On Desire 2018. Part 03: Oddie's Desires

In his essay, "In Search of the Right Fit", in Federico Lauria; Julien A Deonna (eds), The Nature of Desire, New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017], Graham Oddie begins with a discussion as to what counts as a desire.

Oddie writes that the prevailing view that the object of a desire is a proposition. I have written that a desire is a propositional attitude: a desire that P is an attitude towards the proposition P. However, I am not so inclined to say that a proposition is the object of a desire. A person does not fall in love with a proposition, nor is he inclined to take a proposition as his reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

Setting aside that issue for the moment, Oddie describes the standard problem with the idea of understanding desires as propositional attitudes. A person's desire for ice-cream, for example, does not, at least on its surface, express an attitude towards a proposition. However, it can easily be translated into a propositional attitude. The person who desires ice-cream desires "that I am eating ice-cream."

From this, Oddie draws the conclusion that the objects of desire are states.

Oddie is defending a value appearance theory of desires. Consequently to desire a state is to have it be the case that the state appears to be good. To desire that I eat ice cream is to view the state that I eat ice cream is good.

Oddie recognizes that there are some objections to this view, and we will be discussing them in future posts. For the moment, our concern is only a concern with what a desire is.

I would defend a view that a desire assigns a value to a state of affairs where the proposition that is the object of that desire is true. So, a desire that I am eating ice-cream assigns a positive value to states of affairs in which the proposition "I am eating ice-cream" is true. My aversion to pain assigns a negative value to states of affairs in which the proposition "I am in pain" is true.

Contrary to what this view states, Oddie asserts:

Other kinds of entities can have value: a hokey-pokey ice-cream, Kyoto, the Goldberg Variations, persons, species, and ecosystems are all apt subjects for evaluation.

This is something I would deny. What has value is the state, "I am eating hokey-pokey ice-cream" or "I am visiting Kyoto" or that "this species not go extinct". These are states in which certain propositions are true.

Of course, it is true of hokey-pokey ice-cream that "it is such as to fulfill the desires in question." That is, hokey-pokey ice-cream is such as to fulfill the desires of those who like to eat it. This, I would argue, is a legitimate sense of "good" or of value. However, it is just another way of saying that an agent has an attitude to a proposition and such a state would fulfill that desire. Kyoto is such as to fulfill the desires of those who want to visit. The existence of a species is such that it fulfills the desires of those who want it to continue to exist.

Here, Oddie writes something that I take to be mistaken:

What makes it true that one wants this or that is that one wants to stand in some appropriate relation to this or that.7

He attributes this view to D. Lewis, (1979, ‘Attitudes De Dicto and De Se’, Philosophical Review, 88, 513–543).

Here, I will have to disagree. A desire that a species continue to exist - that it not go extinct - is simply a desire that "this species is extinct" remain false. There is nothing in this desire that concerns a relationship between the agent and the state in which the proposition is true.

I have used the example of Alph who has a desire that a beautiful planet exist. He is standing next to a button. Push the button and the planet will pop into existence, and Alph will pop out of existence. If this is Alph's only desire - that such a planet exist - then he has a reason to press the button and no reason not to.

This is, so far, consistent with Oddie's value appearance thesis without postulating any type of intrinsic value. The brain, in assigning a negative value to a proposition being true, makes it appear to be the case that state of affairs in which that proposition is true have value (as long as they can be recognized as such a state). We have Oddie's appearance theory of desire without the nonsense of intrinsic values.

The next task is to see if this account handles the situations that Oddie might raise against it.

On Desire 2018. Part 02: Desires as Dispositions to Act

The first reading for the summer is: Graham Oddie, "In Search of the Right Fit".

In this paper, Oddie spends some time on a view presented by R. Stalnaker, ((1984). Inquiry. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.):

To desire that P is to be disposed to act in ways that would tend to bring it about that P in a world in which one’s beliefs, whatever they are, were true.

Off of the top of my head, I would say, "Yeah, that's right."

This just goes to prove that I need to be more careful. I am sometimes not as precise as I need to be.

Oddie brings up the objection:

[I]magine that a malevolent demon plants a chip in Radioman’s brain so that whenever he believes of any radio within reach that he can turn it on, he turns it on. Ipso facto, on the dispositional account he desires radios within his reach to be on. Two questions: First, does Radioman have a reason, even a weak one, to go around turning on radios? No, he just finds himself turning the damn things on. . . . Second, does Radioman even have a desire that radios within reach be on? He doesn’t like the sound of radios blasting, and he would be just as happy if radios didn’t exist at all. And he has no desire to have radios within reach so that he can have them blasting away.

Well, no. He doesn't have a desire. He sees a radio, and the chip takes over his muscles so that he reaches out to turn on the radio.

Actually, I don't think this is a fair presentation of Stalnaker's thesis. Radioman's reaching out to turn on the radio is not an "action" in the sense required in the Stalnaker's quote. It certainly is not an action in my understanding of the quote. This is because Radioman is not turning on the radio as an end in itself or as a means to an end. It is more like a heartbeat, or sweating. It is something that happens, not something that Radioman does.

In order to count as a "desire that P", it must be the case that the realization of P is an end or goal - something for the sake of which means are sought.

In Desire 2018: Part 01, I mentioned the distinction between the motivational theory of desire versus the evaluation theory of desire. The motivation theory says that desires are motivating reasons. The evaluation theory says that a desire is a perception of some state of affairs as good.

The idea that desires identify ends may not fully support the evaluation model, but does explain part of its appeal over the motivation model. Desires are more than just dispositions to act. They provide reasons to act. They take a state of affairs and assign a value to that state. For example, the aversion to pain takes the state of affairs, "I am in pain" and assigns it a negative value. In this way the avoidance of pain is an end - something for the sake of which other things (e.g., taking a pain relief pill, refraining from putting one's hand in a bed of hot coals) are means. Assigning a value to an end is more than just being disposed to realize an end.

So . . . this is going to be an important part of the nature of desire - a "desire that P" assigns a value to the realization of P.

This does not require that value exist as something independent of desire - that value is something that we perceive. Indeed, it is fully consistent with the theory of evolution to say that we evolved to be creatures that assign a value to a state such as, "I am not in pain" and, with that value assigned, then begins to look for ways of preventing the realization of such a state. We evolved to assign values to having sex, eating, being in a comfortable temperature. We learn to assign values to such things as studying philosophy, reading science fiction, taking long hot showers. Through praise and condemnation, we teach each other to assign values to such things as taking the property of others without consent (a negative value), repaying debts (a positive value), and helping those in need (a positive value).

But this becomes a key point. A desire that P is not just a disposition to act so as to realize P. It is the assigning of a value to the realization of P (a positive or negative value) such that it becomes a goal of our intentional actions.

I gotta remember that.

On Desire 2018. Part 01: The Two Dogmas of Desire

My summer project for the summer of 2018 hereby begins.

I will be reading through:

Federico Lauria; Julien A Deonna (eds), The Nature of Desire, New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017]. This is a collection of articles on . . . well . . . on the nature of desire. This will figure into a chapter of my thesis having to with . . . um . . . the nature of desire.

I will be writing commentary as I go through the articles. This is my way of keeping notes.

One of the contributors to this anthology is University of Colorado Philosophy professor Graham Oddie - who will likely be on my dissertation committee.

The first item discussed in the introduction to the anthology is the two conceptions of desire.

There is the motivational conception; desires are motives to do something.

And there is the evaluative conception; desires consist in perceiving certain states as good (and, thereby, motivating the agent to realize such a state).

Within desirism, I have tended to defend the first of these conceptions. There is no "good" to be perceived in the second sense - no value living out there in the world. There are only (evolved or learned) dispositions to realize or prevent the realization of certain states of affairs. We like high-calorie, high-cholesterol food because our ancestors who liked it lived longer and had more children than those who did not. We have an aversion to pain because evolution favored ancestors with an aversion to pain. There is no independent "good" to be perceived.

So, I am going to be siding with the motivational theorists and against the evaluative theorists.

Oops . . . Graham Oddie is an evaluative theorist.

But he apparently defends an evaluative theory that is consistent with the denial that values exist in the world independent of the mind. His view is agnostic between the claim that we have simply evolved to see certain states of affairs as good - that, in a sense, we evolved to perceive this illusion of goodness, or whether this goodness actually exists.

A quick note: This summary may not fit Oddie's work. I have only begun his article in the anthology, so I cannot yet report on it reliably.

Still, I will be given an opportunity to test one of the core claims of desirism, that a desire that P is a mental state that motivates the agent to act so as to make or keep true the proposition 'P'. This, I take it, is a motivational state theory.

By the time this summer is done, I should have a pretty good understanding of desires, which should fit nicely into my thesis.

Alston on the Moral Justification of Belief

I have written my last paper of the school year.

I did not write it as an assignment. Rather, there was a discussion during the last day of my Metaphysics and Epistemology Pro-Seminar class concerning the ethics of belief.

The argument under consideration says that we cannot be held morally accountable for our beliefs because they are not under our voluntary control. And we can only be held responsible for things over which we have voluntary control. (Not entirely true, as revealed by the existence of moral luck, but let's set that aside.)

So, we can't be held responsible for our beliefs.

I objected, "But, accountability involves more than intentional action. There is recklessness and negligence. In these cases, the agent does not intend to bring about a bad state of affairs, but is an unintended side effect of things they do for other reasons."

The professor's response was, "That would be a good paper topic."

So, I wrote it.

The paper is called Epistemic Negligence

The paper is a commentary on: William Alston, "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification," Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988): 257-99.

It's link to desirism springs from a thesis put forward by James Montmarquet, (“Epistemic Virtue”, Mind, 96(384): 482–497) in 1987 that what he defines as conscientiousness is the desire to believe that which is true and not believe that which is false. This desire, it seems to me, is one that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote universally (indeed, far more universally than it currently exists). Thus, it would count as a good desire in desirism terms.

A summary of the article:

• Richard Feldman, ("The Ethics of Belief," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LX, No. 3, May 2000) seems to have somewhat misrepresented the views of William Alston. Specifically, he paid little attention to Alston’s distinction between “indirect voluntary control “ and “indirect voluntary influence “.
• “Indirect voluntary control” concerns choosing to realize a state (e.g., to have a belief, to kill Vic) as an end or a means to a further end - by doing something else (e.g., studying, shooting Vic). For example, flipping a light switch to turn on a light, where turning the light on was intended as an end or a means to some further end.
• “Indirect voluntary influence” involves influencing a state as an unintended side effect of an intentional action, such as killing a patient by mistakenly removing the wrong (healthy) kidney.
• “Indirect voluntary influence” captures the deontological categories of knowing, reckless, and negligent wrongdoing - deontological wrongs where the wrongs were not intended.
• Alston recognized (correctly) that we have indirect voluntary influence over our beliefs. That is, there are intentional actions we can perform that influence our beliefs.
• Alston did not seem to recognize that indirect voluntary influence implies indirect voluntary control. When we are aware that an action has an influence, we may choose the action because of its influence, thus choosing the effect either as an end or a means.
• When we have indirect voluntary influence, we are still morally responsible for those unintended, perhaps unforeseen, and possible wrongs (e.g., harms) of our intentional action (e.g., reckless and negligent harms the agent did not intend). So, indirect voluntary influence over our beliefs still leaves us morally responsible for reckless and negligent acquisition of beliefs.
• In comparing epistemic to deontological justification Alston selected the deontological category of "permission" or "permissible action". An action is permissible if it is not prohibited.
• The epistemic counterpart to this would be epistemic permission: A belief is justified if it is not prohibited - if it is not held in violation of epistemic rules.
• Alston recognized that, for epistemic justification, this is too broad. Many permissible beliefs are not justified. He provides examples of permissible unjustified beliefs e.g., testimony, cultural traditions.
• I suggest a stricter standard - a standard required as a defense against negligence that I call a “non-culpability standard”.
• The non-culpability standard applies when one’s voluntary actions risks harming or wronging others.
• When this type of risk obtains, standards get more strict - stricter than the permissibility standard allows.
• I show how the non-culpability standard handles the cases Alston presented against the permissibility standard.
• However, there is a potential problem with the non-culpability standard. The culpability standard is not fixed - the greater the magnitude and certainty of harm, the stricter the standards. Epistemic justification, in contrast, has not been held to be variable in this way.

Motivation vs Evaluative Theories of Desire

I am starting a book on the nature of desire.

It begins by presenting two conceptions of desire.

One is the view that desire is a motivational state - a disposition to (and reason to) act so as to realize that which is desired.

The competing view sees desire as an evaluative state - a disposition to see something as good.

In addition to aiming toward satisfaction in the way explained, desires are often said to aim at the good, just as beliefs aim at the truth. One way of understanding this slogan is to interpret it as follows: one cannot desire something without “seeing” some good in it. Call this the “guise of the good” thesis.

Now, I have attached the term “good” to “that which will fulfill the desires in question.” However, one must be careful about the direction of fir here. Is something good because it is desired? Or is it desired because it is good?

To answer this question, I think that all we need to do is to look at the desires of animals - a dog’s aversion to pain. Does it make sense to think that Fluffy, who broke a leg due to getting it caught as she fell off the cabinet, perceives the pain as bad? I find it difficult to even think of Fido as judging this dog food better than that, or the ram in the forest judging the doe as attractive. Desires and aversions are much simpler than this. They are mental states motivating the agent to realize certain states of affairs.

When humans started to acquire intelligence, discovering that they favored some states over others - preferred the taste of some food, preferred to be warm on a cold winter night, wanted food and sex, it is not unreasonable to think the the goodness was in the thing wanted and not merely a motivation to realize some state. It is as natural as thinking that the Earth is the center of the universe. However, if we think about it a bit, we can see that this is not the case. The bird with a disposition to sit on its eggs to keep them warm is not "aiming at the good". She is simply doing what she likes, and has evolved to like to sit on her eggs to keep them warm. Ancestors who evolved this disposition had more eggs survive to become birds which became this specimen's ancestors.

So, things are good because they are such as to fulfill the desires in question. And malleable desires are good to the degree that they tend to fulfill the desires in question. That fits the relationship between desire and goodness better than the evaluate state theory.

On Objectivity and Theories of Value

I wrote this in response to a facebook inquiry.

However, I do not think you will need the context to understand the claims being made. It concerns the objectivity of value and the measure of theories of value.

I tend not to use terms like “objective” because they are ambiguous in a way that leads to confusion.

Objectivity is not a property of things, it is a property of propositions. A proposition is objectively true or false, or subjectively true or false (as in “true for me”).

Or you can talk about something being an object. Objects in this sense are distinguished from such things as events, states of affairs, and properties.

Actually, I do not think that anybody denies that value is a property. Objects, states of affairs, and events are good or bad. Value is a property they have.

There are intrinsic properties (mass, size), and relational properties (heavier than, larger than). There are also "functional" properties - properties that relate input to output. Evolution, erosion, digestion, and intention are functional properties.

All of these types of properties are real - including relational properties. Location is a relational property. So is time (age). Velocity is a relational property (as is acceleration). You cannot talk about these things without talking about A in relation to B.

Not only are relational properties real, they can be a part of scientific inquiry. “Orbits” is a relational property, but we can have a scientific theory of orbits.

Desirism holds that value is a relational property - a relationship between states of affairs and desires. Morality is a specific type of value property - the relationship between malleable (capable of modification using praise and condemnation) desires and desires that people generally have.

Propositions describing relational properties are objectively true or false. “Jim is taller than Sally” is objectively true or false. “People generally have many and strong reasons to reward/praise those who keep their promises and punish/condemn those who do not” is objectively true. But it is an objectively true statement about a relational property, not an object.

Now, let us talk about theories.

We have two theories of planetary movement. We have the “angel” theory and the “gravity” theory.

Comparably, we have two theories of morality, an “intrinsic prescriptivity” theory and "desire modification" theory.

The “angel” theory really does not explain anything. It does not explain why some planets move faster than others. It does not explain why the angels pushing Venus and Mercury will push their planets only so far from the sun, then turn around and head back to the sun again. It does not explain the retrograde motion of a mars, Jupiter, and Saturn near opposition.

The “intrinsic prescriptivity” theory does not explain anything about value. It does not explain the wrongness of breaking a promise, or why it is appropriate to respond to wrongdoing with condemnation.

The "desire modification" theory does have an explanation. Condemnation for breaking promises acts through the mesolimbic pathway to encode behavioral rules in the prefrontal cortex to create an aversion to breaking promises - making it less likely that the agent will break promises in the future. In fact, it works the same way also on people who learn about the punishment, helping to promote a universal aversion to breaking promises. People generally have many and strong reasons to promote this universal aversion to breaking promises.

One of the implications of the "desire modification" theory is that if, for example, a railroad worker whose behavioral rules tended to conform well to that which people generally praised and condemned were to have a metal rod blasted through the prefrontal cortex of his brain, this would likely impair his tendency to act in conformity to social rules. (See the case of Phineas Gage.)

What if another theory were to come along that was as good as the "desire modification" theory?

Well, what if another theory were to come along to explain the motion of planets that was as good as the gravity theory? If the theory has the same conclusions then, for all practical purposes, it is the same theory, and there is no reason to choose. If, instead, it produces different conclusions we look at those differences and see if they provide reason to favor one theory over the other. We may look to see if the theory makes predictions that we can test. We may evaluate the theories based on which is simpler - or what fits better with theories in other disciplines. Desirism scores advantages due to its fit with neuroscience and evolutionary theory as well as its fit with observations such as the Phineas Gage case (not to mention the advantage it scores because it actually explains things).

Note that condemnation will function through the mesolimbic pathways to create or modify rules of behavior coded in the prefrontal cortex whether we believe it or not. In this case, it is like global warming. Skepticism or doubt will not stop prevent it from happening.

Again, why not condemn the sun for causing cancer? The reason is because the sun does not have a reward system that would allow us - through condemnation - to get the sun to acquire behavioral rules such as acquiring aversions to act in ways that cause cancer.

Questions on Morality

I came across somebody asking questions about morality that I answered as follows:

Q: “Why are we morally accountable for anything?”
A: Because we are intentional agents – beings who, on the basis of beliefs and desires, act in ways that change the world, where those desires are, themselves, under the influence of praise and condemnation. It makes sense for people generally to promote, universally, desires that tend to fulfill other desires using praise and condemnation.

Q: Should the Sun be put on trial for causing cancer?
A: No. The sun is not an intentional agent acting on desires capable of being influenced by rewards such as praise or punishments such as condemnation.

Q: If all there is to us is matter, then aren't we just meat robots, programmed by nature through evolutionary mechanisms, and acting according to our nature just like all physical objects do?
A: Actually, very few physical objects act on beliefs and desires where desires can be molded using praise and condemnation.

Q: What is the foundation of your beliefs about right and wrong?
A: Your use of the term “foundation” begs some important question. I have a theory of right and wrong – which, like all good theories, is the theory that best explains and predicts the phenomenon of morality.

Q: Why is something wrong?
A: Definition: An act is wrong if and only if a person with good malleable desires and lacking bad malleable desires would not have preformed the act in those circumstances. Malleable desires are desires that we can mold using praise and condemnation. In virtue of this fact, it makes sense to reward/praise actions so as to promote good desires and punish/condemn actions to promote good aversions or inhibit the formation of bad desires.

Q: One can say stealing is wrong, but what about it makes it wrong?
A: The fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to use praise and condemnation to promote universally an aversion to taking property without consent.

Q: What fact about the universe justifies your belief that it is indeed objectively wrong?
A: Those pieces of evidence that support the belief that people generally have many and strong reasons to use praise and condemnation to promote universally an aversion to taking property without consent.

Q: I understand that one could create a moral system that was based with our biology and best interests in mind, but why would that be any more valid than one that wasn't?
A: Arguments are valid or invalid. Propositions are true or false. The proposition, “people generally have many and strong reasons to use praise and condemnation to promote universally an aversion to taking property without consent" is objectively true. (Try proving that it is false, or even that it is just a matter of opinion.)

Desirism and the Prisoners' Dilemma

In decision theory, there is a famous problem called the Prisoners' Dilemma.

You and another person from your country - somebody you do not know - were arrested in a foreign country. You are not guilty of any crime, but the local dictator is looking to make an example of people from your country for propaganda purposes. He wants the two of you to confess to being foreign agents. The other agent has been taken into another room and offered the same deal you are about to be offered.

You have a choice. You can "confess" to being foreign agents, or you can refuse. If you confess, and the other agent refuses, you can go free. The other person will go to prison for 5 years. However, if you refuse, and the other confesses, then you will be the one going to prison, and the other will go free. Of course, if you both confess, then you will both go to prison for 3 years. But, if you will not cooperate with the dictator's plan and you both refuse, he will charge each of you with some lesser crime and imprison you for 1 year.

A chart of the options looks like this:

The reason that this is a puzzle is because, no matter which option the other person chooses, you will get fewer years if you confess. Let us say that the other person confesses. Then, by confessing yourself, you get 3 years instead of 5. Or, imagine that the other person refuses to confess. By confessing, you get to go free rather than spend 1 year in jail.

Yet, if both of you choose this option, then you both get 3 years in prison. Though if you can both refuse to confess, both of you can get out in 1 year. The problem is: How do you get the other person to refuse to confess when, in doing so, he risks having you send him to prison for 5 years while you walk away.

Consider, now, the way that desirism handles this type of case.

Consider, if you will, that the person you were arrested with was somebody you cared about a great deal . . . your child, your spouse, your best friend. Would you confess and send this person to prison for 5 years so that you can walk away? Indeed, I suspect that quite a few of us would not even condemn an innocent stranger to prison for 5 years for our own sake. Of course, if the stranger does not have the same consideration for us - if they "confess" to a crime so that they can walk away and we get the 5 years, we would morally condemn them. We would hold them in such contempt . . . and perhaps plot a bit of revenge when our five years are up. Justice requires it. Morality requires it.

In the context of the Prisoners' Dilemma, desirism offers two types of solutions.

One solution involves promoting a desire to be in the optimum state - in this case, a state of mutual cooperation. Assume for the sake of argument that individuals have such a desire to be in a state of mutual cooperation than it is more valuable than avoiding 3 years of prison. That would change the final payouts to the following:

Now, at least, it is no longer the case that if the other person refuses to confess that you are better off by confessing. You are made better off as well because, by doing so, you create a state of mutual refusal - of helping each other - that you value more than avoiding a year in prison. Yet, if you think that the other person is going to confess, you still have reason to confess as well just to minimize the harm done.

The other solution is to promote an aversion to confessing to something one did not do (and harming another person), and a desire to tell the truth even when a lie would get you out of some serious problem. Let us say that both agents are given an aversion to lying in ways that will harm another with a strength of -2, and a desire to tell the truth equal to 2 units. The negative value experienced here would be the guilt of knowing that you did something to cause an innocent person to be made worse off. The positive value here is pride at knowing that you did the right thing in telling the truth, even though it hurt you.

Now, the payoff chart would look like this:

In this case, you are both spending a year in prison. However, you are both aware of the fact that this was the best option. There is no option that is better. The option of walking away with 0 years of prison, but so much guilt that you would sacrifice 2 years to get rid of it, was a worse option.

These options do not solve the Prisoners' Dilemmas. However, they create a way to prevent them from happening. One does so by altering people's desires so that the cooperative action becomes more attractive and the harmful action becomes associated with guilt and aversion of such strength that it outweighs other positive concerns.

With strong enough moral sentiments, Prisoners' Dilemma types of situations will become quite rare.

On Cotton and Fossil Fuels

Essay assignment: Compare and contrast the cotton industry in the United States in 1850s to the fossil fuel industry in 2018.

Let me start with a point of contrast. There is very little that we can attribute to the fossil fuel industry in 2018 which is as blatantly evil as chattel slavery based on race. Any attempt to say that the current owners and operators in the fossil fuel industry are “as bad as” the owners and operators of cotton plantations in the 1850s would be a mistake.

However, important similarities do exist, and they are matters of moral significance.

Recently, I was asked why I thought the founding fathers, with their belief that all men are created equal and endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, would still endorse slavery. I had argued that the founding fathers believed in the existence of moral facts and meant for the phrase referencing the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be a reference to these moral facts. Yet, they seemed to ignore a very clear application of these moral facts. How could that happen?

I argued that slavery appeared in the Constitution for the same reason that we do not have a carbon tax. There are entrenched interests whose wealth and power depends on a system that would be threatened if they admitted to certain facts.

The fossil fuel industry – its owners, managers, and employees – are engaged in activities that will destroy cities in some cases and, in a few cases, destroy whole nations. They will kill millions of people and cause great deal of suffering to hundreds of millions more.

Yet, they are blind to the moral wrongness of their actions. In the case of fossil fuel production, the owners and operators of the fossil fuel industry do not want to see themselves as villains. Therefore, they blind themselves to facts that would lead to that conclusion. In this case, they are blinding themselves to hard and fast scientific facts.

In the same way that the fossil fuel industry is motivated to accept bogus science in defense of their institutions, the same was true of the cotton industry in 1950. Case in point: The "theory", proposed by Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, 1851, that, while slavery is the natural and comfortable condition for mentally healthy blacks, some blacks suffered from a mental disorder he called "drapetomania," which motivated the slave to attempt to escape slavery. One can prevent a slave from developing drapotomania by treating the slave with some measure of kindness and comfort. However, once afflicted, the best treatment for this illness was said to be a judicious application of a whip.

Certainly, if people who can blind themselves to well-established scientific fact backed up by stacks of evidence, we should not be surprised to discover that people can blind themselves to “softer” moral facts such as the idea that blacks also have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The desire that plantation owners and operators had to see themselves as good people while still preserving the system that gave them wealth and power blinded them to that which, to somebody who could view the situation more objectively, are blatantly obvious moral facts.

The purpose of my reference to the planation system is to point out what can happen to people who are, in many ways, decent human beings. There is little doubt that many plantation owners and operators were, in the bulk of their lives, decent human beings. They loved their children, took care of their elderly parents, helped their neighbors, participated on civic projects. They held to the same principles against lying, repaid their debts, kept their promises, refrained from taking their neighbor’s property without consent, at least so long as they were dealing with other white people. They had many reasons to consider themselves decent human beings.

However, they suffered from a moral blindness that prevented them from seeing themselves as moral monsters with regard to their treatment of a certain part of the population whose interests did not concern them.

Owners and operators of the fossil fuel industry are suffering the same effect.

This, in itself, explains how this problem arises and perseveres in the population of plantation owners and operators in the one case, and fossil fuel industry owners and operators in the other. It does not explain how these ideas are spread throughout a population who (1) do not own slaves, or (2) do not own or operate businesses in the fossil fuel industry.

The notion here is that not all rationalizations are alike. People seeking to rationalize the wrongs inflicted on others in pursuit of their own wealth and power are going to test several different rationalizations. Those that succeed will grow and spread and become more widely adopted, while those who fail will disappear, never to be heard from again. Now that we have the owners and operators of the cotton/fossil fuel industry seeking to dismiss the wrongs they inflict on others, we can look at the techniques they used and ask, “Why are these the ones that succeeded in a wider population?”

Before going on, I would like to add that the owners and operators of the fossil fuel industry has a significant advantage over the owners and operators of the cotton industry. The fossil fuel industry has the capacity to hire public relations firms that know how to create surveys and focus groups who will tell them which messages will work. They maintain lists of contacts with the media that they can use to spread the ideas that the research shows them will work.

What works, among human beings, is a message of tribalism. One needs to pick out or identify a tribe, give it the message that “we” are morally superior to “them” and if “them” wins, then “us” will suffer unduly.

In the case of the plantation owners in the first half of the nineteenth century the tribal message that worked was racism. “We white people are morally superior to them black people. Them black people are only fit to be slaves. Nature and God built them that way. Rest assured, fellow white people, you are more like us than like them. Though, if you allow the abolitionist to win, the abolitionist will make you politically equal to the blacks. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

The fossil fuel industry has found its mark, not in racial tribes, but in political tribes. In the 1850s, it was “supporting slavery and other policies useful to the economic and social interests of the plantation owners made you a member in good standing of the white race,” now it is, “supporting the policies useful to the economic and social interests of the fossil fuel industry makes you a member in good standing of the conservative party”. And, just as the 1850 message was accompanied by the claim that the white race is morally and intellectually superior to the black race, the 2018 message is that the conservative political movement is morally and intellectually superior to the liberal movement.

“They are beneath you – only worthy of the contempt and condemnation of decent people like us – and certainly you would rather be one of us than one of them.”

And that, then, is how the fossil fuel industry of 2018 is like the cotton industry of 1850. It is made up of people whose economic and social status depends on being blind to the moral wrongs of their action, who have adopted a message that feeds into the tribal instincts of a general population to promote an idea that “we” are better than “them” and that to be counted “one of us” you will have to adopt these attitudes useful to preserving the social and economic status of those in this industry.

Interpreting the Bill of Rights

A member of the studio audience . . . well, not really, it was really my Philosophy of Law professor . . . asked a question regarding the interpretation of law.

It concerned an email discussion concerning Justice Paul Stevens' editorial calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment. After I posted some comments suggesting the difficulty in doing this and the reasons why some may oppose it, he responded with the following set of questions:

In light of our class in jurisprudence the question is where to look for guidance. In Natural Law, Legal Positivism, Legal Realism or where? Are any of these theories any good when it comes to the Second [Amendment] at least with respect to those who want it out and those who see it as sacred?

My answer was:

Positive Law vs. Natural Law

In discussing morality, I discover that people often confuse what I call an anthropological/sociological concept of morality with a philosophical concept.

The anthropological/sociological concept is descriptive - it asks what people believe to be right or wrong in a particular culture at a particular place and time.

The philosophical concept asks, “What is the right answer, if any?”

For example, was slavery morally permissible in South Carolina in 1850? The answer using the anthropological/sociological concept is “Yes.” The answer using the philosophical concept is, “No.” (NOTE: This is not to say that all philosophers would agree with that answer, but I would defend it. I hold that there are moral facts, and this is one if them. Yet, this moral fact does not change the correct anthropological/sociological answer.)

These are not conflicting answers. They are two different answers to two different questions.

We see this same distinction even in the hard sciences. We talk about ancient Egyptian astronomy, Medieval medicine, and Newtonian physics. In Newtonian physics, “Force equals mass times acceleration is true” is true. In Einsteinien physics (and in the real world, so it seems) it is false (but close enough for almost all practical purposes). Again, the statement that F=m*a is true in Newtonian physics but not in the real world is not a contradiction. The two statements are talking about two different things.

I see the dispute between legal positivism and natural law theory as being similar.

Legal Positivists are looking at the social/anthropological question of what the law is believed to be in a particular culture at a particular place and time. Legal Realism is an extreme form of Legal Positivism. It attempts to predict and explain whether (for example) the accused would be convicted or acquitted in a particular culture at a particular place and time, the way that a moral anthropologist might try to predict if a person in a culture would be praised or blamed.

The Natural Law theorist asks, “Should the accused be convicted or acquitted?” Or even, better yet, “Should the accused have even be put on trial? Should there even be such a law?”

These theories are not in conflict. They are addressing different questions. They only appear to be in conflict when people confuse the anthropological/sociological concept of law (positive law: what the law is believed to be) with the philosophical concept (natural law: what the positive law should be).

Natural Law theorists particularly contribute to this confusion when they identify what the law is and what the law should be, insisting that law that deviates from what the law should be is not law. It is still law in the anthropological/sociological sense even if it is false, just as “F = m * a” is true in Newtonian physics even if it is not true of the world.

The Separation Thesis
An important question in the philosophy of law concerns the Separation Thesis. This thesis holds that there is a fundamental distinction between what the law is and what the law ought to be. This thesis is often presented as a conflict between legal positivists (who say that an unjust law is still law) and natural law theorists (who say that an unjust law is no law at all).

If we recognize the distinction above, we see two types of separation thesis. There is a separation thesis that exists separately within either positive law or natural law itself, and there is a separation thesis concerning the separation of positive law from natural law.

Imagine a judge who must decide the case before her. Let us assume that the judge is a legal positivist who thinks that she ought to judge the case according to the law and that she ought not to let her moral opinions influence her decision.


The judge fails before she even begins. Her first decision involved answering a moral question – whether she morally ought to apply the law as written and morally ought not to allow her moral principles to impact her decision. In answering this question, she has already allowed a moral opinion to impact her decision.

In fact, I find it difficult to see how anybody who is not a moral nihilist (who rejects the very idea of morality) can prevent moral principles from impacting a decision. The decision constitutes an action. As an action, it is governed by moral principles. There is an “ought” and “ought not” applicable to what she does.

Of course, on the natural law side, there is no problem linking natural law to natural morality. Natural law is simply an expression of natural morality.

So, on the anthropological/sociological descriptive side, we have a positive law (the descriptive law at a particular place and time) linked to positive morality (the descriptive morality of a particular place and time). On the natural law side we have a natural law linked to natural morality.

Then there is the question of a “separation thesis” between positive law/morality and natural law/morality. In this case, the answer is, “Of course there exists a separation, just as there is a separation between Newtonian physics and the physics of the real world, Ancient Egyptian astronomy and the real-world facts concerning the stars and planets, and Darwin’s theory of evolution and evolution as it exists."


Bridging the Gap
Having said this, there is a way to bridge the gap between positive law and natural law. I will argue that we find an example of this in the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights contains phrases such as:

• The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed (Amendment II)
• The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. (Amendment IV)
• No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation (Amendment V)
• Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. (Amendment VIII)

These terms: “right”, “unreasonable”, “due process”, “just”, “excessive”, and “cruel” are value-laden terms. They require a judgment of value.

The question to be answered here is whether these terms are best understood as using the sociological/anthropological sense of the term (the beliefs about value that exist at the time), or the natural law sense of the term (the moral facts).

The doctrine of “originalism” seems to prefer the anthropological/sociological concept. Under this interpretation, the person interpreting the amendment is invited to try to discover, through an examination of history, what the term “right”, “unreasonable”, “just”, etc. meant to the people living at the time that they were writing the amendment. This requires a study of history, anthropology, sociology, and the culture at the time the Constitution was written. In a sense, this “freezes” the Bill of Rights in a certain era and keeps it in that era until some deliberate act (e.g., an additional amendment or revision) applies a new set of anthropological/sociological facts.

The alternative to this is that these terms use the natural law sense of the term. Under this interpretation, the Amendment refers to a moral fact that exists in the world independent of anybody’s beliefs or opinions. There exists, in the real world, a right to be secure in one’s persons, houses, papers, and effects. There exists, in the real world, an objective fact of the matter as to whether a search is reasonable or unreasonable. On this interpretation, it does not matter what the founding fathers believed. They could very well have been wrong. What matters, instead, is what the moral facts – the natural law – say to be right, to be reasonable, to count as due process, to be just or excessive or cruel.

Agreement
As I see it, even the legal positivist would have to come to the conclusion that the value-laden terms in the Bill of Rights (and other parts of the Constitution) refer to the natural law - to the moral fact of the matter, not to the beliefs of the founding fathers.

This is because, as a matter of anthropological/sociological fact, when the founding fathers made moral claims, they assumed the existence of independent moral facts and they were using moral terms to refer to those independent facts. They were not using those terms to refer to their beliefs about those facts. So when they wrote about “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” they assumed that there was, in the world, a thing called a “right” and that this thing, whatever it is, is that which the people had. They did not have this right in virtue of the fact that the founding fathers believed it. Nor could one infallibly determine its size, scope, or limitations by examining the beliefs of the founding fathers. The person who wanted to see the size, scope, and limitations of this right had to look at the right itself and determine what these limits were in fact.

This view of morality is blatantly obvious in looking at the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . .

This is not talking about a right that exists only because the founding fathers believed that it exists. This is talking about a right that exists in fact – and the purpose of governments is to secure rights that exist in fact. Consequently, to determine what the right is that the government needs to secure, one needs to look, not at the beliefs of the founding fathers, but at the right that exists in fact.

Of course, all of this assumes that there are rights that exist in fact. If there are no such rights, then this would imply that the Bill of Rights is empty. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects cannot be abridged by any law if there is no right to abridge. The right to bear arms cannot be violated if there does not exist, in nature as determined by natural moral law, a right to bear arms that can be abridged.

And, of course, on this interpretation, judges are being commanded by the Constitution to apply – not their own moral opinions to the case – but the moral facts insofar as they can determine what those facts are.

The Second Amendment
This comment emerged in the context of a discussion of repealing the Second Amendment. On this view, if we look at the intentions of the founding fathers the amendment says that there exists in nature a genuine right to bear arms, and its size, scope, and limitations exist in nature as a matter of fact. We then need to investigate that right to determine its size, scope, and limitations in fact. If there is no such right in fact, than the Amendment is empty. No law can infringe on a right that does not exist in nature. The assertion in the Bill of Rights that such a right exists does not make the assertion true. And if it does exist, we still need to look at the right itself to determine its size, scope, and limitations - whether it applies to the private ownership of thermonuclear bombs or whether there is no such right.

We get to this answer regardless of whether we follow the path given us by the Legal Positivist or the Natural Law theorist, on the grounds that the authors of the Second Amendment themselves were Natural Law theorists.

Supererogation

Here is yet another episode in the continuing drama of "moral philosophers wasting their time."

I know . . . it's still too harsh.

This is a problem with much of my writing. I have an idea of what "sells" - what attracts readers - what would boost popularity. However, I tend to find it substantially immoral. Appealing to tribal loyalties, for example, would probably tend to members of the tribe promoting my work. Instead, I argue against tribalism and write against those tribes that would otherwise likely adopt me as one of their own.

People also seem to prefer arrogant and condescending writers. They can certainly generate a lot more comments. But I can only be arrogant and condescending if I immediately apologize for it. That doesn't work.

Anyway, the issue that I want to discuss today is supererogation.

Supererogation are praiseworthy acts that go above and beyond the call of duty. It happens when there is some act that there are moral reasons to do - e.g., donate a substantial portion of one's income or one's extra kidney - to others, yet doing less than this is morally permissible.

Katie Steele presented the dilemma as follows:

(1) If there is more moral reason (it is more praiseworthy) to do act Y as compared to do act X, it is not permissible from the moral point of view (it is blameworthy) to do X. (I have an obligation to pay you $50. If I pay you $40 instead, I still owe you $10 and can be blamed for cheating you out of $10 if I do not pay it.)

(2) There is more moral reason to perform supererogatory acts compared to non-supererogatory acts. (There are moral reasons to give more of your wealth to those in need than less, or to give your unused kidney to somebody who needs one than to keep it for yourself.)

(3) It is permissible, from a moral point of view, to do (some) non-supererogatory acts. (It is morally permissible to give less to charity or to keep your kidney to yourself.)

(4) There are some supererogatory acts (e.g., donating a substantial portion of your income or donating a kidney).

I am not going to go over Katie's suggestion for dealing with this dilemma . . . I believe that the terms of the workshop would not allow me to share her position as it is a work in progress.

However, I can give the desirist answer.

Praise and blame exist to do work. They aim to perform a function - to mold the desires of character, promoting desires and aversions that people have reason to promote.

The effect of praise and blame are not going to be uniform across the population. As with most things, we can expect a bell-shaped distribution curve. They will be more effective on some than on others. There will, in fact, be a segment of the population that they will be particularly effective on. These people will acquire the desired preferences to a particularly strong degree.

It makes no sense to blame people for failure to reach a level of virtue that only 1% of the population is capable of reaching. That would require perpetually condemning 99% of the population where that condemnation would be ineffective. In fact, these unreasonable demands could potentially weaken the effectiveness of blame, reducing its ability to encourage people to adopt good desires and aversions to the degree that a more rational use of this tool would make possible.

On the other hand, there is certainly good reason to praise the top 1% - because we do have reason to encourage these traits to the degree that we are able to do so. We have a reason to invent the term "hero" and apply the term to those who go "above and beyond the call of duty."

These, then, are the supererogatory actions - those that it makes sense to praise, but where it does not make sense to blame or condemn those who fail to perform them.

In the previous argument, this calls into question Premise 1. There are actions that there are more moral reason to perform (praiseworthy) where the failure to perform those actions are not blameworthy. These are the actions of the top X% of what the tools of praise and condemnation make possible.

Oh, I wrote Katie Steele and offered my suggestion above.

Her response: Thanks for this. I think your account sounds here sounds plausible. I think it is roughly compatible though with one of the options that I was suggesting – the idea that the ‘permissible set’ (of non-blameworthy) options represents what is ‘morally decent’, where that may merely be a matter of social convention. Amongst these options, some are still recognisably morally better. You offer a potential story for why these two sorts of judgements might be socially useful…

Against Any Intrinsic Life-Value

Welcome to another episode of "Moral Philosophers Wasting Their Time".

Okay . . . that's too harsh and condescending.

But, it is the case that a lot of work being done in moral philosophy seems to be grounded on false assumptions, meaning that a great deal of work is being done to no useful end.

I spent all day Monday attending a workshop on "Formal Value Theory". Two of the presentations concerned moral theories that are built on false assumptions of intrinsic value.

One of the two presentations concerned another version of what, in moral philosophy, is known as The Repugnant Conclusion.

For all practical purposes, the argument goes as follows:

Assume that you have a population of, say, 100 entities each of them are having a quality of life that we shall arbitrarily assign a value of 100 units. Such a life is going twice as well as a life that has 50 units of value. These numbers are merely for illustrative purposes. All we really need to know is that one life can go batter than another. The life of a person in constant pain is better than the life of a person who only infrequently experiences pain. If you imagine your own future, I am confident that you see some possible futures as being better than their alternatives.

So, we have our community of 100 people each with a life that has 100 unites of value.

If we lower the value and add numbers of people, we can create a community that has more overall value than the one we have. So, let us say that we cut the value of each life in half (to 50 units), but we add another 101 people. Where the previous world had 10,000 units of value, this new world has 10,050 units of value. The latter is better. On the hypothesis that we should maximize total life-value, we should bring about the latter world.

Now, let us cut the value of each life in half again - to 25 units. And, again, we double the number of people in the world and add one. Now, we have a world with 10,075 total units of value. This is a better world still.

If we keep doing this - if we keep reducing the quality of life but increasing the number of people experiencing life at that level of quality, so long as the overall value remains positive, we can make the world a better and better place. One billion people with a quality of life of 0.000011 will have 11,000 total life value units - or 10% more than that of the world with 100 people experiencing 100 life-value units each.

Of course, all of this is premised on the idea that life-value units are to be maximized.

Desirism denies that there is any type of intrinsic value to be maximized. Value exists as a relationship between states of affairs and desires. And the value of the state of affairs in which people have particular desires is evaluated according to its relationship to other desires. The Repugnant Conclusion gives us reason to reject the idea that there is an intrinsically good "life value" to be maximized and, in so doing, gives us a reason to reject alternatives to desirism.

How does desirism see this problem?

Ask people, what type of future do they desire for their - say - great grandchildren. If they had to choose between a society in which their great grandchild were 1 of 100 people with a life value of 100, or one of 1 billion people having a life value of 0.000011, which would they choose?

I strongly suspect that few would select the repugnant conclusion. Indeed, people will tend to find that option repugnant.

Yet, a lot of moral philosophers are still pushing this idea that there is something like a life value to be maximized - the assumptions that lead to this type of conclusion. Usually, they are talking about maximizing happiness, or well-being, or pleasure over pain. There is even a desire satisfaction version that argues that desire satisfaction has intrinsic value to that the goal of morality is to maximize desire satisfaction. This means creating more people with more desires to be satisfied. This is supposed to be an intrinsically good thing.

These moral philosophers could spend their time more productively if they could accept that arguments such as these refuse the thesis that there is an intrinsic value to be maximized and, instead, looked at value not as an intrinsic property, but as a relational property. Value relates states of affairs and desires. The repugnant conclusion is simply not a conclusion that people have many (if any) reason to desire.

Is and Ought Revisited

A useful Facebook discussion . . .

Yes, such creatures apparently do exist. Don't interrupt.

A useful Facebook discussion has given me to revisit the derivation of 'ought' from 'is' and examine some of its elements with a bit more care.

Here is the standard derivation that I have given to a hypothetical 'ought'.

P1: Agent desires that P
P2: Doing A will realize P
C: Therefore, Agent ought to do A.

Now, in order to make this into a valid argument, we need to specify some of the details.

First, let us examine the premise: Agent desires that P

Agent desires that P

Agent desire that P implies that Agent has a motivating reason to realize states of affairs in which P is true. This is what it means to have a desire. Desires provide motives to act. An aversion is a desire that not-P, so aversions also provide reasons to act - reasons to prevent the realization of states of affairs in which P is true.

Doing A will realize P

The Facebook discussion made me realize that I was hiding an implicit assumption in this. In order for this inference to work out, we must define realize in this context to mean that doing A will realize a state of affairs in which P is true, and not doing A will prevent the realization of states of affairs in which P is true.

You see, if we stick with a concept of realize where it simply means creating a state of affairs in which P is true then there will be cases when the premises are both true and the conclusion is false. These are cases where doing A will realize a state of affairs in which P is true, but not doing A will also realize a state of affairs in which P is true. That is to say, P will be made or kept true no matter what I did. I desire that the sun will come up in the morning . . . this is true. It is also true that, if I do a chicken dance, the sun will come up in the morning. It does not follow from this that I ought to do a chicken dance because it is also true that if I do not do a chicken dance, the sun will come up in the morning.

So, lesson learned: We must understand doing A will realize P to mean that doing A will bring about a state of affairs in which P is true and not doing A will bring about a state of affairs in which P is false. Now the agent has a reason to do A.

Therefore, Agent ought to do A

This part has always been something that I needed to be clear about.

The sense of ought that I talk about here is prima facie ought. It is a sense of ought that means nothing more than has a prima facie reason to do A. This is a reason that can be outweighed by other reasons that the agent has. It is a kind of reason that should be outweighed by other reasons that the agent should have. It is not a moral ought. It is not an all-things-considered ought.

Here is a same argument presented in this discussion - modified somewhat to eliminate some confusing elements.

P1. (premise) You have a desire to have money.
P2. (premise) Taking your friend's money will satisfy that desire.
C. (conclusion) Therefore, you ought to take your friend's money

Now, of course this argument is not valid if we take the 'ought' in the conclusion to be a moral ought or an all-things-considered ought.

In the case of the all-things-considered ought the argument only considers one thing, not all things.

In the case of moral ought, I have argued elsewhere that moral ought is not grounded on the desires the agent has. It is ground on the desires that people generally have reason to promote universally. So, these premises do not justify a moral-ought conclusion.

I can illustrate the prima facie reason easily enough by imagining that the money turned up missing. Now, as the crime investigation team, we need to determine who took it. We ask, "Who has a motive?"

Well, in fact, everybody has a motive to take the money in that everybody has at least one desire that can be better fulfilled by taking the money. Our list of suspects starts off being quite large - and it is large precisely because the argument above is valid for everybody. The conclusion is true in the sense that . . . yeah, you have a reason to take your friend's money. But, this is not an all-things-considered ought which would also consider your aversion to harming your friend or with damaging your friendship. Nor is it a moral ought that considers the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote universally an aversion to taking the property of others.

With these elements in place, we can see how we can derive an ought from an is. From this foundation, we can build more complex oughts, such as practical oughts and moral oughts.

Hume on Causation

I have heard from multiple sources that all conversation concerning causation starts with Hume.

In An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume defined causation as follows:

We may define a cause to be an object followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second. Or, in other words, where if the first object had not been, the second never would have existed.

The first half of this quote is quite similar to the idea of pragmatic causation that I have been suggesting in the previous posts: A cause is that which we have reason to manipulate in virtue of the fact that, through it, we can bring about that which we desire or prevent the realization of that to which we have an aversion.

Note, however, that this account of practical causation differs from Hume's definition in that it includes an element whereby manipulating the cause is a means of manipulating the effect. Hume's definition is binary; A either is or is not followed by B. The account of practical causation says that we can manipulate B by manipulating A. Now, either bringing into existence or denying existence of something is one form of manipulation. However, the account of practical causation at least makes clearer the fact that, for example, we can turn a dial to make the music louder or quieter, or make the light in a room brighter or dimmer.

One of the criticisms of Hume is that his theory of constant conjunction seems to identify certain things as causes that we typically do not accept to be causes. A standard example is the fact that night always follows day. Indeed, all "objects" (it would make more sense to use the term 'state of affairs') similar to a day are followed by objects similar to night. Yet, we do not say that day causes night or night causes day. Rather, we say that day and night have a common cause - the fact that the earth spins on its axis.

The pragmatic account of causation, in that it includes an element that looks at what we can manipulate in order to change the effect, avoids this objection. If we look at that which we can manipulate to bring about a change in the effect we discover that there are things that we can manipulate that will bring about a similar effect in both day and night. We can increase the length of the day (and the night) by slowing the spin of the Earth. We can eliminate the day and create a permanent night by eliminating the sun.

So, the practical view of causation respects the fact that the day and the night have a common cause - that which we can manipulate in order to influence both of them.

Off of the top of my head, I fear that this account of causation is going to be considered circular. After all, "that which we can manipulate" seems to be assuming causation, and thus it is assuming that which we are trying to explain. How do we account for the fact that the manipulation of A brings about a change in B? This "bringing about a change in" is the very subject of causation that we are trying to understand.

If we look to Hume for an answer to this question, we acquire this knowledge from experience. We learn that the conscious manipulation of A brings about a change in B in regular ways that we can observe and understand. By experience we learn that the manipulation of A brings about a change in B.

Note that this still contains a significant difference with respect to Hume's account of causation. Hume describes causation in terms of the regular connection between events, while the pragmatic view of causation looks at the conscious manipulation of A to bring about a change in B. Or, at the very least, it is something where we have reason to expect that if we could manipulate A (e.g., slow down the rotation of the earth), then we could bring about a change in B (the length of the sun). This is information we acquire through observation.

This also provides us with a way of acquiring a more precise definition of "objects similar to" the cause and the effect. Objects "similar to" the cause are those that we can manipulate that will bring about a change in the effect. Objects "similar to" the effect are those that are changed by manipulating the cause.

Experience tells us that by changing the color of a light switch we do not change the capacity of the light switch to turn the light on and off. Thus, the color does not cause the light to go on or off. It is not something that we can change to manipulate the effect. Similarly, something is "similar to" the light going on if it is something that will illuminate when switch is turned on. A different light bulb, a heating lamp that fits into the same socket, or a heater plugged into the same socket, are all objects similar to the light in that they are things we can manipulate by turning the switch on and off.

By defining "similar to" as that which we learn through observation that we can manipulate in order to bring about changes in the effect, then this is not circular. This is empirical. It fits in with Hume's basic empiricist assumptions.

Note that I have written this entire post concentrating on the first half of Hume's quote. I have said little about the second half - "where if the first object had not bee, the second never had existed". Though it follows from what I have said that this is a poor restatement of the first premise. The first statement allows for the manipulation of the properties of the second object by manipulating the first. The second statement is entirely black and white, 'exists' or 'does not exist'. I do not think that causation is as binary as this second statement seems to require.

Philosophers' Communication Problem - Causation

Philosophers seem to have a pathological dislike of having their claims be comprehensible to real people.

I am going to add “cause” to my list of examples. Here, "cause" joins terms such as “realism” and “anti-realism”, and “objective” and “subjective”, as terms that philosophers use in a way that is destined to confuse more people than it helps.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the Philosopher David Lewis distinguishes “causation” from “explanation”.

He defines “causation” as that which occurs in nature independent of intelligent thought. For example, a collision between a Mars-sized planetoids and an early Earth caused the moon to form.

Explanation, he claims, applies to what Humans do as we look for “the cause” of accidents, wars, famines, good harvests, and economic prosperity.

The problem is that what Lewis calls “explanation”, the rest of the world calls “cause”. The term “explanation” can be used to talk about a relationship between cause and effect. However, when we ask for an explanation we are usually asking for a description. For example, “Explain the meaning of ‘We the People” as it appears in the Constitution", or, "Explain the process for determining the velocity of an unladen sparrow."

Lewis' application of terms to the issue of causation would be like deciding to use the word “ball” to refer to a tendency to bounce off solid objects and using the term “red” for the spherical object thrown against solid objects to demonstrate its 'ball'. We already have perfectly good English terms for these things: ‘ball’ = elasticity and ‘red’ = ball. The rest of the world would find what this person says a lot easier to understand if he - and those who commented on his work, would simply use the terms in their standard English way.

We invented (and are continuing to modify) language language primarily to use as a tool for realizing our desires. It would only make sense that our language would have a convenient way to refer to, "that which we can manipulate that will help us to realize that which is important to us." The word we use is “cause” as in “the cause” or “a cause”. Since knowing what we can manipulate in order to realize what we desire is useful to us, I suspect that we will continue to use the word 'cause' primarily in this way.

Of course, we have the capacity to recognize that there are relationships between one state of affairs and another in the sense that, "If we did have an interest in realizing or preventing the relation of the effect, we would manipulate the cause." Conequently, we have a way of applying this term for what we have both the ability and a motive to manipulate to that which we may only hypothetically want to manipulate. Consequently, even though no person was around to witness the formation of a moon, we can still ask and answer the question, "If we wanted to create a moon, what would we have focused our attention on that could have realized the formation of a moon?" We can ask the same question concerning the extinction of the dinosaurs, the formation of the milky way galaxy, the death of a star, or the fact that ice floats on water.

So, we do have an expanded sense of the word 'cause' that goes beyond what we actually care about. However, it is built on a concept of 'cause' that is concerned with realizing what we do, in fact, care about.

The bulk of philosophical discussion seems to be focused on this expanded concept of 'cause'. However, discussions keep getting derailed by linguistic intuitions concerning how we would actually use the word 'cause' - and those intuitions cannot be divorced from actual or hypothetical human desires.

So, it seems, not only are these philosophers good at confusing us, they are just as good at confusing each other.

I intend to use the word 'cause' to refer to 'that which we can manipulate in order to realize that which we desire or to prevent the realization of that to which we have aversions." I will sometimes extend this usage to ask about things that would have been good objects of manipulation if we had wanted to realize or prevent some state of affairs.

Responsibility for the 2016 Presidential Election

Who can we blame for the fact that Trump became President in 2016?

In my previous post, I presented an account of practical causality. It states that the cause of something is the type of thing that we can we can influence to bring bout a type of state that we desire or prevent a type of state to which we are adverse.

At least, that is the cause we have reason to care about. There is another, broader type of causation - but that alternative type includes a lot of things we do not care about (excluding a very small number of scholars and a few others).

So, I want to look at this account of practical causation with respect to a real-world causal problem.

Who can we blame for the fact that Trump became President?

The first thing to note is that, even though we look for "the cause", it is often not the case that there is one and only one cause. The only time that there is one and only one cause is if there is one and only thing of a type that we could have changed to have prevented the realization of a state of affairs in which Trump became President.

Many people use this linguistic convention as a rhetorical trick to avoid moral responsibility. In conditions where more than one wrong action contributes to an avoidable bad state of affairs, each person who contributed to realizing that which ought not have been realized points a finger at the other causes and cries, "It's their fault!" The embedded assumption that there is one and only one cause then allows the individual to draw the false conclusion, "If they are the cause, then I cannot be the cause."

However, in the real world, it is often the case that there is more than one cause. Each cause is a type of event that we can influence which, if we influence that type of event in the right way, will prevent the realization of types of states of affairs such as Trump becoming President.

As it turns out, anything that would have brought about a shift of 6,000 votes in Michigan, 22,000 votes in Pennsylvania, 11,000 votes in Wisconsin and was morally culpable can be listed as being "to blame" for Trump winning the 2016 election.

Of course, there is a large obvious set of candidates of who is to blame - including Trump, the Republican National Committee, and those who rallied behind, worked for, and contributed to the Trump campaign. But, let's look a bit beyond the obvious into some of the potentially controversial causes.

Sexism - particularly implicit bias: This was certainly to blame for the election results. A person suffering from implicit bias did not vote against Clinton because she was a woman. Instead, this voter found some other excuse to vote against Clinton. One likely source is that the thought of voting for a woman gave the voter a general feeling of uneasiness. Without realizing that their uneasiness resulted from sexism, they interpreted their sentiments as, "I don't trust her" or "I just don't like her" or in attributing certain wrongs to her where they would not have drawn the same conclusion about a male candidate based on the same evidence. In short, they used make-believe or exaggerated reasons other than sexism to reject a candidate that sexism made them feel uneasy about.

Bernie Sanders. Yes, Bernie Sanders is to blame for Clinton's defeat. It is not just that he weakened her as a candidate. A greater harm came from his "us" versus "them" tribal rhetoric. Humans are built to respond to this way of thinking with increased polarization and hatred - even intolerance - of "the other". Tribal thinking, once it is established, closes the mind to reason and evidence. This is why you find groups (tribes) with such absurd beliefs - this is tribalism dominating reason. It does not matter that Sanders endorsed Clinton later. He created a tribe whose members simply took his later endorsement as a betrayal of the tribe. Sanders' tribalism had another effect - it worked hand-in-hand with the Russian campaign to tip the election in favor of Trump. Sanders plowed the ground and planted the seeds. The Russians tended the crops and harvested its fruit.

The Russian meddling. Russia selected America's president. Putin looked at the candidates, pointed to Trump, and said, "I want that one," then invested several million dollars in a campaign of mostly illegal activity to get his preferred candidate elected. Saying that Putin selected the US President is to be interpreted as simply restating this causal relationship. Putin's contributions to the Trump campaign likely flipped more than 40,000 voters in the states listed above, which gave the election to Trump.

Of course, sexism itself worked with Putin and Sanders to give the election to Trump. Implicit bias made people more willing to embrace Sanders' tribal rhetoric and more eager to see merit in what has since been shown to be Putin's campaign rhetoric.

Post-Fact Thinking: Many people simply do not care whether their political rhetoric is true or false. The speed at which false claims spread on social media is proof of this. People share false and misleading information at the drop of a tweet. If it supports a conclusion that they like - they accept it, they share it, and they endorse it. While there is no condemnation given to those who spread misinformation, those who attempt to correct misinformation are attacked. A greater general aversion to false beliefs and deception would have meant less misinformation on social media, and more people basing their votes on the facts.

This lack of interest in the truth was, of course, also useful to Putin and his team. Their campaign largely consisted in filling social media with lies and distortions that those who have no interest in the truth were more than eager to share on social media, freely helping the Russians to harm America and its interests and its people.

Let me return to the purpose of this post - to give a practical application to the practical theory of causation. These are all causes in the practical causation sense in that they represent the types of things that are under our control that we can change to prevent the types of harms that we have suffered from happening in the future.

The things we can do to make things better in the future:

(1) Recognize and work on eliminating or correcting for - or at least preventing the worst outcomes of - our implicit biases.

(2) Shunning and shutting down "us" versus "them" tribal political rhetoric.

(3) Setting up defenses against Russian style political meddling - at the very least warning others what to expect and how to fight back. (Something the Trump administration and leaders in the current legislature seem quite unwilling to do.)

(4) Worry a lot more about whether the claims that we are spreading on social media are true - or whether we just want them to be true because they fit our political narrative.

This represents how to put the theory of practical causation to practical use.

Pragmatic Causation

Yesterday, I mentioned that philosophers distinguish between the causation that occurs when there are no people (e.g., the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs), and the causation that people are interested in (whether Russian meddling was responsible for Trump being elected President).

On the surface, they seem quite similar.

However, when we look at the first type of cause, we tend to include things that people are not actually interested in. In earlier posts I mentioned the case of saying that the house fire was caused by the existence of oxygen in the room. This is true in the metaphysical-causal sense in that if there had been no oxygen in the room there would have been no fire. However, this is not the cause we are interested in. Consequently, it is not the moral/responsible cause of the fire.

We could also say that building the house itself caused the fire. If the house had never been built, it never would have caught fire. Yet, again, this is not the type of cause we are interested in. Thus, though building the house was, in one sense, the cause of it burning down, it was neither the cause in the moral/responsible sense or in the useful sense.

In considering this broader sense of cause, I must say that I have no interest in the causes that people generally have no reason to be interested in. This means that I find it hard to find the motivation to investigate this type of cause other than the need to create a paper for class and turn it in.

Yet, I am drawn to the thesis that this type of cause would not even exist except that people have a need and a use for a more pragmatic sense of "cause".

If we look at cause through a pragmatic lens, it seems to me to take something of the form, "things like A tend to cause things like B" means "if you want to control things like B, then you should look for ways to control things like A."

Of course, "wanting to control things like B" comes from the motivation to realize states of affairs in which the propositions that are the objects of our desires are true.

One of the things I have noticed about pragmatic causation is . . .

In the general discussion of causation, people like to link specific causes to specific events. Whereas in pragmatic causation, people link "things like the cause" to "things like the effect". They are more general. While we may look at the cause of the Great Depression, we are actually more interested in the kinds of things that have effects like that of the Great Depression. When we look for the cause of an automobile accident we are looking for the types of things that tend to cause things like automobile accidents.

We do this because our interest in avoiding economic depressions and automobile accidents cause us to wonder what we can do - what actions we can take - to prevent economic depressions and automobile accidents. This causes us to look for types of causes that we can act on - that we can influence - in our quest to manipulate effects.

Even causes that we seem to be able to do nothing about are susceptible to pragmatic consideration. When we look for the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs we are looking for things the likes of which can bring about a mass extinction. In finding that "the cause" is an asteroid impact, we learn that if we wish to avoid our own mass extinction, we should look for the possibility of an asteroid impact. If the cause of the dinosaur extinction was disease, it causes us to look for the possibility of preventing a human extinction by our study of diseases.

In other words, we are looking to control something that is like the asteroid impact or pathogen that could have an effect that is something like the extinction of the dinosaurs - namely, human extinction.

Our interest in looking for the cause of the automobile accident is to find out whether there is "something like that which caused the accident that we can act on or manipulate" which can be the cause of "something like that accident." This way, we can act on that which seems to be the cause of the accident (e.g., drunk driving) in order to reduce that type of effect (automobile accidents).

This, to me, simply seems to be a more sensible concept of causation.

Causation versus Explanation

It turns out that the ideas that I posted yesterday - my "pre-study" ideas of causation - turn out to be philosophically . . . um . . . wrong.

I want to remind the reader that I have never studied theories of causation outside of the realm of moral responsibility. I am learning as I go. And, mayhaps, I can help you to learn as I go as well.

Recall that I postulated that we adopted the idea of "cause" for practical reasons. We have an interest in making certain propositions true or false (that which is the objects of our desires). We invented the idea of "cause" to identify those things, the manipulating of which, can bring about or avoid that which we desire or towards which we have an aversion.

Problem: Causes (and effects) would exist even if we did not exist with our desires to identify them. If I make causes dependent on our desires then, in the absence of our desires, there would be no causes. Yet, this conclusion seems to be false. This gives us reason to reject the original assumption.

Logic can be so annoying sometimes.

David Lewis distinguishes between 'causation' and 'explanation'. He understands explanation as being dependent on us. Indeed, the explanation of something is the cause that we care about. So, the presence of oxygen in the air may be a part of the cause of the house burning down, but it is not a part of the cause that we care about (since we are not going to start building houses without oxygen). The cause that we care about (the short circuit, the stove set on high and the owner falling asleep, the arsonist) is what 'explains' the fire. It is through this concept of explanation that we can assign moral responsibility.

However, there is still this 'cause' that we may or may not have reason to care about. That is 'causation' itself - what the philosophers are interested in.

This leads to a potential source of confusion.

If there are causes that we care about, then there is at least a possibility of causes that we do not care about.

This leads to a problem since one of the ways we evaluate theories of causation is by testing them against our linguistic intuitions. Somebody proposes a theory of causation, we imagine how it would work in specific instances, and we check whether we would, intuitively, call that a cause or not.

For example, Tom places a bomb that would kill Susan if it goes off. Pete notices the bomb and disarms it. Pete, we may say, saved Susan's life in that if Pete had not disarmed the bomb, then Susan would have been blown up. Fortunately, Pete had a pair of wirecutters in his pocket because he had been working on some home repairs. If Pete had not put the wire cutters in his pocket, he would not have been able to save Susan's life. So, we can say that one of the causes of Susan's life being spared was Pete's having a pair of wirecutters which, in turn, was caused by his doing home repairs.

However, it is also the case that if Tom had not placed the bomb, that Pete would not have been able to save Susan's life. So, Pete's saving Susan's life was caused, in part, by Tom placing a bomb. So, do we credit Tom with placing the bomb in virtue of the fact that, "If you had not placed the bomb, then Pete would not have been able to save Susan's life."

That seems odd, right?

However, we must distinguish between the causes and explanations. Tom's placing the bomb may have caused the event that resulted in Pete's saving Susan's life. However, Tom's placing the bomb did not save Susan's life. This is because Tom's placing a bomb, though a part of the cause, is not a part of the cause that we care about. So, it is not a part of the 'explanation' for how Susan's life was saved. Tom gets no moral credit.

So, we are going to need to keep this distinction between 'causation' and 'explanation' in mind as we look at the philosophy of causation.

And note that what I wrote yesterday may be more of a theory of 'explanation' than a theory of 'causation'.

Thoughts on Causation and Responsibility

The next section on my Metaphysics and Epistemology course is "causation".

As I have reported earlier, I have studied value theory - without much emphasis on metaphysics and epistemology. However, on the subject of causation, there is an area of overlap.

That area concerns moral responsibility. To say that Agent A is responsible for an accident is to say that, in a sense, he caused it. So, it seems, having a theory of responsibility requires having a theory of causation.

Before getting into this study of causation, there are two preliminary points worthy of consideration.

(1) Free Will

In discussing moral responsibility, one of the first topics to come up is that of free will. We cannot hold a person responsible for an action unless, in some sense, he "could have done otherwise". This is often taken to assume that the agent has some strange contra-causal power that allows him to break the laws of physics and cause matter to go one way or another - to perform one action instead of another - regardless of what would happen under the determined laws of physics.

Desirism is unique, I think, among moral theories in that it not only denies the existence of free will, it denies that the free will hypothesis has anything to do with morality. Morality was invented in a determined universe and it was invented so that it works in a determined universe. Those thinkers who postulated some sort of free will were wrong from the start.

Typically, philosophers distinguish positions regarding free will having to do with different positions on two different questions:

Question 1: Do humans have free will?

Question 2: Is free will required for moral responsibility?

Libertarianism (not to be confused with the political view, with which it has no necessary connection): The position known as "libertarianism" says that the answers are "yes" (humans have free will) and "yes" (free will is required for moral responsibility). This is considered the standard or default view of morality as it is practiced. We hold people morally responsible for actions when they could have done otherwise and, because humans have free will, they could have done otherwise - unless compelled to act by some outside force.

Hard Determinism: The position known as "Hard Determinism" says that the answers are "no" (humans do not have free will) and "yes" (free will is required for moral responsibility), which means that there is no such thing as moral responsibility. This whole practice of holding people morally responsible for their actions is a mistake. We are all only doing that which prior historical events cause us to do and to say that we are to be condemned because we could have done otherwise is a mistake.

Soft Determinism/Compatibilism: The position known as "soft determinism", also often known as "compatibilism," effectively argues that the answers are "no" (humans do not have free will) and "no" (free will is not required for moral responsibility). What is required for moral responsibility is that one's actions are caused by one's character or the type of person one is - by one's own beliefs and desires. When the action is caused by the type of person you are - with who you are as a person - then you are responsible for that action even though you are the type of person you are as a result of the determined laws of nature.

Desirism is a particular kind of soft determinism. One of the problems with compatibilism is that it says that A is compatible with B - that the two can exist side by side in moral harmony. It allows that a type of "free will" is compatible with determinism because it defines "free will" in terms of acting on one's own beliefs and desires - with auctions being caused by the type of person one is. Desirism is a particularly harsh form of compatibilism because it dismisses free will entirely. It does not want to live in peace and harmony with "free will". It wants to dump "free will" entirely - kick it out of the house and be rid of it. It was a bad idea at the start and it remains a bad idea.

Instead, desirism holds that the actions that one is responsible for are those that come from one's character, and that character itself is under the influence of praise and condemnation (reward and punishment). We hold people responsible for their actions because, in a determined world, holding people responsible (reward and punishment; praise and condemnation) has effects on people's character, and we have reason to value those effects.

(2) Practical Responsibility

So, fine, a person is morally responsible for an act when it comes from a part of his or her character that is susceptible to change through praise/reward and condemnation/punishment.

This still does not give us a theory of causation.

On this matter, I have tended to adopt a pragmatic view of cause. To say "A causes B" is to say, "Hey, as a matter of practicality, if we want to control B, then the best way to do this is to find some way to control A."

So, a house burns down. The fire marshal is interested in what caused the fire. It wasn't caused by the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere - we certainly are not going to start building oxygen-free houses. It was caused by faulty wiring, since we can change wiring codes and install safety measures (e.g., circuit breakers) that reduce the chance of fires due to wiring.

And, so, a person is responsible for an action when the action is caused by a part of his character that we can influence using reward/praise and condemnation/punishment. We hold people morally responsible for actions - and apply reward/praise and condemnation/punishment to the action, precisely because it was caused by a type of character trait vulnerable to reward/raise and condemnation/punishment.

Cause by Absence

I think one of the merits of this type of account of causation is that it makes sense of the possibility of the absence of something being a cause.

What caused the fatal accident?

Answer: A callous disregard for the interests of other people on the part of the machine operator.

Most competing theories of causation require that, to make sense of A causing B, there must be an A that causes B. They have no place for the possibility that the absence of A can cause B.

However, on this practical cause model, we can make sense. If the absence of A is something that we can influence - something that we can change - in order to prevent further occurrences of B, then "the absence of A" is a perfectly reasonable cause of B. It simply means that we have the power, in the future, to make it more likely that there will be an A. In the example above, we need to promote a regard for the well-being of others, which we can do (in part) by registering condemnation or punishing those who display a callous disregard for the interests of others.