Critique of "The Intuitionist Ethics"
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> The question as posed may be unanswerable -- not enough information exists to
> determine what the truth is.
And I think that this is the case with many moral judgments. Another
problem is that moral terms may not be as "sharp" as some other terms, so
there are problems of ambiguity and vagueness as well. Now you say that
you are not asking for definitive answers to moral questions, but it
seems that you interpret these problems as suggesting not that the truth
value of moral claims is hard to determine, but rather as suggesting that
they are not the sort of things that have truth value.
We had much the same sort of argument over aesthetic realism. I claimed
that, on the facts, any reasonable way to understand "most important"
made the statement, "Louis Armstrong was the most important musician in
jazz" come out true. Terms need not be sharp in order to be "sharp
enough" in some cases.
> But would you say this: the claim is true if and
> only if the best arguments we have on the matter show that the Soviet Uni
> on would
> not have collapsed if the US had not increased its defence spending? I w
> ould not,
> and I doubt very many others would, either. That's a justification theory of
> truth, not a correspondence theory.
Very good. I see I have not been clear here, and perhaps I have been
muddled as well. How about this. I accept a correspondence theory of
truth, but a coherence theory of justification. The truth about complex
questions, about the collapse of the Soviet Union or when it is right to
abort a fetus, can not be directly assessed by reference to a set of
observation statements - the set is too large for human understanding to
encompass. I don't think that that makes the truth /depend/ on the
justification, but looking for justificatory errors may be the best we
can do, at least at present.
...
> If you think I am asking for you to provide definitive answers regarding
> moral
> questions, you are mistaken. There are any number of ethical realisms th
> at would
> satisfy my requirements *if only people generally agreed that they were t
> he right
> theories*. Utilitarianism, for example. If pretty much everyone took
> utilitarianism to be the correct moral theory -- to the point of claiming
> that
> anyone not intending their moral claims to be utilitarian claims had conc
> eptual
> confusion -- then *I* would agree that moral claims had objective truth v
> alues --
> even if we couldn't find out what those truth values were.
Well, I think something like utilitarianism is true. Of course, some
persons claim that the correct moral theory is not anything like
utilitarianism, or they they do not act as utilitarians, but I think
they are mistaken. Many objections to (something like) utilitarianism
can be handled by showing that they assume away constraints on knowledge
and reason, as Russell Hardin argues in his /Morality within the Limits
of Reason/. Further, deontological elements in our moral reasoning can
be seen as evolutionary adaptations, e.g., a concern for fairness that is
actually motivated by a concern for consequences can easily be seen
as self interested, and so self defeating. But a genuine or "built in"
concern for fairness actually improves human welfare.
I think it is a mistake to insist that (pretty much) everyone must
actually hold that (something like) utilitarianism is the correct moral
theory for moral claims to have objective truth values. What matters is,
if, in fact, (something like) utilitarianism makes sense of the moral
claims that people make, regardless of what theory they claim to hold, if
any.
...
> > However, if a
> > Nazi says that it is right to kill Jews because they are sub-human, that
> > is a clam that can be analyzed (and found to be false).
>
> It is the *basis* that is shown to be false, not the moral claim itself (
> that it is
> right to kill Jews).
Right, and this gets back to my not being clear, above. Let me try
again. If (something like) utilitarianism is true, then it would be true
that it is right to kill Jews if this (did something like) produced the
greatest human welfare. Now, I don't think it is true that killing Jews
would do this, but it can be quite difficult to show from scratch that
something does or does not lead to the greatest human welfare. Typically
we try to find agreed upon premises as a basis for checking our
justifications. If the Nazi does this, I can show him to be mistaken.
If the Nazi refuses to do this and says "Killing Jews is simply what I
/mean/ by 'good'", then he is not engaged in any sort of reasoning, moral
or otherwise. This strategy is always open to him, even in domains like
the physical world where you do not seem to doubt realism.
...
> > I think he is mistaken because I don't think that
> > his reasoning is correct.
>
> So you *do* have a justification theory of truth?
He might have hit the truth with a completely bogus argument, but I doubt
it so much that I am willing to say he is wrong. I do not know how to
directly show that infanticide would not lead to (something like)
increased human welfare. It's simply too complex.
...
> > OK, perhaps I should say that I am a "human relativist": the statements
> > are true if they accord with values common to all cultures. If that be
> > relativism, then make the most of it.
>
> I don't think it's relativism. What's a culture, tho, and how can we tel
> l whether
> a claim accords with "it"s values?
Since I am looking at all cultures, it's not so important what /a/
culture is, but that there be common human values that do not depend on
culture. I think that there are, and that they are (something like)
utilitarian. Of course, there are values which are not common, and
claims about these may lack truth values.
> > I am taking a sort of Quinian approach to all of this. I think that
> > moral claims can "bump up against the world" in a way similar to other
> > kinds of claims. [...] Also, I think that objective truth -
> > for any category of claims - is a regulatory ideal, not something that we
> > "get" now and forever. [...]
>
> Perhaps you could explain this latter statement a bit for me? Is it rela
> ted to the
> former -- should I be going out and finding out Quine's views on objectiv
> e truth?
Well, reading Quine is always worthwhile, but I had switched to a sort of
Peircian view after the "also". But I'll give you a short Feynman quote
that might let you skip a lot of any sort of reading: "A scientist is
never certain."
...
> Notice how we commit ourself to the truth of X when we say that A observe
> d X. To
> avoid committing ourself, we have to report that A "said" or "claimed" th
> at he
> observed X.
OK, I'll fold on this one.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Gordon G. Sollars:
> > Why can't it be something you trained yourself in?
>
> I'm not sure it can't be. I would have a reason for training myself
> that way, tho....
Right, such as you thought it was morally correct independently of any
current feelings of approval.
> > And are you sure that
> > a genetic basis should be labeled "non-rational"?
>
> Quite sure.
I'm not. A maximizing process such as evolution has a good claim to
being called a rational process.
...
> I can see how someone could
> report that I should do X and not approve of me doing X -- contrary to
> what I wrote earlier. Such a person would have to be someone who is a
> moral realist who does not approve (perhaps disapproves) of what he
> takes the moral facts to be. For an example from Rand, consider
> Rearden at the beginning of Atlas Shrugged -- he thinks that he should
> support his family even tho he *feels* the wrongness of it.
>
> However, I don't think such people are common.
My point is not that they are common, but that they are a serious
challenge to your view of "shoulds" being correct. Such a person thinks
he has a basis for moral judgment independent of his approval. Of course
he probably realizes how much better it would be for him if his approval
was in line with his basis for judgment. This no doubt leads people to
change the basis for their judgment or to what they give approval (or
both).
Further, that the basis of moral judgment can differ from the approval is
consistent with moral realism, i.e.., it is moral facts which provide the
basis. This is true even if everyone in fact decides to end the dilemma
by junking the basis and going with the approval, i.e.., engages in
rationalization.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
> Gordon G. Sollars
> > A maximizing process such as evolution has a good claim to
> > being called a rational process.
>
> Evolution is no more rational than water spreading into a field. Evolution
> is a fine substitute for reason, if you have the time & resources to evolve
> the answers you need, but it in no way proceeds on the basis of what is
> reasonable -- it doesn't make choices based on its understanding of its
> goals.
Now it is you who are sounding like a "good reasons" ("reasonable") guy!
I don't deny that "acting on the basis of what is reasonable" isn't
"rationality" or that "having an understanding of its goals" can not
describe a rational actor. But I don't see why the former is the only
good characterization of "rationality" or why the latter is a necessary
condition of it. My chess playing program doesn't (I think) "understand"
its goals, but it does very well with them.
...
> > My point is not that they are common, but that they are a serious
> > challenge to your view of "shoulds" being correct.
>
> I am not claiming that my view of "should" provides truth-values for should
> statements -- rather the opposite. My claim is only that there is a very
> reliable relation between the feelings and the convictions, and so these
> people only pose a problem if they are, in fact, common.
It may not be a "problem" in the sense that you will encounter much
difficulty if you act on your theory, but, then, you will not encounter
much difficulty navigating on the surface of the Earth using Ptolemaic
astronomy. It's still better in some sense if we can explain
"retrograde" motion, whether it is infrequently observed among planets or
people.
What I am trying to argue (perhaps unsuccessfully) is that there simply
could not be any folks with unaligned "shoulds" and "approvals" if your
theory is correct. Unless, you take an "approval" to be a sufficiently
rarefied thing, not a "feeling", that it starts acting like what I think
a "should" is.
> > Such a person thinks
> > he has a basis for moral judgment independent of his approval. Of course
> > he probably realizes how much better it would be for him if his approval
> > was in line with his basis for judgment. This no doubt leads people to
> > change the basis for their judgment or to what they give approval (or
> > both).
>
> Think about what you just wrote, tho. What you are saying is that people
> will change to make themselves more like I say they generally are. How can
> you believe that that refutes my position?
Because I'm not just saying that. My position is that there is /both/ a
"basis for moral judgment" /and/ an "approval mechanism". If I
understand your view, you collapse these two into one. Thus, there is no
possibility of tension between them. OTOH, I can grant that there are
strong reasons for the "basis" and the "mechanism" to be aligned, even if
they are not always so. And I can agree that many (most?) persons will
tinker with the basis - engage in "rationalization" - rather than attempt
to alter what they feel approval towards.
If (what I take to be your) position were correct, it could be taken to
count against moral realism, since the "approvals" or feelings do not
have truth values (but maybe moral realism could be correct anyway, I'm
not sure). OTOH, my "basis" is the kind of thing that could be made up
of statements with truth values (of which at least one, hopefully for the
realist, has the value "true"). So I am only trying to very slightly
increase our confidence in moral realism by arguing that your view of
"shoulds" is inadequate to describe all the relevant things a view of
"shoulds" should.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
> Gordon G. Sollars:
> >>> A maximizing process such as evolution has a good claim to
> >>> being called a rational process.
>
> >> Evolution is no more rational than water spreading into a field.
I'm pretty sure I don't want to call evolution a rational /actor/,
either, but an "actor" and a "process" are different. If (something
like) utilitarianism (I'm going to label this: (SL)U) is true, evolution,
as a maximizing process, could lead to outcomes that would be like those
/chosen/ by an actor. Thus, humans could have welfare maximizing
behaviors that are "rational" that are not the result of human reasoning.
I'll try to develop this point more in the other reply I owe you, but due
to time constraints it may take me a while to get back to it.
...
> I don't deny that there is such a thing as moral reasoning. I just deny that
> moral claims have truth values. The terms used in moral reasoning are type
> terms, and are based ultimately in terms accepted on the basis of feelings.
> These feelings permeate the conclusions as well -- someone who has a bad
> feeling
> about a "good" act is in an unstable position.
As I have said, I have no problem with the point about instability; but
I think that you do. A person whose cognitive understanding of what
morality requires is at odds with his motivational psychology will, I
think, take steps to reduce this conflict. It may even be true that most
people in this situation engage in rationalization about the cognitive
aspect rather than try to alter how they feel. But what I consider to be
the "cognitive aspect" you seem to regard as moral reasoning about
feelings. How can such reasoning about my feelings lead me consider as a
"good" act something that I have a bad feeling about?
> > [...] My chess playing program doesn't (I think) "understand"
> > its goals, but it does very well with them.
>
> The chess program understands the game of chess -- and nothing else. It
> reasons
> about chess, but has no feelings on the matter. It is a rational actor i
> n a very
> limited field.
OK, so is "understanding" independent of consciousness on your view, or
do you think that the program is conscious in some sense?
...
> > What I am trying to argue (perhaps unsuccessfully) is that there simply
> > could not be any folks with unaligned "shoulds" and "approvals" if your
> > theory is correct.
>
> That's wrong. My theory is not that the shoulds and the approvals always
> align,
> but that the shoulds are a strong indicator of approval.
I thought you said the shoulds /were/ approvals. I'm going to have to go
back and review, but I don't have time now.
...
> Approval is a feeling. It is satisfaction or anticipation of satisfactio
> n with a
> person, state of affairs or planned course of action, or with types of th
> e same.
And it seems to me that a person can believe that he should do X without
having any feeling of satisfaction or anticipation of satisfaction about
X.
...
> No, you misunderstand. I hold that there are the two, but that they are
> normally
> coincident. *And* that the fundamental bases for moral judgements are ac
> cepted
> due to the feelings of the moral agent
If they are normally coincident, how can you be sure?
> -- whether simply (that's just the way
> they've always been) or as a result of a process of alignment between their
> judgements and their feelings. The feelings are the basis for the intuit
> ions --
> I really doubt that anyone intuits a moral premise that they disapprove of.
Well, "approve" and "disapprove" are binary. How about "not completely
comfortable with"? And "intuit" is problematic, too. How about this:
can a person reason to a moral premise that he is not completely
comfortable with? I say yes. I'll go beyond that and say that he could
reason to one he disapproved of, as well.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
> But when you get right down to it, it
> is the feelings of the moral agent that are the foundation of the moral c
> laims --
> you will get to a point where the agent is not reasoning, but merely feel
> ing. This
> in all but a few unstable individuals.
It seems as if you are implicitly making the argument that there are
moral foundations that consist only of feeling. Is that because you
think that there must be foundational moral premises that can not be
based upon reasoning? I reject this sort of foundational pyramid. From
a justificatory standpoint I don't see why there are special foundational
premises, feeling-based or otherwise.
Are you also saying that the unstable have reasons that are not (at
present) based upon feeling? I'm a little confused by this.
> > How can such reasoning about my feelings lead me consider as a
> > "good" act something that I have a bad feeling about?
>
> What is going on in the question you're asking is an agent has a bad feel
> ing about
> something, but can't seem to figure out what's bad about it -- might even
> , in fact,
> think that it's a good thing in spite of their bad feelings. This situat
> ion is, as
> we both agree, unstable. The agent may decide that they are mistaken abo
> ut one of
> their moral premises, or they may decide that they would be a better pers
> on if they
> felt better about this thing. In the former case, the person's bad feeli
> ngs are
> motivating a re-evaluation of their moral premises.
I would say that the dissonance of believing a moral judgment that is at
odds with the feeling is what motivates the re-evaluation. I'm getting
an even stronger impression you think moral judgments must ultimately be
based on feelings because... what else would they be based on? They
might not be based on any finite set of premises. Indeed, if we reject
foundationism (as we should), this is not simply the case with moral
judgments, but with all judgments. Support for a judgment can come from
any "direction", not simply from "below". What matters from a
justificatory standpoint is how well the judgment coheres with our total
set of beliefs. Of course, for convenience we may choose to organize our
beliefs, and this could well create foundational beliefs as an artifact.
We are also, no doubt, more sure of some beliefs than others, but that
alone does not mean that all our beliefs can be individually ordered with
one at the bottom. Equivalence classes may be all we get.
> In the latter case, the
> strength of their belief in their fundamental moral premises over-rides t
> heir bad
> feelings about this particular thing -- but note that their fundamental moral
> premises are held not for more fundamental reasons (that would be a contr
> adiction),
> but because of their moral sentiments.
It seems that you are asserting that the "fundamental premises" must be
grounded in moral sentiments - but weren't the bad feelings also moral
sentiments? So these sentiments are just at war with each other, and we
can't really say anything about why one comes out on top? Why are you
sure that my decision to be better person must be based upon a feeling or
sentiment?
...
> The former. There may be understanding where there is no consciousness o
> f it, and
> there may be no understanding even when there is a self-perception of
> understanding. Understanding is the ability to respond appropriately --
> the wider
> the range of appropriate response, the greater the understanding. I thin
> k many
> people are just underestimating the sheer amount of understanding humans
> have.
If understanding is the ability to respond appropriately it is hard for
me to see why you won't call a "reason-conforming" process a rational
one. Or can "understanding" be guided by something other than
consciousness?
...
> > I thought you said the shoulds /were/ approvals.
>
> If I did, I was being sloppy. I said shoulds *signalled* approval.
Right, sorry. But we have agreed that they need not signal approval. So
what are they when they are /not/ doing that? My position is that they
could be stating moral facts (if they are not too ambiguous to lack any
definite meaning). Most of the time (except for "unstable" persons) they
are stating moral "facts" of which we approve (in quotes because we could
be wrong about it being a fact).
...
> And since one cannot *reason to* a *fundamental* premise, one is left won
> dering how
> the fundamental premises are established.
They are not fundamental - any more than there is only one foundation for
all true statements. In fact, we can begin anywhere, although perhaps it
is true that everyone must begin somewhere.
They are not established - like a good theory, they fail to be
disestablished by our contact with the world, so we run with them.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>> But when you get right down to it, it is the feelings of the moral
>> a point where the agent is not reasoning, but merely feeling. This
>> in all but a few unstable individuals.
Gordon G. Sollars:
> It seems as if you are implicitly making the argument that there are
> moral foundations that consist only of feeling. Is that because you
> think that there must be foundational moral premises that can not be
> based upon reasoning? I reject this sort of foundational pyramid.
> From a justificatory standpoint I don't see why there are special
> foundational premises, feeling-based or otherwise.
You either reason in circles, or you come to some foundation (you don't
have enough time to engage in an infinite regress :-). Even if you
reason in circles, you have some meta-reason for choosing one set of
circles over another.
> Are you also saying that the unstable have reasons that are not (at
> present) based upon feeling? I'm a little confused by this.
No. The unstable individuals are the ones who are basing their moral
claims on moral attitudes they don't have -- things they don't feel. We
have agreed that such individuals will tend to either come to feel what
they claim, or eventually stop claiming what they don't feel.
>> [A]n agent has a bad feeling about something, but can't seem to
>> figure out what's bad about it -- might even, in fact, think that
>> it's a good thing in spite of their bad feelings. This situation
>> is, as we both agree, unstable. The agent may decide that they are
>> mistaken about one of their moral premises, or they may decide that
>> they would be a better person if they felt better about this thing.
>> In the former case, the person's bad feelings are motivating a
>> re-evaluation of their moral premises.
> I would say that the dissonance of believing a moral judgment that is at
> odds with the feeling is what motivates the re-evaluation.
And that contradicts what I wrote how?
> I'm getting
> an even stronger impression you think moral judgments must ultimately be
> based on feelings because... what else would they be based on? They
> might not be based on any finite set of premises. Indeed, if we reject
> foundationism (as we should), this is not simply the case with moral
> judgments, but with all judgments. Support for a judgment can come from
> any "direction", not simply from "below".
I am not talking about "above" and "below"; I am talking about "before"
and "after". Reasoning does not have to be truth-preserving (indeed, in
this case, it is my position that there is no truth to preserve). If
support for B comes from A, then A is "before" B, whether A is "above" B
or "below". In such a case, A is more foundational than B.
[...]
>> In the latter case, the strength of their belief in their fundamental
>> moral premises over-rides their bad feelings about this particular
>> thing -- but note that their fundamental moral premises are held not
>> for more fundamental reasons (that would be a contradiction), but
>> because of their moral sentiments.
> It seems that you are asserting that the "fundamental premises" must be
> grounded in moral sentiments - but weren't the bad feelings also moral
> sentiments? So these sentiments are just at war with each other,
Good so far. Keep in mind the difference between a moral premise (a
claim taken to be true without argument) and a moral sentiment (a
feeling).
> and we
> can't really say anything about why one comes out on top?
I'm sure someone who's interested could say lots about it.
> Why are you
> sure that my decision to be better person must be based upon a feeling or
> sentiment?
Why do you say you're better?
Why do you think that's better?
> ...
>> There may be understanding where there is no consciousness of it, and
>> there may be no understanding even when there is a self-perception of
>> understanding. Understanding is the ability to respond appropriately
>> -- the wider the range of appropriate response, the greater the
>> understanding. I think many people are just underestimating the
>> sheer amount of understanding humans have.
> If understanding is the ability to respond appropriately it is hard for
> me to see why you won't call a "reason-conforming" process a rational
> one.
Evolution is not responding to anything, let alone responding
appropriately.
> Or can "understanding" be guided by something other than
> consciousness?
I don't understand the question. Understanding isn't guided; it's
embodied. It can be embodied in somthing that's not conscious, but I
doubt that very much understanding can be embodied in anything that's
not conscious.
> ...
>>> I thought you said the shoulds /were/ approvals.
>> If I did, I was being sloppy. I said shoulds *signalled* approval.
> Right, sorry. But we have agreed that they need not signal approval.
Not quite. I agreed that they were not perfectly reliable signals.
> So
> what are they when they are /not/ doing that?
Misleading.
[...]
>> And since one cannot *reason to* a *fundamental* premise, one is left
>> wondering how the fundamental premises are established.
> They are not fundamental - any more than there is only one foundation for
> all true statements. In fact, we can begin anywhere, although perhaps it
> is true that everyone must begin somewhere.
>
> They are not established - like a good theory, they fail to be
> disestablished by our contact with the world, so we run with them.
Well *of course* they're not disestablished -- they'd have to have some
naturalistic meaning to be disestablished. Lacking such, they are
impossible to disestablish.
...mark young