Responding to Criticism: Michael Smith on The Moral Problem

In this post, I try to convince you that I was wrong.

I have been criticizing the view that "There is a reason for you to do X" implies "You have a desire that would be fulfilled by doing X."

I owe it to you, the reader, to give this position the best defense I can provide. There are reasons why so many people believe it - it's not just something they picked at random to have faith in. There is an argument for it. Consequently, I am obligated to explain what this argument is in such a way that it is possible for an intelligent and concerned person to be convinced that it is true. Then one can demonstrate the subtle but important mistake one makes in going from the available reasons to that particular conclusion.

Michael Smith in The Moral Problem provides a defense of the position I am criticizing. In Smith's argument, he has us begin with the assumption that you have convinced you that I have a moral obligation to give 10% of my income to famine relief. So, now, at the end of our discussion, I say, "You're right. I am obligated to give 10% of my income to famine relief." But, then, I also say, "But, I don't care. You've convinced me that I have this obligation, but I am entirely unmoved to do that which I agree that I am obligated to do." The oddness of this conjunction of statements is captured in the proposition, "If I am convinced that I am obligated to perform some action, then I am motivated to perform some action."

If we combine this with a Humean theory of motivation (a move that some consider controversial, but we do not need to get into that here), then this yields the conclusion, "If I am convinced that I am obligated to perform some action, then I have some desire that would be served by my performing that action."

There is a strong and a weak version of this thesis. The strong version says that if I believe that I have an obligation to do something than I am sufficiently strongly motivated to actually do it. If I do not actually perform the action, assuming that I am able to do so, this proves that I do not sincerely believe that I have the obligation. The weak version, in contrast, allows that I can be motivated to perform the action, but that this motive can be outweighed by other motives not to perform the action. We may be able to distinguish these two versions by categorizing the former as an "all things considered ought judgment" and the latter as a "prima facie ought judgment." Since both of these views are mistaken, we do not need to decide between them.

In contrast, Desirism says that convincing me that I have an obligation to donate 10% of my income to famine relief means convincing me that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would donate 10% of their income to famine relief. "Good desires," in turn, are those desires that people generally have reasons to promote universally, while bad desires are those that people generally have reason to inhibit universally.

Desirism allows me to say, "Okay, you have convinced me that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would have performed that action. However, since I do not have the relevant good desires, and do not lack the relevant bad desires, I happen to be unmoved by your argument. I am not the least bit motivated to do that which you have totally convinced me I have an obligation to do."

Consequently, desirism fails to account for the motivation that is intrinsic to being convinced that one has an obligation to do something. Because it cannot account for this observed fact, the theory itself fails and must be discarded.

Obviously, I do not believe this. I think that Smith's argument is flawed. To defend desirism, I either need to question Smith's observations about the relationship between believing one has an obligation and having motivation, or account for that relationship in a way compatible with desirism.

Allow me to take the second route.

Let us look at exactly what I am saying when I say, "You have convinced me that I have an obligation to give 10% of my income to famine relief."

As I already mentioned, this means that you have convinced me that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would give 10% of his money to famine relief. If I were to then say that, even though I believe what you say, I am not in the least bit motivated to act, then I must be saying, "I either lack some good desires, or I have some bad desires" This, in turn, implies, "People generally have many and strong reasons to condemn - and perhaps even to punish - people like me." It turns out that I do have reasons to avoid condemnation and punishment. Consequently, I do have reasons to do that which I agree that I am obligated to do. However, I am not being moved by any desire to help those in need, or by any desire to do that which I believe is right. I am being moved, instead, by my aversion to condemnation and punishment that, I have agreed, people generally (people like you) have many and strong reasons to inflict on people like me.

These reasons are still not necessary. They are contingent. They depend on the fact that I have reasons to avoid condemnation and punishment. If I were a sufficiently powerful self-sufficient entity who had nothing to fear in terms of punishment and did not care about condemnation, then I would not, in fact, have a reason to do that which I said I had an obligation to do. The situations in which this is most likely to be the case are situations in which I can perform the act without getting caught (or without others even getting suspicious), in which case I can avoid all condemnation and punishment for my evil deeds. This contingent relationship (this denial of a necessary relationship) is something that people such as Smith would object to. After all, an action is wrong even if the agent can get away with it in secret.

Of course, desirism agrees that the action is wrong even when I can get away with it without the least bit of risk of condemnation and punishment. This is because, even though I can get away with the moral crime, it remains true that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn, and perhaps even to punish, people like me. Consequently, the objection that desirism cannot account for the fact that the actions that one can get away with are not wrong fails. Desirism does account for those facts.

Still, desirism states that, if I believe that I can get away with some action without getting caught (and thus avoid condemnation and punishment), I can still agree that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn and, perhaps, to punish people like me (in other words, that performing the action is wrong), and still perform the action without the least bit of hesitation. Yet. even this requires that I have no desire to be the type of person that people generally have reason to praise, and no aversion to being the kind of person that people generally have reason to condemn and punish. Note that if I perform the action without getting caught, I would still be the type of person that people generally have reason to condemn and punish, even if they do not know this fact. To be unmoved by the fact that the action is wrong is to be unmoved by the realization that I am the type of person that people generally have reason to condemn and, perhaps, to punish.

The type of person that can be unmoved by the belief that they have an obligation is turning out to be a very rare type of creature, indeed. Typically, the way people respond to the claim that their actions are wrong is through some sort of rationalization. They say - often to others, but at least to themselves - "The claim that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn, and to punish, people like me is mistaken. I have good reason for what I do. The only people who will suffer as a result of my theft are the insurance companies, and they are malevolent and exploitative institutions that deserve to suffer. Or, the person who will suffer from my violent assault (or rape) or my destruction of their property is somebody who, in virtue of their past actions, deserves to suffer. Or, "even though they do not realize it and I have not obtained their consent, they will value what I am doing and will, ultimately, be better off because of it." These are among the more common ways of denying the thesis that "people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn, and perhaps to punish, people like me." Or, they may say that, "even though this is a prima facie wrong, it serves a greater good."

In fact, I offer as a partial defense of desirism that it is capable of explaining and predicting the types of claims that wrong-doers will make in their own defense. All of the standard excuses that wrong doers offer are reasons that, if true, would argue against the proposition, "people generally have reasons to condemn or even to punish people like me." If this was not an accurate account of what people mean when they say that some action is wrong, then why is it that these are the arguments that people use when they want to support the thesis that the action actually is not wrong.

In summary, desirism can, in fact, handle the observation that when somebody has been convinced that something is wrong they tend to be motivated not to perform that action. This is because it is a very rare type of creature indeed who can be unmoved by the fact that "people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn, and perhaps to punish, people like me." It is such a rare occurrence that, in the real world, you can almost universally expect that convincing somebody that some action is wrong means motivating him to avoid performing that action.