Moral Education

In a recent discussion, I was directed to look at Matt Dillahunty’s claims about morality.

I would like to explain quickly what Dillahunty gets right and wrong on morality.

Dillahunty tells a story of two children who misbehave. We may assume that they are identical twins. One is then threatened with punishment if he should misbehave in the future. The other is sat down as the parents explain the wrongness of his action, asks, “How would you like it if somebody does that to you?” in order to draw on the child’s empathy so as to promote a wrongness in those types of actions.

He concludes that both children will be equally behaved. However, the second child will be a morally better person because he acts for better reasons.

What is true: The second child will be a morally better person because he acts for better reasons.

What is false:

(1) The two children are both likely to behave the same.

Take these identical twins as adults and hire them at a bank. Put them in charge of transferring funds. Hook one up to a device that inflicts an extremely painful shock each time he transfers money into a wrong account. Explain to the other the hardships that may result from doing so. I would trust Person 1 to pay a great deal more attention to detail.

This is a minor point.

(2) The second child acquired his moral attitudes as a consequence of reason.

Dillahunty is ignoring the fact that this lecture is filled with praise for those who refrain from the type of behavior in question, and condemnation of those who do not. This praise and condemnation are not processed through the faculties of reason. They are processed through the reward system.

The factual statements contained in the lecture may accurately describe why people generally have reason to praise or condemn those who perform the act-type in question under those circumstances. However, the factual premises neither entail nor cause the change in sentiment. It is the praise and condemnation wrapped around the factual statements that have this effect.

The reward system takes rewards and punishment and uses it to encode new rules of behavior. Praise is a type of reward; condemnation is a type of punishment. In part, the second child behaves for the same reason the first child behaves (to avoid future punishment, in the form of condemnation). In part, the lecture, as condemnation, encodes a new behavioral rule - an aversion to doing that which resulted in condemnation.

Better Reasons

Of the two types of reasons, the internalized reason (the acquired desire or aversion) is better than the incentive/deterrence value of rewards/punishments.

Primarily, the incentive/deterrence reason vanishes when the agent’s behavior is unobserved. He can neither be rewarded or punished for that which is kept secret. However, the internalized norm - the desire or aversion acquired through activation of the reward system - remains in play even when the agent is unobserved. Because if this, we have reasons to prefer the second type of motive to the first. Which means, we have reasons to praise some conduct and condemn others. The internalized reason is, indeed, the better reason.

Dillahunty simply fails to understand how these better reasons are taught and learned.

Epistemic Responsibility 003: Reckless Belief and Access to Information

Audi, Robert (2006), "Testimony, Credulity, and Veracity", in Lackey, Jennifer, and Ernest Sosa (eds.), The Epistemology of Testimony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This examination into the principles of the legitimacy of believing something based on testimony is going to involve a lot of intuition-mining. We'll encounter a lot of stories and we will be asked to conclude whether the consequence is a justified belief based on testimony.

I dislike this method of philosophizing. We invent our language to use in regular day-to-day circumstances of normal life. Our concepts are not meant for the bizarre situation philosophers can imagine. I tend to support an instrumental view of language. Language is a tool. Its specific structure was selected substantially for its usefulness. Terms that are useful in the situations we regularly find ourselves in are not always useful in situations we never have to deal with.

Be that as it may, our first story concerns a teacher (Luke) who believes that evolution is false, yet teaches his students the facts of evolution - the fossil record, the methods of natural selection. He tells them that humans began in Africa and migrated out.

Have the students learned - do they know 0 that humans began in Africa and migrated out?

A part of my own intuition is that, if two teachers (Luke, Biggs) give identical lectures about evolution, and no student has access to the fact that one person believes the information and the other does not, then both sets of students acquire the same amount of knowledge. One cannot hold a person responsible for information they have no access to.

As long as we are telling stories, let us look at the case of Judith. Judith is on trial for negligence. She pressed a button that caused a trolley to runaway where it would have killed five people if not for the fact that a utilitarian pushed a fat man off of a bridge and stopped the train, only to precipitate a national dispute that resulted in massive quantities of angst, stress, and disutility.

Judith reports that she pressed the button because her coworker, Phillipa, told her that pressing the button would dispense an ice cold soft drink, and Judith was hot and thirsty. in one case, Phillipa believed what she told Judith, and in another case she did not. At her trial, the question of whether Phillipa believed her statement would be held to be entirely irrelevant. It is not at all relevant to the credence that Judith gives to the belief that pressing the button would yield an ice cold soda.

So, here is one of my principles: There is no moral implications for the credence that a person assigns to a belief based on information she has no access to. If the difference between stories is based on some hidden fact, then the intuitions about what the agent knows or does not know should yield the same results in each case.

Audi does not actually render a verdict in this case. He goes on to other cases such as:

Luke teaches the theory of evolution, but would have taught a false theory if the school had told him to. In other words, he taught what the school told him to teach.

In discussing this example, Audi brings up the idea that Luke is not a reliable transmitter of information.

Again, the relevant point as far as I am concerned is whether, and to what degree, the students have access to this information. If the students get exactly the same information in exactly the same way in two different circumstances, then the two sets of students are justified in assigning the same credence to their lessons.

We are going to be spending a lot of time in these posts discussing testifier prescriptions and subject (listener/reader) prescriptions. The point I will be making is that there is no burden based on the subject in virtue of information she has no access to. This type of information is irrelevant to subject assessment.

I am having a hard time figuring out what Audi wants to say about these cases. He identifies the questions, but does not seem to be giving answers. I am going to have to put some more care into reading these.

Epistemic Responsibility 002: Reductionism and Non-Reductionism

I should start off with a few words about a major distinction in epistemology - a distinction between reductionism and non-reductionism.

The original champion of reductionism is David Hume. Generally, I speak favorably of Hume, though in this matter his account might have a few problems.

Reductionism holds that justifiably believing what other people say can be reduced to other forms of justification such as induction or perception (or some combination of basic forms of learning). In deciding whether you can trust what I say, you must start by having some idea of whether I am a trustworthy sayer (sayerist?) - whether or not I take care to make sure that what I report is true. You need to determine if I have any idea of what I am talking about because, even if I am honest, if I honestly assert things that are not true, then you would be wise not to believe me.

Non-reductionism holds that justifiably believing what other people say is a basic form of knowledge acquisition that cannot be reduced to other types. Thomas Reid is the historical champion of this view. The favorite model for this view is the learning of children. When you were five years old, were you sitting there assessing whether or not your parents were reliable reporters of the truth or have a habit of generally knowing what they were talking about? Of course not. You assumed this. You were not accepting their testimony on the basis of complex inferences and deductions. Their word was, for you, a basic, fundamental source of information against which other sources could be tested.

The first article in the anthology I am covering is:

Audi, Robert (2006), "Testimony, Credulity, and Veracity", in Lackey, Jennifer, and Ernest Sosa (eds.), The Epistemology of Testimony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Audi presents a view that follows closely the views of Thomas Reid - the archtypical non-reductionist. And, after providing all sorts of arguments showing that Reid has the best theory, he pulls the rug out from under him and declares his allegiance with the reductionists.

Just to be clear, in talking about testimony, I say something, and you believe what I said because I said it. For example, I say something like, "Audi presents a view that follows closely the views of Thomas Reid." Or, better yet, my claim that this blog posting is based on Audi's article that appears in Lackey's and Sosa's anthology. I suspect that you are going to take my word for this - and assign this belief a high degree of credence, even though your only evidence for this proposition is the fact that I said it.

That's not to say that you trust me completely as if this is some type of religious scripture. That type of trust would have certain advantages (for me), but I don't think it will (should) happen. I am simply saying that you will assign the claim a statement of "true" if asked on a test, and expect to get credit for putting down the correct answer.

Audi also states:

It would be a mistake to think that some conscious activity of interpretation is generally required for testimony-based knowledge. Typically, we simply understand stand what is said and believe it.

This is a statement that I have some questions about.

When you take my statement and decide to agree or disagree with it, you have to understand what it says, right? If I had written the same sentence in a foreign language (e.g., Egyptian hieroglyphs), you would neither agree nor disagree. In order to interpret the squiggles that I put on your screen (or, if you printed this, your paper; or, if you are listening to this, the sounds emitted from your text to speech program), you have to have some sort of system built up for converting those squiggles and sounds into something having propositional content.

Understanding testimony is a whole lot different from opening your eyes, seeing a tree, and believing that there is a tree. Interpreting a sentence takes a level of mental activity that most animals - animals who can see trees and jump from branch to branch - cannot even begin to deal with.

As I see it, the set of skills involved in interpreting provide a great deal of room for moral evaluation that mere perception does not have. People can do this job of interpreting well or poorly - and some do it very poorly indeed. In fact, there seems to be a cultural tradition of assigning the worst possible interpretation of what others say so that one can deliver blistering and denigrating comments to them in the comments section of social media. This "moral quality of interpretation" is going to come up again . . . and again . . . and again . . . in this series.

Yet, we can ask whether this gives us a reason to deny Audi's claim. As you read this posting, I am assuming that you will have little trouble interpreting the words. Some trouble . . . particularly where I cut and paste and edit and leave sentence fragments behind. But you will process most sentences without conscious decision making. Indeed, the quality of my writing can be measured by my effectiveness at producing statements you don't have to ponder about overly long.

If you go back to the original definitions of "reductionism" versus "non-reductionism", the question is whether this task of interpretation means that testimony can be reduced to being inferential, or remains non-inferential.

Audi says, "No.".

Actually, he says:

Even where one must think about what is said and laboriously interpret it, as with a complex message or an utterance by certain non-fluent non-native speakers, ers, it does not follow that one's belief finally arising from accepting the message one discerns is inferential.

In the words of the dread pirate Barbarossa, "That means no."

(Yes, I know that I am mixing up my pirate movies. It's my blog.)

However, I am not seeing much of an argument in defense of this position. Perhaps later.

One thing we can say is that "testimonial knowledge is not inferential" and "testimonial knowledge is skill-based leaving room for moral credit and blame" are not, necessarily, incompatible. We will have to look at this later.

For my purposes, this interpretation provides a place for moral assessment. You can't blame a person for opening his eyes, seeing a tree, and believing that he sees a tree. You can blame a person for poorly interpreting a statement. This means that individuals have a moral obligation to (a good person would develop his skills so as to be able to) interpret statements well.

Epistemic Responsibility 001: Introduction

I am beginning a new series in the discussion of testimony - one of the classes that I am taking this semester.

My interest in this case has to do with . . . I need it to complete my course requirements for my degree.

Actually, my interest goes a bit beyond this. I have written a bit about epistemic negligence and the view that people can be morally culpable for what they believe or fail to believe. In other words, if you do not believe the right things for the right reasons, you are a contemptible creature not fit for human civilization. No, you do not have a moral permission to believe what you want. Do I have a moral permission to believe that you ought to be chopped into little pieces with a machete? Do I have a right to believe that I can drive home safely after my four quick beers?

You might try to answer, "Sure, as long as you don't act on those beliefs?"

Barring the fact that having a belief that one does not act on is a violation of the laws of physics, what about if I believed that I may go ahead and act on these beliefs. Do I have a moral permission to do that? And if you answer that I have a moral permission but you have a moral permission to interfere violently with my acting on this belief, you know nothing about the meaning of the phrase "moral permission."

Reckless believing is as much a moral crime as reckless driving, or recklessly waving a gun around shooting it randomly. You're going to kill somebody if you keep that up and the people who you put at risk at being killed have every right to violently interfere with your reckless behavior - in self defense, at least.

Given this attitude towards reckless belief, this course, I hope, will give me reason to look in more detail at what I might want to call reckless belief.

This is a course on epistemology (theory of knowledge), not moral philosophy (theory of right and wrong). So, there may be a worry that my interest in this general subject will not fit the specific subject matter. However, I hold that there is a strong connection between the different types of justification. After all, justification has to do with "reasons for . . . " doing something. Reasons for performing an act, reasons for praise and condemnation, and reasons for assigning credence to a belief. So, you can look to this series on testimony to find my thoughts on reckless belief.

I am thinking that "reasons for" holding a person in contempt for reckless believing is going to fit in quite well with this subject matter.

I have not actually seen a syllabus yet. However, I know what readings will be assigned, and one of them is an anthology of essays that will cover various theories in epistemology. This seems to be a good place to start.

Those readings are found in:

Lackey, Jennifer, and Ernest Sosa (eds.), 2006, The Epistemology of Testimony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fall 2018

The new semester will be starting soon.

I am taking three courses . . . and, this time, I want to write down more comments on my courses so that I can have the notes available. I am assuming each course will require a paper, so I am going to need to consider paper topics.

Philosophy of the Middle Ages

This course concerns philosophy from about 700 AD to about 1200 AD (I assume). Philosophy during this period was interesting. Europe was in its dark ages following the fall of the Roman empire. However, a bunch of Arabs got hold of some ancient Greek texts and began translating them into Arab and Persian. The Muslim religion at the time was extremely tolerant. Christians, Jews, and Muslims all formed a fairly stable society. This allowed for the creation of schools that took ancient Greek text and translated them into Arabic. This was a springboard for several hundred years of dedicated philosophical thinking and writing.

With the Crusades of the 1100s, many of these texts made it back to Europe, with a rebirth of European (Latin) philosophy. I think it is quite important to have an understanding of ways of thinking other than one's own. I am looking forward to an opportunity to better understand these people.

Epistemology of Testimony

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that I give you a description of philosophy during the Middle Ages. I describe it as a time when the Europeans were in a dark age as philosophy thrived in Arabic communities. Then, after a few hundred years, philosophy returned to Europe. To what degree are you justified in believing me? To what degree does reading and accepting the information I put on the page count as knowledge on your part? What are the standards for answering these questions? I think that I have a paper topic figured out for this class. I have seen an analogy used of a bucket brigade, where a bucket of water gets handed down the line from one person to another. The metaphor is that of a belief that gets handed from one person to another. The belief, with all of its justification gets handed from person to person.

However, there seems to be something missing from the discussion - at least from what I have read so far. In order to understand testimony I have to interpret it. In order to interpret it, I need to follow the norms of interpretation. One of those norms in the Principle of Charity which says that I am supposed to give that which I read and hear the best interpretation possible. The best interpretation possible is the interpretation that I have the most and strongest reason to accept as accurate. When that happens, what are the standards of knowledge for information that I, to at least some degree, helped to shape? Unlike a bucket which gets handed from person to person as it is, in the case of passing a belief, the recipient gets to decide what is being handed to him, and THEN answer the question of whether or not to accept it.

Political Philosophy

This course mostly concerns international politics. This will give me an opportunity to address a question that I have wondered about. Two questions, actually. One question is the question of secession and unification. History is filled with peoples coming together into larger nations and breaking apart into individual nations. The coming together often - but not always - happens under the threat of violence (empire building). So does the dividing up. One of my interests is in the principles of uniting or dividing nations.

This, however, is a part of another question I have. In international law, there is a great deal of legislating without representation. the United States passes laws that impact people in other countries. However, those people in those other countries do not get a vote. This seems to go against the very principle of democracy. We can make the case that when one group of people makes decisions that impact another without giving that other a say in the making of those laws, that this is a type of tyranny. The world over is governed by a type of tyranny. This hardly seems correct.

Conclusion

So, this is where my thoughts will be going this semester. I will keep you informed as to my progress.

Proving a Moral Ought

In a long and profitable discussion, I came up with a way of expressing desirism that I hope others may find useful.

From three facts, I will derive a moral ought.

In doing so, I will derive “ought” from “is”. However, I will not appeal to free will, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, impartial observers, social contracts, or any similar fictitious entity. Nor will I sneak values in the back door cloaked in a value-laden term such as “flourishing” or “well-being”.

Specifically, assume that there is (1) a community of intentional agents where (2) each has an aversion to its own pain, and (3) each has a “reward system”.

An intentional agent is one that acts on beliefs and desires (intentional states).

A reward system is a system that processes rewards and punishments, including praise and condemnation, and uses it to create new desires and aversions, and to modify (redirect, strengthen, weaken) existing desires and aversions.

For purposes of this story, we do not need to know how these beings acquired this aversion to their own pain. Perhaps the creatures first evolved an ability to sense things by touch. Then they evolved a disposition to respond to certain sensations with MAKE IT STOP and MAKE SURE THAT NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

Similarly, the story of the origin of the reward system is irrelevant. The "aversion to pain" alone would have only allowed the agents to use means-ends reasoning to avoid future pain. The reward system may have evolved as a more efficient alternative. Without it, the agent would have to constantly remember that bees are a potential source of pain and one can avoid pain by avoiding bees. The reward system instead takes experience with bees and gives the individual an aversion to bees themselves. The individual then simply avoids bees. Avoiding pain is an unintended (but welcome) side effect of an aversion to bees.

However it came about, our intentional agents have an aversion to their own pain and a reward system.

In this initial situation, if an agent had to choose between (a) a scratch on its finger, and (b) the painless (for him and only him) destruction of the world, he has a reason to choose "not-a" (to avoid the scratch on his finger), but no reason to choose not-b (the painful-for-others destruction of the world). He would choose the destruction of the world over a scratch on his finger.

However, he also has a reason to cause others to have an aversion to causing pain to others. After all, “If I can cause everybody else to have an aversion to causing pain to others, then I can get them to avoid causing pain to me. My own aversion to my own pain gives me a reason to create this aversion in others.”

Our agent not only has a motive, he has a means. He can do this by praising and rewarding those who choose not to cause pain, and punishing and condemning those who cause pain.

These beings might have a primitive mind. “Condemning” might consist only in snarling, snapping, slapping, beating one’s chest, bearing one’s teeth. “Praising” would involve the sharing of food, grooming, play, and sex. This disposition to respond to those others who cause pain (where those others also have a reward system) might be instinctual, maybe even genetic, given the usefulness is preventing others from causing pain.

Or the creature might be a bit more intellectually sophisticated, and actually recognize the relationship between snarling and snapping at those who cause pain and their disposition to avoid causing pain to others, and thus be able to intentionally praise and condemn so as to produce this aversion.

More sophisticated beings with language may invent other ways to express approval and disapproval - to praise and condemn - such as using the terms "good" and "bad", "right" and "wrong", "hero" and "asshole".

But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. At this point we have a collection of individuals with an aversion to their own pain and a reward system. We have a collection of individuals with a reason to cause in others an aversion to causing pain, and a means to do so - by praising those who avoid causing pain and condemning those who do not.

In our hypothetical community, with our initial three conditions in place, we can show that it is also true that (4) everybody has reasons to promote, universally (in all other members of the community) an aversion to causing pain. This is not a new assumption, this is an implication of the assumptions we have already made.

We can soften that condition a little. We can allow that, perhaps, some creatures have no aversion to pain and, thus, do not have a reason to promote in others an aversion to causing pain. Yet, with this weakening, it is still an objective fact of this community that people, generally, have reasons to promote, universally, an aversion to causing pain by means of praise and condemnation, and little reason not to. This is a fact.

So, they adopt the practice of praising those who avoid causing pain to others, and condemning those who do not. As a consequence, they are somewhat effective at promoting a nearly universal aversion to causing pain to others.

We can further allow that complications and complexities mean that different people acquire this new aversion in different strengths. Perhaps it does not work on everybody, and some still lack this aversion to causing pain to others. However, this way of using praise and condemnation is generally effective. We are, after all, dealing with matters of cause and effect - which can be quite complex. These are not matters of logical entailment.

An individual who acquires this aversion to causing pain to others will react differently when confronted with a situation where he must choose between suffering pain himself and causing pain to others. If confronted with a situation where he must choose between enduring a great deal of pain himself or inflicting a small annoyance on others, he may still choose the small annoyance to others. However, when the choice is between a scratch on his finger and extreme suffering for others, he now has more and stronger reason to choose to endure the scratch on his finger. His aversion to the scratch is weaker than his newly learned aversion to causing pain to others in these circumstances.

If he does choose the suffering of others, people generally have reason to respond with snarling and snapping or other expressions of disapproval. If he chooses the scratch on his finger, they have reasons to respond with smiles and the sharing of food and other expressions of approval.

Now, let's deal with this "is/ought" problem.

If I tell you that you ought to do X, and you ask, "Why?", the only legitimate answer that makes any sense is for me to tell you of a reason to do X. If I cannot tell you of a reason to do X - a reason that actually exists - then you can reject my claim that you ought to do X.

That is to say, "ought to do X" implies "there is a reason for you to do X".

"There is a reason for you to do X" is an "is" statement. Deriving "is" from "is" is not at all problematic. Consequently, deriving "ought" from "is" is not problematic either.

Let's take a look at what David Hume presents as his argument against deriving "ought" from "is":

"For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it."

Hume is mistaken, this relation is not entirely different. The "ought" relation is an "is" relation that links an action to reasons for action that exist.

"Ought" is an ambiguous term. I would propose that we have many different meanings of "ought". These different "ought" meanings refer to different relationships between actions and reasons for action that exist.

The three principle meanings of "ought" are pro-tanto ought, practical ought, and moral ought. The "ought" I am talking about in the discussion above, "having a reason", is the "pro tanto ought". A pro tanto "ought to do X" is a statement that there is at least one reason - perhaps defeatable, and perhaps not very good reason, but a reason . . . to do X.

So, then, where do we get these "reasons to do X"?

Hume himself tells us where. On Hume's account, if there is a reason to do X, then there is a desire that would be served by doing X. Our agent's aversion to its own pain is his reason to avoid being in pain. This aversion to pain, where others have a reward system, is his reason to praise and condemn others so as to create in others an aversion to causing pain. Once a person has an aversion to causing pain, then they have a pro tanto reason to avoid causing pain. A person that has both a reason to avoid his own pain and a reason to avoid causing pain to others, forced to make a choice between enduring some pain himself or causing some pain to others, will need to look at whether and to what degree each aversion is served by the different options - weighing the service to each aversion against the service to the other, and judging which action best serves those aversions.

We need to carefully distinguish between the concepts, "Agent has a reason to do X" and "There is a reason for Agent to do X". These two statements do not mean the same thing. Yet, moral philosophers often use them interchangeably, generating a great deal of confusion.

The two phrases are different. Consider the phrase, "Agent has $10", and "There is $10." Certainly it is possible for it be the case that "there is $10" to be true, while "Agent has $10" is false. This is the case if somebody other than agent has $10.

Alph and Bet each have an aversion to their own pain. In our initial situation, before any praising or condemning has taken place, Alph has a reason not to cause pain to himself. Alph has no reason to avoid causing pain to Bet. However, there is a reason for Alph not to cause pain to Bet. Bet has that reason. While the reason that Bet alone has will not motivate Alph in any way to avoid causing Bet pain, it will motivate Bet to praise and condemn Alph, thereby creating in Alph a new reason - an aversion to causing pain to others. Once this new reason is created, then Alph will have a reason not to cause pain to Bet.

Now, let us go back to the definition of "ought". To say, "You ought to do X" is to say "There is a reason for you to do X." (Recall that I am talking about pro tanto ought at this point). "There is a reason or you to do X" does not mean "You have a reason to do X" - so the "ought" might not be in the least bit motivating. That is, it may not motivate you to do X. If the phrase "there is a reason" is referring to reasons other people have, then it is referring to reasons to praise you if you do X, or condemn you if you do not do X.

Now, we have an "ought" that refers to what people have reason to praise and condemn.

In other words, while there is an "ought" that refers to what an agent has a reason to do, there is another "ought" that refers to what to what people generally have reason to praise or condemn an agent for doing (or not doing). Another way to say this is that we have an "ought" that refers, not to what an agent HAS a reason to do, but to what an agent SHOULD HAVE a reason to do.

Returning to our original situation, where agents have an aversion to their own pain and a reward system, an agent has no reason to refrain from causing pain to others. However, the agent ought to have such an aversion. By this, I mean that people generally ought to praise those who refrain from causing pain to others and condemning those who do not. Which means that people generally have reasons to praise those who refrain from causing pain and those who do not. Which is true because people generally have desires that would be served by praising those who refrain from causing pain and condemning those who do not. Those desires that would be served are their own aversions to pain.

Now, finally, to say that it is wrong to cause pain to others is to say that a person who had the desires she ought to have (including an aversion to causing pain to others) would not have caused pain to others in those circumstances. It is wrong, and it is a type of wrong that people generally have reason to respond to with condemnation.

That's it then. From (1) a group of intentional agents who (2) each has an aversion to their own pain and (3) a reward system, we get "It is wrong to cause pain to others". There are reasons to praise those who refrain from causing pain, and to condemn (even to punish) those who do not. And there are few (if any) reasons not to do so.

There is no god, no intrinsic values, no categorical imperatives, no social contract, no free will, no impartial observers, no veil of ignorance. There is also no "sneaking values in the back door" by using value-laden terms such as "flourishing" or "well-being". There are simply relationships between states of affairs and desires, where desires provide reasons for action.

Moral Progress

Moral Progress (20180817)
Alonzo Fyfe

I have been asked to explain moral progress and moral disagreement
.
I have written this presentation several times. However, I keep learning new things, so, rather than referring back to an original example, I keep hoping that each time I can do it better.

A Theory of Morality

I start with a physics model. I note how physicists, when they seek to explain physical forces, begin by assuming a simplified universe of frictionless surfaces, perfectly spherical bodies, massless strings, or a universe consisting of only two bodies. Once we understand the simple mechanics, we can add in complexities.

Simple Beginnings

My simple universe is a community of beings with only one desire - an aversion to their own pain. This aversion can be expressed as a propositional attitude - a “desire that I not be in pain” that assigns a negative value - a “to be preventedness” to any state of affairs where “I am in pain” is true. In having an aversion to their own pain, each person has a reason to avoid (to prevent or to stop) being in pain.

Some may hypothesize that everybody also has a reason to prevent or stop others from being in pain. On this hypothesis, there is something in the nature of “that entity is in pain” that generates a reason to prevent or stop it from being the case that “that entity is in pain”.

We are going to hypothesize that no such power or entity exists. Each entity has only one reason for action - the prevention of their own pain. This means that if a being encounters a situation where he must choose between (1) a mildly annoying scratch on his finger, and (2) excruciating pain for everybody else, his only reason for intentional action is to avoid the mild irritation on his finger.

However, we will postulate the existence of a reward system. This system processes rewards and punishments (including praise and condemnation) to generate new reasons for action or modify existing reasons. If, by pressing a button, one gets fed, one acquires an interest in pressing the button - not only so that one can get fed, but for its own sake. If, by pressing the button, one gets an electric shock, one acquires an aversion to pressing buttons. This is not just a means to avoid pressing buttons. One will tend to avoid pressing buttons even when one knows it will not produce a shock. One acquires an aversion to (and, thereby, a reason not to) press the button.

So, by praising and rewarding those who refrain from actions that cause pain to others, and punishing and condemning those who do cause pain to others, one can create in others an aversion to causing pain to others. In creating this aversion, others will come to have two reasons for intentional action: to prevent the realization of their own pain, and to avoid actions that bring it about that others are in pain.

In this way, others actually acquire a reason not to cause pain to others. However, it does not arise from the very nature of others being in pain. It arises as a result of rewards (such as praise) and punishments (such as condemnation) acting on their reward systems to create aversions to causing pain.

The effect is the same. As a result, agents come to have two reasons for action that sometimes conflict. Now, faced with a choice between a mild irritation on their finger and excruciating pain for others, the aversion to causing pain to others outweighs the aversion to avoid one’s own pain, and chooses the mild irritation. However, if faced with a choice between excruciating pain for oneself and a mild irritation for another, the agent may still choose the mild irritation for the other.

Explanatory Power

We have now a situation where everybody has a reason not to cause pain to others. However, it does not require the existence of a mystical power of one person’s aversion to his own pain to automatically (magically) generate reasons for others. Furthermore, it explains and predicts the ubiquitous use of praise and condemnation (and other forms of rewards and punishments) in morality.

It explains why punishment and condemnation are the appropriate response to wrong acts. Obviously, punishment and condemnation cannot prevent the action that has already taken place. However, the act shines a spotlight on an area where it would be useful to apply additional reasons-generating punishment and condemnation. It is the person who performed the wrong act who is deserving of condemnation and punishment precisely because there is reason to promote an aversion to doing that type of act. The punishment must be “proportional” to the wrong since the strength of the aversions we have reason to create is proportional to the strength of the reasons we have to create that aversion. We have fewer and weaker reasons to promote aversions to trivial wrongs than we do to massive large-scale wrongs. The theft of $5 deserves less punishment and condemnation than the rape and murder of a child.

The “inherent power to create reasons in others by the very nature of a wrong” cannot account for these features. Instead, these become arbitrary, unexplained elements of the mysterious reasons-generating power. In the same way that this power mysteriously generates reasons for others, it mysteriously generates a rightness to responding to wrong behavior with condemnation and punishment, and it mysteriously dictates the appropriate level of condemnation and punishment, none of which can actually be explained.

Note that it is not a valid objection to this theory to state that it cannot account for moral behavior – for the fact that one person helps another at what would otherwise be a cost to himself, or that a person refrains from taking the property of another even when she can do so without getting caught. It explains this behavior as a consequence of desires and aversion acquired through social conditioning.

A person with a desire to help others has a reason that may well tilt the balance in favor of helping, when all other concerns would have said not to help. A person with a learned aversion to taking the property of others without consent is no more likely to take the property of others when she can get away with it than a person with an aversion to pain is likely to burn herself when she can get away with it.

More importantly, the theory being proposed provides a more sensible real-world account of what those reasons are and how they came to exist. By praising and rewarding those who help, a society creates in others a desire to help that, at times, will tilt the balance against all other concerns. By condemning and punishing those who take the property of others without consent, we create an aversion to taking the property of others without consent, which leaves our property secure even when others can take the property without getting caught.

This system also explains why the reasons different people have do not have the same strength – why some people will not help when other people will not, why some people steal when others (better) people would not.

Part of the reason for this is because the basic biological foundation on which experience works on is not the same for all of us, so identical environments will still not produce identical results. Yet, even with this, we do not have identical experiences. One person may have taken property without consent as a child and gotten away with it, obtaining the benefits (which serve as a reward) without he punishments, thus not developed an aversion to taking property without consent. Taking property may have been essential to survival. As an adult, he teaches his children to take property successfully. This weakens the aversion to taking property in those children. Of course, those children may also experience the condemnation and punishment of others, and are certainly told of the harms of getting caught. Consequently, they may be torn – their feelings pulling them in two contradictory directions.

In the same way, this system explains the cultural variation in attitudes. Different people in different cultures experience different patterns of reward and condemnation, giving them different reasons for engaging in certain types of behavior. Growing up white in a culture of black slavery or white privilege, they experience rewards and praise for racist attitudes, and learn an attitude of contempt towards blacks. Growing up in a culture where homosexuality is condemned, they acquire negative attitudes towards homosexuals and homosexual acts. These are the consequences of rewards and punishments.

The Cost of Error

I have contrasted two theories of morality.

In one theory, the very nature of one person’s suffering generates in others a reason against causing suffering.

In the other theory, the very nature of one person’s suffering and the fact that he is surrounded by people whose brains contain a “reward system” implies that he has reason to use rewards and punishment (including praise and condemnation) to cause others to have aversions to causing suffering – aversions that give others reasons against causing suffering.

Both theories end up at the same point – a reason against causing suffering to others. There is nothing in this reason itself that carries a marker of its origins. All one knows is that one has a reason. It takes theoretical work to try to figure out where it came from.

This means that it is possible for a person who has a reason against causing suffering brought about by the second system to make a mistake and think that it came about through the first system. Such a person believes that the reason they have against causing suffering exists in virtue of being able to correctly perceive an intrinsic reasons-making property in other people’s suffering.

This can be a very costly error.

A person who believes that she is under the watchful eye of a guardian angel who will not allow her to suffer harm may take risks that she would not otherwise take. This could have unfortunate consequences as the act she thinks is safe turns out not to be safe at all.

The person who thinks that reasons come from the nature of things may fail to take steps to create those reasons in others – or to properly advocate that others in the community do the same thing. The result is a community where people are more prone to lie, steal, vandalize, engage in fraud, kill, and engage in prejudiced and discriminatory acts that they would not otherwise engage in if the causes of reasons were properly understood. The advocate of natural reasons is more prone to let the cards fall as they may. After all, the reasons already exist. It is not as if he needs to put any work into creating them.

More importantly, a person with a learned desire that p or desire that not-q who takes their reasons to realize p or prevent q to be in virtue of an intrinsic reasons-generating property is not going to be open to evidence that their attitude should change. His aversion to homosexual acts is taken to be caused by an internal “not to be doneness” built into homosexual acts. Any argument to the effect that this attitude is harmful and should be changed will be met with the response, “But it is wrong by its nature, and your arguments that we would do better with a different attitude are irrelevant.”

The intrinsic reasons-generating property theory is inherently conservative and resistant to change. It takes the learned attitude of the agent and makes it an intrinsic property of that being evaluated. Ultimately, the agent’s own learned likes and dislikes are taken to be a marker of all that which is good and right in the world. He ignores evidence concerning whether having such an attitude – having it himself and having it made universal throughout the community is such a good idea, and insist instead he is seeing intrinsic reasons-making properties that make such arguments irrelevant.

This is particularly dangerous when two people – or two groups – come into conflict. One of them has promoted in their community a desire that p, while the other has promoted a desire that not-p. Members of the first community have reasons to realize p, and members of the second community have reasons to prevent its realization. If each take their reasons to be generated by an intrinsic reason-generating power in p, they have a conflict, and there is no way to resolve this conflict short of war. If, instead, they realize that their reasons are grounded on learned preferences – taught through social customs of praise and condemnation – they can then ask, “Which learned preferences do we really have the most and strongest reasons to promote?” To answer this question, they can enter into debate and discussion.

There is a right answer. The fact that we are arguing about the relative merits of promoting particular sentiments universally (rather than about the intrinsic reasons-making properties of things) does not imply that the answer is merely a matter of individual taste or preference.

Moral Progress

But is there moral progress? Can one culture be better than another?

Let us return to the starting community populated by people with an aversion to their own pain and a reward system. These people have reasons to prefer a community populated by people with an aversion to their own pain, a reward system, and an aversion to causing pain to others. The latter community is clearly better than the former community.

This community might well (falsely) believe that if they promote an aversion to causing pain to others that an all-powerful god will punish all of them with excruciating pain. Suffering from the effects of this belief, they actually condemn anybody who promotes an aversion to causing pain to others. Advocates of this vile philosophy that risks their god’s vengeance are burned alive as a warning to others. Regardless of what they believe, and regardless of the feelings that are generated as a result of this error, they still have more and stronger reasons to form a society that includes an aversion to causing pain to others. They are simply unaware of this moral fact.

Becoming aware of it, and then creating that universal aversion, represents moral progress.

The abolition of slavery, social equality for women, the combatting of child abuse, recognizing the moral permissibility of homosexual relationships, all represent moral progress. They all represent creating sentiments (like the aversion to causing pain in the hypothetical example) that people generally actually have reasons to promote universally.

Moral Argument

This also brings to the surface the possibility of error and moral debate. In the example given above, the people who (falsely) believe that a god will punish them with excruciating pain if they were to reward/praise behavior that avoids causing pain and punish/condemn acts that cause pain are barriers to moral progress. They are wrong. Regarding the reasons for promoting a universal aversion to causing pain to others, they are on the wrong side of the issue, and those who argue for creating such an aversion are on the right side. This goes hand-in-hand with the thesis that there is such a thing as moral progress, and the false believers are standing in the way of progress.

In some cases, it may be difficult to determine what attitudes we have reasons to promote. In the case of capital punishment, the “ultimate punishment” for the performance of certain types of crimes may be useful in promoting even stronger aversions to committing those types of crimes. This would give us reason to promote universal acceptance of – and even a desire for – this type of punishment. On the other hand, capital punishment is killing. Promoting a universal desire to kill may not be such a wise idea.

One might respond, “No, we are only cheering the killing of the guilty!” That might be the intent, but the cheering takes place in the real world and one has to look at the real-world effects. In a population of 300 million people, cheering the killing of the guilty will be internalized in some of the population as killing those who deserve it. They may classify as “deserves it” people who have committed the slightest wrong – who they perceive as having cut them off on the highway, looked at them without a proper acknowledgement of respect, or failed to hand over money the person thought he had a right to take. Attitudes about who deserves killing are going to differ. As a result, cheering killings may create more murders than it prevents.

We can have genuine disputes over issues such as government assistance to the poor, taxation, what to allow people to say and what to prohibit from being said, the treatment of animals, the treatment of future generations, the accumulation of wealth. We may well discover reasons for and reasons against promoting certain attitudes. We may find people claiming that reasons exist that do not, in fact, exist, such as the “vengeful god” referred to in the hypothetical example – the god that would inflict suffering on a community that promotes an aversion to causing suffering.

Disagreement does not imply that there is no right answer. Nor does it get in the way of people saying, “Here are good reasons to promote such an attitude” and backing it up with empirical evidence, and “Those are bad reasons for promoting such an attitude” and backing that up with empirical evidence as well.

Moral Persuasion

So, now, imagine that you have been captured and taken into the woods by somebody who plans to cook you slowly over an open fire and then eat you. You desire that this not be the case. You wish to try to prevent this from happening. What are your options?

According to the theory presented here, you have three options.

Option 1: You can try to point out to him that he already has a reason not to cook you and eat you that he might not be aware of. Perhaps you can convince him that you are riddled with parasites, and he certainly does not want to eat somebody riddled with parasites. Another option is to convince him that you have an all-knowing, all-powerful, invisible friend who will punish anybody who cooks and eats you, causing them endless suffering. This wouldn’t be true, but it might be effective.

Option 2: Change his desires. If you have a pill that causes people to have an aversion to killing and eating others, see if you can find a way to get him to eat it. Failing that, he has a reward system, and it may be that by praising the decision not to cook and eat you, and by condemning the decision to do so, you may effect a change in his desires and create within him an aversion to cooking and eating people. This takes a lot of work though – a lot of time and a string of experience – so it will likely not be effective if he plans on eating you for the evening meal.

Option 3: Prevent him from acting. Kill him, or escape, or . . . better yet . . . do both, in whichever order is most convenient (or possible) in the circumstances.

These are your three options. (1) Convince him that cooking and eating you will thwart a desire he already has, (2) create within him a new desire that would be thwarted by cooking and eating you, (3) make it impossible for him to cook and eat you.

You could try to tell him that, by its very nature, cooking and eating you has its own intrinsic reasons-creating property and that in virtue of this fact he already has a reason not to eat you that he might not be aware of. Personally, I would go with the story of the all-knowing, all-powerful invisible friend. It sounds more plausible.

There is another option, but it requires some advanced planning. If successful, you will not even end up in this situation, so you will not need to ask yourself what to do if you were in such a situation. This is to get together with others in your community and convince them that you all should use your collective powers of reward and punishment, including praise and condemnation, to promote universally an aversion to cooking and eating people.

Given the massive complexities of human society, the massive complexities of the human brain (including other genetic and environmental influences), and the massive varieties of experiences a person may have, one will not eliminate the possibility of being killed and eaten. However, to the degree that one can promote such an aversion, to that degree one can at least reduce the chances.

Once again, I want to remind the reader that, when it comes to “what desires do people generally have the most and strongest reasons to promote universally using these tools of reward (such as praise) and punishment (such as condemnation)” has a right answer – at least in many cases. In our original simple universe, the value of promoting universally an aversion to causing pain was not a matter of opinion. In our society, the value of promoting aversions to lying, fraud, sophistry, theft, vandalism, assault, rape, murder, and the like is not a matter of opinion. There is an objective fact of the matter. People generally have many and strong reasons to promote, universally, these desires and aversions by praising those who act correctly and condemning/punishing those who act wrongly.

Conclusion

This, then, is a brief account of the position I have been defending.

There are no intrinsic reasons-creating properties in the natures of particular states of affairs. There is, instead, a set of desires and aversions and a learning system we evolved to have because it was useful in generating new desires and aversions. Once this reward system came into being, it was there for others to manipulate. All they needed to do was to manipulate each other’s experiences – their rewards and punishments – to generate behavioral rules useful to those who were doing the manipulating. With hole communities usefully manipulating everybody’s learned desires and aversions having, in their effect, the (unintended) well-being of the whole group, the institution of morality came into existence.

This system is so simple that animals could use it. If one animal performs an action that is perceived to threaten the interests of another animal – either its own interests or its interest in the well-being of others such as its children, mate, and friends – it has reason to respond with condemnation. This takes the form of snarling, growling, swiping with paws, and making other aggressive gestures. If they perform useful actions, others can reinforce those useful actions using rewards such as grooming, food, sex, or even positive gestures such as a smile or pleasant “approving” noises.

This does not need complex cognition. It needs nothing more than, “If it seems favorable, respond with rewards and praising noises. If it seems dangerous, respond with punishments and condemnation noises”. We become angry, shout, and insult those who perform actions that we perceive as a threat. That this seems so natural is no accident. It is because harm to us does not have any intrinsic reasons-making properties, but we can act on the reward systems of others to create those reasons nonetheless.

People generally have many and strong reasons to promote some desires and aversions universally. This applies to aversions such as lying, theft, assault, rape, and murder. It applies to desires such as keeping promises, repaying debts, and helping those in desperate need. There are right answers to the questions about what sentiments to promote and what sentiments to avoid promoting.

From this, without any need for the existence of intrinsic reasons-making properties, we get objective morality.

RoME 2018 13: Desert

The Sad and Untimely Death of Desert
Stephen Kershnar

Commentator: Spencer Case (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Chair: George Sher (Rice University)

Abstract: The paper argues against the existence of desert. It begins by arguing that there is no adequate theory of what desert is. The paper then argues that there is no plausible basis of what makes people deserve things. Specifically, it argues that the intuitive notion of desert fits poorly with responsibility-internalism. There is no intuitively plausible basis for positive desert, and the basis for negative desert is not the opposite of that for positive desert. In addition to problems with the basis of desert, the paper argues that there is no plausible model of how desert and well-being relate to intrinsic value.

My general attitude towards a project such as this is that it is a waste of time. The reasons for believing this were actually brought up in the discussion following the paper. It is entirely unreasonable to expect that society will ever give up the concept of desert. We will be using the term for as long as civilization exists and making decisions of policy - deciding questions of life and death - on the basis of desert. If one wants to perform a socially useful activity, then one can propose refining it into something useful - something that will help us to make wise decisions.

I argue for this position in the case of morality. In a sense, I am a moral nihilist. Moral values - understand as intrinsic mind-independent oughtness - do not exist. So long as moral terms are understood to refer to such entities - as making claims about such entities - and using those claims to justify harmful behavior - we should get list of terms that ground harming others on the basis of properties that are wholly fictitious.

However, we are not going to get rid of moral terms. Therefore, the next best option is to argue for refining them - reforming them - turning them into something useful. Justifying reward and punishment on the grounds of their usefulness in the ways they act on the reward center to change ultimate ends provides us with a way of making moral terms useful.

There is a particular point to "desert" that would be important to consider in reforming the term. It is used to distinguish when harms to others are justified, and benefits (rewards, praise) to others is advisable. It identifies when the standards of reasonable rewards and punishments, praise and condemnation, have been met. To the degree that we can fix those standards, we can fix the standards of desert.

Taken in this light, Kershnar's arguments may be taken as information on how the current understanding of "desert" is flawed and needs to be reformed.

One of the problems with desert is that people use it to argue for a right to some things based simply on the fact of one's existence. For example, it is sometimes said that people deserve a basic standard of living. They deserve to be provided with food (so long as there is plenty of food available). This does not need to be earned, nor can it be lost. except in the case where a person may have committed a capital crime. It is interesting to note that, in the virtue of having committed a crime, one can lose one's life itself, but not one's right to food and medical care while alive. (On the other hand, one can be deprived - on the basis of desert - of the means to obtain such things. One can lose one's job, which means losing the ability to buy food and medical care. And, yet, after one has lost the means to earn these things, others are still said to be obligated to provide them.)

On top of this, there are the things deserved as rewards and punishments.

The nature of Kershner's overall project is to identify things for which a person may "deserve" something and then, for each of the standards provided, produce some sort of counter-example where the standard does not determine desert. For example, he considers the claim that desert is determined by hard work and sacrifice. Yet, he points out that a person may work hard and sacrifice for an evil project. He cannot deserve rewards or punishments based on the consequences of his action (the benefits or harms produced) since they are often a matter of luck for which the agent warrants no credit or blame. He argues that a person cannot deserve something based on their motives because people are not responsible for their motives.

Note that desirism has a different way of looking at praise and condemnation. It sees praise and condemnation as actions. The reasons for actions - the reasons to praise or condemn - are determined by the desires (or, more precisely, on the desires that it makes sense to promote) that motivate the acts of praise and condemnation. Determining what is deserved involves determining the motives behind praise and condemnation, the value of those motives, and whether good motives would motivate praise or condemnation. It is on this standard that it is deserved.

Kershnar focus his attention solely on the intrinsic properties of the person being praised or condemned and argues that none of them work. If this account of praise and condemnation is accurate, we can well expect none of them to work.

People do not deserve praise because of their virtue. They deserve praise because people generally have many and strong reasons to promote that virtue universally. On this standard, it does not matter whether the agent is "responsible" for his virtue - has the power to pick it up. What matters is the effect of the praise - whether it would be useful in promoting or strengthening that virtue in the person praised and in others.

Kershnar will likely respond that if we use this model, then praise and condemnation, reward and punishment, are independent of desert. If desert is simply interpreted as that which is due to a person strictly based on the qualities that he has that he had the ability to choose freely then . . . yes . . . I would have to agree that there is no such thing as desert. Yet, in practical purposes, even if we take this to be a part of the meaning, it is only a part of the meaning. In its practical application, it is a term that we use to direct the acts of praise and condemnation, reward and punishment, rationally. In that sense, it is still useful to have a concept of desert.

RoME 2018 11: Ultimate Meaning

Ultimate Meaning: We Don't Have It, We Can't Get It, and WE Should Be Very, Very Sad
Rivka Weinberg


Commentator: Chris Heathwood (University of Colorado Boulder)

Chair: Daniel Muñoz (MIT)

Abstract: Life is pointless. That's not okay. I will show that. I argue that a point is a valued end and that, as agents, it makes sense for us to want our efforts and enterprises to have a point. Valued ends provide justifying reasons for our acts, efforts, and projects. I further argue that ends lie separate from the acts and enterprises for which they provide a point. Since there can be no end external to one's entire life since one's life includes all of one's ends, life as a whole cannot have a point. Finally, I argue that since we live our lives and structure our living-a-human-life efforts both in parts and as a whole, it is fitting to be sad to recognize that bothering to live is pointless. My discussion helps make sense of the literature that frequently talks around this topic, but often does so vaguely and indirectly.

This paper defends the conceptual possibility and utility of permissible-wrong action. Permissible-wrong action is a moral assessment according to which agents sometimes perform wrong actions that are nonetheless permissible. Initially, this will sound like a mistake. An action cannot be both wrong and permissible, since we take wrongness and impermissibility to be interchangeable, and an action cannot be both permissible and impermissible without a straightforward contradiction. The apparent inconsistency hangs on the assumption that all morally wrong actions are morally impermissible. Driving a wedge between “impermissibility” and “wrongness” and arguing they are different types of moral assessments about actions reveals the possibility of permissible-wrong action. Permissible-wrong action helps to provide solutions to many of moral theory’s other most challenging puzzles. I focus on genuine moral dilemmas and asymmetrical assessments of permissibility in Doctrine of Double Effect cases in this paper.

It is with regret that I report that Weinberg spoke extremely quickly, prohibiting me from any hope of taking notes without fear of getting hopelessly lost in a torrent of words . . . when, in fact, I ended up getting hopelessly lost anyway.

Best made plans and all of that.

First lesson: When I give a presentation, it is my duty to communicate with the audience. This means making sure that I ask myself not only if my ideas make sense, but if I am presenting them in a way that is useful to the listener. I truly think that Weinberg's mode of presentation is a fault.

Be that as it may, let me try to see if I can reconstruct something that sounds like an argument - though I cannot guarantee that this can be attributed to the speaker.

WEinberg's goal seems to be to determine whether a whole life can have value.

To have value in the sense that she is interested in is to serve a purpose, that it aims at a valued end. This valued end has to be external or beyond that which is serving it. A hammer serves an end of constructing a house - where the construction of the house is external to the hammer. For a life to have value it, too, must serve an end.

She admits that a part of a life can have value. One can dedicate a portion of a life to some purpose - e.g., getting a law passed to provide health care to everybody in a community regardless of ability to pay. However, the question that Weinberg takes herself to be addressing is the question of whether a whole life can serve an end. However, once the project ends, then what? What end does that serve? Now, there is nothing. No purpose. Indeed, there is no purpose that serves as an end for a whole life, only as an end to a part of a life.

Desirism holds that all value exists as a relationship between states of affairs and desires. Consequently, a life is good to the degree that the propositions p that are true of a life are those which are an object of the desires of the people who lived it. This makes it possible that an agent can desire "that I have a life with qualities Q1, Q2, Q3, . . . Qn" and discover at the end that she has lived a life with qualities Q1, Q2, Q3, . . . Qn. It is a good position to be in. I wish to have a life where I have made some contribution to the overall understanding of morality. If my life has that property, then it would have fulfilled the desires in question, which would have given it value.

If, as Weinberg argues, life has no point, what does that matter? This only matters if an agent has a desire that life have a point. In this case, the fact that life does not have a point would thwart his desire. His desire attaches some value to this not being the case. The same line of reasoning applies to a person who has a desire to serve God. If he has this desire, and there is no God, then this desire must remain unfulfilled. However, if he does not have this desire, then the fact that his life does not serve God ends up being unimportant. There is no reason to care unless there is a desire that would be served by that which the object of one's thought.

There are people who care greatly that their life serves some end that has intrinsic moral worth. We can imagine a person who desires that he live his life in service to God. He discovers that there is no God. Therefore, his life is meaningless . . . pointless . . . a waste of effort. One should not casually dismiss the severe pain that this type of revelation can have on an individual. It can be painful to the point of suicide. Having a life with meaning in this sense is that important to them.

The fact that it is extremely important to some people does not change the fact that this importance is contingent. It is not necessary that a person desires that his life serve God. This is something he was taught within an environment that praised and promoted an interest in that which can never be obtained. Somebody else can be quite content with a life that does not serve God or some sort of intrinsic good or not have a point. That person is not mistaken, just somebody with different interests.

How Reasons Work

The following are additional posts and comments that I have made on the Desirism facebook group.

I am bringing up out of the depths of a comment section below a response I have written to the thesis that we have direct experience of evaluative valence.

My response:

I am one of those people who has experienced drugs which allows a person to experience pain without an aversion to pain. As a child, I had a severe sore throat where I refused to eat or drink anything - which was not healthy. The doctor gave my mother some pills. I took a pill and, an hour or so later, she gave me a glass of orange juice.

ARE YOU FREEKING INSANE! THAT'S ORANGE JUICE!

YOU DON'T LOVE ME!

But, I drank the orange juice and it "felt" the same way it has been feeling. I felt the same sensation in the back of my throat.

But, I didn't care.

The reason I did not care is because "pain" is processed in two parts of the brain. The feeling is processed near the top of the skull (the somatosensory cortex). The badness of pain is experienced near the stem (the limbic system). The drug inhibited brain signals in the "I hate this" part of the brain, but the signal in the "I feel this" part of the brain was not effected.

So, I learned to distinguish pain from the aversion to pain. Pain does not have an inherent badness. Rather, we evolved to respond to feelings of pain with, "MAKE IT STOP!" because it served evolutionary purposes. The feel of pain is one thing, the MAKE IT STOPNESS!" something else entirely.

Now, if I may restate my position:

Pain is a mental state that assigns a negative value (-V) to the proposition "I am in pain" being true, which, in turn, provides the agent with a reason to prevent the realization of "I am in pain".

When it comes to an aversion to causing pain to others (a mental state that assigns -V to "I am causing pain to others") this is not a direct perception of an evaluative valence. This is an aversion, perhaps with some evolutionary foundation, but largely socially engineered through a long history of praise and condemnation, reward and punishment, inflicted on you directly, threatened hypothetically, inflicted on others in your presence, and experienced through gossip and works of fiction. All of these are processed through the reward system. Rewards and punishments do not just have to happen to you. (Thus, the importance of role models.)

These moral rules tended to be encoded in the prefrontal cortex. There is a brain pathway - the mesolimbic pathway - that connects the reward centers of the brain to the prefrontal cortex that is responsible for receiving these signals of reward and punishment - including praise and condemnation - the using them to encode these behavioral rules.

In other words, in your life you experienced a number of cases of reward and punishment, of yourself and others. These acted through your reward system to encode "do not cause pain to others" in your prefrontal cortex. And to assign to this rule a negative value (a "-V") that you can then use to compare this concern with others that might arise.

What makes morality objective is that there is a right answer to the question, "What do people generally have the most and strongest reasons to promote universal desires for and aversions to?" People's beliefs and feelings on the matter do not change this truth. It is sitting out there, waiting to be discovered.

What follows now is a comment that I wrote a bit later as the discussion continued.

My mental states have a great deal of causal efficacy concerning my behavior. I can tell a nice story about how pain signals travel up the nerves in my body to my brain, where it is processed to generate signals that will then cause my actions so as to avoid similar sensations in the future. I can tell how a part of that signal will activate the mesolimbic pathway to encode a rule in the prefrontal cortex that will give me an aversion, not to pain, but to that which causes pain. A few bee and wasp stings will give me a strong dislike for bees and wasps - causing me to avoid them, not as a means for avoiding pain, but as an end in themselves. I can augment this with an evolutionary story about how the development of this system kept my ancestors alive and having children.

How does this connection between the signals travelling up the nerve endings to my brain connect to your brain to generate reasons for intentional action?

Knowing that you also have a reward system, it follows that if I want to avoid being in pain, I have reason to activate your mesolimbic pathway in such a way so as to encode in your prefrontal cortex a an aversion to causing pain to others.

In turns out that we evolved a disposition to respond to praise and condemnation the way we respond to rewards and punishment. Among animals, the bearing of teeth, growling, snarling, the relatively harmless slap of a paw, beating one's chest, signals with ears back and tail low, all represent the animal equivalent of condemnation. Grooming, smiling, hugging, the sharing of food, and sex all serve as rewards. In this way, animals control each other's behavior through systems that do not cause physical injury.

This is the system by which one animal's mental states influence another animal's mental states.

Let's apply this to a the case where I am screaming and on fire and you are holding a blanket.

IF you have an aversion to my suffering, THEN you will have a reason to act so as to help put out the fire. However, IF you have no such aversion - and if you see no other advantage (e.g., a reward or some other form of compensation - some other desire of yours that would be served by putting out the fire), then you have no reason to do so. And if you have a desire THAT I suffer the agony of being burned, then you may have been the one who lit me on fire, just to watch me suffer.

That's the difference between a good person and an evil person. A good person has those desires that people generally have reasons to promote. A good person is a person who acts in ways we have reason to praise - so as to trigger the reward systems of others to encode dispositions to engage in the same types of behavior. An evil person has reasons to act so as to cause harm to others - actions that people generally have reasons to condemn and to punish, so as to trigger the reward systems of others to encode aversions to those types of action.

If you stand and watch me burn, or if you are the person who sat me on fire so that you could watch me suffer, then that would make you the type of person that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn. They have many and strong reasons to trigger the reward systems of people generally to have an aversion to watching people suffer, and condemning and punishing you for your act would be one way to accomplish that.

The greater the distance between the reasons an agent has and the reasons she should have, the greater the evil.

Anyway, I can handle the situation where a person helps another who is on fire. And I can handle the situation where a person sets another person on fire. They have to deal with the different ways the limbic systems of the two agents are wired and the rules encoded in their prefrontal cortex through a lifetime of rewards and punishments.

RoME 2018 08: Non-Identity Problem

Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress Session 08. Timothy Campbell
‘The Bullet-Biting Response to the Non-Identity Problem’
Commentator: Michael Tooley (University of Colorado Boulder)

Abstract: According to the bullet-biting response to the non-identity problem: Given a choice between creating a well-off child, A, and a different child, B, that is significantly worse off than A, it is not wrong to create B. David Boonin has presented an argument for the bullet-biting response. He claims that although the conclusion of his argument is implausible, the rejection of the argument is even more implausible. But Boonin’s argument is more implausible than he realizes. Three specific premises, together with what I call the existence requirement—that creating a child cannot make that child better or worse off than she would otherwise have been—jointly entail that it is not wrong to create children whose lives contain only pain and suffering. This is a damning objection. It can be avoided by rejecting the existence requirement, but this would undermine two other premises of Boonin’s argument.

This is an issue that I have written about a few times recently.

It concerns a woman, Wilma, who is given a choice between conceiving a child (Pebbles) now who will be born blind, or taking a tiny pill for two months and giving birth to a child later, Rocks, who will be a healthy child capable of leading a regular life.

Many have a moral intuition that for Wilma to conceive Pebbles now, rather than taking the pills and conceiving Rocks later, would be immoral. As I interpret it, it means that she would be deserving of condemnation.

For me, when I hear this argument, I am treated to memories growing up when I was told that I would deserve condemnation if I were to marry a black person and conceive a mixed race child, rather than marry a white person and give birth to a white child. The arguments that I heard growing up were the same arguments used here. I was told that my decision to bring the disadvantaged person into the world rather than the person who has all of the advantages of white privileged was selfish. I was, for all practical purposes, expressing a willingness to harm a child for the sake of what I want.

Of course, I would not be harming anybody. I would give that mixed-race child the best life I could, under the circumstances. If the quality of her life is less than the quality of life Rocks would enjoy, that is not my responsibility. So long as Pebbles would have, in the end, decided that she would have rather lived than not lived, then I could be content that, in giving her as much and as good as I could have given her (Pebbles), I have given her enough.

Timothy Campbell wants to reject this line of reasoning and argue for the condemnation of the Pebbles' parent - whether it be Wilma in Boonin's story, or the mixed-race child in my own.

Campell's line of reasoning is to come up with a rule that would allow us to condemn the person who wishes to parent the child that will have the lower quality of life. However, he is concerned about a parallel case in which a person is faced with a choice in which he must choose between (1) saving an existing child with the quality of life of Pebbles, or (2) replacing Pebbles with another child that will have the quality of life of Rocks. Campbell thinks that he can find the difference in the fact that failure to save Pebbles will be a "significant cost" that the would-be parent of the would-be child with the lower quality of life does not inflict on their child. Campbell's would-be rescuer is prohibited from inflicting that cost.

One objection to make here has to do with asking whether one is inflicting a cost or providing a benefit. In fact, rescuing Pebbles may be better understood as providing her with a benefit. That benefit is a continued life of a particular level of quality she can obtain in the face of her disability. Now, if we assume - as we must - that the quality of life of Pebbles rescued from the fire is identical to the quality of life of Pebbles conceived by not taking the pill, then we have no way to distinguish the two cases. If one is permissible, then so is the other.

In another part of the argument, Campbell drew a bar graph on the blackboard that indicated Pebbles' quality of life. He then drew a dotted line identifying the minimum morally respectable quality of life. However, he drew this line above that which Pebbles would enjoy. This is in spite of the fact that Pebbles would, ex hypothesi, consider her life worth living. Against this, I asked by what justification does Campbell draw the line for the minimum level of an acceptable life ABOVE where Pebbles would have drawn it for herself. Campbell at least needs to give an assumption in Pebbles' favor, that she knows the minimum acceptable quality of her life better than Campbell does, unless Campbell can override this presumption with superior evidence.

For these reasons, I conclude that Campbell has not given any good reason to condemn the parent who would intentionally choose to have a mixed-race child that would have a lower quality of life than the pure blood child he could have otherwise fathered.

Moral Realism

Another post from the Desirism page on Facebook that I wanted to stash here for safe keeping.

MORAL REALISM

I claim that Desirism is a realist moral theory.

This is dangerous. When people see the terms “moral” and “realism” together they are prone to draw two quick implications, neither of which are true.

(1) Intrinsic value
(2) Mind independence.

Value realism is assumed to mean realism about intrinsic, mind independent values.

Desirism denies both of these. Values are relational properties (not intrinsic), and they relate objects of evaluation (states of affairs) to desires, which are certainly NOT mind independent.

So, can I justify using the term “realism” in this way?

First, I cannot simply switch to using the term “anti-realism” because this contains its own mistaken implications. People who see the terms “moral” and “anti-realism” together assume that morality is merely a matter of opinion. They assume that what it takes for something to be right or wrong is that the agent “feels” a certain way about it.

None of these are true either.

So, I am forced to decide which set of false assumptions I want to deal with, and those are the false assumption associated with the word “realism”. They are easier to deal with because, outside of morality, “realism” implies neither of these things. Outside of morality we are realists about relational and mind-dependent property.

Relational Properties

We are lunar realists. Moons are real. Nobody is required to be anti-realists about moons. Yet, nothing is a moon in virtue of its intrinsic properties. To be a moon, an object in space must stand in a particular relationship with something else. It must “orbit” that thing. And that something else cannot be a star. If it were a star, the object would be a planet or asteroid or comet, not a moon.

Similarly, we are realists about comparisons. We are realists about “taller than”, “more massive than”, “three feet away from.” These are real properties that can appear in any scientific paper without anybody questioning the fact that the author is describing reality.

So, “realism” does not require “intrinsic property”. One can sensibly assert that values are relational properties, but relational properties are real. Reality is filled to the brim with relational properties. Some of these relational properties are “orbits”, some are “values”.

Mind Independence

The visual cortex is real. That is the part of the brain at the back that the eyes are attached to. A scientist can include the term “visual cortex” in a scientific paper, and nobody would object that what the scientist is studying is not real. Of course it is real.

However, there can be no “visual cortex” without minds. That it is a “visual” cortex requires that there be perceptions obtained through the eyes. Perceptions require minds.

Indeed, if “realism” requires mind independence, then neuroscience cannot be a science. Any attempt to study the brain and how it functions - any attempt to study the mind - cannot be studying anything real if realism requires mind independence. The very phrase, “minds are real” would be a contradiction because “minds are real” can never be true in a universe where minds do not exist.

We can add to our list of real mind-dependent entities that are real certain illnesses or disabilities such as Parkinson’s Disease and blindness. You cannot talk about these things without talking about minds, yet we hold that they can be legitimate objects of scientific inquiry.

Do you think pain is not real? Put your hand on a hot stove and then tell me with a straight face that the pain is not real. Try doing anything with a straight face - one not distorted by the contortions of a person who is experiencing real pain.

So, mind-dependent properties are real.

Too Broad?

Have I now defined “realism” so broadly that it has lost all usefulness?

Not at all. I am not at all a realist about the meanings of terms. In English, the fact that the term “nova” means “exploding star” is not a fact of the world. It is true only because people who speak English have adopted a particular convention. In a different culture, "nova" could mean something different, like "new". In a different culture at a different time, "atom" could mean "without parts" and "malaria" could mean "bad air". It all depends on the arbitrary attitudes adopted within a culture at a time.

Scientists did not discover in a laboratory that Pluto was not a planet. Scientists, instead, have a linguistic custom of preferring to classify like objects with like. Evidence suggested that Pluto has more in common with objects in the Kuyper belt than it does with the set {Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune}. So, they sought a new set of definitions that lumped like with like. How did they settle the issue? Answer: They took a vote.

Here, one might object, "But are you not arguing that you have the one true and correct definition of 'realism'? Are you not treating realism as if it has an objectively correct definition?"

No, I am not. All of the arguments that I used made reference to conventions and practices. We have a convention, everywhere outside of morality, of taking relational properties as being real properties. We have a convention of treating the mind itself as real and as something about which we can make objectively true and false claims. I am arguing for doing the same thing to "moral realism" that astronomers did with the term "planet" - adopt a new convention that lumps like with like - that respects the fact that relationships between states of affairs and desires are real in the scientific sense.

Morality is not like this. One can make slavery legal or illegal by taking a vote, but one cannot make it right. One can adopt a social convention of

Summary

So, when I say that desirism is a realist moral theory, I should be understood as saying that I am going to use the term "realism" when we talk about morality as we use it everywhere else in science. According to this use, minds and relational properties are real. Consequently, statements describing relationships between the properties of minds (desires) and objects of evaluation are real. Moral properties are real. Somebody may believe that people generally have many and strong reasons to sacrifice the virgin in the volcano, and it may be a cultural tradition to do so, but, in both cases, they are wrong. Objectively wrong.

RoME 2018 07: Moral Reasons

Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress Session 07: Anne Jeffrey
How to Get Metaphysical About Moral Reasons Without Losing Your Mind Dependence”

Commentator: Michael Bukoski (Florida State University)

Abstract: This paper proposes a way of being serious about the metaphysics of moral reasons (as serious as the robust realist) while embracing the thesis that moral reasons are mind dependent (usually forwarded by the quasi- and anti-realist). The view I introduce to do this work is what I call Moral Reasons Hylomorphism. According to Moral Reasons Hylomorphism, moral reasons are objective entities whose existence and persistence conditions are determined by certain of an agent’s mental capacities, and whose contents—that is, what they count in favour of or against—depend on certain of an agent’s mental states. I defend the hylomorphic account by showing how it uniquely solves a familiar puzzle arising from metaphysical and conceptual assumptions about moral reasons while avoiding pitfalls of other mind-dependent accounts.

I had difficulty understanding this presentation. Allow me to try to explain it as best as I can.

The first problem I had is that I had no idea what "Hylomorphism" is, and the author did not explain it. Perhaps she suspected that we all already knew what it was - and perhaps I should have already known what it was. But, I did not. Fortunately, about 5 minutes into the presentation while being totally lost, I remembered that had come to the presentation with Google, so I asked Google what this was.

Google told me, "Hylomorphism is a view that physical objects result from the combination of matter and form."

A statue exists not only in virtue of the matter which makes up the statue existing, but with the statue having a particular form. The same is true of a particular person - who is made up of certain organs, but also depends on those organs being structured in a particular way.

It would seem, then, that Jeffrey wants to argue that moral reasons can be understood as some sort of combination between matter and form, and this would solve some problems that people are thought to have with respect to moral reasons.

Those problems have to do with moral reasons having two properties:

(1) Moral reasons must be action-guiding or motivating.

(2) Moral reasons must be objective.

The problem with these two properties is that they seem to not be compatible. In order to guide or motivate action, a moral reason must be one or more of the agent's mental states - a state that is capable of causing an intentional action and, at the same time, still allow that the intentional action is the agent's intentional action. Whereas objectivity seems to require that the moral reason exist as something outside and independent of the agent's mental states. As can be expected, it is difficult for something to be both one or more of the agent's mental states and independent of the agent's mental states.

And . . . that is about as far as I could go with this presentation. I cannot explain how Jeffrey thought that Hylomorphism about moral reasons would solve this problem. I cannot even say how Jeffrey thought that moral reasons were hylomorphic.

I am sorry that I could not do better.

I will add a comment about how desirism handles this issue. Moral reasons are not action-guiding. Moral reasons have to do with the desires and aversions that other people have - specifically, reasons that they have to praise or condemn conduct in order to create mental states in the agent. Morality is not concerned with the mental states an agent has, but with the mental states the agent should have. Naturally, if the agent had those mental states they would motivate her action. In the absence of those mental states, the agent lacks reason to do what is right (or, at least, lacks the right reasons), and that is what makes her evil.

However, this does not pay any attention to the concept of "hylomorphism". So, I regret, I cannot really even provide a summary of Jeffrey's views on this matter.

RoME 2018 06: Praise

Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress Session 05: Nathan Stout
“I Have To Praise You Like I Should”

Commentator: T.M. Kwiatek (Cornell University)

Abstract: In recent years there has been an explosion of philosophical work on blame. Much of this work has focused on explicating the nature of blame or on examining the norms that govern it, and the primary motivation for theorizing about blame seems to derive from blame’s tight connection to responsibility. However, very little philosophical attention has been given to praise and its attendant practices. In this paper, I identify three possible explanations for this lack of attention. My goal is to show that each of these lines of thought is mistaken and to argue that praise is deserving of careful, independent analysis by philosophers interested in theorizing about responsibility.

The main focus of this paper is to argue for a study of praise as something distinct from the study of blame. Praise has not gotten much analysis at a time when many people are talking about blame. As such, Stout is going to present many interesting facts about praise. Over the course of the discussion he will be saying some interesting things about blame as well.

In advance, I want to note a bit of what desirism has to say about praise. Praise is an action. As such, the reasons for praising are the same types of reasons that provide reasons for other types of actions - to fulfill the desires of the agent who performs the praising.

I also wish to note that Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder in the book In Praise of Desire uses a different set of distinctions than Stout does, and I think those distinctions make sense. Specifically, Arpaly and Stout deny that praise is the opposite of blame. Blame, they argue, is an attitude, while praise is an act. I can blame a co-owner of my business for the decline in profitability last year without doing anything, but if I praise her I must perform an action. The true opposite of blame, according to the authors, is credit. That is to say, I can credit my co-owner for an increase in profitability last year without doing anything. And the true opposite of praise is condemnation, which is also an action.

This may have an impact on some of Stout's arguments.

Stout attempts to demonstrate that there are several ways in which praise is not the opposite of blame.

Stout argues that a person is blameworthy for doing the wrong thing for bad reasons, but it is not the case that a person is "praiseworthy" for doing the right thing for right actions. Many right actions are not praiseworthy. However, this may be a result of the failure to draw proper distinctions as mentioned above. Act-types are typically divided into three categories, not two. These are: obligatory, permissible, and prohibited. If Stout puts the sole category of "prohibited" and sets it up to match "blameworthy", then sets both categories of "obligatory" and "permissible" up against "praiseworthy", then this could account for the lack of parallel structure. We would need to ask whether the parallel structure could be preserved by matching "praiseworthy" with "obligatory" and "blameworthy" with "prohibited".

Strictly speaking, this does not seem to raise any objections. The parallel structure is broken in part because "the right and the good" contain a category of supererogatory actions (praiseworthy actions that are not obligatory), whereas there is no similar category on the blameworthy/prohibited side. That, itself, suggests a distinction.

Stout also mentioned that blame always has an affect (emotional component) but praise does not. That is to say, when we blame somebody, it seems to always be the case that there is some form of contempt lurking in the background. However, praise can be heartless.

There is polite praise but not polite blame. Everybody who asks a question in a presentation must begin by praising the speech. This called into my mind the custom of tipping. It seems obligatory to give a tip, even in some case regardless of service, where tipping in one sense seems to have been meant at as a way of expressing praise. I can gratuitously give people something good, but may not gratuitously harm them. I can freely give somebody $100, but not so freely take $100 away.

Stout further argues that blame suffers from a problem of hypocrisy that does not apply to praise. We disregard blame when it comes from somebody who does what he condemns, but bit praise when one does what the praise giver does not do.

Finally, a lack of capacity reduces blame, but seems to expand praise. A child may escape blame due to a lack of capacity, but the praise of children is not limited due to lower capacity. Indeed, children seem to get extra praise. Indeed, children are praised for actions expected from adults. However, we expect these actions from adults on the assumption that they received proper moral education as a child.

Note that desirism sets praise and condemnation on a foundation of molding desires. The use of praise and condemnation is to trigger the reward system. However, praise and condemnation are also actions that are themselves governed by reasons, and the reasons to praise and condemn is not limited to molding desires. Other interests also motivate (provide reasons to do or forbear) praise and condemnation. This is an example where it is tempting to argue (falsely) that there is only one morally relevant reason to praise or condemn. This is as false here as it was in Session 01.