Reading Notes: Korsgaard on Hume and Moral Justification

If we find upon reflecting on the true moral theory that we still are inclined to endorse the claims that morality makes on us, then morality will be normative. I call this way of establishing normativity the ‘reflective endorsement’ method.

(Christine Korsgaard, Sources of Normativity, Cambridge University Press, 1996)

After Christine Korsgaard presented her "reflective endorsement" standard of normativity, she attempted to argue that David Hume (among others) used this method to justify his moral theory.

According to Korsgaard, Hume recognized a distinction between the work of the theoretical philosopher - which was to explain morality, and the practical philosopher - which was to promote moral behavior. Neither actually justifies moral claims. In the first case, it is quite possible that once we can fully explain morality we may discover that it is a field whose claims we cannot justify (e.g., they are divine commands where there is no God). In the second case, it is possible to promote something that lacks justification.

So, how do we get moral justification?

However, Korsgaard shows that, for Hume, once we explain morality we find it to be something that people have reason to embrace.

As a side note, Korsgaard represents the work of the "sentimentalists" such as Hume as being in contrast to that of the "realists". I dislike these terms since they implies that sentiments are not real - or that they are distinct from that which is real. I hold that statements about sentiments - and the relationships between objects of evaluation and sentiments - describe reality. They are real. A morality that talks about relationships between objects of evaluation and sentiments (or, actually, desires) is a part of the real world.

However, I don't believe that one can read the morality of something directly from one's own sentiments. Morality has to do with the sentiments that people generally have reason to promote - not necessarily the sentiments an agent has.

According to Koorsgaard, Hume may agree with this.

According to Hume, moral judgments are based on sentiments of approval and disapproval which we feel when we contemplate a person’s character from what he calls ‘a general point of view’.

The degree that these two accounts can be reconciled depends on the degree to which we can match up contemplating a character from a general point of view and desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote. For one thing, the latter does not require contemplation or a point of view - it describes a relationship that exists in the real world. On the other hand, both approaches may still yield the same conclusions.

There is a feature in Korsgaard's account of Hume's ethics that I have long thought to be a mistake in philosophy. This is the struggle to find something in an agent's motivational set that gives the agent reason to do the right thing or be the right sort of person - always. In fact, some philosophers seem to take it that a moral claim cannot be justified if somebody, somewhere, lacks a reason to do what she "ought" to do.

In this article, we find Korsgaard discussing Hume's attempt to argue that everybody has a reason to be moral because - apparently - everybody has an aversion to others thinking poorly of them. This is not just a reason to do the right thing, but a reason to be the right sort of person - the type of person that others can admire and respect.

We can wonder whether everybody indeed has such a desire and, even if they do, the strength of that desire.

Ultimately, Hume argues that, even where people lack this aversion at the start, they are disposed to acquire it. The attitude that others have towards an individual (or the attitude that one knows that others would have "if they only knew") is an attitude one eventually adopts towards oneself. Everybody has a reason to be the type of person others can respect because that is the only way they can respect themselves.

Even where this is true, these interests would still be a small set of the interests a person may have. In some people they may be the weaker concern - potentially too weak to support the conclusion that an agent must act in a particular way.

We can also wonder what it would mean for morality if somebody lacked that desire. Would it no longer be wrong to do what society disapproved of?

More importantly, we need to worry about how this would work in the case in which a person lives in an immoral society. We can imagine a person being condemned because she is working to free the slaves or hide Jews from the Nazis in a society where a great many people have adopted the Nazi's attitudes towards Jews (the way many in America today share Trump's attitudes towards Muslims).

In another type of case, there are people with desires that others condemn without having a good reason to do so. We must consider the case of homosexuals seeking to live in accordance with their interests in a society that condemns homosexuality.

In short, what people may condemn and what is immoral are often not the same thing.

Desirism holds that there may be a gap between the desires that a person has (and, thus, what the agent has a reason to do) and the desires an agent should have (the desires that people generally have reason to promote). This gap is the distinction between a good person and an evil person. The possibility of a person not having the desires or interests she should have is not a problem - it is a fact. Indeed, it is the presence of this gap (and the reasons that exist to promote certain desires) that justifies condemnation and punishment.

Similarly, there can be a gap between what a society does condemn and what it has reason to condemn. A society can condemn homosexuality while lacking any good reason to do so. Similarly, people generally may have good reason to abolish slavery even where a few manage to convince the majority of non-slaves that this is not the case. A person can want to be the type of person others can respect. However, a person can also recognize that, even though others would likely condemn the individual if they knew some relevant fact (she was freeing slaves, hiding Nazis, or in a homosexual relationship) she can say that the fault is in society, and not in her.

If normativity requires that each and every individual have compelling reason to do what is right - then morality lacks normativity. This gap between what an agent desires and what an agent should desire guarantees that we cannot always persuade people to "do the right thing" by showing that it fulfills her current desires. Sometimes, we have to reward, praise, condemn, and punish in order to create the desires that would then motivate an agent to do the right thing (and not do the wrong thing). If morality cannot tolerate such a gap, then there is no such thing as morality.

Morality Without Free Will

Well, I got a response to my email to Dr. Johnson.

He seemed to raise no objection to the claim that people can still have reason to reward, praise, condemn, and punish even if there was no free will - if these tools worked to rewire the brain. It is a legitimate alternative to "brain surgery", provided that it is effective.

Dr. Johnson raised doubts as to how effective it is. However, that is a different (and empirical) question.

Still, Dr. Johnson did argue that removing free will from the equation and thereby removing the fact that people are punished because they "deserve" it would imply the end of morality. Punishing people for deterrance or rehabilitative reasons is something other than morality.

I am not so certain that this is the case.

I don't think that free will ever played much of a role in morality. Consequently, I think we can eliminate free will from the equation and what we call morality will be substantially unchanged.

One of my reasons for believing this is because, if this thesis is correct, morality emerged a long time before any human even had the capacity to think of "free will".

We see the roots of morality as I have described it - the use of reward, praise, condemnation, and punishment to alter intentional mental states and, thereby, to alter behavior - even among animals. It is particularly common among social primates.

A snarl or a snap, the showing of teeth, a swipe of the paw, beating one's chest - these all display a primitive form of disapproval or condemnation. Grooming, the sharing of food, a smile, and a caress are rewards - they show approval or praise. Yet, these animals know nothing of free will. They simply know the effectiveness of such displays on behavior. They use these as simple tools - as they use sticks and rocks.

As humans became more intelligent, we can expect a number of changes to occur.

First, they will become more efficient at the use of these tools to control behavior in a number of ways. They will be able to better determine not only the immediate but the long-term effects of actions on the fulfillment of other desires. They will be able to better discriminate when something is the result of an agent's malleable intentional states and when they have some other cause - thus better able to determine when to apply the tools of reward, praise, condemnation and punishment and when they are not called for.

Second, they are going to make these practices a topic of conversation. Responses that were in the form of snarls and smaps will be in the form of words, phrases, and sentences. They will invent a language that will allow them to debate when to snarl and snap at somebody and when praise and reward.

Even rudimentary language will arise long before any person ever thinks of a concept as complex as "free will" and applies this to the practice of morality.

For these reasons, I consider "free will" to be a part of a theory that was applied to try to explain and understand a set of practices that existed even when humans were prehisotoric social primates. It was applied to a set of practices that existed before the idea of free will was even thought of, and among beings who could not even have a notion of counter-causal free will.

It was a bad theory, and one we have since discovered many reasons to abandon.

Accordingly, I think that morality can easily survive the discovery that the "free will" hypothesis was just a bad idea to begin with. We still see the original purpose and function of morality in the ways people use it. In practice, people never lost track of the idea that intentional actions are caused by beliefs and desires, and that desires can be molded through the use of reward, praise, condemnation, and punishment.

Heathwood's Theory of Well-Being - Part 3 - The Desire to Be Worse Off

It is time to get back to Dr. Chris Heathwood's desire-satisfaction theory of personal well-being.

Heathwood is defending a thesis he calls Concurrent Intrinsic Desire Satisfactionism - a thesis that says that the quality of a life depends on the satisfaction of what he ultimately desires (desires as an end, rather than as a means) when the agent wants it.

But what happens when a person desires not to be well-off?

Heathwood illustrates this type of case as follows:

Imagine a man who, ridden with guilt for past crimes, wants (intrinsically) to be badly off. In order to satisfy this desire, the man takes an arduous, boring, and insignificant job. He’s pretty miserable. "Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism" (Philosophical Studies, 2006, 128:539-563

The problem is that this agent is getting what he wants (to be miserable) when he wants. Consequently, Concurrent Intrinsic Desire Satisfactionism would say that this "getting what he wants (being miserable) when he wants it" is making for a good life.

So, the agent is having a good life by making himself miserable.

This sounds a bit odd.

Heathwood's proposed solution is to say that, yes, this agent is getting one of the things that he wants when he wants it. However, we have to weigh this against all of the things that make his life miserable.

It it is impossible (conceptually, metaphysically) to experience things like misery, boredom, arduousness, etc. without having desires frustrated.

However, Heathwood also claims that the satisfaction of the desire to be miserable must be outweighed by all of the frustrations of those desires that are being thwarted.

But the satisfaction of this desire to be badly off must, of necessity, count for less, in terms of welfare, than all the daily frustrations he racks up. If it were otherwise, then the man wouldn’t be badly off, and the desire to be badly off would no longer be satisfied. So Concurrent Intrinsic Desire Satisfactionism implies, correctly, that the man is not well off, that he has succeeded in becoming badly off.

For me, this raises another question. How is it that the agent chooses to make himself badly off?

If the desire to be badly off is so weak, and all of the frustrated desires combine to something so much greater, then it would have to be the case that the agent has far more reason to ignore and set aside this weak desire to be badly off than he has to act on it.

I am assuming that the amount of desire satisfaction we get from a desire depends substantially on its strength. The satisfaction of a weak desire counts less towards well-being than the satisfaction of a strong desire.

If this agent's desire to be badly off counts so little towards welfare, then it must be weak. If it counts for significantly less than the desires that are being frustrated, then it must be significantly weaker than the desires that are being frustrated. However, if it is significantly weaker than all of the other desires, then why (or how) is it the case that it can overpower all of those other desires?

The only way in which this desire to be badly off can overpower the other desires and be the desire the agent acts on is if it is stronger than the combined force of the other desires. However, if this is the case, then it seems we must give up the claim that this desire to be badly off counts for less (provides less desire satisfaction) than the desires being thwarted.

This is as much of a problem with the account of well-being I tend to defend as it is for Heathwood's. I argue that well-being depends on the objective fulfillment of self-regarding desires. The desire to be badly off is a self-regarding desire. Consequently, its fulfillment would contribute to the well-being of the agent. And, just as against Heathwood's theory, the strength of the desire (and, thus, its contribution to well-being) has to outweigh the combined strengths of the desires being thwarted in order for the agent to act on it. Otherwise, the other desires would overpower it and prevent the agent from acting to make himself badly off.

It would seem that an agent cannot - or, at least, cannot rationally - will himself to be worse off. It will always result in fulfilling a stronger desire than those that were thwarted.

However, there is a way in which a person can choose to make their life worse off. This method exploits the fact that desires do not have backwards causation. Consequently, future desires, no matter how strong they are, have no influence on current decision making. This is what makes addictions possible and explains part of the reason why diets are difficult. The agent knows that her actions will thwart future desires, but those future desires cannot weigh against the force of the current desire to eat, smoke a cigarette, drink alcohol, and the like. Consequently, the current desire causes the agent to act in ways that she knows will ultimately make her worse off.

An agent with a current desire to be worse off would be able to intentionally act in ways that would end up thwarting more and stronger future desires. When the future arrives, then the agent would experience the frustration of those desires when she had them, which would diminish the quality of the person's life. This type of case would fit in with Heathwood's Concurrent Intrinsic Desire Satisfactionism.

Morality in a Determined Universe

In preparation for going to graduate school, I have been reviewing some general philosophy. Specifically, I have been going through the lectures in, "The Big Questions in Philosophy" taught by King's College professor Dr. David K. Johnson.

It prompted another of these letters I have been writing as my studies have caused me to imagine that I might have something useful to say on some subject.

Lecture 18 in this series had to do with free will. Dr. Johnson ended the lecture by suggesting that admitting we do not have free will would imply replacing a system of moral responsibility and punishment with a system that viewed criminal behavior as a mental disorder to be cured.

I thought I would suggest to him that these might not be mutually exclusive options.

Dr. Johnson

I hope that you will pardon this intrusion.

I have been going through your lectures on "The Big Questions in Philosophy" from "The Great Courses" (which I find extremely valuable and interesting).

At the end of Episode 18, in which you discuss free will, you end the lecture imagining a future society in which neuroscience was so far advanced that the notion of free will is no longer defensible.

You suggested that, in such a case, we would no longer "punish" people who engaged in criminal behavior "because they deserved it". Instead, you said, "We would simply discover the way they were neurally miswired, and then correct it so that they no longer behaved that way."

I would like to suggest that morality itself is, and always has been, a tool for rewiring the brain in a manner substantially like what you have described above.

I am assuming that you do not intend to limit the list of acceptable procedures specifically to surgery - you were simply using this as an illustrative example. If the "rewiring" can be done by the use of chemicals - anti-psychotic drugs, lithium, or hormones - then this would also fit your model. Similarly, if we could rewire the brain through, for example, a non-invasive procedure such as sonic waves or magnetic fields, that would also count. What matters is not the method used, but the effect that method has on rewiring the brain and, thus, altering behavior.

Well, then, what if the rewiring were to be caused by subjecting a population to rewards and punishments?

I want to suggest that moral rewards and punishments - including moral praise and condemnation - actually works to rewire the brain in ways that tend to reduce dispositions to behave in ways harmful to others and increase dispositions to behave in ways helpful to others (or, at least, in ways that are harmless).

Rewards and punishments act to change behavior in two main ways.

One of these ways is not relevant to the idea that I would like to present here. Rewards provide incentives for engaging in certain behaviors ($25 million reward for information leading to the death or capture of a known terrorist leader) while punishments - or the threat of punishment - provide a deterrence ($500 fine for speeding in a school zone).

These functions do not involve rewiring the brain, and are not the functions that I am concerned with here.

The effect that I am interested in is the effect that rewards and punishments have in changing what an agent actually comes to like and dislike.

Punish a child who tells a lie and the child learns not only to tell the truth to avoid punishment, but acquires an aversion to lying for its own sake. The child then tells the truth, even when there is no chance if getting caught and punished, because the child has become averse to lying. She simply does not want to lie.

Note that the child is not punished because we consider her morally responsible in any robust way. The child is punished to "teach her a (moral) lesson" - a lesson that is learned as the punishment rewrites a portion of the child's pre-frontal cortex.

In your lecture, you spoke of Phineas Gage, the unfortunate railroad worker who had a tamping rod driven through his brain, destroying a large portion of his pre-frontal cortex. What he lost as a result of this brain damage was the ability to conform his behavior to social norms.

This illustrates the fact that the pre-frontal cortex is the part of the brain that interprets rewards and punishments, extrapolates from them a set of social norms, and then conforms behavior to fit those norms. By analogy, it seems to work in the same way that the auditory parts of the brain take sounds and extrapolates from them the meanings and grammar of language, allowing the agent to communicate with others.

If we are going to correct a person's wiring to prevent criminal behavior, it seems that we are going to be looking for a way to rewire the pre-frontal lobe, at least in many cases.

One way we have for rewiring the pre-frontal cortex is through rewards and punishments.

Rewards and punishments are processed in the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens has a direct connection to the pre-frontal lobe. One of the effects of reward and punishment is to send signals to the pre-frontal robe, where it initiates this rewiring. As I mentioned above, the brain takes these rewards and punishments and extrapolates from them a set of behavioral rules to generate behavior that makes rewards more likely and punishments less likely.

Please note, I am using rewards and punishments in their biological sense - not their social sense. An animal is "punished" if an action results in an electrical shock (for example) - even though the animal is not being blamed for that action. In other words, the claims about rewards and punishments I made above are just as applicable to an animal living alone in the wild where natural rewards and punishments also generate rules of behavior.

For us social creatures, this process extrapolates and promotes conformity to the social rules that we teach through a system of rewards and punishments.

There are two more relevant claims to add to this hypothesis.

(1) Praise acts on the brain as a reward, and condemnation acts on the brain as punishment. Consequently, praise and condemnation can also be used to rewire the prefrontal cortex.

(2) Rewards/praise and punishment/condemnation work not only on those who are rewarded or punished, but on others who consider even the possibility of being rewarded or punished. Through the faculty of empathy, we can put ourselves in the position of those who are rewarded or punished and, in experiencing the reward or punishment this way, have our own pre-frontal cortex rewired without actually being the person rewarded or punished.

This "someone else" does not even have to be a real person. It could be a character in a story.

If this is correct, morality as a tool for rewiring the pre-frontal cortex of people within a community, to inhibit behavior that tends to cause harm and promote behavior that tends to produce benefits.

We could say that "ought to have done otherwise" implies "could have done otherwise" has to do with distinguishing that which reward/praise and punishment/condemnation can influence and that which is outside of its influence.

We do not condemn/punish the person who failed to teleport a child out of a burning building because no amount of condemnation or punishment can create in people an ability to teleport a child out of a burning building.

On the other hand, we praise/reward those who go into a burning building to rescue a child because praise/reward has the capacity to rewire the pre-frontal cortex, not only in the person doing the rescuing but in others as well, to promote generally a disposition to take risks to save others. Thus is something we each have reason to want others to be disposed to do if we should end up in such a dire situation.

In our day to day lives we use rewards (such as praise) and punishments (such as condemnation) to cause people to acquire (for example) an aversion to lying or to taking the property of others without their consent. We promote an interest in helping those in dire need and an interest in upholding and defending certain political and social institutions.

In other words, even in a determined world, people have reasons to reward, to praise, to condemn, and to punish. These are the scalpels we use to perform brain surgery - to rewire the pre-frontal cortex and, in doing so, generate behavior that conforms to social rules.

The future world you imagine, where neuroscience has reached such a state of advancement to show that there is no room for free will, may well continue to be a world where rewards and punishments are used because of their determined effects on rewiring the brain.

In fact, this is what morality has been doing all along.

Well, this is just an idea that I thought I would toss your way for your consideration. I do hope that you find some value in this and that it was worth a bit of your time.

Sincerely,

Alonzo Fyfe

Christine Korsgaard on Justifying Moral Justification

Christine Korsgaard has a theory for justifying justification.

It is difficult to justify justification without begging the question.

If you believe that a particular set of rules justifies a set of conclusions, how do you go about justifying the statement that "these rules justify those conclusions"? How do you prove the rules of logic without either using the rules of logic, or using something else which, then, needs its own justification?

When it comes to justifying moral claims, Korsgaard suggests testing whether the method of justification survives the act of revealing what they are. Once we know, "This is what provides the foundation for our moral claims," does the sense that moral claims are justified remain? Or does it (can it) vanish?

If we find upon reflecting on the true moral theory that we still are inclined to endorse the claims that morality makes on us, then morality will be normative. I call this way of establishing normativity the ‘reflective endorsement’ method. (Korsgaard, Christine (1996): The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

She explains this system in one case by describing an account of morality in which it fails.

Evolutionary theory says that moral claims are justified through a moral sense that we have evolved to have because it promotes the survival of the species.

Now, we take an agent and put him in a situation where she needs to make a moral choice. She can delete an email and nobody will know that it ever existed, or she can turn it over to investigators. She ponders that moral sentiments are sentiments that evolved in order to promote the survival of the species. However, she can go from here to ask, "The fact that people have sentiments that I should turn this over to the investigators that came about through evolution - does that really tell me that I must turn this email over to investigators?"

The agent in this case may share this evolved sentiment - having an aversion to deleting the email and failing to do her duty, but she is still open to taking this as an unfortunate side-effect of evolution, rather than a moral requirement.

At this point, I do not have space to discuss the merits of this test. I hope to do that later.

However, would like to report that desirism seems to pass this test.

Desirism holds that the right act is the act that a person with good desires would perform, and good desires are desires that people generally have many and strong (desire-based) reasons to promote.

The reasons to promote a desire comes from the desires that would be fulfilled by the desire being promoted if it were universally adopted.

For example, people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to gaining an advantage through deception - by lying and by fraud. The reasons for promoting such an aversion come from the desires that would be fulfilled by a widespread aversion to these types of deception. An act of lying or of fraud is wrong, then, because it is something that a person with such an aversion would not do. It warrants condemnation and, perhaps, punishment because these tools promote the overall aversion to these types of deception.

Now, we apply Korsgaard's test. Would knowing that this is the case undercut the sense that the moral claims are justified?

Knowing these things will not change the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to these types of deception. It will not change the fact that they can promote this aversion through the condemnation and punishment of those who engage in these types of acts. It does not change the fact that the person who does such an act has done something that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn or to punish.

This ties into one of the arguments that I have used (though perhaps not stressed enough) for this whole project.

Let us say that I am entirely wrong in claiming that this is an account of morality. Let us say that I am totally confused about this. perhaps morality essentially involves divine commands or intrinsic values that do not exist.

It would still be the case that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to deception, that they can do so by punishing and condemning those who engage in the practice, and that a person who commits such an act is somebody that people generally have reason to condemn or to punish.

In other words, this is still a useful project to develop, even if we do not call it morality.

Desirism Book - Part 0014 - The Truth About Value

Is value subjective, or objective?

From what I have said so far, many would conclude that this is a subjectivist account of value. After all, for our one agent, Alph, gathering stones has value because he desires it. It is not the case that he desires it because it has value. (Or, it may be more accurate to say that the claim that Alph values gathering stones and Alph desires to gather stones simply report the same thing.)

However, the terms "objective" and "subjective" are ambiguous. People often confuse these distinctions and, because of this, draw implications that are not accurate.

The two definitions of "objective" that cause the most problems are:

(1) Independent of mental states such as belief and desire.

(2) True, regardless of whether the agent wants or believes it to be true.

Reading quickly over these two claims - it is easy to think that they say the same thing. However, they are different. The nature of this difference makes it the case that value is subjective in the first sense (dependent on desire), but objective in the second sense (value propositions are true independent of whether agents believe or want them to be true).

If we look at our imaginary universe containing it's one agent (Alph) and his one desire (to gather stones), the value that Alph finds in gathering stones is fully dependent on his desire. If Alph were to desire to scatter stones instead, then scattering stones would have value to Alph.

However, none of the propositions that we have been using to talk about this world are true because Alph believes them to be true, or because Alph wants them to be true. Every proposition is objectively true or false - as objective as any claim in any science.

Specifically, The statement "Alph has a desire to gather stones" is objectively true (within this imaginary universe). It is as objective as the statement, "Alph has a scar on his left arm" or "Alph has a temperature of 99.1 degrees". While the first says something about the structure of Alph's wrist, and the second says something about Alph's body overall, the proposition "Alph has a desire to gather stones" reports a fact about the way his brain is structured.

It is not the case that "Alph is gathering stones has value to Alph" is true because Alph either believes or wants it to be true.

From our initial description of the world, it is simply not true that Alph has a desire that Alph values gathering stones. A desire that the proposition be true is not a part of the description. Yet, the proposition is true, and its truth is independent of Alph's desire that it be true.

Similarly, we made no claims about what Alph believes other than that he has those beliefs that allow him to make true the proposition, "I am gathering stones". There is no need for a belief that Alph values the gathering of stones. Alph need not have ever thought about the question of whether he values gathering stones. He simply goes about the chore.

Because people confuse these two concepts, they slip from the fact that values are subjective (depending on desires) to the fiction that value claims are subjective (true because the agent either believes or wants them to be true). They then use this second claim to argue that values are beyond debate or scientific inquiry - that an investigation into the facts of the world cannot tell us anything about what has value and what does not.

However, the former, though true, does not imply the latter. It no more rules out the objectivity of value than it rules out the objectivity of scars and body temperature.

What are we going to say, then, if we are asked the question of whether value is objective?

If we say that value is objective, we are likely to be taken as meaning that values exist independent of belief and desire, which is not the case.

If we say that value is subjective, we are likely to be taken as meaning that value claims are true or false depending on whether or not agents believe them or want them to be true or false - which is not the case either.

It may be best to answer this question by saying that people are generally confused about the concepts of "objective" and "subjective" such that nobody can answer this question without spending a considerable amount of time explaining their answer. If one is pressed for an answer, the fact of the matter is that value claims can be investigated scientifically in the same way that claims about body temperature and scars can be investigated scientifically.

Reasons to Abandon Old Desires and Acquire New Ones

A couple of posts ago, in an open letter to Dr. Heathwood, I argued for a way of defending a desire-fulfillment theory of well-being from one objection raised against it.

In that previous post, I addressed an objection that stated that a desire-fulfillment theory of well-being implied that a person should, if the option were available, get himself addicted to a potent drug as long as fixes were easily obtainable and the desire could be repeatedly and easily fulfilled.

In response, I argued that the objection confused the thesis that an agent's well-being depended on getting as much desire fulfillment as possible from the thesis that the agent was trying to fulfill the most and strongest of his desires. In order to judge whether an agent has a reason to acquire a new desire, we are not to ask whether it produces a lot of desire fulfillment. We are to ask whether her existing desires give her a reason to make the change.

Unless acquiring the addiction helps to fulfill the agent's other desires, the agent has no reason to acquire the addiction.

The same response applies to another potential objection that Heathwood mentioned.

When someone can’t get what he really wants, he may adapt his preferences to his predicament.  If he succeeds in doing this, he is now getting everything he wants.  This seems like an unfortunate situation, but the desire theory may be unable to accommodate this intuition. Desire Fulfillment Theory" (G. Fletcher (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being, Routledge, 2016),

This is all he says on the matter.

I am not clear as to what Heathwood is calling "an unfortunate situation" or what intuition there is to accommodate. However, I do not need to clarify what Heathwood was after to explain how the case of changing one's desires would play out.

Let us take an agent, Alph, and give him a desire that P, a desire that Q, and a desire that R.

In this case, the desire that Q and the desire that R are being thwarted. However, since S and T are both true, if Alph were to replace the desires that Q and R for the desires that S and T, he will get a lot more desire fulfillment.

However, we need to ask, "What reason does Alph have to do this? Where does that reason come from?"

If we assume that desire fulfillment magically generates its own reasons, then it would be true that the agent would have a reason to change desires. But they do not generate their own reasons. Reasons for action come only from desires.

In other words, we are going to continue to use Bernard Williams' concept of having a reason, where "A has a reason to φ iff A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φ-ing."

In other words, Alph has a reason to change desires only if doing so would serve to fulfill his desires that P, Q, and R. These are the only things that can give him a reason to change to the desires that S and T. In other words, the agent has reasons to acquire a desire that S and a desire that T only if there is something about having those desires that makes P, Q, and R true.

We do, at times, instruct people to get different desires.

A person who is faced with the thwarting of an important desire - a politician who has lost an election or an actor who cannot get a role, or a musician who cannot get a recording contract - are often told to abandon that option (to give up their dream) and to find something else to do with their time.

Often, this advice can be understood in terms of, "You can't fulfill those desires, so choose the next best thing."

However, advice can also take the form of, "Find a new interest."

However, this advice follows the model given above. I wrote that a person with a desire that P, Q, and R, where Q and R are being thwarted would have a reason to acquire new desires S and T if doing so would fulfill their other desires. Since the thwarting of desires tends to generate frustration and unhappiness (which a person has reason to avoid), and the satisfying of a desire generates pleasure (which people generally desire), an agent usually does have reasons to acquire new desires in the face of constant frustration of existing desires.

Here, again, we have an account of how a potential objection to a desire-fulfillment theory of well-being can be answered by focusing on the desires that an agent has. What makes a person's life go well is not maximizing an agent's desire fulfillment, but maximizing the fulfillment of the agent's desires. The desires are taken as a given, and their fulfillment determines the quality of the life.

Desirism Book - Part 0013 - The Value of Truth

We are looking at a world in which there is one person (Alph) with one desire (to gather stones), asking what is true about such a person in such a state.

One question to answer is, "What is the value of truth?"

Or, more accurately, "What is the value of believing true propositions (having true beliefs)?"

In our imaginary world, believing true premises has no end-value. The only thing that has end value (for Alph) is gathering stones. Truth (or believing true propositions) only has value as a means.

There are some true propositions that Alph must believe in order to gather stones. He must know what a stone is, where the stones are, where the gathering spot is located, and how to transport the stones.

He will need to have true beliefs that will keep him safe. He has reason to avoid jumping off any large cliffs to get to the stones that he sees at the bottom. He would benefit from true beliefs regarding the building of a ladder for climbing up and down the cliff, and for building a rope and bucket to haul the rocks up the cliff.

Depending on what the facts of the matter are, he may need to know where he can find water to drink and food to eat. The latter in particular will require a number of additional beliefs about how to acquire food and what types of food are more useful.

Remember, Alph only desires to gather stones. He has no taste preferences. In our model, he eats only for utilitarian reasons - to stay alive. True beliefs will help him to avoid scurvy, rickets, and other diseases that would prevent him from gathering stones. However, this requires a great many true beliefs.

False beliefs, on the other hand, are seldom, if ever, useful. Some are harmful. A false belief that there are rocks to be gathered in the next valley may cause Alph to waste a considerable amount of time travelling to the next valley, only to discover that there are no rocks to gather.

A false belief that he can fly across a chasm may have him laying injured at the bottom of the chasm.

Unless there are false beliefs that are useful, Alph has no reason to acquire false beliefs, while he does have reason to avoid a list of false beliefs at least as long as the list of true beliefs he has reason to acquire.

There is no value other than that which serves the fulfillment of a desire. Where the only desire is Alph's desire to gather stones, nothing has value except insofar as it is Alph gathering stones (which Alph values for its own sake), or that which helps Alph to realize a state in which he is gathering stones (which Alph values as a means to the one and only end).

Truth (or true belief) has value only insofar as it is desired for its own sake, or to the degree that it helps to bring about states that are valued for their own sake.

However, true beliefs are very, very useful. Even in our own society, it is no exaggeration to say that a great many of the evils that we suffer come from agents acting on false beliefs.

Unwanted Desires

The following is an email that I intend to send to Dr. Heathwood at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Dr. Heathwood:

I beg your indulgence on this intrusion.

I have just read your article "Desire Fulfillment Theory" (forthcoming in G. Fletcher (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being, Routledge, 2016), which I found here .

In reading the article, I had some thoughts on "unwanted desires" that I would like to present, if you don't mind.

As you state it, the objection seems to be directed particularly towards "summative" theories of well-being where the quality of a life is determined by the sum of its (subjective) desire satisfactions. You presented Derek Parfit's objection to this as follows:

I am about to make your life go better.  I shall inject you with an addictive drug.  From now on, you will wake each morning with an extremely strong desire to have another injection of this drug.  …  This is no cause for concern, since I shall give you ample supplies of this drug.  Every morning, you will be able at once to fulfill this desire.

I would like to suggest a possible response to this objection that I did not see in your article.

Let us take an agent, Alph, and give him a desire that P, a desire that Q, and a desire that R.

The summative thesis says that Alph's life goes better insofar as (he believes that) P, Q, and R are all true. In particular, his life goes better if (he believes) this than if he (believes) that P and Q are true and R is false. We can add additional considerations regarding the strength of the desires, but, for now, I would like to avoid those unnecessary complications. 

Parfit is introducing a new desire - a "desire that I" ("that I have another injection of this drug" where "I" refers to Alph).

Parfit argues that Alph has a reason to acquire this desire.

But how can this be the case?

Let us introduce Barnard Williams' account of having a reason, "A has a reason to φ iff A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φ-ing." I actually do not know if you accept this account but it seems to be a respected position among philosophers - and I think it has a great deal of merit.

In this case, Alph only has a reason to acquire a "desire that I" if that desire will in some way serve the satisfaction of one or more of the desires that P, Q, or R. However, depending on the specific content of these desires, this need not be the case. If P = "My spouse is happy," and Q = "I learn to speak Greek", and R = "I am not in pain" then none of these desires gives the agent a reason to acquire a desire "that I receive an injection every morning."

Now, it is the case that if a different agent, Betty, has a "desire that I" then her life would go better if she got the injection every day. Her desire gives her a reason to seek that injection. 

Parfit could be taken as saying that Alph has a reason to acquire this desire merely in virtue of the fact that it is a strong desire which will be constantly and repeatedly satisfied. This seems to presume that desire satisfaction itself has an intrinsic "ought to be acquiredness" built into it. As such, we should obtain as much of it as possible.

However, the summative theorist need not (and should not) accept this assumption. Such a property does not exist. (For the sake of brevity I will gloss over that discussion. Again, I will leave it that this is at least a respected position among some philosophers.)

What this implies is that the quality of an agent's life is determined by summing the (subjective) satisfactions of that agent's desires. Alph's life is evaluated according to the degree to which P, Q, and R all become true. The possibility of acquiring a "desire that I" that can be repeatedly fulfilled is irrelevant to the value of Alph's life, because it is unimportant to Alph.

In other words, Alph is not seeking as much desire fulfillment as possible. Alph is seeking the fulfillment of the most and strongest of his desires. These are not the same thing.

Anyway . . . it's just a thought. I hope you find it useful.

Alonzo Fyfe

Heathwood's Theory of Well Being - Part 2 Supplemental - Self-Sacrifice

In the last post I argued that a desire fulfillment theory of a good life has a problem with actions of genuine self-sacrifice.

Desire fulfillment theory (a.k.a desire satisfaction theory) says that a good life is a life in which a person gets what he wants. In the case where an individual voluntarily chooses to sacrifice himself for the sake of another (or for the sake of a principle), the agent still gets what he wants. It just so happens that he wants that which benefits another person more than he wants that which benefits himself. However, he is still getting what he wants most and only giving up something that he values less. Thus, on desire fulfillment theory, he obtains an overall benefit and necessarily ends up better off as a result.

I applied this to the case of a parent making a sacrifice for his child, a soldier who is severely injured while serving her country, and the scientist who sacrifices her health in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Further research brought me to Heathwood's article, “Desire Fulfillment Theory” (forthcoming in G. Fletcher (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being, Routledge, 2016).

I am going to have to buy this book.

There, Heathwood discusses the problem of idealistic and self-sacrificial desires.

On the scheme that I am using, this would indicate a distinction between what I would call other-person-regarding desires and other-thing-regarding desires. More specifically, another-person-regarding desire is a desire that takes another person as its object. In other words, the proposition P that identifies the object of a “desire that P” is a proposition that refers to another person or other people. An example of this is that, “I hope that Jim does well in the bowling tournament this weekend.”

An other-thing-regarding desire is a desire where the proposition P for a “desire that P” refers to something other than a person. The scientist who sacrifices his or her own health in order to expose some hidden truth of the world would have an other-thing-regarding desire. The same would be true for the individual who sacrifices his welfare for the sake of a moral principle – because it is wrong to lie or because he had made a promise. The moral principle one serves is a thing, not a person. The principle might benefit other people, but that is not the motivation behind the action.

Heathwood mentions the option of excluding other-regarding desires by fiat – which is the option that I prefer.

I would not say that the reasons for this move are not merely “by fiat”. Language is an invention which can be made more or less useful. We have reasons to distinguish between “benefit to self” and “benefit to others” that provide reasons to adopt a language in which we have terms that recognize and respect these differences. Given that agents are always fulfilling their desires, a good dividing line for judging whether a person selfish or altruistic is on the line between that which fulfills the agent's self-regarding desires and that which fulfills other-regarding desires.

Writing against this move, Heathwood writes:

Plausibly devoted parents are sometimes benefitted when their intrinsic desires concerning their children’s welfare are satisfied; presumably some such desires are altruistic. Conversely, desires based on moral considerations should, intuitively, also sometimes count. People can become quite invested in justice, for example; if the just outcome is their heart’s desire, it doesn’t seem right to rule out all possibility of benefit.

However, other-regarding desire seldom, if ever, stand without the company of some self-regarding desire as well.

First, there is the case that it is “my child” that obtains the benefit or “my country” that is being served. There is a self-regarding element in each of these desires. While they are, at the same time, also other-regarding, the fulfillment of the self-regarding element will satisfy the criterion that what benefits a person is the fulfillment of a self-regarding desire.

Second, there are often, of not always, self-regarding desires that accompany an other-regarding desire. The person with an aversion to lying – a desire that not-P where P = “I tell a lie” has a self-regarding desire, the fulfillment of which would count as providing a benefit on this model. A soldier can find some value in fulfilling the desire “that I have served my country.” In fact, self-regarding desires are so common that many people suggest that every apparent act of altruism can ultimately be reduced to the “selfish” fulfillment of a self-regarding desire.

Heathwood argues elsewhere that the issue of self-sacrifice (for the sake of other persons or other things) can be handled using a “summative” account of welfare. Specifically, an act of self-sacrifice fulfills a desire, but it thwarts more desires than it fulfills, so the agent ends up being worse off.

Against this, I would like to know how or why a person can rationally choose an action that he has more and stronger reasons to choose not to perform.

I will not get into this issue in any great detail here. Instead, I want to discuss this issue more fully in another post.

Heathwood's Theory of Well-Being - Part 2 - Simple Desire Satisfactionism

The topic under discussion is "A good life" or what it means to be doing well.

Simple Desire Satisfactionism is a theory of a good life that states that a good life simply consists in getting what one wants – fulfilling the most and strongest of one’s own desires. More specifically, in the terms already put down in this blog, it means that, for a person who has a desire that P, desire that Q, and a desire that R, his life is going well if a state of affairs (or series of affairs) is realized in which P, Q, and R are all true.

If we use the example that I have been using in the desirism book posts, where Alph has one desire, which is to gather stones, so long as there are stones to gather, Alph is having a pretty good life – as good as a life can be. We may not like it, but Alph has no reason to complain.

Heathwood discusses this theory in his article, "Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism" (Philosophical Studies, 2006, 128:539-563).

He notes, correctly, that when we talk about desire satisfaction we are talking about what Heathwood calls “intrinsic desires” and what I call “end-desires”. These are things that are desired/valued for their own sake. They are distinguished from things that are desired/valued as a means to an end.

When Alph has gathered all of his stones he has a “desire as means” to scatter stones so that he can gather them again. However, this scattering of stones does not contribute to his well-being or the quality of his life. It is work – something he must do though he has no end-desire to do so in order to once again realize a state in which he is gathering stones.

I dislike the use of the term “satisfaction” because it hints at a physical sensation such as “pleasure” that one might have when thinking that one has gotten something that one wants. I prefer to use the term “fulfillment” – indicating that, for an agent with a desire that P, a state of affairs in which P is true fulfills the requirements for being a state that the agent values.

Similarly, I fear that the term “intrinsic” desires suggests value that is intrinsic to objects of evaluation and, thus, not dependent on desires. The value of any state of affairs S is, in fact, extrinsic – depending on there being a desire that P and that P is true in S. Even then, the state S is only valued/desired in this way by those with the desire that P. Instead, I use the term “end-desires” or “desires as an end” as opposed to “desires as a means”.

Terminology aside, Heathwood brings up a couple of problems with the “simple desire satisfaction theory”. These objections are effective against the theory. However, they point to possible improvements.

One problem concerns future desires. Heathwood uses an example from Richard Brandt that involved a person at age 20 who desires that rock music be played at his 50th birthday party. However, by the time he turns 50, he no longer likes rock music. Instead, he prefers easy listening, and wants easy listening for his birthday party. Simple desire satisfaction theory states that fulfilling the desire of his 20-year-old self will contribute to the quality of his life – his well-being. However, this seems not to be the case.

Heathwood answers this objection, sensibly, by arguing that what matters is getting what one wants when one wants it. It means getting rock music while one wants rock music, and getting easy listening when one wants easy listening. Now-for-then desires, or desires for some future state, are not included among the desires that contribute to the quality of a life since they are not desires that can be fulfilled while one has them.

This implies that a person's life can neither be improved upon or diminished by what happens after the person has died.

Heathwood notes a second problem with simple desire satisfaction theory that comes from remote desires – or desires for things so far removed from a life that it cannot influence its quality. He uses Derek Parfit’s example of a person who meets a stranger on a train. Over the course of the trip, the agent learns that the stranger is ill and sincerely comes to hope that the stranger is cured of his affliction. However, he never sees the stranger again and never learns that the stranger, actually, comes to be cured. This is a desire that is fulfilled, but it does not seem to contribute to the quality of the agent’s life.

Heathwood answers this objection with another modification to simple desire satisfaction theory. Simply, Heathwood suggests that the satisfaction of a desire only counts if the agent is aware that it has been satisfied.

In providing this objection, Heathwood dismisses Parfit’s suggestion that the only desires that count are desires “about the agent’s own lives” (though this raises questions about what those desires are).
I have an objection that suggests that Parfit may be closer to the truth than Heathwood on this matter.
My objection has to do with the possibility of genuine self-sacrifice. This is a case in which an agent sacrifices or lessens the quality of his or her own life for the same of something or somebody else. A parent who sacrifices for his child, the soldier who sacrifices for her country, and the scientist who is so devoted to her research that she neglects her own well-being are examples of this.

Under Heathwood’s account it would seem that the only form of self-sacrifice that exists involves helping others in a way that one does not learn about whether the act was a success or a failure. The soldier who gives his life for his country would perform an act of genuine self-sacrifice. However, the soldier who becomes paralyzed or loses a limb learns whether her sacrifice was successful. Thus, this person has only traded something of lesser value for something of greater value in her own life. She has not performed a genuine sacrifice.

I would like to suggest an answer much like Parfit’s. The desires that matter in measuring the quality of a life are the desires that take the self as an object. These are desires where the proposition that is the object of the desire refers to the agent who has it. “I desire that I have lots of money,” “I desire that I not be in pain,” “I desire that I see my grandchildren graduate from college.” These desires are self-referencing and count towards the quality of a person’s life.

An act that is performed where an agent thwarts self-referencing desires to fulfill other-referencing desires, then, would be acts of genuine self-sacrifice. The soldier who becomes paralyzed or loses a limb has performed an actual act of self-sacrifice in that her self-regarding desires (those regarding the use of the limbs that are paralyzed or lost) are sacrificed so that an other-regarding desire (the safety of her comrades in arms, her country, and its fellow citizens) are fulfilled. This is a sacrifice of self for others.

This suggestion will still require some work. There is a question as to how to handle desires that are both self-regarding and other-regarding, such as the parent who desires that his children are healthy or that his country is protected. There are also questions regarding self-regarding harms, such as a person who has performed some criminal act and, feeling guilty, wants to be punished.
Heathwood discusses a similar case to these in the next part of his article. I will look at his discussion and try to provide some clarification on these issues in a future post.

The Myth that Atheism is the Lack of a Belief in God

I have been in discussion with some atheists recently regarding two of their more popular myths.

By "myth", I mean false feel-good beliefs brought into a culture and embraced against all evidence.

These myths are:

(1) Atheism is the lack of belief in a god.

(2) The claim that criticizing a religion does not imply criticism of all of the people who identify with that religion.

In this post, I will discuss the first of these myths. I will discuss the second myth later.

Both of these myths have to do with claims about the meaning of terms. Consequently, we must start with an account of the meaning of terms.

When attempting to defend the claim that atheism means the lack of a belief in a god they typically answer that it is built directly into the term. Atheist comes from the parts “a” (without or not) and theist (belief in a god). Thus, atheism means “without belief in a god.”

If this is a reasonable way to proceed then, contrary to the claims of every physicist and chemist, you cannot split an atom. The term “atom” come from the part “a” (without or not) and “tomos” (to cut or split into parts). It literally means “that which cannot be divided further.”

Just think, all these years in which physicists and chemists have been using the term 'atom' incorrectly.

In fact, that is not how one determines the current meaning of a term within a language.

The meaning of a term is determined by the theory that best explains and predicts the behavior of native speakers of a language engaged in using that term. The behavior in question particularly concerns linguistic behavior, but may include other forms of behavior as well.

One can support a theory with observations about behavior consistent with the theory, and falsify a theory with observations that are inconsistent.

Let us take the term "atheist" it " atheism". The "lack of a belief in God theory" predicts that native speakers of a language would be totally comfortable with assigning the term "atheist" to rocks, squirrels, and peopled with such undeveloped brains that they cannot form such complex beliefs. In act, they would view these assignments as obviously true. "Of course they lack belief in a god."

Observations show us that these predictions fail.

This, then, gives us reason to reject the "lack of a belief in God" hypothesis.

Here is a competing theory.

Atheism is the belief that the proposition, "At least one God exists" is certainly or almost certainly false.

This predicts that native speakers will only apply the term to those who assert that they have a particular belief. They will not apply it to rocks, squirrels, mentally impaired adults, or particularly young children. Indeed, this is what we observe among native English speakers in general.

I must offer a precaution here. Many of my readers are likely to be people who have bought into this atheist myth. A clique or sub tribe, consisting of significantly less than 0.01% of the native speakers of English, gave adopted a private language that redefines the term. However, this does not change the fact that, in the linguistic community at large, the term is used consistently with the second theory.

As a part of this myth, many in this clique that have adopted this private definition actually assert that it is the “correct” meaning of the term. They respond with condescention and ridicule when encountering members of the 99.99% who use the term with its standard English meaning. Thus, they add fiction upon fiction – myth upon myth.

There is a reason why this clique of atheists have adopted this myth. Unfortunately, it is not because the belief is grounded on sound reason.

It is grounded on the belief that the absence of a belief does not have to be defended rationally. By denying that atheism is "a belief that P", they feel justified in asserting that they need not offer argument in defense of that which is believed.

In other words, this clique of atheists is playing word games as an alternative to engaging in rational debate. By equivocating on the meaning of the term "atheism", they (often smugly) cross their arms and say, "I don't have to defend nothing. I don't have a belief to defend. It's your job to do the defending."

The statement, in most cases, is actually a lie. Those who employ this mythical definition of atheism still have the belief that the proposition, "at least one God exists" is certainly or almost certainly false. If somebody tries to use this “lack of a belief in God” claim, just ask them, “Is the following proposition true, almost certainly true, probably true, unknowable, probably false, almost certainly false, or certainly false?” Then give them the proposition, “At least one god exists.”

If they answer, “almost certainly false” or “certainly false” then they DO have a belief. In fact, they have exactly that belief that identifies them as “atheist” in the common understanding of the term. All of that talk about lack of a belief in God is just rhetorical nonsense.

In fact, one can now bypass this “lack of a belief in God” nonsense by saying, “Let’s talk about this instead.”

In spite of these protests, I expect that this atheist clique will continue to embrace the “atheism is the lack of a belief in god” myth.

Atheists are human. Among humans, it is all too easy for myths and fictions to worm their way into a community to such an extent that the community cannot easily abandon it – in spite of the weight of reason and evidence stacked against it. This fiction has become so much a part of the identity of this atheist sub-group that one cannot even be considered a full member unless one embraces (or at least pays lip service) to this myth. To question the myth is to risk banishment.

Yet, they will eagerly condemn theists who display these very same qualities.

Or, atheism is the belief that the proposition, 'at least one God exists' is certainly or almost certainly false.

And I, by the way, am an atheist as the term is used in English - and I see no reason to try to hide that fact behind some verbal smoke and mirrors.

On the Charge of Being an "Intellectual Lightweight"

Against both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, I have claimed that being an intellectual lightweight is a fault. I placed it in a list that also included hate-monger get bigotry and a disregard for the humanity of those who are not Americans.

Yet, there is an important difference between these three qualities.

I want to start by saying something about the context. The post was written and charges made in the context of talking about applicants for the job of President of the United States. It is a position for which we have reason to require a certain amount of intellectual acuity.

Furthermore, there clearly is nothing actually wrong with not knowing things.

All of us are ignorant of a great many things. There are whole fields of study about which I know very little. I do not apologize for it. Each of us has only a limited amount of time on this world - insufficient to capture more than a small percentage of the sum of human knowledge - itself a very small fraction of what can be known.

Not knowing things is not a failing.

Still, we have a number of moral responsibilities regarding knowledge - many of which depend on and respect the fact that, individually, we are substantially ignorant.

Curiosity is a virtue. A thirst to know is something that we all have reason to promote through general praise. At the same time, intellectual laziness - intellectual sloth - is something we have reason to condemn.

There is a distinction between those who lack knowledge in an area because they are focusing on other subjects, and those who lack knowledge because they are content to be ignorant.

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both show signs not only of ignorance, but of intellectual sloth. Having been given significant amounts of time to learn about matters that they claim are important to them, they come back still knowing little or nothing about those subjects.

Sanders wants to break up the banks, but cannot identify the statutes that would guide such an action or the department that has responsibility to take action given those statutes. He has not educated himself on matters of foreign policy - a subject that he seems to bore him, even though a President cannot ignore matters of foreign policy and many of his economic plans have foreign policy consequences. For example, depriving a developing country of the opportunity to trade with the United States - wrecking their economy - risks creating a generation of vengeful potential recruits into terrorist organizations.

Trump, when asked who he consults with on foreign policy matters, answered that he talks to himself, "Because I have a very good brain."

If a person actually does have a very good brain, one of the things that would be obvious to him is how much he does not know.

There are a lot of people in the world with very good brains. The trick is to find those who have focused those brains on the subjects important to the decisions one wants to make and find out what they know that one does not know.

Intellectual arrogance when lives are at stake is a vice. The person who thinks that they know everything, and that nobody else can provide them with information or interpretations that are useful, is a very dangerous person.

In the same way that conservatives deny the scientific consensus on evolution, climate change, sex education, and the biological facts regarding homosexuality, many liberals follow the liberal program of denying the scientific consensus on genetically modified food, nuclear power, alternative medicine, and the genetic influence on behavior. Sanders and Trump both obviously get their scientific beliefs, not from scientists, but from political ideology.

The level of arrogance there escapes notice only because we refuse to pay attention to it. Here is a body of experts who, in many cases, devote nearly every waking hour reading and doing research on a subject. Then the politician comes along and thinks that a few moments of thought is all that he needs to dismiss the scientist as being wrong.

An intellectually honest person says, "I don't know everything. I need to surround myself with experts and get my opinions from them."

An individual could, of course, choose to become an expert in some field by devoting their own time to its study. I have my own opinions on matters of moral philosophy that I think are well earned. I have actually studied climate change, minimum wage, international trade, and the economics of political decision-making. However, you will not read a post where I proclaim my expertise on matters in the Middle East, drug laws, wall-street regulation, or public education.

It is no crime to not know - the best of us does not know infinitely more than he or she knows.
It is a moral crime to fail to respect the fact of one's ignorance, to fail to take advantage of what different people have acquired an expertise in, to pretend to know what one does not, and to fail to exercise a measure of moral responsibility regarding beliefs when the lives and well-being of others are at stake.

As with the previous comparisons, Trump is far worse on this scale than Sanders. One clear measure of the difference is that Sanders is willing to say, “I do not know” (or some variation on that theme). Trump, on the other hand, tries to bullshit his way through the question. He cannot possibly admit to having any limitation. In this, Sanders obviously has the morally superior attitude. Trump is, in effect, lying – pretending to have knowledge he does not have and trying to disguise his ignorance in bluster and nonsense.

It is on this measure that Trump and Sanders both fail . . . Trump being far worse than Sanders.

The Three Failings of Trump

It seems that the Republicans have selected Trump as their candidate for President of the United States.

I was caught entirely by surprise - as were a great many others.

The reason for my surprise is because I did not think people would actually vote for such poor candidate. I was confident that voters would ultimately turn away from him and give their vote to somebody worthy the office of President.

I was mistaken.

(1) He has a total disregard for people outside of the United States.

In fact, both Trump and Sanders seem to regard those who are not native to the United States as mere things - entities that have no value outside of their usefulness. They certainly are not to be thought of as human beings. Consequently, they cannot be treated inhumanely. Their suffering is not human suffering, and they possess no human rights.

For Trump, this means that the families - the children - of suspected terrorists are legitimate military targets. It means they can be tortured.

By the way, one of the implications of embracing a moral principle is that, by their nature, moral principles are universal. If it is legitimate for the American government to torture suspected terrorists, then it is legitimate for foreign government to torture American soldiers. We cannot consistently say that this is a legitimate practice and then assert that others are wrong to use this practice on us.

Do you recall the person in the movies who would round up everybody in a community and slaughter them because they are suspected of aiding the enemy. Nothing Trump has said suggests that he would find this morally objectionable.

In fact, nothing Trump has said suggests that he finds anything morally objectionable.

Worse, is the fact that it seems that if he were to do such a thing – if he were to destroy a whole town in Pakistan or Syria on the grounds that it supported potential terrorists – a depressingly large number of Americans would likely cheer it as an example of bold and decisive action that proves that America is not a country to be messed with. After all, we must assume that those who vote him into this position share his views.

(2) He has a simple-minded “us” versus “them” way of looking at the world that is the very essence of bigotry.

Sanders was always painting millionaires and billionaires as the enemies of civilization – people whose only goal was to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else. He painted the whole class as nothing but evil, disregarding the differences among individuals.

Trump thinks the same way about women, Muslims, and Mexicans. They are all lesser human beings – if they may be thought of as human beings at all – and should all be considered (1) emotional and incompetent and as having worth only in terms of how good they look, (2) terrorists, (3) rapists and murderers respectively. While he seems to acknowledge the theoretical possibility of there being individuals who do not fit the mold, this possibility has no implications for policy. Anybody who is not white and male is presumed inferior unless proven otherwise – and the bar has to be set unusually high to make sure that nobody who can fake their way across.

There have always been some Americans who have thought the same way. If not, then the KKK and Jim Crow laws would never have existed. However, it is depressing to see that there are enough of these kinds of people still in the United States to give Donald Trump the Republican nomination.

(3) Trump is an intellectual light-weight.

He knows nothing about the issues that he presents.

He thinks that the National Enquirer is a reliable news source. He retweets nonsense as if it is true, and when challenged on the fact that they are false (and, not only false, but lies that are used to promote immoral attitudes such as racial bigotry), he merely says that he does not have an obligation to check the accuracy of everything he passes on. He does not care about truth or facts.

He does not base his conclusions on the evidence. Instead, he holds the evidence up to his pre-conceived notions (including the bigotries I mentioned in the previous section) and uses those beliefs to evaluate the evidence.

He does not need advisers – in matters of foreign policy or economics, for example – because to count as a good adviser is to tell him what he already believes, and he doesn’t need anybody to tell him what he already believes.

The Limits of Analogy

Comparing Sanders to Trump in these qualities is unfair to Sanders in a way. Sanders does have all of these same failings, but not nearly to the degree that Trump has them. Sanders’ failings made it possible for him to commit significant mistakes – errors that had consequences he did not foresee or (in the case of harming the global poor) did not care to see. With Sanders, it would be a case of good intentions having bad consequences.

Trump, on the other hand, seems capable of intentional evil. He shows no evidence of having a moral compass at all. He praises the tyrants of the world for being strong leaders. He jokes about killing reporters who print things he does not like (and seriously supports laws that would make it easier to imprison such people).

Consequently, his actions seem not to be limited by any sense that some things are immoral. The only restraint he will likely recognize is what he can get away with. Making such a person President can have some very unfortunate consequences.

Heathwood's Theory of Well-Being - Part 1 - Overview

I did not make it to Chris Heathwood's presentation on Friday . . . 

. . . Or, actually, I did and saw that the presentation was being given in a small conference room - a table with about 12 chairs surrounding it. This gave me the impression that they were not expecting members of the general public to attend.

Still, I found the homework that I did interesting.

I read a paper from Chris Heathwood's about the good life called, "Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism" (Philosophical Studies, 2006, 128:539-563) in which he undertook the following project:

Step 1: Present the most plausible desire-satisfaction theory of well-being.

Step 2: Present the most plausible pleasure theory of well-being.

Step 3: Argue that the two theories are actually the same theory.

There are three major factions involved in the philosophical battles regarding a good life.

Faction 1: The good life is the one with the most desire satisfaction.

Faction 2: The good life is the life with the most pleasure and least pain.

Faction 3: the good life is the life with the most items on an objective goods list - friends, knowledge, family, virtue, etc.

Heathwood's article did not consider Faction 3 - the objective list theorist. There is good reason to discard it. This standard of well-being requires a list of items having some type of intrinsic prescriptivity - an "ought-to-be-doneness" built into the nature of those things that make it onto the list.

However, nothing in the real world has this type of value. Intrinsic prescriptivity is a fiction. An "objective list" of the elements of a worthwhile life that is not determined by their capacity to fulfill desires is an empty list. Things only have value in virtue of their capacity to make true the propositions that are the objects of desires. Either the propositions are true in the object of evaluation, or the object of evaluation has the capacity to make them true.

A devoted reader will have no difficulty concluding that I am to be found in Faction 1. All value is found in making or keeping true the propositions that are the objects of desires.

I might also be found within a certain subset of the community for Faction 2 - the hedonist theory of well-being. I hold that the sensations of pleasure or pain have no value in themselves, but have value in virtue of the fact that agents have a desire for pleasure and an aversion to pain. Neuroscience has an explanation for this phenomenon based on the fact that the sensation of pain is processed in one part of the brain, and the aversion to pain in a different section. This makes it possible to eliminate the aversion to pain without eliminating the sensation of pain itself.

On this interpretation, the value of obtaining pleasure consists in making true the proposition, "I am experiencing pleasure" and "I am not in pain" for those people who have a desire for pleasure and an aversion to pain. This version of Faction 2 is actually a version of Faction 1 - a version where only the desire for pleasure and aversion to pain are the only desires that are relevant to well-being.

I will say in advance that I think Heathwood provides an excellent account of desire-satisfactionism. However, I think his pleasure theory is less successful as is his attempt to argue that the two theories are alike.

I am going to spread this discussion out over a few posts. In my next post, I will give some attention to his desire satisfaction theory of well-being.

I will state at the start that I think Heathwood's best account of the "desire satisfaction" faction account of well-being is quite good. I am anxious to get into it. 

Desirism Book - Part 0012 - The Reader's Point of View

I suspect that there are a number of readers who look at this life we are imagining in which Alph gathers stones, scatters them, and gathers them again with dread. It is absurd to say that there is any value here - to say that Alph has a life worth living. The best des that this says something about value will be taken as absolutely bizarre.

In fact, the philosophical literature discusses an imagined case of a fully informed agent with a desire to count blades of grass - not unlike Alph's desire to gather stones. In imagining this student sitting in the field counting the grass, day after day, it is difficult to imagine that this is a very good life.

What I suspect is happening in this case is that the reader is taking her own desires in examining the imagined world. Each of her own desires has their own proposition. She sees none of those propositions as being true in the state of affairs she imagines. Consequently, she has no motivating reason to realize such a state of affairs. From this she judges that it has no value.

However, we are not concerned at this point as to whether the reader has any reason at all to realize a state of affairs in which Alph, with his one desire to gather stones, exists.

If I were to ask the reader to imagine Charlie, living in New York, I would say that he is near the Atlantic ocean. In saying this, I certainly do not mean to imply that the reader is near the Atlantic ocean. Nor do I need to reader to approve of the fact that Charlie is near the Atlantic ocean. I am only describing a relationship that exists in fact between the Atlantic Ocean and Charley. The reader is only being asked to acknowledge that this relationship exists.

Consequently, when I say that Alph has one desire - to gather stones, then I am saying that states of affairs in which Alph is gathering stones are states of affairs that Alph has reason to bring about. I am saying that scattering stones, to Alph, would have instrumental value once all the stones are gathered. I am saying that having a large pile of stones is an unintended consequent (like getting pregnant is often an unintended consequent of having sex). I am saying that an outside observer cannot have reason to choose one world over another until that outside observer has desires, in which case he would choose the world where the propositions that are the objects of those desires are true.

These are all relationships that exist - no different from the proposed relationship between the location of the Atlantic Ocean to Charlie.

Everything said here would remain just as true if I were to say that Alph had one desire - to count blades of grass. Then counting blades of grass would be the only end-reason for any of Alph's actions. Alph would eat only insofar as eating was necessary to help him to continue to count blades of grass. If asked to choose between being in a world where there was no grass and a different world existing where somebody else (Betty) with a desire to count grass lived on a planet filled with grass, Alph would be indifferent between the two. This is because neither world is a world where "I am counting blades of grass" is true.

The fact that the reader has more than one desire and none of them include counting blades of grass, and has no desire with propositions that would be true in the imagined world with the imagined grass counter, and would not want to be that person is irrelevant. It is as irrelevant as her aversion to living in New York or near the ocean is to the fact that Charlie, who lives in New York, is near the ocean.

So, I ask the reader to set those feelings and those judgments aside. We are looking only at the relationships that exist in this imagined world - a world in which there is one person (Alph) with one desire (a desire to gather stones).