The Hypothetical Perfectly Rational Person and Morality

I want to try a new tact in this claim that you can get morality by asking what a perfectly rational agent behind some veil if ignorance would say in answer to moral questions.

I am going to tentatively accept thus model and ask a hypothetical perfectly rational agent what she would say in answer to moral questions.

Here is how I think that person would answer.

First, get rid of this veil if ignorance. What makes you think that decisions made in a state of ignorance have any merit?


Okay, I know that you think that these facts should not be considered relevant in making moral decisions. I understand that. I get it. Bit you don't need to make a perfectly rational person ignorant of irrelevant facts when you seek their answer to real-worked questions.


The eccentricity of the orbit of the fifth planet discovered orbiting the star Gleise 581 is not relevant to the the question of where to search for my car keys as I get ready for work. You don't need to make me ignorant of the eccentricity of that planet when asking me questions about where to search for my car keys. Being a perfectly rational agent (hypothetically), I already know that those facts are not relevant.


Why aren't they relevant?


Because they do not answer the question. Moral questions simply are not questions about my personal likes and dislikes - about tastes that I have.


I suggest that moral facts are statements about what malleable desires people generally have the most and strongest reasons to promote using social tools such as praise and condemnation. When you ask me questions about these malleable desires, I know that my own likes and dislikes have only the slightest bit of relevance in answering those questions. Grounding my answer in those likes and dislikes is not rational.


Furthermore, when I answer the question of which malleable desires people generally have the most and strongest reason to promote or inhibit using these social tools, my answer will be grounded on objective facts. There is a fact of the matter as to what people generally have the most and strongest reason to promote or inhibit, and those facts remain facts even if I - the hypothetical perfectly rational person - were to cease to exist. The conclusion does not depend in any way on a fictitious entity such as myself.


Now, I may answer that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote a strong widespread aversion to responding to words alone with violence - a fact that can also be reported as 'a right to freedom of speech'. When I say this, it does not automatically follow that you, as an individual, have any particular reason to promote such an aversion. Even when you know all of the facts, it may still be true that you, personally, have no interest in promoting such an aversion.


However, it remains true - regardless of your personal likes and dislikes, that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote such an aversion. They have many and strong reason to praise and reward those who exhibit an aversion to responding to words with violence, and to condemn - even to punish - those who lack this aversion to responding to mere words with violence. There is a fact of the matter, substantially independent of whatever likes and dislikes you or I happen to have.


In telling you that there is a right to freedom of speech, then, how do I get you to refrain from responding to words with violence?


Well, I can't do it by reason alone. Desires (such as the aversion to responding to words with violence) are a-rational. Making you aware of all the relevant facts, and even making you a perfectly rational person - has no necessary implications for what you want.


The tools for changing desires are not facts and reason, but praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.


My claim that there is a right to freedom of speech is a claim that people generally have many and strong reasons to employ the social tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote in people such as you and me an aversion to responding to words with violence. They cannot create this aversion by providing us with facts and rationality. They create this reason by putting us in an environment with the relevant components of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.


There is still a place for reason in morality.


If your car has a flat tire, reason alone - or reason combined with relevant facts - cannot change a tire. But it can tell you the most efficient way to get the tire changed. It tells you how to use a jack, tire-iron, lug nuts, and spare tire to create a state in which the flat tire has been exchanged for one that is not flat. It even tells you - given your desires - why you should change the tire.


Similarly, reason and facts cannot create virtue. But it can tell you how to use social tools such as praise and condemnation to create virtue, and even which desires to promote or inhibit using these tools.

There is a reason why praise and condemnation, reward and punishment, are such dominant parts of moral institutions. It is because morality is concerned primarily with the tuning of malleable desires, and these tools are the tools for tuning malleable desires. This feature of praise and blame - praiseworthiness and blameworthiness - is something that a great many moral theories simply ignore. They sweep it aside, refusing to acknowledge that their inability to explain the role of these elements is, in fact, a serious argument against the theories they are offering. 


The final question you might ask, then, is what reasons do people generally have to promote those malleable desires they have the most and strongest reason to promote, or to inhibit those malleable desires they have the most and strongest reason to inhibit.


If you ask that question, I will simply accuse you of not paying attention and uttering words without thinking about what they mean.

This, then, is the answer from the perfectly rational person. Well, this is my proposal for how she would answer. Not being a perfectly rational person, I can only offer a theory as to what she might say - the way many moral philosophers offer theories about what such a person might say.

Importantly, it is an answer that meets the criterion that, once we know the answer, we can rid ourselves of the hypothetical perfectly rational person. She was just a place holder for the right answer. She was never an essential part of the answer. The fact that she is a work of fiction - an imaginary being - does not affect the moral argument, because she is a premise that can be eliminated and replaced with objective facts.

And with that, we get an actual real-world objective morality without pieces of fiction woven into it.