Jumping Over The Is-Ought Gap (Draft)
Follow up to: Of Oughts and Is, Part III
Author’s Note: Honestly, this essay will likely make very little sense to you unless you start from the very beginning. At best you will want to backtrack all the “follow up to”s, but I think you can get by fine with reading just “Don’t Smuggle Your Connotations”, “The Folly of Debating Definitions”, “The Map and The Territory”, “The Meaning of Morality”, and “Of Ought and Is, Part I” “…Part II” and “…Part III”. (If you feel like this is too much prerequisite reading, read “The Sad Truth of Inferential Distance” to understand why I would do something like this.)
This is a recanted essay!: From the comments I’ve been getting, I now know that I definitely haven’t been as clear in communicating my views as I thought I was. Thus, I’m going to be scrapping this essay as a draft and starting over. Please note that this is an old and outdated draft of this essay. See “I’m Never As Clear As I Think I Am” for more information.
In “The Meaning of Morality”, I decided to crack open our notions of “morality” and “good” to see what was inside. This turned out to start an adventure through the tunnels of normativity, and will keep us on a train that will go for quite awhile longer, because there is a lot to say.
The first big idea was breaking apart the claim that an action fit the label “good” and the claim that we have some sort of intrinsic motivation (reason for action) to preform that action. This was the idea of pluralistic moral reductionism — that the word “good” was just that, a word, and like other words it could have multiple, even mutually exclusive definitions. Thus as long as we did not smuggle the connotation of intrinsic motivation, we could avoid the massive folly of endless squabbling over what exactly is “good” or not.
That being said, we do begin a nearly endless squabbling over what exactly gives us reasons for preforming or refraining from certain actions. In “Of Ought and Is, Part I”, I started outlining the Is-Ought Gap, which broadly put means that we can’t conclude what ought to be the case just from saying that something is “good” alone. More specifically and simply put, the Is-Ought Gap presents us with a “Why Challenge”: Why ought I follow your moral theory, anyway? Where are the reasons for action coming from?
It’s not enough to just huff and puff about what ought to be the case, and “Of Ought and Is, Part II” and “Of Ought and Is, Part III” carry this challenge all the way through, showing it to not be well-met by any current theory for normativity.
Now we begin the process of picking up the pieces of normativity that were left lying on the ground. The good news is that I didn’t bring you through a whirlwind tour of seven different theories about the motivational force behind certain moral statements just to tear them down, but also because they each contain key pieces needed to bring us back. I now want to construct a philosophical notion of reasons for action, and then dive into the psychology that actually underlies our motivation and see how these things together help us understand what it is we ought to do …if anything in particular.
Hypothetical Imperatives
For the first step, I turn our attention back to Immanuel Kant. He had outlined a categorical imperative that said we ought to follow certain moral commands regardless of whether we personally desire to. I found such categorical imperatives to be problematic, but Kant had something else to offer: the hypothetical imperative.
Categorical imperatives state You ought to do X, regardless of anything else. Hypothetical imperatives, however, incorporate an if-then element: If you desire Y, then you ought to do X, where X is the outcome that most likely gets you Y. Here, desire can be taken more-or-less as it is used in common parlance. More particularly and specifically, a “desire for Y” is philosophical shorthand for a mental state that motivates you to act as to bring about Y. If you desire to eat a cookie, you will go to the store and buy some, since that action brings about you eating a cookie.
Notice that here we’re keeping it simple. It’s clear that you might desire to get a cookie, but then have some other desire that would prevent you from going to the store and buying some, like a desire to not spend money, or a desire to stay on the couch and watch TV. It’s also clear that even while the notion of desire is pretty useful for explaining and predicting human behavior, it is not a concept that holds up well to current psychological research. All we do have to recognize at this point is that our internal mental states can give us reasons for action.
Not Quite The Gap Anymore
This brings us back to the “Is-Ought Gap” I mentioned earlier — the idea that, for any moral system, it makes sense to ask why we have reasons for action to follow that system. A theory like utilitarianism might say that we ought to do whatever maximizes the happiness of conscious creatures, but then might ask why that is the case — why must we do whatever maximizes the happiness of conscious creatures? Essentially, something is missing when we go from “Action X, if preformed by you, would maximize the happiness of conscious creatures” to “Therefore, you ought to preform action X”.
And here I lay out the simple answer for what is missing; for what actually would give us reasons for action to follow a system: our desires. Here’s how that works from a simplified philosophical standpoint:
- It’s true that we value certain states of affairs (how the world currently is right now) more than other states of affairs, and thus want the current state of affairs to be one which we value.
- Secondly, certain facts about how the world work means that certain actions (including refraining from action altogether) will bring about a certain state of affairs, whereas other actions will bring about other states of affairs.
- Therefore, valuing certain states of affairs will cause us to be motivated to act as to bring about those certain states of affairs.
- Therefore, we have reasons for action — namely, it becomes tautological to say we ought to act as to bring about states of affairs we value.
All this adds up to the bridge we need to get from the “is” side (we have specific mental states) to the “ought” side (we ought to preform certain actions). And we do indeed answer this Is-Ought Problem and solve the “Why Challenge”. Why ought you eat a cookie? Well, because you hypothetically value eating cookies, and if you don’t actually have this value, than our claim that you ought to eat a cookie is false.
Instrumental Means and Terminal Ends
It’s important to think about desires a bit differently than the way we currently may be thinking about them. For examples: why do we study, if we don’t actually enjoy studying? Why exercise, if we know that it only hurts us and makes us tired? The answer here is the difference between two types of desire, which are unfortunately blurred together (at least in English) by both using the same word.
The difference is between what is called an instrumental value (or desire-as-means) and a terminal value (or intrinsic value or desire-as-ends). The instrumental values are something you come to value only because it helps you achieve your terminal values (you desire them as a means to get what you want), whereas the terminal value is desired as an end in itself.
For examples again, while we may enjoy studying a bit for itself, we mostly do it as a means to get good grades, which itself might be valued as a means to graduate from college, which might be a means to get a good job, which might be a means to having a successful life. What exactly we desire-as-means versus what exactly we desire-as-ends is something to sort out when we look in depth at the actual underlying psychology later on.
No one I know really wants to be in a traffic jam for the fun of it (terminal value), but people will still knowingly enter into traffic jams if it's the only way they can get to where they need to be (instrumental value).
Bringing in Beliefs
Here, it may seem that “ought” is tautological: we ought to do what we want to do, and thus it’s really meaningless to tell someone they ought to do something different than what they’re already doing, because they’re already either doing what they terminally value, or something that they desire-as-means to achieve their terminal values. But once we bring in beliefs, which may be in error, we can see that there is actually room for a true recommendation to be made as to what you ought to be doing, but aren’t currently doing.
For example, let’s keep it simple by going back to a hypothetical agent (an “agent” is an entity capable of deliberate action) that has only one terminal value: to consume a cookie. This agent, call him the Cookie Monster, will thus be motivated to preform whatever action is most likely to lead up to a state of affairs where he is consuming a cookie. Now let’s say that there is a red box, a green box, and a blue box, and the blue box contains a cookie. The Cookie Monster is offered only one of these boxes — he gets to make the choice, and then the other boxes are destroyed, along with their contents.
Now, the Cookie Monster has no information about the boxes, and thus can only choose at random, and selects the red box. To his dismay, he sees the blue box get destroyed with his cookie inside. Yet, there is indeed a sense in which we can say the Cookie Monster’s action was mistaken — he ought to have chosen the blue box (and thus also ought to have instrumentally valued choosing the blue box).
The Logical Underpinnings
These facts about what the Cookie Monster ought to do are not opinions, but rather actual facts about the hypothetical solely derived from two statements about how the hypothetical “is”: (1) the terminal value of the Cookie Monster and (2) the outcomes to which each hypothetical choice would lead. These facts are no different than deriving “the shape is a square” from knowing that the shape (1) a polygon with (2) only four ninety degree angles. We also need not have anyone personally recommend the action to the Cookie Monster for it to be true that the Cookie Monster indeed ought to pick the Blue Box.
Indeed, we can construct the hypothetical imperative that “If the Cookie Monster desired to eat a cookie and if choosing the blue box was the action most likely to bring about the cookie, the Cookie Monster ought to pick the blue box”, and it would be a logically true statement in any hypothetical scenario. The normativity comes from the scenario as a whole, but reduces to individual facts about the overall scenario — the desires for certain state of affairs and the causal relations of how actions bring about states of affairs.
The Two Ingredients
And it’s important we have both parts in order to construct normativity. Imagine that instead of the Cookie Monster, we had the Anti-Cookie Monster who terminally desired to avoid cookies at all costs. While none of the casual relations of how actions bring about states of affairs in the hypothetical changed, the change in the terminal value considered results differently: The Anti-Cookie Monster ought to choose the green or red box.
Likewise, if the cookie were moved to the green box, the regular Cookie Monster with the terminal value to eat a cookie now ought to do something differently — choose the green box instead of the blue box. Here, a change in the causal relationships of actions and states of affairs resulted in a different normative action, even though the terminal value wasn’t changed.
Objective/Subjective, Prescriptive/Descriptive
So in one sense this normativity is subjective — it comes from a desire that exists within the brain of the agent (or whatever stuff hypothetical agents are made out of). But in another sense this normativity is completely objective — it comes from the objective fact that the desire exists and indeed has motivational force, and the causal relationships about how actions bring into effect states of affairs relevant to that desire. Carefully note here what precisely is in the map, and what is in the territory.
Once you bring in beliefs that are capable of being wrong, you also get a difference between what the agent believes he or she ought to do, and what the agent actually ought to do, given the true facts about the world in which the agent lives. It will be important for later discussion to note that the first type — what the agent believes he or she ought to do — is called descriptive normativity (or descriptive ethics) and the second type — what the agent actually ought to do — is labeled prescriptive normativity (or prescriptive ethics).
Normativity Through Standards
The fact that we can ground normativity in hypotheticals about agents and causal relationships completely different than those found on Earth means that normativity need not take place in any actual desire, but rather can exist in strictly hypothetical relationships. What I mean by this is that all the hypothetical imperatives for the Cookie Monster and Anti-Cookie Monster are true statements, even though the Cookie Monster, Anti-Cookie Monster, and the three boxes all don’t exist here on Earth.
Thus demonstrating the truth of normative statements becomes something more akin to math, like adding one and one and getting two. It’s a simple matter of logical deduction. The problem on Earth, however, is that the causal relationships between actions and states of affairs that actually exist cannot be deduced solely by logic, but actually require observing the world empirically. Likewise, the terminal values of the agents that exist on Earth, humans, are so complex as to also require specific empirical study before a logical analysis can be applied. (Technically, given that nonhuman animals also have desires, they too can be agents to which true hypothetical imperatives apply, though this probably won’t be much use for them.)
Institutions
The punchline that I’m getting at is that we can propose a certain standard, say “maximize the well-being of conscious creatures” and then construct a hypothetical imperative about that standard, and have that statement be true, even if no agent actually cares at all about maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures.
We can then say that “In order that you match this standard, you ought to X”, where X is whatever action actually does maximize the well-being of conscious creatures. These standards exist externally to any sort of desiring that is actually taking place, and are true by being a relationship between the causal relationships of the world and the standard itself.
To see why this matters, I turn you back to Searle’s idea of institutions that I discussed earlier. He tried to bridge the Is-Ought gap by saying that if you made a promise to pay someone $5, you entered into an institution where you ought to pay that person $5. Now we have the tools to see what is really going on: the promise to pay someone $5 means that “you ought to pay that person $5, in order that you match the standard of promise-keeping”.
Of course, this hypothetical imperative may not be at all relevant to you if you don’t personally care about the standard of promise-keeping, but it remains an unimpressively true statement nonetheless. You can jump the is-ought gap even with a factual “is” statement about what a standard entails and a factual “is” statement about whether a certain action meets that standard.
A Taxonomy of Oughts
Thus it becomes much simpler from a pragmatic linguistic standpoint to merging the concept of standards and the concept of terminal values by taking ought statements to just be about an end or a goal without any further elaboration. Thus we might say that “In order to maximize his terminal value (of eating a cookie), the Cookie Monster ought to choose the blue box (given that the blue box is the only box that contains the cookie)”.
However, we could just as well say “In order to maximize the well-being of conscious creatures, the Cookie Monster ought to not choose the blue box (given that the blue box all along secretly contained a bomb that would destroy Earth)”. While this second hypothetical imperative statement might not be relevant to the Cookie Monster, it is nonetheless true, and both are types of goals that a hypothetical imperative may have.
We thus end up with the following types of ought statements:
- A true ought connects an end with the action that most effectively accomplishes that end.
- A false ought connects an end with the action that does not most effectively accomplishes that end.
- A motivating ought is either a true or false ought that has as an end the terminal value or values of the agent in question. Some oughts will be motivating oughts for some agents and not for others.
Notice here that we’ve shifted the definition of “ought” away from “motivating force” and to just any connection between an action and an end that the action may bring about. This allows us to talk about more claims than we could otherwise. Just don’t get confused.
In order that you ride the rollar coaster, your height must match a certain standard. Here, we have two institutions in one: the institution controlling who is admitted onto the rollar coaster, and the institution about how tall you have to be.
Where We Go From Here
So now I’ve traced normativity through a long path — jumping over the is-ought gap with ends that may include either generic standards or the specific values of agents. This ends up with the construction of hypothetical imperatives that, because an agent may not have all the relevant information or may have false beliefs, can be truly prescriptive in the sense that an agent can act incorrectly.
All of this can take place and be deduced by logic alone within a hypothetical, mathematically-defined world, but if it were to take place on our real Earth, the sheer complexity of the world would prevent us from using only logic to deduce oughts relevant to us or the standards we care about. Thus, we must turn to an empirical study of both sides of the equation — what it is we value and how to get it. Such is what I will consider the general study of normativity.
Here’s a tentative roadmap subject to update: In the next essay, I will write more about how this picture of normativity fits within the philosophy of ethics as a whole, with a specific focus on recommending that we reconsider how we use words like “good”, “bad”, “right”, “wrong”, “moral”, and “ethical”. I will then write an essay to stem the likely tide of fatalism that this may bring, showing that I do not intend to bring society crashing down with me just because there is no almighty moral law.
Then, I will delve deep within the relevant science and spend many essays to determine what we value, why, and a bit about how to get it. While I’d like to focus mostly on the psychology of motivation, I’d also like to focus on some of the underlying psychology and philosophy that explains why we make such large mistakes about ethics, and why ethics is such a confusing field.
After that, I will return to our philosophical analysis here and update it. Lastly, I will proceed to applied ethics, and talk about the states of affairs I value, and maybe why you should consider valuing them too.
Followed up in: I’m Never As Clear As I Think I Am
Before commenting further, please note that this is an old and outdated draft of this essay.
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I now blog at EverydayUtilitarian.com. I hope you'll join me at my new blog! This page has been left as an archive.
On 30 May 2012 in Recanted. 60 Comments.
30 May 2012, 5:52 am
We ought to bring about states of affairs we desire, in general, because it is rational to act so as to satisfy our desires, and rationality is a human norm. But we have other norms too, which lay claim to what we ought to do, and one can see that means-ends rationality isn’t all that there is to normativity in certain cases. One such case is that of the amoralist, who does not have any of the noble desires that we would like him to have, but instead has desires that are well served by acts of immorality – here it is false to say that he ought to do what satisfies his desires, the reason being that whilst his actions meet the standard set by the rationality norm, they do not meet that set by the moral norm for humans.
I take it that the case of the amoralist shows that the general thrust of much of this reasons-for-action is wrongheaded. If so, then we might think that his being given a reason to refrain from immorality isn’t after all sufficient to motivate him, and so reject the dubious idea that moral imperatives are “intrinsically motivating”. And since founded on this dubious idea was the further notion that moral imperatives must connect with desires in some way, in order to account for their motivating character, we can reject that too. But, of course, it is still true that an amoralist ought not commit murder, rape, torture, and so on. So we should take the view that, sometimes at least, what one ought to do does not depend on what desires one has. If one always has reason to do what one ought to do, it then follows that reasons for action are neither equivalent to, nor require, desires.
Such is my view, anyway. In some ways you come close to it – in mentioning institutional oughts and ignoring the desires of an agent as irrelevant to their truth – but you also equate reasons-for-action and desires, which makes the problem of the amoralist insoluble.
30 May 2012, 10:14 am
Peter,
I liked the way you connected this to Searle.
30 May 2012, 12:53 pm
Well, at least it was better than that Fyfist desirism double-speak, but that doesn’t mean it offered anything substantially different.
TaiChi,
Hello there.
I can see how a theist like myself can make that remark, but if there is no morality imposed from outside, how can you make this remark? Isn’t this just your opinion superficially elevated to the status of fact?
30 May 2012, 8:21 pm
TaiChi, I don’t think our views disagree on anything of substance, only express our vocabulary differently. However, the problem I have is that when you say it is false that the amoralist (and we should assume this is an amoralist who also holds malevolent intentions) ought to do what satisfies his desires, you do not say what standard you have in mind.
I agree with you that such malevolent action does not meet specific norms frequently used by humans, whatever those norms may be. And I agree that the statement “in order that the malevolent amoralist meet the specific moral norms frequently used by humans, he ought to do whatever satisfies his desires” is false.
However, “in order that the malevolent amoralist most satisfies his own desires, he ought to do whatever satisfies his desires” is not only true, but tautologically true. And again by definition, this is going to be the only motivating ought for this amoralist. So we won’t be able to change his behavior merely by citing the specific norms frequently used by humans, though we may be able to shape his behavior by threatening to enforce these norms.
The way that I make use of the word “ought”, the claim that “the malevolent amoralist ought not do what satisfies his desires” isn’t even true or false, but rather indeterminate without knowing the relevant end that this ought will take.
A source of confusion may be that you expected me to be enumerating solely moral imperatives. I was not — I was actually broadly enumerating all possible imperatives.
~
I agree with you that moral imperatives need not be intrinsically motivating, nor need they connect with desires in some way. However, I disagree that one has reason to do whatever one ought to do, unless that ought is motivating. I think in many cases one may have no reason to whatever one ought to do.
~
Thanks!
~
I’ll take that as a compliment. This analysis herein was not intended to be a codified law of morality or a decisive proof of secular ethics, however. Instead, I think I did exactly what I claimed — provide a philosophical basis for normativity and the word “ought”. Nothing here is really even that unique, nor did I intend to be unique.
~
I’m actually interested in how a theist like yourself can make that remark.
30 May 2012, 9:39 pm
Peter,
Well, first I’ll ignore the fact that you’re flipping the burden onto me. It’s up to TaiChi and anyone else who endorses the claim to demonstrate it’s validity. Can you?
At any rate, you said it yourself. The only way an “ought” makes sense is if it’s instrumental in fulfilling the agent’s terminal desires, right? Well, if an amoralist can X and get away with it, and if X will be instrumental in fulfilling his terminal desires, then by your take he ought to X.
Now contrast that to theism, where the command “do not X” is imposed from God, and bears unfavorable punishments and consequences for all who X, whether they get caught or not. In this case, X will not be instrumental in fulfilling one’s terminal desires, and would actually work to thwart them. Therefore, equally by your take, said amoralist ought not X.
30 May 2012, 9:41 pm
What stops God from being an amoralist? Definition?
30 May 2012, 10:20 pm
joseph,
C’mon man, be serious.
31 May 2012, 12:39 am
Obviously, God can’t be an amoralist because he’s the originator of all the morals. So if you’re ever bothered by the psalmist celebrating cracking babies’ heads open on rocks, or people getting smitten for seeing the high priest’s bare ass, or picking up sticks on the weekend, or being allowed to rape captive women under threat of turning them out into the desert after their families have been slaughtered, you just remind yourself just who it is making the rules, and simply submit. Don’t really think about it, that’s where you’re making mistakes and getting all confused. Let it flow, potential brother!
Man, people are so soft nowadays. I blame feminazis!
31 May 2012, 2:36 am
Cl,
Hi. I’m simply stating a condition of adequacy on a true moral theory: if there is one, then it has to have amongst its consequences that an amoralist ought not murder, rape, torture, etc.. But yes, if you want to divert the discussion, I do believe it.
“I can see how a theist like myself can make that remark, but if there is no morality imposed from outside, how can you make this remark?”
I reject the idea that ‘oughts’ must be motivational, or appeal to desires which make them true. As such, I don’t need to believe in an external authority who makes the observance of moral imperatives a matter of long-term prudence. If you want an argument for that, it’s that moral imperatives apply to amoralists, and if they do, then those imperatives can’t after all be grounded in having particular desires which would make moral behavior in the amoralist’s best interests. That’s sufficient to support my view. But if you want a reason why I don’t go the other way, and conclude that God exists, it’s because I believe that even if God does not exist, moral statements are still true.
Peter,
However, the problem I have is that when you say it is false that the amoralist (and we should assume this is an amoralist who also holds malevolent intentions) ought to do what satisfies his desires, you do not say what standard you have in mind.
A moral standard, of course. Isn’t this the correct answer?
And again by definition, this is going to be the only motivating ought for this amoralist. So we won’t be able to change his behavior merely by citing the specific norms frequently used by humans, though we may be able to shape his behavior by threatening to enforce these norms.
Right. But describing the moral facts, and trying to bring the behavior of others into harmony with the moral facts, are two separate projects. One might see the matter differently if one think that moral imperatives are intrinsically motivating – for then if we knew what grounded the moral imperatives, we would have something rationally persuasive to say to the amoralist about why he ought act morally – but I think that we have no grounds to believe that beyond vain hope.
The way that I make use of the word “ought”, the claim that “the malevolent amoralist ought not do what satisfies his desires” isn’t even true or false, but rather indeterminate without knowing the relevant end that this ought will take.
To be more specific, I presume you’re also of the view that “the malevolent amoralist ought not commit murder” is indeterminate (that “the malevolent amoralist ought not do what satisfies his desires” is indeterminate given his desires are not specified would be trivially true). But any moral theory ought to have the consequence that “the malevolent amoralist ought not commit murder” is true. So that seems to be a demerit of your view, doesn’t it?
I agree with you that moral imperatives need not be intrinsically motivating, nor need they connect with desires in some way. However, I disagree that one has reason to do whatever one ought to do, unless that ought is motivating. I think in many cases one may have no reason to whatever one ought to do.
One may lack the requisite belief, yes, and in that sense have no reason to do what they ought to do. But in another sense, they always have a reason to do what they ought to do, the sense in which there is a reason (which they perhaps haven’t grasped) for their doing what they ought to do. Take your cookie monster, and his three boxes – does he have a reason to choose the blue box? Yes, because it has his cookie inside, and what he wants is a cookie. But no, because he possesses no belief which favours the cookie’s being in the blue box over his other choices. So there’s an objective and subjective sense of “has a reason” – only in the objective sense, equivalent to “there is a reason” is it true that everyone has a reason for doing what they ought to do.
Joseph
Theists think God is by nature perfectly good. If so, nothing stops him from being amoral – it’s just not his thing.
31 May 2012, 8:25 am
CL,
I am serious, an amoral god is absolved of the problems of evil and good instantly.
I’ve said before I am not adverse to the idea of pantheism, which does not exclude the idea of God being amoral.
Tai Chi,
I suspect the “not in God’s nature” answer restricts libertarian interpretations of free will.
31 May 2012, 8:32 am
Also some Christians have claimed that the God in the Old Testament is actually wicked, so the idea of an amoral God doesn’t seem that outlandish.
31 May 2012, 11:15 am
TaiChi,
How is inquiring about your morality / normativity tantamount to diverting the discussion? I find that accusation mildly annoying. I’m trying to learn from you.
So your justification is basically an elaborate version of, “TaiChi disapproves of murder and thinks the amoralist should, too?”
That’s the part I’m striving to understand. How so?
31 May 2012, 11:18 am
joseph,
I replied as I did because your question cannot be meaningfully asked of the God of the Bible (or classical theism, or the “traditional monotheist God of the philosophers” for that matter).
I would also reject TaiChi’s remark that it’s “not God’s thing.” According to the Bible, God literally cannot “become” an amoralist. It would be logically impossible given other biblical tenets.
So what exactly are you intending to ask?
31 May 2012, 12:57 pm
As a word of caution, both you and Cl mean different things about a moral statement being “true”. As far as I can tell, Cl means “true” from an internalist standpoint, as in that moral ought is also a motivational ought. You and I mean “true” from an externalist standpoint, as in that moral ought is a true ought despite not being a motivational ought.
I do my best to make this explicit by including the frequently ommited but implied hypothetical clause that makes it clear what standard the ought is taking and how it might apply to the subject. The fact that you do not, I think, injects needless confusion into this affair.
~
No, because there is no correct answer. Relative to some end, you ought to do one thing, and relative to another end, you might ought to do something entirely different. Even among ends that are specifically labeled “moral”, there are a wide variety, often mutually exclusive, and no-one privleged above the other except in how we personally value them.
~
This is not a demerit of my view because I am not offering a moral view, I’m offering a view of normativity broadly considered. Given that murder is frequently considered as “morally wrong killing”, then by definition it should be wrong under all moral standards. Thus, “In order to meet any moral standard, the malevolent amoralist ought not commit murder” is true.
However, there are many ends which are not moral standards. On some of these, the malevolent amoralist shows no inconsistency in committing murder. The fact that my use of the word “ought” can take these amoral or even anti-moral standards into account while also accounting for moral standards I think is a plus to my view, not a minus.
~
Point well taken. When I spoke of reasons for action, I meant “that which would motivate the agent to action”. I suppose you could have reasons for action that were more along the lines of explanations for why one might take that kind of action (for example, appealing to a desire the agent doesn’t actually have). Now, of course, this makes the idea of equating “reasons for actions” with “desires” to be a tad absurd. I think I’ll have to revise this essay a little to reflect that.
~
I cannot demonstrate it’s validity from the specifically internalist standpoint, correct. Neither can TaiChi, and as far as I can tell he isn’t even trying — instead, we’re looking at the externalist standpoint, it’s just that TaiChi doesn’t make this very clear.
Now I think it’s fair to find the externalist standpoint really trivial, because the malevolent amoralist won’t change his behavior simply because he knows that his behavior is unjustified relative to some moral standards — by stipulation of the hypothetical, he doesn’t care about these standards. But nonetheless, behavior still can be measured against these standards, even if they don’t matter in the sense we may want them to.
~
Well, he ought to X in order to maximize his own desire set, yes. It’s nitpicky, but important to how I think the word “ought” ought be used in order to minimize confusion in conversation — to explain what end the “ought” is being taken relative to.
~
So, in this case, the malevolent amoralist ought not do anything God wouldn’t want him to do in order that the malevolent amoralist maximize his desire set, becuase any action God wouldn’t want is action that will result in universally undesirable punishment?
Indeed, that view does logically follow from your premises, and would provide an internalist reason to refrain from malevolent behavior. I also don’t disagree with your analysis of where the motivations come from, and I see that you don’t disagree with mine — you just add the existence of the Biblical God to the causal relationships of this world and then follow the logical conclusions from there.
From a meta-ethical standpoint, we don’t seem to disagree at all. The only problem I see is that you need to show that (1) God exists, (2) this God is specifically the Biblical God, and (3) wants specific things from us that you can enumerate. I know we’ve had lots of unfinished back-and-forth on (1) and (2), but not yet on (3).
Interestingly, if this is your meta-ethical view and you agree with me that motivating oughts come from desires, I wonder where you’re fervor for inherent/intrinsic rights comes from. Is it that you think “justice” and “responsibility” can only exist if they are perfectly enforced, which a God could do?
(Also, this isn’t the gotcha question it sounds like, I’m just curious what your response is: if God can perfectly enforce justice, why do we bother doing it ourselves?)
31 May 2012, 1:55 pm
Peter,
I haven’t addressed your responses in the above comment yet, but I wanted to get this out of the way first:
This is exactly the same sort of moral naivete for which I decried desirism. It seems you simply assume that, “humans ought to do things that are instrumental in achieving their terminal goals” is a true statement (if not, correct me here). I’m skeptical, and I don’t think you’ve given any evidence or logic to justify swallowing such a massive assumption—but evidence and logic are precisely what we would expect from somebody who claims morality is amenable to empiricism.
31 May 2012, 2:14 pm
Well, mine isn’t so simple: on my view, motivating oughts come from a combination of desires, authority, empiricism and omniscience. We ought not X because God desires ~X (desires, authority), God knows X will have negative ramifications for creation (omniscience), God can prove that X will have negative ramifications for creation by allowing humans the free choice to X (empiricism), etc.
(1) cuts both ways. At least in terms of proving the correctness of your ethical theory, you need to demonstrate that God doesn’t exist, else we cannot be sure the assumption, “humans ought to do things that are instrumental in achieving their terminal goals” is true. However, since only God can prove Himself, this is out of our hands, and really has no place in the discussion. My only point in ethical discussions is to force all atheists to acknowledge that if the biblical premises are true, then God’s morality is the best possible. I think that fact gets much less attention than it deserves, but at the same time, I understand most atheists find it trivial because they’ve already assumed God doesn’t exist, or probably doesn’t exist.
As for (2), like I said, only God can prove Himself (in the undeniable, appear-before-your-very-eyes sense), but I’ve already given several arguments for the God of the Bible. The onus is on you to falsify or invalidate them. So far, current OT discussion notwithstanding, the bulk of our discussions have focused on the POE, and instead of falsifying or invalidating my claims about the POE, you’ve actually accepted some of them, and significantly scaled back your own arguments. I’ve also went on the offensive and shown how some of your other arguments are flawed (cf. your argument on prayer). If this were an armwrestle, the angle would be <90, pointing towards you.
(3) is quite simple. The Bible is full of commands articulating what God wants from us.
So I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m nowhere near as interested in ethics and morality as most atheists, and I think most atheists are anywhere from mildly to obsessively fixated ethics and morality because they intuitively accept the force of my claim (God’s morality is the best possible). Take away God, and we’ve got a massive problem to solve.
My “fervor” comes from the simple fact that I believe God created humans for specific purposes. Therefore, we have the intrinsic right to that which God created us for. Simple as that.
31 May 2012, 4:17 pm
I’ll correct you here, because I take all “oughts” to have a corresponding end, which is absent in your statement. As you just quoted me, people ought to do things that are instrumental in acheiving their terminal goals according to some ends, but not according to others.
What I did say, however, is that people will be motivated solely by their desires, mostly because I’m not really sure what else people could be motivated by that doesn’t reduce to desires, but also because of the psychology of motivation I intend to outline in future essays.
~
But all this breaks down to what you care about. Perhaps you’re motivated by an aversion to what God would do to you if you did what he didn’t want or an aversion to the negative ramifications for creation. But you could just as easily have people who agree with you about how X has a negative ramification for creationism, yet don’t care about negative ramifications for creationism, and go on to X anyway.
~
I think it’s also trivial because it’s not unique to the Bible. Indeed, if the Koranic premises are true, then Islam’s morality is the best possible; if Hindu premises are true, then Hinduism’s morality is the best possible. Heck, if Richard Carrier’s Darla the She-Goat exists, then She-Goat morality is the best possible. Same with something like Wonko.
Additionally, what does it mean for a moral system to be the “best possible”? This, itself, must be relative to some standard for evaluating moral systems. Does “best possible” just mean “the moral system cl likes best”?
~
Agreed.
~
It’s clearly not that simple — there’s widespread disagreement over what God wants from us. Let’s go with just one: ought we legalize same-sex marriage?
31 May 2012, 5:02 pm
How so? The “achieving of terminal goals” *IS* the corresponding end. Can you clarify yourself here?
No, it doesn’t. It all breaks down to the fundamental human aversion to privation. I don’t have the link handy, but you agreed with me that nobody wants to go to hell. Nobody wants to experience suffering. So, on theism, doing X can be rightfully called objectively wrong, meaning that outweighing, adverse consequences will obtain for the individual regardless of their beliefs. To contrast, on atheism, well… if the amoralist doesn’t believe murder is wrong, and can murder without getting caught, and there aren’t any consequences… why shouldn’t he murder? More to the point, why shouldn’t you say he should murder? The only possible answer seems to be because you don’t believe the statement “humans ought to act on their desires to achieve their terminal ends” is always true. Okay, well… when is it true, and why? When is it false, and why?
Now you’re moving the goalpost. Before, all you said was that I’d have to show that God wants specific things that I can enumerate. Well, go read the Ten Commandments. Hell, they’re even enumerated for you. That humans disagree what God has enumerated is irrelevant.
It’s unique to one and only one God, regardless of interpretations: an omniscient Creator with our best interests in mind.
The “best possible” means the one that makes only true claims about morality. It’s not something we can discover. It can only be implemented by revelation.
1 Jun 2012, 2:25 am
CL,
I think it can be asked, and has been, as it’s a form of the euthyphro dilemna.
Now I know the Orthodox Christian position is that the God of the Old Testament is defined as being omnibenevolent. What logical reason is there that God ought be morally good though? Were we lucky?
What prohibits God from performing amoral acts?
If God has a kind of “saintly free will”, as some apologists would have it, well this saintly free will must be a part of perfection, and why were Adam and Eve (as hypotheticals) not created with this “saintly free will” if they were created perfect, by a perfect being.
If God has this saintly free will where does that leave the “free will defense” for the problem of evil?
If God has libertarian free will, and is omnipotent, then God can commit amoral, and evil acts, and so is not omnibenevolent.
If the answer is “not in God’s nature”, then as theramin trees pointed out, I, Joseph, am also omnipotent, apart from the many things “in my nature” that prohibit me.
As Tai Chi pointed out previously, God may hypotheticallt know a perfect moral laws, God may know the true physical laws that govern the universe also. Thus those laws are independant of God, can be ascertained without God, and do not necessitate the existance of a God.
1 Jun 2012, 12:26 pm
Peter,
I think you’ve slipped into utter triviality by offering … hypothetical imperatives… to provide a theory of “normativity.” If you define normativity so inclusively, there never was a problem with it to begin with. Nobody claimed to have problems understanding hypothetical imperatives or “deriving” them from facts. To claim to have solved the problem of deriving “is” from “ought” is just a cheat: Hume clearly meant “ought” in the moral sense couldn’t be derived from “is.” The “ought” of hypothetical imperatives is prescriptive but not normative, and your use of terms has confused poor cl, who thinks you’re saying a person is morally required to accomplish goals the most effective way possible.
Now, you can say that no harm is done so long as your definitions are understood (although the discussion shows they aren’t.) But I fear you are deceiving yourself into thinking you’ve actually accomplished something philosophical, whereas you haven’t even learned anything you didn’t know initially: hypothetical imperatives are perfectly kosher, by anyone’s standards.
This decline might come from promising a solution in advance to having one, a practice that may not be as innocuous as I had allowed. It’s hard to say afterwards that you haven’t found a solution (or, as here, there’s no problem to be solved). In understanding the causes of philistine drift, you must also allow for the brain rot caused by debating fundamentalists (about topics like whether the Bible shows that public health is revealed truth).
1 Jun 2012, 5:26 pm
Joesph, fair enough.
Cl,
Because I intend to discuss Peter’s views.
Of course, you’re goading me to present a theory, but all I want to do here is argue that certain kinds of theories don’t work. At least, I hope you’re goading me.
Peter,
I don’t, because I don’t think that every ought is a hypothetical ought – to assume that would be to equate moral imperatives to imperatives concerning means-ends rationality, and that’s just what I think is a mistake. Again: it is true that an amoralist ought to do what is moral, but it is not always true that the moral action that the amoralist ought to do satisfies his desires. So, moral oughts do not turn on desires, and if not, then there’s no reason to think that a moral ought is a hypothetical imperative masquerading as a categorical imperative, which links a desire in its antecedent to the satisfaction of the desire in its consequent.
I appreciate that difficulties in spelling out a plausible ethical theory have led thinkers to believe that moral imperatives must be hypothetical, but other than this, I can think of only one argument for it. That involves the observation that we sometimes follow up a moral imperative with a hypothetical one, when we are seeking to convince others. But the obvious reading of this situation is that we first appeal to the other’s moral sensibilities, and then to their self-interest. Since the appeal is not to the same considerations in each case, there is no reason to think that the moral imperative equates to the hypothetical one.
A moral realist would say that some of those ends are actually moral, and those they stand in contradiction to are not moral, but only called “moral”. A moral realist would say that there is a moral standard which determines that the amoralist ought to act morally. Since you deny these instead, I don’t think you’re a moral realist. In that case, I don’t understand your project: what is the point in “closing the is-ought gap”, except to show how moral realism might be true?
Morality is part of normativity, isn’t it? In that case, a theory of normativity which delivers the wrong verdict regarding a moral imperative is, ipso facto, a less compelling normative theory.
Right: “In order to meet any moral standard, the malevolent amoralist ought not commit murder” is true under your theory. But this other sentence, “The malevolent amoralist ought not commit murder”, is indeterminate under your theory, whereas it should turn out true. That’s a demerit of your theory (at least from the standpoint of moral realism).
Sure. It’s only philosophers who tend to think that the malevolent amoralist is inconsistent when he acts immorally, because they’re in the grip of a false theory. I agree with this.
Since you deny that there is a moral standard which determines that the amoralist ought to act morally, I don’t think you account for moral oughts at all. There are, of course “moral standards”, i.e. bodies of moral statements which certain groups of people take to be true, but just as it is plain that the sociology of religious belief cannot account for the truth of religious propositions themselves, so too is it true that he appeal to people’s beliefs about morality is inadequate to accounting for the truth of moral imperatives. To assume otherwise is to commit the use/mention fallacy.
Well, a truism is that a reason is something which can play a role in a chain of reasoning. Do desires play such a role? Do beliefs? I don’t think so: instead, it is propositions about desires and beliefs which play that role. So reasons are not desires or beliefs: they are propositions which stand in inferential relations to other propositions. Reasons for action, by extension, stand in inferential relations to propositions which describe actions.
It is true that propositions about the desires an agent has stand in inferential relations to propositions about that agent’s actions, so these are reasons for action. But propositions about moral behavior also stand in inferential relation to propositions about an agent’s actions (e.g., from “murder is immoral” it follows that “X ought not to murder”), so these too are reasons for action, or so say I.
3 Jun 2012, 3:39 pm
I agree with the part following the ellipsis.
Sometimes I think the real definition of “agnostic” is an atheist who wishes there were a God. (Or maybe an atheist is an agnostic who’s glad God doesn’t exist.)
Similarly, there’s a kind of moral nihilist who wishes morality were real–usually it’s a utilitarian morality that’s hoped for. These sometimes call themselves moral fictionalists. Perhaps for lack of an overpowering interest in literature, Peter hasn’t adopted the term, but I think he has the program. He would like to save as much from moral discourse as we can pretend is true, while at the same time acknowledging that morality isn’t real or objective.
3 Jun 2012, 10:18 pm
The corresponding end is the if part of the statement, not the then part of the statement. Thus with that end, your statement would be “In order to achieve your terminal goals, you ought to achieve your terminal goals”, which is tautologically true.
Another source of confusion is that you say that people’s terminal goals are actually not best satisfied by acting on their desires. But given that I use “terminal goals” and “desires” synonymously, this sentence is logically impossible.
~
Correct — people universally care about not experiencing suffering. Thus, it boils down to what you care about. I’ve already agreed with you about how if God exists, there is the same motivating ought for everyone to avoid behaviors God doesn’t like.
~
It would be unique to a one and only God, if there were only one God. But it could be unique to any potential one and only God, regardless of religion, or unique to a pantheon of gods, or unique to anyone who has the ability to universally punish. Such a system of justice could even be created by space aliens — simply capture the Earth and have the technology sufficient to monitor everyone and torture anyone who goes against you.
Furthermore, such an ought need not be grounded in someone with our best interests in mind. You could have an evil God who will put anyone in Hell who refrains from killing babies, and then it would be true that in order to avoid extreme personal pain, you ought to kill babies.
~
In the sense that God knows everything and thus knows every fact there is about the universe, and can construct all relevant hypothetical imperatives out of them? Sure. But I don’t see what that’s good for, given we don’t have access to it ourselves.
Likewise, it’s possible there’s a computer on Pluto that only makes true claims about morality. Big deal.
~
You’re right, I’m moving the goal posts here. But how do we go about interpreting the Bible correctly enough to discern God’s actual commands? Should I be in staunch opposition to same-sex marriage or not? Is this not an issue?
3 Jun 2012, 10:18 pm
It sounds like you’d be interested in my essay series about TheraminTrees’s Atheism. Free will for humans and God, plus ensuing imperfection play a big role in Part I and Part IV.
3 Jun 2012, 10:25 pm
Indeed, I should have made the distinction between moral oughts and non-moral oughts far more clear. I was trying to establish a thorough moral anti-realism while still allowing for prescriptive statements to be made. Thus there still are things that we ought to do.
~
I don’t think I’ve accomplished anything monumental, yet. Actually, pretty much everything in my morality series is just going to be combining the ideas that other people have come up with.
~
I had this solution in mind before starting this series.
~
I’d like to save as much from moral discourse as actually is true. Notice that at no point did I say that everyone has an obligation to maximize the well-being of conscious creatures. I’d deny that I’m a moral fictionalist, and that this becomes more clear as this project goes on.
3 Jun 2012, 11:01 pm
I’d offer these two arguments:
Moral standards, as a group, are not meta-ethically privileged. Sure, someone morally ought to refrain from murder, but they also anti-morally ought to murder everyone they see, and spaghetti ought to make a nice spaghetti dinner. There is nothing about “morally ought” that makes it better than any other kind of ought, except that we personally care about it more. Thus saying oughts must only be moral oughts excludes a lot of other kind of oughts that are just as legitimate.
No single moral standard is morally privileged. There are multiple standards that each claim to be the “one true moral standard”. Consider just utilitarianism and deontology, for example. These two standards both claim to be about morality and make mutually exclusive categorical prescriptions about what you morally ought to do, regardless of your desires. What makes deontology incorrect compared to utilitarianism?
This leads to the conclusion that since many different kind of ends can be spoken about, and none are privileged either within or outside morality, we can find a robust normatively by including all of them. And we can only include all of them by speaking hypothetically.
Indeed “moral ought” is just that — a semantic shortcut for a hypothetical imperative taking the end of morality. I suppose if you can establish that distinctly moral ends are the only ends worth talking about, then you can say there’s no need to state them hypothetically.
To further clarify, do you think people can be mistaken in not having moral ends? I’m trying to sort out the genuine differences between anti-realism and realism, and I think it comes down to whether we can prescribe ends to people in the same way we can prescribe means, suggesting that someone is mistaken in refraining from moral behavior.
~
Hypothetical imperatives need not turn on desires — they just need to turn on a clearly stated end, and these could be moral ends. Thus it’s false to say that hypothetical imperatives must like a desire to a satisfaction of that desire. Indeed, we can link a moral standard with a satisfaction of that moral standard.
~
To show that we can make sense of normativity, and that there are things we ought to do that we can be genuinely mistaken about.
~
But then I’m confused, because I don’t deliver wrong verdicts regarding moral imperatives. I agree that we morally ought not murder. I just deny that “ought” refers to “moral ought”.
~
No, that’s false. I do think there is a moral standard which determines that the amoralist (morally) ought to act morally.
I think that “moral” is a word given, albeit confusingly and inconsistently, to a class of ends that generally have to do with impartially considering the desires of others.
I think these standards exist in the abstract as ends, and think that there are means that most effectively fulfill them. Indeed, this means-end relationship would exist purely in logic, and would remain true even if all entities capable of acting did not exist.
I find that the “moral ought” links these moral standards to the means of best fulfilling them. I further agree that refraining from murder and acting morally both do best fulfill the moral standard, tautologically so.
I account for moral oughts by allowing moral standards to be true from this externalist perspective. I just don’t find these moral standards to be privileged in normatively compared to non-moral or anti-moral standards, and I don’t find there to be any specific moral standard that is morally privileged from the rest.
~
I would agree it follows from “murder is immoral” that “X morally ought no t to murder”, or rather “In order to be consistent with moral standards, X not ought to murder”.
Likewise, it follows from “murder is immoral” to “X anti-morally ought to murder”, or rather “In order to be consistent with standards that seek to harm as many people as much as possible, X ought to murder”.
For clarity, I would think it only follows from “murder is immoral” to “I am motivated to refrain from murder” only if I care about those moral standards. Which I do.
~
For what it’s worth, I would be interested in hearing your theory.
4 Jun 2012, 7:14 am
Peter,
I don’t see why you think this persuasive. That moral oughts are not special is a surprising consequence of your kind of theory, not something which can be assumed to be common ground, from which your kind of theory might be reasoned into. That there is some sense in which someone ought to murder everyone they see is certainly not common ground, it fact it seems patently false. And that spaghetti ought to make a nice spaghetti dinner is an example of an ought which cannot be treated as hypothetical, so I don’t see how it supports extending the hypothetical treatment to further cases.
Granted, there are arguments for moral anti-realism. In and of themselves, they provide reason for rejecting moral realism, not especially for interpreting moral imperatives as hypothetical.
If I take moral oughts to be categorical, rather than hypothetical, then I don’t thereby give up my ability to reason hypothetically about moral theories other than my own. I can still say, as you would, that according to this moral standard, X ought to Y, but according to that moral standard X ought to Z. What I can’t say is that X ought to Y, and that X ought to Z, where Y and Z and mutually exclusive courses of action. But neither can the friend of moral oughts as hypotheticals, since that would be to endorse a contradiction. So there’s no advantage here for your view over others.
I don’t think the amoralist necessarily makes an error of reason, no. That he does not recognize a moral standard is, however, a defect in him: for instance, he ought to care about the feelings of those he may callously harm.
It delivers the wrong verdict concerning “We ought not to murder”. Whether or not you wish to call this a moral imperative, it is an imperative that your theory is wrong about: “We ought not to murder” is not indeterminate, instead it is true.
Not really: you believe that there is a ‘moral standard’, i.e. a body of moral statements taken to be true. You think that a moral standard exists the same way you think creationism exists: not as describing reality, but as describing some theory about reality, which people believe in.
I understand you position better now, which doesn’t seem terribly different from anti-realism, and is not as interesting as I thought it might be. And I think we’ll continue to use our terms differently, which makes discussion difficult. So, this seems a good place to stop.
I have bits of a theory. You might like to read this.
4 Jun 2012, 3:37 pm
I retract the charge of triviality, as this is a contentious claim. It must have been buried somewhere in your post, which I admit not reading as carefully as I should–in fact, let me be honest–mostly skimming. (But I’m disappointed in discovering that you have not indeed come over to moral nihilism. TaiChi is wrong: you remain a moral realist. (On my analysis, this will probably always be so — http://tinyurl.com/cxjqxo9)
What’s trivial–or let me again be honest, what’s obfuscatory–is that you spend most of your argument on what’s not contentious and seem to ignore the tasks really incumbent, whether arguing for or even clarifying your claim.
The reason you think your views hard to classify is that your theory suppresses rather than resolves the issues. If you hold abstract moral standards are real, you are a moral realist. Should categorical imperatives trump all other considerations? Not for all categorical moralities: virtue ethicists can hold that moral virtues must be balanced against nonmoral virtues.
You’ve located the is ought gap at the wrong place. In the hypothetical imperative, “To achieve what I want, I should take into account both my moral and nonmoral values” the part that founders on the is/ought problem isn’t the explicit prescriptive but the suppressed categorical constituting “moral values.” You only values you mistakenly believe are moral.
If you think you have terminal moral values, you embrace a set of moral duties constituting those values. You bury these oughts still a layer deeper in your system in the requirement of “impartiality.” This implies a categorical standard of neutrality. “Everyone wants to avoid privation” leaves you with a harm utilitarianism. Belaboring the obvious about hypothetical conditionals allows you to adopt utilitarianism without defending its claims.
4 Jun 2012, 3:57 pm
“You only values you mistakenly believe are moral”
should be
You only have values you mistakenly believe are moral.
—-
To reiterate. If you think you can claim that terminal moral values are constituted by biological or cultural universals, then the same arguments apply against you as apply against any attempted reduction of morality to culture or biology. (And you have the same counterarguments in your favor.)
4 Jun 2012, 4:01 pm
TaiChi,
You appear to be using an admittedly common definition of “hypothetical imperative” which requires Sam in “Sam ought not kill randomly” to possess some appropriate desire. You understandably don’t want the truth of moral ‘ought’ statements to hinge on Sam’s set of desires, so you conclude that moral ‘oughts’ aren’t necessarily hypothetical ‘oughts.’
Meanwhile, Peter is using a slightly more abstract definition of “hypothetical imperative” which requires an (often implied) end or goal, but not a desire. Peter can say “Sam ought not kill randomly [relative to some conventional moral end]” and have this be a true hypothetical imperative even if Sam lacks any appropriate desire. The advantage to this line of thinking is that the truth of all normative statements is cleanly separated from everyone’s desires, yet we can explain why the truth value of some normative statements matter more to us than others (we care about the ones that give guidance regarding our actual desires).
If I recall, the confusion about what “hypothetical imperative” means is Kant’s fault because he characterized them both ways, but being connected to a desire and being connected to an end are two distinct qualities.
5 Jun 2012, 12:44 am
@Garren,
Can’t you re-word any “ends-hypothetical-imperative” as a “desire-hypothetical-imperative” merely by adding the words “if the agent desires so-and-so ends”.
For example:
Ends-Hypothetical Imperative
To ensure everyone in the room is dead, you ought murder everyone in the room.
Desire-Hypothetical Imperative
If you desire to ensure everyone in the room is dead, you ought murder everyone in the room.
5 Jun 2012, 3:11 am
joseph,
I would say that second assertion (If you desire…) leaves the meaning of its ‘ought’ ambiguous. This is why some people will say the second assertion is true (by assuming the ‘ought’ takes the end of ‘to ensure everyone in the room is dead’) and other people will say the second assertion is false (by assuming the ‘ought’ takes some end like ‘to show love and respect’).
So, no, I don’t think the two sentences are equivalent.
5 Jun 2012, 10:08 am
Joseph & Garren,
In ordinary language (which is our subject), I think an if clause is a perfectly fine way to specify an end.
The real problem arises when you try to conditionalize on a person’s set of desires rather than on any specific desire or desires.
3. [Said to the same person as before] Based on your desires, you ought to murder everyone in the room.
#3 is untrue because a person’s desire set doesn’t have an optimal realization. (Although I don’t think Peter addresses why this is so–necessary to exclude ought statements without specified ends.) Maybe the person addressed wants to ensure that everyone is dead but also wants to avoid prison.
#3 is just as bad as just saying, “You ought to kill everyone in the room.” An ought statement conditionalized on a person’s set of desires (even just a subset specified as being of a certain kind, such as moral desires) is (strictly) untrue for the same reason as an unconditionalized ought statement (one without a specified or implied end).
This caveat might be relevant to Peter’s project.
5 Jun 2012, 1:57 pm
Garren’s objection to conditionalizing on desire can be answered by merely rephrasing:
If you have the desire, then to satisfy the desire to ensure that everyone in the room is dead, you ought murder everyone in the room.
Joseph seems correct that equivalent conditionals exist based on desires and external goals.
5 Jun 2012, 2:37 pm
Yep, desire fulfillment is a possible goal. Stephen’s rephrasing makes that goal explicit and unambiguous.
5 Jun 2012, 2:39 pm
…though I should point out that the “if you have a desire” clause is functioning more as a way of giving advice than as a logical condition. The rest of the rephrase is true or false regardless of whether the person addressed has such desires.
5 Jun 2012, 4:21 pm
To satisfy the desire to ensure that everyone in the room is dead, you ought murder everyone in the room.
Is this true regardless of whether the person has the desire? Not strictly. If you don’t have the desire, the statement is untrue because of the referential failure of “the desire.”
5 Jun 2012, 9:44 pm
Firstly, Stephen thankyou for converting my witterings into something useable!
I confess I am puzzled by the following:
1. The difference in “having a desire for/to x” and “to desire x/to x”.
2. The need to state the satisfaction of desire as an end, Peter Hurford seems to assume this is foundational (?). I hope I used that word correctly.
3. The initial point by Garren that:
That is I don’t see why “ought” is assumed to automatically take an end lile love or respect, if it is unspecified.
6 Jun 2012, 12:27 am
joseph,
People have a tendency to fill in the meaning of ambiguous ‘ought’ statements with moral ends. If I say out of the blue “You ought to torture a dog on a YouTube video”, you’d probably reply, “No, I don’t think so!” If you were really pedantic, you might ask what reason, end, goal, etc. I have in mind…but we usually just skip that and intuitively apply moral ends like beneficence, non-malfeasance, respect for autonomy, or justice. Or something in Haidt’s bundle.
I think we make this assumption because we’re so used to the ambiguous use of ‘ought’ to promote these sort of goals. And the reason people leave these ‘oughts’ ambiguous is because they want to pressure others with the “magical force” of vague normativity who might otherwise say, “I don’t care about beneficence” (or whatever).
If there’s any place in moral theory for categorical imperatives, it’s not in semantics or ontology, but in psychology.
6 Jun 2012, 1:28 am
A definite end (implied or stated) is a necessary condition for a sound imperative statement, but it isn’t always sufficient; in fact, it usually isn’t sufficient. Consider the uncontroversial:
To ensure everyone in the room is dead, you ought murder everyone in the room.
This may be true because murdering everyone in the room is the only way to ensure they’re all dead. But usually the same event can be brought about in different ways. It may not be necessary to murder everyone to ensure everyone dies; their death may be imminent if you only let other processes run their course.
A more common example:
To get in shape, you ought to take up running.
Is that true if you can also take up swimming? I don’t think so, for the person receiving the advice could disagree: “I don’t think I ought to take up running to get in shape because I’m better at following a swimming regimen.”
Hypothetical imperatives are usually vague. But the vague one about running and swimming runs no big danger of being understood as “magical.” The vagueness is easily adjusted for by extensive use of implied conditions. Hypothetical imperatives are pragmatic devices more than they are logical ones.
What I think this shows is that the magical force of moralistic imperatives doesn’t come from, as I think you imply and as I think you and Peter may believe. Vague imperatives can be very useful and practical. Rather, some imperatives without ends are interpreted categorically because that’s the intended meaning. People don’t confuse hypothetical imperatives with categorical imperatives when the former are stated vaguely, but they use vague imperatives to make categorical claims. There’s nothing in the form of the imperative that necessarily distinguishes it as hypothetical or categorical.
6 Jun 2012, 1:30 am
“What I think this shows is that the magical force of moralistic imperatives doesn’t come from, as I think you imply and as I think you and Peter may believe. ”
Should be
doesn’t come from their vague form, as I think…
6 Jun 2012, 1:47 am
Thanks Garren,
I see what you mean. What I am wondering is if the straight foward rejection of:
“You ought torture a dog on a Youtube video”
Could equally be construed as a denial of having any desire to perform the act, or, perhaps a little more difficult to argue, a denial that there are any ends that would be fulfilled by doing such a thing.
Expressing any desire to do such a thing would risk punishment from peers and/or society.
I don’t think that’s what goes through peoples minds, it’s probably more of an emotion like disgust, but I wonder if that’s what it amoumts to.
6 Jun 2012, 1:56 am
Stephen,
I am struggling to work out what I believe.
It’s something like:
You can come up with hypothetical imperatives for decreasing human suffering, increasing human knowledge, experience, love, happiness. If you accept those as moral by definition, a societal construct, then they are morals. If you don’t then they are what they are. There is no logical compulsion to obey those hypothetical imperatives, there may be some biological compulsion. Positing a God does not resolve any of these issues, in no small part due to any solution lacking logical coheremce, in my opinion. I am not sure categorical imperatives are real.
6 Jun 2012, 2:45 am
Stephen,
I’m not sure we’re disagreeing because I agree that hypothetical imperatives can be stated in vague ways (with details about ends, available actions, and available information left to context or convention). What makes categorical imperatives incapable of being true are not vague ends, but no ends.
6 Jun 2012, 2:00 pm
Where we disagree is that I think that when people state imperatives really having no ends, they typically intend to state a categorical imperative; whereas, you think they are being sloppy or confused about stating some hypothetical imperative.
The argument of my last post is that if people tend to be confused about hypothetical imperatives, as you claim, then misinterpretations of vague hypothetical imperatives would be prevalent. But people do not readily interpret vague hypothetical imperatives as categorical.
6 Jun 2012, 2:21 pm
You approach the key issue in your second sentence, but I don’t understand your resolution. If you regard morals as societal constructs, how are they “morals”? One isn’t bound to accept “societal constructs” as governing one’s behavior. Can you be more precise about what you mean by “accept”? That’s where the action is.
I contend that we may adopt principles of personal integrity; adopting then means using them to govern one’s conduct. But then, this has nothing essential to do with societal constructs. (See my “What’s morality for?—Integrity versus conformity” — http://tinyurl.com/6mq74zp)
6 Jun 2012, 10:48 pm
Sorry Stephen, I only have a mundane point to offer you, it was definition I was thinking of as a “societal construct”.
I.e. If you accept that decreasing human suffering is morally good, by definition…
The next point you raised, no, I agree I don’t think you are bound to accept that definition, it’s a choice. Hence the “if”.
I will pop over to your blog and read your thoughts. A quick remark, aren’t any “principles” going to be based on “morals”?
7 Jun 2012, 12:25 am
So there’s been enough misconceptions in this thread — my fault, sorry — that I’m re-doing this part of the series, starting now going from “Of Oughts and Is, Part III” to “Good and Ought as Relative”.
So hopefully the bulk of comments will be addressed by the partial reboot. But I just want to quickly address the things here that I feel need addressing:
I don’t assume it to be common ground, but rather something I would demonstrate. It’s also not a consequence of my kind of theory but a premise — this theory has merit because it accounts for the fact that moral oughts aren’t special.
~
On what basis is this judgement made? Would a staunch amoralist also be correct in calling you defective relative to an anti-moral standard?
~
I think that follows if you take “ought” to mean what I call “morally ought”, by privileging the moral aspect of normatively as the basis for using the word “ought”. We disagree about whether or not that is a mistake. Hopefully the partial reboot will make this more clear.
~
Again, that’s false. I believe that there is a moral standard kind of like how there is a height standard needed to get onto roller coasters, or a standard like the rules of chess. I think the rules of morality very much describe the social construct that actually regulates human behavior in societies, not the thing that people only believe regulates behavior.
~
“Everyone wants to avoid privation” was a claim that, as far as I can tell, every person wants to avoid pain happening to themselves. I said nothing about them wanting to avoid pain happening to others. I also said nothing about everyone having terminal moral values. Furthermore, I said nothing about requiring impartiality or neutrality. Where did all this come from?
I know that I personally value the well-being of other people. Whether these are moral values, I’m not sure. Whether this adds up to realism or anti-realism, I’m not sure. Whether others have these same values, I’m not sure. I didn’t think this essay would be controversial, so I’m glad it doesn’t look controversial on first glance.
~
That factors into Garren and I’s theory. I’ll make sure to discuss that soon, because it’s a big part of the picture. But useful and practical, as you know, does not make for true or coherent.
7 Jun 2012, 1:06 am
“I think that ‘moral’ is a word given, albeit confusingly and inconsistently, to a class of ends that generally have to do with impartially considering the desires of others.”
7 Jun 2012, 1:52 am
Joseph,
No. Not strictly, insofar as “morals” implies the existence of moral truths.
And if we loosen the definition of “moral” to include any terminal abstract values, I still deny “morals” exist.
In the broadest sense, yes. Principles of personal integrity draw upon broad, instinctive “moral” inclinations, but these don’t compel any specific principle. Some concept of theft will probably figure in many persons’ principles, but how theft is defined and from whom one is barred from stealing can vary greatly.
The key conceptual point may be that such principles aren’t terminal. They are choices people make in the service of their broad adaptation. But what people refer to when they insist that they have morals is that they have a terminal commitment to certain values. Thus I disagree with Peter that having a general relationship to equity considerations about welfare suffices to define moral values. Moral values as practically everyone uses the term in life refer to terminal values. And Peter, in fact, expressly treats “moral values” as terminal in the glimpses we get from his draft.
7 Jun 2012, 3:43 am
Peter,
“I think these standards exist in the abstract as ends.. I find that the ‘moral ought’ links these moral standards to the means of best fulfilling them.”
That’s where I got it from. I think abstract standards serving as ends for moral oughts are terminal values.
7 Jun 2012, 4:01 am
How could you think an essay containing (or seeming to contain) the claim to have bridged the is/ought gap wouldn’t be controversial?
7 Jun 2012, 4:21 am
Peter,
Maybe I can help with that. Do you do things that seem designed to increase or decrease the strength of this value? If so, on what do you seem to base these acts? If you base them on the value itself, the concern for the well-being of others, that’s evidence you’re a moral realist. If you seem to base your choice to try to become more caring or less caring on how being that way will affect the rest of your life, then you’ve escaped the curse of moralism.
Are you happy with the level of concern for others that you manifest? Could you imagine wanting to be less concerned? Affirmative to the second suggests you aren’t committed to realism–not with regard to that particular value at least.
7 Jun 2012, 11:48 am
But from the externalist standpoint I’ve been speaking from, saying that morality generally has to do with impartiality adds up to no requirement for impartiality, unless you want to act consistently with moral standards.
I would admit that saying moral standards require impartiality is somewhat
controversial — not all moral standards involve impartial evaluations.
~
I personally don’t want to talk about “moral values” at all, but I have to because it’s too confusing if I don’t mention them and people keep bringing them up in comments. I’d rather refer to the specific content of the value, regardless of whether it’s moral or not, or terminal or not.
Is the term “moral values” used exclusively to refer to terminal values? Do (terminal) moral values not exist? Both of these ideas are plausible, but I think we would need empirical evidence to answer these questions. They don’t seem to be the kind of questions answerable by philosophy alone.
~
I have been speaking about abstract standards independent of whether or not anyone actually values them. It’s kind of like speaking about a standard like “taller than eighty feet”. Clearly the Washington Monument meets this standard, whereas Barack Obama does not. Yet being “taller than eighty feet” needs not be a terminal value.
~
Hypothetical imperatives as a solution seemed straightforward.
7 Jun 2012, 12:24 pm
Yes — designed to increase.
~
I think that’s a bit of a false dilemma. While I don’t have perfect introspection, I’m pretty sure what I don’t do is think “Hey, I think the well-being of others is objectively good, and I obviously want to do anything that is objectively good, so I’m going to donate $10 to GiveWell.”
On the flipside, I don’t think “Hey I really need to be happier right now, and I think a great way to do that would be to help others, so I’m going to donate $10 to GiveWell.
Instead, I think things like this “I want to donate $10 to GiveWell!” When I think of why, it goes kind of like “I’m feeling compassionate for the suffering of others.” Not quite that often, but sometimes, I wonder why I would want to act on this compassion.
Then, I think something like “Acting on compassion makes me into the kind of person I want to be, which makes me happy to think about. Knowing that other people are better off makes me happy too, especially when I did something to help.”
See any dreaded moralism in there? (What is “moralism” anyway?)
~
I am happy with the level of concern for others that I manifest. I could imagine wanting to be less concerned with others, but I find it unlikely and can’t yet sketch what it would take for me to actually lessen my concern, especially intentionally.
7 Jun 2012, 3:16 pm
Perhaps the main reason readers misunderstood your draft version is that it isn’t clear what problem you’re working on. Usually, the subissues you discuss relate to the existence of objective morality. “Moral values,” the term (or some synonym) isn’t dispensable, because we need a term for the discourse we’re evaluating: “moral” discourse. A typical Fyfist line is “I don’t care about what “morality” means; I just want to make a better world.” But “making a better world” doesn’t constitute a philosophical problem. (Marx said, ‘Philosophers have interpreted the world; we propose to change it.’ [Not exact quote.] But he didn’t mean they would change it by doing philosophy.)
If your problem isn’t the nature of “morality,” what is your problem?
Philosophers approach the question by examining the presuppositions of moral discourse. That is a philosophical problem–unless there are no obvious consistencies. So, if the problem is whether moral discourse is fundamentally wrongheaded, one must argue about moral discourse rather than about particular abstract values. If you’re averse to talking about “morality,” then you’re going to be averse to analysis of moral discourse. Then you can’t answer the question of whether talk about “moral values” is fundamentally misguided. But again, that may not be your question; then, what is? I think all philosophy starts with a problem.
You’re the second person who’s asked what “moralism” means. Which bothers me because I use the term to avoid the alternative, “moral realism,” which seems unnecessarily arcane and perhaps designed to keep talk about the nonexistence of morality away from the masses, who might put the conclusions to good use. “Moralism” can be read as “moral realism,” although it’s (intendedly) slightly pejorative, with connotations associated with nagging schoolmarms.
Not all altruism, not all compassion, derives from moralism or even from principles of integrity. But I don’t think compassion (emotions related to sympathy) fuels a wish to become more compassionate. That requires a belief that compassion itself is “good”–in the moral sense. When you say you like the kind of person acts of compassion produces, you’re saying you measure the effects against a terminal value. Being a compassionate person becomes an end in itself.
The reason I think there are no terminal values is because the most coherent theory I can produce (or find) treats internal principles (considered terminal in ordinary moral discourse–a point that needs to be argued and which I haven’t really argued here) as habits that function to reduce ego depletion by automatizing automatic responses to potential temptation. A person who analyzes his values this way will take a workmanlike attitude toward his principles of integrity.
Allow me to sketch an example. You avoid tainted animal meat, and Joseph has considered the same practice. Now, if asked whether Joseph manifests “moralism” would be a harder question than the same question about you. If Joseph were *not* a moralist, I could see him deciding to avoid animal meat to cultivate a concern for animal welfare useful to him in his profession. Maybe that’s a stretch, but I think it’s conceivable. But doing it or contributing to causes because it produces what the Less Wrongians call (irritatingly) “warm fuzzies” seems to me (for the previously mentioned theoretical reasons) emblematic of a moral realist.
It’s important to notice that what’s here discussed is how you view your “principles of integrity,” not how they really function. I’m saying you probably treat them as terminal ends. But I think they inevitably vary with the way they fit into your life adaptively. They just do so less effectively because you have (in my view) a misconception about their role. You think of them as if they were terminal values because you don’t consciously think of them in terms of adapativeness.
You would merely treat charitable giving as a bad (or excessive) habit. You would locate the cues that drive you to give and substitute other routines which provide amoral satisfaction or the satisfaction of other moral urges.
10 Jun 2012, 5:39 pm
If impartiality necessarily characterizes morality and people use the term “morality” to describe a class of impartial standards, then either purportedly moral standards *are* impartial or there is no morality. But your motivation for defining morality in terms of an approximation to general usage bespeaks the desire to “save” moral discourse. Thus, you would seem to believe that there are impartial standards.
You could avoid the commitment to impartial morality by defining moral standards as standards that are *purported* to be impartial, but I don’t think that simple redefinition would serve your purpose.
10 Jun 2012, 5:46 pm
“then either purportedly moral standards *are* impartial”
More clearly, “some purportedly moral standards…
10 Jun 2012, 6:03 pm
There’s a missing premise and more precise conclusion I should make express:
1. People use “morality” to describe a class of impartial standards. (Your premise)
2. If morality exists, the term sometimes coincides with standards people call “moral.” (Otherwise, there’d be no point to looking at what people call “moral.”)
3. Conclusion: Any morality must contain impartial standards.
4. If impartiality is conceptually impossible, there is no morality (even defined in your limited way).
5. But (I think) you introduced a definition based on an approximation to usage to save moral discourse, and you are thereby committed to the existence of morality as you’ve redefined it.)
15 Sep 2012, 3:18 am
I still disagree. I think one can wish one was more compassionate (or that it was easier to be compassionate) because it would result in more people being helped, which is good for the compassionate person. This need not require moral realism in the sense that compassionate is a cosmic mandatory law for everyone.
When I think of something moralistic, I think of something I personally don’t want to do, but still have to do because moral law says so (like, say, denying homosexuals the right to marry). When I think of being more compassionate, I just think of it as fulfilling a goal for more people being helped.
When I reflect on why I want more people to be helped, I reach the equivalent of an introspective 404 error. Thus, absent a better explanation, I notice my confusion and label it “terminal value”. The introspective buck stops there.
I suppose what I’m getting at is that in previous discussions, it seems like you believe that if I were to truly reject moralism, I would adopt a self-interested point of view and see the drive to utilitarianism as harming myself and want to what I can to curtail it so as to live a more fun life.
But I still don’t get why the self-interested POV is the preferred one absent moralism, or rather why self-interest in the sense of selfishness is equivalent to self-interest in the sense of egoism. Perhaps that’s not actually what you’re saying?