What Should I Do? What Reactive Attitudes Tell Us About Reasons for Action

First, a quick reminder regarding context and relevance.

You want to know what to do. You want to know what reasons count as legitimate reasons for doing one thing rather than another. "Is this a good reason for doing A rather than B?" "Does that reason even exist or is it just make-belief, or a rationalization?"

The posts in this series, "What Should I Do?" are examining reasons for action.

In reading through the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External  I came across a section on "reactive attitudes".

Reactive attitudes are supposed to tell us whether there are (or whether an ancient has) external reasons - reasons not grounded on desires (on the agent's own desires).

Recall, I have written that a lot of this conversation is muddled because of a failure to distinguish between the reasons (desires) that an agent has and reasons (desires) that exist - which includes the desires of other agents. Much of the formal discussion pays no attention to this distinction. Consequently, authors drift back and forth between these two concepts in ways that I find confusing.

With this context established, we note that reactive attitudes suggest that there are reasons for action (or an agent has reasons for action) independent of the agent's desires or motivational states.

Some have observed in defense of Moral Rationalism, for example, that if an agent does something we consider morally wrong, then we blame (or resent) him. But blame, these philosophers claim, involves the judgment that the agent had reasons not to do what he did. Consequently blame is unwarranted when such judgments are unwarranted (Nagel 1970, Smith 1994). Therefore, since moral wrongdoing is sufficient to warrant blame, moral obligations must entail reasons.

So, "blame" implies "the agent had reasons not to do what he did."

I disagree.

"Blame" implies "an agent should have had reasons not to do what he did (or should not have had reasons to do what he did). In other words, reasons exist for causing the agent to have reasons that are different than those the agent actually had. Please note the use of the distinction between "reasons exist" and "having reasons" in this account. The reasons that exist are the desires of other agent - which provide the reasons for blaming people like the agent.

Why blame people like the agent?

The Stanford article describes Bernard Williams - an internalist with respect to reasons - as arguing that blame has an instrumental role to play.

[For Bernard Williams, blaming] in these cases functions as a ‘proleptic mechanism’: it itself changes the situation for the agent so that she now has an internal reason that she otherwise would have lacked (Williams, 1989).

In other words, blame plays upon the fact that others have a reason to seek the respect of other people. It withholds that respect as a way of giving people a reason to do what, morally, they should do.

In Williams' sense, blame plays the same role as fines, imprisonment, and other forms of punishment. It provides an immediate disincentive against performing the wrong action. Because an agent has a need for personal liberty and cash, we can threaten to take away his liberty or fine him and take some of his money to provide an incentive not to do that which is wrong. And, according to Williams, because agents have a natural interest in the favorable opinion of others, we can use blame as a deterrence on those people who risk (or think about doing) what they should not.

I would argue that it goes further than this. Incentives and disincentives belong more to the realm of law than to morality. Insofar as blame is a moral tool, its instrumental value rests in its power to actually change the desires of others. It acts on the limbic system of the brain to mold desires - creating aversions to the types of acts that are blamed. Disincentives of the type that Williams talks about only gives a person a reason to avoid the wrongful act when that person is at risk of being caught. The molding of desires, where successful, gives people a reason to avoid the wrongful act even when the agent has not chance of being caught, because it becomes something he wishes not to do.

This goes back to the fact that blame is tied to the reasons the reasons that an agent should have, rather than the reasons that the agent actually has. Blame takes note of the fact that the reasons an agent has deviate from those the reasons the agent should have, and then acts on the limbic system to bring those reasons into alignment.

The Stanford article raises an objection to these instrumentalist accounts of blame.

This view is resisted by many who see the question of the appropriateness of a reactive attitude as primarily an issue of desert. Arguably, blame is appropriate only if it is deserved, and not if it is merely effective in influencing people's behavior.

In order for this objection to make sense, we need a suitable theory of desert. What is it about a person - or a person's action - that makes him "deserve" blame? In answering this question, we need to answer the question of "Why is it the case that it is blame that is deserved?" We cannot hold up the instrumentalist account of blame with this "desert" account until the "desert" account has been filled out enough to allow for comparison.

I suspect that when we do fill out this "desert" account, we will come up with a theory that says that a person "deserves" blame under those conditions where the instrumental value of blame is most effective. There will be little or no difference between the two theories in practice.

In fact, the question of "when do people deserve blame" will be best answered by answering the question, "Under what conditions to those who blame have the most and strongest reasons to blame?" The conditions under which those who blame have the most and strongest reasons to blame are conditions under which blame would do the most instrumental good.

But, this line of reasoning will have to be worked out in detail at another time.

What Should I Do? Rational Motivation

In examining this issue of "what should I do", one commonly encounters people talking about counterfactual motivation.

There is, on this account, a distinction between what would fulfill an agent's actual desires, and what would fulfill the desires that an agent would have if she were fully informed, or fully rational, or meets some other counterfactual criterion.

I deny that these are different. Information, rationality, and the other criteria that these people mention have no influence on an agent's actual desires-as-ends.

Actual vs Counterfactual Motivation

Let's look at this claim more closely, then I will get back to issues that I see with it.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, "Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External"

Another very important distinction among versions of Internalism is between Actual and Counterfactual versions. The former claim that if someone has a reason to do A, then it follows by necessity that she actually is somewhat motivated to do A (on the Motivation version), or actually has a desire that would be served by doing A (on the State version). Counterfactual versions make weaker claims: that if someone has a reason to do A, then it follows by necessity that she would be motivated to some degree, or would desire to do A, in circumstances of a particular kind.

Different Counterfactual theories disagree over the nature of this “particular kind” of circumstances: prominent proposals include (i) that the agent be in possession of full information, or at least not have any relevant false beliefs (Smith 1994; Joyce 2001); (ii) that she have completed “cognitive psychotherapy” or that her attitudes have reached a state of reflective equilibrium (Brandt 1979); (iii) that she have a vivid awareness of all relevant contingencies (Darwall 1983); (iv) that she deliberates faultlessly from her existing motivations (Williams 1979); (v) that she be practically rational (Korsgaard 1986)—a suggestion to which we shall return; and (vi) that she be ideally virtuous—a ‘phronimos’ (McDowell 1995).

Of these, the sixth option is different from the rest - so I wish to set it aside. The first five all suggest making adjustments to an agent's beliefs - that the agent be fully informed or aware of all relevant contingencies and the like. The last on the list actually calls for the agent to have different desires - good desires (virtues) and the absence of bad desires (vices). In almost every case, this set of desires would be different from the agent's actual desires.

My objection here is to counterfactuals that target beliefs.

Means and Ends

Much of what is written in this article seems to suggest that mistakes with regard to "means" of obtaining various ends is somehow a threat to the idea that reasons are grounded on actual desires. Thus, mistaken means are used as evidence that we are required to use some sort of "counterfactual" theory of reasons.

However, this is a mistake.

The mistake springs from the fact that the term "desire" (and similar terms such as "want" and "prefer" are, in fact, not only used when we talk about the ends or goals of intentional action, but also the means to those ends. A person wants a job so that she can make money so that she can afford an apartment where she can keep the temperature at a comfortable level. In this chain of desires, only the latter is desired as an end in itself or as a goal. Other things are desired as a means to that end.

False or irrational beliefs can get in the way of an agent getting what she really wants (desires-as-ends). Our agent may take a job thinking that it will allow her to pay for an apartment, only to discover that the job does not pay enough. She may purchase a condominium that she expects that she will be able to keep at a comfortable temperature only to discover that there is no air conditioning and the building rules prohibit individuals from installing air conditioning (because of old wiring).

However, when a person makes a mistake with respect to means, then it is NOT the case that the agent "has a reason to do X". In these types of cases, the agent in fact has no reason to do X. She only (and falsely) believes she has such a reason.

Note that in the original quote, the article identifies "actual" internalism as a theory that states that the agent "actually has a desire that would be served by doing A." However, in the case of a mistaken means, the agent does not, in fact, have a desire that would be served by doing A. The agent merely (and falsely) believes that she has a desire that is served by doing A. The proposition that doing A will serve a desire of hers is false.

To take another example. A person is thirsty reaches for a glass that she believes contains clean water, though in fact it is poisoned. She does not "really want" to drink out of that glass - she only thinks she does. A proper awareness of the fact will cause her to realize this mistake and put the glass down. It is perfectly legitimate to tell the agent reaching for the glass of water, "You don't want to do that." Then, when she asks "Why not?" tell her that the glass contains poison. She will respond by saying that you are correct, she did not want to do that.

Reasoning About Ends

Desires-as-ends are immune to reason.

You cannot reason a person out of a drug addiction or out of a sexual orientation. There is no syllogism that can prove that an agent's preference for chocolate over vanilla is mistaken. Desires-as-ends, like height, weight, age, and blood pressure, simply exist. You can no more reason a person to a new desire-as-end than you can reason her to a new height.

Consequently, "full information" or "vivid awareness of all relevant contingencies" or "cognitive therapy" is not going to change actual desires into something else.

They will allow the agent to choose more efficient means to an end, but they will not alter the ends (or the actual reasons) for intentional action.

These corrected beliefs can also be used to demonstrate to a person that she has reason to take steps to change some desire-as-end. In the same way that you can show a person that she has reason to lose weight, or to reduce her salt intake (to lower her blood pressure), you can reason her into taking steps to seek treatment for a drug addiction or to reduce his sex drive by showing her that the addiction is thwarting other desires (if, indeed, this is the case). Information (reason alone) will be as impotent in bringing about a direct change to harmful desires as they are in bringing about a direct change to weight or blood pressure. It takes "something else" to actually change these properties. However, true beliefs may inform a person who is otherwise mistaken that she has sufficient reason to go through the effort.

If we are going to argue that what an agent has a reason to do assumes that she has these corrected desires, I am going to ask whether it also means she should have the ideal weight and blood pressure. In all three cases, we are talking about an agent going through the effort to make a physiological change. Why are we to assume that the corrected desires matter but the corrected weight and blood pressure do not?

Besides, if we are talking about correcting these desires, we are leaving the set of counterfactuals concerned with corrected beliefs, which is outside of the scope of this particular discussion.

Conclusion

The section discussing counterfactual internalism ends with this statement:

Because it is uncontroversial that an agent can have reasons to do things that she is not actually motivated to do (particularly if she is unaware of those reasons), we will assume that interesting Motivation versions of internalism take Counterfactual forms.

It is only uncontroversial that an agent can have reasons to do things that she is not actually motivated to do if we mistaken means to be relevant to having reasons. A person has a reason to purchase a winning lottery ticket based on her ACTUAL desires - the desires that she can fulfill with the money from the winning lottery ticket. There is no different set of desires that she would have with more and better information. There is only the improved ability to determine the means towards those ends - the ability to choose the winning lottery numbers when buying the ticket.

So, as we try to answer the question, "What should I do?" - of course we are looking for whatever will actually fulfill desires, not for what an agent falsely believes would fulfill those desires. That is the whole point of asking the question. However, being fully informed, subjected to cognitive therapy, and perfect awareness of the alternatives are only going to be relevant in selecting the means to the ends, not the ends themselves. A person's actual ends, and the ends that the person would have if fully informed, are going to be the same.

What Should I Do? "A Central Problem in Ethics"

In order to refresh my understanding if the issues regarding internal and external reasons, I turned to the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - an extremely valuable online resource. I sought an article called: Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External.

There, I found myself wading into a familiar swamp.

I want to address what the author called "a Central Problem motivating much ethical theorizing since the 1940s."

This Central Problem is addressed as a tension between:

(1) The Humean Theory of Reasons:

The Humean Theory of Reasons (HTR): If there is a reason for someone to do something, then she must have some desire that would be served by her doing it.

(2) Moral Rationalism

Moral Rationalism: An action is morally wrong for an agent only if there is a reason for him not to do it.

(3) Moral Absolutism

Moral Absolutism: Some actions are morally wrong for any agent no matter what motivations and desires they have.

The tension is described as follows:

For example, presumably it was morally wrong for Hitler to order a program of genocide, even if it served some of his desires and wasn't detrimental to any of them. . . . If (as Moral Rationalism claims) an action (like ordering genocide) is morally wrong for an agent (like Hitler) only if there is a reason for him not to do it, and if (as HTR claims) there is a reason for him not to do it only if he has some desire that would be served by his not doing it, then it follows that whether an action is morally wrong for an agent depends upon what he desires. But that seems incompatible with Moral Absolutism. So it seems we must reject at least one of HTR, Moral Rationalism, and Moral Absolutism.

We see in the Humean Theory of Reasons described above a deliberate conflating of "there is a reason" and "she must have" a reason. HTR explicitly states that a reason does not exist unless she (the agent) has it.

Clearly, desires can exist that the agent does not have - we have no problem with that. The question is whether the desires that exist count as reasons that exist.

Of these three, the one that I would reject is the Humean Theory of Reasons. I would substitute the following:

The Revised Humean Theory of Reasons (RHTR): If an agent has a reason to do something, then she must have some desire that would be served by her doing it; but to say that there is a reason for the agent to do something is to say that there is a desire that would be served by her doing it, but it need not be her desire, though the relevant desires need not be hers.

Later in the article the authors state:

Any Actual State version of reasons internalism says that to have a reason, an agent must have some corresponding actual motivational state. But this is precisely what makes reasons hostage to an agent's actual psychology, creating the tension with Moral Rationalism and Moral Absolutism.

However, this is not the same thing. It is true that to HAVE a reason, and agent must have some corresponding actual motivational state. The problem emerges when one insists that for a reason TO EXIST - that there can be no reasons other than the reasons that the agent has. Recall, the original phrasing for HTR begins, If there is a reason for someone to do something . . ." This is not the same thing as to have a reason.

Applying this to the "tension" described above, we can see that it is morally wrong for an agent (like Hitler) to order a program of genocide because of the many and strong reasons that exist against such a program, though almost all of these reasons that exist are not reasons that Hitler has.

When it comes to the project of inventing a language we can use to talk about these things, this leaves us with a few questions to be answered. The question of whether to call desires that exist "reasons that exist" is a type of problem comparable to whether or not to call Pluto a planet. We cannot come up with a deductive proof or even a straight-forward empirical proof that other desires count as "reasons that exist". We can simply decide whether we are going to use language in this way or some other way.

I have been distinguishing moral-ought from practical-ought according to whether "reasons for the agent to do X" includes "reasons that exist" (moral ought) or excludes them (practical ought). However, this is nothing more than a linguistic decision. I think I will continue to speak of reasons in this way - at least for the time being.


So, if you are trying to decide what you should do in the practical sense of "should", you would judge each alternative according to how well it (and its consequences) fulfills your desires. Those desires, in turn, are to be evaluated according to how well they fit in with your other desires. You have reason not to promote or strengthen or even fulfill desires that will thwart your other desires. At the same time, you do have reason to promote, strengthen, and fulfill desires that tend to contribute to the fulfillment of other desires.

If you are trying to decide what to do in the moral sense of "should", you would judge each alternative according to how well it would fulfill desires that people generally have reason to praise - and thwart desires that people generally have reason to condemn. Their reasons to praise or condemn are reasons for calling the act moral or immoral. Their reasons to praise and condemn have to do with the effect of praise and condemnation on molding malleable desires.

Well . . . this is how I would handle "a Central Problem in ethics".

I have another question to look at which is relevant here.

Philosophers also distinguish between the desires (motivating reasons) the agent has from those that the agent would have if she were "fully rational" or "fully informed" or meets some other criterion. I argue that, since neither rationality nor information has any implications for what an agent "desires as an end", that there is no difference between the ends that an agent has, and those she would have if "fully rational" or "fully informed". I want to take a look at that issue in a future post. Then, I suspect we can return to discuss J.L. Mackie's theory of practical 'ought'.

The Poorest of the Poor

A second problem that I have with Bernie Sanders' campaign to be President is his utter lack of concern for the well-being of the poor.

Earlier, I wrote about Sanders' use of the "politics of other" to promote his candidacy. This is a campaign tactic where a candidate identifies some group to identify as "other". The target audience is told that "the other" is responsible for their problems and that the candidate will get tough on "the other" if elected. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump identifies foreigners and Muslims as "the other". Bernie Sanders targets billionaires.

Sanders' other problem is a disregard for the very poor.

In making this accusation, I am referring to the very poor on a global scale.

The World Bank reports that, in 2012, 12.7 percent of the world's population (900 million people) lived on less than $1.90 per day, while 29.4 percent (2.1 billion people) lived on less than $3.10 per day. In 1981, 44 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty.

Most of these gains occurred in China, where "753 million people moved above $1.90 threshold" between 1981 and 2012.

For somebody worried about poverty, it would seem that this is a good thing.

A person who was concerned with the plight of the very poor, it would seem, would consider this to be a good thing, and would want to see this continue. He would want to see the remaining 900 million people moved above the lower line, then see everybody move above the upper line.

Sanders almost never discusses global poverty. The fate of the poorest of the world's poor seems not to interest him.

This fact sits beside the fact that Sanders presents himself as an advocate of economic justice. He expresses a strong moral concern with economic equality. This would seem to entail some measure of concern for those people living on less than $1.90 per day.

However, Sanders simply dismisses the plight of the world's poor.

In a Vox interview, Bernie Sanders said:

I think from a moral responsibility [sic] we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.

I know of no way of interpreting Sanders' moral claim here other than to say that it counts as a legitimate objection to a policy that aids those in poverty that the program reduces the wealth of those who have much, much more."

Let us imagine a convention of millionaires in a hotel somewhere. Imagine that somebody brings up the issue of poverty - even American poverty. Imagine the individual in that room saying, "I support the Bernie Sanders doctrine. I think from a position of moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the country to address the problems of poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this room even poorer."

The important fact to note is that Bernie Sanders has given voice to this very same principle. He has used it in defense of his policies. Either there must be some morally valid reason why this a valid moral principle when Bernie Sanders utters it but not when the millionaire in the room utters it, or Sanders is guilty of hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy that he can avoid only by choosing to be concerned with the plight of those living on less than $1.90 per day and saying, "Yes, the quality of their lives matter."

Furthermore, the fact of the matter is that the successes against global poverty have not made the people in this country even poorer. Real median household income in the United States has risen approximately 10 percent over the same time period - from about $46,000 in 1981 to $51,000 in 2012 in real dollars. Certainly, many Americans would have liked to have seen a faster rate of increase, but Americans have not been made poorer.

The "make Americans poorer" argument is a rationalization - a lie (if Sanders knows what has happened to American median income during this time period), or a fiction embraced as true because of its political usefulness.

More to the point, there is reason to believe that some of the policies Sanders will pursue will reverse some of the progress that has been made. If a policy - such as restricting international trade - would have the effect of throwing 100 million foreigners back into extreme poverty, Sanders' attitude suggests that he would not see this as a relevant concern.

One of the things that I seriously dislike about Sanders' campaign - is the fact that he refuses to even address the fate of the people in the world living at near poverty. It is one thing to refuse to have a plan to help these people. It is another to refuse to address very real possibility that one is advocating policies that will make their situation worse - that will reverse 30 years of progress.

The only sensible conclusion to draw from these facts is that, to Sanders, those people simply don't matter.

Here, too, we see Sanders' adopting a moral attitude that is very similar to the attitude that Donald Trump expresses - though Trump is more vocal in his defense. This involves the utter disregard for the well-being of foreigners. Those who are not Americans are not "people" in an important sense. What happens to them is not a moral concern.  

The differences is that, while Trump expresses an active hostility towards foreigners, Bernie Sanders simply doesn't care about them. If we return 1.2 billion to severe poverty - well - they're not Americans. It's not as if their suffering actually matters.

What Should I Do?: Having a Reason vs. There Exists a Reason

The next article in the series on J.L. Mackie's Ethics will concern the huge topic of "practical reason". David Phillips, in "Mackie on Practical Reason" ( in Philosophical Studies Series, A World Without Values, Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory (Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin (eds.)) argues that Mackie presents a better theory of practical reason than Barnard Williams - the person whose theory is the most widely read and discussed.

Why should you care?

Actually, this - and a few postings to follow - involve a discussion about how to answer questions of the form, "Why should I care?" correctly. Do you want a right answer to the question, "Why should I care?" Then what follows will be useful.

I am going to start with a set of distinctions that I use in trying to understand this issue.

Note that I hold that desires provide the only end-reasons for intentional action that exist. If you are looking for a reason to do something - or to not do something - that reason is ultimately going to be found in a desire, or it does not exist. The chain of reasoning might go through a chain of means (e.g., I will take the job so that I can earn an income so that I can buy a house which I can keep at a comfortable temperature through summer and winter). But why live at a comfortable temperature? It's just something that people like.

What are these distinctions?

(1) An agent has a reason to do X vs. there exists a reason for A to do X. This corresponds to: The agent has a desire that would be fulfilled by doing X vs. there exists a desire that would be fulfilled by A's doing X. The desires that other people have are desires that exist, but are desires that the agent does not have.

(2) Motivational/explanatory vs normative reasons. The desires that an agent has are those that motivate and explain current behavior. However, we can take those desires and ask how they fit in with other desires. A person with a desire to smoke has a motivating reason to smoke, and this desire explains the fact that she does smoke. However, when we take note of the way that the desire to smoke leads to behavior that thwarts other desires. we find reason to say that the agent has no GOOD reason to smoke. Smoking is not recommended.

(3) Practical vs. moral reasons. To ask what a person should do in a practical sense is to ask what reasons an agent has for or against performing some action. These are grounded on the agent's own desires. On the other hand, to ask what a person should do in a moral sense is to ask how the action stands in relation to reasons that exist - that include the desires of other people. More specifically, it asks how the action stands in relation to desires that people generally have reason to promote (and to the absence of desires that people generally have reason to inhibit).

Note that I have listed these distinctions as I use them. Much of the discussion that follows will concern alternatives ways of dividing up this conceptual landscape and the merits of each alternative.

Here, specifically, Phillips is intending to contrast Bernard Williams' theory of practical reason with that of J.L. Mackie.

Williams' theory is expressed as follows: “A has a reason to φ if A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φing” (Williams, B. 1981, "Internal and External Reasons", In his Moral Luck, 101– 113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)

However, as Phillips points out, Mackie analyzes 'ought' (as in 'a ought to G") in terms of "There is a reason for a's Ging."

Here, we see the discussion jumping across the line between "A has a reason to G" and "There exists a reason for A to G" without even a mention that these are not the same thing.

Since I relate "A has a reason" to practical ought, and "There exists a reason" to moral ought, I see a risk of blurring the distinction between what is practical and what is moral as well.

So, let's see if we can figure out how to answer questions of the form, "What should I do?"

The Politics of the Other

I have three major problems with Bernie Sanders' campaign for President that I would like to discuss.

Interestingly, these are three serious problems that I also find with Donald Trump's campaign for President. It turns out that the two candidates share some important, and unflattering, characteristics.

The first of these is that both candidates have created campaigns based largely on the politics of "the other". (I will discuss the other two in future posts.)

This is how the playbook goes.

Step 1: Identify some group of people as "the other".

Step 2: Tell the target audience that their problems, their difficulties, the fact that life seems to be treating them unfairly, to be largely due to "the other". If only "the other" was brought to heal, then the members of the target audience would see some significant improvement or realization of something of value to them.

Step 3: Promise the target audience that if they support you, then you will make it a priority to deal with "the other" and deliver to the people these benefits and values.

The only difference here lies with who the candidate identifies as "the other".

In the case of Donald Trump, it's Muslims and foreigners. It's not "some" Muslims and foreigners. He takes no pains to distinguish one from another. His words, his policy proposals, make no distinctions. If one is a Muslim, or a foreigner, one is assumed to be guilty and of a lower quality of life that is not worthy of the considerations and respect due to full human beings. They are all "other".

For Sanders, "the other" are "billionaires".

Sanders makes no attempt to judge billionairs as individuals.

Sanders wants to have the government forcefully redistribute the wealth of billionaires to "those in need".

He almost never mentions the fact that a large number of these billionaires are current working on their own plans to redistribute their own wealth - and to do so in ways that have the largest impact possible.

Consequently, he almost never mentions the fact that if he were to take this money from these billionaires and put it in the federal treasury, a substantial portion of that redistribution would be away from the people that the billionaire would have helped with his or her charitable efforts and into the pockets of whomever can afford the best political lobbyists and can afford to bend the ear of some senator or representative.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates lead this list of philanthropic billionaires. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which will receive almost 100% of the combined wealth of both Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates) will fully redistribute this wealth over the next several decades.

Furthermore, the Foundation is focused on spending the money on those projects that would wring the most benefit out of each of those dollars. Projects are vetted to determine the magnitude of the impact. As a private organization dedicated to providing help, the Foundation is immune from the influence of lobbyists and other types of influence peddlers who would try to divert those billions into the pockets of their sponsors - the way that government money often gets redirected. So, it actually goes to projects that do real good in the real world.

Buffett and Gates have also set up an organization called The Giving Pledge - which lobbies the wealthiest people in the world to give at least have of their wealth to charitable causes. Their website contains the profiles of 141 of these people - targets of Sanders' "politics of the other" who are supposed to be the great oppressors responsible for all of our middle-class ills - who have pledged to redistribute at least half of their wealth to those who can most benefit.

None of this denies that there are billionaires and corporations using their wealth to nefarious ends. While the people listed above are seeking to help those who need it most, lobbyists and public relations firms serving an even larger number of the wealthy are forcing wealth in the other direction. I am not arguing, "everything is fine, trust the billionaires, they are all saintly people who will take care of you."

Just as, against Trump's bigotry, I would not argue that every Muslim and foreigner has the best interests of America at heart and we can perfectly trust all of them to act benevolently towards us. One does not have to take this absurd position to correctly categorize Trump's proposals as bigoted and unjust. One does not have to assume that all billionaires are saints to see that Sanders is being bigoted and unjust.

What I am arguing is that "the politics of the other" is a morally illegitimate way to address these problems. What a politician should do is, when addressing people, respect and acknowledge the difference between the good and the evil, try to work with those who are good, and to target those who are evil in virtue of their individual words and deeds. Rather than turning the world into a battleground between "us" and "them" inflicting mutual injustices on each other, politicians should be working on ending injustice.

Unfortunately, this "politics of the other" works. It attracts large, cheering crowds who want nothing more than a powerful-seeming leader who will stick it to "them" for the benefit of "us". There is something deep in our psychology that makes the politics of the other very attractive and appealing - in spite of the injustice and violence that spawns from it. It is one of those unfortunate human tendencies that we need to keep a lid on. We certainly should not be cheering and supporting politicians who play on this human failing to their own advantage.

What I would have Sanders do is to give up this politics of the other. I would have him acknowledge that billionaires are human beings - some good and some evil, and that it is as unjust to vilify billionaires as a group as it is to vilify Muslims as a group. Unfortunately, this would lose him some of his cheering crowds - because there are a lot of voters in both parties who are wildly enthusiastic supporters of this way of seeing the world.

This is one reform that I would like to see Sanders make. There are a couple of others that I will write about in the days ahead.

Pragmatic Moral Realism

Consider the following cases.

Case 1: We begin with a widespread belief - one that almost nobody questions - that witches exist. Some women have the capacity to use incantations and deals with supernatural forces to hex, curse, make sick, make unlucky, or kill their enemies. But, over time, we come to realize that this capacity to use incantations does not exist. We conclude that witches do not exist either. Witches are removed from our ontology.

Case 2: We begin with a widespread belief - one that almost nobody questions - that solid objects fill the space that they occupy. That rock used in the cobblestone sidewalk is all rock. But, over time, we come to realize that matter is made up of atoms, and atoms are almost entirely empty space. However, we do not conclude that solid objects do not exist. We continue to speak of solidity - much as we did before.

Why are there cases in which a discovery leads to eliminativism, and others where it does not?

These examples come from Jamie Dreier, who brings them up with respect to J.L. Mackie's "Error Theory".

Dreier, Jamie, "Mackie's Realism: Queer Pigs and the Web of Belief" in Philosophical Studies Series, A World Without Values, Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory (Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin (eds.).

Dreier, like many others, interprets Mackie as making a claim something as follows:

We begin with the widespread belief - one that almost nobody questions - that moral rightness and wrongness exists. Some actions or states of affairs have a built-in "ought-to-be-doneness" or "ought-not-to-be-doneness" that provides both normative reasons and motivation to perform what ought to be done and avoid what ought not to be done. But, over time, we come to realize that this intrinsic prescriptivity does not exist. We conclude that moral rightness and wrongness do not exist either - all such claims are false.

Drier thinks that Mackie needs to explain why moral rightness and wrongness should be treated like witches - which are eliminated from our ontology - and not like solidity - which is simply modified.

Mackie actually argues that morality should be treated in a way that is somewhere between witches and solidity. Mackie's own example was that moral terms should be treated like the term "atom".

Let's classify this as Case 3:

Case 3: We begin with the widespread belief - one that almost nobody questions - that the smallest piece of an element has no parts. If you break an element such as gold or copper into smaller and smaller bits, you will end up with a core substance - a building block - that cannot be divided further.  However, over time, we come to realize that the smallest bits of an element does have parts. They are made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons. We continue to speak of atoms. However, atoms now are the smallest pieces of an element - which are themselves made up of neutrons, protons, and electrons.

These cases reveal a possibility that debates over what exist and what do not exist can get mixed up with a different debate that is not nearly so significant. These are debates about language - about how we are going to be using terms going forward.

Take the case of the "atom", mentioned in Case 3. There were actually two options. Scientists could have said, "Oh, then, atoms do not exist. Or, if they do exist, they are not the smallest pieces of an element. Instead, these protons, neutrons, and electrons are the true atoms because they have no parts (only, it later turned out to be the case that they do have parts). We are going to need a new term for these smallest bits of an element. Let's call them, elementons."

There is no experiment or logical test that we can conduct that would make this proposed option incorrect and the option actually taken - to continue to refer to the smallest pieces of an element as "atoms" - as the correct option. It is a decision to be made entirely on pragmatic consideration. "We were using terms in the past in a way that embedded some errors. What is the most efficient way to fix this? Which change will make the transition from our current error-filled way of speaking to a more accurate way of speaking as easy as possible?"

Astronomers took a vote regarding the definition of "planet". Physicsts seemed to have simply migrated into a new language without much difficulty or discussion. When JJ Thompson started discussing the structure of atoms (Thompson recognized that there were parts having negative charge and other parts having a positive charge), other physicists simply went along with it. Nobody raised their hand and shouted, "Stop! You can't sensibly talk about the parts of something that literally means 'that which has no parts'!"

These considerations suggest that we should be looking for a pragmatic solution to the question of moral realism.

Getting all of the speakers of the English language (or any language, for that matter) to abandon moral terms simply is not practical. They are going to continue to use these terms and, furthermore, will continue to use them in the most important decisions that they make. They use these terms to answer questions of life and death, freedom or imprisonment, which social policies to adopt and which to reject.

A more practical consideration would be to get them to use these terms in ways that contained more truth and less fiction. Where people use these terms to refer to the will of some divine being or some sort of intrinsic prescriptivity, we can say, "Nope. We're not going to do that - those things do not exist and morality is something that exists."

If somebody wants to use moral terms to refer to the subjective preferences of the individual, we can say, "That's a waste. We already have terms for that - terms such as "I like" and "He wants" and "they would prefer it if you did not".

The point being, the question of what exists in the world is different from the question of what terms we should use to talk about those things.

There would still be a lot of things to debate and discuss. However, it would be a different type of debate - a different type of discussion.

Of relevance to our current discussion, rather than saying "All moral claims are false because they refer to intrinsic prescriptivity," practical considerations would suggest, "Moral claims cannot refer to intrinsic prescriptivity because that would make them false."

Motivational Force

While we are on the subject of 'motivational force'.

I do not see any evidence for motivational force to come out anything but desires.

A 'desire that P' gives an agent a motivating reason to realize P to a degree equal to the strength of the desire.

Desires, more specifically, provide the end-reasons for intentional action. Desires select our goals or objectives; that is, a desire that P creates a goal to realize a state of affairs in which 'P' is true.

Beliefs select the means for realizing these ends. If a person desires to be eating a chocolate cake, then a belief that there is chocolate cake in the kitchen gives the agent a motivating reason to go to the kitchen . . . in order to get the chocolate cake . . . which is the agent's goal or objective.

A belief can report motivational force.

So, you can report that people generally have motivating reasons to go and see the new "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" movie. One could do so by saying that it is a "good" movie. However, no motivational force comes from the belief that "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is a good movie. The motivational force comes solely from the desires that the belief reports would be fulfilled by experiencing the movie.

Moral goodness reports what people generally have reason to praise or condemn. Praise and condemnation act on the limbic system of the brain to mold malleable desires. They can be used to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. The motivating reason to praise or condemn come from the desires being fulfilled or thwarted. It does not come from the belief that something is morally good.

In fact, it is quite possible that an agent can have a belief that something is morally good - that it is something people generally have many and strong reasons to praise (or to condemn the absence) - without personally having a reason to do so.

However, moral claims are not solely claims about what people generally have reason to praise or condemn. Moral claims also contain the praise or condemnation that people generally have reason to give. Thus, "intentionally killing civilians to promote a political cause is wrong" not only expresses that it is something that people generally have reason to condemn. It also condemns those who would intentionally kill civilians.

Given this component of moral claims, an agent will tend to avoid reporting that an act is morally wrong unless the agent has a motivating reason to condemn it, or avoid claiming that something is morally good unless the agent has a motivating reason to praise it.

However, here, we are talking about a claim - a speech act. We are not talking about a belief. The belief entails no praise or condemnation - only the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to praise or condemn. As an action, claiming that something is right or wrong may come from another of concerns; to impress others, to manipulate others, to deflect suspicions.

I take J.L. Mackie's "Argument from queerness" (which has been the subject of many recent posts) to be an argument that it would be "queer" for anything other than desires to provide end-reasons for intentional action. How can a belief provide an end-reason for intentional action (unless it reported a relationship between states of affairs and desires - in which case it reports on motivational force coming from desires and provides no motivational force of its own)? How can an action, or a state of affairs, or a hypothetical action or state of affairs, provide an end-reason for intentional action?

Desires provide end-reasons for states of affairs because this is the way they are programmed. Desires attach value to goals and motivates the agent to achieve that goal. The agent then searches among her beliefs for a way to reach the goal. It is, of course, a lot more complex than this. But these are the basics. This is the "massless strings and frictionless pulleys" account of intentional human action and motivational force.

The practical application of all of this is . . . if you are in a discussion with others about what should be done in a particular case, then the reasons for action that exist are desires.

This includes a moral dimension - reasons to promote certain desires that fulfill other desires and reasons to inhibit desires that thwart other desires- but these also relate back to desires.

If somebody in the discussion is bringing in "reasons for intentional action" that do not, ultimately, rest in desires that people generally have reason to promote or at least not inhibit - then that person is bringing fictions into the debate. Those "reasons" can be discarded as reasons for intentional action that do not exist.

Trust Your Feelings? A Poor Way to Do Morality

Why does all of this matter?

All of this discussion of "reasons", and "motivational force", and "prescriptivity". Is this just academic entertainment that has no relevance in the real world?

Can it put bread on the table?

Can it provide medical care to the sick and injured?

Can it get people to stop setting off bombs in shopping centers?

Well, actually, yes it can.

Moral and political philosophy is actually what ended the dark ages and brought us the Age of Enlightenment. It ended the despotic rule of kings who were believed to have gotten their authority because God selected them to be king, and replaced it with a world where all men - and, ultimately, all people - are created equal. Before the scientific revolution could happen, we needed a philosophical revolution that said that we could understand the universe by observation, measurement, modeling, and reason.

The topic that I have been posting on recently - on the existence of intrinsic prescriptivity - is one that leads to mistaken judgments. Those mistakes, in turn, lead to actions which result in people being harmed for no good reason.

Here is an example:

When I was young, I went out with a friend collecting signatures on a petition in front of a grocery store. We were involved in a discussion with an individual when a mixed-race couple left the store and walked to their car with their groceries, embracing and sharing a short kiss along the way.

The person with whom we were talking pointed to them and exclaimed his objections to interracial relationships.

I had no doubt that he could just "see" the wrongness interracial relationships. He looked upon that couple and had an immediate feeling of wrongness. From this, he made a judgment that such things ought not to be done. On the basis of that judgment, he was willing to take political action to help to ensure that those types of things were prevented - by law, and by threat of punishment - if necessary.

He also said that, if the state abdicated its responsibility in enforcing these moral truths, then it was up to the people to do so.

This same phenomenon drove much of the opposition to homosexual marriage. An individual sees - or simply imagines - a homosexual relationship. He "feels" the wrongness of it. He uses this to make a judgment. Based on that judgment, he engages in political actions that prevent homosexuals from marrying, from adopting children, and from enjoying a good quality of life together.

Donald Trump is preying upon the same type of mistake in his campaign to be President. There is a substantial portion of the population that has an aversion to being around those who are "different" from them. They hear somebody speaking Spanish, or they see dark skin or a head scarf, and they have an averse emotional reaction to having those people around. They feel anxious and uneasy. From this they make a judgment that those people ought not to be here. Based on that judgment, they take political action. Unjust, immoral, hurtful political action.

I think, some of the worst advice that gets propagated is the idea that you should "trust your feelings" or "let your conscience be your guide" or "do whatever feels right to you."

Some feelings are not to be trusted. They serve as a very poor guide. We are foolish to encourage the prejudiced, the selfish, and the cruel to "do what feels right to them".

Evolutionary morality, as it turns out, fits into this same program. It says that our moral feelings came about as a result of evolution and seems to imply from this that they can be trusted. Of course, those who promote this model cherry-pick their data. They only see evolved altruism and sympathy. They ignore evolved tribalism and gender dominance.

Their message that morality comes from evolution gives us no way to evaluate the results of evolution as good or bad. It gives us no way to determine which of the features evolution gave us that we should use and nurture, and which we should fight.

The only way to evaluate the effects of evolution is if there is something outside of evolution we can hold these effects up to in order to evaluate them. This means that the true measure of good and bad does not come from evolution. It comes from that thing outside of evolution that we use to make these evaluations.

Our feelings - evolved and learned - are not to be trusted. They need to be examined and evaluated. If they are, we will discover that we have some feelings motivating actions hurtful to others that we actually need to throw out. At the same time, we may discover feelings that are helpful that need to be cultivated. (In this category, I would put a "love of the truth" - which seems to be in very short supply these days.)

These dry, philosophical assessments that have made up my blog recently . . . that's what they are about. They are about the mistake of taking feelings as being a reliable indicator of moral fact. It would be in our interest to discourage people from continuing to make that mistake.

The Motivation to Do What One Ought

Trying to decide how intrinsic prescriptivity that does not exist can cause an intentional action in the real world is about like trying to determine how many imaginary angels can dance on the head of a pin.

The reason we need to be confirmed about the former case is in order to refute the claim that intrinsic prescriptivity exists and can cause intentional action.

In my last post, I identified three possible routes from intrinsic prescriptivity to intentional action.

(1) Intrinsic prescriptivity can link to action independent of the agent's belief or desire (which raises problems with the ownership of the action).

(2) intrinsic prescriptivity can link to action through a motivating belief that "X is good" which introduces a whole new type of entity - beliefs with motivating power - into our ontology and still leaves the question of what "X is good" means unanswered..

(3) intrinsic prescriptivity can link to action through 'correct' desires - desires that take as their object that which has intrinsic prescriptivity which runs into the problem that desires (like height, weight, eye color, and other evolved traits capable of being influenced by environmental factors) are neither 'correct' nor 'incorrect'.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong in "Mackie's Internalisms" comes up with a much longer list.

• Fact internalism: Moral facts have some special force built into them.
• Judgment internalism: Moral judgments (as mental states or acts) have some special force built into them.
• Knowledge internalism: Moral knowledge has some special force built into it.
• Acquaintance internalism: Acquaintance with moral facts has some special force built into it.
• Justified-belief internalism: Justified moral beliefs have some special force built into them.
• Thought internalism: Normative thoughts have some special force built into them.
• Belief internalism: Normative beliefs have some special force built into them.
• Seeming internalism: Moral seemings have some special force built into them.
• Seeming-judgment internalism: Moral judgments that seem true have some special force built into them.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong presents this list of internalisms in his article "Mackie's Internalisms" (from Joyce, Richard and Kirchin, Simon (eds), Philosophical Studies Series, World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory).

It sometimes seems as if Sinnott-Armstrong is criticizing Mackie for not specifying the type of “intrinsic prescriptivity” he is arguing against. Yet, it seems that Mackie has an easy defense go this charge. “I am criticizing all of them. Look, I could have selected one of these and said that this is my target. However, this means that all of the others would still be unchallenged with its supporters shouting, “What about me?” None of these forms are gong to work, so I am targeting all of them.”

Be that as it may, The conclusion of Sinnott-Armstrong's argument is that the view that Mackie is criticizing is either seeming or Seeming-Judgment internalism. What doesn't exist, according to Mackie, is a "normative reason to do X" or "not to do X" built into actions such that whenever it seems to be the case that something has this property, the agent is motivated to perform or to avoid that action, respectively.

It seems easy to link "seeming" to motivation in a way that Mackie would approve of. An agent interprets her own desire-based motivation to perform an act as "it seems that the object of evaluation has an intrinsic prescriptivity."

This interpretation is incorrect.

Whereas this error is built into the meaning of moral terms, all moral claims are claims about intrinsic prescriptivity from what is, in fact, merely a personal preference.

Mackie would have us end this practice of taking personal likes and dislikes as signs of intrinsic prescriptivity and then taking the fact that others have different interests as evidence that they are, in some way, defective or relating to the world incorrectly. They are not. They are just different.

At this point I would like to add that Mackie does not say that these interests cannot be evaluated. However, that evaluation does not consist in determining whether or not the objects of desire have intrinsic prescriptivity. The evaluation looks at whether the desire tends to fulfill or thwart other desires. Mackie would argue that, where desires come into conflict, we should seek some sort of compromise. I would argue - against Mackie and in support of John Stuart Mill - that morality involves the use of social tools such as reward and punishment to bring to bring private interests and desires into harmony with the public good.

Morality and Motivating Force

According to a common view of morality, something's being morally good provides people with a motivating reason to realize that thing.

There is a question as to whether moral goodness creates an overriding reason - a reason that trumps all other interests and concerns, or whether it provides some lesser motivation that can sometimes fail to override individual concerns.

Of course, there is a third option - that morally goodness provides a person with no motivation at all. Under this option, there is nothing at all incoherent or irrational with a person declaring something to be morally obligatory even though he finds himself entirely unmotivated to bring such a thing about.

This set of distinctions is the second set that Walter Sinnott-Armstrong brings up in his article "Mackie's Internalisms" (from Joyce, Richard and Kirchin, Simon (eds), Philosophical Studies Series, World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory).

I discussed Sinnott-Armstrong's first set of distinctions in the previous post: Reasons: Motivating, Explanatory, and Normative.

Recall, J.L. Mackie wants to argue that intrinsic prescriptivity (what Mackie confusingly calls 'objective value') does not exist. One of his arguments is that intrinsic prescriptivity would be such an odd thing that we have reason to doubt that such a thing exists. Part of what makes intrinsic prescriptivity odd would be this power to prove agents with motivation to act.

As Sinnott-Armstrong points out, Mackie sometimes speaks as if intrinsic prescriptivity provides overriding motivational force. However, Mackie's "Argument from Queerness" works against the idea that intrinsic prescriptivity provides any motivational force. If Mackie can successfully challenge the weaker (some motivational force) thesis, then the stronger (overriding motivational force) thesis falls away as a matter of course.

Ultimately, we are talking about things in the universe that will cause physical muscles to move in the ways that they move when an agent carries out an intentional action. Intrinsic prescriptivity, if it existed, has a power to cause a person to reach into his pocket, pull out his wallet, take out a $20, and hand it to the person he had borrowed $20 from the week before.

Is there anything in the universe that has the power to do this?

The Ownership of Intentional Action

Intentional actions are generally explained in terms of beliefs and desires. Beliefs and desires are brain states. The fact that brain states can cause signals to go to the muscles and cause them to move in particular ways is not problematic. The question is: Is there something else in the universe - something we may call "intrinsic prescriptivity" - that has the power to bring about these types of movements and yet still allow them to be classified as the agent's intentional action.

If I were to plant a chip in your brain and use it to control the movement of your body, one of the implications of this is that those actions are no longer your actions. If I were to manipulate your body in such a way that you were to commit murder, the claim that you committed murder would be false. I would have been the person who committed murder - using your body as the murder weapon. An action belongs to the person whose beliefs and desires caused that action.

Somehow, intrinsic prescriptivity has to cause an intentional action (repaying a debt) without overriding the agent's ownership of that action.

Beliefs and Motivational Force

One option is that the belief that X is good provides motivating force that influences an agent's intentional action. This thesis needs to be held up to Hume's thesis that desires provide motivational force, but beliefs do not. Desires identify the ends of intentional action, and beliefs select the means.

It also raises the question of, "What does a person believe when she believes, 'X is good'?" One quick way to draw a link between belief and motivation is to equate the believe that "X is good" with the belief that "I feel motivated to realize states of affairs in which X is true". Consequently, everything the agent judges to be good is something the agent is motivated to bring about. However, this says nothing about the source of that motivation.

In particular, it does not require that the motivation come from some sort of intrinsic prescriptivity. This link would hold up even if the only thing that motivates the agent is her own desires - in which case she would say 'X is good" is true whenever "I desire that X" is true. 

If we relate motivation to the belief that "X is good", we still have to figure out some sort of relationship between "X is good" an intrinsic prescriptivity. We have not actually answered any questions.

'Correct' and 'Incorrect' Desires

Another option is to link intrinsic prescriptivity to desire.

With respect to belief, a belief that 'P' is true if and only if 'P' is true - and not merely true because it is believed. With respect to desire, we could say that a desire that 'P' is 'correct' if and only if 'P' is good - and not good because it is desired.

This model of intrinsic prescriptivity runs into problems when it confronts the theory of evolution. Evolution has molded our desires towards genetic fitness. We tend to desire those things the desiring of which propagates the species. Either we must postulate that propagating the species is intrinsically prescriptive, or we must postulate an odd coincidence between what is intrinsically prescriptive and what propagates the species.

The main problem is that we do not need to bring 'intrinsic prescriptivity' into this at all. All we need are desires molded by evolutionary forces such that we are disposed to desire that which propagates the species.

In the case of humans, we are talking about a species with a 'plastic' brain. While some desires may be hard-wired, others are molded and shaped through our interaction with the environment. Yet, even with this, there is reason to believe that desires lock onto 'intrinsic prescriptivity', or even to postulate the existence of intrinsic prescriptivity for them to lock onto. 

Conclusion

These, then, seem to be the three ways in which 'intrinsic prescriptivity' can motivate intentional action.

(1) Intrinsic prescriptivity can motivate intentional action in ways that bypass the agent's beliefs and desires. However, this option runs the risk of interfering with the agent's ownership of the action.

(2) Intrinsic prescriptivity can motivate intentional action by generating true motivational beliefs about the goodness of things. However, this answers no questions since we now need an explanation of what it means for the belief that 'X is good' to be true.

(3) Intrinsic prescriptivity can motivate intentional action by generating 'correct' desires. However, evolution molds our disposition to desire according to what promotes genetic replication and gives us no reason to believe we have evolved a faculty to perceive intrinsic prescriptivity.

A fourth option in this case is to hold that 'intrinsic prescriptivity' does not exist. Desires alone provide the motivating force for intentional action, and desires are neither 'correct' or 'incorrect' in this sense.