1/10 = 0.20. Compare this to (2, 20), which yields 1/2 + 1/20 = 0.55. We then multiply these by the appropriate constant (let's pretend it is 10), and subtract the result from the summed utilities. Then (10,10) yields total value of 20 - 2 = 18, whereas (2,20) yields 22 - 5.5 = 16.5.

Hopefully that gives some indication of how a telic prioritist could say that world (2) has more value than world (1), despite (1) having a greater sum of personal utility. I'm not sure how plausible it is, though. I think that deontic prioritism is more plausible: we ought to focus on benefitting the worst off, not because it would result in a better state of affairs [it would not], but because it's the right thing to do. (I'll discuss possible reasons for claiming this in a future post.)

Utilitarians have a different answer, of course. We should not intrinsically care more about benefitting the badly off. They don't matter more than anyone else. It's just that, due to diminishing marginal utility, it's a whole lot easier to benefit people who are badly off. We can make more of a difference there. We should relieve poverty because that's an effective way to maximize total utility, not because the welfare of the worst off is more important than that of the rest of us.

The Fact-Value Gap

[The following essay was written for my meta-ethics class, PHIL 236. I tried to cover far too much given the word limit. Oh well.]

The apparent dichotomy between fact and value strikes us as so commonsensical as to require little by way of explanation. This neat picture carves the world into two independent spheres: the descriptive and the evaluative. Within the former we find the objective facts of science, or the way things are. The latter realm comprises instead what ought to be, and is the province of value judgments, which are taken to be subjective or else mysterious in a way that sets them apart from natural facts. It might seem this dualism is enforced by an unbridgeable gulf – that no collection of facts could ever entail an evaluative conclusion. In this essay I aim to show why that assumption is mistaken.

The doctrine of the fact/value gap is essential to two opposing meta-ethical theories. Non-cognitivists use it to support their conception of ethics as subjective, something we project onto the world, rather than an objective part of reality. Intuitionists, by contrast, do believe that objective values exist, but they are held to be non-natural properties that must be detected through a mysterious faculty of ‘moral intuition’. Ethical naturalism might be seen as a ‘third way’ between these two extremes, ironically combining the objectivity of intuitionism with the metaphysical naturalism of non-cognitivism by denying the one doctrine that they share.

The ‘Naturalistic Fallacy’

Attempts to provide a reductive definition of ‘good’ have traditionally been charged with committing the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. Consider the following argument:

(1) X maximizes happiness.

(2) Therefore, X is good.

This is a clear example of an ‘ought’ conclusion being invalidly[1] derived from an ‘is’ premise, since there is no explicit connection between the two. But note that the argument “This shaker contains NaCl, therefore it contains salt” suffers the same logical problem. We are not thereby tempted to propose a ‘fact/chemical gap’![2] In either case, we require a theoretical account of the relation between the two concepts (e.g. “salt is NaCl”). This is the role of normative ethical theory: to relate the moral facts to the non-moral facts so as to enable reasoning between the two.

Our sample argument involved an implicit appeal to utilitarianism:

(0) What maximizes happiness is good.

Inserting this premise into the earlier argument yields a logically valid deduction. Yet proponents of the fact/value gap would nevertheless charge it with committing the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. Their target is not the argument’s logical form, but the definitional premise (0). As G.E. Moore defined it, “the naturalistic fallacy… consists in identifying the simple notion which we mean by ‘good’ with some other notion.”[3] But of course it is question-begging to charge reductionists with this, for whether their proposed definition is indeed of one and the same concept (rather than some other one) is precisely what is at issue. So the naturalistic fallacy is no argument against reductionism, it can only be the conclusion of a prior anti-reductionist argument.[4]

One might appeal to the ‘Open Question’ argument to play this prior role. If a proposed definition was correct, then anyone with a full grasp of each word’s meaning would recognise their synonymy, so it would be absurd to ask whether an object could have one property without the other. For example, it makes no sense to ask, “Bob is a bachelor, but is he unmarried?”. However, for any proposed reduction of ‘good’ to some natural property ‘X’ (e.g. pleasure), it seems that “is X good?” remains an open question. So, the argument goes, ‘good’ and ‘X’ cannot mean the same thing after all.

Three responses can be made to this. Firstly, the truth of even analytic statements is not always immediately obvious. So an analytically ‘closed’ question might yet appear open, pending further reflection and analysis.[5]

Secondly, two words might designate the same property even if they differ in meaning. The empirical methods of science uncover synthetic, rather than analytic, identities.[6] However, the naturalist must explain how moral facts could be identified with natural ones. Since Open Question arguments could be re-applied to any proposed criteria for identification, the justification for which must be a priori, this collapses into the first response.[7]

The third option is to hold that the common conception of morality is confused and in need of revision. Our aim then would be to capture the most important and coherent aspects of the folk concept in a naturalistic analysis, and abandon the rest.

Descriptive and Evaluative Meaning

Non-cognitivist defenders of the fact/value gap might seek to ground it instead on how we use language. When one describes a ‘good wine’, there appears to be an evaluative component to the expression which is independent of its descriptive meaning. Two people might agree on all the (descriptive) qualities of the wine – call these ‘X’ – and yet disagree as to whether these qualities made it good or not. What meaning ‘good’ has over and above ‘X’ is the evaluative meaning, that is, the commendation of the speaker.[8]

I think this picture is rather misleading, in that it conflates evaluation with conation. Evaluations need not be intrinsically action-guiding at all; ‘dispassionate evaluation’ is not a contradiction. One might evaluate an object against criteria which they care little for, as does the reluctant judge of some local competition.

Note that we may happily grant a fact/attitude gap, and locate value in the former realm. In doing so, however, we will need to provide some explanation of why it is that evaluations are often – if not always – action-guiding. The best explanation for this is found not in positing some special sort of evaluative meaning, but by recognising the import of the objects being evaluated, and noting the variety of uses to which language may be put. As McNaughton writes:

In telling my fellow-picnickers that there is a bull in the field I may not only be making a statement but also, in that context, warning them and advising them to take evasive action. This does nothing to show that the sentence ‘There is a bull in the field’ has a special kind of meaning. [9]

So even if sentences exhibit but a single sort of meaning, they may still be employed for various other communicative purposes. Philippa Foot points out that we often use the word ‘dangerous’ for the speech-act of warning, much like ‘good’ is often used for commending.[10] But of course we are not thereby tempted to incorporate the ‘warning function’ of ‘dangerous’ into the very meaning of the word, or suggest that anyone may, without mistake, assess as ‘dangerous’ whatever they have a fearful attitude towards.[11] That such language often happens to be action-guiding is more plausibly due to the nature of good or dangerous things than the mere force of the words.[12]

Contrary to the non-cognitivist’s suggestion, description and evaluation are not always entirely independent of each other. For example, the primary evaluative criteria for functional concepts, such as ‘knife’ or ‘pen’, are internal to the concept. Knowing that a good pen must write legibly is part and parcel of knowing what a pen is.[13] The same holds for intrinsically teleological notions like ‘belief’; since belief aims at truth, we can infer that a false belief is, in this respect, a bad one.[14] Pre-established criteria also apply to the assessment of roles, such as ‘father’, ‘farmer’, or ‘patriot’.[15] One could not appeal to just any old fact as evidence that someone is a good father. Descriptive meanings put constraints on what might legitimately feature in evaluations.

The entanglement of fact and value becomes even clearer in the case of thick ethical concepts such as ‘cruel’ and ‘brave’. Dichotomists must argue that such concepts can be ‘factored’ into strictly descriptive and evaluative components. It is not obvious how to go about this, however. Hilary Putnam argues that it is quite impossible to give the ‘descriptive meaning’ of ‘cruel’ without using the word itself or some synonym. Mastery of the concept, even in neutral (‘descriptive’) contexts, requires sensitivity to the evaluative point of view.[16] This exemplifies a fundamental intertwining of the descriptive with the evaluative.

The Facts About Value

It seems clear that we can be mistaken in our value judgments. But this implies there is something for us to be mistaken about. That is, the possibility of moral error requires that there be moral facts. We might naturally wonder what sorts of facts these could be. In what follows, I will approach this question through analysis of non-moral value.

Evaluation occurs relative to some presupposed criteria. Whether an object measures up to some particular standard is a matter of objective fact, about which we can be mistaken. We saw above that sometimes the criteria of evaluation will be internally fixed by a concept. Normativity may also arise within an institution: if you make a promise, you ought to keep it, and if the umpire says you are ‘out’, then you ought to leave the field.[17] One may engage in an external critique of institutions, but at least from within they create their own normative standards, against which ‘ought’ claims can be assessed.

A key question is whether there are determinate criteria for assessing well-being. Anscombe notes that we have no difficulty reasoning from natural facts to conclusions about what a plant ‘needs’ in order to flourish.[18] Similarly, there is little question that humans have various basic and complex needs, the deprivation of which makes us worse off. It might be further added that, in general, the fulfilment of our desires makes a positive contribution to our welfare. And note that whether our desires are fulfilled or not is also a matter of objective fact.

Once we have an account of human well-being,[19] it is easy enough to construct an agent-objective aggregate, which could plausibly be equated with moral value. All we need to grant is the eminently plausible claim: “Morality, by its very nature, is concerned with what is good from the perspective of the moral community”,[20] in conjunction with some aggregation principle (e.g. maximization or maximin) that allows us to define the good of the community in terms of the good of the individuals that compose it.

On the general account sketched above, value is assessed relative to presupposed criteria. We can say what ought to be done according to the rules of a game, or what is necessary for the flourishing of an individual or society, but there is no sense of value that transcends these various frameworks. One might object that there is no way to adjudicate between rival standards of evaluation: if morality and self-interest conflict, which is the more important consideration? But this question is either incomplete or nonsensical, as we must ask: ‘important’ according to what criteria?

The essentially relational nature of value is made clearer by the notion of an evaluative point of view. Absolute objectivity, or the absence of a perspective, leaves no room for value; the universe doesn’t care what we do. But this need not lead to nihilism. Viewpoints exist, and value exists in relation to them. Morality does not require some ‘absolute value’ that is good from the null view. On the contrary: evaluation is impossible when deprived of all criteria, and ‘ought’ becomes meaningless – “a word of mere mesmeric force”.[21]

This might be thought to undermine the demands of morality. Morality is, of course, categorical in the sense that it applies independently of our personal concerns. One is not released from a moral obligation by saying that they do not care about it. The viewpoint of morality is collective, so not subject to the whims of any sole individual. Yet this is consistent with morality being ‘hypothetical’ in the sense that it is a means to an end – that of human wellbeing – and will not be considered reason-giving by those who do not share this end.[22] Similar remarks could be made of epistemology, yet this doesn’t undermine our general concern for evidence and truth.[23]

The relational theory situates value firmly within the realm of fact. The facts about value are not made any less real simply by virtue of being relational. If something is obstructive to human ends, that is a matter of natural fact. The fact-value gap is founded on a failure to recognise human desires, and other such sources of teleology, as part of the real world. The ‘no ought from an is’ doctrine might be better restated as ‘no ought from non-teleological facts’,[24] where ‘teleological facts’ involve concepts that come with pre-established criteria for evaluation, as discussed earlier in this essay.

We saw various examples of non-moral ‘oughts’ being legitimately derived from teleological facts. This result is also supported by the generally-accepted thesis that values supervene on the natural facts. There is no possible world that is exactly like our own one in all factual respects, but where it was 'morally right' of Hitler to carry out the Holocaust. This suggests that the natural facts of the matter ‘fix’ or determine the moral ones, which would set up an entailment relation between them. This essay will now conclude with a moral counter-example to the fact/value gap, borrowed from James Rachels:[25]

P: The only difference between doing A and not doing A is that, if we do A, a child will suffer intense prolonged pain. Otherwise, everything will be the same.

Q: Therefore, it is better not to do A.

It seems clear that there is no possible world where P is true yet Q false. That is, P entails Q. The fact/value gap is thus crossed.

Bibliography

Anscombe, G., ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ in W. Hudson (ed.) The Is-Ought Question. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Black, M., ‘The gap between ‘is’ and ‘should’’ in W. Hudson (ed.) The Is-Ought Question. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Chappell, R., ‘Morality as Means’, http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2005/02/morality-as-means.html

Darwall, S., Philosophical Ethics. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998.

Foot, P., ‘Goodness and choice’ in W. Hudson (ed.) The Is-Ought Question. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Foot, P., ‘Moral Beliefs’ in P. Foot (ed.) Theories of Ethics. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Foot, P., ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives’ in S. Cahn and P. Markie (eds.) Ethics: history, theory, and contemporary issues. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Frankena, W., ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy’ in P. Foot (ed.) Theories of Ethics. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Hare, R., ‘Descriptivism’ in W. Hudson (ed.) The Is-Ought Question. London: Macmillan, 1969.

McNaughton, D., Moral Vision. New York: B. Blackwell, 1988.

Putnam, H., The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Rachels, J., ‘Naturalism’ in H. LaFollette (ed.), The Blackwell guide to ethical theory. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000.

Railton, P., ‘Moral Realism’ in P. Railton, Facts, values, and norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Searle, J., ‘How to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’’ in W. Hudson (ed.) The Is-Ought Question. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Searle, J., ‘Objections and replies’ (Appendix) in W. Hudson (ed.) The Is-Ought Question. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Simpson, P., Goodness and nature. Boston: M. Nijhoff, 1987.

Smith, M., ‘Moral Realism’ in H. LaFollette (ed.), The Blackwell guide to ethical theory. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000.

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[1] At least in the syntactical sense. Once the meanings are considered, perhaps it would be impossible for the premise to be true and yet the conclusion false. This will depend on which moral theory is true.

[2] H. Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, p.19, points out that it may be useful in some contexts to distinguish “between ethical judgments and other sorts of judgments”, or for that matter, chemical judgments and other sorts, but none of this entails any metaphysical conclusions.

[3] Quoted in W. Frankena, ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy’, p.56.

[4] Ibid., pp.58-59.

[5] P. Simpson, Goodness and nature, p.26. He suggests, for example, that the Euclidean definition of a circle as “a plane figure contained by one line, which is called the circumference, and is such that all straight lines drawn from a certain point within the figure to the circumference are equal to one another” (p.20) is far from self-evident to non-geometers. This response is elaborated by M. Smith, ‘Moral Realism’, p.31, who argues that the naturalist must aim at an analysis which “entails the complex set of constraints on the way in which we use the word ‘right’.” So long as it does this job, it is of no concern whether the analysis is “obvious”.

[6] S. Darwall, Philosophical Ethics, p.35. For example, “salt is NaCl” is a synthetic identity statement.

[7] M. Smith, ‘Moral Realism’, pp.29-30.

[8] R. Hare, ‘Descriptivism’, p.243.

[9] D. McNaughton, Moral Vision, p.53.

[10] P. Foot, ‘Moral Beliefs’, p.87.

[11] Of course you may justifiably feel fear because you believe something is dangerous. But the point is that such a belief may be in error. This suggests that we may be similarly mistaken about whether something really is good. It is a factual matter.

[12] Foot, ‘Moral Beliefs’, p.95, makes a similar point about the desirability of virtues.

[13] Foot, ‘Goodness and choice’, p.216.

[14] This idea is developed from J. Searle, ‘Objections and replies’, p.264, “it is internal to the notion of a statement (descriptive word) that a self-contradiction (descriptive word) is a defect (evaluative word).”

[15] Foot, ‘Goodness and choice’, pp.218-219.

[16] Putnam, pp.38-40. As noted earlier, we can distinguish the (whole) meaning of the word from the various uses it is put to; but this is not to factor the meaning into ‘descriptive’ and ‘evaluative’ components. This seems to support my suggestion of a fact/attitude gap in place of the fact/value gap.

[17] J. Searle, ‘How to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’’, p.132.

[18] G. Anscombe, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, p.181.

[19] It would go beyond the scope of this essay to provide a full account here, but I hope the previous paragraph highlights some general grounds for thinking this can, in principle, be done. See P. Railton, ‘Moral Realism’, pp. 9-17, for a very plausible explication of this ‘non-moral value’.

[20] Darwall, p.125.

[21] The quote is from Anscombe, p.182.

[22] Foot, ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives’, pp.616-617.

[23] Railton, pp.6-8. The question of whether we have good reason to care about ‘the moral point of view’ is one I explore further in my online article, ‘Morality as Means’.

[24] J. Rachels, ‘Naturalism’, p.79, suggests something along the lines of ‘no ought from facts that make no mention of desires’, but this fails to account for other sources of normative criteria discussed earlier.

[25] Ibid., p.76.