The Accountability Theory of Condemnation

This is the last post in a series that examined theories of condemnation that compete with that proposed by desirism.

I am using the following text:

Dill, Brendan and Darwall, Stephen (2014). "Moral Psychology as Accountability" in Moral Psychology and Human Agency (D'Arms, Justin and Jacobson, eds.). Oxford.

So far, I have looked at:

The Egoistic Theory of Condemnation: the theory that people condemn others because they seek some personal gain - compensation, cooperation in the production of a public good, satisfaction.

The Deterrence Theory of Condemnation that explains condemnation as a threat that will give people a reason not to perform those actions that will result in condemnation.

The Retributivist Theory of Condemnation which attempts to explain condemnation as an attempt to inflict retribution on the guilty party in proportion to the wrongness of their crime.

The theory that the authors defended was one that they called the accountability theory.

the accountability theory views punishment as a means to the end of getting the perpetrator to hold himself accountable for his wrongdoing (p. 48)

This theory is still going to encounter the problem that we have come up with before. This is the problem of the condemnation of historical, fictional, and hypothetical individuals. It would be quite difficult, as I understand it, to hope to get Hitler to hold himself accountable for the Holocaust. Similarly, given Trump's psychology it is highly unlikely that he will ever hold himself accountable for anything either. Yet, we condemn both of them.

This problem also occurs in the case of third-party condemnation. This applies to cases like those where the people of the household condemn others who are not present and who may never hear of the condemnation. Clearly, this form of condemnation cannot hope to cause the condemned to take responsibility for his actions. Yet, the condemnation of historical, fictional, and hypothetical figures is quite common, as is the condemnation of people who are not present and who cannot hope to made to hold themselves accountable by these actions.

The Retributivist Theory of Condemnation

I am looking at theories of condemnation to measure how they compare to the role that condemnation plays in desirism.

I am using the following text:

Dill, Brendan and Darwall, Stephen (2014). "Moral Psychology as Accountability" in Moral Psychology and Human Agency (D'Arms, Justin and Jacobson, eds.). Oxford.

So far, I have looked at:

The Egoistic Theory of Condemnation: the theory that people condemn others because they seek some personal gain - compensation, cooperation in the production of a public good, satisfaction.

The Deterrence Theory of Condemnation that explains condemnation as a threat that will give people a reason not to perform those actions that will result in condemnation.

This time I wish to look at the Retributivist Theory of Condemnation.

The authors describe the retributivist theory as follows:

This theory claims that condemnatory behavior is motivated by the goal to cause harm to the perpetrator in proportion with the blameworthiness of the perpetrator’s wrongdoing (p. 48).

Research on condemnation show that "subjects’ punishment judgments are sensitive to the perceived blameworthiness of the perpetrator" according to the authors. However, this leads to a question. How do we measure the blameworthiness of the perpetrator? If blameworthiness is measured in terms of the amount of punishment that the person is thought to deserve, and punishment is proportional to blameworthiness, then we have a vicious little circle linking blameworthy attitudes and punishment attitudes. Of course, in this case, punishment is going to be proportional to blameworthiness, because blameworthiness is determined by the amount of punishment one judges the agent to be due.

Retributivist theory is going to suffer from the fame fault identified earlier for both egoistic and deterrence theories. It fails to account for our condemnation of those who have died, fictional characters, or hypothetical characters. Historic and fictitious characters cannot be made to pay compensation, nor can they be coerced or shamed into participating in projects that benefit the community (egoistic theory), nor can our condemnation deter them from performing similar crimes in the future (deterrence theory). Similarly, we cannot harm them. If the motive of condemnation is to obtain retribution in proportion to the wrong, and we cannot harm them, then the motive for condemning them cannot be coming from that source.

A moral education theory of condemnation can handle these types of cases. This theory states that the motive behind condemnation is to alter people's character - to create and promote useful desires to perform or aversions to performing certain types of actions, not only in the person condemned, but in others as well. We condemn historical figures to tell people, "Don't be like them." This is the same reason we create and condemn story-book and movie villains. The purpose is not to bring about any change on the part of those who are condemned, but to bring about a charge in the population as a whole based on that condemnation.

I should add - these are not entirely either-or choices. Obviously, deterrence and incentive are reasons behind reward and punishment. And we do sometimes threaten punishment to coerce people into contributing to a public good. So, there is some truth behind the egoistic and deterrence theories. The retributivist theory has an additional problem that these other theories do not have. Retributivist theory seems to hold that harming certain people is good for its own sake - that it is to be pursued as an end independent of any benefit that may come from it. If intrinsic value does not exist, then punishing people in order to bring about or realize a state of intrinsic value that does not exist can never justify punishment.

Desirism does have a way to handle that objection. Recall that desirism concerns the benefits of manufacturing certain desires - and that means manufacturing certain ends. A person with a desire to keep his promises views keeping a promise as an end in itself - something to do for its own sake independent of the benefits it creates. It does not look to the benefit of keeping promises, but to the benefits of promoting a universal desire to keep promises. One can make the argument that there are benefits to promoting, universally, a desire to see the guilty punished. A person with this desire will seek to punish the innocent even in cases where punishing the innocent produces no additional benefits in the same way that a person with a desire to keep promises will keep a promise even when it produces no other benefit. It is useful to universalize such a desire or aversion even if they lead to these rare cases in which no good comes of it - good still comes from universalizing the relevant desire or aversion.

Desirism, then, provides us with a way of understanding retributivist condemnation without the metaphysical magic of intrinsically prescriptive properties.

The Deterrence Theory of Condemnation

In our last exciting episode, I explained how the theory of condemnation that comes from desirism defeats the egoistic theory of condemnation.

This week, we are playing against the deterrence theory of condemnation.

I am employing Dill, Brendan and Darwall, Stephen (2014). "Moral Psychology as Accountability" in Moral Psychology and Human Agency (D'Arms, Justin and Jacobson, eds.). Oxford.

Recall that the value of this article is found in the fact that it not only identifies the various theories of condemnation, of which the egoistic and deterrence theories are but two examples, but it then examines the empirical research to determine if the theory actually fits what people are doing when they condemn or punish. The deterrence theory of condemnation say that people engage in condemnation as a way of giving others a reason not to perform actions of the type being condemned. According to the authors:

The deterrence theory predicts that subjects will judge that a more severe punishment is appropriate when the potential deterrence benefit is high, and that a less severe punishment is appropriate when the potential deterrence benefit is low.

They then went on to discuss a number of experiments that show that this is not the case.

At once level, I do not think that the deterrence theory implies that greater potential deterrence implies greater punishment. We could probably get a great deal of deterrence against littering or jay-walking if we were to hang, draw, and quarter perpetrators. However, if we were to do this, the wrongdoing would be found in the hanging, drawing, and quartering of perpetrators far more than in the crimes that the guilty are thought to have committed. Even somebody who holds to a deterrence theory of punishment has reason to refrain from harsher punishment, even where it will do good, on the grounds that it will not do enough good to warrant the suffering that would be found in that punishment. So, this is a poor test for the deterrence theory.

However, it is relevant that this research shows that people will punish even when there is no deterrence effect because the punishment cannot in any way influence the agent's or anybody else's future action. This would be the case if an electrical shock were delivered against the perpetrator even though the perpetrator would have no way of knowing why he got shocked or to relate it to his wrong action.

According to desirism, people condemn in order to promote universally aversions to doing actions of the type being condemned. The deterrence effect of condemnation applies not only to the person being condemned, but to others who experience the condemnation as well - even when they experience it third hand or experience it as being inflicted against an imaginary or hypothetical character that has no home of being deterred about it. We cannot prevent the subject from telling his friends that, "I punished him, even though he has no way of knowing that it was me or why it happened." The telling of the story that those who perform of actions of that type merit some sort of harm promotes in others an aversion to doing acts of the type that the agent is punishing.

One problem with the deterrence theory is that it can not explain the condemnation of historical figures, fictional figures, or hypothetical figures in a story. Our condemnation is not going to change their action. Yet, we have reason to condemn them because of the effects of that condemnation on others in our community. Condemning a historical figure tells others, "do not be like him." Creating a story in which the villain gets it in the end - and the audience both within the story and observing the story cheer - tells viewers that they will be the recipient of the same type of attitude if they should act as the person the movie acted.

So, now, we have two problems with the discussion of the deterrence theory of condemnation. The first of these is that it does not consider reasons why agents might want to temper their condemnation for other reasons - it takes deterrence to be the only reason relevant to the amount of compensation. The second is that it does not consider the effect of condemnation on third parties. The third is that it considers only the effect of giving people a reason to avoid condemnation. It does not consider the effect of condemnation in promoting a simple aversion to doing acts like the type being condemned. I may refrain from taking property because I fear getting caught (and the punishment that would follow). However, the main reason that I do not take the property of others is because I have an aversion to taking the property of others. It is not something that I want to do, and it does not reflect the type of person I want to be. The effect of condemnation in promoting attitudes like this is missing from the discussion that Dill and Darwall provide.

It would actually be a mistake to call this a deterrence theory of condemnation. It is, instead, a moral education theory of condemnation - and not necessarily the education of the person being condemned. It can involve the education of anybody growing up in a community where actions of the type of in question are routinely condemned.

The Egoistic Theory of Condemnation.

I read an article yesterday that I found extremely interesting.

Series Introduction

Dill, Brendan and Darwall, Stephen (2014). "Moral Psychology as Accountability" in Moral Psychology and Human Agency (D'Arms, Justin and Jacobson, eds.). Oxford.

In this article, the authors look at several theories of condemnation, discuss the merits and demerits of each, and present a theory of their own.

Readers will know that condemnation plays a central role in desirism. Condemnation is a tool that people employ to act on the reward and punishment pathways of the brain so as to create universally aversions to performing acts of the type being condemned. Condemnation is legitimate when it serves this purpose, and illegitimate when it does not.

Dill and Darwall presented the first systematic account I have come across concerning competing theories of condemnation. So, this gives me a chance to weigh the account that desirism provides to other theories - and a listing of what those theories are.

A part of what makes this interesting is that the article draws heavily on empirical research on the subject . . . and I like empirical research.

I am going to go through a series of posts discussing these theories.


The Egoistic Theory of Condemnation

The egoistic theory states that we condemn others for self-interested reasons. We condemn because it makes us wealthier, improves our reputation, or just because it feels good.

The idea that people condemn for the sake of wealth involves the use of condemnation to get people to contribute to public goods. Public goods have what economists call a "free rider" problem - people can benefit even if they do not contribute to the costs. If a community builds a dike to protect the town from floods, everybody in the town benefits, even if they do not donate to the effort of building the dike. Condemnation is used to get everybody to contribute to the dike, thus profiting those who condemn.

However, as the authors point out, empirical research shows that agents punish other agents even at a cost to themselves. This is shown in various "public goods games" where people will pay to impose costs on a perceived wrongdoer. They sacrifice $20 to impose a $100 cost on a perceived wrongdoer.

They also punish wrongdoers anonymously, which means they forego any advantage of reputation.

And, finally, research shows that punishing others does not improve one's mood. Dill and Darwall report on two studies that examined this hypothesis. These studies report no relationship between willingness to punish and an agent's expectation that doing so will make them feel better.

There is another problem with the "feel better" hypothesis that the authors did not discuss. The "feels good" hypothesis says that we punish people because it pleases us to do so - we enjoy it. Punishing people involves harming them. But it is hard to see how we can justify puishment on the grounds that it feels good to do so. Indeed, harming others for the pure pleasure of doing so seems to be the paradigm example of malevolent evil.

Desirism can be seen as a type of egoistic theory. We condemn people in order to promote, universally, an aversion to performing certain types of actions. We have reasons to promote these aversions on the grounds that actions of that type tend to thwart our desires. In a sense, it is a mistake to call this "egoistic" since the desires that provide our reasons to condemn others can be other-regarding desires. We may be interested in the well-being of people other than ourselves when we condemn liars, thieves, rapists, and murderers. But it still serves our interests - even if some of them are altruistic interests - to do so.

None of the research that Dill and Darwall pointed to discredits this theory. An immediate short-term cost can easily be offset by the larger gain of promoting certain types of aversions universally. It would be hard for an experiment of the type typically used to test this, since promoting certain desires universally will include talking to others about the punishment one has inflicted outside of the experiment. Student subjects promote such aversions by sitting around the cafeteria with their friends talking about how they refused the money to punish the selfish individual, promoting the aversion to selfish activity among that circle of friends.

Of course, anonymous punishment has the effect of promoting certain aversions. Since inflicting punishment involves causing harm, and we have reasons to promote aversions to causing harm, we can expect punishment to "feel bad" at least in the sense that one worries about whether they have inflicted the punishment justly and against somebody who is actually guilty.

So, the desirism theory of condemnation stands up well against the egoistic theory of condemnation.

In the next posting, I will compare desirism to the deterrence theory of condemnation.

Manufacturing Motives: Creating Desires

It has been suggested that a podcast about value should be able to say something about the value of listening to a podcast on moral value that I am planning to start in a few months.

In the previous posting I looked at the value of listening to a podcast in terms of fulfilling the desires that the potential listener already has. Such a podcast could fulfill the potential listener's desires in one of two ways. It could fulfill the desires directly in terms of being entertaining, containing a subject matter that the listener is intrinsically interested in. A clear and easy to understood speaking voice and good sound quality are important to prevent thwarting some of the listener's desires by preventing the podcast from being hard to follow or annoying. I am not guaranteeing that this podcast will have those qualities, but they will be required to give the podcast value to any given listener.

The other method goes as follows:

Spoiler alert: The method of creating value that I will talk about here is the method that will turn out to be the most important when it comes to morality.

What if I could create within you a desire that would be served by listening to the podcast. For example, assume that I could make an elixir and put it in your drink that would make you fall in love with the sound of my voice. Under the effect of this magical spell, you want nothing more than to hear my voice. You would then have a motive to listen to the podcast over and over again just so that you can hear my voice.

This illustrates the second method of giving somebody a motive to perform some action. One creates a desire that the action would serve. In giving them such a desire - and making them aware of the fact that the action will serve that desire - one gives them a motive to perform that action.

We do not have magical elixirs. However, we do have something else. Humans evolved to have a reward and punishment system. It is a pathway through the brain, fueled mostly by the neurotransmitter dopamine, whereby if you reward somebody for performing some action, then that person acquires a desire to perform that action. He already has a motive to perform the action - for the sake of obtaining the reward. However, over time, people come to value performing the action, not for the sake of the reward, but for its own sake. Similarly, if you arrange for it to be the case that a person is punished if he should perform some action - is given an electrical shock, for example - and you make him aware of this fact, you give him a reason not to perform the action. Furthermore, he will come to value not performing the action, not just for the sake of avoiding punishment, but for its own sake.

When it comes to activating the reward system, praise serves as a type of reward, while condemnation serves as a type of punishment.

This, as I said, has more to do with morality than it does with listening to a podcast. If we praise people who keep their promises and condemn people who break their promises, we give people a motive to keep promises. At first, they keep promises as a way of obtaining the reward - praise, and of avoiding the punishment - condemnation. But, over time, people come to simply like to keep their promises and to hate breaking their promises, even when they will not get caught. By giving people an aversion to breaking promises, you give them a motive to keep their promises even when they have other reasons not to, and even when they cannot get caught.

This suggests that if people were praised for listening to my podcast and condemned for failure to do so, then this will eventually result in people having a desire to listen to the podcast that would be served by, of course, listening to the podcast. Insofar as they have such a desire and know how to listen to the podcast, they have a motive to do so.

This, then, will bring up the question of whether there are reasons to praise people who listen to this podcast, or to condemn those who do not. There probably is not. However, the degree to which we can provide information that would be useful in making better communities, to that degree there might be reasons to encourage people to listen.

Are there reasons to praise people who keep promises and to condemn people who do not? Are there reasons, in other words, to create in people a desire to keep their promises that will motivate them to do so even when they otherwise do not want to? Actually . . . yes. There are a lot of reasons to do so.

What, then, is the value of listening to this podcast? Hopefully, I can make it pleasing or useful - such as to fulfill the desires you already have. It might also be useful in that it can help to fulfill desires you should have - desires that there are reasons to create. This is not beyond the realm of possibility. Insofar as this podcast can actually provide information that would be useful in creating better communities - making the world a better place, to that degree it may be useful to praise those who listen to it and to condemn those who do not, thereby creating within people desires that would be served by listening to this podcast.

That seems to be taking a huge step outside of the bounds of reality. Let's return to earth and answer, directly, the question: What is the real-world value of listening to this podcast?

Listening to this podcast will have value insofar as it is entertaining and provides useful information. The information that I hope to provide is information on the nature of value that will be useful in creating better communities - in making the world a better place than it would have otherwise been. Better communities, in turn, are those in which people obtain the benefits of their association with other people in terms of getting the things that they value, while avoiding the risks and harms that humans often inflict on others.

The value of listening to this podcast is found in the degree to which it is successful at reaching these goals.

Manufacturing Motives: Linking Action to Desire

This is the podcast about value. Because it is a podcast about value, you should expect that I can say something about the value of listening to this podcast.

Let me give it a try.

In order for me to get you to choose to listen to this podcast, I have to provide you with a motive to listen to it. How do I do that?

Well, there are two ways I can do that.

Here is the first way.

You have a set of desires. Now, I am using the word “desire” in a very broad sense. It includes all sorts of likes, wants, preferences, interests, and the like. When I speak about desires, I am including things that would more accurately be called aversions. I am assuming that you have an aversion to pain. You might have a desire to live on Mars or an aversion to spiders, or an aversion to living on Mars and happen to like spiders.

Desires are the source of motivation. Take your aversion to pain as an example – your desire that you not be in pain. This aversion to pain can give you a motive not to put your hand on a hot stove. If somebody were to ask you, “Why did you not take that pie out of the oven with your bare hands?” it is perfectly sensible to answer, “Because it will hurt!” The aversion to pain gives you a motive to find a pot holder to use when you remove the pie. A desire to live on Mars might motivate you to study Martian geology, or to research ways to grow food on Mars. Your interest in spiders might motivate you to get a pet spider. Your interest in that classmate might motivate you to ask her if she would be interested in studying for the exam together.

So, one way to get you to listen to this podcast is to create some sort of link between your listening to this podcast and something that you desire.

I could, for example, arrange to inflict on you a severe electrical shock if you fail to listen to the podcast. The combination of your aversion to pain, and the belief that you can avoid the pain of an electrical shock by listening to my podcast, means that you have a motive to listen to my podcast.

I regret to report that I have not found a cost-effective way to hit you with a painful electrical shock if you do not listen to my podcast, so I am going to have to find some other method.

I could pay you. One nice thing about money is that a great many of the things that most people desire they can get if they have enough money. This means that most people have a motive to do things that result in their receiving some money. Your desire for something that you can get if you have money, plus the fact that you can get the money if you listen to this podcast, means that you have a motive to listen to this podcast.
But, I am not going to pay you to listen to this podcast. I’m selfish that way.

There are two other ways that I can get you to listen to this podcast. I can make something that you enjoy doing, or I can make it useful, or I can try to do both at the same time.

To make this podcast something you want to listen to, I can work to make sure that the sound quality is good. I can try to speak clearly so that my words are easy to understand and speak in a tone that does not cause listeners to fall asleep. I can add a joke here and there for entertainment value. With any luck, they might even be good jokes – but that might be beyond my ability.

Perhaps you are like me. You simply have an interest in what it is for something to be good or bad, in which case I need to provide you with content that will help you to answer some questions you may have on that subject.
In all cases, I motivate you to listen to this podcast by identifying something that you desire and incorporating it in this podcast to the best of my ability.

To make this podcast useful, I would need to make it something that you can use given something you desire outside of this podcast. Perhaps you are having trouble falling asleep and this podcast provides a useful cure for your insomnia. Technically, I would not count that person as somebody who “listens to the podcast,” but that does not change the fact that this is one way this podcast can be useful. It is not the way I want it to be useful, but it could be useful in just that way.

Or, perhaps I could encode the next winning lottery number into my podcast. Then, anybody who believed that they had a reasonable chance to figure out the code has a motive to listen to the podcast. Again, given that money is useful in the fulfillment of many desires, and listening to the podcast would provide one with a reasonable chance of getting some money, one has a motive to listen to the podcast.

In all seriousness, I hope that you will find this podcast useful in helping to get a better understanding of the nature of value – the difference between what is good and what is bad – as a useful start in contributing to making a community that is better than it would have otherwise been. I hope that I have already showed you some of that in the material we have covered so far.

I have tried to cover one of the ways in which I can create a podcast that has value. It would be a podcast that is such as to fulfill the desires of others.

The podcast can fulfill those desires directly – by being entertaining, pleasing, and providing information that the listeners are interested in for its own sake. The podcast can fulfill those desires indirectly by providing listeners with information that they can use to acquire more of that which is good and avoid more of that which is bad.

This is a very small scratch on what is a very large surface. What I have covered so far should give rise to a large set of new questions. For example, I have said that something is good if it is such as to fulfill certain desires, either directly (is pleasing) or indirectly (is useful). Does this mean that everybody is selfish – seeking only the fulfillment of their own desires? We will cover this issue in more detail in a future episode, but the short answer is “no”. Almost everybody has at least some altruistic desires. They genuinely want what is best for their friends and for their family, and they are genuinely distressed at people being maimed, killed, abused, or exploited and are strongly motivated to prevent these things from happening. A selfish person is not a person that does what he desires. A selfish person is a person who only desires a better life for himself, and does not care whether others suffer or die so long as he gains wealth and power.

Let’s set those questions aside for now. We have some unfinished business. I said that there are two ways I can build value into this podcast. I have discussed one of those two ways – by making it such as to fulfill the desires you already have. The other way would be to give you new desires that would be served by this podcast. I will discuss that option next.

The Value of True Morality

One would think that if I blog and intend to produce a podcast on the nature of value that I should be able to say something about the value of particpating in such a podcast.

Let us assume that you are working for a company that is seeking to relocate you and your family to a new city. They are giving you an option as to which city you would like to move your family to.

Option 1: This office is in a community of individuals who are well known for their kindness and helpfulness. Its citizens not only help others at times of need, but they seem to genuinely enjoy doing so. They get along peacefully with each other and experience little violence - though they are intent on defending themselves and others when people threatening violence appear in their community. In fact, stories of individuals stepping up to defend those who cannot defend themselves are quite common. If they make a promise, they are inclined to keep it unless something truly significant prevents them from doing so. They have similar attitudes towards repaying a debt and fulfilling their side of any bargain or negotiation in good faith. They actively dislike taking advantage of others and prefer to deal honestly and openly.

Option 2: This city is filled with people like Donald Trump. They lie constantly, borrow money with no intention of every paying it back, engage in bargains with no intention to living up to their part of the bargain if they can get away with it. They engage in acts of cruelty and abuse at a whim, and even seem to enjoy their cruel and abusive treatment of others as expressions of their own worth and power. You can count on them to ignore any plea for help, being fully confident that they will give you aid and assistance only if and insofar as it is profitable towards them. Though, do not pay them in advance for helping you because once they get the payment then they will recognize no obligation to help.

What is the value of Option 1 over Option 2?

We do not actually have much of a choice over which type of community to live in. But we do have a choice as to what type of community to make for ourselves and our friends and family. The question of which is better - Option 1 or Option 2 - is not a question of what type of community to move into. It is a question of what type of community to create.

Also, we should acknowledge that this our choice is not between one community or the other. These represent end-points on a continuum. We cannot create Option 1, but we can nudge the community in that direction. Alone and individually, we can make but a small impact (though, importantly, we will have that impact on the part of the community closest to us, which is a point in its favor). Yet, when we combine our efforts with the efforts of others, we can move some pretty heavy loads. No single worker could move the stones that made the Great Pyramids of Egypt. However, when you get enough people pulling in the same direction, you can do quite a bit of work. We all have reasons to pull together in building a community built on honestly, kindness, trustworthiness, helpfulness, peace, and justice.

Or, we could build a community of lies, corruption, dishonesty, brutality, and exploitation. That's certainly an option. I wouldn't recommend it. In such a community, there might be a few people "on the top" who get to profit from their lies, corruption, dishonesty, brutality, and exploitation. However, the vast majority of the population will be those who are abused and exploited by corrupt officials at the top. So, there are far more of us with far stronger reasons to prevent building such a community than there are with an interest in building it. Though, unfortunately, those who are interested in building a community of lies, corruption, and exploitation seem to have power that is out of proportion to their numbers - as any student of history can attest.

This is about building a better community. Insofar as this is our goal, we have reason to get together to discuss and compare notes about what such a community would look like and the best ways to go about building it. Naturally, we are going to disagree. But no one of us has perfect virtue and wisdom. Consequently, we have something to gain by getting together, comparing notes, sharing what we know, and seeing how we can work together so that our children and grandchildren, at least, get to live in a community that is closer to Option 1 than Option 2.

Right?

Discussing Morality

This post relates to the podcast I am wanting to start in a few months.

I very much value public input and comment. This is not like a movie or television series where avoiding spoilers has a high priority. This is an honest attempt to generate an improved understanding of morality among a larger group of people.

And, I am not the master of all virtue and wisdom. I hope to tap into the virtue and wisdom of others to make the best podcast available.

Towards that end, I have been thinking about how to introduce the podcast -an “episode 0” that will be about a 5 minute “trailer” that will get people interested in the content.

So . . . How does this sound? Comments welcome . . . encouraged . . . strongly encouraged.


Greetings.

Fact: We all depend on other people for the best things in life.

I recently enjoyed a week in my home, alone with my cats, reading, writing, and not talking to another human being.

However, I was it in a house that other people built, reading material that other people provided, delivered to me across an infrastructure that other people build and maintain, eating food that other people grew and delivered, secure in the knowledge that other people were standing by ready to help me if something went horribly wrong.

At the same time, some of our biggest threats come from other people. We and those we care about are the potential victims of theft, rape and other forms of violent assault, enslavement, and murder.

It is no coincidence that these threats all fall under the general category of “immorality”. We consider these things “wrong” precisely because we have reasons to want other people not to do them to us and those we care about.

Deciding what these things are and getting people not to do them is not easy.

How about we simply arrest and imprison anybody who engages in vandalism, theft, assault, rape, slavery, or murder?

Two things.

First, now we face a new threat - the threat of being falsely accused and imprisoned.

Second, what if we need to conscript people to build a dike before a flooding river destroys the whole community, or to fight an enemy intent on conquering and enslaving us? What if funding some infrastructure will make everybody better off, but most people want to enjoy the benefits without contributing to the costs? What if we set up an institution for identifying and arresting thieves, rapists, and murderers, and somebody hijacks it to use it to enslave others and adjust those who would oppose him?

When we succeed at harvesting the benefits of living with other people and minimizing the threats, we live together in a peaceful and prosperous community. When we fail . . . whole cities end up as piles of rubble filled with bloody corpses. When it fails, even a little, somebody - possibly you, possibly somebody you know and care about - ends up murdered, raped, injured, exploited, robbed, or otherwise harmed.

Here’s an example of morality gone wrong.

In the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent declared a crusade against Catharism. The Cathars believed in two gods – one good and one evil – which was contrary to the Catholic belief that there was only one God. The town of Beziers was one in which the citizens supported and sought to protect its Cathars – so they refused to turn their Cathars over to the Church. The crusaders laid siege to the town. They managed to get in through one of the city gates and commenced to slaughter its residents – about 20,000 people of all ages.

Why did this happen? Naturally, when there are a lot of people involved there are a lot of different reasons. There was a desire to protect people from eternal torment in hell by protecting them from a heresy that would result in divine punishment after death. There was a Catholic Church who did not want to share power with a different group of spiritual leaders. There were nobles seeking each other’s lands. There were citizens of Beziers who simply wanted to protect and defend their friends and neighbors. There were crusaders who were told that 40 days of service would erase all of their sins. There were obviously a few people who just like killing and, for whom, a chance to walk down a city street slaying everybody one sees and have all of one’s sins erased at the same time was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

There was, above all, a failure of morality. The institutions that people adopt to harvest the benefits of sharing the planet failed, and the result was widespread theft, rape, and murder.

Any student of history knows that its pages are soaked in this kind of blood and violence. The Crusades, the 30 Years War, the English Civil War, slavery, thousands of years in which women were mere property – moral failure is all too common.

Moral failure is all too common - even today. And people suffer and die as a result.

So, I think we are due for a serious discussion about the demands of morality. And I want to invite you to join me.

And it has to be a discussion. I was not granted with perfect wisdom and virtue. Several times, I have thought I have known some important answers, only to have somebody step up and prove to me that I was mistaken. Consequently, I am in no position to preach the truth of morality. I have, on the other hand, put a great deal of effort into understanding the issue, and I think that I am in a good position to facilitate such a discussion. Perhaps we can contribute something to harvesting more of the benefits of living in a community with others, while reducing or eliminating some of the threats.

2020

A new year. A year of transition.

This year I will:

(1) Defend my master's thesis

(2) Hopefully be accepted into the PhD program in Philosophy at the University of Colorado. (I have submitted my application)

(3) Lose my job of 20 years. They have already notified me of an intention of ending my employment at the end of the current project in April.

(4) Graduate with an MA in Philosophy from the University of Colorado.

(5) Begin a new podcast on morality.

(6) Turn 60 years old.

By this time next year, my life will have totally changed. Well, not totally. Almost totally. I will have more time devoted to making the world a better place, and a lot less income to do it with.

This means that this blog is ending the dry spell it has suffered while I held down two jobs and finished my MA thesis. NOTE: For the next 4 months I will still be holding down 2 jobs, and still taking graduate-level courses at the University of Colorado. But, I fully intend to begin transitioning to my new lifestyle now rather than wait until graduation in May. And that means regular posts.

I hope that this is a good year for all.

Metaethics 0011: Michael Smith's Convergence of Ends

In my previous post, Metaethics 0010: Michael Smith's Moral Realism, I took issue with Michael Smith's claim that ends are subject to rational evaluation. I identified a number of different types of value - instrumental value, participatory value, contributory value, evidential value, and symbolic value. All of these can be rationally evaluated. This is because each of these consist of conglomerations of beliefs and ends, and the belief component can be rationally evaluated. There is no evidence in this that ends can be rationally evaluated.

Smith's moral realism contained another element. He argues that, if we were all rationally assess our attitudes, that we would come to some sort of convergence. However, since ends are not subject to rational assessment, and all rational assessment that does occur relates objects of evaluation to those ends, convergence requires that we already have the same ends. We all want the same things.

This requirement for convergence is false on its face. We can start with basic, biologically evolved ends such as aversion to pain. I have an aversion to my pain, and you have an aversion to our own pain. Insofar as I have an aversion to your pain, this is, at the very least, a different end from my aversion to my own pain. My aversion to my own pain has to do with the fact that my sensory nerves are connected to my brain (and, thus, those parts of the brain that process my aversion to pain) in a particular way. If there is any connection between your sensory nerves and my brain, it is clearly not the same type of connection, and it is not processed the same way.

Furthermore, in the same way that you and I did not evolve to have the same eye color, height, facial features, and the like, it is unlikely that we evolved to have identical aversions even to our own pain. I may have a stronger aversion to pain than you do, or a dislike for certain types of pain that do not bother you nearly so much. I may find bright lights and the scraping of fingernails on a chalk board to be painful while you shrug them off. You may find cold temperatures to be painful, while I am comfortable.

To make matters worse, our desires and aversions - much more than our physical features - are not genetically determined. We each have a reward system - a mesolimbic pathway. Because of this, our experiences shape our ends. You have great experiences with your family where you go to sports games and watch sporting events on television and root for the same team and enjoy your time together. My family, on the other hand, went camping, creating in me a love for the outdoors.

In fact, in many instances, we have reason to prefer it if ends do not converge. This is one area where ends are significantly different from beliefs. With respect to beliefs, while it is impossible for two people to have a complete set of beliefs (nobody can know that much), their beliefs should agree. However, when it comes to desires, it is not a convergence of desires that we are looking for, but a harmony of desires. I often use those desires that are relevant to choosing a profession as an example. We have no reason to want to create a society where everybody would put the same job at the top of their list of most preferred job, have the same second preference, and so on all the way to the bottom where everybody identifies the same least desired job. We are much better off in a society where some people value being teachers, others like being engineers, some want to be philosophers, others are historians, some build houses, and others produce sculptors and paintings. A rich diversity of desires pays dividends in the way that a rich diversity of beliefs do not.

So, against Smith's idea of a convergence of ends, we have: (1) ends are not subject to rational deliberation, (2) the sources of ends guarantees that we will have different ends, (3) to the degree that we have different ends we are - even if we are all equally and perfectly rational - going to be differently motivated by that which, relative to our different ends, have instrumental, participatory, contributory, evidential, and symbolic value, and (4) we have reasons to prefer a diversity of ends while we have no such reason to prefer a diversity of beliefs.

I think we can do without Smith's convergence of ends.

Metaethics 0010: Michael Smith's Moral Realism

Michael Smith is concerned with a tension that we see in our use of moral terms.

First, we seem to be using moral terms to express facts. When a person makes a moral claim such as, "You should tell him the truth," or "Abortion is morally permissible," we seem to be making regular every-day statements. This is captured in the Frege-Geach Problem discussed earlier in Metaethics 0005: Mark Shroeder - The Frege-Geach Problem. The problem is precisely that we treat moral statements like any other declarative sentence. We do not treat them like commands or expressions of attitude or any other type of non-cognitive entity. They fit, for example, perfectly well in structured arguments relating premises to conclusions.

Second, we seem to be using moral terms to express attitudes. The way Smith describes it: "We seem to think, other things being equal, to have a moral opinion simply is to find yourself with a corresponding motivation to act."

Well, I don't think this. Since I take "X is wrong" to mean "people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn and, perhaps, punish those who do X," and I know that the truth of such a statement is independent of my desires and beliefs, I recognize the possibility that people can have many and strong reasons to punish me for things I have no interest in refraining from doing. It is a conceptual possibility. This does not mean that there are any real-world instances, but it involves no contradiction.

Smith makes the additional claim that desires are subject to rational criticism. He uses the example of a person who is has a desire to never be near a spider because, "I come to believe, falsely, that spiders give off an unpleasant odor."

Contrary to Smith, ends are not subject to rational criticism. Means can be subject to rational criticism because means are nothing but combination of ends and beliefs - and those beliefs (like the belief that spiders can give off unpleasant odor) can be subject to rational criticism. Technically, this is true of more than means. It is also true of contributory value, symbolic value, and evidential value.

Contributory value is the value that something has in virtue of being a part of something else. For example, take a single square inch of the Mona Lisa painting. It has value in virtue of being a part of (contributing to) the Mona Lisa painting. Contributory is a type of value that can be subject to rational criticism, because the belief that something is a part of a larger whole that has value can be subject to rational criticism.

Symbolic value is the value that something has in virtue of representing something else that has value. A commemorative statue, or mother's ashes in the urn over the fire place, can have symbolic value. Again, symbolic value can be subject to rational criticism in a number of ways. The object one may not be what one thinks it is. Last December when Cousin Joe brought his kids over, one of them knocked the urn off of the mantle over the fire place and, without telling anybody, Cousin Joe cleaned up the mess and replaced the contents of the urn with ashes from the fireplace. Or the symbolic piece of the original cross is nothing but a sliver taken from a nearby tree.

Evidential value is the value that something has in virtue of being evidence of something else. Children's laughter is a sign of their happiness and has value in virtue of the fact that it is evidence of their happiness, which has value. Evidential value can be questioned on the grounds that, "Hey, the fact that those children are laughing does not, in fact, mean that they are happy. They were told to laugh by a cruel master so that the nosy child protection investigators will go away and file their report."

So, we can rationally criticize instrumental, contributory, symbolic, and evidential value precisely because these forms of value consist, in part, of beliefs. Those are beliefs about how the object of evaluation stands in relation to some end - as a means to bringing about, a part of, a symbol of, or evidence of an end. And we can rationally criticize the beliefs. There is no evidence that we can rationally criticize ends.

Though we could rationally criticize the end insofar as it has its own instrumental, contributory, symbolic, and evidential belief-containing value where we can rationally criticize those beliefs. To the degree that a person can decide what ends to have, one can base that decision on beliefs about these other types of values. One can make a choice as to whether or not to acquire a nicotine addiction (though cannot so easily choose not to have such an addiction after one has acquired it). The instrumental, contributory, symbolic, and evidential value of a nicotine addiction can all enter into the decision. The individual can be rationally criticized for failing to have true beliefs about the relationships between nicotine addiction and other ends. However, none of this argues that the nicotine addiction can be rationally criticized in any other way.

Anyway, Smith does not give us any reason to believe in the rational assessment of ends as ends.

Metaethics 0009: Peter Railton's Moral Naturalism

Peter Railton is what, among moral philosophers, is a naturalist. He holds that moral properties can be reduced to natural properties.

Of course, desirism also holds that value properties can be reduced to natural properties - relationships between states of affairs and desires.

Consequently, a defender of desirism has a reason to be interested in Railton's five elements for a naturalist, reductionist moral theory.

A word of warning: in discussing these elements, Railton was talking about "a person's good" or what others might call a person's well-being, as opposed to value in general. However, it takes only some slight modification to get value in general.

He identifies the following five elements:

(1) Identificatory Reduction: Locating a (possibly complex) property that is claimed by an identificatory reduction to underlie the cognitive content of discourse.

Railton describes this and all of his elements using "hedonism" as the model. The hedonist identifies, according to Railton, "a distinctive experiential state: happiness". The point of this element is that it properly identifies the things that that people call good or bad. Against this thesis, Railton notices that people seem to value a variety of things other than happiness. In response, Railton argues that this is true, but happiness (or pleasure) is the element that determines how strong those desires become. A desire that produces happiness tends to be reinforced, suggesting that happiness is the actual end and desires are promoted or demoted according to their ability to produce happiness.

In contrast, desirism holds that relationship between a state of affairs and a desire. The desire is expressed as a proposition taking the form "agent desires that P" where "P" is a proposition. The object of evaluation is a state of affairs. That state of affairs is good if P is true and bad if P is false. This thesis embraces the pluralism that hedonism tends to shun. One key argument for preferring the pluralist version has to do with Nozick's experience machine. Given a choice between being put into an experience machine and given nothing but happy experiences, or living in the real world where there is a chance of making true the propositions that are the objects of one's desires, many people prefer the latter. A parent having to choose between happily (but falsely) believing that their child is doing well, and unhappily (but falsely) believing that their child is being tortured mercilessly, would prefer the former, showing that her child's well-being is more important to her than her happiness.

When we talk about some complex states of affairs the truth or falsity of certain propositions that are the objects of desires can combine to make them more or less good - or more or less bad - depending on their on-balance fulfillment.

(2) Explanatory Role: Providing evidence to the effect that this property plays an explanatory role of the appropriate sort to warrant saying that the property is both (potentially) empirically accessible and actually exemplified in our experience.

Here, we are looking for reasons to believe that the item that value is being reduced to actually exists and plays a causal role in the universe. We have evidence that there really is something called "happiness". We seem to be able to identify it where it occurs. We can leave it up to the psychologists to fill in the details of where it can be found an.

Desires, as propositional attitudes that explain and predict behavior, also seem clearly to exist. When we want to know why somebody did what she did, we typically explain their behavior by postulating a set of beliefs and desires. The use of desires to explain intentional actions is like the use of atoms to explain the properties of elements and molecules. It's vindication is found in how well it works.

(3) Normative Role: Providing an account of how this property, given its character, could come in a non-accidental way to play a significant normative role in the regulation of human practices corresponding to the normative role played by the concept of good.

Why does the natural property work as a source of good? Railton points out our interest in pursuing happiness and avoiding unhappiness. As Railton points out, "...it is psychologically (or perhaps even metaphysically) impossible for a person to have the peculiar experience that is happiness and not be drawn to it." Railton denies a tighter connection, but I think that an argument can be made in support of a tighter connection. A sensation would not be called "happiness" if it did not come with some quality that draws a person towards it. Given a particular sensation, we recognize it as "happiness" in part by recognizing that people use the term to refer to something they are drawn to, and we are drawn to the sensation. Happiness is a value-laden term, and it is not happiness if it is not desired.

Desires play a significant normative role in that "ought" applies to actions, and identifies those actions as actions that tend to realize the propositions P that are the objects of the relevant desires. Thus, "you ought to do X" means "doing X will tend to fulfill the desires in question."


(4) Tolerable Revisionism: Developing an argument to the effect that the account this property affords of a person's good is, if revisionist, at worst tolerably revisionist.

To see the significance of this point, we can look at the standard reduction of the term "water" to "H2O". Once scientists made this connection, this did require some revision to our concept of "water". It was originally taken to be an element - one of the primary elements. These discoveries showed that water was not an element at all but a combination of two elements - oxygen and hydrogen. Thus, the reduction was "revisionist" to some extent, but it fell well within the limits of "tolerable revisionism." Railton illustrates the case of intolerable revisionism by taking, for example, the case of "good" = "cholesterol laden". This would require such a significant departure from how "good" is actually used that it would fail the "tolerably revisionist" test.

One of the biggest problems that hedonism has in this respect is with the incommensurability of value. If all value can be reduced to a single currency, then there should be no regret in choosing between one option and another. If you had to choose between making $500 or $100, you choose the $500 and be done with it. However, many of our choices involve incommensurable goods. In choosing between going off to college in some other state and staying in one's home town with one's friends and family, there is genuine regret over the loss of the one not selected. There is no such regret in having an investment that pays a 12% rate of return that one does not have money invested in a second option that pays 4%.

With these considerations in hand, we actually need to revise this element from Railton. It must not only be the case that the revisionism is "tolerable", it must be the case that the revisionism is the least revisionary option.


(5) Vindication upon Critical Reflection: Developing a further argument to the effect that recognizing this property as underlying discourse about value would not undermine the normative role of such discourse.

On this element, we are wondering whether awareness of the reduction would change people's attitude. Here, we may consider the way that, for some people, if humans are an evolved creature then our life has no meaning. This is not the type of life that those who have been raised with the idea that they were serving God could find valuable. Similarly, if we reduce "good" to "happiness", it may well be the case that some people would find a life devoted to happiness to be a waste. "Is that it? Is it truly the case that the only thing I live for is the maximum stimulation of the pleasure centers of my brain?"

Some people may find the same problem with desirism. They may ask it. "Is this all life is about - making or keeping true the propositions that are the objects of our desires?" Such a thought might depress some people and be seen to poorly capture what they count as "valuable". However, desirism can well handle these types of cases. If a person comes to desire (value) serving God, or realizing something of intrinsic significance, or permanence, then that person is going to dislike any theory that says that the fulfillment of these desires is unattainable. Yet, the theory can still handle the fact that people find value in these things - in virtue of the desires he has.

Besides, certain of our ends are not going to change simply because our beliefs about them change. Coming to realize that our aversion to pain is due to an evolutionary chain of events that paired certain sensations to avoidance will not make pain any less painful or change the fact that we have a reason to avoid it. A person may lament, "Is that all there is to avoiding pain - preventing the realization of a state of affairs that we have evolved a disposition to try to prevent?" But that will not allow him to put his hand in a bed of hot coals with total indifference as to the outcome.

Conclusion

These standards provide a useful way to evaluate desirism as a naturalistic moral philosophy. We needed to amend one of them - element 4 - adding the relative claim that a reduction must not only be tolerably reductive but the least reductive option. With that revision, we can see how desirism defeats hedonism on a number of measures. It better explains choices and value, normative (ought-driven) elements, and incommensurability of goods. Though some people may not like the idea that life aims at making real the propositions that are the objects of one of our desires - the fact that they do not desire such a life is not an argument against the thesis. The fact that one finds a description of the world undesirable does not prove that the description is false.

Metaethics 0008: Peter Railton's Naturalism

Peter Railton, "Naturalism and Prescriptivity," Social Philosophy and Policy, 7 (1989) has what is considered to be a substantial objection to G.E. Moore's open question argument (which I discussed in Metaethics 0007: G.E. Moore's Open Question Argument.

For a refresher, Moore's Open Question argument says that for any natural property one can identify ("good" = "pleasure"), if one were to ask the question, "This is pleasurable, but is it good?" this is an "open question". That is to say, the answer to the question is not as obvious as, "This is pleasurable, but is it pleasurable?" would be. Yet, if "pleasure" and "good" were as closely related as this thesis suggests, then the question should not be open.

This argument was extremely influential in the first part of the 20th century, convincing a great many good philosophers that moral properties cannot be natural properties. At least, this cannot be true by definition.

Peter Railton argues that, even though a relationship is true by definition, it can still yield an "open question." This happens when the speakers are not entirely clear about the relationship. To illustrate this point, Railton refers to the relationship between the terms "water" and "H2O". The statement, "water is H2O" is true by definition. And yet, if we were to subject this to Moore's test, we see that, "This is water, but is it H2O?" is an open question. This happens because the fact that what people call "water" is made up of molecules of hydrogen and oxygen is something that people need to learn. It is not obvious. In fact, until this discovery takes place, "water" clearly does not mean "H2O". However, once people acquire this type of knowledge, they decide, "Hey, we can make our language a bit more precise if we simply come to mean H2O when we talk about water." Thus, they revise and update their language to take this fact into consideration. Yet, it is still the case that a person can grow up in a culture, learn to use the term "water" the way people typically use the term, and remain ignorant of the basic fact of chemistry that identifies "water" as H2O".

It's one thing to argue that there is an (another) type of statement that is immune to G.E. Moore's "open question argument".

Of course, this cannot be end of it. The fact that there are certain types of identities that can survive Moore's open question test does not prove that any and all identities can survive the test. If one wants to reduce to "good" to some sort of natural property, one still needs to find an identity that actually works. PLUS it needs to survive Moore's open question test.

Desirism faces the same constraint. As I showed in Metaethics 0007: G.E. Moore's Open Question Argument, the argument fails against identities that contain an ambiguous reference such as "the desires in question". However, it is not the case that "good" can be reduced to any old identity that has an ambiguous reference. One needs to go to the effort of showing that one has identified the identity that works best. "Good" = "Is such as to fulfill the desires in question" still requires a lot of work.

Parfit makes this point by using the example of "good" = "being cholesterol-laden". This, in fact, corresponds to very little of what the term "good" is used for. It fails to describe paintings, political institutions, poetry, and promise keeping. None of these things can be described - or are even the type of entity that can be described - as "cholesterol-laden" in any sense. Therefore, we have to reject this reduction.

Similarly, one would have to reject "good" = "such as to fulfill the desires in question" if it should fail to account for substantial uses of the term "good". Fortunately, this identity can refer to paintings, political institutions, poetry, and promise keeping. If there are things out there that such an identity has trouble with, it would count as a substantive objection against the theory.

Parfit is going to argue that "good" is "pleasure". I am going to argue that "good" is "is such as to fulfill the desires in question". The contest between them will be fought on the grounds of what can best account for the standard uses of "good". But that will have to wait for a future post.

British Ethical Theorists 0017:Sidgwick, Desires, and Goodness

Whatsoever is the object of any man's desire, that it is which he for his part call Good, and the object of his aversion, Evil.Thomas Hobbes, Leviathon

Henry Sidgwick, in The Methods of Ethics, Book I, Chapter IX, objects.

To be clear, at the start, Sidgwick objects to this as a definition of "good", and on that score I would agree with Sidgwick. I hold that "good" is to be understood as "that which there is a reason to bring about." It is merely a matter of empirical fact that the only reasons that exist to bring about (or, for that matter, to prevent) are desires and aversions. If some other types of reasons existed, then those reasons would allow us to call other things good. But they do not exist.

However, I wish to set that question aside and simply take up the challenge of answering Sidgwick's concerns that are applicable to the proposition: "Good" = "Is such as to fulfill the desires in question." Against this proposition, many of Sidgwick's objections are relevant. It is time I stepped up and addressed them directly.

Desires and Expectations

Sidgwick wrote, "We have first to meet the obvious objection that a man often desires what he knows is on the whole bad for him."

This is easily addressed, for what is it that makes it bad for him? That would be the case that the realization of that which is desired also realizes states to which he has aversions - where, in some cases, that to which the agent is adverse is more strongly disliked that that which is desired. The point to be made here is that this is an observation, where we do not need to postulate anything other than desires and aversions to explain this observation. A person likes to eat chocolate cake, even though it causes him to gain weight, and the weight gain thwarts all sorts of desires.

Sidgwick also commented, "but that these bad effects, though fore-seen are not fore-felt". This is something that desirism has fully addressed. Future desires have no capacity to reach back in time and motivate current action. I know that, in the future, I will hate the fact that P. However, that future hatred will provide future motivation. The only way that it can motivate current behavior is if I have a present desire that my future desires be fulfilled. Other than that, the future desire is known but not felt.

The same is true of future good effects, such as the effects of saving for a retirement, which cannot motivate any current savings, unless the agent has a current desire that future desires go satisfied.

However, the very reason that those future states are bad (or good) is in virtue of their relationship to the agent's desires. It is still the case that there is no good other than that which fulfills a desire, and no bad other than that which will thwart a desire.


Unfulfillable Desires

Sidgwick also argues that, "a prudent man is accustomed to suppress, with more or less success, desires for what he regards as out of his power to attain by voluntary action---as fine weather, perfect health, great wealth or fame, etc.; but any success he may have in diminishing the actual intensity of such desires has no effect in leading him to judge the objects desired less `good'."

Here, it is important to see exactly what Sidgwick is saying, because it is not obvious. If we accept that "good" = "is such as to fulfill the desires in question," then it should not be possible to adjust the strength of a desire for something without changing its goodness. However, according to Sidgwick, the prudent man weakens his desire for things that are beyond his control. Yet, in weakening his desire, he does not weaken their goodness. Therefore, goodness is independent of the strength or object of an agent's desire.

One way to conceive of an agent weakening his desire for something is by lowering what the agent would be willing to give up to get it. Let us assume that perfect health - one of the things on Sidgwick's list - is something that the agent would be willing to spend $10 million to acquire. However, he does not have $10 million. According to Sidgwick, if he were prudent, he would lower his desire for it. Lowering his desire would translate into, for example, being willing to pay $1 million for it. This translates into saying that, if the price were dropped to $5 million, he would no longer buy it, because he does not want it that badly.

We have two options. On one option, he truly does not care about perfect health with the intensity that he used to. In this case, we should draw the conclusion that its value has diminished - that it is no longer as good as it once was. On the other option, while he has learned to deal with the unpleasantness of the unfulfilled desire, he still desires the good as much as he used to. In this case, he is still willing to pay the original $10 million, and it would be wrong to say that perfect health has any reduced value. Either way, the value of perfect health is still tied to how strongly it is desired.


Conclusion

As I mentioned at the start, I do not take this to be the meaning of "good", simply an account of what it takes for value statements to be true. This is because desires provide the only reasons that exist. If we change the desires, then we change the reasons that exist for realizing some end. Consequently, there is little option but to say its value has changed. But the value may not be what the agent believes it to be. An agent have a desire that P, and either falsely believe that he will find P in S or be unpleasantly surprised by finding P in T. It is still the case that the value he unexpectedly found or the badness that he failed to avoid depends on his desires.

British Ethical Theorists 0016:Some Notes 01

This will likely be one of several posts in this series that just jot down some random pieces of information that I encounter in my reading.

Sidgwick on Motivational Internalism

Sidgewick wrote that the judgment that X ought to be done gives an impulse or motive to action and that it must at least be possible that this impulse to action conflicts with the agent's other motives. Sidgwick seems to be arguing that the "ought" of morality is something that does battle against other inclinations - where, in some cases, the other inclinations win out and where moral ought wins out in others.

Specifically, Sidgwick wrote in Methods of Ethics, Part I, Chapter 3, Part 3 that:

Further, when I speak of the cognition or judgment that `X ought to be done'---in the stricter ethical sense of the term ought---as a `dictate' or `precept' of reason to the persons to whom it relates, I imply that in rational beings as such this cognition gives an impulse or motive to action: though in human beings, of course, this is only one motive among others which are liable to conflict with it, and is not always---perhaps not usually---a predominant motive. In fact, this possible conflict of motives seems to be connoted by the term `dictate' or `imperative', which describes the relation of Reason to mere inclinations or non-rational impulses by comparing it to the relation between the will of a superior and the wills of his subordinates. This conflict seems also to be implied in the terms `ought', `duty', `moral obligation', as used in ordinary moral discourse: and hence these terms cannot be applied to the actions of rational beings to whom we cannot attribute impulses conflicting with reason. We may, however, say of such beings that their actions are `reasonable', or (in an absolute sense) `right'.

Desirism, of course, would deny this. A judgment that something is a duty is a judgment that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would do it. However, it is at least possible that the agent has other ends and none of the ends that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would have. In fact, this should be said - to base morality on one's own ends is to conceive of the world in which the agent himself is a master and all others are mere servants. Granted, this way of thinking is consistent with each agent being a benevolent master - they may still care about others. Still, it only allows the interests of others to be morally relevant if the agent has a relevant motivational pro-attitude towards those interests. If not, the agent is not rendered evil. Instead, the interests the agent is not moved to consider are rendered - by that fact alone - irrelevant.


Moore on the Usefulness of Virtues

G.E. Moore, in seems, denied that virtues had intrinsic value. His main argument stated in Principia Ethica, Chapter V, convincingly enough:

Nevertheless I do not think we can regard it as part of the definition of virtue that it should be good in itself. For the name has so far an independent meaning, that if in any particular case a disposition commonly considered virtuous were proved not to be good in itself, we should not think that a sufficient reason for saying that it was not a virtue but was only thought to be so.

As written, this is one of the features of desirism. A desire is good insofar as it tends to fulfill other desires. No desire is good in itself. If it were discovered that a particular character trait were to do more to fulfill the desires of others than was originally thought, then tha is a reason to promote that desire as a virtue. If it tends to do harm, then we have reason to condemn it. If it were the case that selfishness produced vast amounts of wealth that made even the lives of the poorer individuals better off, then that would be a reason to call it a virtue. If, instead, it results in a few families hoarding the vast majority of wealth and the rest of us being merely their serfs and servants, then this gives most of us reason to condemn selfishness.


Broad, Sidgwick, and the Role of Reward and Punishment

C.D. Broad, in his book Five Types of Ethical Theory, he devotes Chapter 6 to the study of Sidgwick. In this, he presents Sidgwick's argument that the concept of right is findamental and basic - that it is unanalyzable. To make his case, he looks at various proposed analysis and dismisses them.

One of the possible forms of analysis is: "other men will feel approval towards me if I do X and will feel disapproval towards me if I omit to do X".

This is near enough to what desirism states that one should comment on the difference. A good desire, according to desirism, is one that people have reason to promote using praise (of those who exhibit it) and condemnation (of those who do not). However, good and bad desires are not identified by actual praise and condemnation, but on the praise and condemnation people have reasons to inflict. The objections that Broad applies (in Sidgwick's name) to the former theory do not apply to the latter. For example, Broad has Sidgwick objecting that it certainly seems possible for it to be the case that the people praise some form of conduct that is still not right, or condemn some conduct that is not wrong. So, what people actually praise and condemn cannot determine what is right or wrong. This is true. This is because there is sometimes a difference between what people have reason to praise and condemn on the one hand, and what they do praise and condemn on the other. So, Sidgwick is correct about this reduction of right, but he did not say anothing about the more reasonable alternative.

Revising Gibbard's Planned

This posting is a reworking of an original post where I commented on the metaethical theory of Allan Gibbard. It is such a significant rewriting, that I am opting to post it separately.

Allan Gibbard seeks to explain “ought” in terms of the realization or expression of a plan, then tries to use this to explain how disputes can be consistent with a non-cognitivist (or quasi-realist) account of value.

He has us consider Jack, who has an interest in drawing water from a well at the top of a hill. However, there is a chance of falling and breaking his crown. Ought he to try for the water? In Gibbard’s discussion, one observer (Agent1) says that Jack should - the need for the water makes it worth the risk. Another observer (Agent2) says that Jack should not - better safe than sorry. They disagree about something. Gibbard tells us that they disagree about plans or, more precisely, at how fetching the water will fit into the plan. Gibbard tells us that this is the type of disagreement we find in the case of moral disagreement.

I see plans as the paradigm of means-ends reasoning. If you want to make an apple pie, follow a recipe - a plan. Plans provide a course of action that, when followed, realize some end or goal. The value of the plan depends importantly on the value of the end or goal. However, plans do not give ends their value - that is a separate question. The apple pie recipe tells me how to make an apple pie, but it does not give me a reason to make it. A plan to win the state fair blue ribbon for best apple pie may give me a reason to make an apple pie, but not a reason to seek the ribbon. In all cases, there seems to be something just out of the reach of the plan's "ought" - the reason for the plan itself.

Let us admit that we are creatures that plan. Jack creates a simulation. In this simulation he places a character, Sim Jack. Sim Jack has his beliefs and his goals or ends. Sim Jack’s world also runs by the same laws of nature as the real world. We may imagine Jack running these simulations, using different action-options, and trying to determine which one will realize more of his ends. He uses this to create a plan. Please note that this takes a lot of time and effort, so Jack will typically use shortcuts instead that are less reliable but take less time and energy.

Agent1 and Agent2 also have the ability to construct their own version of Sim Jack. For Agent1, for example, Sim Jack is Sim Agent1 with Jack’s beliefs and Jack’s ends. Agent2 can also create a Sim Jack. Once constructed, they can each run Sim Jack through their iPhone simulations testing different actions. Our Agents can test their simulations by using historical data and determining if the simulation correctly predicts historical results. In doing this, note that one or both simulations can be mistaken - the agent's can be wrong. In other words, there are points here of genuine disagreement.

Gibbard may object to the very idea of these simulations predicting Jack's behavior. Gibbard seems to suggest that Jack has a capacity to make choices that go outside of the laws of nature. He states that science has always seemed to fall short at capturing what is "exceptional" about humans, and this seems to include something that goes into our "plans". He also wrote, "Moore thought that moral facts somehow lie outside the world that empirical science can study. We can broaden this to a claim about the space of reasons as a whole, which, we can say, lies outside the space of causes." We may be forced to go in that direction, but I do not think that should be our first option. We should at least look at what we can do without taking such extreme steps.

Assume Agent1 runs Sim Jack using an action that Jack did not think of and discovers it will realize more of Jack’s own ends. Is there an English sentence he can use to report this to Jack? I would recommend something like, “Jack, you should try this.” In saying this, Agent1 is reporting a fact about the relationship between “this” action and Jack’s ends that is true (or not) regardless of what Agent1 believes or endorses. “Should” is being used to report relations between actions and ends, though not necessarily the ends of the speaker.

Once our Agents have built and tested their simulations, they can then see what happens when they adjust certain variables. The variables I am interested in are: (1) the world, (2) Jack’s beliefs, and (3) Jack’s ends.

Gibbard considers why we would contemplate plans from another person’s perspective and appears to settle on the answer that it is a kind of useful playing - like reading fiction - helpful in improving our ability to make our own plans. These simulations are not just useful games. We use them to predict how others will act. We have reasons to care about whether others will interfere with or help realize our own ends. We can also use them to determine how we may influence whether their action will realize or thwart our ends.

Examples that involve altering the world variables include applying physical restraints (locks, imprisonment) and offering incentives or threatening punishments. Agents may also be interested in the case where the world actually corresponds to Jack’s beliefs. Jack is assuming this is the case when he runs his own simulations, but our Agents may recognize that some of Jack’s beliefs are mistaken. They can still run their own versions of Sim Jack under the assumption Jack is right to see the results.

Examples that involve changing belief variables can include, “Which action would best realize ends if beliefs were true in the sense that they accurately describe the world?” Here, instead of changing world variables to agree with Jack’s beliefs, our hypothetical Agents change the belief variables to match the world. This may be mistaken for the “informed desire” approach. However, I side with Hume in holding that a change in beliefs do not imply a change in ends. Our ends come from evolution/biology (aversion to pain, desire for sex, hunger, thirst, concern for one's offspring, comfort), activation of the mesolimbic pathway, drugs, and physical change - e.g., having a railroad tamping rod driven through one's prefrontal cortex in a railway construction accident. Agents may also have an interest in running Sim Jack through iterations where they change the belief variables to beliefs that are reasonable given Jack’s evidence. An epistemologist can help us in this task.

Ends may be immune to reason. However, they are not immune to praise and condemnation (and other forms of reward and punishment). Consequently, our Agents may want to run Sim-Jack iterations while adjusting Jack’s ends to those that are within people’s power to bring about using praise and condemnation. By comparing the results to the ends of other people, these iterations tell us something about the ends that people have reason to promote using praise and condemnation. These simulations would also need to include relevant real-world facts; for example, that ends persist and will influence a large number of actions. A particular end (e.g., to keep promises) might produce some bad consequences in a given instance and still be an end that people generally have reason to promote through praise (of those who keep promises) and condemnation (of those who do not).

People who run simulations under these terms can have genuine disputes on a number of grounds. For example, they may disagree about the ends that people generally have reasons to promote through praise and condemnation. They may also disagree over what a person with such ends would do in a given circumstance. These are genuine disputes over matters of fact – not the pseudo-disputes that Gibbard generates.

Gibbard might still object to this on the grounds that it implies motivational externalism. Simulations that agents run based on ends other than their own only contingently reveal facts that will motivate those agents. However, that issue will have to be addressed elsewhere.

Metaethics 0007: G.E. Moore's Open Question Argument

This posting is inspired by Michael Ridge's article, "Ecumenical Expressivism: Finessing Frege," Ethics, Vol. 116, No. 2 (January 2006), pp. 302-336. However, that article is not substantially about Moore's open question argument. It discusses the argument and its relationship to non-cognitivist theories of value. Ridge's article is about the theory of value he proposes, "ecumenical expressivism". But, in doing so, he discusses the role that Moore's open question argument has in motivating non-cognitive theories.

In this post, I seek to take a look at that foundation as Ridge described it.

The open question argument aims to show that the meaning of "good" cannot be reduced to any natural property.

In all honesty, I agree with this conclusion. I argue that "good" = "is such as to fulfill the desires in question". However, it is a mistake to argue that this is what the term means in standard English. To call something good is to say that there are reasons to realize that thing. It is an a poteriori fact - a fact learned from experience - that the fulfillment of desires are the only reasons for intentional action that exist. Consequently, Consequently, "good" = "is such as to fulfill the desires in question" is not an a priori truth (true by definition).

Still, the open question argument has diverted a lot of philosophical labor-hours down some very unfruitful paths. Even if I were to offer "good" = "is such as to fulfill the desires in question" as being true by definition, Moore's open question argument would fail to show that this is mistaken.

So, what is the open question argument and how is it supposed to show that moral claims cannot be reduced to natural facts?

Let me borrow Ridge's characterization:

Take any proposed naturalistic analysis N of a moral predicate M. Moore’s open question argument maintains that it will always be possible for someone without conceptual confusion to grant that something is N but still wonder whether it is really M. If, however, N really was an accurate analysis of M then the question “I know it is N but is it M?” would not be conceptually open.

Moore used his open question argument against Sidgwick's claim that pleasure is the only good, so let us try it there. We take Sidgwick's claim, "good" = "pleasurable". We apply Moore's open question test and translate Sidgwick's hypothesis into a question: "Drug induced highs are pleasurable, but are they good?" You do not need to find an example where the conclusion is clearly "no". Any example will do. The point that Moore wants to make is that, no matter what example you take, the question, "X is pleasurable, but is it good?" has no obvious answer. The question, "X is good, but is it good?" would be taken to have an obvious yes answer. Indeed, we can ask why anybody would even ask such a question. If "good" = "pleasurable", asking the question, "X is pleasurable, but is it good?" would be like asking, "X is red, but is it red?" or "X is in Denver, but is it in Denver?" However, "X is pleasurable, but is it good?" is not like these other examples. This shows that "pleasurable" cannot be the same as "good".

The argument then takes one further step. It claims that there is nothing natural or material that you can test in this way and come up with a closed question. Pick any natural property you want, it will fail the open-question test. If all natural properties fail the open-question test, them "good" must refer to a non-natural property.

That's the argument.

The problem is that the open question argument does not work when you are dealing with ambiguous terms. Terms that refer ambiguously to two or more natural properties generate open questions when they are subject to the open question test.

So, let's take the proposal, "good" = "is such as to fulfill the desires in question."

Let us subject this to the open question test and ask, "X is such as to fulfill the desires in question, but is it good?"

Well, that depends. Are the "desires in question" the same in both cases?

The question could be asking, "X is such as to fulfill Agent1's desires, but are they such as to fulfill Agent2's desires?" This is an actual open question. The answer may very well be "no".

If we look at what desirism says about morality, we find that people quite often ask the question, "X is such as to fulfill those desires that people generally have reason to promote universally, but is it such as to fulfill Agent1's desires?" This is the way desirism understands the question, "Why should I be moral?" The answer may well be "no". There is no guarantee that doing the right thing will fulfill the desires of the agent. In fact, desirism understands most wrong action - most cases of people doing what they ought not to do - as cases where the agent does something that fulfills his desires, but does not fulfill the desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote universally.

In fact, things get worse for the open question argument when we introduce the idea of "conventional implicature". Conventional implicature is what happens when the perceived meaning of a term or phrase differs from the literal meaning. An example would be my wife shouting down to me as I work on a philosophy blog posting, "Honey, it's ten to six!" What she says is literally true. However, in this particular context, it means in this context is: "Quit working on that stupid blog posting and get ready for work!" We know what a term or phrase "really means" when we can imply that meaning from the conversational context.

Conventional implicature allows us to recognize rhetorical question. Rhetorical questions are questions with an obvious answer that tells the hearer to take this obvious answer and run with it. When we deal with an ambiguous question, conventional implicature typically allows us to judge when the agent is asking a rhetorical question (with an obvious answer) and when she is asking a serious question. A rhetorical question will be one that uses the same definition of the term in both parts of the sentence. A serious question uses different definitions in each part of the sentence.

Conventional implicature tells us to interpret the question, "X is such as to fulfill the desires in question, but is it good?" as a serious question. This means to interpret the question as, "X is such as to fulfill the desires in question, but is it such as to fulfill those other desires in question?"

This, indeed, is an open question - a question to which the answer is "no". This is because people do not ask questions like this if the answers are painfully obvious - and the answer would be painfully obvious if it referred to the same desires in question in both cases. Consequently, conventional implicature tells us to look for a different "desires in question" in each case. When we do, the question is a genuine open question.

So, I do not think that "good" = "is such as to fulfill the desires in question" tells us the standard English-language meaning of the term "good". However, even if it was, you would not be able to use Moore's open question test on it. Ambiguous terms generate open questions by default.

British Ethical Theorists 0015: Moore's Isolation Test

One of the things that G.E. Moore is noted for is his "isolation test" of intrinsic value.

As Hurka reported in British Ethical Theorists, Moore ultimately defined intrinsic value in terms of what has value in isolation. "By saying that a thing is intrinsically good [our theory] means that it would be a good thing that the thing in question should exist, even if it existed quite alone" (Moore, Ethics, p. 27).

Of course, desirism denies that anything has value "in isolation". Rather, the value of any state of affairs depends on how it stands in relation to one or more desires. However, there is still an argument to be made that Moore's isolation test is helpful in finding out exactly what it is that the agent desires. We have a state of affairs S, and Agent1 finds value in S. This means that Agent1 has a desire that P and P is true in S. It seems as if Moore's isolation test may be a good test for making sure that Agent1's desire is a desire that P and not something else.

The most famous application of Moore's isolation test involved his comparison of two planets.

Let us imagine one world exceedingly beautiful....And then imagine the ugliest world you can possibly conceive. Imagine it simply one heap of filth, containing everything that is most disgusting to us, for whatever reason, and the whole, as far as may be, without one redeeming feature. The only thing we are not entitled to imagine is that any human being ever has or ever, by any possibility, can, live in either, can ever see and enjoy the beauty of the one or hate the foulness of the other.... [S]till, is it irrational to hold that it is better that the beautiful world should exist than the one which is ugly? Would it not be well, in any case, to do what we could to produce it rather than the other? Certainly I cannot help thinking that it would; and I hope that some may agree with me in this extreme instance. G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica.

First, of course, the value of each world depends on how what is true of the world stands in relation to certain desires. We may imagine that the first world is a pristine, safe, and healthy Earth-like world with green meadows, fresh water falling into a clear pool, and healthy animals flittering about or grazing. While we imagine the disgusting world as a huge ball of dung. We encounter an alien species that evolved from a type of dung beetle. They may well agree with us that it is better that a beautiful world exist. However, their idea of beauty is realized in the world that is a big ball of dung. Indeed, they may not be able to imagine a world more beautiful.

This illustrates that the value of the world is determined by how it stands in relationship to desires.

However, we are still left with a question. Do we find value in the beautiful world existing, or is it just the case that our experience of the world is that in which we find value?

This really is the question that Moore was trying to answer. He was responding to Henry Sidgwick's thesis that nothing has value but pleasure. This can be translated in desirism terms to mean that we have only one desire that P, and that is the desire where P = "I am experiencing pleasure". Moore's isolation test is an attempt to prove that this is false. He attempts to do this by asking us to make a choice where, in both cases, "I am experiencing pleasure" is false. Yet, Moore argues, we would choose. In desirism terms, it means that we must have a desire that P that is true in which the beautiful world exists but nobody experiences it. We must have a desire that the beautiful world exist such that we have reason to realize the state of affairs in which "the beautiful world exists" is true.

So, Moore's isolation test may do a poor job of picking out what has intrinsic value. However, it may be useful in picking out more precisely what are the objects of our desires - what states of affairs will actually fulfill our desires.