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RichardChappell comments on Pluralistic Moral Reductionism - Less Wrong
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As I argue elsewhere:
"Hypothetical imperatives thus reveal patterns of normative inheritance. But their highlighted 'means' can't inherit normative status unless the 'end' in question had prior normative worth. A view on which there are only hypothetical imperatives is effectively a form of normative nihilism -- no more productive than an irrigation system without any water to flow through it."
(Earlier in the post explains why hypothetical imperatives aren't reducible to mere empirical statements of a means-ends relationship.)
I tentatively favour non-naturalist realism over non-naturalist error theory, but my purpose in my previous comment was just to flag the latter option as one that physicalists should take (very) seriously.
Error theory
You know this, but for the benefit of others: Roughly, error theory consists of two steps. As Finlay puts it:
Given my view of conceptual analysis, it shouldn't be surprising that I'm not confident of some error theorists' assertion of step 1. Is a presupposition of moral absolutism 'essential' to a judgment's status as a 'moral' judgment? Is a presuppositional of motivational internalism 'essential' to a judgment's status as a 'moral' judgment? I don't know. Moral discourse (unlike carbon discourse) is so confused that I'm not too interested to assert one fine boundary line around moral terms over another.
So if someone thinks a presupposition of supernaturalism is 'essential' to a judgment's status as a 'moral' judgment, then I will claim that supernaturalism is false. But this doesn't make me an error theorist because I don't necessarily agree that a presupposition of supernaturalism is 'essential' to a judgment's status as a 'moral' judgment. I reject step 1 of error theory in this case.
Likewise, if someone thinks a presupposition of moral absolutism or motivational internalism is essential to a judgment's status as a 'moral' judgment, I'll be happy to deny both moral absolutism and motivational internalism, but I wouldn't call myself an error theorist because I reject the claim that moral judgments (by definition, by conceptual analysis) necessarily presuppose moral absolutism or motivational internalism.
But hey, if you convince me that the presumption of motivational internalism in moral discourse is so widespread that talking about 'morality' without it would be like using the term 'phlogiston' to talk about oxygen, then I'll be happy to call myself an error theorist, though none of my anticipations will have changed.
Hypothetical imperatives
I'll reply to a passage from your post on hypothetical imperatives. My reply won't make sense to those who haven't read it:
I think this is because 'should' is being used in different senses. The real modus ponens is:
Or at least, that is plausibly what some people mean when they assert what looks like a hypothetical imperative. Doubtless, others will appear to be meaning something else if pressed by interrogation.
Now, to respond to Sidgwick:
I could capture this 'unreasonableness' by simply clarifying that from the standpoint of Bayesian rationality, it would be somewhat irrational to expect good health despite not rising early (or so the doctor claims).
But again, I'm not too keen to play the definitions game. If you state hypothetical imperatives with more intuitions about the meaning of hypothetical imperatives than I do, then you are free to explain what you mean by hypothetical imperatives and then show how they fit into the physical world. If you can't show how they fit into the world, then you're talking about something that doesn't exist, or else we'll have to replay the physicalism vs. non-physicalism debate, which is another topic.
Right?
Thanks for this reply. I share your sense that the word 'moral' is unhelpfully ambiguous, which is why I prefer to focus on the more general concept of the normative. I'm certainly not going to stipulate that motivational internalism is true of the normative, though it does seem plausible that there's something irrational about someone who acknowledges that they really ought (all things considered) to phi and yet fails to do so. (I don't doubt that it's possible for someone to form the judgment without any corresponding motivation though, as it's always possible for people to be irrational!)
I trust that we all have a decent pre-theoretic grasp of normativity (or "ought-ness"). The question then is whether this phenomenon that we have in mind (i) is reducible to some physical property, and (ii) actually exists.
Error theory (answering 'no' and 'no' to the two questions above) seems the most natural position for the physicalist. And it sounds like you may be happy to agree that you're really an error theorist about normativity (as I mean it). But then I'm puzzled by what you take yourself to be doing in this series. Why even use moral/normative vocabulary at all, rather than just talking about the underlying natural properties that you really have in mind?
P.S. What work is the antecedent doing in your conditional?
Why do you even need the modus ponens? Assuming that "should_ToTortureChildren" just means "what follows is an effective means to torturing children", then isn't the consequent just plain true regardless of what you want? (Perhaps only someone with the relevant desire will be interested in this means-ends fact, but that's true of many unconditional facts.)
Right.
Unfortunately, I don't think I'm clear about what you mean by normativity. The only source of normativity I think exists is the hypothetical imperative, which can be reduced to physics by straightforward methods such as the one I used in the original post. I'm not an error theorist about that kind of normativity.
This is a good question. Truly, I want to get away from moral vocabulary, and be careful around normative vocabulary. But people already think about these topics in moral and normative vocabulary, which is why I'm trying to solve or dissolve (in this post and its predecessor) some of the usual 'problems' in this space of questions.
After that's done, I don't think it will be most helpful to use moral language. This is evident in the fact that in 15 episodes of my 'morality podcast' I've used almost no moral language at all.
Not much, really. I wasn't using the modus ponens to present an argument, but to unpack one interpretation of (some) 'should' discourse. Normative language, like many other kinds of language, is (when used correctly) merely a shortcut for saying something else. I can imagine a language that has no normative language at all. In that language we couldn't say things like "If you want to torture children, you should volunteer as a babysitter" but we could say things like "If you volunteer as a babysitter you will have more opportunities to torture children." The way I'm parsing 'should' in the first sentence, nothing is lost by this translation.
Of course, people use 'should' in a variety of ways, some of which translate into claims about things reducible to physics, others of which translate into claims about things non-reducible to physics, while still others don't seem to translate into cognitive statements at all.
Thanks, this is helpful. I'm interested in your use of the phrase "source of normativity" in:
This makes it sound like there's a new thing, normativity, that arises from some other thing (e.g. desires, or means/ends relationships). That's a very realist way of talking.
I take it that what you really want to say something more like, "The only kind of 'normativity'-talk that's naturalistically reducible and hence possibly true is hypothetical imperatives -- when these are understood to mean nothing more than that a certain means-end relation holds." Is that right?
I'd then understand you as an error theorist, since "being a means-end relationship", like "being red", is not even in the same ballpark as what I mean by "being normative". (It might sometimes have normative importance, but as we learn from Parfit, that's a very different thing.)
My thought process on sources of normativity looks something like this:
People claim all sorts of justifications for 'ought' statements (aka normative statements). Some justify ought statements with respect to natural law or divine commands or non-natural normative properties or categorical imperatives. But those things don't exist. The only justification of normative language that fits in my model of the universe is when people use 'ought' language as some kind of hypothetical imperative, which can be translated into a claim about things reducible to physics. There are many varieties of this. Many uses of 'ought' terms can be translated into claims about things reducible to physics. If somebody uses 'ought' terms to make claims about things not reducible to physics, then I am suspicious of the warrant for those claims. When interrogating about such warrants, I usually find that the only evidences on offer are pieces of folk wisdom, intuitions, and conventional linguistic practice.
You still seem to be conflating justification-giving properties with the property of being justified. Non-naturalists emphatically do not appeal to non-natural properties to justify our ought-claims. When explaining why you ought to give to charity, I'll point to various natural features -- that you can save a life for $500 by donating to VillageReach, etc. It's merely the fact that these natural features are justifying, or normatively important, which is non-natural.
Sure. So what is it that makes (a) [the fact that you can save a life by donating $500 to VillageReach] normatively justifying, whereas (b) [the fact that you can save a mosquito by donating $2000 to SaveTheMosquitos] is not normatively justifying?
On my naturalist view, the fact that makes (a) but not (b) normatively justifying would be some fact about how the goal we're discussing at the moment is saving human lives, not saving mosquito lives. That's a natural fact. So are the facts about how the English language works and how two English speakers are using their terms.
It's not entirely clear what you're asking. Two possibilities, corresponding to my above distinction, are:
(1) What (perhaps more general) normatively significant feature is possessed by [saving lives for $500 each] that isn't possessed by [saving mosquitoes for $2000 each]? This would just be to ask for one's fully general normative theory: a utilitarian might point to the greater happiness that would result from the former option. Eventually we'll reach bedrock ("It's just a brute fact that happiness is good!"), at which point the only remaining question is....
(2) In what does the normative signifiance of [happiness] consist? That is, what is the nature of this justificatory status? What are we attributing to happiness when we claim that it is normatively justifying? This is where the non-naturalist insists that attributing normativity to a feature is not merely to attribute some natural quality to it (e.g. of "being the salient goal under discussion" -- that's not such a philosophically interesting property for something to have. E.g., I could know that a feature has this property without this having any rational significance to me at all).
(Note that it's a yet further question whether our attributions of normativity are actually correct, i.e. whether worldly things have the normative properties that we attribute to them.)
I gather it's this second question you had in mind, but again it's crucial to carefully distinguish them since non-naturalist answers to the first question are obviously crazy.
Yup. I'm asking question (2). Thanks again for your clarifying remarks.
What if you actually should be discussing saving of mosquito lives, but don't, because humans are dumb?
I think this is a change of subject, but... what do you mean by 'actually should'?
But the question then is what goal you should have. It is easy to naturalise norms inasmuch as they are hypothetical and indexed to whatever you happen to be doing. (if you want to play chess, you should move the bishop diagonally) The issue is how to naturalise categorical ends,the goals you should have and the rules you should be following irrespective of what you are doing.
Such facts aren't supernatural. OTOH, they fall on the analytical/apriori side of the fence, rather than the empirical side, and that is an iimportant distinction.
What reasons are there for doubting the existence of categorical imperatives that do not equally count against the existence of hypothetical imperatives? I can understand rejecting both, I can understand accepting both, but I can't understand treating them differently.
Depends what you mean by 'categorical imperative', and what normative force you think it carries. The categorical imperatives I am used to hearing about can't be reduced into the physical world in the manner by which I reduced a hypothetical imperative into the physical world in the original post above.
I take it you want to reduce a hypothetical imperative like "If you want to stretch, then you ought to stand" into a physically-kosher causal claim like "standing is causally necessary for satisfying your desire to stretch". Now, I'm skeptical about this reduction, simply because I don't see how a mere causal claim could provide any normative direction whatsoever. But in any case, it seems that you could equally well reduce a categorical imperative like "Regardless of what you personally want, if you are the only one around a drowning child, then you ought to help save it from drowning" into a physically-kosher causal claim like "your help is causally necessary for the survival of the drowning child". Both causal claims are equally physicalistic, and both seem equally relevant to their respective imperative, so both physicalistic reductions seem equally promising.
Of course, the question "why should I assume that the drowning's child survival actually matters?" seems reasonable enough. But so does the question "why should I assume that satisfying my desire to stretch actually matters?" If the first question jeopardizes the reduction of the categorical imperative, then the second question would also jeopardize the reduction of the hypothetical imperative.
I'm not used to the term 'categorical imperative' being used in this way. Normally, a categorical imperative is one that holds not just regardless of what you want, but regardless of any stated ends at all. Your reduction of this categorical imperative assumes an end of 'survival of the drowning child.' To me, that's what we call a hypothetical imperative, and that's why it can be reduced in that way, by translating normativity into statements about means and ends.
The set of non-ethical categorical imperatives is non-empty. The set of non-ethical hypothetical imperatives is non-empty. Hypothetical imperatives include instrumental rules, you have to use X to achieve Y, game-laying rules, etc.
How exactly does this answer the question?
I agree. Epistemic imperatives are categorical, but non-empty.
Right, those are examples where non-ethical hypothetical imperatives often show up.
So how does this add up to a reason to think there is a case against categorical imperatives that doesn't equally well count against hypothetical imperatives?
My thought process on sources of normativity looks something like this:
There's a lot of kinds of normative/"ought" statements. Some relate to games, some to rationality, and so on. Hypothetical "ought" statements do not require any special metaphysical apparatus to explain them, they just require rules and payoffs. Categorical imperatives are another story.
One man's conventional linguistic practice is another's analytical truth.
Rules and payoffs explain "ought" statements only if you assume that the rules are worth following and the payoffs worth pursuing. But if hypothetical imperatives can help themselves to such assumptions (assuming e.g. that one's own desires ought to be satisfied), then categorical imperatives can help themselves to such assumptions (assuming e.g. that everyone's desires ought to be satisfied, or that everyone's happiness ought to be maximized, or that everyone ought to develop certain character traits).
I don't think so. You ought to use a hammer to drive in nails even if you don't want to dive in nails. Anyone who is playing chess should move the bishop diagonally.That doesn't mean you are playing chess.
Of course those are hypothetical, and non-ethical. It might wll be the case that the only categorical imperatives are moral categorical imperatives; that. ethics is the only area where you should do things or refrain form things unconditionally.
Again, you're assuming that the rule 'if you're driving in nails, use a hammer' is worth following, and that the rule 'if you're playing chess, move bishops diagonally' is worth following. A nihilist would reject both of those rules as having any normative authority, and say that just because a game has rules it doesn't mean that game-players ought to follow those rules, at most it means that lots and lots of rule-violations make the game go away.