"I have" vs "There is" a Reason to Do Something

In the previous post, "The Central Problem of Morality", I claimed that I could solve The Central Problem of Morality by employing a distinction between "I have a reason to do something" and "There is a reason for me to do something."

If I have a reason to do something, then I have a desire that would be fulfilled by my doing it. If, on the other hand, there exists a reason for me to do something, then there exists a desire that would be served by my doing it. The desire that exists need not be mine - I am not the only creature in the universe with desires. Consequently "there is a reason to do something" does not imply "I have a desire that would be served by my doing it."

The standard problem of morality as described in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is built on the premise that "there is a reason for me to do something" does imply "I have a desire that would be served by my doing it." It is from this false premise that we get "the central problem of morality". Replace the false premise with a true premise and the central problem of morality disappears.

What SEP calls "the central problem of morality" is found in trying to reconcile (1) If I tell you that something is wrong, it means that there are reasons for you not to do it, (2) to say that there are reasons not to do it is to say that you have a desire that would be served by not doing it, and (3) the wrongness of the act is independent of your desires. Fixing this inconsistent triad is called the "central problem of morality".

You can look at that previous posting for more details.

What I want to do here is to describe this distinction between "I have a reason to do something" and "there is a reason for me to do something" in a bit more detail and try to make its relationship to morality a bit more obvious and easier to understand.

So . . . let me begin with this.

Imagine that you are a creature with an aversion to pain. (I know . . . moral philosophers have this bad habit of using examples that have only the weakest relationship to reality. But, if you please, bear with me a moment, I think this will help.)

Imagine that you are a creature with an aversion to pain, and you are surrounded by creatures that have what we will call a "mesolimbic dopamine pathway" What this brain feature does is that it processes what are called "rewards" and "punishments". The way this system works is that it takes rewards (which we can loosely understand as "things that the agent likes") and punishments (which we can loosely understand as "things that the agent does not like") and processes them so as to generate rules of behavior that tend to increase the chances of "what is liked" happening and "what is not liked" not happening.

Now, there are several important facts and distinctions one has to keep in mind.

First, praise acts as a reward and condemnation acts as a punishment. That is to say, praise tends to generate dispositions to do those things that result in praise, and condemnation tends to generate dispositions to do things other than that which brings condemnation.

Second - and this is important . . .

Rewards and punishments work in two different ways.

The first way is as incentives and deterrence. If you promise to pay somebody to do something, you give him a reason to do it. If you threaten to punish someone if he does not do what you command, this gives him a reason to do what you command. The important thing to make note of is that this is NOT (emphasis, "NOT") what I am talking about when I talk about rewards and punishments (including praise and condemnation) generating reasons for behavior.

The second say is as the causes of new dispositions - desires and aversions. Praise a child for her honesty and she will be more likely to be honest - even under conditions where she cannot expect to receive any praise. She will come to value honesty for its own sake - as an end in itself. If a child is "punished" by, for example, eating a meal that has mushrooms in it that makes him violently ill (even if it has nothing to do with the mushrooms or even the food), the child may well acquire a strong aversion to eating mushrooms. Put such a meal in front of the child in the future and he will turn away. Similarly, condemnation and punishment will tend to form strong dispositions to avoid that which caused the condemnation and punishment. This is the effect that I am focusing on in this blog posting.

Now, a quick summary. You have an aversion to pain. You are surrounded by creatures with a "reward system" whereby, by praising and rewarding those who avoid actions that cause pain, and condemning and punishing those who perform actions that cause pain, you can potentially promote in others an aversion to performing actions that will cause you pain. You certainly have a reason (note the use of the phrase "have a reason") to praise and reward those who avoid causing pain to others, as well as to condemn and punish those who do not. Furthermore, you have a reason to promote this aversion to causing pain universally - in everybody else, without exception. The more people who have this aversion to causing pain, and the stronger that aversion is, the less likely it will be the case that you will experience pain. So . . . go ahead . . . use your powers of praise and condemnation, and reward and punishment (to the degree that you can safely do so) to promote, universally, in others an aversion to causing pain. It sounds like a good idea.

Now, I want to add one more stipulation - which is that you are not so different from the other creatures in your community. In other words, just like you, they have an aversion to their own pain just as you have an aversion to your own pain. Furthermore, your brain contains a reward system just as theirs does. Consequently, just as it is the case that you have reason to praise and reward those who avoid causing pain to others, and to condemn and punish those who cause pain to others, those others have reason to praise and reward you when you avoid causing pain to others, and to condemn and punish you if you should cause pain to others.

Under these conditions, we can say that it is true that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote, universally, an aversion to causing pain to others. So, how are we going to communicate this fact to others?

We share a common language.

I have an idea. We can say that it is "wrong" to cause pain to others. When we say this, we will mean, of course, that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote, universally, an aversion to causing pain to others. However, I think we can be a bit more efficient than that. We can include as a part of the meaning of the term "wrong" the act of condemnation itself. When we say that what somebody did was wrong we are not only reporting a fact about the desires that people generally have reason to promote universally, we are - at the same time and in the same breath - making a statement of condemnation. "What you did was wrong," not only tells a person, "You did something that people generally have reasons to promote an aversion to doing through condemnation and punishment." We are also saying, "We condemn you. We hold you in contempt. Behold our anger and indignation as your wrongdoing."

An interesting side note about punishment. We often intentionally harm others, but it is not always punishment. A doctor who gives a child a vaccine causes the child pain. But it is not a punishment. For something to count as punishment - in the social and legal sense - it must contain an element of condemnation. It must contain an element of condemnation to count as "punishment".

Anyway, my goal here is to elaborate on how the distinction between "Agent1 has a reason to do something" and "there is a reason for Agent1 to do something" solves the central problem of morality.

Notice that, in the above example, when we tell somebody "causing pain to others is wrong" we are NOT (emphasis "NOT") saying that he has a reason to avoid causing pain to others. We are saying that he SHOULD have a reason to avoid causing pain to others and, by that, we mean that there are reasons to condemn and, perhaps, punish those who cause pain to others as a way of giving them a reason to avoid causing pain to others. Note that, when we say, "we are going to give you a reason to avoid causing pain to others," we are generally talking about both methods described above. That is to say, we are promising not only to use condemnation and punishment as a deterrence, but we are also seeking to use condemnation and punishment to trigger the reward system to create a rule against (an aversion to) causing pain to others.

So, now we have a solution to the central problem of morality.

Recall that the central problem is trying to resolve an inconsistent triad.

(1) If I tell you that something is wrong, it means that there are reasons for you not to do it, (2) to say that there are reasons not to do it is to say that you have a desire that would be served by not doing it, and (3) the wrongness of the act is independent of your desires.

In this version of the problem, we are going to reject (2). To say that there are reasons not to do it is to say that there are reasons to cause you to have a desire that would be served by not doing it. You may not have such a desire - at least not yet, but we're working on changing that.