12/17/2010
The Philosophical Review, Vol 50, No 1 Jan 1991
This paper ties to defend the view that humans are rational ultimate ends-seekers against two objections from Elizabeth Anscombe. The view is Aristotle's but more refined by Aquinas, and it is, roughly, that all human activity aims at some (one) ultimate end. Anscombe's objections are given on the first page: first, human actions might have no particular end, and second, to believe that every human action aims at one ultimate end is probably an error in reasoning: a fallacious move from 'every action has some end' to 'some end is had for every action'. (pg31) Aside from the logical fallacy, the author's main task is to account for how the view that multiple intrinsic ends can be admitted to the Aristotelian conception of one ultimate end at which all human action aims. (pg32) Instead of using a reconstruction of Aristotle's argument, author prefers to use Aquinas' throughout the paper, since he believes is more expanded and explicit.
Author considers Aquinas' argument to have four main parts, each of which author goes about refining and defending. (pg34)
[A] Each human action is for the sake of some end
[B] Each human action is for the sake of some ultimate end
[C] There is some single ultimate end for the sake of which all the human actions of an individual human being are done
[D] There is some single ultimate end for the sake of which all human actions of all human beings are done
Over the course of the paper, author refines all the above claims into modified ones:
[A'] Each human action properly so-called, that is, each action resulting from deliberated willing, is for the sake of some end (pg37)
[B'] Each fully rational human action is for the sake of at least one weak ultimate end (pg45)
[C'] There is some single strong ultimate end for the sake of which all the human actions of a fully rational being are done (pg47)
[D'] All fully rational human beings share a purely formal strong ultimate end (pg61)
The paper takes each claim in order and converts it to it's altered state, and then discusses each one. First is to narrow the discussion of human action to human action that is done on a rational basis. Author utilizes a common distinction in Aquinas involving activities associated with humans (e.g. breathing) and actions done by a human qua human-- by virtue of a having reason. (pg35) Thus, Anscombe's first objection, that some human activity is just 'doing what we are doing, just because' is isolated into a different set of activities and author only wants to focus on those done for a reason. Author sketches what it means to perform a human action properly so-called: it is the intellect conceiving of a good, judging it as good, and presenting it to the will as worth doing: 'deliberated willing' (pg36). With this explication, author argues that A' is a conceptual truth talking about a subset of human activity, and author believes this subset is sufficiently large to be interesting (pg38-9). The key point here, which is used as a strategy throughout the paper, is to avoid taking A-D as being empirical generalizations about humans but instead criteria for what rational action consists in for humans (pg39-40). The second main strategy is to insist that Aquinas' arguments are laying out formal criteria, not contentful ones. Which particular ends Aquinas might believe are intrinsically the best are not implicit in A-D. (pg40-1)
In the next section author gives some terminology regarding ends and means: an end is subordinate if it is done for the sake of another end, and such a relation is transitive. (pg42) Author will later give further specifications: subordinate ends can be subordinate-as-constituent or subordinate-as-means (pg52), both of which, author claims, are distinct from the third subordination: instrumental subordination. More terminology: means-ends actions go into a 'tree'; every human action has an end'-tree, and it must contain one 'ultimate' end, meaning an end sought for itself. The argument for each tree having an ultimate end (pg43-4) is that without such an end, the will would not be moved to pursue the subordinate ends or other means. (This might also serve as a reason why an end tree cannot be infinite, without a terminus). An ultimate end (end desirable in itself) is named a 'weak ultimate end', to contrast it with a 'strong ultimate end', which is considered an end or set of ends that fully satisfy a particular human. [Of interest here is that author will talk about creating a strong ultimate end out of deliberation and conscious, rational, discarding of some weak ultimate ends (pg65)] With the argument for the need for at least one end-in-itself (weak ultimate end), author specifies B'.
The next part of the paper seeks to install plausibility for C', and author relies heavily on the formal, criterial aspects of the discussion and also some additional distinctions. For author, a strong ultimate end is considered simple to be an end which fully satisfies the rational human to every extent possible: "it completely fulfills all a human being's rational desires". (pg46-7) However, it does not have to be one thing. It can be an aggregate of many weak ultimate ends, combined together into one (disjunctive?) end. To believe that a strong ultimate end must be one thing is a 'monolithic' conception of the ultimate end, of which, author conjectures, hedonistic utilitarianism is an example. (pg48) However, there can be an aggregate case, which is a collection of weak ultimate ends into some sort of formula. (pg49-50) It is here that author introduces ends that can be ends-in-themselves but also subordinate-as-constituents of a further-- aggregated-- ultimate end. (pg51) "The possibility of an aggregate view of ultimate ends, then, requires us to distinguish three different relations of subordination among ends: instrumental subordination, subordinatino-as-a-constituent-part, and subordination-as-a-means." (pg53)
The worrisome part of Aquinas' argument for the rationality of an ultimate end is the teleological element-- that each being desires its own 'perfection'. But author believes that the case can be made that it is rational to have a strong ultimate end without such teleology. (pg54) The way author goes about this is to try to establish that the human intellect can consider 'the good' in the abstract, or the universal concept of 'the good'. Thus humans can not only consider a particular aim or goal as good-in-itself, but also form a conception of various goods as comprising the (abstract) good. (pg55) We can see how some goods conflict, how some might need weighing, or perhaps even rejecting. Thus a human can conceive of how her collection of good-in-themselves might conflict or might fit together into a coherent and structured ultimate good (using practical reason), the best life (pg56). What is also revealed here is that such an effort will uncover one single strong ultimate end (possibly aggregated), since more than one will mean incoherence or conflict-- a sort of schizophrenia (pg58). Author uses an example of Albert Schweitzer, who may have both wanted to pursue science and also music. Though he chose to pursue science, he could still recognize the pursuit of music as an end-in-itself, but he could not be said to desire it any longer. (pg57-8) Author places the use of practical reason in crafting an aggregate strong ultimate end from multiple ends-in-themselves.
Author introduces one more type of subordinate end, the subordinate-as-specification. (pg59) This subordinate is a determinate specification for a more abstract, indeterminate-ending ultimate end. Author uses 'attain political power' as the ultimate end, and 'win the mayoral race' as a subordinate-as-specification. Author then reviews the three types of ends (strong ultimate, weak ultimate, and instrumental-to-weak-ultimate) and the four subordinate relations (instrumental, -as-means, -as-constituents, -as-specifications) in a prolonged example of a triathelete. (pg60, also see appendix) The upshot of these introductions is that it gives best-life theorists much better tools in talking about the motivations and desires of their human subjects. For instance, it is acceptable to say both that one loves her children for its own sake, but also because it is a constituent of living well (pg63-4).
Author spcifies that rational human agents should all share a formal strong ultimate end-- which would be ether a monolithic or aggregate concept of the individual's most-satisfying good. (pg61-2) The trouble is in figuring out the content. Author believes that practical reasoning isn't just means-ends reasoning, but also reasoning about which ends go into the ultimate one (pg63-4). This is in contrast to philosophers who might argue that there is no rational way to decide between strong ultimate ends. (Frankfurt or Williams?)
12/17/10
12/10/10
Strawson, Peter - Morality and Perception
12/10/2010
Skepticism and Naturalism Ch 2, Columbia University Press, 1985
Author starts this chapter by talking about two dimensions of analysis of human behavior, the first being humans' natural inclination to talk about moral attitudes, free will, judgments, actions, and beliefs, and the other being the purely objective, morally 'skeptical', approach to the world which takes physical causes and physical behavior to the the only constituent elements. Author points our that a reasoned reply to this skepticism isn't efficacious since one can't be 'reasoned' out of either position. (pg32-3) Instead, it should be noted and agreed that it is a 'condition of our humanity' to see people as moral agents bearing freedom of choice and responsibility, and that occupancy of the other, purely physical, position, can be short-lived at best. (pg33-4) Here there is a contrast between what is natural for humans to assume about each other, and the 'naturalistic' position that can also be occupied, about the same subject matter. Hence two 'radically different' standpoints.
The answer for the author, for dealing with these two disparate positions, is not to choose between them, or even suggest that a choice must be made. In order to have the criteria to make such a choice, author suggests there must be a third, independent metaphysical place to occupy, and author believes there is no such place. Instead, admit both are accurate and habitable, though the naturalistic position less so than the 'naturalist' position of believing humans have moral attributes. While there are parallels between this move and answers to skepticism about the natural world, author argues there is a breakdown in the analogy since it is sometimes salubrious to occupy the naturalistic position, where it is not ever useful to be a physical world skeptic. (pg39-40)
Author argues better analogy is found in the debate over the reality of sensible properties like color, texture, smells. These sensibles can be reduced to surface reflectivity, chemicals in the air, and so on: purely physical properties expressed using micro-structures and causal forces. (pg42) The debate here is between the 'commonsense realist' and the 'scientific realist'. This debate does not need to have one victor; instead, we should recognize 'a certain ultimate relativity in our conception of the real' (pg44).
The trouble with this relativizing move is that it fails to appease the 'hard-line' physicalist, who feels the reductive position is compromised. (pg45) Author then takes an interlude into a discussion about the various internal relative conceptions of what is morally praiseworthy and morally blameworthy. This mild moral relativism perhaps gives the naturalistic reductionist even more grist for the mill, now claiming that the reason we lack agreement is that the entire structure is based either on illusion or on some other mutable human function. Author's answer is just to assert that the naturalist and the naturalistic views aren't incompatible, one we are simply naturally committed to, and the other is intellectually habitable though not for very long (pg49-50).
Skepticism and Naturalism Ch 2, Columbia University Press, 1985
Author starts this chapter by talking about two dimensions of analysis of human behavior, the first being humans' natural inclination to talk about moral attitudes, free will, judgments, actions, and beliefs, and the other being the purely objective, morally 'skeptical', approach to the world which takes physical causes and physical behavior to the the only constituent elements. Author points our that a reasoned reply to this skepticism isn't efficacious since one can't be 'reasoned' out of either position. (pg32-3) Instead, it should be noted and agreed that it is a 'condition of our humanity' to see people as moral agents bearing freedom of choice and responsibility, and that occupancy of the other, purely physical, position, can be short-lived at best. (pg33-4) Here there is a contrast between what is natural for humans to assume about each other, and the 'naturalistic' position that can also be occupied, about the same subject matter. Hence two 'radically different' standpoints.
The answer for the author, for dealing with these two disparate positions, is not to choose between them, or even suggest that a choice must be made. In order to have the criteria to make such a choice, author suggests there must be a third, independent metaphysical place to occupy, and author believes there is no such place. Instead, admit both are accurate and habitable, though the naturalistic position less so than the 'naturalist' position of believing humans have moral attributes. While there are parallels between this move and answers to skepticism about the natural world, author argues there is a breakdown in the analogy since it is sometimes salubrious to occupy the naturalistic position, where it is not ever useful to be a physical world skeptic. (pg39-40)
Author argues better analogy is found in the debate over the reality of sensible properties like color, texture, smells. These sensibles can be reduced to surface reflectivity, chemicals in the air, and so on: purely physical properties expressed using micro-structures and causal forces. (pg42) The debate here is between the 'commonsense realist' and the 'scientific realist'. This debate does not need to have one victor; instead, we should recognize 'a certain ultimate relativity in our conception of the real' (pg44).
The trouble with this relativizing move is that it fails to appease the 'hard-line' physicalist, who feels the reductive position is compromised. (pg45) Author then takes an interlude into a discussion about the various internal relative conceptions of what is morally praiseworthy and morally blameworthy. This mild moral relativism perhaps gives the naturalistic reductionist even more grist for the mill, now claiming that the reason we lack agreement is that the entire structure is based either on illusion or on some other mutable human function. Author's answer is just to assert that the naturalist and the naturalistic views aren't incompatible, one we are simply naturally committed to, and the other is intellectually habitable though not for very long (pg49-50).
12/3/10
Strawson, Peter - The Mental and the Physical
12/03/2010
Skepticism and Naturalism Ch 3, Columbia University Press, 1985
This book chapter discusses the mind-body problem, specifically the 'Identity Thesis' that mental events are identical to physical ones. Author puts the discussion within the context of what author considers to be a dialogue between skeptics and naturalists. Author prefaces the discussion on the identity thesis with a recap of the comparison between the scientistisc approach to natural phenomena and the more phenomenal approach to the same events. For instance, there is a natural disposition to believe in the reality of colors, yet the scientistic approach dispenses with them in favor of some micro-properties, e.g., of surface spectral reflectance. Author contends that either standpoint can be occupied and that neither is superior to the other. (pg52)
The identity thesis is that events or states in a 'person's mental history... are, all of them, identical with events or states belonging to his physical history' (pg53)-- an anti-dualist approach. Author approaches the debate over the truth of the identity thesis by trying to establish some common elements of agreement, and, about the particular arguments supporting it, "tries to circumvent" them. Author gives a 'trivial' truth: that whatever is happening to a human subject at any given moment (in waking life), there are both physical and mental descriptions of it. Author calls them two 'stories'-- the physical and the personal. Perhaps an entirely physical story could be told, but it would leave out all that is "humanly interesting" (pg56). And no one supposes that the personal story isn't correlated with the physical one, at least somehow. (pg57) The discussion moves to what kind of connection could exist between the two kinds of description: is there 'causal linkage' or an identity, or some other model? Here author suggests that, instead of trying to decide what the connection between the two descriptions is, we should be 'noncommittal', preferring instead to be content with the two descriptions and understand there is a 'physical realization of the mental' (pg61).
Interestingly, author rejects as unsound the common objection to the causal claim-- that it makes the mental events into epiphenomena, not causally relevant, or "nomological danglers". It is unsound because the physical account would not yield an explanation for human action or agency. It would yield predictable physical events, but, author claims, the explanations for human behavior/actions lies in the personal descriptions, not the physical events. (pg62-3)
Overall, author believes there should be enthusiasm for uncovering the relationships between the physical operations of the brain and mental events, but remains agnostic about the identity theory. Finally, author wraps up the parallel author drew between the scientistic denial of phenomenal qualities and the physicalist denial of qualia (pg64-68).
Skepticism and Naturalism Ch 3, Columbia University Press, 1985
This book chapter discusses the mind-body problem, specifically the 'Identity Thesis' that mental events are identical to physical ones. Author puts the discussion within the context of what author considers to be a dialogue between skeptics and naturalists. Author prefaces the discussion on the identity thesis with a recap of the comparison between the scientistisc approach to natural phenomena and the more phenomenal approach to the same events. For instance, there is a natural disposition to believe in the reality of colors, yet the scientistic approach dispenses with them in favor of some micro-properties, e.g., of surface spectral reflectance. Author contends that either standpoint can be occupied and that neither is superior to the other. (pg52)
The identity thesis is that events or states in a 'person's mental history... are, all of them, identical with events or states belonging to his physical history' (pg53)-- an anti-dualist approach. Author approaches the debate over the truth of the identity thesis by trying to establish some common elements of agreement, and, about the particular arguments supporting it, "tries to circumvent" them. Author gives a 'trivial' truth: that whatever is happening to a human subject at any given moment (in waking life), there are both physical and mental descriptions of it. Author calls them two 'stories'-- the physical and the personal. Perhaps an entirely physical story could be told, but it would leave out all that is "humanly interesting" (pg56). And no one supposes that the personal story isn't correlated with the physical one, at least somehow. (pg57) The discussion moves to what kind of connection could exist between the two kinds of description: is there 'causal linkage' or an identity, or some other model? Here author suggests that, instead of trying to decide what the connection between the two descriptions is, we should be 'noncommittal', preferring instead to be content with the two descriptions and understand there is a 'physical realization of the mental' (pg61).
Interestingly, author rejects as unsound the common objection to the causal claim-- that it makes the mental events into epiphenomena, not causally relevant, or "nomological danglers". It is unsound because the physical account would not yield an explanation for human action or agency. It would yield predictable physical events, but, author claims, the explanations for human behavior/actions lies in the personal descriptions, not the physical events. (pg62-3)
Overall, author believes there should be enthusiasm for uncovering the relationships between the physical operations of the brain and mental events, but remains agnostic about the identity theory. Finally, author wraps up the parallel author drew between the scientistic denial of phenomenal qualities and the physicalist denial of qualia (pg64-68).
11/12/10
Aydede, Murat - Is Feeling Pain the Perception of Something?
11/12/2010
The Journal of Philosophy, Vol CVI, No 10 Oct 2009
Author uses section I to develop what author calls the Initial Argument: that there is an asymmetry between the following two reports:
1) I see a dark discoloration on the back of my hand
2) I feel a jabbing pain in the back of my hand
The first is a perceptual report using linguistic categories and is considered 'extramental', verifiable, and a 'success' verb. The second seems to be like the first, and one might be invited to consider it a perceptual case just like the first. Yet author points out that, first, whatever the subject in 2) is feeling, it isn't 'in the hand'. (pg533-4) Since it's surely possible to have the pain without anything happening to the hand, and conversely it is possible to have something happening to the hand without the pain, there is an asymmetry about what the subject is attributing in 2) compared to 1). In 1), the subject is attributing an object on her hand. It can be false if there is no object on the hand. In 2), the subject is attributing a pain to her hand. But it cannot be false if there is nothing jabbing her hand-- she will still have a pain 'there'.
In 1), there is a 'premium' placed on the perceived object (pg535) in an epistemic relationship between one's (extramental) environment and one's perceptual process. In 2), there is a potential disconnect between what one feels and one's (extramental) environment, and there is no emphasis placed on the environment to validate the claim. Thus an asymmetry between 1) and 2), specifically that 1) is a report on an environmental condition, while 2) is a report of an experience (pain). So 2) does not fit into the category of perceptual reporting. Hence feeling pain is not a form of perception.
Part II fleshes out what kind of report 2) is instead: it is the experience of pain! The 'puzzle' for all involved is granting that there can be a veridical report of pain happening in a hand when really it is happening in the head. How can 2) be true if it is a report of an experience and not of what is happening extramentally in the subject's hand? The 'report' is about the hand and is, at best, 'confused'. So how can it be true? (pg537) Author discusses the Perceptualist/Representationalist account. Here, the thought is that 2) is a report on an experience that is representing that there is an extramental environmental condition like tissue damage.(pg538) Strong Representationalism claims that the qualitative content is identical to or exhausted by the representational content, which, remember, contains environmental conditions. Weak Representationalism deny the identity and hold that there can be an extra character to the phenomenal character of the pain. Author claims that all Perceptualists must be Representationalists and temporarily treats them equivalently. (pg539)
Concerning the 'puzzle' of how 2) can be a true report given this account, author says the Perceptualist splits the concept of pain into two parts, the PAINe and PAINtd (the concepts of Pain-experience and Pain-tissue-damage). Pain-e is the experience of pain-- its qualitative feel. Pain-td is what the pain-e experience represents, that there is tissue damage taking place at a location L on the body. (pg540) So the Perceptualist may claim that 2) reports of pain-td are true reports of pain-e: Pain-e is the experience of pain-td (environmental, extramental, tissue damage at L), but Pain-e may be mistaken that there is actual pain-td. But the PAINtd (having the concept of pain-rd) is veridical since pain-e really does exist-- there is a pain-td-like experience even though there may not be pain-td (due to e.g. phantom limb). Author claims to be sympathetic to this account of pain reporting, but points out that this line of argument for pain reporting is ironic to the Perceptualist's account of pain experiences. Perception, as noted above, places the 'premium' on the objects represented, while this account of pain reporting seems to place the 'premium' on the experience of the object (not the object-- tissue damage at L-- itself). (pg541) This is a kin to the asymmetry author previously described. Author describes a hallucinatory case where we discover there is no tissue damage-- this does not mean we should rescind our claim to having a pain.(pg541-2)
Here is the taxonomy: pain-td is actual or possible environmental tissue damage, giving rise to pain-e, a physical condition causing the experience of pain. Pain-e should cause the sensory concept PAINe, which is a claim that the experience of pain (pain-e) is representing pain-td at L. Finally, PAINtd is the representational concept of pain-td, but it only arises because of PAINe. So PAINtd infers there is pain-td because of PAINe. (PAINtd is used to 'express' what is represented by pain-e, or [I guess?] PAINe)
Part III is a pause in the dialectic to address a possible objection. The first is the objection that the Perceptualist account can be salvaged by adding a proviso: that mentalistic perceptions like feeling pain be 'read' "opaquely", which means that 'feeling' isn't used as success verb. So there could be the experience of pain-td (PAINe), but it wouldn't imply that there was environmental tissue damage to be located. (pg543) Author tries to explain what is going on with an 'opaque' reading: instead of a perceptual report 'going through' the concept and applying to the object, an opaque report is just a report about the experience (that is supposed to apply to the environment, but might not in many cases). (pg544) For instance, when knowingly looking at an optical illusion, one might claim to see a 'red circle', but we all understand the subject isn't talking about an environmental condition but a visual experience instead. So, the objection continues, mentalistic perceptions are perceptions, they are just taken opaquely. Author replies: it is odd that mentalistic perceptions have to be given a wide opaque berth, while usual perceptions are dominantly transparent. In other words, perceptual reports are dominantly 'committal'-- to make mentalistic reports noncommittal is to take away a key element of genuine perception. The second reply is as follows: if there are cases where pain reports are transparent, then it can be possible that the pain report a subject might give about her hand would turn out false if there was no tissue damage there. This doesn't jibe with our conception of pain. (pg545-6)
Section IV considers two other possible troubles for the author's account. The first is just a question about the validity of the author's claims about the intuitive concept of pain, especially across cultures. Reply: without data, tough to do, but I've cross-checked my own intuitions against scores of my own students and colleagues and haven't really encountered a significant divergence of intuitions. (pg546) The second is an objection that the conception of pain the author is using is a folk-psychological one, and that we shouldn't bend our philosophy of consciousness to try to accommodate folk psychology. After all, physics doesn't bend to folk physical intuitions (e.g. that heavier things fall faster). Author uses the International Association for the Study of Pain's definition of pain following this objection (pg547), and it specifically spells out a distinction between the experience of pain and tissue damage or potential tissue damage.
Section V takes on the Perceptualist by attacking the PAINe/PAINtd distinction, but simultaneously arguing that the Perceptualist needs the distinction for three reasons. (pg550-1) Author argues that Perceptualists want to treat pain reports as reports of experiences of secondary qualities, similar to reports of, say, seeing red. Yet seeing red is a transparent relation that, under normal circumstances, commits subjects to pass through the experience of seeing red and 'label' the object itself as red. (It is still a secondary quality since the primary quality for color is surface spectral reflectance--SSR) So the concept of RED has a 'labeling use' onto things like tomatoes because it can pass from the experience of redness to placing the concept RED onto the object perceived. The supposed analogy for PAINtd breaks down, according to author, since we find it acceptable to be noncommittal about whether there is any tissue damage once we have the concept of PAINtd. (pg549) We commit in genuine perceptual cases, but in mentalistic cases we don't feel that the absence of tissue damage will defeat PAINtd. At best, PAINtd is a sort-of placeholder for what PAINe is an experience of. (pg551) PAINtd is not committed to "labeling" a L on the body as suffering from tissue damage. "Even though there is an appearance/reality distinction for tissue damage (that is pain-td), we do not seem to ever label it by PAINtd, even though it represents pain-td" (pg550) The final part of section V is the move from pain reporting to pain itself and its asymmetry with perception. (pg552-3) The move here is to call sensory experiences 'transparent', meaning they have 'labeling uses' directly to the objects represented by the sensory concepts the subject experiences. What is happening here is that the criterion of 'transparency'/'labeling uses' that sensory concepts ordinarily have for the objects being represented by experiences is used against the PAINtd concept because, according to author, its only representational content is PAINe, not the tissue damage (that may or may not be) at L. (Pain-e is not transparent to PAINtd.)
Section VI uses similar arguments levied against the Perceptualist against the Strong Representationalist. The Strong Representationalist believes that the representational content of sensory concepts exhausts their phenomenal content. Here the condition used in the end of section V are slightly revised. The condition from section V was as follows:
COND: For any experiences of a given kind, they are genuinely perceptual only if they are transparent to the sensory concepts they give rise to. (pg552)
The version author accepts in section VI simply replaces 'perceptual' with 'strongly representational'. Since PAINtd doesn't have the transparency discussed earlier, author rejects Strong Representationalism.
Section VII is objections and replies.
Objection: look at neuroscience. Pain receptors and processing looks just like other sensory processing. Reply: just because it is sensory doesn't make it perceptual. To be perceptual, you have to take a sensory quality to be conceptual or categorized (pg559).
Objection: ok, have a disjunctive version of the perception of pain-- every case where it is veridical, it is perceptual, in phantom cases, it isn't perceptual. Reply: there is no good explanation of why the common practice is to get it wrong sometimes and right other. Furthermore, the asymmetry between perceptual cases and mentalistic cases remains (pg561-2)
Objection: well this is just a psuedo-problem, since pain is, metaphysically perceptual even though we don't treat it that way. Reply: This means we're psychologically mistaken about pain? So how can one be motivated to think it is perceptual? (pg563)
Author's conclusion is that we do not need a perceptual or strongly representational account of phenomenal experiences to be physicalists. Furthermore, there is something important in the fact that these 'intransitive bodily sensations' are different from perceptions in the noninferential manner expounded upon in this paper. (pg565-6)
The Journal of Philosophy, Vol CVI, No 10 Oct 2009
Author uses section I to develop what author calls the Initial Argument: that there is an asymmetry between the following two reports:
1) I see a dark discoloration on the back of my hand
2) I feel a jabbing pain in the back of my hand
The first is a perceptual report using linguistic categories and is considered 'extramental', verifiable, and a 'success' verb. The second seems to be like the first, and one might be invited to consider it a perceptual case just like the first. Yet author points out that, first, whatever the subject in 2) is feeling, it isn't 'in the hand'. (pg533-4) Since it's surely possible to have the pain without anything happening to the hand, and conversely it is possible to have something happening to the hand without the pain, there is an asymmetry about what the subject is attributing in 2) compared to 1). In 1), the subject is attributing an object on her hand. It can be false if there is no object on the hand. In 2), the subject is attributing a pain to her hand. But it cannot be false if there is nothing jabbing her hand-- she will still have a pain 'there'.
In 1), there is a 'premium' placed on the perceived object (pg535) in an epistemic relationship between one's (extramental) environment and one's perceptual process. In 2), there is a potential disconnect between what one feels and one's (extramental) environment, and there is no emphasis placed on the environment to validate the claim. Thus an asymmetry between 1) and 2), specifically that 1) is a report on an environmental condition, while 2) is a report of an experience (pain). So 2) does not fit into the category of perceptual reporting. Hence feeling pain is not a form of perception.
Part II fleshes out what kind of report 2) is instead: it is the experience of pain! The 'puzzle' for all involved is granting that there can be a veridical report of pain happening in a hand when really it is happening in the head. How can 2) be true if it is a report of an experience and not of what is happening extramentally in the subject's hand? The 'report' is about the hand and is, at best, 'confused'. So how can it be true? (pg537) Author discusses the Perceptualist/Representationalist account. Here, the thought is that 2) is a report on an experience that is representing that there is an extramental environmental condition like tissue damage.(pg538) Strong Representationalism claims that the qualitative content is identical to or exhausted by the representational content, which, remember, contains environmental conditions. Weak Representationalism deny the identity and hold that there can be an extra character to the phenomenal character of the pain. Author claims that all Perceptualists must be Representationalists and temporarily treats them equivalently. (pg539)
Concerning the 'puzzle' of how 2) can be a true report given this account, author says the Perceptualist splits the concept of pain into two parts, the PAINe and PAINtd (the concepts of Pain-experience and Pain-tissue-damage). Pain-e is the experience of pain-- its qualitative feel. Pain-td is what the pain-e experience represents, that there is tissue damage taking place at a location L on the body. (pg540) So the Perceptualist may claim that 2) reports of pain-td are true reports of pain-e: Pain-e is the experience of pain-td (environmental, extramental, tissue damage at L), but Pain-e may be mistaken that there is actual pain-td. But the PAINtd (having the concept of pain-rd) is veridical since pain-e really does exist-- there is a pain-td-like experience even though there may not be pain-td (due to e.g. phantom limb). Author claims to be sympathetic to this account of pain reporting, but points out that this line of argument for pain reporting is ironic to the Perceptualist's account of pain experiences. Perception, as noted above, places the 'premium' on the objects represented, while this account of pain reporting seems to place the 'premium' on the experience of the object (not the object-- tissue damage at L-- itself). (pg541) This is a kin to the asymmetry author previously described. Author describes a hallucinatory case where we discover there is no tissue damage-- this does not mean we should rescind our claim to having a pain.(pg541-2)
Here is the taxonomy: pain-td is actual or possible environmental tissue damage, giving rise to pain-e, a physical condition causing the experience of pain. Pain-e should cause the sensory concept PAINe, which is a claim that the experience of pain (pain-e) is representing pain-td at L. Finally, PAINtd is the representational concept of pain-td, but it only arises because of PAINe. So PAINtd infers there is pain-td because of PAINe. (PAINtd is used to 'express' what is represented by pain-e, or [I guess?] PAINe)
Part III is a pause in the dialectic to address a possible objection. The first is the objection that the Perceptualist account can be salvaged by adding a proviso: that mentalistic perceptions like feeling pain be 'read' "opaquely", which means that 'feeling' isn't used as success verb. So there could be the experience of pain-td (PAINe), but it wouldn't imply that there was environmental tissue damage to be located. (pg543) Author tries to explain what is going on with an 'opaque' reading: instead of a perceptual report 'going through' the concept and applying to the object, an opaque report is just a report about the experience (that is supposed to apply to the environment, but might not in many cases). (pg544) For instance, when knowingly looking at an optical illusion, one might claim to see a 'red circle', but we all understand the subject isn't talking about an environmental condition but a visual experience instead. So, the objection continues, mentalistic perceptions are perceptions, they are just taken opaquely. Author replies: it is odd that mentalistic perceptions have to be given a wide opaque berth, while usual perceptions are dominantly transparent. In other words, perceptual reports are dominantly 'committal'-- to make mentalistic reports noncommittal is to take away a key element of genuine perception. The second reply is as follows: if there are cases where pain reports are transparent, then it can be possible that the pain report a subject might give about her hand would turn out false if there was no tissue damage there. This doesn't jibe with our conception of pain. (pg545-6)
Section IV considers two other possible troubles for the author's account. The first is just a question about the validity of the author's claims about the intuitive concept of pain, especially across cultures. Reply: without data, tough to do, but I've cross-checked my own intuitions against scores of my own students and colleagues and haven't really encountered a significant divergence of intuitions. (pg546) The second is an objection that the conception of pain the author is using is a folk-psychological one, and that we shouldn't bend our philosophy of consciousness to try to accommodate folk psychology. After all, physics doesn't bend to folk physical intuitions (e.g. that heavier things fall faster). Author uses the International Association for the Study of Pain's definition of pain following this objection (pg547), and it specifically spells out a distinction between the experience of pain and tissue damage or potential tissue damage.
Section V takes on the Perceptualist by attacking the PAINe/PAINtd distinction, but simultaneously arguing that the Perceptualist needs the distinction for three reasons. (pg550-1) Author argues that Perceptualists want to treat pain reports as reports of experiences of secondary qualities, similar to reports of, say, seeing red. Yet seeing red is a transparent relation that, under normal circumstances, commits subjects to pass through the experience of seeing red and 'label' the object itself as red. (It is still a secondary quality since the primary quality for color is surface spectral reflectance--SSR) So the concept of RED has a 'labeling use' onto things like tomatoes because it can pass from the experience of redness to placing the concept RED onto the object perceived. The supposed analogy for PAINtd breaks down, according to author, since we find it acceptable to be noncommittal about whether there is any tissue damage once we have the concept of PAINtd. (pg549) We commit in genuine perceptual cases, but in mentalistic cases we don't feel that the absence of tissue damage will defeat PAINtd. At best, PAINtd is a sort-of placeholder for what PAINe is an experience of. (pg551) PAINtd is not committed to "labeling" a L on the body as suffering from tissue damage. "Even though there is an appearance/reality distinction for tissue damage (that is pain-td), we do not seem to ever label it by PAINtd, even though it represents pain-td" (pg550) The final part of section V is the move from pain reporting to pain itself and its asymmetry with perception. (pg552-3) The move here is to call sensory experiences 'transparent', meaning they have 'labeling uses' directly to the objects represented by the sensory concepts the subject experiences. What is happening here is that the criterion of 'transparency'/'labeling uses' that sensory concepts ordinarily have for the objects being represented by experiences is used against the PAINtd concept because, according to author, its only representational content is PAINe, not the tissue damage (that may or may not be) at L. (Pain-e is not transparent to PAINtd.)
Section VI uses similar arguments levied against the Perceptualist against the Strong Representationalist. The Strong Representationalist believes that the representational content of sensory concepts exhausts their phenomenal content. Here the condition used in the end of section V are slightly revised. The condition from section V was as follows:
COND: For any experiences of a given kind, they are genuinely perceptual only if they are transparent to the sensory concepts they give rise to. (pg552)
The version author accepts in section VI simply replaces 'perceptual' with 'strongly representational'. Since PAINtd doesn't have the transparency discussed earlier, author rejects Strong Representationalism.
Section VII is objections and replies.
Objection: look at neuroscience. Pain receptors and processing looks just like other sensory processing. Reply: just because it is sensory doesn't make it perceptual. To be perceptual, you have to take a sensory quality to be conceptual or categorized (pg559).
Objection: ok, have a disjunctive version of the perception of pain-- every case where it is veridical, it is perceptual, in phantom cases, it isn't perceptual. Reply: there is no good explanation of why the common practice is to get it wrong sometimes and right other. Furthermore, the asymmetry between perceptual cases and mentalistic cases remains (pg561-2)
Objection: well this is just a psuedo-problem, since pain is, metaphysically perceptual even though we don't treat it that way. Reply: This means we're psychologically mistaken about pain? So how can one be motivated to think it is perceptual? (pg563)
Author's conclusion is that we do not need a perceptual or strongly representational account of phenomenal experiences to be physicalists. Furthermore, there is something important in the fact that these 'intransitive bodily sensations' are different from perceptions in the noninferential manner expounded upon in this paper. (pg565-6)
11/5/10
Strawson, Peter - The Matter of Meaning
11/05/2010
Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties: The Woodbridge Lectures 1983, Ch 4 Columbia University Press, 1985
This chapter or paper is about the conflict between nominalism and realism. The battle is over the reality of abstract objects.
Part 1 of this chapter talks about the perfectly natural way in which people talk about concepts, propositions and thoughts as though they were real things. Yet such things aren't part of the natural world of space and time; the philosopher is accustomed to calling them 'abstract objects'. Yet there are those who are suspicious of such entities, the 'rejectionist', who believes that only things in the world of space-time are existent. Such a rejectionist is responsible for providing an account of what people are doing when they speak, seemingly meaningfully, about someone grasping a 'meaning' of a word, or someone disputing what a concept entails or doesn't. Author calls for the rejectionist to give an account of: (1) what sentences are and how they do what they do, (2) why and how people assent or dissent to sentences and other proposition-like elements of language, and (3) the seeming realness of 'feelings, images, sensations'.
Author recounts one rejectionist argument offered by the later Wittgenstein. The story goes as follows: a person learns the use of a word by learning how it applies to a certain object, or action, or real-world phenomenon, etc. She then comes to use the term 'naturally', and has 'natural' associations with it. But this is just to say she uses it intuitively, not that it has some special status as an abstract object. (pg76) But what does the term 'mean'? Perhaps we should understand meaning not only as how a particular person uses it, but whether she correctly uses it-- but this simply implicates a community of language users who approve or disapprove of the term's usage. It doesn't need to implicate some reference to an abstract object. Author now asks: does this account satisfy? (pg79)
In section 3, author investigates the two aspects of the Wittgensteinian claim-- that there becomes a natural way to use a word, and that its proper use is located in the community of language users. Author opens with a discussion of seeing x as an x. That is, taking a red, globular sense perception and classifying it as an (e.g.) apple. This seems to be a case of recognizing a particular as participating in a universal, yet the rejectionist can just as easily say it is just a case of understanding that a particular can be treated the same way as previous particulars to which the label 'apple' is applied. (pg81-84)
Author believes he'll get more traction for universals in the second part of the rejectionist's claim, that of correct use within a linguistic community. This is because the language-users must all recognize a word-type and sentence-type and situation-type when judging similarity or difference in (therefore correct or incorrect) usage. Here the rejectionist, if she is to justify her position, must resort to assuming the reality of types, hence possibly universals. (pg84) Author also believes the reductionist reply will be faulty. The rejectionist might reply that if these universals are only located as abstract, objects of thought, then you must be able to find them in the mind. Yet investigations into the mind find only more "natural items, events, or processes". (pg85) Author replies that this misses the point: we are talking about the objects of thought, not the process of thought.
Section 4 tries to change the focus of the debate from abducting universals from the natural world to finding them in the abstract, analytical or logical world. Author starts with an intuition pump about analytic truths, or truths of reason or truths proved by the nature of logic, mathematics, or language. The rejectionist might reply that the underwriting for these truths is not abstract entities but the general agreement or assent by the language users, and, specifically, what those language users do to establish its correctness. If they look at the world, then it may be different from whether they just talk and debate the issue at hand.
There is another reply, one offered by Quine instead of Wittgenstein: that there is no special distinction-- that any statement can be revised or changed in face of empirical discovery, or that any statement can be taken as 'analytic' if the rest of the system is changed to fit it. As long as the system stays consistent, 'analytic' and 'synthetic' are mutable and therefore disposable as distinctions. (pg88-9). Author replies that Quine still needs the principle of 'consistency' or non-contradiction, so this, at least, is one logical truth independent of naturalism. The comeback from the rejectionist is more in the Wittgensteinian vein: it is that the community of language users exhibit a thorough rejection of concepts that negate each other-- this is one of the natural facts of language users. For a reply to this, author suggests that it is an external perspective. From the internal perspective, we can see and find contradictions, elements of tension, and so on, in the concepts employed by others. This is an internal ability, which may become expressed or may not, but it is part of the abilities of rationality. (pg90-1) Author then claims the rejectionist will probably use the same line as before: that thoughts are natural occurrences and that, however it may feel we are manipulating abstract entities, what we are actually doing is a natural process of thinking, and that has a distinctive character.
The conclusion is left open: there are the positions of realism and nominalism; though realism has a long philosophical tradition, the nominalist is more and more popular today.
Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties: The Woodbridge Lectures 1983, Ch 4 Columbia University Press, 1985
This chapter or paper is about the conflict between nominalism and realism. The battle is over the reality of abstract objects.
Part 1 of this chapter talks about the perfectly natural way in which people talk about concepts, propositions and thoughts as though they were real things. Yet such things aren't part of the natural world of space and time; the philosopher is accustomed to calling them 'abstract objects'. Yet there are those who are suspicious of such entities, the 'rejectionist', who believes that only things in the world of space-time are existent. Such a rejectionist is responsible for providing an account of what people are doing when they speak, seemingly meaningfully, about someone grasping a 'meaning' of a word, or someone disputing what a concept entails or doesn't. Author calls for the rejectionist to give an account of: (1) what sentences are and how they do what they do, (2) why and how people assent or dissent to sentences and other proposition-like elements of language, and (3) the seeming realness of 'feelings, images, sensations'.
Author recounts one rejectionist argument offered by the later Wittgenstein. The story goes as follows: a person learns the use of a word by learning how it applies to a certain object, or action, or real-world phenomenon, etc. She then comes to use the term 'naturally', and has 'natural' associations with it. But this is just to say she uses it intuitively, not that it has some special status as an abstract object. (pg76) But what does the term 'mean'? Perhaps we should understand meaning not only as how a particular person uses it, but whether she correctly uses it-- but this simply implicates a community of language users who approve or disapprove of the term's usage. It doesn't need to implicate some reference to an abstract object. Author now asks: does this account satisfy? (pg79)
In section 3, author investigates the two aspects of the Wittgensteinian claim-- that there becomes a natural way to use a word, and that its proper use is located in the community of language users. Author opens with a discussion of seeing x as an x. That is, taking a red, globular sense perception and classifying it as an (e.g.) apple. This seems to be a case of recognizing a particular as participating in a universal, yet the rejectionist can just as easily say it is just a case of understanding that a particular can be treated the same way as previous particulars to which the label 'apple' is applied. (pg81-84)
Author believes he'll get more traction for universals in the second part of the rejectionist's claim, that of correct use within a linguistic community. This is because the language-users must all recognize a word-type and sentence-type and situation-type when judging similarity or difference in (therefore correct or incorrect) usage. Here the rejectionist, if she is to justify her position, must resort to assuming the reality of types, hence possibly universals. (pg84) Author also believes the reductionist reply will be faulty. The rejectionist might reply that if these universals are only located as abstract, objects of thought, then you must be able to find them in the mind. Yet investigations into the mind find only more "natural items, events, or processes". (pg85) Author replies that this misses the point: we are talking about the objects of thought, not the process of thought.
Section 4 tries to change the focus of the debate from abducting universals from the natural world to finding them in the abstract, analytical or logical world. Author starts with an intuition pump about analytic truths, or truths of reason or truths proved by the nature of logic, mathematics, or language. The rejectionist might reply that the underwriting for these truths is not abstract entities but the general agreement or assent by the language users, and, specifically, what those language users do to establish its correctness. If they look at the world, then it may be different from whether they just talk and debate the issue at hand.
There is another reply, one offered by Quine instead of Wittgenstein: that there is no special distinction-- that any statement can be revised or changed in face of empirical discovery, or that any statement can be taken as 'analytic' if the rest of the system is changed to fit it. As long as the system stays consistent, 'analytic' and 'synthetic' are mutable and therefore disposable as distinctions. (pg88-9). Author replies that Quine still needs the principle of 'consistency' or non-contradiction, so this, at least, is one logical truth independent of naturalism. The comeback from the rejectionist is more in the Wittgensteinian vein: it is that the community of language users exhibit a thorough rejection of concepts that negate each other-- this is one of the natural facts of language users. For a reply to this, author suggests that it is an external perspective. From the internal perspective, we can see and find contradictions, elements of tension, and so on, in the concepts employed by others. This is an internal ability, which may become expressed or may not, but it is part of the abilities of rationality. (pg90-1) Author then claims the rejectionist will probably use the same line as before: that thoughts are natural occurrences and that, however it may feel we are manipulating abstract entities, what we are actually doing is a natural process of thinking, and that has a distinctive character.
The conclusion is left open: there are the positions of realism and nominalism; though realism has a long philosophical tradition, the nominalist is more and more popular today.
10/29/10
Donagan, Alan - Universals And Metaphysical Realism
10/29/2010
The Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan Vol 1 Historical Understanding and the History of Philosophy, Ch 12. Malpas, Eds. University of Chicago Press, 1994
In this paper Author tries to revive Bertrand Russell's realist theory of universals. Author lays it out using Russell's own language from Problems of Philosophy: 'I am in my room' has a relation 'in' that connects me with my room. The 'in' relation itself has a reality to it. (pg211) The reality of relations like 'in' gives way to the reality of universals quite immediately: me being in my room and your being in your room is not two different cases of 'in'. They are the same case; they aren't two particulars. But they happen at two different places (perhaps at the same time). Thus the two cases of 'in' aren't one particular either. So, the 'in' is a universal. (pg212)
The possibility of the existence of a relational universal is met with the following objection: it seems possible to establish the reality of any particular relational entity by means of a negation proposition. A negation proposition is something like ~x(Relation)y. This is because we use relational entities in negative statements (which are also true or false) just as much as we do in positive ones. For instance: "x isn't in bed" is ~(x (in) bed), and seems to establish the reality of the relational universal 'in', but without, in this circumstance, the 'in' being exemplified (the proposition is true: x doesn't stand to the bed with the 'in' relation). This leads to the absurd conclusion that there are hundreds of existing relations that aren't exemplified. Author claims Russell tried to finesse this by having a Principal of Acquaintance: we have had immediate acquaintance with every understandable proposition; no acquaintance, no apprehension. Author pushes back that this won't do, since it is possible that there are relations we don't in fact understand but we could nevertheless put into a negation proposition. (pg 215-6) [What is author's way out? To assert that it is ok to have such real un-exemplified universals?]
The first objection and reply author discusses is the objection that the universal entity is caught between being divisible among all the places it is exemplified, or that it is indivisible but somehow present in multiple places at the same time. This is the original problem Plato encountered. Author denies that the second choice is problematic: it is only problematic for particulars, not for universals. Universals are naturally indivisible and exemplified multiply: that's what they do. (pg218) An issue along this same difficulty arises regarding the nature of exemplification. Exemplification seems to occur when there are true instances of a universal relating to particulars. But the trouble arises when one tries to explain the relation: x is related to y with the exemplification of the relational universal 'in'. In other words, the exemplification relation is exemplified in the case of x, 'in', and y. In trying to explain the relation of exemplification, an infinite regress arises. (pg219-220) The solution comes from denying that exemplification is a relation. The difference between "x is in bed" and "x isn't in bed" is that one is true and another is false, not that, in one case, 'in' is exemplified and in the other case, 'in' isn't exemplified. (pg221)
The second objection asks whether Russell's version of real universals is too bold. A more moderate Aristotelian version talks about essences and the sharing of them in particulars; yet not every relation has an essence. (pg222) The Aristotelian story has an essence unified as one thing in the human mind through a process of abstraction, yet it is distributed through the various particulars it is instantiated in. Author criticizes this as being even more obscure than Russell's theory of universals (pg223).
A completely different objection is raised by Quine (and, to a lesser extent, Goodman) in the nominalist program. For Quine, what exists is a function of what items are quantified in a set of true statements. Because you can construct a set of quantified statements no variables of which are universals or relations, then you don't need them in your ontology: they are dispensable. Against this objection, Donagan offers two replies: 1) Sellars has argued that quantifying over variables is not the way to determine ontological commitments. 2) if you admit that "two dogs are white", then isn't there a quality that the two dogs both have? (pg224-5)
The next objection might have been offered up inadvertently by Russell himself when he suggested that there could be an artificial language where normal predicates like '...is white' are replaced by a name for a 'discontinuous particular' like 'White'. So, to say that a wall is white, you might express 'wall white', the meeting of two particulars, 'white' and 'wall'. Author pushes back against this, claiming that it wouldn't be possible to establish the name 'White' without reference to the color white, which would have to be put together using some sort of predicate. But of course the language has no predicates, so there wouldn't be a way to establish that 'White' is white. (pg227)
Another objection is Pears': that realism seeks to provide an escape from the 'maze of words' into the real world by means of asserting that the words all refer (at least all the primitive ones do). While this seems informative, it doesn't do the work of actually getting out of the 'maze', and is therefore unhelpful. It is uninformative but appears to inform; it is just a circular system of words. (pg228) Author just says that realism is informative because it explains a fact about language '... is white' using a fact about the world: whiteness. (pg229-230)
The final section of the paper involves the author looking at Russell's motivations to hold his "Realist Principle": 1) not all relational predicates can be disposed of-- some are necessary for a language about the world (pg232-3); and 2) that statements with primitive predicates will be true or false based on how the world is comprised, not based on fantasy or idealism or nominalist acrobatics. (pg233) While it seems modest, this seems to be a realism worth having, since the price of not having it entails errors of idealism or nominalism. (pg234)
The Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan Vol 1 Historical Understanding and the History of Philosophy, Ch 12. Malpas, Eds. University of Chicago Press, 1994
In this paper Author tries to revive Bertrand Russell's realist theory of universals. Author lays it out using Russell's own language from Problems of Philosophy: 'I am in my room' has a relation 'in' that connects me with my room. The 'in' relation itself has a reality to it. (pg211) The reality of relations like 'in' gives way to the reality of universals quite immediately: me being in my room and your being in your room is not two different cases of 'in'. They are the same case; they aren't two particulars. But they happen at two different places (perhaps at the same time). Thus the two cases of 'in' aren't one particular either. So, the 'in' is a universal. (pg212)
The possibility of the existence of a relational universal is met with the following objection: it seems possible to establish the reality of any particular relational entity by means of a negation proposition. A negation proposition is something like ~x(Relation)y. This is because we use relational entities in negative statements (which are also true or false) just as much as we do in positive ones. For instance: "x isn't in bed" is ~(x (in) bed), and seems to establish the reality of the relational universal 'in', but without, in this circumstance, the 'in' being exemplified (the proposition is true: x doesn't stand to the bed with the 'in' relation). This leads to the absurd conclusion that there are hundreds of existing relations that aren't exemplified. Author claims Russell tried to finesse this by having a Principal of Acquaintance: we have had immediate acquaintance with every understandable proposition; no acquaintance, no apprehension. Author pushes back that this won't do, since it is possible that there are relations we don't in fact understand but we could nevertheless put into a negation proposition. (pg 215-6) [What is author's way out? To assert that it is ok to have such real un-exemplified universals?]
The first objection and reply author discusses is the objection that the universal entity is caught between being divisible among all the places it is exemplified, or that it is indivisible but somehow present in multiple places at the same time. This is the original problem Plato encountered. Author denies that the second choice is problematic: it is only problematic for particulars, not for universals. Universals are naturally indivisible and exemplified multiply: that's what they do. (pg218) An issue along this same difficulty arises regarding the nature of exemplification. Exemplification seems to occur when there are true instances of a universal relating to particulars. But the trouble arises when one tries to explain the relation: x is related to y with the exemplification of the relational universal 'in'. In other words, the exemplification relation is exemplified in the case of x, 'in', and y. In trying to explain the relation of exemplification, an infinite regress arises. (pg219-220) The solution comes from denying that exemplification is a relation. The difference between "x is in bed" and "x isn't in bed" is that one is true and another is false, not that, in one case, 'in' is exemplified and in the other case, 'in' isn't exemplified. (pg221)
The second objection asks whether Russell's version of real universals is too bold. A more moderate Aristotelian version talks about essences and the sharing of them in particulars; yet not every relation has an essence. (pg222) The Aristotelian story has an essence unified as one thing in the human mind through a process of abstraction, yet it is distributed through the various particulars it is instantiated in. Author criticizes this as being even more obscure than Russell's theory of universals (pg223).
A completely different objection is raised by Quine (and, to a lesser extent, Goodman) in the nominalist program. For Quine, what exists is a function of what items are quantified in a set of true statements. Because you can construct a set of quantified statements no variables of which are universals or relations, then you don't need them in your ontology: they are dispensable. Against this objection, Donagan offers two replies: 1) Sellars has argued that quantifying over variables is not the way to determine ontological commitments. 2) if you admit that "two dogs are white", then isn't there a quality that the two dogs both have? (pg224-5)
The next objection might have been offered up inadvertently by Russell himself when he suggested that there could be an artificial language where normal predicates like '...is white' are replaced by a name for a 'discontinuous particular' like 'White'. So, to say that a wall is white, you might express 'wall white', the meeting of two particulars, 'white' and 'wall'. Author pushes back against this, claiming that it wouldn't be possible to establish the name 'White' without reference to the color white, which would have to be put together using some sort of predicate. But of course the language has no predicates, so there wouldn't be a way to establish that 'White' is white. (pg227)
Another objection is Pears': that realism seeks to provide an escape from the 'maze of words' into the real world by means of asserting that the words all refer (at least all the primitive ones do). While this seems informative, it doesn't do the work of actually getting out of the 'maze', and is therefore unhelpful. It is uninformative but appears to inform; it is just a circular system of words. (pg228) Author just says that realism is informative because it explains a fact about language '... is white' using a fact about the world: whiteness. (pg229-230)
The final section of the paper involves the author looking at Russell's motivations to hold his "Realist Principle": 1) not all relational predicates can be disposed of-- some are necessary for a language about the world (pg232-3); and 2) that statements with primitive predicates will be true or false based on how the world is comprised, not based on fantasy or idealism or nominalist acrobatics. (pg233) While it seems modest, this seems to be a realism worth having, since the price of not having it entails errors of idealism or nominalism. (pg234)
10/22/10
Anscombe, Elizabeth - Mr Truman's Degree
10/22/2010
The Collected Philosophical Papers of GEM Anscombe, Vol 3: Ethics, Religion and Politics Ch 7 University of Minnesota Press, 1981 (Reprinted from pamphlet, Oxford 1957)
This paper takes a stance against Oxford's granting Harry Truman an honorary degree. Author considers Truman to be a villain, or at least unworthy of an honor. Author first starts with a series of fact-statements or observations: (pg62-4)
1) The Allies said they would follow the basic tenants of wartime respect for civilians as long as the Germans did too (assume this extends to the Japanese).
2) The goal of the war in Europe was established as 'unconditional surrender'. This absolutist position is questionable to author.
3) The Germans did seem to bomb indiscriminately.
4) Rhetoric surrounding the war was often about it being a fight between two whole nations, not two armies. The distinction between civilians and the military was deliberately blurred.
5) When the US declared war on Japan, they sought the objective of 'unconditional surrender'.
6) The Allies changed their strategy to involve widespread, mass bombings
7) The Allies refused to let Japan negotiate a surrender but instead use a new kind of weapon against them.
Author's primary principle in this paper is that to kill the innocent as a means to an end is, always, murder. (pg64) This isn't about 'following the rules as long as the other guy does', it is morally wrong no matter what. The argument is simple:
p1) The atomic bomb was dropped as a means of getting Japan to surrender unconditionally
p2) Innocent lives were undoubtedly killed by the bomb
c1) The person responsible for dropping the bomb killed innocent lives as a means to get Japan to surrender unconditionally.
p3) President Truman is responsible for dropping the bomb.
p4) To kill innocents as a means to an end (getting Japan to surrender unconditionally) is murder
c2) President Truman is responsible for murder.
Author first disputes that Truman is somehow courageous because he made a tough decision. And, given the conditions, many lives were saved by dropping the bomb. But author points out the conditions were inappropriate, 'barbarous'-- those of insisting on unconditional surrender. (pg65) Author further reformulates the argument that you can 'do evil so that good may come' as 'any fool can be as much of a knave as suits him'. (pg65)
In the second section of the paper, author explores how war can sometimes allow for the killing of innocents, perhaps as accidental to attacking valid military targets. Yet if the means for accomplishing a military end involve the killing of innocents, this is not accidental-- this is murder. (pg66-7) This leads to a larger discussion of who compromises 'the innocent' in a war. The people who work in the factories that make munitions? The farmers who grow the food for the front? The conscripts who would prefer not to fight but were drafted? Relating to conscripts, they are not innocent because "innocent" refers not to a condition but an action: someone who is trying to harm you is not an innocent.(pg67)
Author also examines the argument that 'all war is horror; it is only a matter of how much'. Author believes that denying this argument also involves denying pacifism, which author believes is a false doctrine. For author, there are legitimate killings, especially ones to stop injustice or harm to peoples. (pg68-9) Author also briefly describes a justification for the death penalty-- the killing of someone who has been determined to be a malefactor to society. (pg68-9) Author then makes a mockery of the argument that, since all war is evil, it doesn't matter whether innocents die or not-- author considers the argument absurd, even if the premise were true.
Author ends the paper by commenting on the state of moral philosophy at Oxford that might have sanctioned giving Truman the honorarium. (pg71)
The Collected Philosophical Papers of GEM Anscombe, Vol 3: Ethics, Religion and Politics Ch 7 University of Minnesota Press, 1981 (Reprinted from pamphlet, Oxford 1957)
This paper takes a stance against Oxford's granting Harry Truman an honorary degree. Author considers Truman to be a villain, or at least unworthy of an honor. Author first starts with a series of fact-statements or observations: (pg62-4)
1) The Allies said they would follow the basic tenants of wartime respect for civilians as long as the Germans did too (assume this extends to the Japanese).
2) The goal of the war in Europe was established as 'unconditional surrender'. This absolutist position is questionable to author.
3) The Germans did seem to bomb indiscriminately.
4) Rhetoric surrounding the war was often about it being a fight between two whole nations, not two armies. The distinction between civilians and the military was deliberately blurred.
5) When the US declared war on Japan, they sought the objective of 'unconditional surrender'.
6) The Allies changed their strategy to involve widespread, mass bombings
7) The Allies refused to let Japan negotiate a surrender but instead use a new kind of weapon against them.
Author's primary principle in this paper is that to kill the innocent as a means to an end is, always, murder. (pg64) This isn't about 'following the rules as long as the other guy does', it is morally wrong no matter what. The argument is simple:
p1) The atomic bomb was dropped as a means of getting Japan to surrender unconditionally
p2) Innocent lives were undoubtedly killed by the bomb
c1) The person responsible for dropping the bomb killed innocent lives as a means to get Japan to surrender unconditionally.
p3) President Truman is responsible for dropping the bomb.
p4) To kill innocents as a means to an end (getting Japan to surrender unconditionally) is murder
c2) President Truman is responsible for murder.
Author first disputes that Truman is somehow courageous because he made a tough decision. And, given the conditions, many lives were saved by dropping the bomb. But author points out the conditions were inappropriate, 'barbarous'-- those of insisting on unconditional surrender. (pg65) Author further reformulates the argument that you can 'do evil so that good may come' as 'any fool can be as much of a knave as suits him'. (pg65)
In the second section of the paper, author explores how war can sometimes allow for the killing of innocents, perhaps as accidental to attacking valid military targets. Yet if the means for accomplishing a military end involve the killing of innocents, this is not accidental-- this is murder. (pg66-7) This leads to a larger discussion of who compromises 'the innocent' in a war. The people who work in the factories that make munitions? The farmers who grow the food for the front? The conscripts who would prefer not to fight but were drafted? Relating to conscripts, they are not innocent because "innocent" refers not to a condition but an action: someone who is trying to harm you is not an innocent.(pg67)
Author also examines the argument that 'all war is horror; it is only a matter of how much'. Author believes that denying this argument also involves denying pacifism, which author believes is a false doctrine. For author, there are legitimate killings, especially ones to stop injustice or harm to peoples. (pg68-9) Author also briefly describes a justification for the death penalty-- the killing of someone who has been determined to be a malefactor to society. (pg68-9) Author then makes a mockery of the argument that, since all war is evil, it doesn't matter whether innocents die or not-- author considers the argument absurd, even if the premise were true.
Author ends the paper by commenting on the state of moral philosophy at Oxford that might have sanctioned giving Truman the honorarium. (pg71)
10/15/10
Bennett, Jonathan - Whatever The Consequences
10/15/2010
Ethics, Thomson & Dworkin Eds, Harper & Row 1968
This paper seeks to dispute the so-called principle of double effect, which posits a moral difference between actively doing x and passively allowing x to happen (when you could have stopped it). The example that author uses throughout the entire paper is one of a woman who is in labor but has reached complications and will die unless a late-term abortion is performed. However, it is also possible to deliver the baby alive, but the mother will suffer complications and eventually die. Author wants to attack those who believe that there is a moral difference between killing the baby and 'letting the mother die' by delivering the baby. The principle under attack is: "It would always be wrong to kill an innocent human, whatever the consequences of not doing so", though at the outset (pg212) author acknowledges that it isn't possible to refute that principle directly. Instead the strategy will be to show that the structure of the principle, something like 'always don't do x, whatever the consequences' is morally vacuous.
To start, author does not seek discussion with interlocutors who take religious authority or divine command as the basis for the principle; author wants to talk with those who believe there is an independent way to ascertain the validity of the principle. (pg213) Those who follow the principle are provisionally stipulated as 'conservative'. Author argues the conservative makes the following claims: (pg214)
-It is wrong to kill an innocent, whatever the consequences
-operating on the baby will kill it
-not operating (and delivering the baby) is not killing the mother, since her death is only a consequence, not an act of killing
-operating is wrong, not operating is permissible
What is going on here is an Action/Consequence distinction, which author tries to unpack in most of the rest of the paper. An action is considered motion in the physical environment, but will also typically include some of the 'upshots', that is what happened as a result of the physical motion. But not all the 'upshots' or consequences will be included in an action-- some could be considered to fall on the side of mere consequences. Author believes this is a valid distinction, but wonders if there is moral salience to it, especially in the case of the woman in labor. For author, there are 6 ways to approach the distinction between a human action and the consequences that come from it: (pg216-7 & pg222-3)
a) The actor was highly confident that the upshot (consequences) would follow from the action
b) There was a high degree of certainty or high likelihood that the upshot would follow from the action, even if the actor didn't know it
c) The aim or intention with which the action is performed does not include the upshot (consequence), even though such a consequence may inevitably follow
d) An impartial observer who assesses the entire situation would assign a particular upshot to be part of an action
e) There is a high degree of immediacy, 'simplicity of causal connections', short time-lag, etc. for actions but not for consequences
f) Actions can only be activities of a person, while not-doing something, whatever the consequences, is not an action.
Author argues there is moral salience to a-c but they do not apply to the 'obstetrics case', and d-f do apply to the obstetrics case but aren't morally significant. (pg216) To start, a and b both are stipulated in the case that the doctor knows either the woman or the child will die depending on the doctor's actions. So the obstetrics case does not have these elements. And with c, the doctor doesn't kill the baby for the sake of killing the baby-- the doctor does so to save the mother. And vice-versa with saving the baby but killing the mother-- in neither case is the action performed for the sake of killing the innocent human. (pg217)
Author then takes an elaborate detour into the general philosophy behind the conservative principle. The conservative might want to argue that there is a higher degree of immediacy or certainty that the child will die compared to the dying mother. However, author believes this is the wrong kind of argument the conservative would want to make to justify her position. If that argument underwrites the distinction between an action and its consequence, then it might be possible to concoct a case where performing some intentional voluntary motion would create a small chance of killing an innocent but have a large immediate upshot of saving more innocents. This kind of argument is not a 'whatever the consequences' argument. Author discusses how a conservative like Anscombe first denies this kind of argument as an underwriter, but then helps herself to it in her footnotes. (pg218-221) In general, this is a discussion about the permissibility of using 'fantastical' examples in moral theory.
The second group of ways to support an Action/Consequence distinction d-f might have differences in the obstetrics case, but author claims that no one should consider them morally relevant. Author claims that d would actually argue against the conservative position and moves to e, the case of a closer causal connection or a higher degree of immediacy in the killing than in the letting die. Author believes this element is loosely connected with a and b. But e has a difference in immediacy in the obstetrics case, (pg224) where there is no asymmetry in cases a and b (author claims). Author ties e and f together as basically using a distinction between actions and refraining-from-acting to do its work. Though there is a difference, author claims the difference isn't morally relevant. The difference between acting so that x happens and not-acting and allowing x to happen are laid out by author: (pg225-7)
Similarities:
-bodily movements
-the happening of x (e.g. someone dying)
Differences:
-there is a limited set of activities that could be performed in order to kill
-there is a wide set of activities that could be performed when letting-die
These differences are merely of degree, which may not be comforting to the conservative anyway, since it is possible to construct a circumstance where actions are so limited to destroy the difference in set size. More immediately, your moral judgment on whether someone is responsible for a death does not lessen once you learn that A could have killed B a whole variety of ways, not just the way A actually killed B. (pg228-229) And this is the fatal difference-- the set size of the ways in which an impermissible action might have occurred is metaphysically significant but not morally so.
The last portion of the paper discusses the reasons to perhaps stick with such a 'whatever the consequences' rule like the one. A conservative might object to the example, claiming it is too fantastic or fanciful and that it unfairly tests a good rule. Author counters that the example used in the paper is of a kind: there will be other times where this kind of case might come up. A conservative who pushes further might use two different arguments: (pg231-2)
1) You missed something when you analyzed the elements of the Action/Consequence distinction-- something that is morally salient but not nameable. Reply: this is a serious issue; do the tough work to elucidate the moral difference. If you can't, then drop the reply.
2) We must have some rules, or else we would never be able to decide anything on time. A host of particular situations are too complex to try to resolve one-by-one-- we need rules to do it efficiently. Reply: This is a focus on the particular, not the specific. You can make two rules: one that specifies what to do in certain kinds of situations, another that specifies what to do in other kinds of situation. The objection is about the particular, not the specific. Further, this argument is consequentialist: 'if we don't have rules to follow, look at the consequences that might occur!', which doesn't seem to be appealing to the conservative anyway. (pg234)
Ethics, Thomson & Dworkin Eds, Harper & Row 1968
This paper seeks to dispute the so-called principle of double effect, which posits a moral difference between actively doing x and passively allowing x to happen (when you could have stopped it). The example that author uses throughout the entire paper is one of a woman who is in labor but has reached complications and will die unless a late-term abortion is performed. However, it is also possible to deliver the baby alive, but the mother will suffer complications and eventually die. Author wants to attack those who believe that there is a moral difference between killing the baby and 'letting the mother die' by delivering the baby. The principle under attack is: "It would always be wrong to kill an innocent human, whatever the consequences of not doing so", though at the outset (pg212) author acknowledges that it isn't possible to refute that principle directly. Instead the strategy will be to show that the structure of the principle, something like 'always don't do x, whatever the consequences' is morally vacuous.
To start, author does not seek discussion with interlocutors who take religious authority or divine command as the basis for the principle; author wants to talk with those who believe there is an independent way to ascertain the validity of the principle. (pg213) Those who follow the principle are provisionally stipulated as 'conservative'. Author argues the conservative makes the following claims: (pg214)
-It is wrong to kill an innocent, whatever the consequences
-operating on the baby will kill it
-not operating (and delivering the baby) is not killing the mother, since her death is only a consequence, not an act of killing
-operating is wrong, not operating is permissible
What is going on here is an Action/Consequence distinction, which author tries to unpack in most of the rest of the paper. An action is considered motion in the physical environment, but will also typically include some of the 'upshots', that is what happened as a result of the physical motion. But not all the 'upshots' or consequences will be included in an action-- some could be considered to fall on the side of mere consequences. Author believes this is a valid distinction, but wonders if there is moral salience to it, especially in the case of the woman in labor. For author, there are 6 ways to approach the distinction between a human action and the consequences that come from it: (pg216-7 & pg222-3)
a) The actor was highly confident that the upshot (consequences) would follow from the action
b) There was a high degree of certainty or high likelihood that the upshot would follow from the action, even if the actor didn't know it
c) The aim or intention with which the action is performed does not include the upshot (consequence), even though such a consequence may inevitably follow
d) An impartial observer who assesses the entire situation would assign a particular upshot to be part of an action
e) There is a high degree of immediacy, 'simplicity of causal connections', short time-lag, etc. for actions but not for consequences
f) Actions can only be activities of a person, while not-doing something, whatever the consequences, is not an action.
Author argues there is moral salience to a-c but they do not apply to the 'obstetrics case', and d-f do apply to the obstetrics case but aren't morally significant. (pg216) To start, a and b both are stipulated in the case that the doctor knows either the woman or the child will die depending on the doctor's actions. So the obstetrics case does not have these elements. And with c, the doctor doesn't kill the baby for the sake of killing the baby-- the doctor does so to save the mother. And vice-versa with saving the baby but killing the mother-- in neither case is the action performed for the sake of killing the innocent human. (pg217)
Author then takes an elaborate detour into the general philosophy behind the conservative principle. The conservative might want to argue that there is a higher degree of immediacy or certainty that the child will die compared to the dying mother. However, author believes this is the wrong kind of argument the conservative would want to make to justify her position. If that argument underwrites the distinction between an action and its consequence, then it might be possible to concoct a case where performing some intentional voluntary motion would create a small chance of killing an innocent but have a large immediate upshot of saving more innocents. This kind of argument is not a 'whatever the consequences' argument. Author discusses how a conservative like Anscombe first denies this kind of argument as an underwriter, but then helps herself to it in her footnotes. (pg218-221) In general, this is a discussion about the permissibility of using 'fantastical' examples in moral theory.
The second group of ways to support an Action/Consequence distinction d-f might have differences in the obstetrics case, but author claims that no one should consider them morally relevant. Author claims that d would actually argue against the conservative position and moves to e, the case of a closer causal connection or a higher degree of immediacy in the killing than in the letting die. Author believes this element is loosely connected with a and b. But e has a difference in immediacy in the obstetrics case, (pg224) where there is no asymmetry in cases a and b (author claims). Author ties e and f together as basically using a distinction between actions and refraining-from-acting to do its work. Though there is a difference, author claims the difference isn't morally relevant. The difference between acting so that x happens and not-acting and allowing x to happen are laid out by author: (pg225-7)
Similarities:
-bodily movements
-the happening of x (e.g. someone dying)
Differences:
-there is a limited set of activities that could be performed in order to kill
-there is a wide set of activities that could be performed when letting-die
These differences are merely of degree, which may not be comforting to the conservative anyway, since it is possible to construct a circumstance where actions are so limited to destroy the difference in set size. More immediately, your moral judgment on whether someone is responsible for a death does not lessen once you learn that A could have killed B a whole variety of ways, not just the way A actually killed B. (pg228-229) And this is the fatal difference-- the set size of the ways in which an impermissible action might have occurred is metaphysically significant but not morally so.
The last portion of the paper discusses the reasons to perhaps stick with such a 'whatever the consequences' rule like the one. A conservative might object to the example, claiming it is too fantastic or fanciful and that it unfairly tests a good rule. Author counters that the example used in the paper is of a kind: there will be other times where this kind of case might come up. A conservative who pushes further might use two different arguments: (pg231-2)
1) You missed something when you analyzed the elements of the Action/Consequence distinction-- something that is morally salient but not nameable. Reply: this is a serious issue; do the tough work to elucidate the moral difference. If you can't, then drop the reply.
2) We must have some rules, or else we would never be able to decide anything on time. A host of particular situations are too complex to try to resolve one-by-one-- we need rules to do it efficiently. Reply: This is a focus on the particular, not the specific. You can make two rules: one that specifies what to do in certain kinds of situations, another that specifies what to do in other kinds of situation. The objection is about the particular, not the specific. Further, this argument is consequentialist: 'if we don't have rules to follow, look at the consequences that might occur!', which doesn't seem to be appealing to the conservative anyway. (pg234)
9/24/10
Donagan, Alan - Consistency
09/24/2010
The Theory of Morality ch 5, University of Chicago Press, 1979
This chapter attempts to deal with possible inconsistency in the moral system author has laid out in the previous three chapters. Author is less concerned about consistency between all the different precepts, since undoubtedly he mis-formulated some of them in a way that would generate moral conflict. The larger question is whether a system such as this in general is prone to inconsistency. Inconsistency is equated to moral perplexity-- there being a circumstance where the moral precepts give conflicting answers on what to do. Viewed in this light, author looks at Aquinas' cases of moral perplexity: perplexity on account of some prior misdeed, and essential perplexity. Perplexity due to some prior misdeed is the circumstance where a prior action or intention was impermissible or culpable and now the agent is faced with conflicting choices about how to get aright. Author back others like Kant and Aquinas in claiming that this conditional perplexity is not a threat to the system's consistency. (pg145) This still leaves moral perplexity 'simpliciter'.
The possibility of perplexity simpliciter is first given by Bishop Kirk, claiming that only a moral system with one principle could be said to contain no contradictions a priori. Any system with more than one inviolable principle may results in a conflict between the principles. Author denies this, claiming that one can easily imagine two inviolable principles ('absolute prohibitions'), such as not lying and not killing, which would never come in conflict. (pg146-7) Author also considers Peter Geach's conception of Divine law, which never conflicts due to divine providence but can appear to do so because of limits on human understanding. Author does not help himself to this because of the theological commitments it entails, and Donagan has taken a secular route. Author also does not use an ordering principle or weighting, since it is 'incompatible with the very nature of deductive systems'.(pg148) Instead, author claims that there is a structural principle that is derivable from the fundamental principle of respect for rational agents: 'It is impermissible to do evil that good may come of it'. (pg149) [his argument is on pg155] Author labels this the Pauline principle after St. Paul.
Author reviews the previous work, specifically second-order and first-order precepts. The two levels can't conflict since all manner of combinatorial schemes are possible without moral perplexity. Furthermore, author claims that second-order precepts are not independent enough from first-order ones. Thus if there is any inconsistency, it is among the first-order precepts (permissible and impermissible actions). (pg149-150) Author then reviews the different types of duties given in the first-order precepts: duties to self and duties to others within and without institutions. During this time author claims that it isn't possible that one needs to hurt oneself in order to respect others. In cases where there must be a choice between two impermissible acts (not because of perplexity simpliciter, but perplexity after a prior violation), author does not admit that there are degrees of moral impermissibility. Instead, impermissible wrongs can be more or less 'grave'. (pg152) Hence the precept: 'When you must choose between evils, choose the least.' During the review, the principle of beneficence arises as a potential source of inconsistency (pg153). Here the Pauline principle does some work, as does Kant's 'perfect' and 'imperfect' duties. Author argues that some acts are impermissible, but among the permissible ways to promote human well-being, there are many different plans of action. One must be beneficent, but it is left open exactly how. (pg154) Author also discusses Jonathan Bennett's objection to absolute systems because they do not take into account bad consequences. (pg156-7)
The next section (5.3) deals with a 'double effect', an action that is both good and bad. Author talks about the exact formulation of this idea, notably a conflict in formulation between JP Gury and Germain Grisez. (pg158) A case of double effect is killing in self-defense (if killing is wrong). Here it is permissible to defend oneself, even to the death, and yet killing is also impermissible and presumably a grave evil. (pg159) Author also takes the case of abortion: under Gury's formulation it is impermissible to kill the baby to save the mother's life. However, it would probably be permissible to extract a 'cancerous womb' to save a woman's life, even if that cancerous wound happened to contain a baby. For Gury, the principle turns on whether the evil was the means of the good effect or not.(pg159) Author rejects Gury's formulation because of author's previous work in the theory of action; both cases are agent actions voluntarily done.
Author contrasts Gury with the thinking of Germain Grisez, for whom the principle of double effect was about analyzing two factors: the unity of performance (acts) and the unity of intention. If an act cannot be divided into smaller acts which might avoid double effect, then an examination of the intention with which the act is performed is the important factor for double effect. For Grisez, an intention is licit if it is performed for the good effect and not for the bad, and the bad is out-proportioned by the good. (pg161) For instance for Grisez, an abortion may be performed in order to save the mother's life, and yet it is equally permissible to kill the mother in order to save the fetus. (pg162) The problem here is the absolute abstention from violating or coercing an aggressor. The Judeo-Christian tradition sees a fetus that happens to threaten the mother's life as an aggressor, somewhat ungrateful for its life. (pg162) For author however, the performance of an impermissible action leaves one open to coercion (or death, if necessary) because she has forfeit the right to respect. For author then, the principle of double effect is useless since the cases it was meant to cover are not problematic. (pg163) This is lucky for author, since author also objects to Grisez's treatment of intentions as the only morally relevant components of actions (see ch 4).
The final section (5.4) discusses a unique feature of the principle of beneficence, pregnancy. There is a possibility for moral perplexity here because of the possibility of the human race outstripping the available resources. If birth control is impermissible and Malthusian (overpopulation) problems are possible, it seems there could be conflict. However, author argues that contraception is permissible. (pg167) However, abortion is impermissible. (pg168-170) Author considers two arguments for the permissibility of abortion. The first is that a fetus is not a human being. Author: 'that is forced' (pg168). The second is that humans do not have the right to be respected as rational agents, only full-fledged members of a moral community have that right. Author: even if I grant that, isn't it true that a fetus will become a moral community-member if you nurture and let it? 'If respect is owed to beings because they are in a certain state, it is owed to whatever, by its very nature, develops into that state' (pg171). Author does allow for an abortion in the case of rape, since the mother cannot be subjected to labor and child-rearing without a prior voluntary action (pg169). For author, any case where the pregnancy is not the result of a voluntary action would excuse the mother removing the fetus, viable or not.
The Theory of Morality ch 5, University of Chicago Press, 1979
This chapter attempts to deal with possible inconsistency in the moral system author has laid out in the previous three chapters. Author is less concerned about consistency between all the different precepts, since undoubtedly he mis-formulated some of them in a way that would generate moral conflict. The larger question is whether a system such as this in general is prone to inconsistency. Inconsistency is equated to moral perplexity-- there being a circumstance where the moral precepts give conflicting answers on what to do. Viewed in this light, author looks at Aquinas' cases of moral perplexity: perplexity on account of some prior misdeed, and essential perplexity. Perplexity due to some prior misdeed is the circumstance where a prior action or intention was impermissible or culpable and now the agent is faced with conflicting choices about how to get aright. Author back others like Kant and Aquinas in claiming that this conditional perplexity is not a threat to the system's consistency. (pg145) This still leaves moral perplexity 'simpliciter'.
The possibility of perplexity simpliciter is first given by Bishop Kirk, claiming that only a moral system with one principle could be said to contain no contradictions a priori. Any system with more than one inviolable principle may results in a conflict between the principles. Author denies this, claiming that one can easily imagine two inviolable principles ('absolute prohibitions'), such as not lying and not killing, which would never come in conflict. (pg146-7) Author also considers Peter Geach's conception of Divine law, which never conflicts due to divine providence but can appear to do so because of limits on human understanding. Author does not help himself to this because of the theological commitments it entails, and Donagan has taken a secular route. Author also does not use an ordering principle or weighting, since it is 'incompatible with the very nature of deductive systems'.(pg148) Instead, author claims that there is a structural principle that is derivable from the fundamental principle of respect for rational agents: 'It is impermissible to do evil that good may come of it'. (pg149) [his argument is on pg155] Author labels this the Pauline principle after St. Paul.
Author reviews the previous work, specifically second-order and first-order precepts. The two levels can't conflict since all manner of combinatorial schemes are possible without moral perplexity. Furthermore, author claims that second-order precepts are not independent enough from first-order ones. Thus if there is any inconsistency, it is among the first-order precepts (permissible and impermissible actions). (pg149-150) Author then reviews the different types of duties given in the first-order precepts: duties to self and duties to others within and without institutions. During this time author claims that it isn't possible that one needs to hurt oneself in order to respect others. In cases where there must be a choice between two impermissible acts (not because of perplexity simpliciter, but perplexity after a prior violation), author does not admit that there are degrees of moral impermissibility. Instead, impermissible wrongs can be more or less 'grave'. (pg152) Hence the precept: 'When you must choose between evils, choose the least.' During the review, the principle of beneficence arises as a potential source of inconsistency (pg153). Here the Pauline principle does some work, as does Kant's 'perfect' and 'imperfect' duties. Author argues that some acts are impermissible, but among the permissible ways to promote human well-being, there are many different plans of action. One must be beneficent, but it is left open exactly how. (pg154) Author also discusses Jonathan Bennett's objection to absolute systems because they do not take into account bad consequences. (pg156-7)
The next section (5.3) deals with a 'double effect', an action that is both good and bad. Author talks about the exact formulation of this idea, notably a conflict in formulation between JP Gury and Germain Grisez. (pg158) A case of double effect is killing in self-defense (if killing is wrong). Here it is permissible to defend oneself, even to the death, and yet killing is also impermissible and presumably a grave evil. (pg159) Author also takes the case of abortion: under Gury's formulation it is impermissible to kill the baby to save the mother's life. However, it would probably be permissible to extract a 'cancerous womb' to save a woman's life, even if that cancerous wound happened to contain a baby. For Gury, the principle turns on whether the evil was the means of the good effect or not.(pg159) Author rejects Gury's formulation because of author's previous work in the theory of action; both cases are agent actions voluntarily done.
Author contrasts Gury with the thinking of Germain Grisez, for whom the principle of double effect was about analyzing two factors: the unity of performance (acts) and the unity of intention. If an act cannot be divided into smaller acts which might avoid double effect, then an examination of the intention with which the act is performed is the important factor for double effect. For Grisez, an intention is licit if it is performed for the good effect and not for the bad, and the bad is out-proportioned by the good. (pg161) For instance for Grisez, an abortion may be performed in order to save the mother's life, and yet it is equally permissible to kill the mother in order to save the fetus. (pg162) The problem here is the absolute abstention from violating or coercing an aggressor. The Judeo-Christian tradition sees a fetus that happens to threaten the mother's life as an aggressor, somewhat ungrateful for its life. (pg162) For author however, the performance of an impermissible action leaves one open to coercion (or death, if necessary) because she has forfeit the right to respect. For author then, the principle of double effect is useless since the cases it was meant to cover are not problematic. (pg163) This is lucky for author, since author also objects to Grisez's treatment of intentions as the only morally relevant components of actions (see ch 4).
The final section (5.4) discusses a unique feature of the principle of beneficence, pregnancy. There is a possibility for moral perplexity here because of the possibility of the human race outstripping the available resources. If birth control is impermissible and Malthusian (overpopulation) problems are possible, it seems there could be conflict. However, author argues that contraception is permissible. (pg167) However, abortion is impermissible. (pg168-170) Author considers two arguments for the permissibility of abortion. The first is that a fetus is not a human being. Author: 'that is forced' (pg168). The second is that humans do not have the right to be respected as rational agents, only full-fledged members of a moral community have that right. Author: even if I grant that, isn't it true that a fetus will become a moral community-member if you nurture and let it? 'If respect is owed to beings because they are in a certain state, it is owed to whatever, by its very nature, develops into that state' (pg171). Author does allow for an abortion in the case of rape, since the mother cannot be subjected to labor and child-rearing without a prior voluntary action (pg169). For author, any case where the pregnancy is not the result of a voluntary action would excuse the mother removing the fetus, viable or not.
9/10/10
Donagan, Alan - Second-Order Precepts
9/10/2010
The Theory of Morality, Ch 4 University of Chicago Press, 1979
This chapter deals with intentions and culpability. Relying on the discussion from section 2.2 of chapter 2, author reminds us that one can perform an impermissible action yet be inculpable, or conversely be culpable after performing a permissible one. This is because actions are intensional, opaque to substitution of similarly referring expressions. (This is old philosophical ground.) Author goes through a prolonged discussion of human agency. An action from a human isn't necessarily representative of her agency-- it could be involuntarily like the beating of a heart. 'Acts', rather than 'actions' are 'ascribable to a man as a doer'. (pg113) Yet author reverts back to describing 'human actions' as those containing human agency (pg114). The taxonomy breaks down as follows:
-There are physical actions and physical acts, and physical acts can be voluntary or involuntary
-There are just mental acts, but some are still voluntary and some involuntary (e.g. seeing a teacup on the table is a mental occurrence but not really voluntary-- it is perceptual or sensational)
-Whenever a human acts voluntarily, aka knowingly/wittingly, this is an example of agency.
Author rejects a colloquial version of "voluntary" in favor of a strict one: an act done with agency, knowingly, is voluntary. If you are threatened with death or the performance of an act, that act, if you choose to perform it, is voluntary. (pg115)
Author engages in a prolonged discussion clarifying author's theory of human agency. First is to reject the believe-desire pair as causal for human action (acts) but rather as supplying motivations. (pg115-6) An interesting aside is made by author where he considers how someone might contemplate what profession to pursue and how 'it is quite possible that he will have no inclination to any.' (pg117) [This is a comment on my belief that humans are unable to make such macro choices.] The next discussion is about the inability to substitute predicates or objects under different descriptions when describing a person's human action (act). The idea goes as follows: that Oedipus did voluntarily kill a 'haughty stranger' at the crossroads is true. That he voluntarily killed his father is false. Yet the haughty stranger was his father. That it isn't possible to substitute descriptors and preserve truth is the mark of the intensional, rather than the extensional. Author's solution: "An act will be said to be voluntary only as falling under the descriptions which its agent is aware it falls under." (pg118-119) This leads to taxonomic trouble, since there are human actions that are now not voluntary (e.g. Oedipus killing his father). Author borrows from Davidson for his solution: all human actions are due to human agency, but they are only voluntary if falling under certain descriptions. (pg120)
So, to reiterate: human actions (acts) are a subset of actions-involving-humans, and human actions (acts) are all expressions of human agency. Human agency performs all acts, and those acts (however described) are a product of human agency. However, they are only considered voluntary if they fall under the description the human agent was aware of or did wittingly. The moral precepts of what acts are permissible and impermissible are intensional-- that is, an act must not fall into a certain description. However, there can be cases where a human action (act) violates a precept but the agent did not know it. (pg121) In such a case, it is a violation of respect due to a rational creature to hold someone responsible for acts that fall under descriptions she did not know about. "Actions are culpable only as falling under descriptions under which they are voluntary, that is, done knowingly" (pg121-2)
The next distinction (4.2) involves intentions. Intentions are a subset of voluntary actions, and are done 'according to a plan', though it doesn't have to be explicit. (pg122) Author resists thinking of human action as causal consequences of intentions (pg123-4), and also resists the thinking that someone intends all the foreseeable consequences of her actions (pg124), using the Christian/martyrdom example again. (Imagine a Christian who is threatened that he must either renounce his religion or be killed. Author wants to resist the idea that, if he refuses to renounce, he intended his own death.) However, just because one doesn't intend something she does voluntarily and knowingly, that does not remove her culpability. Thus there is the case of the creditor who knows he will ruin the debtor if he calls for payment, but doesn't intend to ruin him, just to receive his payment. He is responsible for all foreseeable consequences, not just the intended ones (pg125). Intentions, then, are morally important not because they can excuse someone from culpability, but because they can add a special dimension of culpability. This dimension is one of intending to perform an impermissible human action (act) but the act fails to come about for whatever reason; it is impermissible to intend what it is impermissible to do. (pg125) Author seems to think there is some difficulty here since occasionally one may willingly commit violence against another with the sole intention of committing violence against that other, but knowing that she does so justly because e.g. it is defending a third party from the unjust aggression of the other. Because of the possibility of doing the right thing but with the wrong intentions, author adds the precept 'it is impermissible to do what it is impermissible to intend'. (pg127)
Author then moves on to ignorance, and how it may reduce (or not) culpability. Since voluntary actions are knowing actions, an action from ignorance can be involuntary, therefore, inculpable. However, there are kinds of ignorance, and not all kinds are the right sort to eliminate culpability. Author distinguishes between two kinds to start: ignorance of the non-moral facts (that the 'haughty stranger' = your father), or ignorance of moral facts (that you shouldn't kill your father). Author sides with traditional practice in not excusing ignorance of moral facts, at least for a fully rational agent. (pg128) So perhaps ignorance of the non-moral facts could reduce culpability; author then introduces two more distinctions: acts done because of ignorance, and acts done in ignorance. Further distinctions immediately follow: two kinds of acts done in ignorance: acts that aren't complete human actions due to some impairment; and acts that are done without knowing particular non-moral facts, but even if they had been known, they wouldn't have affected the outcome.
So the taxonomy of ignorance is as follows:
-ignorance of moral facts = culpable
-ignorance of non-moral facts: two kinds: acts because of ignorance vs acts in ignorance
-acts because of ignorance: in these circumstances, one must examine the intentions
-acts in ignorance: two kinds: impaired or non-caring
In the case of acts because of ignorance, author argues that one can be inculpable only if, once informed, an agent would have acted permissibly, that is, the agents intentions were good. (pg130)
In the first case of 'in ignorance', the agent is inculpable unless she could have prevented her impairment, in which case being impaired is similar to having affected ignorance-- a spurious excuse and culpable. In the second case, where the agent does not care what the non-moral facts are, author pronounces her culpable. (pg129) Another close relative to this is recklessness. Ultimately author wants to find the precept that ignorance is culpable iff it springs from negligence-- from want of due care.
The final discussion of the chapter involves the conscience. Author argues that the conscience is largely influenced by cultural norms and expectations, using the example of Huckleberry Finn's bad conscience about letting Miss Watson's property, a slave named Jim, run off. The right thing was to help this slave escape, but it was contrary to Finn's conscience. (pg131-2) Author examines the historical place of conscience-- as a faculty or a disposition (pg132-3). The trouble with a conscience is that it can produce honest cases of disagreement. Since this is contrary to a deontological theory of morality, author is committed to consciences being error prone. However, one becomes culpable if one disobeys the judgment of her conscience, even if her conscience is in error. (pg135-6) Author then aims to clarify the confusion some philosophers have over the distinctions between conscience and second-order precepts and first-order precepts, using Prichard's "Duty and Ignorance of Fact" and Ross' "The Foundations of Ethics" as targets. Since conscience can err, those in the right may force people to act permissibly against their conscience, e.g. force conscription or, perhaps, to force fundamentalist Muslims to allow women to go to school.
Lastly (4.5), author discusses a moral hazard: the corruption of one's consciousness and downfall of her conscience. The explanation is that a human agent can choose what to focus on, what to pay attention to-- how to direct one's attention to particular facts (and not to others). It becomes a "sham" when one fixes her consciousness on just one particular fact to the exclusion of other pertinent ones. Yet it can allow for denial of the relevant moral considerations that might lead to the right conclusion about what to do. This is a short theory of human mental life that accounts for how the conscience of one agent, or even a whole society, can become corrupted.
The Theory of Morality, Ch 4 University of Chicago Press, 1979
This chapter deals with intentions and culpability. Relying on the discussion from section 2.2 of chapter 2, author reminds us that one can perform an impermissible action yet be inculpable, or conversely be culpable after performing a permissible one. This is because actions are intensional, opaque to substitution of similarly referring expressions. (This is old philosophical ground.) Author goes through a prolonged discussion of human agency. An action from a human isn't necessarily representative of her agency-- it could be involuntarily like the beating of a heart. 'Acts', rather than 'actions' are 'ascribable to a man as a doer'. (pg113) Yet author reverts back to describing 'human actions' as those containing human agency (pg114). The taxonomy breaks down as follows:
-There are physical actions and physical acts, and physical acts can be voluntary or involuntary
-There are just mental acts, but some are still voluntary and some involuntary (e.g. seeing a teacup on the table is a mental occurrence but not really voluntary-- it is perceptual or sensational)
-Whenever a human acts voluntarily, aka knowingly/wittingly, this is an example of agency.
Author rejects a colloquial version of "voluntary" in favor of a strict one: an act done with agency, knowingly, is voluntary. If you are threatened with death or the performance of an act, that act, if you choose to perform it, is voluntary. (pg115)
Author engages in a prolonged discussion clarifying author's theory of human agency. First is to reject the believe-desire pair as causal for human action (acts) but rather as supplying motivations. (pg115-6) An interesting aside is made by author where he considers how someone might contemplate what profession to pursue and how 'it is quite possible that he will have no inclination to any.' (pg117) [This is a comment on my belief that humans are unable to make such macro choices.] The next discussion is about the inability to substitute predicates or objects under different descriptions when describing a person's human action (act). The idea goes as follows: that Oedipus did voluntarily kill a 'haughty stranger' at the crossroads is true. That he voluntarily killed his father is false. Yet the haughty stranger was his father. That it isn't possible to substitute descriptors and preserve truth is the mark of the intensional, rather than the extensional. Author's solution: "An act will be said to be voluntary only as falling under the descriptions which its agent is aware it falls under." (pg118-119) This leads to taxonomic trouble, since there are human actions that are now not voluntary (e.g. Oedipus killing his father). Author borrows from Davidson for his solution: all human actions are due to human agency, but they are only voluntary if falling under certain descriptions. (pg120)
So, to reiterate: human actions (acts) are a subset of actions-involving-humans, and human actions (acts) are all expressions of human agency. Human agency performs all acts, and those acts (however described) are a product of human agency. However, they are only considered voluntary if they fall under the description the human agent was aware of or did wittingly. The moral precepts of what acts are permissible and impermissible are intensional-- that is, an act must not fall into a certain description. However, there can be cases where a human action (act) violates a precept but the agent did not know it. (pg121) In such a case, it is a violation of respect due to a rational creature to hold someone responsible for acts that fall under descriptions she did not know about. "Actions are culpable only as falling under descriptions under which they are voluntary, that is, done knowingly" (pg121-2)
The next distinction (4.2) involves intentions. Intentions are a subset of voluntary actions, and are done 'according to a plan', though it doesn't have to be explicit. (pg122) Author resists thinking of human action as causal consequences of intentions (pg123-4), and also resists the thinking that someone intends all the foreseeable consequences of her actions (pg124), using the Christian/martyrdom example again. (Imagine a Christian who is threatened that he must either renounce his religion or be killed. Author wants to resist the idea that, if he refuses to renounce, he intended his own death.) However, just because one doesn't intend something she does voluntarily and knowingly, that does not remove her culpability. Thus there is the case of the creditor who knows he will ruin the debtor if he calls for payment, but doesn't intend to ruin him, just to receive his payment. He is responsible for all foreseeable consequences, not just the intended ones (pg125). Intentions, then, are morally important not because they can excuse someone from culpability, but because they can add a special dimension of culpability. This dimension is one of intending to perform an impermissible human action (act) but the act fails to come about for whatever reason; it is impermissible to intend what it is impermissible to do. (pg125) Author seems to think there is some difficulty here since occasionally one may willingly commit violence against another with the sole intention of committing violence against that other, but knowing that she does so justly because e.g. it is defending a third party from the unjust aggression of the other. Because of the possibility of doing the right thing but with the wrong intentions, author adds the precept 'it is impermissible to do what it is impermissible to intend'. (pg127)
Author then moves on to ignorance, and how it may reduce (or not) culpability. Since voluntary actions are knowing actions, an action from ignorance can be involuntary, therefore, inculpable. However, there are kinds of ignorance, and not all kinds are the right sort to eliminate culpability. Author distinguishes between two kinds to start: ignorance of the non-moral facts (that the 'haughty stranger' = your father), or ignorance of moral facts (that you shouldn't kill your father). Author sides with traditional practice in not excusing ignorance of moral facts, at least for a fully rational agent. (pg128) So perhaps ignorance of the non-moral facts could reduce culpability; author then introduces two more distinctions: acts done because of ignorance, and acts done in ignorance. Further distinctions immediately follow: two kinds of acts done in ignorance: acts that aren't complete human actions due to some impairment; and acts that are done without knowing particular non-moral facts, but even if they had been known, they wouldn't have affected the outcome.
So the taxonomy of ignorance is as follows:
-ignorance of moral facts = culpable
-ignorance of non-moral facts: two kinds: acts because of ignorance vs acts in ignorance
-acts because of ignorance: in these circumstances, one must examine the intentions
-acts in ignorance: two kinds: impaired or non-caring
In the case of acts because of ignorance, author argues that one can be inculpable only if, once informed, an agent would have acted permissibly, that is, the agents intentions were good. (pg130)
In the first case of 'in ignorance', the agent is inculpable unless she could have prevented her impairment, in which case being impaired is similar to having affected ignorance-- a spurious excuse and culpable. In the second case, where the agent does not care what the non-moral facts are, author pronounces her culpable. (pg129) Another close relative to this is recklessness. Ultimately author wants to find the precept that ignorance is culpable iff it springs from negligence-- from want of due care.
The final discussion of the chapter involves the conscience. Author argues that the conscience is largely influenced by cultural norms and expectations, using the example of Huckleberry Finn's bad conscience about letting Miss Watson's property, a slave named Jim, run off. The right thing was to help this slave escape, but it was contrary to Finn's conscience. (pg131-2) Author examines the historical place of conscience-- as a faculty or a disposition (pg132-3). The trouble with a conscience is that it can produce honest cases of disagreement. Since this is contrary to a deontological theory of morality, author is committed to consciences being error prone. However, one becomes culpable if one disobeys the judgment of her conscience, even if her conscience is in error. (pg135-6) Author then aims to clarify the confusion some philosophers have over the distinctions between conscience and second-order precepts and first-order precepts, using Prichard's "Duty and Ignorance of Fact" and Ross' "The Foundations of Ethics" as targets. Since conscience can err, those in the right may force people to act permissibly against their conscience, e.g. force conscription or, perhaps, to force fundamentalist Muslims to allow women to go to school.
Lastly (4.5), author discusses a moral hazard: the corruption of one's consciousness and downfall of her conscience. The explanation is that a human agent can choose what to focus on, what to pay attention to-- how to direct one's attention to particular facts (and not to others). It becomes a "sham" when one fixes her consciousness on just one particular fact to the exclusion of other pertinent ones. Yet it can allow for denial of the relevant moral considerations that might lead to the right conclusion about what to do. This is a short theory of human mental life that accounts for how the conscience of one agent, or even a whole society, can become corrupted.
8/20/10
Donagan, Alan - First-Order Precepts
08/20/2010
The Theory of Morality Ch 3, University of Chicago Press, 1979
In this chapter author lays out the duties to oneself, duties to others in a non-institutional format, and finally duties to others through institutions, including both contractual and generic civil society duties. These are all precepts of the first-order, that is, regarding what it is permissible, impermissible, and required to perform. The second-order precepts are regarding intentions and are not covered in this chapter.
In section 3.2 author describes duties to oneself. The first is not to commit suicide at will: "it seems evident that if one is to respect oneself as a rational creature, one may not hold one's life cheap, as something to be taken at will."(pg76) However there are circumstances that make suicide permissible. The two cases author considers is where an individual is sick or affected such that she becomes dangerous to others (pg78), and the case where she is in an inescapable set of dehumanizing or tortuous conditions. (pg79) The extension of not killing oneself at will is not to mutilate or impair oneself at will, yet this precept author backs away from, claiming that it is not part of our traditional common morality. Becoming addicted to a drug isn't permissible, but general use that temporarily impairs judgment somehow is fine.(pg79-80) "For anybody to place any kind of drug-induced enjoyment before the full use of his capacities as a rational creature, is a plain case of failure to respect himself as the kind of being he is." For author, there is a positive duty to oneself, and that is to develop a life-plan, "a coherent plan of life according to which, by morally permissible actions, his mental and physical powers may be developed." (pg80) Author calls this the Principle of Culture. There are innumerable acceptable plans, e.g. soldier, professor, factor worker [?], provided its behavior is morally permissible. It is under this life-plan duty that an agent is required not to neglect her health, subject of course, to the risks inherent in her particular life plan.
Section 3.3 describes non-institutional duties to others. The Principle of Culture is transformed into the Principle of Beneficence, (pg85-6) where it is "impermissible not to promote the well-being of others by actions in themselves permissible, inasmuch as one can do so without proportionate inconvenience." This duty, author claims, "derives from their character as rational creatures, not from their desert."(pg85) The duty does not lay much claim from the well-developed to the well-developed, since it is each's obligation to flourish; the duty is rather more aimed at dependents, orphans, the sick, the injured, the incapacitated, the afflicted. (pg85) However, this duty also makes it impermissible to frustrate others' morally permissible projects, and to "[abstain] from actions that would foreseeably elicit responses by which others would be injured." (pg85) And of course it is impermissible to promote the morally permissible (or even praiseworthy) goals of another through impermissible actions (e.g. kidnapping the homeless for cancer research). (pg85-6) Part of the principle of beneficence is extended to combatants in war: it is impermissible to harm non-combatants in a just war (and of course an unjust war is impermissible...).(pg87) Another extension involves refraining from hurting the reputation or honor of another, or of disparaging another, even when accurate, unless it is to prevent a wrong from being committed (pg88).
Prior to the discussion of the Principle of Beneficence, author lays out one against harming or threatening to harm another at will. The justification for this is that respect for other rational beings entails "treating every normal adult as responsible for the conduct of his own affairs", and that "[interfering] by force with anybody else's conduct of his life, unless there is a special adequate reason, is not to respect him as a rational creature."(pg82) This does not immediately apply to children, the insane, and other quasi-rational (or not) agents. The rule is against "at-will" force, since presumably some force will be permissible in order to avoid greater harm to others. (pg82-3, pg85) Here author gives us a teaser about abortion. The extension of this precept of physical force is the force of will, that is a prohibition against slavery. (pg83-4) Author claims this is a fundamental principle of Judeo-Christian morality, even though both cultures lived with it for hundreds of years.(pg84)
The final non-institutional duty to others is the impermissibility of lying when one is purporting to give one's opinion. (pg88) The justification for this precept is that by lying to another "you deprive him of the opportunity of exercising his judgment on the best evidence available to him". (pg89)
Section 3.4 discusses contractual obligations, as part of an institution of giving and accepting promises and the creation of a bond from those activities. Author discusses the construction of a contract briefly and exposes it to be a fundamentally non-moral institution. Given that, author asks whether a contract can ever be a moral bond? (pg92) Author's answer is that the institution of a contract is morally legitimate, and so breaking it is akin to lying, which is already impermissible. (pg92) In extended discussion about this, author considers it permissible to break a contract if another, more pressing moral duty arises. (pg93) A last clarification involves keeping a promise made to those committing wrongs: author argues that one does not have to (e.g. pay a ransom, if promised, to secure the release of a hostage).
Section 3.5 regards the institution of property. This author considers to also be a non-moral institution, so the question is whether there are any morally impermissible (or permissible) forms of property. After a discussion on the different types of property and different types of rights (pg95), author settles on two moral precepts from Judeo-Christian morality: not to despoil the earth so that future generations cannot provide for themselves, and not to "disfigure" the earth so that it cannot be enjoyed as an object of contemplation. (pg96). Generally speaking too, the Right of Appropriation exists: things affording appropriation must be mixed with some labor to signify the intention of exclusive use, which must commence within a reasonable period of time. And finally, the appropriation of things for property mustn't leave nothing for others to similarly appropriate. (pg97-8) This final requirement (leaving "enough and as good" for others) is, author admits, almost never fully possible. Author argues that being born into a society where 'all property is already distributed' leaves the requirement to provide for the education of such a person to allow her to earn her way through society and afford to purchase the resources necessary for a 'fully human life'. (pg99-100) As an addendum to all this, author argues that civil anarchy and solitude are both 'human evils' and that if there are unjust or defective laws regarding property, one is obliged to respect them for the sake of keeping civil society in place. (pg100)
3.6 is a section on family and familial construction. Author considers a family as essentially a matter of parenthood. Thus respecting familial ties mostly related to respecting children as rational beings (or growing-into rational beings). Thus the duties in a family are to the upbringing of the children and it is "impermissible for human beings voluntarily to become parents of a child, and yet refuse to rear it to a stage of development at which it can independently take part in social life" (pg101) Adoption is considered inferior to biological parentage. (pg102) Author considers 4 forms of family life: monogamy, polyandry, polygyny, and free-love/exogamous. Author has contingent, historical problems with polyandry and polygyny (pg102) but argues that there could be a form of marriage other than monogamy that properly respected the children to be raised and yet involved marriage of more than one male to more than one female.(pg103) Author argues that marriage can be dissolved without moral objection, and, interestingly: 'since the only objection to [divorce or staying married] is the suffering it causes, neither can be condemned as failing to respect every human being as a rational creature.' (pg104)
The final topic here is the permissibility of extra-marital sexual relations, or of 'deviant' sexual acts within a marriage. Author reviews the traditional arguments e.g. from Kant and Thomas Aquinas. Author also considers the side that considers them permissible, simply because they are mere physical acts not affecting respect for rational agents. Author rejects this, claiming 'it is ... wrong to think of the sexual gratification obtained from physical acts as deriving from them solely as physical'. (pg106) "Non-significant purely physical sexuality is virtually inconceivable" (pg107) Author considers 'one's imaginative awareness' and 'emotional response' as morally significant, similar to Augustine's theft of the pears. (pg107) Author forms two morally good aspects of sexual acts: 'life-affirming' and 'non-exploitative'. Any act that is 'life-denying' in its 'imaginative significance' or is exploitative is impermissible.
The final section 3.7 has to do with civil societies. Civil societies have territorial boundaries within which there is a system of justice or jurisdiction. Author scaffolds an argument that goes as follows: most of the laws within civil society are about nonmoral institutions like contracts and property. Everybody needs civil society in order for their human potentialities to be fully cultivated. As long as 'the legal-political system does not seriously violate anybody's moral rights', everybody must obey the laws of the civil society they are a part of. (pg109) Even when there is a rights infringement, disobeying the laws should be 'passive', since the breakdown of civil society would not allow for human potentialities to be cultivated, and therefore is morally bad. Finally, in defending civil society from an internal or external threat, it may become morally justified to use violence against the aggressors as a defense. In such a circumstance, author argues that conscription is morally permissible and it is impermissible to avoid being drafted. (pg110-111)
The Theory of Morality Ch 3, University of Chicago Press, 1979
In this chapter author lays out the duties to oneself, duties to others in a non-institutional format, and finally duties to others through institutions, including both contractual and generic civil society duties. These are all precepts of the first-order, that is, regarding what it is permissible, impermissible, and required to perform. The second-order precepts are regarding intentions and are not covered in this chapter.
In section 3.2 author describes duties to oneself. The first is not to commit suicide at will: "it seems evident that if one is to respect oneself as a rational creature, one may not hold one's life cheap, as something to be taken at will."(pg76) However there are circumstances that make suicide permissible. The two cases author considers is where an individual is sick or affected such that she becomes dangerous to others (pg78), and the case where she is in an inescapable set of dehumanizing or tortuous conditions. (pg79) The extension of not killing oneself at will is not to mutilate or impair oneself at will, yet this precept author backs away from, claiming that it is not part of our traditional common morality. Becoming addicted to a drug isn't permissible, but general use that temporarily impairs judgment somehow is fine.(pg79-80) "For anybody to place any kind of drug-induced enjoyment before the full use of his capacities as a rational creature, is a plain case of failure to respect himself as the kind of being he is." For author, there is a positive duty to oneself, and that is to develop a life-plan, "a coherent plan of life according to which, by morally permissible actions, his mental and physical powers may be developed." (pg80) Author calls this the Principle of Culture. There are innumerable acceptable plans, e.g. soldier, professor, factor worker [?], provided its behavior is morally permissible. It is under this life-plan duty that an agent is required not to neglect her health, subject of course, to the risks inherent in her particular life plan.
Section 3.3 describes non-institutional duties to others. The Principle of Culture is transformed into the Principle of Beneficence, (pg85-6) where it is "impermissible not to promote the well-being of others by actions in themselves permissible, inasmuch as one can do so without proportionate inconvenience." This duty, author claims, "derives from their character as rational creatures, not from their desert."(pg85) The duty does not lay much claim from the well-developed to the well-developed, since it is each's obligation to flourish; the duty is rather more aimed at dependents, orphans, the sick, the injured, the incapacitated, the afflicted. (pg85) However, this duty also makes it impermissible to frustrate others' morally permissible projects, and to "[abstain] from actions that would foreseeably elicit responses by which others would be injured." (pg85) And of course it is impermissible to promote the morally permissible (or even praiseworthy) goals of another through impermissible actions (e.g. kidnapping the homeless for cancer research). (pg85-6) Part of the principle of beneficence is extended to combatants in war: it is impermissible to harm non-combatants in a just war (and of course an unjust war is impermissible...).(pg87) Another extension involves refraining from hurting the reputation or honor of another, or of disparaging another, even when accurate, unless it is to prevent a wrong from being committed (pg88).
Prior to the discussion of the Principle of Beneficence, author lays out one against harming or threatening to harm another at will. The justification for this is that respect for other rational beings entails "treating every normal adult as responsible for the conduct of his own affairs", and that "[interfering] by force with anybody else's conduct of his life, unless there is a special adequate reason, is not to respect him as a rational creature."(pg82) This does not immediately apply to children, the insane, and other quasi-rational (or not) agents. The rule is against "at-will" force, since presumably some force will be permissible in order to avoid greater harm to others. (pg82-3, pg85) Here author gives us a teaser about abortion. The extension of this precept of physical force is the force of will, that is a prohibition against slavery. (pg83-4) Author claims this is a fundamental principle of Judeo-Christian morality, even though both cultures lived with it for hundreds of years.(pg84)
The final non-institutional duty to others is the impermissibility of lying when one is purporting to give one's opinion. (pg88) The justification for this precept is that by lying to another "you deprive him of the opportunity of exercising his judgment on the best evidence available to him". (pg89)
Section 3.4 discusses contractual obligations, as part of an institution of giving and accepting promises and the creation of a bond from those activities. Author discusses the construction of a contract briefly and exposes it to be a fundamentally non-moral institution. Given that, author asks whether a contract can ever be a moral bond? (pg92) Author's answer is that the institution of a contract is morally legitimate, and so breaking it is akin to lying, which is already impermissible. (pg92) In extended discussion about this, author considers it permissible to break a contract if another, more pressing moral duty arises. (pg93) A last clarification involves keeping a promise made to those committing wrongs: author argues that one does not have to (e.g. pay a ransom, if promised, to secure the release of a hostage).
Section 3.5 regards the institution of property. This author considers to also be a non-moral institution, so the question is whether there are any morally impermissible (or permissible) forms of property. After a discussion on the different types of property and different types of rights (pg95), author settles on two moral precepts from Judeo-Christian morality: not to despoil the earth so that future generations cannot provide for themselves, and not to "disfigure" the earth so that it cannot be enjoyed as an object of contemplation. (pg96). Generally speaking too, the Right of Appropriation exists: things affording appropriation must be mixed with some labor to signify the intention of exclusive use, which must commence within a reasonable period of time. And finally, the appropriation of things for property mustn't leave nothing for others to similarly appropriate. (pg97-8) This final requirement (leaving "enough and as good" for others) is, author admits, almost never fully possible. Author argues that being born into a society where 'all property is already distributed' leaves the requirement to provide for the education of such a person to allow her to earn her way through society and afford to purchase the resources necessary for a 'fully human life'. (pg99-100) As an addendum to all this, author argues that civil anarchy and solitude are both 'human evils' and that if there are unjust or defective laws regarding property, one is obliged to respect them for the sake of keeping civil society in place. (pg100)
3.6 is a section on family and familial construction. Author considers a family as essentially a matter of parenthood. Thus respecting familial ties mostly related to respecting children as rational beings (or growing-into rational beings). Thus the duties in a family are to the upbringing of the children and it is "impermissible for human beings voluntarily to become parents of a child, and yet refuse to rear it to a stage of development at which it can independently take part in social life" (pg101) Adoption is considered inferior to biological parentage. (pg102) Author considers 4 forms of family life: monogamy, polyandry, polygyny, and free-love/exogamous. Author has contingent, historical problems with polyandry and polygyny (pg102) but argues that there could be a form of marriage other than monogamy that properly respected the children to be raised and yet involved marriage of more than one male to more than one female.(pg103) Author argues that marriage can be dissolved without moral objection, and, interestingly: 'since the only objection to [divorce or staying married] is the suffering it causes, neither can be condemned as failing to respect every human being as a rational creature.' (pg104)
The final topic here is the permissibility of extra-marital sexual relations, or of 'deviant' sexual acts within a marriage. Author reviews the traditional arguments e.g. from Kant and Thomas Aquinas. Author also considers the side that considers them permissible, simply because they are mere physical acts not affecting respect for rational agents. Author rejects this, claiming 'it is ... wrong to think of the sexual gratification obtained from physical acts as deriving from them solely as physical'. (pg106) "Non-significant purely physical sexuality is virtually inconceivable" (pg107) Author considers 'one's imaginative awareness' and 'emotional response' as morally significant, similar to Augustine's theft of the pears. (pg107) Author forms two morally good aspects of sexual acts: 'life-affirming' and 'non-exploitative'. Any act that is 'life-denying' in its 'imaginative significance' or is exploitative is impermissible.
The final section 3.7 has to do with civil societies. Civil societies have territorial boundaries within which there is a system of justice or jurisdiction. Author scaffolds an argument that goes as follows: most of the laws within civil society are about nonmoral institutions like contracts and property. Everybody needs civil society in order for their human potentialities to be fully cultivated. As long as 'the legal-political system does not seriously violate anybody's moral rights', everybody must obey the laws of the civil society they are a part of. (pg109) Even when there is a rights infringement, disobeying the laws should be 'passive', since the breakdown of civil society would not allow for human potentialities to be cultivated, and therefore is morally bad. Finally, in defending civil society from an internal or external threat, it may become morally justified to use violence against the aggressors as a defense. In such a circumstance, author argues that conscription is morally permissible and it is impermissible to avoid being drafted. (pg110-111)
8/6/10
Donagan, Alan - Presuppositions and Principles
08/06/2010
The Theory of Morality Ch 2, University of Chicago Press 1979
This chapter promises to lay bare the presuppositions of Judeo-Christian conceptions of the world and of human agency. Author starts with discounting exotic thought-experiment contrasts, e.g. how would human morality work in a world with very different metaphysics, or if humans had different powers (like mind-reading) (pg32,36). What can be gained from comparison is to reveal our own presuppositions that are so fundamental that we hardly recognize them as open to variation. For this, author looks at the Hindu conception of human existence and agency. According to author:
-Hindus do not have much (if anything) for general (that is, extra-caste) obligations. E.g. a Hindu is obliged to obey the precepts her caste puts forward for her, but not the precepts of any other caste, and not much else other than what is her duty as given by her caste. (pg33) In other words, there is no general obligation to each other as humans or as bearers of rights.
-Hindus believe that human essence is a soul that is reincarnated from previous lives and has accumulated good- or bad-fortune, or 'karma'. Bad karma can only be reduced by undergoing suffering or purifying your soul through particular actions. With this conception, there doesn't appear to be any unnecessary suffering-- just the appearance of such. (pg34) And as such, there is no prescription to reduce the suffering of another unless required to do so by the duties set forth in one's caste's prescriptions or 'dharma'.
Author then formulates two principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition that stand in contrast to the Hindu tradition:
(1) Man, considered as amoral agent, is a rational animal.
(2) The world man inhabits is a system of nature, in which events occur according to morally neutral laws.
These two metaphysical concepts underpin the moral agency of humans and humans alone. (pg35) That is, the 'world' doesn't conspire to punish us or to reward us-- the natural laws (and therefore natural events that are un-mixed with agency) are morally neutral.
The next section (2.2) is a prolonged discussion of event-causation and lays out a basic theory of human action. The first distinction author makes is between human actions considered objectively, and those considered subjectively. Objectivity considers the deeds done and assigns permissibility, subjectivity considers the doings of the agents and assigns culpability (pg37). Author talks about the theory of action from (mostly) the objective perspective. Here is a rough summary:
-Events cause other events in the world.
-Events can fall under different kinds of description. (Event-Descriptions and Action-Descriptions) (pg38-41)
-Events are caused by either other events or agents. (Actions are only caused by agents)
-Events cannot cause agent-actions.
On this last principle author spends much time. The jumping off point is the discussion of a new action intervening, or 'novus actus interveniens' (pg42-44). Consider the case of the careless cigarette that might or might not ignite a forest fire. Once a second agent pours gasoline onto the ash, the original smoker's actions do not 'reach through' the chain of events leading to a forest fire. (pg42) This is the case even though you can construct a reasonable 'but for' sentence that includes the first agent: 'but for her throwing the cigarette on the bracken, the forest fire wouldn't have occurred' might be true, but because there was the informed, free and deliberate intervention of a second agent pouring gasoline on the fire, the first agent's causal chain is broken there. (pg44)
Even with these basic principles there is a bifurcation in the approaches to their defense. For it must be admitted that humans are part of the natural world, they are animals, even if rational ones, and that the attempt to separate them from the rest of the world by giving only them autonomous action is problematic. One response is to admit humans are part of the natural world but still assign moral blame even though there is no ontological/metaphysical responsibility through the chain of events. (pg44) The second response seems to be the author's preference: there is a difference between the events caused by humans and the events caused by the natural world. This is Aristotle's distinction between "event-causation" and "action-causation" (pg45). [Is this question-begging?]
The next discussion regarding this distinction relates to the unwitting accomplice(s), for instance a cook who unwittingly serves food previously poisoned by an assassin. Here the cook took an action, but author analyzes this as the cook being the unwitting agent of the assassin. "He does not cease to be the doer of what he does; but because he acts as the agent of the other, that other is also held to be an agent in his action, and the principal agent" (pg47)
Author then spends some time responding to an objection to the concept of autonomous agent/action-causation, leveled by Feinberg and augmented by Bennett. In effect, they wish to object to novus actus interveniens; in the Feinberg case, an agent announces widely his conditional intentions: 'stop or I'll shoot', and when another conducts the antecedent, the promised consequent commences. Feinberg wants to pump intuitions to see the second agent as causing the first agent. (pg49) Bennett formulates a notion of agent action for causing consequences by trying to restrict how one describes 'causal consequences in action descriptions' (pg49), claiming three guidelines for understanding the effects of agency:
i) the more confident the agent was that the consequence would ensue
ii) the more certain or inevitable it was that the consequence would ensue
iii) the higher the degree of immediacy there was between the action and its consequence
Author responds to this with an argument to absurdity: if threatened with either death or committing some abhorrent act, by refusing to commit the abhorrent act, you could be the cause of your own suicide. (pg49-50) Author sees this as conflating the term 'consequences' with the concept of causation-- consequences are sometimes used to indicate alternate states of affairs that aren't causally related but are nevertheless consequents. (pg51-2)
Author moves on to the principle underpinning Judeo-Christian morality, but first discusses the form it will take-- it will rely on there being principles of practical reason that are unconditionally inviolable. (pg53) Author defines a "precept" as "any universal proposition of common morality with respect to the permissibility of any kind of human action considered objectively." (pg54) As such, precepts of common morality specify either: (1) what kind of action is morally permissible, (2) what kind of action is morally impermissible, (3) what kind of action is permissible and obligatory given the appropriate circumstance. (pg54) Author then takes care to make a distinction between 'first-order' moral questions and 'second-order' ones, since much of the Judeo-Christian tradition has to do with the spirit with which actions are performed, the intentions and will of the agent. Since author is more concerned now with the permissibility of the deed (to be) done, objectively considered, that is 'first-order'; the culpability of the agent is considered 'second-order'. (pg55) This is much like author's earlier discussion of agent causation and agent responsibility. Author also briefly denies that there are two additional sets of moral considerations: those for supererogatory actions and those for morally permissible actions that are somehow demeritorious, e.g. in poor taste or some other consideration. (pg56-7)
Author finally commits to the underlying principle of Judeo-Christian common morality:
"Do not do to your fellow what you hate to have done to you" (pg57). Author gives considerable discussion about the different formulations of the golden rule, from the first books of the bible and into the new Testament. Author rejects Thomas Aquinas' version in favor of Kant's since Kant's takes humans themselves as the ultimate entities to respect (rather than the Thomistic version that takes fundamental human goods as the ultimate ends).(pg63-5) The distinction here is the culmination of a clarifying discussion of what Kant meant when he wrote that humans were to be treated as ends, not means.(pg63-4) As an aside, author demeans one of the protestant alternatives to the golden rule which author designates as: 'Love, and do what you will' (pg62-3) The formulation of the common morality that Donagan uses:
"It is impermissible not to respect every human being, oneself or any other, as a rational creature."
In the next section 2.5, author launches into a prolonged discussion of how to setup 'specificatory premises', that is, premises that fill-in what action kinds are permissible, impermissible, and obligatory. [This seems to be an arcane problem, even for a philosopher.] The trouble (as I can see it), is about a question of refinement. Should the fundamental principle be refined, or even scrapped, as tough cases arise? Or should the principle remain unchanged and the precepts be followed even in awkward cases? The analogue to law is a tricky one, since typically case law involves extracting principles from legislation, then applying the principles to a tough case, and possibly slightly altering the principles to get the case to come out right. (pg68-9) This is an example of the 'circular motion' of common law. The insight the author adds is that moral precepts are different from legislation-- legislation is often ends-based, that is, focusing on how to write rules that will promote specific ends. The moral precepts author has in mind are about principles of action-- in other words-- it is deontological. (pg73)
The Theory of Morality Ch 2, University of Chicago Press 1979
This chapter promises to lay bare the presuppositions of Judeo-Christian conceptions of the world and of human agency. Author starts with discounting exotic thought-experiment contrasts, e.g. how would human morality work in a world with very different metaphysics, or if humans had different powers (like mind-reading) (pg32,36). What can be gained from comparison is to reveal our own presuppositions that are so fundamental that we hardly recognize them as open to variation. For this, author looks at the Hindu conception of human existence and agency. According to author:
-Hindus do not have much (if anything) for general (that is, extra-caste) obligations. E.g. a Hindu is obliged to obey the precepts her caste puts forward for her, but not the precepts of any other caste, and not much else other than what is her duty as given by her caste. (pg33) In other words, there is no general obligation to each other as humans or as bearers of rights.
-Hindus believe that human essence is a soul that is reincarnated from previous lives and has accumulated good- or bad-fortune, or 'karma'. Bad karma can only be reduced by undergoing suffering or purifying your soul through particular actions. With this conception, there doesn't appear to be any unnecessary suffering-- just the appearance of such. (pg34) And as such, there is no prescription to reduce the suffering of another unless required to do so by the duties set forth in one's caste's prescriptions or 'dharma'.
Author then formulates two principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition that stand in contrast to the Hindu tradition:
(1) Man, considered as amoral agent, is a rational animal.
(2) The world man inhabits is a system of nature, in which events occur according to morally neutral laws.
These two metaphysical concepts underpin the moral agency of humans and humans alone. (pg35) That is, the 'world' doesn't conspire to punish us or to reward us-- the natural laws (and therefore natural events that are un-mixed with agency) are morally neutral.
The next section (2.2) is a prolonged discussion of event-causation and lays out a basic theory of human action. The first distinction author makes is between human actions considered objectively, and those considered subjectively. Objectivity considers the deeds done and assigns permissibility, subjectivity considers the doings of the agents and assigns culpability (pg37). Author talks about the theory of action from (mostly) the objective perspective. Here is a rough summary:
-Events cause other events in the world.
-Events can fall under different kinds of description. (Event-Descriptions and Action-Descriptions) (pg38-41)
-Events are caused by either other events or agents. (Actions are only caused by agents)
-Events cannot cause agent-actions.
On this last principle author spends much time. The jumping off point is the discussion of a new action intervening, or 'novus actus interveniens' (pg42-44). Consider the case of the careless cigarette that might or might not ignite a forest fire. Once a second agent pours gasoline onto the ash, the original smoker's actions do not 'reach through' the chain of events leading to a forest fire. (pg42) This is the case even though you can construct a reasonable 'but for' sentence that includes the first agent: 'but for her throwing the cigarette on the bracken, the forest fire wouldn't have occurred' might be true, but because there was the informed, free and deliberate intervention of a second agent pouring gasoline on the fire, the first agent's causal chain is broken there. (pg44)
Even with these basic principles there is a bifurcation in the approaches to their defense. For it must be admitted that humans are part of the natural world, they are animals, even if rational ones, and that the attempt to separate them from the rest of the world by giving only them autonomous action is problematic. One response is to admit humans are part of the natural world but still assign moral blame even though there is no ontological/metaphysical responsibility through the chain of events. (pg44) The second response seems to be the author's preference: there is a difference between the events caused by humans and the events caused by the natural world. This is Aristotle's distinction between "event-causation" and "action-causation" (pg45). [Is this question-begging?]
The next discussion regarding this distinction relates to the unwitting accomplice(s), for instance a cook who unwittingly serves food previously poisoned by an assassin. Here the cook took an action, but author analyzes this as the cook being the unwitting agent of the assassin. "He does not cease to be the doer of what he does; but because he acts as the agent of the other, that other is also held to be an agent in his action, and the principal agent" (pg47)
Author then spends some time responding to an objection to the concept of autonomous agent/action-causation, leveled by Feinberg and augmented by Bennett. In effect, they wish to object to novus actus interveniens; in the Feinberg case, an agent announces widely his conditional intentions: 'stop or I'll shoot', and when another conducts the antecedent, the promised consequent commences. Feinberg wants to pump intuitions to see the second agent as causing the first agent. (pg49) Bennett formulates a notion of agent action for causing consequences by trying to restrict how one describes 'causal consequences in action descriptions' (pg49), claiming three guidelines for understanding the effects of agency:
i) the more confident the agent was that the consequence would ensue
ii) the more certain or inevitable it was that the consequence would ensue
iii) the higher the degree of immediacy there was between the action and its consequence
Author responds to this with an argument to absurdity: if threatened with either death or committing some abhorrent act, by refusing to commit the abhorrent act, you could be the cause of your own suicide. (pg49-50) Author sees this as conflating the term 'consequences' with the concept of causation-- consequences are sometimes used to indicate alternate states of affairs that aren't causally related but are nevertheless consequents. (pg51-2)
Author moves on to the principle underpinning Judeo-Christian morality, but first discusses the form it will take-- it will rely on there being principles of practical reason that are unconditionally inviolable. (pg53) Author defines a "precept" as "any universal proposition of common morality with respect to the permissibility of any kind of human action considered objectively." (pg54) As such, precepts of common morality specify either: (1) what kind of action is morally permissible, (2) what kind of action is morally impermissible, (3) what kind of action is permissible and obligatory given the appropriate circumstance. (pg54) Author then takes care to make a distinction between 'first-order' moral questions and 'second-order' ones, since much of the Judeo-Christian tradition has to do with the spirit with which actions are performed, the intentions and will of the agent. Since author is more concerned now with the permissibility of the deed (to be) done, objectively considered, that is 'first-order'; the culpability of the agent is considered 'second-order'. (pg55) This is much like author's earlier discussion of agent causation and agent responsibility. Author also briefly denies that there are two additional sets of moral considerations: those for supererogatory actions and those for morally permissible actions that are somehow demeritorious, e.g. in poor taste or some other consideration. (pg56-7)
Author finally commits to the underlying principle of Judeo-Christian common morality:
"Do not do to your fellow what you hate to have done to you" (pg57). Author gives considerable discussion about the different formulations of the golden rule, from the first books of the bible and into the new Testament. Author rejects Thomas Aquinas' version in favor of Kant's since Kant's takes humans themselves as the ultimate entities to respect (rather than the Thomistic version that takes fundamental human goods as the ultimate ends).(pg63-5) The distinction here is the culmination of a clarifying discussion of what Kant meant when he wrote that humans were to be treated as ends, not means.(pg63-4) As an aside, author demeans one of the protestant alternatives to the golden rule which author designates as: 'Love, and do what you will' (pg62-3) The formulation of the common morality that Donagan uses:
"It is impermissible not to respect every human being, oneself or any other, as a rational creature."
In the next section 2.5, author launches into a prolonged discussion of how to setup 'specificatory premises', that is, premises that fill-in what action kinds are permissible, impermissible, and obligatory. [This seems to be an arcane problem, even for a philosopher.] The trouble (as I can see it), is about a question of refinement. Should the fundamental principle be refined, or even scrapped, as tough cases arise? Or should the principle remain unchanged and the precepts be followed even in awkward cases? The analogue to law is a tricky one, since typically case law involves extracting principles from legislation, then applying the principles to a tough case, and possibly slightly altering the principles to get the case to come out right. (pg68-9) This is an example of the 'circular motion' of common law. The insight the author adds is that moral precepts are different from legislation-- legislation is often ends-based, that is, focusing on how to write rules that will promote specific ends. The moral precepts author has in mind are about principles of action-- in other words-- it is deontological. (pg73)
7/30/10
Donagan, Alan - The Concept of a Theory of Morality
07/30/2010
The Theory of Morality Ch 1 (The Concept of a Theory of Morality), University of Chicago Press, 1979
Author beings his book by tracing the history of moral principles aside from social mores, that is a separation between a societies laws (and customs) and moral principles. Author begins the discussion with the Stoics, who talked about a division between living in accordance with 'Nature', and 'Reason'-- a divine law that was above the social mores. (pg2) Author sees this tradition continuing with Judiasm and then Christianity. (pg4-5) Author consider the core agreement to be "That there is a set of rules of precepts of conduct constituting a divine law, which is binding upon all rational creatures as such, and which in principle can be ascertained by human reason." (pg6) Problem one: are there such principles? Studies of the religious traditions are confused by the fact that each religion also set down a system of religious rules that constituted piety according to that tradition, which was super-morality (that is, went beyond the call of 'common morality') The difficulty here is separating which precepts are specifically religious and which are part of the common morality(pg6-7) Another difficulty is in determining whether the moral principles passed by the traditions are the right ones.
Author takes as his first issue the problem of elucidating the principles of morality for rational agents, not just those within a specific religious tradition. Author considers the philosophers in the German tradition, specifically as they became synthesized and triumphed in Kant, to be the modern form of a rational moral theory. This theory was strongly criticized by Hegel, who considered the theory devoid of content, or at least of most content-- it was too abstract and required only 'duty', which was relatively empty. Kant's theory, according to Hegel, failed to capture what most consider to be the content of the right and wrong decisions they make since it was so abstract-- it failed to capture the 'concrete ethical life' (pg9-11), the content of social mores. Hegel charged Kant with reducing a language to its 'gramaticality', too abstract to be meaningful. (pg13) The problem for Hegel (as given by the author) was one of examining the men of principles who lived in a society whose mores were contrary. The case here taken is the Stoics who repudiated the institution of slavery. This meant, according to author, that they had another basis for moral content other than the mores of their society, in effect the 'abstract' morality had some content. (pg14) The risk of there being no good alternative to a society's mores is brought out when author describes the case of an Austrian who piously subscribed to the Catholic Just War theory and therefore rejected service to the Nazis during WWII. He consulted his priest and bishop, who tried to dissuade him but failed to do so-- and was beheaded. Author considered this the scandalous degeneration of a moral tradition that had fallen to the social mores of the time. (pg14-16)
Author then surveys the English-speaking moral theories, specifically a brand called Intuitionism. Intuitionism is the study of the principles of morality from which moral precepts proceed on a deductive basis. The core of the system are intuitions, which cannot be doubted by those who encounter them, and, supposedly, spring from the nature of reason. (pg17-8) Author discusses this model as being one for mathematical and scientific truths as well, but fell under attack from utilitarianism, and strongly from Sidgwick. Sidgwick criticized intuitionism because it lacked the precision of its principles, and yet as precision was pursued, it would fail to be undoubtable by those studying it. Sidgwick laid out four conditions on intuitionism's precepts: (pg20)
1)That it is clearly and precisely formulated
2) That its self-evidence is ascertained by careful reflection
3) That it is consistent with other propositions received as intuitively evident
4) That experts in the subject do not dissent from it
As 1-3 seemed to emerge, precepts failed on 4.
Author claims that Sidgwick's attack on intuitionism misses the mark, especially on Sidgwick's claim that the experts in the field of intuitionism should agree upon a well-formulated moral precept. Author instead claims that "Intuitionism was a method to be followed, but no more than any other could it assure those who followed it of success. ... since their results did not diverge haphazardly and unsystematically, they could be interpreted as approximating, in different degrees, to the true system that was sought." (pg20)
Author gives more history of the intuitionist project, turning to a 'new' intuitionism advocated separately by Ross and Broad, regarding a system of prima facie intuitive moral precepts that must we compiled in a certain circumstance and then 'balanced' according not to intuition but instead using an analogy to perceptual judgment. (pg22-3) This system was rejected for being too lax, and failing to give a method of balancing or weighing. Author further discusses the breakdown of intuitionism as being, at root, the belief that because we are unable to be perfectly rational and attentive, we cannot reach the indisputable precepts. Author refutes that logic by claiming that we can reach indisputable precepts even if we do not fully know them to be so. (pg25)
Author turns to his positive approach: to examine the Hebrew-Christian traditions to find the fundamental principles of morality (and the metaphysical assumptions grounding them) that are apart from the theistic and religious requirements. (pg26) Interestingly, author does not expect that the metaphysical assumptions about the world, man, and human action will subscribed to by all cultures or all metaphysical systems. "In constructing a moral theory no more is necessary than to identify and state any controversial metaphysical presuppositions that distinguish it from its rivals" (pg28)
The Theory of Morality Ch 1 (The Concept of a Theory of Morality), University of Chicago Press, 1979
Author beings his book by tracing the history of moral principles aside from social mores, that is a separation between a societies laws (and customs) and moral principles. Author begins the discussion with the Stoics, who talked about a division between living in accordance with 'Nature', and 'Reason'-- a divine law that was above the social mores. (pg2) Author sees this tradition continuing with Judiasm and then Christianity. (pg4-5) Author consider the core agreement to be "That there is a set of rules of precepts of conduct constituting a divine law, which is binding upon all rational creatures as such, and which in principle can be ascertained by human reason." (pg6) Problem one: are there such principles? Studies of the religious traditions are confused by the fact that each religion also set down a system of religious rules that constituted piety according to that tradition, which was super-morality (that is, went beyond the call of 'common morality') The difficulty here is separating which precepts are specifically religious and which are part of the common morality(pg6-7) Another difficulty is in determining whether the moral principles passed by the traditions are the right ones.
Author takes as his first issue the problem of elucidating the principles of morality for rational agents, not just those within a specific religious tradition. Author considers the philosophers in the German tradition, specifically as they became synthesized and triumphed in Kant, to be the modern form of a rational moral theory. This theory was strongly criticized by Hegel, who considered the theory devoid of content, or at least of most content-- it was too abstract and required only 'duty', which was relatively empty. Kant's theory, according to Hegel, failed to capture what most consider to be the content of the right and wrong decisions they make since it was so abstract-- it failed to capture the 'concrete ethical life' (pg9-11), the content of social mores. Hegel charged Kant with reducing a language to its 'gramaticality', too abstract to be meaningful. (pg13) The problem for Hegel (as given by the author) was one of examining the men of principles who lived in a society whose mores were contrary. The case here taken is the Stoics who repudiated the institution of slavery. This meant, according to author, that they had another basis for moral content other than the mores of their society, in effect the 'abstract' morality had some content. (pg14) The risk of there being no good alternative to a society's mores is brought out when author describes the case of an Austrian who piously subscribed to the Catholic Just War theory and therefore rejected service to the Nazis during WWII. He consulted his priest and bishop, who tried to dissuade him but failed to do so-- and was beheaded. Author considered this the scandalous degeneration of a moral tradition that had fallen to the social mores of the time. (pg14-16)
Author then surveys the English-speaking moral theories, specifically a brand called Intuitionism. Intuitionism is the study of the principles of morality from which moral precepts proceed on a deductive basis. The core of the system are intuitions, which cannot be doubted by those who encounter them, and, supposedly, spring from the nature of reason. (pg17-8) Author discusses this model as being one for mathematical and scientific truths as well, but fell under attack from utilitarianism, and strongly from Sidgwick. Sidgwick criticized intuitionism because it lacked the precision of its principles, and yet as precision was pursued, it would fail to be undoubtable by those studying it. Sidgwick laid out four conditions on intuitionism's precepts: (pg20)
1)That it is clearly and precisely formulated
2) That its self-evidence is ascertained by careful reflection
3) That it is consistent with other propositions received as intuitively evident
4) That experts in the subject do not dissent from it
As 1-3 seemed to emerge, precepts failed on 4.
Author claims that Sidgwick's attack on intuitionism misses the mark, especially on Sidgwick's claim that the experts in the field of intuitionism should agree upon a well-formulated moral precept. Author instead claims that "Intuitionism was a method to be followed, but no more than any other could it assure those who followed it of success. ... since their results did not diverge haphazardly and unsystematically, they could be interpreted as approximating, in different degrees, to the true system that was sought." (pg20)
Author gives more history of the intuitionist project, turning to a 'new' intuitionism advocated separately by Ross and Broad, regarding a system of prima facie intuitive moral precepts that must we compiled in a certain circumstance and then 'balanced' according not to intuition but instead using an analogy to perceptual judgment. (pg22-3) This system was rejected for being too lax, and failing to give a method of balancing or weighing. Author further discusses the breakdown of intuitionism as being, at root, the belief that because we are unable to be perfectly rational and attentive, we cannot reach the indisputable precepts. Author refutes that logic by claiming that we can reach indisputable precepts even if we do not fully know them to be so. (pg25)
Author turns to his positive approach: to examine the Hebrew-Christian traditions to find the fundamental principles of morality (and the metaphysical assumptions grounding them) that are apart from the theistic and religious requirements. (pg26) Interestingly, author does not expect that the metaphysical assumptions about the world, man, and human action will subscribed to by all cultures or all metaphysical systems. "In constructing a moral theory no more is necessary than to identify and state any controversial metaphysical presuppositions that distinguish it from its rivals" (pg28)
7/9/10
Krugman, Paul - Building a Green Economy
07/09/2010
The New York Times Magazine, April 6 2010
This popular article discusses the basics of environmental economics and the major approaches to legislation for the environment. Author focuses on the threat of global warming, coal burning and carbon emissions in examples of how legislation might work. Author first reviews the core of environmental economics, which is another factor in the basics of economics. The basics of economics involves the mutual benefit from transactions between agents. The problem is when the byproducts of those transactions create costs that aren't factored in, called "negative externalities".
One solution is a restriction on that kind of transaction, or a very high price assessed to the agents for it. This is considered like a ban or strict limit, like for instance emissions standards on cars; those intended for sale in the US cannot go above a certain level of emissions. A major problem with outright bans or high standards is with having to retrofit, or in general the levels of compliance that the status quo (doesn't) enjoy. Author turns to Arthur Pigou's 1920s book The Economics of Welfare (Pigovian tax). The analysis here was that a 'market based' approach that limited production of a certain negative effect, perhaps carbon emissions or sulfur from coal burning on the whole, would allow the polluters to "buy" pollution from the non-polluters, all staying below the legislated cap. This kind of cap & trade system worked for sulfur dioxide into the air from coal producers in the 1990s, author claims.
A number of times, author discusses the state of the debate on climate change and tries to clarify it. While there is uncertainty with how the climate change will take place, and at what level, the vast consensus is that our current levels of carbon production will change the planet over the next 100 years. However, for author, the justification for action is that there is a non-negligible chance that there will be a calamitous result. Thus most uncertainty about the numbers isn't as much of a concern as the real possibility (non-negligible) of 'apocalyptic' conditions.
Author lays out how the cap and trade system might work, and what the (likely) overestimated constraints on economic growth would be, roughly 0.03-0.09 of GDP per annum, and perhaps at a cost of 1-3% of the world's gross product. Author also criticizes the critics of a cap and trade plan as disingenuous, simultaneously arguing that the magic of private innovation can do wonders for efficiency, but that private enterprise would be unable to cope with a cap and trade system. (Author also favors some outright bans or limits on coal burning, acknowledging that much of our pollution comes from that source.)
Author reviews two ways-- carrots and sticks-- of coaxing developing nations (read: China) into a similar system. The carrot is by incorporating them into the global emissions-rights-sales system that would allow China to sell the US (and other developed world) permits to pollute, effectively taking advantage of the fact they are still developing. The stick could be a tariff on imports that takes into account the carbon emissions used to produce it.
Author discusses two possible ways to enact this kind of legislation: the ramp up, or the 'big-bang'. The ramp up suggests that the costs of emissions rise slowly over the next century, the 'big-bang' is much more aggressive about legislating caps upfront. Author is more partial to the 'big-bang', since the ramp-up method seems to place bets that large limits late in the game will have the same effect that good limits now would. What if the game is already lost by the third quarter?
The last discussion is the possible way legislation like this could wind its way through Congress. Good luck.
The New York Times Magazine, April 6 2010
This popular article discusses the basics of environmental economics and the major approaches to legislation for the environment. Author focuses on the threat of global warming, coal burning and carbon emissions in examples of how legislation might work. Author first reviews the core of environmental economics, which is another factor in the basics of economics. The basics of economics involves the mutual benefit from transactions between agents. The problem is when the byproducts of those transactions create costs that aren't factored in, called "negative externalities".
One solution is a restriction on that kind of transaction, or a very high price assessed to the agents for it. This is considered like a ban or strict limit, like for instance emissions standards on cars; those intended for sale in the US cannot go above a certain level of emissions. A major problem with outright bans or high standards is with having to retrofit, or in general the levels of compliance that the status quo (doesn't) enjoy. Author turns to Arthur Pigou's 1920s book The Economics of Welfare (Pigovian tax). The analysis here was that a 'market based' approach that limited production of a certain negative effect, perhaps carbon emissions or sulfur from coal burning on the whole, would allow the polluters to "buy" pollution from the non-polluters, all staying below the legislated cap. This kind of cap & trade system worked for sulfur dioxide into the air from coal producers in the 1990s, author claims.
A number of times, author discusses the state of the debate on climate change and tries to clarify it. While there is uncertainty with how the climate change will take place, and at what level, the vast consensus is that our current levels of carbon production will change the planet over the next 100 years. However, for author, the justification for action is that there is a non-negligible chance that there will be a calamitous result. Thus most uncertainty about the numbers isn't as much of a concern as the real possibility (non-negligible) of 'apocalyptic' conditions.
Author lays out how the cap and trade system might work, and what the (likely) overestimated constraints on economic growth would be, roughly 0.03-0.09 of GDP per annum, and perhaps at a cost of 1-3% of the world's gross product. Author also criticizes the critics of a cap and trade plan as disingenuous, simultaneously arguing that the magic of private innovation can do wonders for efficiency, but that private enterprise would be unable to cope with a cap and trade system. (Author also favors some outright bans or limits on coal burning, acknowledging that much of our pollution comes from that source.)
Author reviews two ways-- carrots and sticks-- of coaxing developing nations (read: China) into a similar system. The carrot is by incorporating them into the global emissions-rights-sales system that would allow China to sell the US (and other developed world) permits to pollute, effectively taking advantage of the fact they are still developing. The stick could be a tariff on imports that takes into account the carbon emissions used to produce it.
Author discusses two possible ways to enact this kind of legislation: the ramp up, or the 'big-bang'. The ramp up suggests that the costs of emissions rise slowly over the next century, the 'big-bang' is much more aggressive about legislating caps upfront. Author is more partial to the 'big-bang', since the ramp-up method seems to place bets that large limits late in the game will have the same effect that good limits now would. What if the game is already lost by the third quarter?
The last discussion is the possible way legislation like this could wind its way through Congress. Good luck.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
