Why Refuse the Experience Machine?

Professor Daniel N. Robinson suggests that any student of philosophy - at least that idea that philosophy is meant to be used in guiding one's own life - answer this question:

Suppose you could be given any life of your choosing played out into you by way of stimulating the brain. What are the grounds on which you would not choose this? What is the basis on which you would choose a life that is frustrating, in which desires remain unrequited, in which you could not achieve a sought level of excellence, over a life in which, by way of the direct stimulation of the brain, all of these desiderata would be achieved, and all negative ones eliminated?

This is an account of what is also known as Robert Nozick's "Experience Machine" question. Nozick brings up this question against hedonism - against any theory, in fact, that says that all we are after in life is some brain state, be it happiness or pleasure or contentment. It is raised against the idea that the only thing we seek is to have the molecules in our brain arranged in a particular way and its currents travelling in a particular fashion and, of all of the things in the world, this is the only thing that matters.

The objection states that, if this is the case, then it seems that reason would demand that we choose this if it were made available. If putting the brain in a vat wherein its molecules could be organized in the appropriate way and its currents could be sent travelling in the proper fashion could be accomplished, then the person who claims that this is the ultimate goal of all human action should see no reason not to jump at this option.

If one would reject this, then . . . why?

Well, I would reject this kind of life. I contemplate the offer and it is of no interest to me. I could, perhaps, be persuaded to enter the experience machine for short periods of time to have experiences that I would enjoy - as a form of entertainment. However, the time would come where I would have to set entertainment aside and do the things that I want to do - accomplish the things I want to accomplish. This means actually doing them, and actually accomplishing them. Or, at least, it means actually trying to do so, even if I should fail.

I have a desire - a goal that I selected for myself in high school - to leave the world a better place than it would have otherwise been. I think that, in my years of study and experience, I have learned some things that it would be useful to others to know. I wish to contribute what I have learned to the total sum of human understanding, in the hopes that at least some of it is actually useful.

A desire is a propositional attitude. That is, to say, any desire that any person has can be expressed as an attitude (desire) towards a proposition P. I desire that I make the world a better place than it would have otherwise been.

The attitude that desire attaches to a proposition is a motivational interest in realizing that proposition - in making the proposition true.

The problem with Nozick's experience machine is, quite simply, that it cannot make these propositions true. The experience machine can feed me the sensations that might cause me to believe that I have made the world a better place. But, in truth, the world is no better off. In fact, the world itself is unchanged. And that makes all the difference.

This does not mean that "leaving the world a better place than it would have otherwise been" has some sort of intrinsic value. It does not imply that such a state has value, in particular, that is independent of the fact that I desire it. It is still in virtue of the fact that I desire to leave the world a better place than it would have otherwise been that this has value. However, it is also the case that in virture of my desire what has value (to me) is that "I leave the world a better place than it would have otherwise been" be made true. Since this is what has value, and life inside the experience machine cannot provide this, then life inside the experience machine does not have value.

This might not be true of anybody. I have admitted to having some desires that can be fulfilled within the experience machine - in exactly the same way that I have some desires that can be fulfilled inside of a movie theater. There may be some people for whom all, or nearly all, of their desires are desires of this type. Such a person may choose to live within the experience machine.

However, it is important to note, that the difference between us is not that I have desires that I seek to realize and they do not. The difference is that I have desires that cannot be realized within an experience machine, and they have desires that can be realized within an experience machine. A person who has a desire "that I experience what it is like to be successful World War II ace" has a desire that can be realized within an experience machine, and thus has reason to enter such a machine. The machine can make the proposition that he is having such an experience true.

All desire, then, is a desire that P, which motivates the agent to realize P. The difference between those who would enter into such a machine and those who would not is found in whether P is a proposition that can be realized within the machine, or a proposition that cannot.

For me, a great many of those propositions cannot be realized within the machine. That is why I would choose not to enter - not for more than a couple of hours at least.

Desirism Book - Part 0001: Introduction

It is time for me to write a new book on desirism.

I have thought about this quite a bit, and given considerable thought as to how to go about it. I have had a preferred method. However, I had doubts as to the merits of this method.

My preferred method has been to start out with a single person, having a single desire. Using this simplified model, I would use this simplified universe to describe the relevant facts about being a person with a desire. I would then add another person with the potential to have a new desire, and describe the new set of relationships that arise as a result.

My question has been, is this really an appropriate way to go about a project such as this?

My standard defense of this practice has been that this is what I have found in science. When I was first taught the principles of mechanics, I was told to imagine a mass in a universe made up otherwise of massless strings and frictionless pullies. In astronomy class, I was introduced to the concepts of orbits by the idea that I should imagine a universe with one object - a planet or a sun - with another object orbiting around it. No other mass or force, no other source of gravity, existed in this simplified universe.

Consequently, my approach was to start with one person, with one desire, freed of anything else that might confuse or distort things in this universe until we could understand this most basic situation. Then, we can add complications as we approach, more and more closely, what is the case in the real world.

Is this really a good way of starting?

I am more confident now that it is an appropriate way to start.

I was originally bothered by the fact that we were starting with a description if a situation where some assumptions are false. However, this is also true of the physicist who starts with the assumption of frictionless surfaces and massless strings. It is just as true of the astronomer who starts with an assumption that the universe contains only two bodies. This is only an objection if the false assumptions are not removed by the time one gets to discussing the real world.

I was also originally bothered by the fact that we were examining morality in an imaginary world. I will argue in the pages that follow that morality is tuned to fit the real world. In fact, a primary function of morality is to tune behavior so that it produces socially useful results in the universe in which we happen to exist. If one changes certain facts about the world, we can change what is moral or immoral.

This implies that morality is not tuned to deal with situations that are rare or, better yet, never occur at all. A famous set of examples concern the question of whether it is morally permissible - even obligatory - to push an unsuspecting fat man off of a bridge against his will if one believes that his mass will otherwise stop a runaway trolly car that would otherwise kill five other people. My attitude is that we have tuned our morality to direct our behavior in circumstances we actually might confront. Morality is whether or not to take money out of a co-worker's purse or to repay the $20 one borrowed from a neighbor. It is not about pushing fat people in front of trolly cars.

So, can we have anything interesting to say about one person with one desire living alone in the universe?

Well, we are not going to make a claim that because something turns out to be immoral in this imaginary world that it is immoral in our world. Nor am I going to create stories to test our moral intuitions in circumstances that arise only in science fiction. We are going to be talking about morality in science-fiction scenarios. However, the moral claims will be claims true in those scenarios, and potentially false where the assumptions that govern that world become false.

Our purpose, then, is to get a general understanding of desires, the relationships between them, and how these relationships generate morality. We will get an understanding of the implications of changing certain assumptions. Ultimately, we will get something of an understanding of how morality works in the real world.

However, we will start with one person and one desire.

Stay tuned for Desirism Book - Part 0002: One Person, One Desire

Transgressions in Reason

I have been distracted, as of late, by the political campaign.

And I have been wasting significant amounts of time engaged in discussions on Facebook that are likely never to be read in any detail or to change anybody's mind.

It makes me wonder why I do such things.

One of the situations that I have trouble turning away from are people who use faulty reasoning. I see a person offering a conclusion and evidence in favor of that conclusion, I see that the reasoning is flawed, and so I respond.

Here is an example:

There is an argument going around that a person should vote for Bernie Sanders because, currently, he polls better against likely Republican opposition. The idea being, "If you want a Democrat in the White House, rather than a Republican, then vote for Bernie Sanders, because he is more likely to beat any likely Republican."

There is a similar argument on the Republican side of the election. This argument claims that Republicans should support John Kasich in a contested primary over Cruz or Trump because he is polling better than they are against likely Democratic competitors. However, as with Sanders, the vast majority of people do not know who John Kasich is.

There will be a billion dollar campaign to define these candidates after the party conventions. Votes will be cast based on what people think of the candidate in October and November, not on what people think about the candidate today. The only way in which polls taken today will be relevant to the November elections is to the degree that one believes that these billion-dollar focus-group driven campaigns will be ineffective.

Today, what most people know (or think they know) about Sanders is that he is white, male, and probably a good Christian (based on the fact that most white males in America are Christian and assumed to be good) who has not said or done anything outlandish. So, naturally, he is to be preferred over the likes of Ted Cruz or Donald Trump - or over John Kasich who, though also unknown, is burdened by association with Cruz and Trump.

The same that can be said about Kasich. He also has said or done nothing that has drawn a lot of negative attention. That alone makes him superior to Clinton. It is not because he has made no embarrassing statements, but the embarrassing statements of somebody so far out of the running are not news and don't get reported.

Yet, they will not remain unknown once the individual has won the nomination and the individual becomes the focus not only of the daily news cycle but of whatever campaign can be brought against him.

And that is where the problem arises.

The use of such reasoning - the willful blindness to relevant facts - represents a failure of rationality.

I would like to add that the failure is to be found in the decision to ignore what is most relevant. The question to be answered is: "How will the opposition be able to define the unknown candidate in the months ahead, and what can be done to prevent it?" The person who is interested in whether this candidate will beat the opposition in November needs to be looking, not at these polls, but at the possible claims that the opposition will be able to make and promote through advertising in the coming months.

An argument can be made that this is a moral failure as well.

Or, more precisely, two moral failures.

One of these moral failures is grounded on the fact that irrational people make mistakes - and those mistakes often cause harm, sometimes quite significant harm, to innocent people. Even rational agents cause harm from time to time, but the risks are far lower. Consequently, people generally have many and strong reason to promote an aversion to irrationality by condemning those who abandon reason in favor of irrational defense of a cherished belief. The type of condemnation they have reason to give is moral. "You ought not to do that. A good person - a properly motivated person - would not do such a thing."

The other moral failure springs from the fact that people tend to believe what they want to believe. When people abandon reason, and when people embrace propositions where the evidence suggests the proposition is false, we have an opportunity to learn something about what the agent really wants. We have a reason to discover that what the agent really has is a want that people generally have little reason to promote.

So, we ask, "Why do people make this mistake?"

People make such a mistake because they become committed to the candidate winning above all else. What matters is that the candidate wins. What ceases to matter is that the candidate deserves to win. What matters is whether one can manipulate another person to support the candidate with logical tricks and half-truths. What ceases to matter is that truth and reason itself shows that there are good reasons to support a candidate.

The person who truly cares that a candidate of a particular party win the general election would want the belief that "supporting this candidate will make it most likely that the correct party will win the general election" is true. In wanting to know that this is true, the agent would look for good evidence and strong or valid reasoning. If, instead, the agent abandons good evidence and sound reasoning, he gives us reason to suspect that he really does not care whether, "supporting this candidate will make it most likely that the correct party will win the general election" is true.

I hold that there is some merit into trying to correct the mistakes in reasoning that one encounters among one's friends and family. We do, in fact, have many and strong reasons to build a society where people are better at drawing correct conclusions from available evidence and less likely to use or to fall for deceptive practices. We have reason to expose what agents really want as opposed to what they claim to want, and to use our tools of condemnation (or praise) appropriately.

To the degree that a person participates in these types of discussions, then one should condemn irrationality as well as bad motives.

But not to the exclusion of other things a person can and should be doing.

The Duty to Confront Objections

My previous post about civil disobedience sparked some comments about the practice of allowing only those people to speak at universities that everybody can feel comfortable and safe about.

A part of my response to this is that it is not a free speech issue.

The right to freedom of speech is a right to immunity from violence of threats of violence for one's words if communicative acts. It does not imply a right to be invited anywhere to give a speech. It is not a right to demand that others view one's you-tube video or tho demand that people turn their televisions on and watch as somebody give a speech.

In other words, a right to freedom of speech is not a right to an audience, and no right to freedom of speech is violated by denying or revoking permission.

If some individual were to decide that he never wanted to see, hear, or read any opinion authored by Alonzo Fyfe, he may choose to click past anything that shows my name, turn off and delete any podcast episode I may appear in, and refuse to attend any presentation where I am speaking. That is his right. My own right to freedom of speech is not violated.

The same is true of a television station that shows only westerns, or the owner of a bar who allows only music of a particular type. Both people gave standards that they use to determine who gets on the stage. Excluding somebody because they do not fit the standards is not a violation of any right to freedom of speech - because the right to freedom of speech is not a right to such an invitation.

However, the right to freedom of speech is not the only moral principle governing the morality of affairs. Simple theft does not violate the right to freedom of speech - but it is still wrong.

Distinct from the right to freedom of speech, there is a duty on the part of each individual to test her beliefs against those of people who disagree with them.

There is no virtue in plugging one's ears and shutting one's eye to everybody who might say, "You are wrong." In fact, epistemic virtue is only found in the person who goes out of his way to find objections to her beliefs, and to deal with those objections with integrity.

I used to be a libertarian. I thought its principles were obviously true and its reasoning to be solid. We can imagine that I had decided to identify with that belief, to take it as a part of my personal identity such that to attack libertarianism would be to attack me as a person. From this, we could declare it to be as immoral to attack those libertarian beliefs as it would be to attack me as a person. This is how the argument goes, is it not?

Being unable to understand how anybody could fail to see the truth of libertarianism, I asked a friend if he knew of anything that presented an objection to these ideas.

I went to one of my libertarian friends and asked if he knew of anything that directly confronted the libertarian philosophy. He gave me an article - I do not recall the name - where the author used Hume's "Is/Ought" distinction to claim that the libertarian philosophers begin with a set of "is" premises (e.g., man is a rational animal), end with a set of "ought" statements (man ought to act rationally), and never once explained how one derives an "ought" from an "is".

After reading the article I went back to the primary sources - libertarian writings by Ayn Rand and Murry Rothbard, for example - and found just the gap that this author was pointing to.

By the end of the day, I was non longer a libertarian.

This story is not proof of anything. Instead, it aims to illustrate the value and the need for people to confront objections to their cherished beliefs. It takes an extreme amount of arrogance for anybody to claim, "I have it right. With the world filled with people with a varied opinions, I not only got everything right but I am so incapable of error that it is an insult even to bring up a potential objection."

In fact, I think I can come up with an argument that it is immoral to identify with any belief to such an extent that an attack on the belief can become an attack on the person who holds that belief.

Anyway, this is not a free speech issue. The obligation to confront objections to one's belief - the obligation to face the fact that one could be wrong and the moral duty to find out if this is the case - exists. It is important and it can be defended. However, the principle is distinct and separate from the right to freedom of speech.

A Proper Model for Civil Disobedience

An incident in New York seems to provide an excellent model for those who wish to engage in civil disobedience.

Ted Cruz was invited to speak at Bronx Lighthouse College Preparatory Academy.

Several students responded with the following email to the administration:

Hello Ms. Duggins,

A group of students will be leaving during 4th period, as act of civil disobedience in regards to the arrival of Ted Cruz to BLCPA. We have all considered the consequences of our actions and are willing to accept them. We respect you and all the staff at BLCPA as well as the expected guests. But we want you to understand that as passionate students, we have ideas and principles that should be heard and respected. This walk out isn't a reflection of our discontent with BLCPA but our opportunity to stand up for our community and future. This walk out is taking place because we as students all share a common idea.

The presence of Ted Cruz and the ideas he stands for are offensive. His views are against ours and are actively working to harm us, our community, and the people we love. He is misogynistic, homophobic, and racist. He has used vulgar language, gestures, and profanity directed at a scholar and staff members, along with harassing and posing threats to staff and scholars according to the Disciplinary Referral slip. This is not to be taken kiddingly or as a joke. We are students who feel the need and right to not be passive to such disrespect.
Here are the rules of an act of civil disobedience:

(1) It is non-violent. Nobody is threatening to disrupt or interfere with others. Specifically, nothing in the action prevents Ted Cruz from speaking or others from listening.

(2) It is announced in advance. This is not an ambush or a surprise. The students declared in advance, "We will perform this act at this time for these reasons." As such, the act of civil disobedience is, itself, an act of communication.

(3) The students announced their intentions to face the consequences of their actions. They are not trying to get away with anything. This states that any disciplinary actions will be accepted without struggle or resistance.

As a result, Lighthouse Academies cancelled the visit.

I am not commenting on the decision to cancel the visit - that is a separate question. Whatever the merits of the decision, it cannot be reasonably taken as a violation of a right to freedom of speech.

The right to freedom of speech is a right to immunity from violence or threats of violence for things said or written. There is no threat of violence. The right to freedom of speech does not imply a right to visit Bronx Lighthouse College Preparatory Academy. Nor is it violated by cancelling such a visit. Lighthouse Academies has the liberty to set its own standards concerning who may visit and that standards that apply in making that choice.

This was well handled.

Must I Really Do This? Why?

When you want to know what a philosopher’s theory of normativity is, you must place yourself in the position of an agent on whom morality is making a difficult claim. You then ask the philosopher: must I really do this? Why must I do it? And his answer is his answer to the normative question. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 1996. 18th parting, 2013.

So, what is my answer to "the normative question?"

I can understand this form of the question if we viewed morality in terms of intrinsic values, divine commands, categorical imperatives, and similar moral entities. But they don't exist.

If we take this route, then we can be moral nihilists. We can say that moral normativity does not exist and throw morality in the dust bin.

But, seriously, think of society eliminating moral concepts - dropping all talk of justice, fairness, obligation, and permission. However, that does not imply that it has to be something that fits into Korsgaard's conception of "the normative question".

In fact, the virtuous person never faces a "tough moral question". The virtuous person does only what she wants. It's just that, being virtuous, what she wants and what morality demands are the same thing. Morality said, "Do what the good person would do - what the person with good desires and lacking bad desires - would do in this circumstance." For the person who already has good desires and lacks bad desires, this reduces to "do what I would do in this circumstance." There are no morally difficult questions.

Morally difficult questions arise for those of us who are not quite so virtuous and who realize our shortcomings. We recognize a gap between what we want to do and what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would want to do. Then, the question can come up, "Why should I do what the person with good desires would do and not what I want to do?"

My next question is going to be, "Do you think you have a choice? You are going to do that which fulfills the most and strongest of your desires, given your beliefs. If you lack certain good desires and have certain bad desires, then you are not going to do what the person with good desires and lacking bad desires would do."

In other words, somewhere in there you have to have a desire - a desire to do the right thing, a desire to be a certain kind of person - to motivate your behavior or all of this questioning is for nothing.

A person with a desire to do the right thing has reason to anguish over the question, "Is this the right thing?" In the same way that a person who wants to win a game of chess has reason to anguish over the question, "Is this the best move?" The question, "Must I really do this?" if "this" is "the right thing" is "Yes, if you want to do the right thing." This is true in the same way that the answer to the question, "Must I really do this?" where "this" is the best move for winning a game of chess is, "Yes, if you want to win the game."

However, this is not a defense of subjectivism where "the right thing" is whatever one wants to do. "The right thing" is what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would do. One of the implications of it being the case that this is "the right thing" is the fact that it us the thing that people generally have reason to praise, and its absence us something that people generally have reason to condemn. There is a right answer to what "the right thing" is and one's personal beliefs bear no necessary relation to what people generally have reason to praise or condemn.

Furthermore, morality is important. Promoting desires and aversions that tend to fulfill other desires has value for the sake of all of those other desires being fulfilled. There are reasons to insist that people generally adopt these attitudes regarding theft, lying, rape, kidnapping, and murder.

Yet, the truth and importance of morality - the urgency of getting people to adopt moral attitudes - is not necessarily compatible with Korsgaard's normative question. By the time the agent has reached the point where the normative question makes sense, with the agent is moral, or she is not. To the moral person, "Why must I make this sacrifice for the sake of my child," isn't a hard question. It isn't even a question.

If there is a question, it is, "Why make people so that they act this way?" The answer to that is, "For the sake of those desires that such people tend to fulfill or, at least, prevent thwarting."

Why Be Moral?

The day will come, for most of us, when what morality commands, obliges, or recommends is hard: that we share decisions with people whose intelligence or integrity don’t inspire our confidence; that we assume grave responsibilities to which we feel inadequate; that we sacrifice our lives, or voluntarily relinquish what makes them sweet. And then the question –why? –will press, and rightly so. Why should I be moral?Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 1996. 18th parting, 2013

Seriously, it seems that morality demands quite a bit from us. Yet, even when the price is high, people often obey.

Yet, at other times, people shrug off the demands of morality at a thought. One would think that a person approaching the subject of climate change would adopt the attitude, "Given the potential harm that could be brought about, I should really understand the subject before I make a recommendation." Yet, people make recommendations concerning policy regarding climate change who clearly have made no effort to understand what they write about - using clearly invalid inferences friends from false data - on matters where their ill-informed advice will contribute to the deaths of millions. Note that this intellectual recklessness is not judged by the specific conclusion that the person draws. It is determined by judging the soundness of his premises and the validity or strength of his inferences from those premises to conclusions.

I should include in this people on the political left who assert that morality demands taking from the very wealthy to provide them with benefits, but who scream in protest at the "unfairness" when those who benefit are those in extreme poverty, whose income might have risen from an average of $750 per year to $3,500. Extreme global poverty over the past 30 years has dropped from 2 billion out of 4 billion (50%) to 700 million out of 7 billion (10%). Yet, we still have people screaming in protest that the economic benefits should have gone instead to those in the $15,000 to $50,000 income range rather than those in the $0 to $750 income range.

So, what are these demands of morality and how strongly are they motivating agents to make hard choices?

These different attitudes towards morality can exist in the same person. A person willing to risk his life in the defense of a moral principle can be just the type of person who drives home drunk from the bar without a thought.

This suggests that the so-called demands of morality might be a little too convenient. People tend to see the demands of morality pushing actually them down the very roads they already want to travel - all things considered.

This "want to travel " does not imply any type of eagerness. The soldier in the foxhole on a cold winter night certainly wishes that circumstances were such that he could be someplace else. But not so much that he could abandon his buddies in the field. Even here, the demands of morality tells the soldier to be where the soldier actually, all things considered, prefers to be.

Of course, some people do have a desire to do that which is right. If this gets combined with a belief that “X is right” then this manifests itself as a desire to do X. If the desire is strong enough it can actually tilt the balance in favor of doing X. However, this leaves open the question of whether and how the proposition, “X is right” is actually ever true – whether anybody can ever do anything that is actually, really, right.

This may sound like a cynical understanding of morality – that it only rationalizes what we want to do all things considered. However, that would be a mistake. It respects the fact that people are always going to do what they want.

(NOTE: This is not ‘egoism’, which also says that people always do what they want but adds the claim that they only want their own well-being or that which is a benefit to them. A person who only does what he wants can still want others to be safe and healthy – even to the point of sacrificing his own well-being to bring health and safety to others.)

From here, we can ask what it is we can do to shape what people wants. The problems with intellectual integrity and economic justice mentioned above rests in the fact that we have done a poor job of instilling in people as much concern with their intellectual integrity, for example, as they seem to have with being caught naked in public (for example). What we need to do is to promote a stronger aversion to intellectual recklessness. Then, the “demands of morality” regarding intellectual reckless will actually motivate a person to take care that their premises are well supported by evidence and their logic is valid.

This casts morality not as a rationalization of actions but as an evaluation of the sentiments (desires) that motivate actions.

In doing so, it answers the question, “Why be moral?” quite easily – because the moral thing is the thing that the (properly motivated agent) most wants to do.

As for the agent who is not properly motivated . . . well, that is why we call them “evil”.







Sent from my iPad

Having a Reason vs There Exists a Reason

I have often protested the fact that those who write on "reasons" fail to distinguish between "the reasons that a person has" and "reasons that exist."

Elsewhere, we make this distinction quite easily. We distinguish, for example, between the money that a person has versus the money that exists, and the job that a person has and the jobs that exist. However, in the realm of reasons, we see no such distinction.

Look at the way that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Internal and External Reasons describes 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.

"If there is . . . " and "She must have . . . " - as if one can switch between one and the other without effort.

After all of that complaining, I would like to take a look at what reasons language would look like if it respected this distinction. We could, for example, divide the Humean Theory of Reasons into two parts; a theory of having a reason versus a theory of reasons that exist.

The Humean Theory of Reasons That an Agent Has (HTRTAH): If an agent has a reason to do something, then she must have some desire that would be served by her doing it.

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

Of course, the reasons that an agent has is a subset of reasons that exist, just as the money that an agent has is a subset of the money that exists.

This may look like it is begging the question with respect to one of the issues in the topic of reasons - the possibility of external reasons. If there are more reasons that exist then there are reasons that an agent has, it seems to follow that external reasons must exist.

However, that moves too quickly. Making this distinction would hardly count as proof that reasons internalizes such as Bernard Williams are wrong. Instead, Williams would be justified in waving his hands and saying, "Of course those types of external reasons exist, but they are not the type of external reasons I am objecting to."

Williams came up with the following theory of reasons (from Williams, B., 1979. “Internal and External Reasons,” reprinted in Moral Luck, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, 101–13.):

(1) A has a reason to φ iff A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φ-ing.

This does not confuse having a reason and there exists a reason. Yet, Williams would have to agree that, if this is true, then the following is also true:

(2) B has a reason to φ iff B has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φ-ing.

And, if B has a reason to φ, then it must be the case that there exists a reason for B to φ. And if there exists a reason for B to φ, then there must be a distinction between the reasons that exist and the reasons that A has.

It will also be the case, in some circumstances, that B might have a reason for A to φ – meaning, B has a reason to bring it about that A does φ. Here, following Williams’ original formula:

(3) B has a reason for A to φ iff B has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his bringing it about that A does φ.

All of these follow from Williams’ original thesis. When Williams says that there are no external reasons, we would have to consider him guilty of the greatest epistemic negligence if we were to interpret him as implying that (2) and (3) were not the case.

The following objection can still be raised: B’s reasons to φ may well be a subset of the reasons that exist. However, it is still the case that the “reasons that exist for B to φ” (if we take this whole phrase rather than its parts) is still limited to the reasons that B has to φ. Other reasons clearly exist – the reasons that other people have. However, none of those other reasons are “reasons for B to φ”.

However, I find the phrase, “reasons for B to φ” to actually be ambiguious on this matter. In one sense, it can be understood to refer only to the reasons that B has. However, in another sense, I would argue that it is sometimes used to mean “reasons that exist for B to φ”.

In fact, I would draw the distinction between the two senses of “reasons for B to φ” precisely on the line separating practical reasons from moral reasons.

If we are talking about practical “ought” – about what a person should do in the practical sense – then we are talking about the reasons that an agent has. In this context, the “reasons for B to φ” and the “reasons that B has to φ” are the same.

If, instead, we are talking about moral “ought” – about what a person should do in the moral sense – then we are talking about the reasons that exist. Harm to others is a morally relevant reason because harm to others refers to states that others have many and strong reasons to avoid. Consequently, in a moral discussion, talk of “reasons for B to φ” is talk of reasons that exist for B to φ – which includes more than simply the reasons that B has.

This is just another place where the ambiguity between the reasons that exist and the reasons that an agent has manifests itself – where people assume that words are being used consistently when, in fact, they are not.

Regardless of what we do with the language – regardless of how we decide to interpret the phrase, “reasons for B to φ”, the reasons that exist for B to φ, as distinct from the reasons that B has to φ, is a real thing. It is a part of the world. It is something for us to discuss. It is something that we have reason to talk about regardless of whether or not we currently have the terms to talk about them.

However, I do not think that native English speakers have left this whole realm of discussion – the discussion of reasons that exist – out of our vocabulary – leaving us with only those terms that refer to the reasons that an agent has. If we were to look more closely at the distinction between practical and moral ought, we would find in this a distinction between actions based on the reasons that an agent has, and actions based on reasons that exist.

Modifying Behavior: Making People Moral

Caroline West, in "Business as Usual? The Error Theory, Internalism, and the Function of Morality" (in A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory, (Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin, eds.) presents a problem for anybody who wants to deny internalism.

And I want to deny internalism.

West first argues that a person who accepts the three propositions below cannot accept internalism. If these three claims are true, then internalism must be false.

(1) Cognitivism , the view that moral claims express beliefs that can be true or false.

(2) The Humean theory of motivation , the thesis that beliefs and desires are distinct existences, and that the motivational states are desires.

(3) The Humean theory of normative reason , which holds that reason alone mandates no revision to a subject's existing desire set, except instrumentally.

Well, I accept all three of these propositions as true; which means that I hold that internalism is false.

West then combines these three claims with an observation that I summarize as follows:

(4) The use of morality to alter behavior - to counteract limited sympathies, exploit role who can be persuaded that they have certain duties to others, cause people to consider the interests of others, and the like.

The idea is that for morality to work, we at least expect that a person’s behavior can be altered merely by convincing them of certain moral claims. Convince a serf that she is obligated to work the Earl’s lands, and the serf will then work the Earl’s lands. Convince a person that he has a duty to tell the truth in a court of law, and he will be motivated to tell the truth in a court of law.

Yet, this relationship between belief and behavior seems to require some form of internalism. It requires that there be some sense in which believing a moral claim rationally requires an agent to behave in a particular way.

If my interpretation of West's argument is correct, she must be saying that the problem exists if we also accept:

(5) Internalism is false. It is not the case that being persuaded of a moral claim rationally requires that an agent change his behavior.

The reported problem is that, once we add (5), we have to get rid of (4), or so it seems.

If, having been persuaded by the arguments against internalism, we all came to believe that there was no necessary rational connection between moral judgment, then we could not use morality in all of the ways that we presently do.

I would like to present a hypothesis for reconciling (5) with (4).

What I am going to argue is that moral statements are meant to alter behavior. However, the mechanism for doing so is not the motivational-rational implications of adopting a moral belief. The mechanism is causal, and does not involve reason or rationality at all. Specifically, moral claims contain an element of praise or condemnation, and that the purpose of this praise or condemnation is to alter desires directly. By altering desires, they alter behavior.

However, in doing this, I wish to maintain the truth of the first three propositions as well.

My first worry is that, by claiming that moral statements are statements of praise or condemnation, I will be taken as asserting some type of non-cognitivist emotivism. If this were true, then I would be contradicting item (1) on the list above, and my project would have already failed.

To confront this objection, I want to argue that moral claims both contain an element of praise or condemnation, and express beliefs that can be true or false – both at the same time.

Imagine being a teacher in a conversation with a student who is upset because he is not being allowed to take a make-up test. The student slaps his hand on the table top and shouts, “You promised!”

This statement expresses a belief that can be true or false. One of the ways in which you may answer the student is to say, “No, I primised that you could take a makeup test on Thursday. Today is Friday.” Thus, you can prove that the truth-apt component of the student’s statement is, in fact, false. The first proposition is preserved. Moral claims are not merely statements of praise or condemnation.

Yet, at the same time, the student is also expressing an attitude of condemnation. He is condemning you in specific for breaking a promise, and he is condemning promise-breakers in general (anybody who would break a promise).

It is the function of this praise or condemnation to modify behavior.

In order to explain this link, I want to speak more generally about the effects of biological reward and punishment on the brain and their effects on behavior. I will ultimately argue that the effects of praise functions as a reward and that condemnation functions as punishment – at least much of the time.

Please note, at this point I am talking about rewards and punishments in the biological sense – not the moral or legal sense. An animal presses a lever and gets a food pellet. The food pellet is, in the biological sense, a reward. There is no sense here that the animal deserved the pellet, or that it acquired the pellet as a result of good behavior. The pellet is a reward only in the sense that it is something that the animal is disposed to acquire, and that the animal is disposed to learn how to acquire.

The same is true of punishments. The same animal presses a bar and gets an electric shock. In calling this a punishment, I am not saying that the animal deserved to be shocked, or that the shock serves as some sort of retribution for pressing the bar. The shock is a punishment only in the sense that it is something that the animal is disposed to avoid, and is disposed to learn how to avoid.

There are two primary ways in which the food pellet can alter the animal’s behavior.

The animal can learn to press the button as a means to obtaining the food pellet. “If you want a food pellet, then you should press the button.” This method of altering behavior works entirely by altering beliefs. It is the belief that pressing the bar will release a food pellet, and a desire for the food pellet, and motivates the animal to press the bar.

However, rewards and punishments also have an effect on molding desires and aversions themselves.
What begins by being valued as a means to an end ultimately comes to be valued as an end itself. And that which an animal avoids as a means for avoiding some punishment (electrical shocks) he will come to avoid for its own sake, even when there are no more shocks.

I admit that I am glossing over this quite quickly. Research shows that the function of rewards and punishments alter attitudes to things other than the direct causal antecedents of that which brings the reward. For example, it also changes attitudes based on other associations. If the animal tends to collect his food in a blue room, the animal will begin to acquire a preference for being in a blue room.

A vital part of this hypothesis is that praise serves as a type of reward and condemnation serves as a type of punishment. Consequently, the praise and condemnation built into moral claims aim to work on the limbic system in the brain to alter attitudes. By altering those attitudes, they alter behavior.

It is also important to recognize that praise and condemnation have an impact far beyond those who are specifically praised or condemned. It effects those who witness the praise or condemnation, and even those who hear about the praise or condemnation. In fact, the praise or condemnation itself need not have happened – the praise or condemnation of a fictitious character can have an impact on molding the moral character of those who read or hear the stories. By altering the moral character of those in the audience, these stories alter behavior.

Once again, please note that this change in behavior does not come about through an application of reason. It comes about through an application of biological rewards (including praise) and punishments (including condemnation) on the limbic system of the brain. Consequently (and importantly) nothing in this violates provision (3) above - the provision that reason alone mandates no revision to a subject's existing desire set, except instrumentally.

I will offer it as a defense of this hypothesis that it accounts for a great many of our moral practices such as the ubiquitous use of rewards such as praise or punishments such as condemnation in making moral claims. It explains the use of rewards such as plaques, ribbons, and certificates – and the use of public award ceremonies. It accounts for the use of parables and stories to teach moral lessons. Those lessons, after all, aim not only to change beliefs, but to change desires as well.

Accepting that the purpose of morality is to change behavior only requires internalism if one assumes that the truth-bearing claim somehow is supposed to rationally require a change of behavior. If we place that work in a different mechanism instead – one that uses causation rather than rationality – then we can have a purpose of moral statements being a change in behavior without requiring that the change come from the belief itself.

On Caucuses and Voter ID Laws

Democrats tend to raise strong objections to voter ID laws.

Republicans claim that they want to impose voter ID laws because they wish to combat voter fraud. However, voter fraud is such a rare thing, for every instance of voter fraud that such a law would prevent, they block a larger number of legitimate votes. This means that the election is less representative of the public will than it would have been without the law (and with a little bit of fraud).

Of course, some argue, the very purpose of the law is to prevent the election from being representative of the public will.

There are certain segments of the population – people who are poor or sick or who lack transportation or who are elderly – who find voter ID laws far more burdensome than people of more established means. These people tend to vote for Democratic candidates. Consequently, Republicans are not actually interested in preventing voter fraud. They are more interested in keeping legitimate voters who would vote for their opponents away from the polls.

During this 2016 primary season for the Democratic Party, thirteen states and several territories will choose convention delegates using a caucus system.

Caucuses have a great deal in common with voter ID laws such that, if one thinks that voter ID laws are fundamentally unfair, then it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the caucus system is fundamentally unfair for the same reasons.

In order to participate in a primary election (as distinct from a caucus), one simply needs to vote. Many states provide a number of ways to vote so that those who are poor, elderly, sick, immobile, or suffering from severe time constraints can still cast a ballot – therefore allowing their preferences to be noted and reflected in the election results.

A caucus, on the other hand, is like a voter ID law on steroids. In order to participate in a caucus, a voter must travel to the caucus location. One has to sit there – potentially through hours of organizational paperwork and speeches. Then, one’s vote is counted.

One of the differences between voter ID laws and a caucus is that, factoring in some logistical matters, a person gets to choose on which day they will get the ID that will allow them to vote. A political caucus, on the other hand, is held on a specific day - at a specific time. Anybody who does not available at that specific time cannot participate - and the election will not reflect her will.

Another difference is that, for parents (particularly working parents), one can generally arrange for somebody to watch the children while they take care of the task of getting a voter ID or choose a day when the children are otherwise occupied or where they can be conveniently brought along. However, when it comes to a political caucus, both parents have to attend at the same time. If they find a third party to arrange to watch the children, then, unless that third party belongs to a different political party (at least in closed caucuses), then that third party still represents somebody who cannot attend the caucus.

Most caucuses offer some sort of child supervision during the caucus process. However, this does not change the fact that it can be a substantial burden to get the kids bundled up and to take them to the caucus – where, perhaps, they do not want to be. Nor does this provide any help if any of the children should have some event scheduled to start or end while the caucus is ongoing.

In other words, parents will tend to find the burdens of participating in a caucus system to be significantly greater than the burdens of voting. This will result in lower participation.

So far, in this primary cycle, voter participation for caucus states (for which I could find data) has average 9.33% of eligible voters. Whereas voter participation in states that held primary elections has been 31.53%. This means that a state that adopts a caucus system rather than a primary voting system puts up barriers that about 70% of those who would have otherwise voted find too large to cross.

This then raises the question of the degree to which these barriers disadvantage any of the candidates. This is the same as asking whether the type of voter more likely to be found in the 30% that do vote rather than the 70% that do vote are more likely to support any of the candidates. For all candidates for which this is true, we can say that those candidates have picked up extra delegates because of rules that prevented their competitor’s supporters from participating.

I wish to remind the reader, the question of the degree to which the caucus system disadvantages candidates is exactly the same question as the question of whether a voter ID system disadvantages candidates, and whether that should be regarded as a problem.

Rather than consider a number of potential responses to these concerns, I can handle most of them simply by pointing out that the defense of the caucus would be just as useful as a defense of voter ID laws. A logically and morally consistent person doesn’t use an argument in one case that she would reject in a relevantly similar case.

Other arguments may exist and, indeed, there may be good reason for a caucus. Yet, those good reasons, if they exist, must be counted as good reason to give some candidates more delegates than others by adopting rules that prevented, to a greater degree, voters who would have supported an opposition candidate from voting. This fact remains true of the caucus system, even if one can find good reasons for it.

Misinterpreting J.L. Mackie

This is quite uncharacteristic of me.

In the last week, I have taken one of my philosophical ideas, written it up as best as I could, and emailed them to certain academic philosophers who have written on the subject asking them if the argument makes sense.

It is nothing earth-shattering. It is the thesis that, for 40 years, philosophers have been misinterpreting the error theory of J.L. Mackie. It is an argument that can be expressed without going off into volumes of text (which would be a huge imposition on the recipient). Yet, it does touch upon a number of ideas that I present in this blog.

What I am attempting to demonstrate is that a standard interpretation of J.L. Mackie's error theory is mistaken.

That mistake probably originates with Simon Blackburn in the article, "Errors and the Phenomonology of Values" (in Morality and Objectivity: A Tribute to J.L. Mackie, Ted Honderich (ed.)).

Blackburn was puzzled by the fact that Mackie spent the first part of his book, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong arguing that all moral claims are false. Then, in the second half of his book, Mackie went on to make a bunch of moral claims as if they were true. In other words, even though Mackie argued that all moral claims are false, he went on to conduct his moral business as usual in the second half of his book.

Blackburn, in pointing out this problem, explained what he thought Mackie should have done.

If a vocabulary embodies an error in some use it would be better if either it, or a replacement vocabulary, were used differently. We could better describe this by saying that our old, infected moral concepts or ways of thought should be replaced by ones which serve our legitimate needs, but avoid the mistake.

Blackburn, however, denies that Mackie did this.

Yet Mackie does not say what such a way of thought would look like, and how it would differ in order to show its innocence of the old error. On the contrary, in the second part of the book he is quite happy to go on to express a large number of straightforward moral views… All of these are expressed in the old, supposedly infected vocabulary.

I want to argue that Mackie did exactly what Blackburn said he should have done, and not what Blackburn said Mackie did.

To begin with, Blackburn gave Mackie a choice to either change the existing vocabulary or to replace it. To illustrate the second option, Blackburn suggested replacing the term “moral” and its cognates with “shmoral” and its cognates.

However, Mackie selected the first option. He opted to use the same words, but to use them in different ways.

He illustrated the way that he was going to reform moral concepts by using the concept of an “atom” as an example.

The fact that the word 'atom', as used in nineteenth-century physics, had as a part of its meaning 'indivisible particle of matter' did not in itself, even in the nineteenth century, compel anyone to believe that there are indivisible material particles. One could either refrain from using the term 'atom' in affirmative statement or, as physicists have subsequently done, use the term with other parts of its meaning only, dropping the requirement of indivisibility. (Mackie: p. 100).

Specifically, the term "atom" originally meant "without parts" or "uncuttable". Physicists were studying helium, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms under this definition – assuming that these smallest bits of each element could not be further divided into parts.

However, as physics progressed, physicists began to suspect that the smallest pieces of an element actually had parts – that they were made up of electrons, neutrons, and protons. It was at least theoretically possible to “split” what people had been calling atoms. However, that meant splitting what, by definition, is that which could not be split.

Ultimately, physicists dropped “without parts” from the meaning of the term “atom” and simply used the term to refer to the smallest pieces of an element – the smallest bits of matter that still could be identified as hydrogen, helium, gold, carbon, iron, and the like.

This did not produce any great crisis for physicists. With this slight change, they were able to continue to go along studying atoms. However, this was not “business as usual”. From that point on it was no longer the case that atoms, by definition, could not be broken up into parts.

Similarly, Mackie is going to continue to use the same moral terms. However, he is going to alter the meaning of those terms. Specifically, he will replace a meaning that contains an false claim of intrinsic prescriptivity and put in its place a term that lacks this error.

This brings us to the next question: How do we distinguish between error-filled “moralizing” and error-free “shmoralizing”

I think we can find that distinction in Mackie's chapter on universalizability.

In Chapter 4 of Ethics, Mackie distinguishes three stages of universalizability for moral claims. The argument here is that what distinguishes "moralizing" from "shmoralizing" is that the former uses Stage 2 universalizability, while the latter employs Stage 3 universalizability.

Mackie described Stage 2 universalizability as follows:

In this second stage of universalization, we look for prescriptive maxims that we are prepared not only to apply to all persons (groups of persons, nations, and so on) alike as things are, but also to go on applying no matter how individuals change their mental and physical qualities and resources and social status. And we must allow not only for changes which may, as a matter of practical, causal, possibility come about, starting from where we are, but also for differences of condition and inversions of role that could not possibly occur, and which it may take a considerable effort even to imagine. (Mackie: p. 90)

This is to be distinguished from Stage 3 universalizability, which he described as follows:

In this third stage we are taking some account of all actual desires, tastes, preferences, ideals, and values, including ones which are radically different from and hostile to our own, and consequently taking some account of all the actual interests that anyone has, including those that arise from his having preferences and values that we do not share . . . We must . . . look not for principles which can be wholeheartedly endorsed from every point of view, but for ones which represent an acceptable compromise between the different actual points of view. (Mackie: p. 93).

He then explains the way that Stage 2 universalizability relates to the practice of taking moral values as intrinsically prescriptive properties, and the way that Stage 3 universalizability avoids this error.

This second sort of universalizability is linked with the fact . . . that moral judgments commonly include a claim of objectivity. The claim that some difference is objectively morally relevant in a certain context is not easy to reconcile with the admission that, while it appears relevant from one interested point of view, it does not appear relevant from the point of view of someone whose situation and qualities are different. By contrast, the claim to objectivity has no tendency to support the third stage of universalization. Quite the reverse. It is all too easy to believe that the objective validity of one's own ideals provides an overwhelmingly strong reason for taking no account at all ideals that conflict with them, or of interests associated with including rival ideals (Mackie: pp. 96-7).

In other words, “shmorality” is not “business as usual”. “Business as usual” would involve continuing with the practice of engaging in Stage 2 universalizability. However, this level of universalizability embeds the false assumption that “objective values” (a.k.a. intrinsic prescriptivity) exists. We avoid this error by dropping intrinsic prescriptivity from the meaning of our moral terms and adopting the new practice of Stage 3 universalizability.

So, when it comes to error-free moralizing, Blackburn’s claim that “Mackie does not say what such a way of thought would look like, and how it would differ in order to show its innocence of the old error," is false. It would look like Stage 3 universalizability, and it denies that objects of evaluation had intrinsic prescriptivity.

Blackburn wrote that, "...in the second part of the book he is quite happy to go on to express a large number of straightforward moral views… All of these are expressed in the old, supposedly infected vocabulary." This is false. Those moral views are expressed in the error-free vocabulary of Stage 3 universalizability.

If I may beg your indulgence, I think I can further support this conclusion by approaching it from another direction.

I think that there might be some confusion generated by the fact that Mackie talks about two types of objectivity in his book.

There is a type of objectivity that involves a claim of intrinsic prescriptivity. This is the type of "objective value" that Mackie says does not exist.

However, there is - at the same time - a type of objectivity that can be captured by the phrase, "Is such as to satisfy requirements of the kind in question," (Mackie: p. 55).

"Requirements", in turn, is cashed out in terms of desires or interests. From Mackie:

'Good', I think, always imports some reference to something like interests or wants, and I intend 'requirements' to be read in this sense, not so colourlessly as to be almost equivalent to 'criteria'. (Mackie: p. 58)

This type of objectivity is real.

However, this type of objectivity is not the type that Mackie is talking about when he says that there are no objective values. From Mackie:

Something may be called good simply in so far as it satisfies or is such as to satisfy a certain desire; but the objectivity of such relations of satisfaction does not constitute in our sense an objective value. (Mackie: p. 24)

Mackie writes about the “objectivity of such relations” as if they are real things. However, these real things are not currently built into the meanings of moral terms.

But he does not say that they could not be.

I understand Mackie as wanting to get rid of objective values in the sense of getting rid of intrinsic prescriptivity (Blackburn’s "morality") and replacing it with objective values in the sense of "being such as to satisfy the desires and interests in question" (Blackburn’s "shmorality").

The switch, then, from "moralizing" to "schmoralizing" is a switch from a morality that defends its moral evaluations of character traits or principles in terms of intrinsic prescriptivity, to a morality that defends its moral evaluations of character traits or principles in terms of "being such as to satisfy the desires and interests in question".

As I see it, David Hume's moral theory provides a model by which we may understand Mackie's "schmorality". A character trait, in Hume's system, is to be evaluated according to whether it is agreeable or useful to the agent (giving the agent reasons to promote it), and whether it is agreeable or useful to others (giving others reason to promote it). It has no intrinsic goodness or badness.

Similarly, we find in Mackie's account of stage-3 universalizability:

In this third stage we are taking some account of all actual desires, tastes, preferences, ideals, and values, including ones which are radically different from and hostile to our own, and consequently taking some account of all the actual interests that anyone has, including those that arise from having preferences and values that we do not share. (Mackie: p. 95)

Once again, “shmorality” is not “business as usual”. “Business as usual” is objectivity in the form of intrinsic prescriptivity. “Shmorality”, in contrast, is objectivity in the form of “being such as to fulfill the desires or interests in question.”

I am not saying that Mackie is right in all of this. I am only saying that this seems to be a better interpretation of Mackie than the "business as usual" interpretation. Once we understand what Mackie actually wanted to say, then we can go on and ask whether or not he was right when he said it.

Caroline West: The Relationship between Motivation and Moralilty

Now, where did I leave off when I was viciously assaulted by illness?

(Actually, I had been ill since mid-January, but surrendered to it this past week as I just didn't want to spend the energy thinking for a while.)

But, there's a need to get back to work.

Now, when I last left off, I was reading Caroline West's article, "Business as Usual? The Error Theory, Internalism, and the Function of Morality"  (in "Business as Usual? The Error Theory, Internalism, and the Function of Morality," in A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory, (Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin, eds.).

West provides us with the following definition of internalism:

[I]t is a conceptual truth about morality that an agent who judges that she morally ought to φ will, insofar as she is rational, be prima facie motivated to φ.

She then argues that the function of morality is such that it it presumes that internalism is true.

She provides five different examples of the function of morality.

(1) Counter-acting limited sympathies. Morality is used to foster cooperation among individuals with limited sympathies in a world with scarce resources so that we may obtain the benefits of that cooperation.

(2) Oppression. Morality is used to keep the serfs and workers at their jobs by informing them that they have certain duties to their lords and masters.

(3) Emancipation - or to prevent oppression. Morality is used by people to demand a right to equal treatment.

(4) Overcoming weakness of will. Realizing one's moral obligations to the other people in the family might - just might - provide a little extra incentive on the part of the agent not to drink excessively or gamble the rent money.

(5) Persuasion: Morality is used by people to cause other people to act differently. It is unique from law, which provides an agent with motivation in the form of avoiding sanctions or obtaining rewards. It's purpose is to motivate an agent to act differently even in the absence of rewards or punishments.

What we actually have here is five different expressions of a single purpose - to get an agent to act differently. The purpose of morality is to influence behavior.

If this is the purpose of morality, then it simply makes no sense that morality would have this purpose unless there is some intimate link between adopting a moral belief or judgment and behavior. The reason it makes sense to alter another person's behavior by getting them to adopt a particular moral attitude is precisely because, "it is a conceptual truth about morality that an agent who judges that she morally ought to φ will, insofar as she is rational, be prima facie motivated to φ." When we get an agent to adopt a certain judgment, we can get her to alter her behavior.

In these posts discussing J.L. Mackie's error theory, we see that Mackie's objection to this is that it postulates the existence of an entity where there is little or no reason to believe that such an entity exists. We are talking about an entity whereby a judgment that "I ought to φ" provides an agent with motivation to φ. But still we have to ask the question of what it takes for a judgment of the form, "I ought to φ" to be true. Is it true merely because it is believed - in which case the agent who things that he should rid the world of all Jews really should rid the world of all Jews. Or is it true of only certain things? If it is true of only certain things, then how did they get that property and how are we to know we have found it?

What we need is a way to link moral judgment to motivation that does not involve any type of bizarre metaphysical entities.

I accept the premise that moral claims intend to alter behavior. However, it does not do so by using self-motivating moral judgments that lack any coherent account of how that can be true or justified.

Instead, moral judgments contain within them an element of praise or condemnation. Praise and condemnation work on the limbic section of the brain to alter desires; promoting desires that tend to bring about what is praised and aversions that tend to avoid that which is condemned. This is a purely determined process, not unlike the ways in which heroine and nicotine can alter motivation. There is no rationality involved - individuals are not reasoned into their moral attitudes. Nor are there any judgments to be accepted or rejected. Instead, agents simply acquire certain likes (a desire to help those in need) and dislikes (an aversion to taking the property of others without their consent).

There is reason and judgment involved in deciding what to reward and punish - what to praise and condemn. People can be rational - or irrational - in making these choices. In this, the situation is much like that of having a flat tire on the car. The concept of rationality is applied to the process of determining if there are reasons to change the flat tire and, if so, how to go about it. However, all the reasoning in the world will not get the flat tire changed. Similarly, rationality is used to determine what desires and aversions to promote, but all of the reasoning in the world will not cause those desires and aversions to change.

This account makes use of entities no more bizarre than reward/praise and punishment/condemnation, their effects on the limbic system on the brain in altering desires, and the standard relationships between an agent's desires and her intentional actions. We can set aside the judgments that one ought to φ that we can neither explain nor justify. And with it, we can set aside internalism.

Freedom of Speech and Interrupting a Presentation

It seems that a lot of people are unclear as to the requirements regarding the moral right of freedom of speech.

The right to freedom of speech is a moral right against violence or threats of violence as a response to words or communicative actions (e.g., sign language, pictures, or cartoons). The main reason for this moral right is that truth has value, and truth should be able to stand up to objections on its merits. It is primarily falsehood that needs to resort to violence in its defense.

This moral prohibition applies to everybody. Some people assert that it is a restriction only placed on government. However, nobody - no individual, no organization, no company - has a right to respond to mere words with violence or threats of violence.

A right to freedom of speech is not a right to enter somebody else's property or private space and start yelling. If there is a violent response to such an action (e.g., fine, imprisonment) it is not a violation of freedom of speech. It is a legitimate response to trespass or to disturbing the peace.

For example, going into a movie theater and shouting protests at the screen when others have come to watch the movie not protected by a right to freedom of speech. An individual has a right to write up a critical review and get it published, or even to shout their protests outside of the theater where it will not disturb those who came to watch the movie. These are legitimate. Entering the theater and disrupting the presentation is not.

The same principle applies to attending a public event for the purpose of shouting down the speaker.

Let us take, for example, an speaking event and a protestor who decides to interrupt and shout her protests for one minute.

There is a principle in morality that says that what it is permissible for one person to do, it is permissible for everybody to do. Almost every moral system has some version of the statement, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It is found in the expression, "How would you like it if everybody did what you did?" In Kantian terms, it can be expressed as, "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction."

So, the person who stands and shouts for a minute is saying that each and every person in the auditorium may stand and deliver a similar one-minute speech. If we assume that the audience has 1000 members, then that is going to be over 16 hours of shouting - assuming that the principle being used involves limiting each individual to 1 minute of uninterrupted shouting.

If one is not willing to wait patiently while every other person takes their minute to shout about something that concerns them, then one is not doing unto others what one would have others do to them. One is acting on maxims one cannot will to be a universal law.

Another way to express this objection is to note that such a person is claiming a special right for themselves that she denies to everybody else. She is saying, in effect, "I am morally superior to all of you; you are all beneath me. My superior moral status gives me rights that none of you have."" Such an act is a paradigm expression of arrogance and self-importance.

Again, there is no objection to writing up a protest, or to arrange one's own meeting where one can express one's own opinion (again, without individuals in the audience shouting their protests). There is no objection to protesting outside of where the speech is being given. The objection is to providing an interruption - the equivalent of standing up and shouting at the screen in the middle of a movie.

Now, I am not a Kantian, nor do I accept moral clichés. However, desirism provides a very similar conclusion.

Instead of, "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction," desirism says, "Act as a person with good desires would act, where good desires are those desires people generally have many and strong reasons to promote as universal desires."

Respect for the speaker and for those who came to watch her speak counts as a desire that people generally have many and strong reason to promote as a universal desire. It is something even the person who would interrupt the speech has a reason to promote as a universal desire since, without it, such speeches would be impossible.

This means that a lack of respect for the speaker and the members of the audience who came to hear the speech is something that people generally have many and strong reasons to respond to with condemnation, and even punishment. It is something that gives people generally good reason to identify the speaker as a selfish and arrogant - as somebody who thinks of herself as being superior to and above others and, correspondingly, thinks of others (and is willing to treat them as) lesser beings.

Which, in fact, accurately describes such a person.

Internalism: A Pernicious False Belief

Internalism not only represents a false belief.

Internalism is one of those pernicious false beliefs that gets people killed - or brings them to suffer other harms. In this, it is like the belief that vaccines cause autism, or the belief that we can dump unlimited amounts of CO2 and CH4 into the atmosphere and not change the climate.

Caroline West defines "the most popular version of internalism" as:

[I]t is a conceptual truth about morality that an agent who judges that she morally ought to φ will, insofar as she is rational, be prima facie motivated to φ. (in "Business as Usual? The Error Theory, Internalism, and the Function of Morality," in A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory, (Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin, eds.)

Why is this a pernicious false belief?

Because, if it is the case that "X is wrong" implies "I am motivated not to do X", then it follows that if "I am motivated to do X" then "X is not wrong."

It effectively create a morality in which whatever a person is motivated to do is morally right, and the only things that are wrong are things the agent actually does not want to do.

Granted, internalism actually talks about what a person would be motivated to do if they were rational. However, this will not eliminate the problem. It is rational for the rapist to kill his victim. It is rational for the person who can take money or merchanise without being caught to take it. It is rational for a person who can get away with a beneficial lie or successfully bully a rival to lie or successfully bully a rival. One can draw no necessary connection between what it is rational for a person to do and what is right.

West admits that internalism is in conflict with a set of three other beliefs (all of which, I would be willing to argue, are true).

(1) Cognitivism, the view that moral claims express beliefs that can be true or false.

(2) The Humean theory of motivation, the thesis that beliefs and desires are distinct existences, and that the motivational states are desires.

(3) The Humean theory of normative reason, which holds that reason alone mandates no revision to a subject's existing desire set, except instrumentally.

NOTE: I usually present the third proposition as, "There is no rationality of desires-as-ends. There is only a rationality of desires-as-means. This is because what we desire as a means is a combination of what we desire as an end plus beliefs, and beliefs can be evaluated rationally.

On this account, if moral claims are beliefs, and only desires motivate, and there is no rationality of desires-as-ends, then there is a disconnect between moral beliefs and motivation.

However, what is more important is that there is a disconnect between moral truth and motivation.

Internalists try to get around this problem by arguing that there is a set of beliefs called "judgments" (which includes moral beliefs) that are motivating and can be evaluated for rationality.

In fact, no such entities exist. This is as much a fiction as postulating angels to explain what keeps the planets in motion.

Here is where that perniciousness comes in again. If the belief that something is morally obligatory provides motivation to do it, then the fact that one does not feel motivated suggests that it is not obligatory. We can determine our moral obligations by looking at what motivates us and, by good fortune, the only things that morality prohibits us from doing are those things we are not motivated to do anyway.

Contrast this with the view that that a person does not determine right from wrong by looking at what one is motivated to do or to refrain from doing. What determines right from wrong is, in some important way, what helps or harms others. Because it is the case that a person can want to do things harmful to others, and want not to do things that would help others, looking to one's own motivation is a very poor way to determine what is right and wrong.

And, yet, a lot of people do this. They look first at what they want to do or what they do not want to do. They then rationalize what they want to do or not doing what they do not want to do. That is, they look for some argument, however unsound it may be, that seems to support the conclusion that what they want to do is right and what they are not morally required to do that which they do not want to do.

This points to where the internalist's "moral judgment" defense fails. The internalist has to argue that there is something about "harm to others" that it is necessarily irrational for an agent to cause and rational for an agent to prevent. Now, let's look at the lion or any other predator or parasite and try to find a way to argue that predators and parasites are necessarily irrational. Just as evolution creates predators and parasites in nature, it has created predatory and parasitical attitudes in us.

Internalism is not only a false belief and a pernicious belief, it is also very, very common. The consequence is a lot of people end up getting hurt, and some of them get killed (or worse).

In her article, West will go on to argue that the various functions of morality (she will identify five) all presuppose some sort of internalism. All of these involve various ways in which moral claims are supposed to alter behavior in some way.

In a follow-up post, I will look at her argument and say, "No, these functions do not suggest any type of internalism. These functions suggest the use of rewards such as praise and punishments such as condemnation to mold malleable desires."

Morality is not concerned with what motivates the rational agent. Morality is concerned with what would motivate the rational agent with good desires and lacked bad desires. "Good desires" are those that people generally have reason to promote, while "bad desires" are those that people generally have reason to inhibit.

This will get us away from this pernicious, false doctrine that a person can determine their obligations and prohibitions by looking at their own motivations.

Realism? Non-Cognitivism? Emotivism? The Case for "All of the Above".

Are you a moral realist? Anti-realist? Cognitivist or non-cognitivist? Emotivist? Prescriptivist? Error-theorist? Objectivist? Absolutist?

How about "All of the above"?

It turns out that whenever anybody claims to be one of these things to be the accurate account of morality they (um . . . we . . . for I have done this, though I am now nearly certain that it is a mistake) are making an assumption that may not be true.

The assumption is that there is universal agreement on the meaning and use of moral terms. We all have to be using moral terms as realists for realism to be true. We all have to be using moral terms as emotivism if emotivism is true.

If, instead, different people use moral terms in different ways, then it is quite possible for one person to be an emotivist, another to be a cognitivist, and yet another to be an error theorist.

J.L. Mackie, in his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, makes this mistake, and then (unknowingly, I believe) provides an account that shows why it might be mistaken.

Mackie starts with the idea that all moral claims are false. He argues that (1) all moral statements claim that the object of evaluation contains an intrinsic prescriptivity, and (2) intrinsic prescriptivity does not exist, so (3) all moral claims are false.

In saying that all moral claims are false he is saying that there is nearly universal agreement in the use of moral terms such that they always point to intrinsic prescriptivity.

What he intends to do about this is to replace contemporary morality with a new morality. He argues for this by pointing to the way that scientists replaced an old definition of atom ("without parts") with a new definition ("the smallest piece of a given element, but which still is made up of yet smaller parts - electrons, neutrons, and protons"). This move did not harm chemistry at all, so a comparable move should not harm morality.

Mackie wants to replace this defective system of morality with a new system. In this new system, we recognize that there is no intrinsic prescriptivity and we universalize our moral principles across different interests. It is a system where no interest is taken as "intrinsically correct" or "intrinsically incorrect."

Let's assume that Mackie is correct to this point. He introduces this new form of morality and, slowly, people adopt it. Let us assume that we reach a point where 80 percent of the people are using moral terms in the old way where all moral claims are false, and 20% of the population has adopted the new way where some moral claims are objectively true - but where moral claims are not claims about intrinsic prescriptivity.

At this point, Mackie would have created a society where nobody can claim that moral realism is true or false. Moral realism would apply to the 20% of the people who, by "moral", are using Mackie's new definition. Meanwhile, "anti-realism" (in the form of an error theory) still applies to the other 80% who, by "moral", are still making claims about intrinsic prescriptivity.

Anybody who asserts that moral realism is the one and true account of morality, or that error theory is the one true and accurate account of morality, would be wrong. To make either assertion is to make the false assumption that 100% of the people are using the term "moral" the same way.

The thing is, we might already be in a situation where the claim that 100% of the people are using the term "moral" with the same meaning is false.

Simon Kirchin says in "A Tension in Moral Error Theory" ( (in A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory, (Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin, eds.), 2010)  that the fact that moral theorists come up with so many different accounts of morality suggests that people are not in 100% agreement on the use of meaning of moral terms. Our moral language is a mess - and in that mess it would be false to claim that there is the type of agreement necessary to say that "realism" or "emotivism" or "cognitivism" or any of the other views is true of all of morality.

So, the next time one is invited to defend moral realism, or relativism, or Mackie's error theory, or any of a number of similar positions, perhaps the best and most accurate response is to say, "I can't. Moral language is simply too varied, ambiguous, and vague to allow us to defend any one of these theories."

Sanders and the Global Poor

With primary elections in several states tomorrow, it is my hope that Clinton pulls at least a little further ahead of Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Sanders threatens such extreme harm to so many people that I cannot see any way for the good he would do to come close to justifying the harm done. Some of us cannot shrug with such indifference at reducing hundreds of millions of people to absolute squalor.

We see more evidence of Sanders' utter disregard for the world's poor and his ignorance of economics in his meeting with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Sanders wants to block immigrants from coming into the United States because, he says, it would lower wage rates and the Koch brothers would profit.

First, Sanders shows not an iota of concern for those being blocked from these jobs. He simply dismisses them, as if they are mere things. This is an attitude I find utterly contemptible (and which is shared by a depressingly large number of Sanders' supporters).

Second, Sanders' views on immigrant labor show a blatant contradiction. If Sanders were a normal  politician, I would say that he was contradicting himself to try to get votes from different groups. However, in this case, I think the more accurate description is that Sanders has no idea what he is talking about.

If we accept Sanders' argument for not letting additional workers into the country, then we should adopt Trump's plan to round up the immigrants that are here and throw them out of the country. After all, if new laborers would lower wages and allow the Koch brothers to profit, then the 11 million workers already here should be thought of as depressing wages and allowing the Koch brothers to profit as well.

However, the prevailing view is that those 11 million workers cannot be deported without doing severe harm to the economy. They are, in other words, providing a significant net benefit to the American economy. If this is the case, then there is reason to expect that additional workers would provide a significant net benefit as well.

In the same way that the 11 million immigrants are a net benefit to the American economy, the people lifted out of squalor around the world and made a part of the global work force are a net benefit to the global economy. These people are purchasing food, basic medical care, clothing, and shelter. In doing so, they are feeding and growing these industries - industries that serve the world's poor - industries that will suffer themselves when Sanders throws the local workers out of their local factories.

Note that, in making this argument, I am accepting Sanders' premise that these people are mere things who have value only insofar as they provide a benefit to others. The argument above claims that they do, in fact, provide a benefit to others.

We should be adding to this the fact that these are human beings, and their welfare is important quite independent of the degree to which they are useful to others. Over the past 30 years, the percentage of people in the world living on less than $2.00 per day has dropped from 50% to less than 20%. In absolute terms, we went from a time when 2 billion out of 4 billion people lived in absolute poverty, to a time when 1 billion out of nearly 7 billion live in absolute poverty.

I look at these facts, and I go, "Really? Wow! That's great!" I truly cannot think of any greater accomplishment in human society - ever.

This is a real improvement to the lives of real human beings. This matters. Those people are not mere 'things' whose only value comes from being a benefit to others.

The President of the United States has a great deal of power when it comes to trade. This means we can't elect Sanders as President and hope that a more intelligent and compassionate Congress will block his more destructive ideas. Sanders can do far more harm to far more of the world's poor far faster than anything that can come from, for example, the Republican denial of climate change.

Sanders' still brags about 25 years of opposition to the very plans that have brought about these changes. Yet, he refuses to even mention these benefits. He refuses to talk about those people as anything other than "potential job stealers". That is all they are to him. And that is all they are to many of his followers.

If the Koch brothers and others profit from this, then, instead of shutting down the systems that have provided such a benefit, we can keep those systems in place and tax those concentrations of wealth instead. With that tax money, we can provide even more benefits to the 1 billion people still in extreme poverty. We can provide food, clean water, basic medical care, capital improvements, training, and education.

Furthermore, let us not pretend that everybody has gained as a result of these policies. Some have been made worse off. We should be using some of that money to help those who are harmed - to smooth the transition to a world where fewer people live in extreme poverty.

It is for the sake of those hundreds of millions of people that Sanders and many of his followers care nothing about that I hope that Clinton will pull further ahead of Sanders tomorrow.  The human suffering that would come from a Sanders victory is too great to shrug off.