Sidgwick on Motives

I have survived the first week of class.

I have nothing of substance to report in the Environmental Philosophy class yet, since we devoted our first day to introductions and paperwork rather than philosophical argument. I can report that as somebody who does not handle interpersonal interaction well, this class will be stressful.

Modal Logic is not going to lend itself to discussion. I listen to lectures. I do my homework, I pass the class. meet my logic requirement.

That leaves the ethics pro seminar.

It will provide me with an opportunity to present a paper in a seminar-like setting at the end of the year. This is one of the academic skills I am missing.

The first three weeks of the class is going to be on Sidgwick. However, I will not be using my paper on Sidgwick vs. Hume on reasons that I wrote for the class since the relevant chapter is not among the assigned readings. Instead, I will produce a paper on Sidgwick's objections to the idea that motives are the proper object of moral evaluation.

Sidgwick explicitly rejected the idea that morality primarily concerns the evaluation of motives, and that the evaluation of actions is derived from a prior evaluation of motives.

To make his point, he identified a number of cases where our moral judgment of an action deviates from our judgment of the motives behind that action. Specifically, he identifies cases where:

1. An agent with bad motives does what he ought to do.
2. An agent with good motives nonetheless performs a wrong or immoral action.
3. An agent is morally blamed for consequences that did not touch his motives at all.

All of these conclusions seem to raise significant problems for the thesis that we evaluate motives first and, from that, derive an evaluation of actions.

For the first type of case, Sidgwick calls up an example from Jeremy Bentham about a prosecutor who is motivated to convict an accused defendant out of malice towards the accused. We may say that the prosecutor has a prima facie obligation to recuse herself. However, assume that she is the sole person capable of taking the case. Sidgwick admits that the prosecutor could be blamed where malice motivated her to perform harmful actions that her duty as a prosecutor would not require. However, the existence of malicious acts done out of malice does not disprove the possibility of right actions also done from malice.

For the second type of case, Sidgwick uses an example of a man who "tells a lie to save a parent’s or a benefactor’s life." We can easily imagine a case when telling a lie to save a life is not wrong, such as the paradigm case of lying to the Nazi soldiers about the Jews hiding in the attic. However, these types of cases do not discredit Sidgwick's point. We can also imagine a case of a person who commits perjury to get his father acquitted of a crime. His good motive - the affection of a child for a parent - does not make his act a right act.

In the third type of case, Sidgwick pointed out, "[Y]ou’ll agree that we can’t evade responsibility for any foreseen bad consequences of our acts by the plea that we didn’t want them for themselves or as means to some further end (p. 94)." It seems that the paradigm case that fits this description is that of negligence. The drunk or texting driver had no motive to brutally slaughter the children in a young family and maim the parents can be considered an evil person. All she wanted to do was get home and go to bed. Wanting to go home and go to bed is not a bad motive. But if her drinking or texting causes a fatal accident, she will have done something wrong.

From these three types of cases - and we can probably come up with countless examples of each - it seems reasonable to conclude that our moral intuitions do not evaluate actions based on an evaluation of the motives behind those actions.

However, there are other ways to relate actions to motives.

The type of motive-based theory that Sidgwick was considering was one like that put forward by his contemporary, James Martineau. Martineau held that God gave us intuitive knowledge of the moral value of various springs of action. These springs of action have a ranking - some were better (or higher) than others. When two springs of action suggested different actions, the right thing to do (according to Martineau) would be that action motivated by the higher motive.

As we can see from the examples above, right action can sometimes spring from bad motives, and wrong action can sometimes spring from good motives or no motive at all.

Motives

However, there is a different relationship between right action and good motive that Sidgwick did not consider. This is a variation of the virtue theory that Rosalind Hursthouse presented. Hursthouse defined right action as "that action that a virtuous person would characteristically do." We only need to modify Hursthouse's account slightly to say that the right act is the act that a person with good desires would characteristically do, and we have a motive-based account that can handle Sidgwick's three cases.

In the first type of case, there is a way in which a properly motivated prosecutor would prosecute the accused, and that defines what the malicious prosecutor should do. In discussing the impossibility of a person acting on two motives – duty and malevolence – choosing the motive from which to act, Sidgwick says that we can tell when the prosecutor steps out of line by noting when he performs an action that malice might motivate but duty would not. We see this same distinction to be found in acts that a person with good motives would perform and those she would not perform.

In the second type of case, we see a situation where a person, despite family affections, is expected to have a stronger aversion to committing perjury. Note that perjury is a special case of lying. We assume that a person is put under oath when there is a special need to know the truth of a matter. The ritual of taking an oath or affirming may be understood as serving the task of triggering this aversion. We can understand that the witness may also have personal affections that give him a reason to lie, but this family affection – though a good motive – is not good enough.

The third type of case, exemplified by acts of negligence where a person did not intend to bring about an effect that was – or, at least, should have been – foreseen can be seen as examples of an agent lacking a good motive. The drunk driver ought to have been more concerned about others. In other words, the virtuous person would have had such an aversion to harming others that he would have taken precautions. Many cases of wrong action may be understood as lacking a virtue rather than having a vice.

In these cases, actions are not judged by their consequences. Nor are they judged by the motives of the person who performed them. They are judged on whether a person with good motives would have performed them. A person with bad motives may perform the same action and it still counts as a right action. An act (e.g., of perjury) may have produced better consequences but still counts as wrong but the aversion to dishonesty prevents the person from performing such an act.

Please note that a person with an aversion to committing perjury would refrain from an act of perjury “because I would be committing perjury” and potentially for no other reason. This would be true in the same way that a person would refrain from holding his hand over an open flame “because it hurts”l we would then look at the reason - the motive – and evaluate it as a good reason or a bad reason.

This then takes us to the question of what counts as a good reason/motive.

I will address that question later.

Ventriloquists vs. Translators

In my readings for my environmental philosophy class, I have been reading Thinking Like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy After the End of Nature.

Chapter 6 in this book talks about the idea that nature talks to us. It calls to us. If we listen to nature, we can know what it wants of us and what our obligations towards nature are.

Steven Vogel, the author of this book, does not accept these claims. He takes them quite seriously and argues why they make no sense.

I want to mention them here because what he said is as applicable to priests (people who claim to speak for God) as it does to environmentalists who claim to speak for nature.

In his response to these types of claims, he distinguishes between translators and ventriloquists. What he does to respond to these types of claims is to argue that there are people who legitimately speak for others - translators. And there are people who pretend to speak for others when what they are doing in fact is taking their own ideas and attitudes and projecting them onto the entities that they are claiming to speak for.

Translators, in my sense, are those who speak for another speaker, saying the words that speaker is for whatever reason unable to say herself (possibly, but not necessarily, because her language is different from ours). A ventriloquist, on the other hand, is someone who speaks for something that is not a speaker, projecting her own words onto a mute object and then pretending that it is that object that is speaking and not herself.

However, Vogel tells us, speaking implies the use of a language, and language use implies the possibility of a dialogue. Allegedly, nature speaks to us - being able to tell us what it wants (and we are thought to have some reason to consider those wants). For some reason, we are supposed to listen to nature. Yet, for some reason, nature has no reason or obligation to listen to us and to consider our wants. Language use involves the possibility of dialogue, as I said, but this conversation with nature is more of a monologue. Or, more precisely, as like the commands of a sovereign given to subjects whose duty is to stay quiet and obey.

For the ventriloquist, nature (or God, as the case may be) is the performer's dummy. The ventriloquist puts his own words into the mouth of the dummy - into the mouth of nature or God - so that he does not have to take responsibility for them. He does not need to explain them or justify them. He does not want to answer any questions. He does this by throwing his voice and making the speaker somebody other than himself - somebody who cannot answer the other person's questions.

The translator can be wrong. In fact, Vogel asserts that translators are always wrong because no language translates smoothly and completely into another language. Still, there are ways to correct for error. The translator can go to the person for whom she is translating and ask questions, request clarifications, and offer alternative interpretations for the speaker to choose from. The ventriloquist assigning his own ideas to God or nature cannot do either.

More importantly, the ventriloquist obtains a politically powerful - and morally questionable - status.

The political danger arises when we are led to grant the ventriloquist’s words (which we mistakenly think of as the words of the dummy) the same respect we grant the words of real speakers, because in doing so the ventriloquist gets a power other speakers do not have: the power to make truth-claims without the responsibility to provide first-person justifications for them.

As I said, this applies as much to those who claim to speak for God as to those who claim to speak for nature.

The Moral Status of Future Persons

Today is the first day of my new life, as it is the day of my first official event as a graduate student - grad student orientation.

It is something like starting a new job. On the first day, one doesn't get to do any real work. One goes through the rituals of becoming a part of the organization. The first day of work, in my case, will be Monday when I attend my first class.

What I wish to do on this blog for the next two years is keep track of ideas that I encounter in my studies.

The overall goal, of course, is to know what good is - or, more precisely, to know what "better" is. Recall that this whole project started with an interest in leaving the world a better place than it would have been if I had not existed. This lead to the question, "What is 'better'? How would I know that this world is better than some alternative?" And that, ultimately, is what I am here to study.

There are far more topics likely to show up in my readings and classes than I am going to be able to write papers about. So, this blog will be a way of saying something about "those other things" that I am not going to be able to put into a paper.

I have just been sent, electronically, a set of readings for one course that indicate that the class will spend some time on the topic of the moral status of future persons.

I can give some preliminary thoughts on the issue of the moral status of future persons. After all, this is a subject I have thought about before.

There are arguments, often used in the abortion debate but that extend far beyond this subject, that says that there is something intrinsically good in bringing a person into the world. Given a choice between a world in which a person exists - capable of experiencing the world, having joys and sorrows, capable of enjoying and appreciating sunsets, friends, falling in love, enjoying friendships - is something that is good as and in itself. Every person that we bring into the world becomes somebody who gets to enjoy sunsets and friends and falling in love.

.So, we should create as many people as possible. Women have an obligation to give birth as often as they can up to the point where the earth cannot hold one additional person.

I take this to reduce the "life has intrinsic value" view to absurdity. Though, my actual reasons for rejecting this hypothesis is the fact that I cannot figure out how to put intrinsic value in any working physics of the universe. Ultimately, the claim that there is no such thing is the claim that such a force or substance is not needed to explain anything that happens in the real world.

Desirism, of course, holds that there is no such thing as intrinsic value. All value exists in the form of states of affairs and desires. To determine the value of a future person, one has to look at what is true about such a world in such a person exists, compare it to a set of desires, and determine whether the propositions that are the objects of those desires are true in the state of affairs in which such a person exists. For example, if a couple wants to have a child, then a state of affairs in which that child exists has value for that couple. If, at the same time, another couple wants to enjoy the freedom (and the financial savings) associated with not having a child then, for them, a state of affairs in which they have a child has negative value.

Desires that might or might not exist yields value that might or might not exist. If the first couple has a child, they will create a being with desires and, in virtue of those desires, there are states of affairs that will have value (good or bad) relative to that child's desires or interests. However, when the second couple decides not to have a child, the desires that will not exist as a result of that decision can neither be fulfilled or thwarted. In determining the value of things in virtue of their relationships with certain desires, relationships to desires that do not exist produce values that do not exist. The thwarting of a desire that does not exist creates a badness that does not exist. (Of course, "creating a badness that does not exist" is actually a contradiction - the more direct way of stating this implication is to say that it creates no badness, at least not here.)

Utilitarians are often bothered by the problem that, if happiness has intrinsic value, and we should create as much of what has intrinsic value as possible, then we need to create as much happiness as possible. This means creating people up to the point where the creation of one more person creates just as much happiness as unhappiness. That is where we stop.

This also means that if there are desires that will exist, then there are future states of affairs that will have value relative to those desires. If we expect that there will be an actual human population in the year 2100, then we can expect that states of affairs in the world at that time will have value depending on how those future states of the world relate to those future desires. Actions that we take now can make life for the next generation, and the generation beyond that, and the generation beyond that, better or worse than it might have otherwise. been. It makes no sense to talk about value relative to desires that will not exist, but a great deal of sense to talk about value relative to desires that will exist.
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The obligation to care for the interests of future generations gets complicated. Though future states of affairs will have value relative to the desires of future people, the question is whether we have reasons to be concerned about what those relationships turn out to be.

Future generations have no capacity to reach back in time to cause us to acquire those interests that will dispose us to act in ways that will create future states of affairs that fulfill those future desires. What we need are current reasons to act in ways that create future states of affairs that fulfill future desires. Many of us have this in virtue of our concern for our own children. This concern for the future welfare of children creates reasons to promote a general interest in the welfare of future generations. This is one vary direct way to argue for promote current desires that tend to create future states of affairs that will fulfill future desires. We can, then, defend this as a moral value - though it is a value grounded on current desires for the well-being of future generations and not on future desires that lack any causal power to reach back in time.

Well, these are preliminary thoughts. We will see if the readings for this section of the course will tie in with these ideas. I suspect that will be at more towards the end of the year.

In the mean time, my next subject of concern is with whether plants, machines, and shopping malls have morally relevant interests that are independent of the interests that people have in them.

Anti-Liberal Attitudes on the Left

I try to avoid being a part of the echo chamber. If those likely to read what I write already agree, then I see no reason to write it. And there is no reason to write for those who will not be reading it. I prefer write about where I think those who basically agree with me might be making some mistake (acknowledging the fact that the mistake may be mine).

I assume that anybody reading this has the correct attitude towards Nazis and white supremacists (though I have posted on the thesis that romanticizing the Confederacy is equivalent to romanticizing Nazi Germany – which I, for one failed to appreciate until recently).

The point at which I disagree is with those denying a right of freedom of speech- who advocate violence as a legitimate response to repugnant beliefs.

For Us or Against Us

I can’t even get to a discussion of that right anymore without first running into the barricade, “Either you are for us, or you are against us.” I am being told that I have a choice – to be either anti-Nazi or pro-Nazi. Except, to be anti-Nazi now must mean being anti-freedom of speech and pro-violence. Which means, being pro-freedom of speech and anti-violence now means being pro-Nazi.

In the days and months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, many liberals – the best liberals - pounced all over then US President George Bush for saying, “Either you are for us, or you are against us.” They told Bush that his view was too simplistic – even simple-minded (and indicative of his general lack of intelligence). He was trying to brand those who opposed his “Patriot Act”, spying on Americans, the invasion of Iraq, Guantanamo prison, torture, and other practices as being “pro-terrorist”. They correctly branded this as not only insulting but worthy of condemnation. Bush was trying to defend America by destroying that which made America worth defending.

Now, liberals – the worst of them – are using Bush’s argument. Where Bush told me that favoring a right to privacy and opposed to torture I was "pro-terrorist", I now have people on the left telling me that if I am in favor of the right to freedom of speech and opposed to "street justice" then I am pro-Nazi. I have a simple decision to make. "You are for us, or against us". You oppose freedom of speech and support street-violence, or you are pro-Nazi.

Once upon a time – about 15 years ago – the bulk of liberals recognized, "You are for us, or you are against us" for what it is. It is a battle cry of tyrants and despots. It effectively says, "You must choose. Either you are our servant, or you are our enemy. You must serve the dictator, or you are an enemy of the state. You support the church leaders, or you are a heretic. Obey or die."

Once upon a time – about 15 years ago – the bulk of liberals recognized that the world was more complicated than this. The bulk of liberals realized that a true patriot can support the ends of the administration in fighting terror while still objecting to its means.

At first, their target is the Nazi or some other target group – a group that seems to be a legitimate target of violence. However, the target list grows. Soon, their target list includes the advocate of free speech and the opponent of street violence. After all, "if you are not for us, then you are against us". That is to say, "If, in your defense of free speech and opposition to street violence you stand in the way of those who would attack the Nazis, then you are as bad as a Nazi, and deserve the same treatment."

This is not some slippery slope argument – some dire warning that, "If we start out in this direction, then we will slide down some slope to a point we would not like; therefore, we ought not to start." This is a logical implication argument. We are not "sliding down some slope to a destination we will want to avoid". We have already reached it. "You are for us or against us" does not lead to "Bend your knee too us or be counted our enemy." It literally means, "Bend your knee to us or be counted our enemy."

I am not bending my knee.

No doubt, they will respond by saying, "Therefore you are siding with the Nazi." However, their claim is no more true that former President Bush's claim that when I opposed the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, torture, and Guantanamo that I was siding with the terrorists. What I was doing – and what I am diong now – is siding with freedom and against tyranny of all forms – no matter how all-knowing and benevolent the would-be dictator thinks himself to be.

Freedom of Speech

On the issue of freedom of speech, there is a new bunch of liberals who think that it is permissible to respond to words they do not like with violence. It is not just any words, they tell us, but words calling for violence. So, what they are telling us is that words calling for violence against those who use words to call for violence is justified. I'm having a little bit of trouble making sense of that position.

Ultimately, people who want to control speech through violence are people who want to control people through violence. And they are not trying to control the speakers or the writers. They are trying to control the hearers and the readers by controlling the ideas we may hear or read about.

It is an attempt to use violence to control the ideas we encounter. With this, they seek to control what we think and, through this, they seek to control what we do. They assert that we lack the capacity to think for ourselves and, thus, we need an authoritative (and violent) overseer giving advanced approval to what we have access to – to make sure we are thinking the right thoughts. They judge themselves as the only ones capable of encountering these "bad ideas" without corruption – so that they can dictate what passes their gate and what must remain outside.

There are a lot of people out there who want to control what we say or do. Violent wars as well as political and religious purges have been fought over the fact. Eventually, a few people got the bright idea that we'll simply outlaw the use of violence to control what people may hear and read. We are going to limit people to the non-violent tools of persuasion only – the pamphlet, the treatise, the play, the public speech on a soap box, the march, the song, the billboard, the full-page ad. It means that there will be a lot of shouting – and a lot of very angry shouting.

Ironically, Nazis love the idea of using violence to control what others may hear or read. They were great fans of book burnings and sending out thugs to beat up on those who expressed opinions they disagree with. Many of those today who call themselves anti-fascists are, in fact, fascists. They are misnamed in the same way the "Patriot Act" was renamed – an attempt to get approval for something by calling it the opposite of what it actually is. They are people attempting to gain control through violence. They are seeking to control people not by persuasion and argument, but by using violence to control what people can hear and read. They are, in fact, the new fascists.

The true anti-fascist is the person who is opposed to controlling others through violence. It is the person who stands opposed to "you are for us or you are against us" - who stands opposed to "bend a knee or be branded our enemy." The true anti-fascist is the person who opposed the Bush Administration when it used this argument, and who stand opposed to those on the left when they use this argument.

Conclusion

Having said this, there are some significant problems that we need to work on. Racist and prejudicial attitudes are rampant. "White privilege" and "male privilege" are real phenomenon that impose injustices daily. These problems deserve not only words of acknowledgement, they deserve genuine action. We need election reform, a better way of hiring and evaluating police officers, systems of compensating for past injustices and systems for preventing future injustices. That work happens to oppose opposition to the idea, "You are either for us or you are against us" and "it is permissible to respond to words and other communicative acts with violence."

Sidgwick: Methods of Ethics, Part 01

In 22 days, I will be in class.

One of those classes, I strongly believe, will begin with an evaluation of Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics. As this is considered a work of central importance in philosophy, I am reading through it and feel that I should provide a critique of its contents.

Unfortunately, it is the nature of a critque of this sort to focus on points of disagreement rather than on points of agreement. And, I have a point of disagreement.

In Book I, Chapter 1, Sidgwick lays out what he takes to be the proper focus of his study. He wants to examine the various ways in which people make moral decisions - various "methods of ethics". These are intuitional - the immediate apprehension of the good or the bad of an action; the egoistical - the good of the agent who is making the decision; the utilitarian - the general good of all people. He argues that people generally tend to rely on all three methods, shifting from one to another. It is his intention to study these three methods, to determine their proper realm, and to find some intellectual balance between them.

In considering his account, I have come up with a way of viewing the various moral theories as they relate to desirism.

Desirism says that individuals with particular ends or desires, living in a community where they can influence the desires of others, have reasons to use their social tools to mold the desires of others in ways compatible with the fulfillment of their own desires.

To illustrate. I have an aversion to pain. I have reason to cause others to have an aversion to causing me pain - doing so will help me to avoid a state in which I am in pain. They, insofar as they have an aversion to pain, have reasons to cause in me a like aversion to causing pain.

Of course, an aversion to causing pain will do some good. However, there is more than one way for them to get me (and for me to get them) to act in ways that will prevent the realization of a state in which they are in pain (or I am in pain, respectively).

But, if I want others to refrain from acting in ways that will put me in a state of pain, there are several ways I can do this. I have mentioned these several ways before, but I have not systematically set them side by side for examination.

I have spoken about the use of reward and punishment as incentive and deterrence. However, I have said that this is not an actual interest in the subject of morality. This is its purpose in law - and in enforcing the rules of a game.

In the realm of morality, reward and punishment are used to alter desires and aversions - to prevent me from causing you pain because, for one reason or another, I do not wish to cause you pain or - better yet - I wish that I do not cause you pain or - even better - I wish that you are not in pain.

I regularly distinguish between a desire to realize some state and a desire that realizes some state. For example, you can get me to avoid actions that cause you pain by getting me to have an aversion to causing you pain. Or I can have an aversion to doing something that might cause you pain. You may want to cause in me an aversion to driving drunk on the grounds that if I had an aversion to driving drunk, I would have an aversion that would make it less likely that you or somebody you care about will be in a state of pain. You may have reason to cause in me a desire to keep my promises because, if I had such a desire, you would be able to plan your own actions based on a reliable prediction that I will do what I said I would do. This will help you to fulfill your other desires. My desire to keep my promises is not a desire to help you fulfill your other desires, but it is a desire that helps you to fulfill your other desires.

I would like to address another set of distinctions - using a desire to tell the truth as an example.

You can give me a desire to tell the truth - a desire to report what is true because it is true, and an aversion to saying what is false because it is false. This is a desire or an aversion that takes truthtelling as its object - the agent is directly concerned with the fact that her statements are true regardless of their consequences or any other consideration. This is not to say that this desire or aversion cannot be outweighed by other concerns, but it does exist so as to motivate a person to generally tell the truth and refrain from lying.

You can also give me a desire to do that which is right and an aversion to doing that which is wrong - accompanied by a belief that telling the truth is right and lying is wrong. This has an advantage over the first system in that it is easier to modify. All one needs to do is change my belief about what is right and wrong and this will change my actions. Whereas the first system requires a change in my desires - a shift in my desire to tell the truth and my aversion to lying. On the other hand, what is an advantage is also, at the same time, a disadvantage. Being an intelligent and reflective person I am likely to look into this belief that telling the truth is right and lying is wrong and ask, "What is it? Can such a thing ever be?" And, questioning whether telling the truth is right and lying is wrong, I lose the motivation to tell the truth and refrain from lying.

A third option is to simply promote an interest in general utility. It would follow, for a person interested in the overall good, that a general disposition to tell the truth and to refrain from lying is a disposition we would all have reason to adopt and to promote in others. And yet we would recognize that this disposition may need to be overridden if following it would, itself, produce a great deal of misery. The problem with utilitarianism rests in the fact that it works best if there is a single ultimate end to be maximized - and there is no such end. This began as a simple aversion each individual had to experiencing their own pain. This provided people generally with reasons to promote in others a set of interests that would reduce the chance that they would be in a state of pain. Now, as a result, we have people with multiple interests. Each person still has their own aversion to pain. They have an aversion to others being in pain. They have an aversion to bringing it about that others are in pain. They have a desire to do that which is right and refrain from doing that which is wrong. They have a desire to maximize utility. And each and every one of these motivations provides its own reason for action.

Sometimes these motives or springs of action conflict with one another. Situations will arise in which a person's aversion to his own pain will conflict with his aversion to others being in pain, or his aversion to doing that which is wrong and belief that an action that will prevent some pain for himself is wrong. There is no single end guiding an individual's action - but multiple ends. So there is no single "end" for the interest in utility to latch onto.

What I like about this is that it shows us where the three dominant theories of ethics comes from.

You have the person who tells the truth because it is the truth and refrains from lying because it is lying. This is the virtue conception of ethics - the idea that morality consists in having good character traits.

You have the person who has a desire to do what is right and a belief that truth-telling is right, and an aversion to doing what is wrong and a belief that lying is wrong. This is deontological moral theory - the theory that states that right and wrong is determined by following certain rules, and that there is no greater virtue than acting from a sense of duty - doing right the right thing because it is the right thing.

Finally, you have the person who tries to maximize utility - recognizing that truthtelling, as a rule of thumb, tends to maximize utility.

All three major types of morality can be grounded on the interests of individuals in avoiding their own pain - and similar natural, biological interests - and nothing more complex or mysterious than that.

The Right of Necessity

One of the things I do for entertainment is listen to the New Books in Philosophy podcast.

The most recent episode interviews Alejandra Mancilla on her book The Right of Necessity, Moral Cosmopolitanism, and Global Poverty.

Basically, the paradigm example of the right of necessity involves a hiker, caught in the wilderness when an unexpected blizzard hits, finds shelter in a mountain cabin. She violates the right to property to break into the cabin. This is generally considered as being permissible.

However, if this is permissible, then is it not also permissible for people who are starving because of a famine to take food from those who have more food than they can use? Does it not justify those need medical care to survive taking what they need to acquire medical care? If not, why not?

Alejandra Mancilla argues that it is permissible. In fact, she argues that people have a right to the basic necessities - a Hohfeldian right that implies that others have a duty of non-interference.

I have used the cabin case as a counter-example to a strong thesis of Libertarian property rights. The libertarian would say that the hiker has to stay outside the cabin and freeze to death, refusing to violate the property rights of the owner.

However, if one says that the hiker has a moral permission to break into the cabin while the owners are absent, then why does the hiker not have a reason to break into the cabin if the owners are present? The right of necessity seems to imply that, if the owners are present, they have no right to tell the hiker, "Stay outside and freeze to death." Instead, they have an obligation to provide the hiker with aid.

In the same way that the cabin owners have an obligation to provide the hiker with a warm place to stay, the wealthy have an obligation to provide the sick and starving - at least those who can be helped with some small cost to the super rich - with food and medical care. This is not a supererogatory action. This is a duty.

In desirism terms, people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn and even to punish those who hoard wealth while others are suffering from a lack of food and medicine - the basics of survival. Helping the global poor is not a supererogatory action - it is a moral requirement, like keeping promises and repaying debts.

On documents page of my Desirism website, there is a paper on "A Foundation for Political Change" which applies these same ideas to the Lockean system of property rights. People seem to forget that Locke's theory of property rights require that those with properly leave "as good and as much" in common for others - enough to meet the basic necessities of life. If there is not enough property left in common for others, then those who have hoarded property have taken more than they have a right to take from the state of nature.

If there is not as much or as good left in common for others, then those who have hoarded an excess amount of properly need to provide those others with that which is at least as good as what they could have acquired from there being "as good and as much" left in nature for them.

We can turn this into an argument for global basic income, if we please - even if it is an income that is provided through an employer of last resort that a person can go to if they cannot find another job. This employer of last resort could put such people to work doing whatever they can do in service to the public good (if anything), but in all cases give them as good and as much as they need for the basics of survival.

Mancella expresses her arguments in terms of rights. However, it is generally easy to translate rights-talk into desire-talk.

One way of saying that A has a right to X is to say that people with good desires would act to ensure that A acquired X. A right to a fair trial means an obligation on the part of others to establish the institutions necessary to provide people with a fair trial. An act is obligatory if it an act that a person with good desires would do. Those who fail to do that which a person with good desires would do may legitimately be subject to condemnation or punishment.

The right to the essentials of life are like the right to a fair trial. We may tax people to provide it and to morally condemn those who seek to prevent people from getting a fair trial.

This book seems to cover a lot of material that I am interested in with respect to the practical application of desirism. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to read it. I have to focus on the material that I need to get my degree. It causes me to regret the shortness of life and the few hours in a day.

I will throw out the suggestion that, if somebody wants to read it and provide a critique from the point of view of desirism, I would consider posting the document on the desirism site.

The Character Thesis and The Desire Thesis

This is the month in which I return to graduate school. My first departmental meeting is in 24 days, and my first class is in 27 days.

Over in the "documents" page of the Desirism site, I have posted a new "work in progress". This is a commentary on "Character and Blame in Hume and Beyond" by Antti Kauppine.

I want to say a few words about commentaries.

Among my sources of entertainment is the podcast series, The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. In the late ancient and medieval period philosophers traditionally produced commentaries on earlier works. In fact, scholars created copies of original works by writing the original text in a column down the middle of a page with particularly wide margins. They would write their own comments in these margins. Those comments often contained some of the author's most original work as they wrote their understandings of, expansion on, or criticisms of the content of the original work.

I think that there is some value in that kind of work, so I have taken to producing my own commentaries. If I find an article with some particular merit, I have decided that it may be worth while to write a commentary on that article, explaining my understanding of that material, expanding upon it, or offering criticism of it.

Recently, I have read Questions of Character edited by Iskra Fileva. It contained Kauppine's article above, which I found worthy of commenting on as a way of developing and explaining my own view.

(NOTE: I still have a problem identifying my own view as "desirism" since it fells quite pretentious. I have an actual aversion to being the kind of person who defends my own moral theory. And, yet, I have a moral theory to defend. It causes a fair amount of tension from time to time.)

Kauppine's article concerns the "The Character Thesis" (CT).

Blame targets a person's character, as manifested by bad thoughts, words, and actions.

This is quite similar to a claim within desirism. That claim can be expressed as "The Desire Thesis."

Praise and blame - as well as other types of moral reward and punishment - targets a person's malleable desires, as manifested by bad thoughts, words, and actions, with the aim of promoting desires generally that produce benefits and reduce harms.

What is unstated in this thesis is that "benefits" and "harms" are understood in terms of the fulfilling and thwarting of other desires.

In the article, Kauppine produces three arguments - taken from Hume - in defense of CT.

(1) We want to attribute the bad action to the person who performed them in order to call that immoral, and we do that by saying that the action comes from the person's character.

(2) Blame has the potential of altering a person's character, which in turn can produce benefits in the form of future good action.

(3) CT is consistent with the concept of "excuse" and how excuses function in moral discussion.

These also provide reasons to accept The Desire Thesis. However, I think that this account leaves out the most important defense of CT and DT. This is the fact that praise and blame also influence the character of other people - people other than the agent. If we are interested in the utility of CT and DT, this effect on the character of several other people and their several future actions produces much more of a benefit than that produced by altering the character of the one person explicitly praised or blamed.

I use the idea of capital punishment, the use of literature to promote good character, and the power of gossip (discussed in another article in this same anthology; "The Psychology of Character, Reputation, and Gossip" by T.L. Hayes, Robert Hogan, and Nicholas Emler) to argue for the power of third-person or even fictional-person praise and condemnation.

So, we add to these:

(4) Blame has the potential of altering the character of people other than the person blamed, thus harvesting benefits from their improved behavior as well.

Of course, (4) is particularly important in desirism, where reward and punishment - including praise and condemnation - are used as a tool to mold malleable desires and, thereby, produce more behavior that tends to fulfill other desires and less behavior that tends to thwart other desires.

After presenting these arguments in favor of CT (and, even more so, DT), Kauppine considers three objections.

(O1) The Autonomy Objection: Blame should attach to that which is under an agent's control, and character traits are not under an agent's control.

According to Kauppine, Hume simply denies that blame is attached to that which is under a person's control in some "free will" sense. We seek to blame the person, and that means attaching the act to his character. DT goes further in denying that blame is free from control by arguing that character is under the influence of blame itself (or, more accurately, rewards and punishments including praise and condemnation).

(O2) The Moral Luck Objection: The level of praise or blame given to people depends, to some extent, on the effects of their actions independent of character. For example, we recognize the distinction between attempted murder and murder even where that difference is attributed to some matter of luck thwarting the attempt.

Kauppine argues that Hume simply denies the existence of moral luck. DT, on the other hand, takes morality to be a practice that the vast majority of people - regardless of their backgrounds and levels of education - must participate in. Therefore, it cannot be too complicated. There is no way to remove moral luck without making morality too complicated. This is why it remains. Yet, blame still targets character since its purpose is to alter character - to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires and aversions that tend to prevent the thwarting of other desires.

(O3) Blame of Actions Out of Character: The thesis that blame targets character is threatened by the observation that we assign blame even when a harmful act is out of character. A person cannot entirely escape blame for a violent assault on the grounds that it is out of character.

According to Kauppine, Hume would argue that these actions are not actually out of character if they come from the person being blamed, even if they are unusual for that person. DT makes this more explicit and defines "out of character" in the morally relevant sense as "anything that comes from traits that praise and condemnation have no power over". Can the rare action be prevented by a stronger character, which itself is under the influence of praise and condemnation? If so, then it is not out of character in the relevant sense.

So, we have four arguments in defense of CT (and of DT) and a response to three potential objections.

These responses help to illuminate the features of desirism and, through this, produce a significant value. In my previous writings, I have not given much attention to the fact that a moral theory is one that nearly everybody can use. Yet, it proves to be an essential part of the defense against the "moral luck" objection. This discussion also heads off in the direction of equating a person's character traits with "the person" - the issue of personal identity - which I have seen for a long time but not explored in detail.

The one thought I want to leave you with is that the fact that this is a commentary does not imply that it is trivial. This commentary describes some important developments in and components of desirism.

Praise, Blame, and Matters of Character

I need to add a bunch of brief notes to catch up on things I have learned.

(1) I have been praising Rosalind Hursthouse's defense of the thesis that a right act is the act that a virtuous person would perform. On the negative side, Hursthouse apparently links virtues to the survival of the species - as if species survival has intrinsic value. My own view is that nothing has intrinsic value. What gives a character trait (desire) it's value is its tendency to fulfill other desires.

(2) I have learned that there is a philosopher, Julia Driver, who defends "virtue consequentialism". However, she seems to hold the view that the relevant consequences consist of maximizing "intrinsic value". Here, too, since there is no such thing as intrinsic value, a virtue cannot be that which maximizes something that does not exist. I need to read her book and discover more details.

(3) The book, Questions of Character, edited by Iskra Fileva (my faculty advisor) contains an article,

(4) This book contains another article, "Character and Blame in Hume and Beyond" by Antti Kauppinen. Kauppinen discusses the idea that blameworthiness concerns a defect in character. A part of this discussion is on the idea that blame, condemnation, and punishment aim at improving the character. However, Kauppinen focuses solely on changing the attitudes of the agent. There is no mention of the use of punishment to promote attitudes generally.

It may be more accurate to sat that Kauppinen attributes to Hume a concern with changing the attitudes of the person blamed. I need to go back to Hume and see if this is correct - if Hume made any claims about changing the attitudes of people generally. This possibility suggests that there will be cases where condemnation has little effect on changing the character of the one condemned, but can still be justified by its more general effects.

Kauppinen raises three problems for a thesis that bases blameworthiness heavily on having a defective character.

(4a) Voluntariness. People are only blameworthy for that which is under their control. Their character is not under their control. Therefore, it is inappropriate to hold somebody blameworthy on the basis of their character.

Desirism (and Hume, according to Kauppinen) simply deny that "voluntary control" is relevant to blameworthiness. In fact, the only sense that we can make of "voluntary control" is that the action springs from the person's character - from the person. Desirism goes further and argues that the reason to be concerned with what comes from a person's character (malleable desires) is that condemnation and punishment (as well as reward and praise) aim to alter the character traits. We see what springs from a person's character, determine whether the character needs modifying, and then modify those traits using reward and punishment (and praise and condemnation).

(4b) Moral luck. The degree to which we praise or blame somebody depends not only on their character traits but on consequential moral luck. A paradigm example involves two people who leave a bar to drive home. Both are intoxicated. Both drift off of the road. One happens to hit and kill a child, the other does not. We blame the person who hits the child more than we blame the person who did not.

For a long time, I held to the view that we should take the average risk of an action and judge the character trait on the basis of this average risk - and blame all people equally. However, then I came to the realization that luck happens. Two people are equally concerned with planning for their retirement. They both invest the same percentage of their income, they both get the same income. However, as it turns out, the investments that one makes does better than the investments that another makes. Because of compounded interest, a small percentage difference each year turns into a significant difference over time. One person ends up $400,000 wealthier than the other. Or, in another case, two people are diligent about protecting their health. They both eat well, exercise, and avoid harmful activities such as smoking. Yet, one gets cancer and the other does not.

Luck happens. If condemnation takes into consideration moral luck, we will still end up with an average condemnation that is the same as it would be if we were to try to go through all the math and condemn all people equally. Furthermore, this "luck" method will automatically include changed consequences due to changed circumstances. It will automatically lower condemnation for an activity that becomes less harmful due to advanced technology, and increase condemnation for actions that become more harmful. We still have the effect of impacting the relevant desires/sentiments/character traits to a degree proportional to its tendency to produce benefit or harm.

(4c) Out-of-character actions. We blame people for actions that are out-of-character. A person is tired, and she snaps at a neighbor for what was a slight irritation that she would normally let pass - that a good person would normally not raised such a fuss about. We still blame her. She still owes the neighbor an apology. If her actions caused actual harm, she would owe compensation for harms done and be subject to some level of punishment. Yet, this is not how she characteristically behaves.

Here, the argument will be that the disposition to fly off the handle when one is tired or stressed is one of their character traits. People have many and strong reasons to promote in others a disposition to control their tempers even in times of stress or distraction. Consequently, we have reason to condemn people for whom this threshold is rather low and to encourage them to make it higher. This is still a case of condemning and potentially punishing people based on their character - with a dash of moral luck thrown in.

This last point is relevant to another objection being raised against all moral theory, which is situationalism. Researchers have shown that people are disposed to behave more or less morally. For example, ask somebody for money when there is the smell of fresh baked bread in the air and they will tend to be more generous. Conversely, have a person make a judgment about an action when they are in a room littered with junk and they will tend to give a harsher judgment. Our behavior - even behavior commonly attributed to "character" - is under the influence of outside forces.

Again, this does not change the fact that we have reason to use reward/praise and punishment/condemnation to promote more charity in those circumstances. There is still a difference between the person who will give $5 when there is no smell of baked bread in the air and $10 when there is, as opposed to the person who gives $10 when there is not and $20 when there is. These are the types of facts that determine the reasonableness of rewarding/praising and punishing/condemning.

Korsgaard: Two Value Distinctions

The decision to return to graduate school has paid another dividend.

A graduate student at the University of Colorado, Zak Kopeikin, pointed me to "Two Distinctions in Goodness" by Christine Korsgaard.

This article identifies the same distinction that I wrote about in A Test for Intrinsic Value.

She defines "intrinsic value" as something where the value is found entirely in that which has value - as a property that supervenes on its natural properties. She contrasts this with what she calls "final value" which is the value that something has as an end. Final value or end value is distinguished from instrumental value or value as a means. Intrinsic value is contrasted with extrinsic value.

If we adopt Korsgaard's terminology, then I would argue that intrinsic value does not exist.

"Final values" (or "ends") exist, but our ends have been subject to a few hundred million years of evolutionary pressure. We are disposed to have those ends that tended to promote evolutionary fitness in our ancestors.

Here is another dividend from returning to school. Shannon Street developed this argument in detail in Street, S., 2006, “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Philosophical Studies, 127: 109–66.

However, there are two problems with Street's argument.

First, she took herself to be arguing against "realism". This would be true if one is talking about "realism" with respect to intrinsic values.

However, this leaves one with the mistaken belief that values themselves are not "real" - that we must be an anti-realist about value. This is not the case. One can, instead, be a "realist" about non-intrinsic values. That is to say, one can still be a "realist" about final values. And, in fact, that is what I am and that is what I defend.

The second problem with Street's argument is that she took moral values to be - in effect - genetic. They are dispositions that we have evolved to have. I have taken this to be a contradiction. To talk about a moral value grounded on genes is like talking about round squares or married bachelors. It is the very nature of moral language that it has to do with what is learned - what is acquired through interaction with the environment.

We have also evolved to have malleable brains, which means, in part, that interaction with the environment can alter out ends. Yet, even the mechanisms by which experience alters ends is subject to natural selection, disposing our interactions with the environment to alter our ends in ways that promoted the genetic replication of our ancestors in their environment.

Each of us is a part of each other's environment. As a result, each of us has the capacity to influence the desires of others - the "ends" of others - the "final values" of others. The tools for doing this are reward and punishment, praise and condemnation.

At this point, we can introduce claims that Jesse Prinz made about "emotional conditioning" - social institutions that cause individuals to acquire certain emotional sentiments with respect to certain states of affairs. In effect, this is the teaching of moral value. But, here, Prinz makes a mistake - stating correctly that morality is a socially conditioned response, but neglecting the fact that people have reasons to promote certain emotionally conditioned responses and discouraging others. We can take certain responses and say, "It would be a good idea of everybody had this one." There are others where it makes sense to say, "It would be a good idea if nobody had that one." And there is a very large set where it makes sense to say, "Well, we have no particularly strong reason to promote this universally or to promote its extinction." This gives us an objective account of moral obligation, prohibition, and non-obligatory permission.

I like how the various parts of these readings are coming together into a more developed philosophy. Soon, this may even grow into a book.

Well, in that book there may be an opportunity to talk about these "tests for intrinsic value". This is the discussion with Zak Kopeikin, who is interested in assessing a couple of tests for intrinsic value. I do not believe that intrinsic value exists. Therefore, I do not believe that we can have a test for intrinsic value.

I am wondering if the tests that Kopeikin wants to examine are actually tests for "final value" or for the ends of particular agents. It is possible - even likely - that we have some common ends - particularly ends that contributed to the evolutionary sense of our biological ancestors. It would be interesting to examine those tests as tests of final ends to see how far that trail can take one.

Just to draw this back into desirism - these "ends" or "final values" are what I have traditionally called that which "desired-as-end" (to distinguish it from that which "desired-as-means"). A desire is a propositional attitude that can take the form "agent desires that P," which gives "final value" to any state of affairs in which 'P' is true. Realizing a state of affairs in which 'P' is true is the "final value" that is created by any given desire.

This easily handles something like G.E. Moore's case in which a person may choose that a beautiful planet exists even if there is no person who can enjoy it. This can be accounted for by a desire that a beautiful planet exist (or that a beautiful thing exist). This desire assigns a final value to any state in which a beautiful planet exists - and provides the agent with a reason to act (and with motivation to act) so as to realize such a state.

It does not matter that nobody will actually experience the beautiful planet. A "desire that somebody experience a beautiful planet" is not the same desire as the desire that a beautiful planet exists. The latter assigns an end value to any state in which a beautiful planet exists. The former only assigns value to a state in which a beautiful planet exists and there is somebody who is appreciating it as a beautiful planet.

So, all of this, with some tweaks, sanding, and polish, can me shown to fit into a coherent defense of desirism.

Things are looking good.

Action Guidingness: Virtue Theory vs. Desirism

Rosalind Hursthouse defines a "right action" as:

P.r. An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically (i.e. acting in character) do in the circumstances. Rosalind Hursthouse. On Virtue Ethics (Kindle Locations 355-356). Kindle Edition.

Desirism, I dare say, has a more complex account of "right action". Desirism recognizes that actions are generally placed in one of three categories; that of obligation, prohibition, and non-obligatory permission. With this three-part dichotomy in mind, desirism categorizes actions as follows:

(1) An act is obligatory iff it is what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would characteristically do in the circumstances.

(2) An act is prohibited iff it is what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would characteristically not do in the circumstances.

(3) An act is permissible but not obligatory iff it is what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires neither would nor would not do in the circumstances depending on the agent's other interests.

There are some things worth noting on the desirism account.

Originally, my idea is that a wrong action was the action that a person with bad desires would do under the circumstances. That seemed to have a type of symmetry about it. However, that simply is not correct. A person can perform a wrong action even if she has no bad desires. The prime example I have used is that of negligence. The truck driver who drives when she is too tired has no bad desire. She just wants to get to her destination. It is her lack of a good desire - a lack of concern for the welfare of other people on the road that she might harm if she falls asleep behind the wheel - that makes her action immoral. To handle this type of case, wrong action is not that which a person with bad desires would do. It is that which a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would not do.

Second, there are some desires that people have little reason to make universal. In fact, there are some desires where people generally have reason to promote and encourage a variety of different tastes and attitudes. This is because a population with diverse interests in these areas have less competition and conflict. When we eat chicken, my wife likes the white meat while I like the dark meat. Our interests are in harmony. Each of us gets what we like, and there is no conflict. In matters ranging from what to eat, what to wear, what to do for entertainment, who to love, what to read, and what profession to go into, there are few reasons to promote a common interest, and many reasons to promote a variety of interests. This, then, accounts for the category of non-obligatory permission.

In On Virtue Ethics, Hursthouse has a narrower conception of non-obligatory permission.

She brings up the idea of a "positive moral dilemma". A regular moral dilemma is a case where a person must make a choice where both options are those which a moral agent would reject. A positive moral dilemma is a case where virtue theory does not give the agent a clear choice among two or more positive outcomes.

Hursthouse uses the case of a mother who is obligated to buy a present for her child. Virtue does not give her any reason to choose among two possible options. Let us say that she is making a choice between present A and present B. The mother cannot determine what present to get by looking at virtue theory. The virtuous person would not necessarily choose A over B or B over A. Consequently, the agent, according to this objection, is left without action guidance. This, then, identifies a defect with virtue theory - it cannot guide action.

Maybe it is odd to say that they both do what is right-neither action, after all, is required or obligatory-but certainly each acts well. Note here that saying only that each does what is permissible fails to capture that fact, and thereby fails to do justice to our two agents. What they do merits more in the way of assessment, for they do not do what is merely permissible, but act generously and hence well. Rosalind Hursthouse. On Virtue Ethics (Kindle Locations 882-884). Kindle Edition.

This seems a bit excessive.

A mother has an obligation to take care of her children - to feed them. She goes to the store. There are shelves filled with various options regarding what to feed the child. It would be odd to describe each and every trip to the store to be an instance of a positive moral dilemma. She must choose clothes for them, and decide on a doctor. She must decide on a career for herself. Life seems to be filled with positive moral dilemmas on this account.

Desirism would simply describe these options as morally permissible. Now, these morally permissible actions exist in an environment where are are also impermissible options. Refusing to feed one's children is morally impermissible, as is refusing to take care of their health. Killing them and eating them are also morally impermissible. The fact that there are morally impermissible options does not imply that all permissible options constitute a positive moral dilemma. They are cases where the parent is permitted to appeal to desires that need not be universalized across a population in deciding among several options.

One of the merits of desirism, I would argue, is that it makes sense of the fact that we have such a large number of morally permissible actions. Nearly everything we do in the day is one of several morally permissible options. My writing this blog post is simply one of a large set of morally permissible actions available to me that includes spending some time playing a computer game, watching television, listening to a podcast episode, writing a novel, or taking a nap.

It is odd at best to argue that a moral theory is not action-guiding if it is not telling an agent what to do every moment of every day. If this is what virtue theory (or desirism) must do to prove that it is sufficiently action-guiding, then I would argue that a failure to be action-guiding in this sense is not a serious defect. In fact, it is no defect at all.

A Test for Intrinsic Value

A recent email exchange with a fellow graduate student has caused me to look at the idea of "intrinsic value".

This graduate student presented an argument concerning G.E. Moore's test for intrinsic value. In response to this, I asked the question "what kind of intrinsic value are you testing for?"

There are two types of intrinsic value that one can be concerned with.

Type 1 intrinsic value is best described as what J.L. Mackie called "objective, intrinsic prescriptivity". It is a power, within certain states of affairs, that inherently calls people to realize that which has this value.

The problem with any test for this type of value is that it does not exist. Testing for intrinsic value of this type is like testing for angels or ghosts. Whatever it is one is testing for, it is not "objective intrinsic prescriptivity". Instead, one has, at best, found something real that one then misdiagnosis as "objective intrinsic prescriptivity".

Type 2 intrinsic value comes from Aristotle and is best understood in relationship to "instrumental value". One wants money so that one can buy some water. One wants water because one wants to quench one's thirst. And why does one want to quench one's thirst? Well, it is the nature of being thirsty that it motivates the agent to realize a state where this condition no longer exists - it motivates the agent to get something to drink. Why quench one's thirst? There is no answer to this question. "I am thirsty and that is all there is to it."

We may understand this type of intrinsic value as the ends of intentional action. The previous acts - the buying the bottle of water and even drinking from the bottle of water are both means to an end. The end is to quench one's thirst - to bring about a state in which "I am thirsty" is no longer true.

This type of intrinsic value exists. However, there is no good reason to divorce this state from the mental states of the actor.

G.E. Moore rejects the idea that we value only those things that give us pleasant experiences (and dislike unpleasant experiences). When Henry Sidgwick said that nothing beautiful can have value independent of somebody's contemplation of it, Moore objected that this was not true.

Let us imagine one world exceedingly beautiful. Imagine it as beautiful as you can; put into it whatever on this earth you most admire—mountains, rivers, the sea; trees, and sunsets, stars and moon. Imagine these all combined in the most exquisite proportions, so that no one thing jars against another, but each contributes to the beauty of the whole. And then imagine the ugliest world you can possibly conceive. Imagine it simply one heap of filth, containing everything that is most disgusting to us, for whatever reason, and the whole, as far as may be, without one redeeming feature. Such a pair of worlds we are entitled to compare: they fall within Prof. Sidgwick’s meaning, and the comparison is highly relevant to it. The only thing we are not entitled to imagine is that any human being ever has or ever, by any possibility, can, live in either, can ever see and enjoy the beauty of the one or hate the foulness of the other. Well, even so, supposing them quite apart from any possible contemplation by human beings; still, is it irrational to hold that it is better that the beautiful world should exist than the one which is ugly? Would it not be well, in any case, to do what we could to produce it rather than the other? Certainly I cannot help thinking that it would; and I hope that some may agree with me in this extreme instance.

Now, we are often faced with a false dilemma, and I think Moore presents his case in this way. We have two options. Either the existence of this beautiful planet has objective, intrinsic prescriptivity, or the existence of the planet without anybody to contemplate its beauty has no value whatsoever.

There is a third option.

An agent can desire that a beautiful world exists. This desire would be quite distinct from the desire that a beautiful world exist and that there is some person who can enjoy the contemplation of it. The person with a desire that a beautiful world exists quite simply has nothing more than an internal disposition to realize a state of affairs where "a beautiful world exists" is true. This proposition can be true without it also being the case that there is a person around to contemplate it. Consequently, this desire can motivate an agent to choose to realize such a state. It is not at all irrational for such an agent to hold that it is better that such a world exists - that they would choose the realization of such a state - over the available competitor.

However, these desires that provide for the ends of intentional action need not be the same for each and every individual. In fact, they are not. Even when it comes to the aversion to pain, each person seems to have a stronger aversion to "my own pain" than for anybody else's pain. "Relieving my pain" for agent A is not the same interest as "relieving my pain" for agent B. So, here we have an example of two different agents having two different ends for their intentional actions.

Consequently, if we are looking for a test for intrinsic value, we are looking for one of two things.

Option 1, we are looking for a test for objective, intrinsic prescriptivity. Any test of this type will fail since it is testing for something that does not exist.

Option 2, a test for the ends of intentional action. However, there is no reason to believe that every agent seeks the same ends. In fact, we have reason to believe that different agents seek different ends, as each person has a specific interest in avoiding a state in which they are in pain. Here, our tests will not necessarily - or even probably - discover something that is common across all individuals.

Punishment and Wrong Action

I had dinner with Jonathan Spelman yesterday. He's the graduate student whose PhD dissertation, Moral Obligation, Evidence, and Belief that I read about a month ago. Our conversation concerned points of disagreement about his paper.

However, there was a point of agreement that seemed to surprise Dr. Spelman. There is a chapter in which he defends the association of "wrong action" to "deserving of punishment". He actually seemed surprised that I accepted his claims here.

Today, I sent him an email explaining my support for his thesis here.

Greetings.

I valued our conversation last evening. I had not been able to do that in quite some time. It seemed to have gone well.

In terms of follow-up, you seemed surprised at me comment that I agreed with your claims that blameworthiness and punishment were associated with wrongdoing. I thought I would explain that position.

By way of background, recall that I present moral reasoning in terms of a moral syllogism.

(1) The moral principle.
(2) The agent's beliefs about the current situation.
(3) The right action.

I claim that right action depends on the agent's beliefs, but the moral principle does not.

Take, for example, honesty.

(1) One should tell (what one believes to be) the truth.
(2) Tim believes that Tony took the tokens from the till.
(3) The right thing for the Tim to tell the police is that Tony took the tokens from the till.

If Tim's beliefs change, then the right action changes. If the agent instead believed that Thaddeus took the tokens from the till, then the agent should say that Thaddeus took the tokens from the till.

Other examples include:

(1) Care for one's patient.
(2) Belief that drug A will relieve symptoms and B and C each have a chance of killing the patient.
(3) The right action is to give drug A.

Or

(1) Care to prevent childhood illness.
(2) Belief that vaccines cause - and do not effectively prevent - childhood illness.
(3) The right act is to campaign against vaccinations.

NOTE: Care to prevent disease also implies that right action includes being concerned to make sure that one's beliefs are well founded. Intellectual recklessness resulting in death demonstrates a lack of compassion.

My roughly described my views at the level of principle as motive utilitarianism. Honesty and care for others are good motives - motives we have reason to encourage in virtue of their consequences.

It turns out that praise and rewards (awards) promote or strengthen desires, while condemnation and punishment promote or strengthen aversions. To create an aversion to lying, we condemn and punish the liar. To promote compassion, we praise and reward the compassionate.

However, we cannot read a person’s motives directly from their action. To determine their motives, we have to also look at what they believed at the point of action. If their beliefs and actions indicate they acted from good motives (e.g., honesty, a doctor’s concern for her patient, a person’s concern for the health of children), then we have reason to judge that the motives are those we have reason to promote (or, at least, not to inhibit). If, on the other hand, their beliefs and actions indicate that they acted from bad motives, then we have reason to respond to those actions with condemnation and punishment.

Consequently, I would agree that there is a connection between wrongdoing and reasons to condemn/punish. This is because I tie both wrongdoing and reasons to condemn/punish to bad motives.

Wrong action comes from bad motives. Bad motives are motives that tend to produce bad consequences for others. Those bad consequences are what give others reason to mold or modify those motives in the agent and other people. Condemnation and punishment act on the limbic system to mold or modify motives. Wrong action is action that people generally have reason to respond to with condemnation and punishment.

So, I am quite comfortable with linking wrong action to punishment.

In fact, if I should have reason to write on this topic, I will certainly reference and draw upon your chapter.

Richard Alonzo Fyfe

Virtue Ethics - Moral Residue

In my studies of Rosalind Hursthouse's virtue ethics, I have moved on to her 1999 book On Virtue Ethics.

In this book, Hursthouse goes into significantly more detail on what she calls "resolvable moral dilemmas".

I have written about these types of cases often. To illustrate this type of case, the examples I have relied on the most are:

A doctor is on her way to meet her father for lunch, as she promised to do, when she witnesses a child on a bike getting hit by a car. She has an obligation to give aid to the injured child. However, doing so requires that she break her promise to her father.

A parent and child are in the wilds fishing when the child is stung by a bee and begins to have an allergic reaction. The adult's vehicle will not start, but there is another vehicle parked nearby with the keys in the car. To get the child to the hospital quickly the parent needs to take the car without permission.

I have presented these in terms that Hursthouse would call "resolvable dilemmas". In the first case, the doctor ought to stop and help the injured child, even if it means breaking her promise. In the second case, the parent needs to get the child to the hospital, even if it requires borrowing the stranger's vehicle without consent. There is a right thing to do, but the right thing involves doing something that is, at the same time, wrong.

Is this a problem?

I have been arguing that desirism can handle these types of cases better than the major moral theories. This is because desirism makes sense of what Hursthouse calls "moral residue".

The doctor in the first case should have both a desire to help the injured child and an aversion to breaking her promise. These desires would cause her to want to find an option that will fulfill both obligations - to make it the case that she provides the child with whatever care she can and keep her promise. However, the situation is one in which both desires cannot be fulfilled. A morally good person - according to desirism - would have a stronger desire to provide the child with aid than to keep the promise (assuming that this was a standard lunch meeting and not, itself, vitally important to the life and health of innocent people).

The doctor would aid the child, but still feel anxiety over not being able to fulfill the desire to keep the promise. She would acknowledge this failure by apologizing for breaking the promise and offering the need to tend to the injured child as an excuse and hope for (expect) to be forgiven for the transgression.

The same story can be told of the parent who took the stranger's car to get the child to the hospital. Again, the parent would owe an obligation to get the car back to the owner as quickly as possible, or otherwise limit the inconvenience that the owner would otherwise suffer. The parent would likely owe the owner some compensation (which the owner is free to - perhaps even encouraged to - reject on the recognition that the parent did what the parent had to do).

According to Hursthouse, a majority of moral philosophers think that it is a sign of a weakness of a moral theory that it cannot provide a determined answer to all moral questions. You should be able to plug the inputs into an algorithm, crank the handle, and out on the other end comes "the right thing to do". To some degree, she does this by showing how virtue theory creates a set of "v-rules" that agents can use to crank out "the right thing to do".

However, in the realm of "resolvable dilemmas", she argues that virtue theory can - I think that the right phrase to use is "be comfortable with" - a moral residual caused by the virtue (e.g., keeping a promise) that the agent cannot honor.

I think that desirism can say a lot more about this. These "virtues" are desires, and a thwarted desire does not simply vanish. A thwarted desire persists, providing the agent with motivation to try to find some way to fulfill it. It leaves behind regret, remorse, and a sense of loss.

In this case, it is the failure to account for this moral remainder - the theory that codifies morality such that one can simply input the relevant information and crank out "the right thing to do" that fails to properly account for morality. It is inventing something that will not exist and cannot exist among humans.

Hursthouse further mentions that some deontologists and utilitarians have seen merit to this objection and have presented versions of both of these theories that can make room for a moral remainder.

Deontologists make it the effect of conflicting moral rules. Though I think there may be problems with this. If we consider, for example, the rules of a game, if the rules come into conflict, there is no "regret" over the rule not followed. We simply build an exception into the rules and continue with the game.

Utilitarians have some room to maneuver. A utilitarian can talk about how a disposition that leads to regret in a given circumstance can promote utility overall - how a disposition that creates moral remorse when a promise is broken can make promise-keeping more reliable overall. I have sympathies for this view, as can be found in the fact that my original name for desirism was "desire utilitarianism." However, I was later forced to admit that desirism is not a utilitarian theory - or even a consequentialist theory. The value of a sentiment is not found in its capacity to 'maximize utility' or in any list of consequences, but in its harmonious relationship to other desires.

Desirism, therefore, can explain some of the features of virtue theory that Hursthouse can only describe.

Global Poverty: Against Economic Empires

The global poor, and anybody who cares about the global poor, has many and strong reasons to condemn those global wealthy whose goal is to build massive economic fiefdoms.

To direct this criticism to the "top 1%" or "billionaires" would make it a bigoted assertion. Criticism of a named group is only legitimate if one is criticizing a defined characteristic of the named group. (See: Criticizing an Idea.) Many people in the named groups "top 1%" and "billionaires" are decent people. They are taking active steps to direct their large stockpiles of accumulated wealth to help the global poor.

However, there are some - morally contemptible people - in this class who are more interested in preserving and expanding their economic empires. They seek to accumulate as much wealth as possible. They regard the life, health, liberty, and well-being of other human beings as having little or no significance when held up against the opportunity to accumulate personal wealth.

People generally have many and strong reasons to morally condemn these economic emperors.

According to desirism, a vice is a character trait that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn. This refers to actual reasons - not mere beliefs, fictions, or figments of the imagination. The aversion to pain is a real reason. Hunger and thirst provide real reasons for intentional action - reasons to praise and condemn, and to reward and punish. The value of shelter and security and the well-being of those one cares about are also real-world reasons. To please an imaginary god, or to serve an imaginary intrinsic value, are not real-world reasons for intentional action (including reward/praise or punishment/condemnation).

The vice of hoarding huge quantities of wealth and using it to establish an economic empire is a vice that there are many and strong real-world reasons to condemn and to punish. It is a vice that people generally have many and strong real-world reasons to call immoral - and a trait of character that justifies calling those who possess it evil, contemptible, moral monsters.

There is, seriously, more and stronger real-world reasons to adopt an attitude of condemnation towards these people than we have for an attitude of condemnation towards drunk drivers, rapists, and thieves. These economic emperors do far more real-world harm - are responsible for far more real-world suffering.

They tend to avoid the condemnation they deserve by using their wealth to promote attitudes other than those that real-world reasons would say are warranted. They like to cause us to believe that they have a right to their wealth (to cause suffering among others) and fill our environment with a condemnation of those who would criticize them for the harms that they cause. Thus, they fill people's heads with imaginary reasons not to condemn them that obscure and replace real-world reasons for condemnation. However, the fact that they are effective at promoting these fictions does not prevent them from being fictions.

Hursthouse's Virtue Ethics - Part 2

I am continuing with my commentary on Rosalind Hursthouse, “Normative Virtue Ethics,” from Roger Crisp,
ed., How Should One Live? (Oxford University Press, 1996), 19-33.

The last two sections of this article have to deal with conflicts and moral dilemmas.

The question being addressed is whether a virtue theory can answer the question, "What should I do?" In other words, can it be action-guiding?

Hursthouse is arguing that it can be, using the principle:

An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically (i.e. acting in character) do in the circumstances.

One problem with this answer concerns conflicts. There are many situations where different virtues can yield conflicting answers. The type of case that Hursthouse discusses involves those in which honesty would imply telling somebody the truth while kindness would suggest lying. A prime example involves the white lies that we tell to prevent hurting another person's feelings for no good reason.

A type of example I often bring up in my own writings is that of a doctor who promised to meet her father for lunch who witnesses an accident. The virtue of being trustworthy says to meet her father. The virtue of kindness says to help the people in the accident.

Another example I often bring up involves a person whose child is stung by a bee and is having an allergic reaction. His car will not start. Another car sits nearby with the keys in the ignition. Care for his child will say to take the car and get his child to the hospital, while concern for the property of others says not to do so.

Hursthouse offers a suggestion that conflicts could simply be an illusion caused by an insufficient wisdom - that a wise and experienced virtuous person would be able to make a choice and others who understood virtue would be able to determine what a virtuous person would do. She argues that this is not the option she would want to defend because she thought that genuine moral dilemmas was possible.

Desirism offers a different answer. It acknowledges that conflicts would exist and, what is more, that conflicts should exist. The behavior that agents are to perform in times of moral conflict acknowledge the conflict and the unfortunate fact that the agent could not satisfy both (or all) obligations.

For example, even the virtuous agent will experience cases when a desire to keep an appointment will clash with a desire to provide help to somebody in need. I consider a mark in favor of desirism that it accounts for cases in which conflict is actually to be expected. In this type of case, desirism says that the individual who cannot make the appointment should still be motivated to tell the person waiting for her that she cannot keep her promise. She should apologize and explain why this is the case. These actions indicate that the agent was aware of competing obligations and felt motivated to fulfill those obligations, even though she failed to do so.

A theory should not only account for the existence of conflict, but account for the ways in which conflicts can sometimes be resolved. If the amount of aid one can offer is relatively slight (e.g., emergency crews are already at the scene of the accident) and the meeting is important (her father is dealing with a significant personal tragedy and at least needs comfort and support), then the obligation to keep the promise may carry the greater weight.

If, on the other hand, the need for aid is slight (the accident victim has suffered severe injuries and there is nobody better qualified to give aid available) and the meeting is not important (she meets with her father daily), then the conflict may be settled with helping the victim. Note that virtue theory still answers the question "What should I do?" in this case - but it does not let the agent off the hook for the conflicting obligation that is left unfulfilled.

Of course, there are cases where the two virtues will be in a more balanced conflict. If it is a minor conflict than the agent can settle the difference on non-moral grounds (based on a personal preference). If it is a major conflict than it may approach the level of a genuine moral dilemma. This would be the case in a Sophie's Choice type of situation where a mother is told, "Choose which of your children you will have me kill or I will kill both."

Hursthouse fends off an objection where, in the case of a moral "tie" between virtues, the agent can casually flip a coin to make a decision. She asserts that a truly virtuous person would not be so casual about such an important decision. Desirism goes further and argues that a true moral dilemma would be one that threatened severe psychological trauma. It would be a case in which an agent had to choose between two extremely strong desires/virtues. She would be desperate for an answer and wrought with grief over the desire/virtue that was thwarted.

As I wrote above, if the conflicting virtues are not of great significance, then an individual can flip a coin or decide the case using non-virtue considerations such as personal preference.

A Definition of Moral Realism

Through a round-about series of links, I was made aware of a video that reports to be the first in a series discussing moral realism.

The video, Moral Realism Defined, does a good job of defining the term as the term tends to be used by moral philosophers.

However, I do not think that the definition is useful. Recall, language is an invention, and we should adopt those definitions that aid in the ends of communication. The current philosophical definition of "moral realism" is one that generates a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. It should be abandoned or reformed - one of the two.

The standard definition of moral realism holds that moral values are real if they are independent of human beliefs and desires.

On this definition, I can make an easy case against moral realism. All value exists on desire. Moral value is a type of value. Therefore, moral value depends on desire. Things that depend on desire are not real. Therefore, moral value is not real.

The problem I have is with that statement that says, "things that depend on desire are not real".

Desires are real.

We use them to explain and predict the motion of bodies in the real world.

In an oft-repeated story, I put my hand on a hot metal plate when I was young. This formed second degree burns that blistered the palm and fingers on my hand. The pain that this caused explained, in party, why I put burn ointment on my hand and wrapped my hand in a bandage. It explained why I took pain relievers. There are many things that happened in the real world that would be hard to explain without reference to that pain.

Yet, "realists" want to say that this pain - the hurtfulness of this pain - was not real.

I think this is an absurd account of reality. A decent definition of realism has to account for the fact that pains such as this - that desires and aversions themselves - are as real as height, weight, age, location, blood pressure, core body temperature, and any of countless additional facts about me. Scientists can examine my pain just as they can examine my digestion. We need a better account of realism that can account for these very real entities.

I hold, as many long-time readers know, that morality consists of relationships between malleable desires and other desires. Specifically, it applies to malleable desires that can be molded through activation of the reward system - through rewards and punishments, including praise and condemnation. These relationships are what provide people with reason to praise and condemn, to reward and punish. There are desires and aversions that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote universally, and these are the core of morality.

These relationships are real. They are as real as the orbital relationship between the moon and the earth. They exist as a matter of fact. They are facts about which whole societies can be mistaken.

Yet, relationships between malleable desires and other desires depend on the existence of desires for their own existence. They are not independent of desires. The realist wants to tell me that, because of this, they are not real.

That strikes me as utter nonsense - and shows that we have need for a new definition of moral realism.

Hursthouse's Virtue Ethics - Part 1

I should start keeping track of the number of days until my Master's Thesis needs to be finalized. I do not think there is a hard due date, but I will set a date of May 15, 2019 - or 380 days from today.

In 1996, Rosalind Hursthouse defended the notion that:

An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically (i.e. acting in character) do in the circumstances.

I am going to start there.

Consequentialism, Deontology, and Virtue Ethics

The first point that Hursthouse makes is that all three types of moral theory - consequentialism, deontology, and virtue theory - can be understood as an argument consisting of three premises.

The first premise describes the nature of a right action. In the case of consequentialism, right action is action that produces the best consequences. In terms of deontology, right action is action in conformity to deontological principles. In the case of virtue theory, she argues, right action is linked to good character.

In the same way that consequentialism must then specify what counts as good consequences, and that deontology must specify what counts as the correct principles, virtue theory must then specify what counts as a virtuous agent.

What Is a Virtue?

When it comes to what counts as a virtue, Hursthouse lists the following options:

This second premise of virtue ethics might, like the second premise of some versions of deontology, be
completed simply by enumeration (‘a virtue is one of the following’, and then the list is given). Or we might, not implausibly, interpret the Hume of the second Enquiry as espousing virtue ethics. According to him, a virtue is a character trait (of human beings) that is useful or agreeable to its possessor or to others (inclusive ‘or’ both times). The standard neo-Aristotelian completion claims that a virtue is a character trait a human being needs for eudaimonia, to flourish or live well.

Of course, I am going to choose the "Hume" option. Hursthouse, in contrast, seems to prefer the Aristotelian option. Specifically, desirism says that a virtuous person is a person that has those desires and aversions that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote in people generally, and that lacks those desires and aversions that people generally have many and strong reasons to inhibit in people generally. Consequently, the overall theory that I defend will be different from Hursthouse's, but the definition of a right action as the action that a virtuous person would perform is the same.

Obligation, Prohibition, and Permission

Hursthouse adds a little detail later in her article.

The above response to the objection that fails to be action-guiding clearly amounts to a denial of the oftrepeated claim that virtue ethics does not come up with any rules (another version of the thought that it is
concerned with Being rather than Doing and needs to be supplemented with rules). We can now see that it comes up with a large number; not only does each virtue generate a prescription — act honestly, charitably, justly — but each vice a prohibition — do not act dishonestly, uncharitably, unjustly.

On this issue, desirism would have a dispute. Desirism produces an account of all three categories of action - obligatory, prohibited, and non-obligatory permission (or liberty).

• An individual has an obligation to do that which a person with good desires (and lacking bad desires) would do.

• An individual is morally prohibited from doing that which a person with good desires (and lacking bad desires) would not do.

• An individual has a moral permission to do that which a person with good desires (and lacking bad desires) may choose to do or not do depending on other interests. Examples of non-obligatory permissions include what to eat, what to wear, where to shop, who to marry (if anybody), what profession to enter into (if any), what to read, and when to go to bed.

Knowing What a Virtuous Person Would Do

Hursthouse also brings up the question of how a person who is not already virtuous know what a virtuous person would do. If an agent cannot figure this out, then the principle, "Do that which a virtuous person would do" is of no use to her.

Desirism has no problem with this requirement. Knowing what a person with good desires would do is just a branch of knowing what a person with any given desire would do. Can we predict what a person with a fear of spiders would do? Perhaps we cannot predict her behavior with perfect precision (since her behavior will also depend on her beliefs and her other desires, some of which may be unknown to us). However, we can predict a general tendency to make an effort to avoid spiders. The stronger the aversion, the stronger the tendency to avoid spiders. Similarly, we can predict the tendencies of a person with an aversion to assaulting others, taking or destroying their property without their consent, or lying. Similarly, we can at least predict the tendencies of a person who is concerned for the welfare of others and prefers to repay her debts.

Moral Education

The next objection that Hursthouse considers against the idea that virtue theory can be action guiding is the idea that what she calls "v-rules" are not a part of the moral education of children. Deontology handles the simple rules of do not lie, do not cheat, do not take what belongs to others, share, and "wait your turn". The v-rules of virtue theory - such things as "be honest" and "be kind" - are beyond the grasp of young children.

Hursthouse answers this objection in part by reminding us that children are told not only to obey certain rules but to acquire certain virtues. "Don't be mean" and "don't be selfish" are among of the moral instructions given even to young children.

I will need to look into the relevance of the instruction of older children, but I know from experience that the boy scout law is a list of virtues: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, brave, clean, and reverent.

Desirism, however, actually gives another advantage to Hursthouse's virtue-based concept of right action. If all we do is give children rules, we leave open the question, "Why follow the rules?" From whence comes the motivation to do what the rule asks us to do? Some may argue that the type of act in question has some sort of built-in motivation that compels action. However, this account is magical and cannot be understood easily as a part of the real world.

A virtue is a rule with motivation behind it. The virtue of honesty manifests itself as a motive - a preference or desire - for truth-telling. The virtue of trustworthiness manifests itself as the rule to keep promises and repay debts that is backed by a motivational disposition to do so. Being courteous, kind, and helpful combine a rule to help others with an internal reason - a motivation - to do so.

Desirism also allows us to provide the answer to the question of the how and why of moral education. Moral education consists of using reward and punishment (including praise and condemnation), acting on the reward centers of the brain to attach motivational force to what may be considered a deontological rule. The why comes from the desires of agents that can be fulfilled if others acquire the motivations that turn these deontological rules (do not lie, keep your promises, repay debts, help those in need) into virtues (honesty, trustworthiness, and kindness).

Conclusion

Here, then, we have an outline of some of the topics that can be brought up in a discussion of the action-guidedness of virtue. Hursthouse's general defense comparing the action-guidingness of v-rules compared to utilitarianism and deontology are applicable without modification. Desirism can provide further answers to the question, "What is a virtue?" It can also address the issues of the three different types of action (obligation, prohibition, and permission) as well as the nature of moral education (reward and punishment to attach motivational force to deontological rules).