British Ethical Theorists 0004: Hypothetical and Categorical Ought

Thomas Hurka argued that the British Ethical Theorists (BETs) he discussed in his book British Ethical Theorists were conceptual minimalists. They tried to reduce the basic set of evaluative terms as much as possible.

One of the ways in which the BETs sought to reach this objective is to reduce all "ought" concepts to one central concept. The concept that they liked was the categorical moral "ought" of Immanuel Kant - the "ought" that is absolutely and independent of all desires.

To make some sense of these categorical imperatives, clearly, if it is wrong for you to murder your neighbor, this wrongness does not depend in any way on you not wanting to kill your uncle. It would be wrong even if you did want to kill your uncle. So, the wrongness of killing your uncle is independent of your desires. This much seems true.

This is not going to fit at all well with desirism. Desirism holds that there is no such thing as a categorical ought. All value relates states of affairs to desires, and desires provide the only reasons for action that exist. Oughts - or reasons for action - that exist independent of desires are a fiction. So, reducing all oughts to categorical oughts is going to be problematic. How is desirism, which grounds all value on desires, going to handle the wrongness of killing your uncle?

So, it seems, desirism has a trap that it needs to find a way out of. Categorical imperatives do not exist so the wrongness of killing your uncle depends on desires, but the wrongness of killing your uncle is independent of your desires. Of course, this way of phrasing the problem reveals the decision. Something can be independent of your desires, but not independent of desires.

The ought that relates an object of evaluation to a desire is called the "hypothetical ought". It is hypothetical because it is expressed as an if-then statement such that "If the first part is true (hypothetically), then the second part is true. A hypothetical ought links the ought of an action to a desire. Hurka used the example, "If you want above all to get rich, murder your uncle." I prefer the more explicitly stated, "If you want above all to get rich, then you should murder your uncle." We are assuming for the sake of this example that if you murder your uncle, you will get rich. You have everything worked out perfectly well so that you will get the inheritance, and you have no chance of getting caught.

In one sense, desirism has something in common with the BETs. Like them, Desirism holds that only one type of ought exists. Unlike the BETs, However, where BETs claim that hypothetical imperatives are the problematic ought, desirism holds that they are all that exist and the categorical ought is fiction. In this essay, I want to look at their arguments against the hypothetical ought and show how the elimination of the categorical ought makes more sense.

Let us look at their arguments.

The BETs used two methods to try to argue against the hypothetical ought. One was to reduce them to categorical oughts. The other was to claim that they are not prescriptive - only descriptive - and so they don't actually tell people what to do.

The First Response: Hypothetical Oughts are Purely Descriptive

According to Hurka, some of the BETs held that hypothetical oughts are purely descriptive. The statement, "If you want above all to get rich, then you should murder your uncle" merely means that, "If you want above all to get rich" is true, then "You should murder your uncle" is true. This is a valid inference that says that "If A, then B" is true and "A" is true then "B" is true. More specifically, if it is true that "If you want above all to get rich, then you should murder your uncle," and also true that you want most of all to get rich, then it is true that you should murder your uncle.

However, "You should murder your uncle" is false. Hurka quoted W.D. Ross as saying:

No one really thinks that the fact that a person desires a certain end makes it obligatory on him to will the means to it; if we think the end is a bad one (or that his desiring it is bad), we think that in spite of his desiring the end he ought not to take the (Hurka, p. 29).

Hurka quotes H.A. Pritchard as saying, "I ought to do so and so" in the hypothetical sense really means, "If I do not do so and so, my purpose will not be realized." The conclusion is merely descriptive. It merely describes the fact that killing your uncle will result in your being rich. It does not actually tell you to kill your uncle. Because hypothetical imperatives are merely descriptive, only categorical imperatives actually tell you what to do.

I would respond to this by saying that the argument contains an equivocation.

"Should" - which appears in the first premise - relates the action to a set of desires. However, the desires that it relates the object of evaluation to need not be the desires of the agent.

There are two types of "should" that are relevant here. One type of "should" relates the objects of evaluation to the desires of the agent. This is the practical "should". The other type relates the object of evaluation to the desires that people generally have reasons to promote universally. This is what, according to desirism, represents the moral "should". Another way of reporting this same distinction is to say that there is a sense of "should do X" that means "you have a reason to do X", and a different sense of "should do X" that means that people generally have reasons to cause people universally to have a reason to do X."

With these two senses in mind, we can now criticize the inference above as either being unsurprising or built on a false premise.

Let us take the first version, "should" = "has a reason" or "relates the action in question to the desires of the agent". Using this sense of "should," the first premise is true. If you want above all else to be wealthy then you have a motivating reason to kill your uncle. Consequently, under the assumption that you want above all else to be wealthy, the conclusion that you have a motivating reason to kill your uncle is true - but unsurprising. If your uncle ends up being murdered, and the police discover that you have become wealthy as a result, they would say - truthfully (that is to say, they will know it to be a fact) - that you had a motive for murder. Even if you did not murder your uncle, you had a reason to do so. Of course, you also may have had (and should have had) reasons not to.

Now, let us take the second version of "should". This version relates the object of evaluation to the desires that people generally have reason to promote universally. To explain what this means, note that people generally have reason to promote, universally, an aversion to doing those things that will result in others being in extreme pain. Each of us has a reason to want everybody else to be averse to causing pain to others, because that makes it less likely that they will cause pain to us. Under this interpretation, the first premise of the original argument is false. Even if it is true that you want most of all to be wealthy, and even though it may be true that you could become wealthy by murdering your uncle, it is not the case that killing your uncle would fulfill the desires that people generally have reason to promote universally. So, it is not the case that you should murder your uncle in this sense.

Consequently, the criticism that the inference from "You want above all to be rich," and "you could be rich if you murder your uncle" to the conclusion "you should murder your uncle" is not a problem for desirism. Properly understood, it only says, "You have a motivating reason to murder your uncle," which is obviously true. In the other sense, it says, "Murdering your uncle will fulfill the desires that people generally have reason to promote universally", which is clearly false.

The Second Response

The second way in which the BETs sought to deal with hypothetical imperatives is by reducing them to categorical imperative. That is to say, there is a categorical imperative telling people to do that which they have a reason to do. For example, using the example above whereby you can become rich if you murder your uncle, the hypothetical reduction maneuver interprets this as saying, "You should either (1) make it the case that you do not desire above all else to be rich, or (2) murder your uncle." Of course, the correct option is (1), you should make it the case that you do not want above all else to be rich.

Actually, the hypothetical reduction maneuver does not recommend any particular option. Assume that I were to place two coins on the table. One coin is heads, the other coin is tails. I then tell you to make it the case that either both coins are heads or both coins are tails. There is nothing in this requests that tells you whether you should make the one coin heads and make the other coin tails. There is nothing in the hypothetical reduction to reject the option of murdering your uncle. In fact, since it is far easier to murder your uncle than to make it the case that you do not want above all else to be wealthy, murdering your uncle seems like the most practical alternative.

No categorical imperative is, in fact, necessary. When we evolved our aversion to pain, a desire for sex, hunger, and thirst, we had no need to add to any of these things a categorical imperative to avoid pain, engage in sex, eat, and drink - not unless one thinks that the most basic animals from insects to oysters follow categorical imperatives. The aversion to pain is sufficient to motivate an agent (give an agent) a reason to avoid pain, and hunger is sufficiently motivating to cause an agent to eat. And when it is the case that an (injured) animal is suffering pain that it cannot avoid, or is hungry with no food or thirsty with nothing to drink, it is absurd to say of the animal that it is under a categorical imperative to "eat or quit being hungry".


Conclusion

The actual argument that I am using against the categorical imperative is that of Occam's Razor. We don't need categorical imperatives. Evolution explains the hypothetical imperatives. Some desires we acquired through evolution. Some desires we acquire through learning. But all values are hypothetical since they depend on the contingencies involved in either how we evolved and what we learned.

We evolved to have desires that motivate us to avoid pain, seek sex, eat, drink, seek comfortable conditions, avoid that which threatens our reproductive success, care for our offspring, form tribes, and the like. This is the only source of reasons that exist.

We also acquired a disposition to learn to like or dislike certain things, depending on our experiences. We learn to like or dislike certain kinds of food, certain people, certain ways of spending our time, and the like by experience. Both of these ways of acquiring desires is contingent and hypothetical.

We have no need to add a categorical ought to the hypothetical oughts that we know exist. Instead, we have reason to apply Occam's Razor and cut them out of our list of things that exist. All we have are hypothetical imperatives, but hypothetical imperatives can handle the issue of moral wrongness being independent of the agent's desires. It is dependent on the desires that others have reason to cause the agent to have, not the desires the agent actually has.