Showing posts with label Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Williams. Show all posts
Monday, April 2, 2012
Normativity and Misunderstandings: Parfit
Notes and Thoughts on Parfit's "On What Matters", Vol. 2, Chapter on Normativity
Oh! Before we start...Welcome my 100th published post! That's a lot of rambling...Thank you for reading my stuff. Here are a couple of fun facts about my blog:
Total number of visits 6787
Most visits in a month 548 in Feb 2012
Strangest Stat: I've had 250 visits from Russia and 132 from Slovenia (shout out to my readers in Russia and Slovenia!)
Strangest keyword search that directed someone to my blog: "Can virtuous people do Zumba" (directed to my post on Aquinas' "Summa Theologica" which I titled "Zumba Theologica"
Ok, back to philosophy...
Overview
In the last post we talked about the disagreement between Parfit and Williams on whether there is such a thing as intrinsic good. The debate continues but in the context of reasons for action. For Williams having a reason to act means that you have some desire that you act to fulfill. For Parfit reasons are facts that count in favour of (or against) a certain act. You can have a reason to act without having some corresponding desire you seek to fulfill.
Parfit uses an example to illustrate his point. It's called the Early Death example:
Suppose that you know that unless you take a certain medicine, you will die much younger, losing many years of happy life. Though you know this and you have deliberated in a procedurally rational way on this and all of the other relevant fact, you are not motivated to take this medicine.
On Williams view you have no reason to take the medicine because there is nothing in your motivational set (the set of desires, dispositions, tendencies, etc that motivate your actions). On Parfit there are facts that give you good reasons that count in favour of you taking the medicine. The split between the two, in the simplest terms is that for Williams reasons for action must by definition motivate action. For Parfit reasons needn't in themselves motivate actions, but they can count in favour of certain actions when considered by a rational agent.
Ok, I've already jumped into the arguments and we're not even out of the intro yet! I know you're anxious for more, so lets enjoy philosophy! Yay!
[Note: If you get tired of reading what Parfit and Williams say you can skip to the bottom section entitled "My Thoughts"! Regarding my thoughts on the issues, I appreciate any feedback 'cuz it'll help me identify weakness in my future paper on the topic. Thanks!]
Misunderstandings
So, check it. Parfit is all "the problem is that Williams doesn't understand what reasons are". Again, for Williams reasons can only be things that motivate action, and the only things that can motivate action are internal to us (the things in our motivational set). The extension of Williams' position is that it is unintelligible to conceive of an "external" reason; that is, a reason for action that is not part of our pre-existing motivational set (i.e. desires). Now that I think of it, we can say this about Williams' concept of a reason for action:
1. A reason must have motivational force on the agent
2. Since the only things that have motivational force on an agent are elements of his motivational set, all reasons are internal to the agent.
3. Since all reasons are internal, any talk of external reasons for action is stark nonsense.
Case 1
Parfit's all, "dude, you sooooo don't understand what I mean by external reasons". Lets go back to the early deph example. Williams says that when we say that Sick Sam has a reason to take the medicine, it's true that we might mean that it would be better for him to take the medicine. But Williams doesn't think that taking the medicine would be a reason for Sam. The distinction is that other people might perceive the facts of the situation and say that they are reasons for taking the medicine but it doesn't mean that the same facts would be reasons for Sam.
Case 2
Lets use a different example to bring out the distinction. Suppose an unfortunate young girl is raped and gets pregnant as a consequence. For some people all the facts of the situation would be reasons for her to get an abortion. For others, the same facts would not be reasons for an abortion. Suppose the young girl has a motivational set that disposes her toward wanting an abortion. The anti-abortion group can rant and rave about the facts that are reasons for them for why she shouldn't have an abortion.
But Williams would argue that unless the girl has some sort of desire (after rational deliberation) to have a child, these facts won't constitute reasons for her. They don't constitute reasons for her because they don't have any "grip" on her; they can't motivate her to act. They have about as much motivational force on her decision as do the facts about her perpetrators favorite sports team.
Again, Parfit wants to deny that reasons need to have motivational force. He says that reasons are simply facts that count in favour (or against) some action. But it seems we need to ax, reasons for whom? in favour of what? Regarding the latter, ultimately in explaining our actions we will say something like "because doing x is right or good". But good for whom? How do you know?
I think Parit's position seems most plausible when we give uncontroversial examples. Examples where "common sense" would tell us what is good. But Parfit's claim is that there are objective values. There are things that are objectively good. When we give examples where people's intuitions or "common sense" differs, his position becomes less plausible.
I feel like in making this post, I'm repeating myself a lot. Maybe that's because that's what Parfit's doing in this section.
Case 3
I don't know why but I'm going to give one more example to contrast the two positions...Suppose Bob the Bully enjoys hurting others; it gives him more pleasure than anything. It's just the way he's wired. He also believes that he is more important than any other person. His motivational set is such that he doesn't care about the suffering of others at all. There are certain facts that most of us (I hope) could point to that give reasons against acting like Bob. The question is whether Bob would see these facts as reasons against him acting how he does. He might agree that certain things are facts, but, given his psychological make up he probably wouldn't see them as reasons that count against his behaviour.
Of course, Williams position is unappetizing for people who really want to believe in objective right and wrong. We want to say something like, "look, bullying causes suffering and suffering is bad. These facts are reasons against bullying-type behaviour." The problem is that while Bob might agree that bullying causes suffering (i.e., the facts), for him it's not a reason that counts against doing it. Causing suffering makes him happy. Bob has no reason to stop bullying although most people will think that he does. The problem with Bob is that, despite being presented with all the facts, he has no reason to stop bullying.
I just noticed something. When I'm writing Williams' arguments I agree with him, but when I write Parfit's I want to agree with Parfit. Moving on...
Normativity and Why Does It Matter?
So how does this all relate to normativity? In short, normativity for Williams is particular to the agent's psychology. Facts can only be reasons in favour/against something in relation to a particular agent's values and desires. What will constitute a 'reason in favour' for a particular agent is a "psychological prediction" based on their desires and psychological make up. For Parfit reasons are facts in favour/against actions that bring about objectively good/bad things/states.
Resolving this question is important to Parfit because he believes that certain ways of living are intrinsically better than others. How are we supposed to decide how to live our lives if we can't appeal to reasons that are for or against one way or another?
My Thoughts
I partly agree with Parfit that some ways of living are better than others. I'm just not sure that we can say that this is an objective fact. But suppose for a moment that Parfit's right, that there are intrinsically better ways of living than others and that we can appeal to reasons for or against certain ways of living. The problem is that how we respond to facts and states of affairs is a consequence of our evolutionary, biological, psychological, historical, and cultural history. How could we possibly hope to disentangle the facts that we consider to be good reasons from our historical, individuals, cultural, and biological biases? Parfit could reply that that's no reason not to try.
Ok, lets continue with the supposition. How could we possibly adjudicate between differing opinions. I think that part of what makes things 'right' hangs on certain biological facts about humans. For instance, we are social animals thus require some sort of sanction on violence if we are to survive as a species. I'll admit right now I have some Hobbesian tendencies. Now, does the fact that a requirement for sanctions on violence is necessary (which arises out of our biology) make sanctions on violence intrinsically good?
What if the facts of our biology were different. Suppose we were like some strange insect species where the female rips the head of the male in order to procreate. Then would decapitation be an intrinsic good because it arose out of our nature and was necessary for the survival of the species?
Lets set that worry aside. There's another worry I have. There is an assumption in Parfit that all rational individuals would respond the same way to facts that count as reasons in favour of something. This arises out of his assertion that there are intrinsic goods. The idea, I think, is that facts that give us reasons to act in ways that aligne with these intrinsic goods (happiness, compassion, knowledge, etc...) will be reasons for all of us.
Think of it this way. Fact A counts as a reason for an action because the action alignes the individual with some intrinsic good. Every rational person who becomes aware of fact A can acknowledge that fact A is a reason in favour of acting a certain way. But this can only be true if both people recognize the aim of the action as an intrinsic good. I have trouble accepting the idea that there can be such consensus. I think there is something to Williams here in that what we consider 'good' has much to do with our psychological make up.
Consider this example. Suppose I'm walkin' down the street and I see some guy playing an instrument I've never seen before: a kazuba. I think it sounds amazing--a cross between a kazoo and a tuba. I'm totally inspired. I go on the intertubes and look up what it is and order one with an handy instructional DVD. Here's the thing. A hundred other people walk by and none of them think the instrument sounds any good. Non of them order themselves one.
Pafit's reasons story goes something like this. The facts about the sounds of the instrument were reasons in favour me learning to play. But why didn't the others respond to those same facts? Just as I did, they all heard the sweet soothing sounds of the kazuba. The plausible story is something like what Williams says: the facts of that sweet kazuba sound gave me reasons in favour of learning to play because there was something in my psychological make up that made me perceive the kazuba sounds good. If there weren't that particular fact about me, no amount of kazuba sonatas could ever give me reasons in favour of playing the kazuba. The upshot is that what we value is deeply intertwined with who we are as individuals.
Given the wide variety of individuals, it's not unreasonable to suggest that there is a corresponding variety of ways to ascribe values to things and concepts. If it's true that there are differences in how value ascribed to concepts and things, then some facts will count as reasons for for some people, and those same facts might be irrelevant or against an action for other people.
The problem for Parfit is this: It only makes sense to talk about reasons for or against something if that thing has some kind of normative value. But, as Mackie pointed out long ago, there is ample empirical evidence to suggest that there are important normative disagreements between people and cultures. Unless Parfit can give us some guidance and to what these objective normative values are, he going to have a difficult time making his case that there are such things.
Even if he can point to instances of agreement, the fact that there is agreement is not evidence of objectivity. It is only evidence of agreement. Parfit for his part can turn things around and say that the burden of proof lies on the skeptic: that there are moral disagreements is only evidence of disagreement, not that one side isn't right.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Normative Truth: Good and Bad Reasons. (Parfit)
(apology--I haven't proof read this yet)
Yo, check it. I think I might actually have my paper topic for metaFX. Stop. That would be the best DJ name for a philosopher ever, DJ metaFX. Anyway, I is going to talk about whever der is such ting as normativity in reasons--that is, whether there's such a ting as a good, bad, right, or wrong reason for axion.
Parfit's Preamble on Disagreements
This is an intensely personal section where Parit shares his personal reasons for his quest to determine what matters in life. The main point, however, is that if we find ourselves in disagreement with someone over a moral issue, the standard assumption is that there is some sort of asymmetry. Maybe the person with whom we disagree doesn't have sufficient cognitive capacity to see the correct answer, or maybe they just don't have all the right facts. But, those types of disagreements can be explained away.
The difficult disagreements are with those that we consider our epistemic peers. The people who are also on a whole. nuva. level. wif us. Aaaand they have all same facts as us. In cases of epistemic symmetry there is no rational reason to suppose our belief is any more correct than our friend's. What do? The only thing we can do is to assume that there is an asymmetry in knowledge or capacity somewhere. But how do we know it's not us that is in the weaker position? Answer: we don't. Oh! Snap!
An example of one of these beliefs is retributive justice. Parfit doesn't think anyone deserves to suffer ever. To support his view he has to find the asymmetry responsible for his epistemic peers' views to the contrary. To support his position Parfit suggests that belief in retributive justice may be a case "in which an evolutionary explanation helps to undermine what it explains".
His argument goes that evolution explains why people have reactive attitudes and the desire to inflict harm. But the fact that these emotions and reaction arise out of the evolutionary process demonstrates that such attitudes are not responses to reasons. They are simply reactions. In other words, just because we have an impulse, doesn't mean the action for which we have the impulse is a right action, or that an emotional reaction isn't justification for an action's being right. Something akin the naturalistic fallacy is going on up in hur.
The upshot of the section is that he has deep disagreements with some of his epistemic peers so in order to determine whether his view is correct, rather than his peers, he needs to discover the asymmetries between them.
Parfit on Williams
Parfit has great reverence for Williams and it disturbs him that their moral views are so divergent. A central issue between them is whether there is such a thing as an intrinsic good. An intrinsic good is something that isn't good because of any consequences derived from its acquisition rather it is good in itself. A standard example would be happiness. We don't pursue happiness for any other reason than happiness itself is good. Contrast that with money. We don't pursue money just to have it, but because it allows us to obtain other things we might value like Ed Hardy shirts--which are intrinsically ugly.
So, why is Parfit so pre-occupied by Williams' rejection of the notion of intrinsic good? Because, without this notion Parit doesn't think we can answer the first question of philosophy: Are we human or are we dancer? Not only that, but we also can't answer the "other" first question of philosophy, "how ought we to live our lives/which kind of life do I have the most reason to live?"
You see, if we have nothing with absolute value to pursue, then not only can we not know at what we should aim our own actions but there will be no grounds by which we might judge the actions/life choices of others. If all values are relative, then the person who pursues a life of causing suffering for others is on equal normative footing as someone who spends their life pursuing justice, happiness, knowledge, and love. For Parfit we need some objective normative truths in order to know what reasons should count in favour or against engaging in an action.
For Williams the notion of an intrinsic good is inexplicable. If something were to be intrinsically good-- that is, its essence was goodness--then its goodness should be explainable in advance of human valuation. This is close to my position. I don't understand how something is intrinsically good, devoid of any context. I understand the notion if we say something like "justice and happiness are intrinsically good for humans". Without humans would justice and happiness be good? Are justice and happiness also good for ants and bacteria? It seems that these values are only positive in relation to the benefits they bring to humans (in a community).
Someone like Parfit might reply that bacteria and ants don't have the capacity for happiness and goodness, so my counter-example is irrelevant. That's an objection I'll have to reply to.
But enough about me, lets go back to Williams' argument which is very similar to my own thought, but obviously more sophisticated! He says that if something has intrinsic goodness then we should not be able to explain its goodness by saying we value it. So, I can't say that love is good because I value it. It has to be the other way around; I must say of something that has intrinsic value that I value it because of its intrinsic goodness. In the case of love, I need to say that I value love because it is good. In essence we are saying that something (e.g. love) is good because it is good. This seems a little tautologous.
The suggestion might be that we should value things such as virtue, justice, and happiness because of the other properties that make them good. Plato says justice is good because it creates harmony. But just like Palin, Williams refudiates this view too.
Before we get into Williams' argument there, lets return to Parfit's view of reasons. He says:
When we call something intrinsically good in the reason-implying sense, we mean that this thing has intrinsic properties that would or might give us or others strong reasons to respond to this thing in some positive way, such as wanting, choosing, or trying achieve this thing.
The basic idea is that certain facts about the world will give us reasons to act in a certain way. For example, it is a fact that helping an old lady across the street will make her happy and will be kind. Both of those things are intrinsically good--those are facts! Those facts give me reasons to act. If there were no facts about the intrinsic goodness of happiness and kindness, I'd have no reason to act one way or the other. A central idea is that facts create reasons for a determinate action.
Reasons Internalism Vs. Reason Externalism
Williams thinks this is all claptrap. He adopts the "Humean" model of action. The basic idea is that I have a predetermined set of desires, dispositions, character traits, etc called the motivational set...the only way we can explain action is by reference to my motivational set. If I say I want to study, but I procrastinate on facebook instead, then my dominant desire was to make witty comments on facebook. Every time I ask "why did I do x" the answer will be "to satisfy some desire in my motivational set". A consequence of this view is that, logically, we can't act in a way that isn't in accordance with something our pre-existing motivational set.
Parfit sees things differently. He says that facts about the world give us reasons to have new desires (if we are sufficiently rational and reflexive). For example, maybe I see an old lady trying to cross the street on my way to work. For whatever reason Zeus (the one TRUE god) gave me a motivational set that lacks the desire to help her across the street. My friend sees that I didn't help her then explains to me why it's good to help old ladies across the street. He states facts about kindness and compassion that give me reasons to include the desire to help many old ladies across many streets. And I dedicate the rest of my life to helping old ladies across streets. The end.
From Parfit's position Williams' view is tragic for humanity. If all that can motivate action are pre-existing desires, then it is pointless to ask what kind of life we ought to live. All we can do is internally reflect on our motivational set and decide which desires we weigh more than others. There is no point in asking what things are important or what we should care about. It is a sad state of affairs indeed.
I have to say that while my philosophical sympathies are with Williams, Parfit paints a much nicer picture. Those in the Williams camp can claim that they are simply doing psychology. It doesn't make sense to say that someone acted in a way that didn't accord with one of their desires. Note that Williams' view doesn't necessarily imply profligate behaviour. Most people have in their motivational set the desire to act in accordance with whatever they consider to be moral.
Moral Disagreement
But I want to set that debate aside and turn to another issue. This notion of normatively--of intrinsic value. It's all fine and dandy to say that this and that are intrinsically good or bad, but what do we do in cases of disagreement? Certainly there are cases where people disagree. Some people think allowing individuals to end their own lives is a good thing, others think it's baaaaaaad. Because Parfit believes in intrinsic values, in such cases someone must be wrong. It's not a matter of, "well, for person A's community it's ok and for person B's community it's not". Nope. Someone is wrong. And it ain't me!
Lets suppose Parfit is right and there are objective moral values. What do we do in cases of disagreement, especially when er'body has all the same facts? It seems that the only way to choose between the two positions, given equal epistemic positions, is to presuppose a meta-theory of value. In other words, suppose I give the reason "dignity is da best" for my position and you give yours "suicide is the da worst". Now we need a theory of value to determine which values to value more. But then someone comes along and gives a contrary theory of how we should weigh values. Now we need a meta-meta theory to adjudicate between those two theories.
The bottom line is this: once we say there is objective normative value, in a moral dispute given epistemic parity, there is no way to decide which reason for action we should prefer unless we further presuppose a meta-theory of values.
I didn't really explain that too well but I hope you get the point...
Wacky Mackie and Wile E. Coyote
Ok, one last thing. What's the solution to this? I think Mackie's error theory is the solution. Here's what he says. When I say this is good or this is bad, I mean what I say but my statements are false. There is no such thing as good and bad. Oh! Snap! The world is going to end! Er'body hide your wife, hide your kids, hide your husband cuz they b rapin' er'body up here!
Hold on. Ain't nobody gong b climbin' in ur windows. Here's Mackie's idea. Just because moral statements are all false doesn't mean that we need to throw away morality. Morality and moral concepts serve a very useful purpose. Just cuz there's no such thing as objective good or bad is no reason to go rapin' er'body in here. Think of it like this. (Some people might disgree with this example but I'll try to come up with others later). Numbers. What are they? Can you touch them? Do they exist? No. They are concepts. Very useful ones at that. We don't stop using them just because they don't exist in any real sense. We can do the same with moral concepts like "good", "right", "bad", and "wrong". Nothing is really intrinsically good or bad, but these are certainly useful concepts.
One interesting consequence of this view is that we are a little like Wile E. Coyote before he realized he's run off a cliff. We act as if these concepts are real and so long as we don't look down, we should be fine!
Any and all criticisms are welcome as it will give me content for my paper. Thank you for reading.
Yo, check it. I think I might actually have my paper topic for metaFX. Stop. That would be the best DJ name for a philosopher ever, DJ metaFX. Anyway, I is going to talk about whever der is such ting as normativity in reasons--that is, whether there's such a ting as a good, bad, right, or wrong reason for axion.
Parfit's Preamble on Disagreements
This is an intensely personal section where Parit shares his personal reasons for his quest to determine what matters in life. The main point, however, is that if we find ourselves in disagreement with someone over a moral issue, the standard assumption is that there is some sort of asymmetry. Maybe the person with whom we disagree doesn't have sufficient cognitive capacity to see the correct answer, or maybe they just don't have all the right facts. But, those types of disagreements can be explained away.
The difficult disagreements are with those that we consider our epistemic peers. The people who are also on a whole. nuva. level. wif us. Aaaand they have all same facts as us. In cases of epistemic symmetry there is no rational reason to suppose our belief is any more correct than our friend's. What do? The only thing we can do is to assume that there is an asymmetry in knowledge or capacity somewhere. But how do we know it's not us that is in the weaker position? Answer: we don't. Oh! Snap!
An example of one of these beliefs is retributive justice. Parfit doesn't think anyone deserves to suffer ever. To support his view he has to find the asymmetry responsible for his epistemic peers' views to the contrary. To support his position Parfit suggests that belief in retributive justice may be a case "in which an evolutionary explanation helps to undermine what it explains".
His argument goes that evolution explains why people have reactive attitudes and the desire to inflict harm. But the fact that these emotions and reaction arise out of the evolutionary process demonstrates that such attitudes are not responses to reasons. They are simply reactions. In other words, just because we have an impulse, doesn't mean the action for which we have the impulse is a right action, or that an emotional reaction isn't justification for an action's being right. Something akin the naturalistic fallacy is going on up in hur.
The upshot of the section is that he has deep disagreements with some of his epistemic peers so in order to determine whether his view is correct, rather than his peers, he needs to discover the asymmetries between them.
Parfit on Williams
Parfit has great reverence for Williams and it disturbs him that their moral views are so divergent. A central issue between them is whether there is such a thing as an intrinsic good. An intrinsic good is something that isn't good because of any consequences derived from its acquisition rather it is good in itself. A standard example would be happiness. We don't pursue happiness for any other reason than happiness itself is good. Contrast that with money. We don't pursue money just to have it, but because it allows us to obtain other things we might value like Ed Hardy shirts--which are intrinsically ugly.
So, why is Parfit so pre-occupied by Williams' rejection of the notion of intrinsic good? Because, without this notion Parit doesn't think we can answer the first question of philosophy: Are we human or are we dancer? Not only that, but we also can't answer the "other" first question of philosophy, "how ought we to live our lives/which kind of life do I have the most reason to live?"
You see, if we have nothing with absolute value to pursue, then not only can we not know at what we should aim our own actions but there will be no grounds by which we might judge the actions/life choices of others. If all values are relative, then the person who pursues a life of causing suffering for others is on equal normative footing as someone who spends their life pursuing justice, happiness, knowledge, and love. For Parfit we need some objective normative truths in order to know what reasons should count in favour or against engaging in an action.
For Williams the notion of an intrinsic good is inexplicable. If something were to be intrinsically good-- that is, its essence was goodness--then its goodness should be explainable in advance of human valuation. This is close to my position. I don't understand how something is intrinsically good, devoid of any context. I understand the notion if we say something like "justice and happiness are intrinsically good for humans". Without humans would justice and happiness be good? Are justice and happiness also good for ants and bacteria? It seems that these values are only positive in relation to the benefits they bring to humans (in a community).
Someone like Parfit might reply that bacteria and ants don't have the capacity for happiness and goodness, so my counter-example is irrelevant. That's an objection I'll have to reply to.
But enough about me, lets go back to Williams' argument which is very similar to my own thought, but obviously more sophisticated! He says that if something has intrinsic goodness then we should not be able to explain its goodness by saying we value it. So, I can't say that love is good because I value it. It has to be the other way around; I must say of something that has intrinsic value that I value it because of its intrinsic goodness. In the case of love, I need to say that I value love because it is good. In essence we are saying that something (e.g. love) is good because it is good. This seems a little tautologous.
The suggestion might be that we should value things such as virtue, justice, and happiness because of the other properties that make them good. Plato says justice is good because it creates harmony. But just like Palin, Williams refudiates this view too.
Before we get into Williams' argument there, lets return to Parfit's view of reasons. He says:
When we call something intrinsically good in the reason-implying sense, we mean that this thing has intrinsic properties that would or might give us or others strong reasons to respond to this thing in some positive way, such as wanting, choosing, or trying achieve this thing.
The basic idea is that certain facts about the world will give us reasons to act in a certain way. For example, it is a fact that helping an old lady across the street will make her happy and will be kind. Both of those things are intrinsically good--those are facts! Those facts give me reasons to act. If there were no facts about the intrinsic goodness of happiness and kindness, I'd have no reason to act one way or the other. A central idea is that facts create reasons for a determinate action.
Reasons Internalism Vs. Reason Externalism
Williams thinks this is all claptrap. He adopts the "Humean" model of action. The basic idea is that I have a predetermined set of desires, dispositions, character traits, etc called the motivational set...the only way we can explain action is by reference to my motivational set. If I say I want to study, but I procrastinate on facebook instead, then my dominant desire was to make witty comments on facebook. Every time I ask "why did I do x" the answer will be "to satisfy some desire in my motivational set". A consequence of this view is that, logically, we can't act in a way that isn't in accordance with something our pre-existing motivational set.
Parfit sees things differently. He says that facts about the world give us reasons to have new desires (if we are sufficiently rational and reflexive). For example, maybe I see an old lady trying to cross the street on my way to work. For whatever reason Zeus (the one TRUE god) gave me a motivational set that lacks the desire to help her across the street. My friend sees that I didn't help her then explains to me why it's good to help old ladies across the street. He states facts about kindness and compassion that give me reasons to include the desire to help many old ladies across many streets. And I dedicate the rest of my life to helping old ladies across streets. The end.
From Parfit's position Williams' view is tragic for humanity. If all that can motivate action are pre-existing desires, then it is pointless to ask what kind of life we ought to live. All we can do is internally reflect on our motivational set and decide which desires we weigh more than others. There is no point in asking what things are important or what we should care about. It is a sad state of affairs indeed.
I have to say that while my philosophical sympathies are with Williams, Parfit paints a much nicer picture. Those in the Williams camp can claim that they are simply doing psychology. It doesn't make sense to say that someone acted in a way that didn't accord with one of their desires. Note that Williams' view doesn't necessarily imply profligate behaviour. Most people have in their motivational set the desire to act in accordance with whatever they consider to be moral.
Moral Disagreement
But I want to set that debate aside and turn to another issue. This notion of normatively--of intrinsic value. It's all fine and dandy to say that this and that are intrinsically good or bad, but what do we do in cases of disagreement? Certainly there are cases where people disagree. Some people think allowing individuals to end their own lives is a good thing, others think it's baaaaaaad. Because Parfit believes in intrinsic values, in such cases someone must be wrong. It's not a matter of, "well, for person A's community it's ok and for person B's community it's not". Nope. Someone is wrong. And it ain't me!
Lets suppose Parfit is right and there are objective moral values. What do we do in cases of disagreement, especially when er'body has all the same facts? It seems that the only way to choose between the two positions, given equal epistemic positions, is to presuppose a meta-theory of value. In other words, suppose I give the reason "dignity is da best" for my position and you give yours "suicide is the da worst". Now we need a theory of value to determine which values to value more. But then someone comes along and gives a contrary theory of how we should weigh values. Now we need a meta-meta theory to adjudicate between those two theories.
The bottom line is this: once we say there is objective normative value, in a moral dispute given epistemic parity, there is no way to decide which reason for action we should prefer unless we further presuppose a meta-theory of values.
I didn't really explain that too well but I hope you get the point...
Wacky Mackie and Wile E. Coyote
Ok, one last thing. What's the solution to this? I think Mackie's error theory is the solution. Here's what he says. When I say this is good or this is bad, I mean what I say but my statements are false. There is no such thing as good and bad. Oh! Snap! The world is going to end! Er'body hide your wife, hide your kids, hide your husband cuz they b rapin' er'body up here!
Hold on. Ain't nobody gong b climbin' in ur windows. Here's Mackie's idea. Just because moral statements are all false doesn't mean that we need to throw away morality. Morality and moral concepts serve a very useful purpose. Just cuz there's no such thing as objective good or bad is no reason to go rapin' er'body in here. Think of it like this. (Some people might disgree with this example but I'll try to come up with others later). Numbers. What are they? Can you touch them? Do they exist? No. They are concepts. Very useful ones at that. We don't stop using them just because they don't exist in any real sense. We can do the same with moral concepts like "good", "right", "bad", and "wrong". Nothing is really intrinsically good or bad, but these are certainly useful concepts.
One interesting consequence of this view is that we are a little like Wile E. Coyote before he realized he's run off a cliff. We act as if these concepts are real and so long as we don't look down, we should be fine!
Any and all criticisms are welcome as it will give me content for my paper. Thank you for reading.
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