Evil: The Gap Between Practical and Moral Reasons

Evil is measured by the distance between practical "ought" and moral "ought".

I have written extensively (and in some technical detail) about reasons for intentional action - and about what it means to say that a person ought to do something.

Ultimately, I argued for a distinction in the way we talk about reasons.

"Practical ought" uses the language "has a reason". This pretty much reduces to "has a desire" and comes close to the formula that Bernard Williams defended:

A has a reason to φ if A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φing.

I would want to say, "if and only if A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φing" since desires provide the only end reasons for intentional action. There is nothing else that generates or creates end-reasons or goals. However, I would reject the claim that this is build into the meaning of the phrase. "Has a reason" refers to any type of reason - it just so happens that the only type of reason that exists come from desires.

A has a reason to φ if and only if A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φing.

I also want to stress that I am talking exclusively about desires-as-ends and not desire-as-means. A person who is thirsty and who falsely believes that a glass contains clean water does not have a reason to drink from the glass. She falsely believes that she has a reason to drink from the glass when, in fact, she has no reason to do so.

I know that there are philosophers who would reject this out of hand. Some would argue that beliefs can motivate. I would argue that any true belief that appears to motivate (e.g., a belief that X is good) is a belief that accurately relates an object of evaluation to a desire and the motivation can actually be found in that desire. Some may argue that habits can motivate – which is true – but habits cannot provide reasons in the relevant sense. Out of habit, a person may get out of bed at 5:00 AM when he has no reason to do so.

I am going to have to save discussion of these types of objections for other posts. In this post, I am merely describing a relationship between practical reasons and moral reasons.

Internalism is true of practical ought. When it comes to practical ought, all of the relevant reasons are reasons that the agent has.

This identifies the reasons that the agent has. However, we can also evaluate these reasons themselves as good or bad. That is to say, we can ask whether the agent has any reason to have a particular reason, or has reason to eliminate a reason. An agent’s desire to smoke, for example, may give her a reason to smoke. However, because of health effects and costs, she has many and strong reasons to get rid of this desire to smoke – this reason to smoke. Similarly, she has many and strong reasons to avoid acquiring such a desire to start with, and to prevent having her children or others she care about acquiring such a desire.

A has a good (bad) reason to φ if and only if A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φing, and A has more reasons to have that desire than to not have it (to not have that desire than to have it).

The account given above of the reasons that an agent has also gives us an account of reasons that exist.

A has a good (bad) reason to φ if and only if A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φing, and there exists more reasons for the agent to have that desire than to not have it (to not have that desire than to have it).

However, these forms of goodness and badness are not the same. A reason can be good in the former sense even though it is bad in the latter sense, and vica versa.

As it turns out, if there exists a reason for Agent to have a desire, because B has a desire which would be satisfied, then B has a reason to cause A to have that desire.

Or, speaking more generally, if there exists many and strong reasons for people generally to have a desire, because of the other desires it would satisfy, then those others have many and strong reasons to cause agents to have such a desire.

The primary tools for causing A (and others) to have a desire are rewards (such as praise) and punishments (such as condemnation). Consequently, if there exists many and strong reasons to cause people generally to have a desire, then there exists many and strong reasons to praise people who have/display that desire and to punish/condemn those who do not.

A has a good (bad) reason to φ if and only if A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φing, and people generally have many and strong reasons to praise those who have such a reason and to punish/condemn those who do not.

This, I would argue, is the essence of moral ought.

Here, then, is the relationship between practical ought and moral ought.

Practical ought looks at the reasons that the agent has – which are all internal reasons and are all, in fact, grounded on desires. Moral ought has to do with the reasons that the agent “should have” in the sense that they are the reasons that people generally have many and strong reasons to cause agents to have generally, using the tools of reward (such as praise) and punishment (such as condemnation).

Good and evil, then, are measured by the size of the gap between what an agent has reason to do and what the agent should have reason to do. People who have the reasons they should have (and do not have the reasons they should not have) are good - and are the proper objects of reward and praise. People who have reasons they should not have, and who do not have reasons they should have, are evil - and are the proper objects of punishment and condemnation.