Sidgwick on Philosophical Intuitions (Book 3, Ch. 13)
Intro
Yo, check it. Weez gonna learn about Sidgwick's philosophical intuitions. Sidgwick (aka Jesus--in my opinion) had this idea that moral truths can be found in the "Common Sense" morality of the everyman. Well, not exactly. More precisely, he thought that if one could systematically analyze the common sense moral principles that are floating around and reject the incoherent (i.e., tautological) axioms, and clarify those that are left--then we can discover the self-evident moral axioms to which every rational person will agree.
What he ends up with are the principles of Justice, Prudence, and Rational Benevolence. And he regards the apprehension of "these abstract truths, as the permanent basis of the common conviction that the fundamental precepts of morality are essentially reasonable." What's important to extract from this conclusion is that the fundamental principles of morality are rational and self-evident.
By 'rational' he means that each on its own is internally consistent (but not necessarily consistent with the others--this will come up later). By 'self-evident' he means that neither one needs to be justified to be accepted as true. We somehow are just able to grasp their truth.
So, lets take a closer look at these famous universal axioms of morality...
Definitions
Justice: Justice can be divided into two main ideas, both of which are too general to serve as particular rules, but are recognized as giving general guidance.
(1) Golden rule-ish justice: "whatever action any of us judges to be right for himself, he implicitly judges to be right for all similar persons in similar circumstances."
(2) Legal Justice: impartiality in the application of general rules; i.e., treat like cases alike.
Prudence (Rational Self-Love): One ought to aim at one's own good. With the qualification that, given greater probability of realizing a future good over a present good, we ought not pursue the present good if I causes us to lose the future good. In other words, suppose you will get 1000 units of happiness from finishing your paper on time and 10 units of happiness from going on facebook. Going on facebook will prevent you from finishing your paper on time. So, stay the fuck off facebook!
Rational Benevolence: The good of one individual is of no more importance that the good of another individual, from the point of view of the impartial universe, (unless you live in 'merica, cuz God thinks 'merca in #1--that's a scientifical fact)
Ok, so now that we know what the universally true moral axioms are, lets qualify them. While these are absolute practical principles, they are too abstract and too universal in scope to determine what we ought to do in any particular case; "particular duties have still to be determined by some other method." Nevertheless, (it is supposed) they are useful guides to which all particular moral rules can be logically traced.
I think there's a question here about how significant Sidgwick's 3 principles are. I guess from the point of view of the philosophical task of demonstrating--contra the skeptic--that there are universal moral principles, we might say that Sidgwick is successful.
But from the point of view of utility, I'm not sure that these principles offer us much guidance when we have tough moral decisions. Of course, Sidgwick acknowledges their generality, but perhaps his project (at this point) is not to present a practical set of principles, rather his enterprise is one of description.
As Sidgwick later points out, the 3 principles aren't necessarily logically consistent with each other. That is to say, in situations where prudence conflicts with rational benevolence there is no rational argument to prefer the one principle to the other, or to shew that one can be derived from the other:
But in the rarer cases of a recognized conflict between self-interest and duty, practical reason, being divided against itself, would cease to be a motive on either side; the conflict would have to be decided by the comparative preponderance of one or other of two groups of non-rational impulses.
By 'non-rational impulses' he means 'desires' for things other than self-interest and duty to society.
Why These and not Other Ones?
So, given all the possible moral principles that exist, why are these the self-evident ones and not some others? Recall that Sidgwick is looking for the founding principles of morality. If a principle is foundational that means it can't be deduced. If we deduce it from some other premises then it would seem that the premises were foundational rather than the conclusion--in fact, this is true by definition. So, Sidgwick needs principles that aren't rationally deduced, yet self-evidently true to er'body.
Consider some other rules like, "you ought not to lie" or even "you ought not to kill". These principles are not self-evident. They seem to require some rational justification, and they aren't universally accepted without qualification--whereas Sidgwick's principles don't require justification. His principles are as self-evident as a mathematical principle (such as the sum of any two even numbers will equal an even number).
The upshot here is that foundational principles will not be deducible from other principles. This in turn which means that if there are universal foundational principles they will only be accessible through our intuitions (how else could we know them?). The best place to look for universal moral intuitions is in the "common sense" (i.e., informal, everyman's) morality. Of course, the common sense morality isn't a systematic moral system but a mishmash of confused and conflicting principles. However, if you go through through it systematically (as he does in an earlier chapter) and tease out the content-ful from the vacuous, you will end up with Sidgwick's 3. That is, all of the principles in common sense morality are either vacuous or can be deduced from Sidgwick's 3.
The Origens of Moral Principles
This this bring up the issue of where moral principles come from (Jesus...duh!). So, of course, Sidgwick, like virtually all moral philosophers is hopelessly misguided on this question because he doesn't realize that er'thing he needs to know about morality he can find in the Bible...or the Koran...or the Vedic texts, or the Tipitaka...etc...
Anyhow, for Sidgwick, because we can't by definition reason our way to foundational moral principles, the only way to access these self-evident moral truths is through our intuitions (not in a new-age-y sense, but a more sophisticated philosophical sense, the details of which don't really matter at this point).
But this raises an objection which goes like this: intuitions are just a psychological fact. The mere fact that our psychologies align on these principles only tells us something about the psychology of humans, it doesn't tell us anything about the objective world in regards to morality. That is, psychological convergence doesn't necessarily imply truth, only that we share some psychological intuitions--which isn't surprising considering we share the same evolutionary past.
Sidgwick's reply to this is that the critique is engaging in a sort of genetic fallacy/burden of proof-y argument. It goes like this. The other principles in common sense morality (those that he discarded) where shown to be either false or vacuous without appeal to their origens. So, we should apply the same sort of standard to the 3. If they are false we should be able to shew it by pointing out that they have internal some logical problem or that they are vacuous. In short, a principle's origen is irrelevant to its truth value.
There are obviously some assumptions about human reason but setting that aside, I think Sidgwick has a strong case here. Lets suppose someone is a liar but occasionally tells the truth. When they say something is that is true, we don't automatically say it's false just because it came from a source that often produces false statements. That would be committing the genetic fallacy. Instead we ought to evaluate statements and principles on their own merit.
There is another objection to Sidgwick. This objection agrees with his invokation of the genetic fallacy but says that he has drawn the wrong conclusion. Sidgwick's conclusion excludes other possible self-evident principles. In other words, he was on the right track but he missed some!
Fairly recently there has been a huge collaborative project between moral psychologists, cognitive scientists, and moral philosophers to empirically discover the foundations of morality loosely organized by Haidt. The most current version of the "moral foundations" theory looks something like this: there are 6 foundations of morality. They are liberty/vs oppression, don't harm others/care for others, sanctity/purity, fairness/don't cheat/proportionality, loyalty (to group and individuals), and respect for authoritar.
The moral foundations theory explains cultural differences in moral rules as arising from the assignment of different values to each foundation. For example, Western liberal countries have the liberty/vs oppression foundation very high and the sanctity/purity quite low (there are, however, regional variations--predominately between the north and the south). More traditional cultures place a higher value (than Western cultures) on sanctity/purity and respect for authoritar.
(Fun activity! find out your own value weights!) http://www.yourmorals.org/
I think you might be able to make the case that Sidgwick's 'prudence' could be rolled into liberty/vs oppression, rational benevolence could be rolled into "don't harm others/care for others", and Justice could be accommodated in "fairness/don't cheat/proportionality". The fit might not be exact but with a little exigenical liberty and charity I think it could be done.
The problem will be accounting for the other three: purity, loyalty, and respect for authoritar. Did Sidgwick's intuitions miss out on something? Did he dismiss something from the common sense morality that he shouldn't have? Or is there some way to fit these remaining 3 into Sidgwick's?
My inclination is that the psychologists and cognitive scientists probably have a model (based on resources and method) that better reflects global intuitions than does Sidgwick's arm-chair theory.
What does this mean for Sidgwick's theory? Maybe we can say that he got some things right, but he missed a couple of things too. Maybe what I need to do is to go back to the text and look at what he dismisses.
Another possibility is that the moral foundations project has a different concept of "foundational moral principle" than does Sidgwick. Stitch and Machery have done some interesting work on the nature of moral concepts to show that often different theories are talking past each other. For example, the moral foundations theory people might mean by "foundational moral concept" motivating force in an agent's decision making, while Sidgwick might mean the fundamental premises to which all rational moral decision making can be traced.
So, one possibility is that we are comparing apples and oranges. We'd need to do some work to determine precisely what each means by "fundamental moral concept" to properly evaluate whether the two theories are different.
Assuming similar notions of what it is to be a fundamental moral concept, one implication of accepting the "moral foundations theory" is that it weakens Sidgwick's claim that all moral rules are derived from just 3 self-evident moral principles.
Sidgwick derives further confidence in his conclusion from the history of (Western) ethics where we find many of the same principles (Clarke, Kant, Mill). The difference between Sidgwick and these other schools of ethics are that they try to shew that the moral axiom are logically linked. That is, by pursuing the good of all we make ourselves better off or that by pursuing our own good, we make society better off. Sidgwick's main point is that all attempt to logically connect these principles fail. The fact that there are self-evident moral truths don't necessitate that they be logically connected.
Showing posts with label moral intuition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moral intuition. Show all posts
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Moral Disagreement Part 1: Parfit
Notes and Thoughts on Parfit and Moral Disagreement (Ch. 34)
Introduction
Before getting into the philosophy, for those of you who aren't familiar with the trolley thought experiments, answer these questions before proceeding:
Trolly Q1: You are driver of a runaway tram which you can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other. You are currently on the track to kill the five. Do you flip the switch to change tracks and cause the one man to die to save the 5?
Trolly Q2: This time you aren't the driver of the runaway tram. This time there's only one track, and there are 5 workers working on it. If the train reaches them, they'll all die. You are on an overpass. You notice a fat man whose body weight is such that if you pushed him off he'll cause the tram to derail and the 5 workers will be saved. Yay! But only at the expense of the fat man's life. Boo! Do you push him off?
Was your answer different for the 2 questions? The outcome was the same, so why might it be different? What's the difference between the situations? And most importantly, how do you justify your position? Keep these questions in mind as we discuss this section. In a way Parfit wants to argue that under ideal conditions we'd all give the same answer. There's a fairly large body of empirical evidence to the contrary, but he'll probably reply that in some way the ideal conditions hadn't been met.
Overview
Yo, check it! (That means I'm about to drop some knowledge) We is about to talk about D-Rock Parfit's replies to the argument from disagreement (and some variations). The argument from disagreement is one of the classical arguments against moral realism (that there objectively true moral values). I did a more detailed account of the argument from disagreement in my post on Mackie (Mackie calls it "the argument from diversity") but for the one or two of you not familiar with the argument it goes a lil' somethin' like this:
1. There is somes peoples.
2. The peoples is disagree very muchly about what is goodly and badly.
3. If there were such a thing as objective moral values, we would expect to find agreement, not disagreement.
C. Therefore, it is seeming there are no objectively true moral values, only relative values. I.e., Moral truth is always relative to social/cultural/historical context; it is never objectively true.
Parfit says this argument is badly. He does not like it. Not one little bit!
Two last definitions, normative belief: A belief about something's value. For example, "telling the truth is good" or "causing unnecessary pain is baaaaaaaad."
Normative reason: That's a reason in favour of doing 'x'. Or, that's a reason against doing 'x'. Or, that's a good/bad reason to do 'x'.
Ok, enough lol catz language. Lets look at his criticisms. (Can you imagine turning in a whole paper in lol catz language? That'd be awesome. lol.)
I will add one more point. Parfit is going to advance the thesis that ultimately it is our intuition that tells us that certain actions and reasons for actions are morally good. This thesis is contrary to other realist positions that say we can know that something is good either by empirical means or by conceptual analysis.
Parfit's Main Claims
Yo, check it! Parfit is a moral realist: He thinks that there are objective moral values. More specifically he makes several claims:
(A). There are some irreducibly normative reason-involving truths, some of which are moral truths.
This means there are objective truths about moral values. For example, there are certain things that are objectively good--in the moral sense--to do, and knowing what these things are gives us reasons for or against an action. Morally good things aren't good because of their consequences, but they are good in themselves. Maybe, helping people is one of these things. "But helping who?" "I don't know, people who need help!"
(B). Since these truths are not about natural properties, our knowledge of these truths cannot be based on perception or on evidence provided by empirical facts.
This one's pretty self-explanatory. Things aren't good because of some property they have, things are good because they are essentially good. Morally good things are intrinsic goods.
(C). Positive substantive normative truths cannot be analytic, in the sense that their truth follows from their meaning.
Whether something is good is not discoverable by analyzing the meaning of the term. E.g., That "justice" is good, isn't discoverable through its definition the way that we can discover what a bachelor is by understanding the meaning of "unmarried man". Identifying something as good isn't a matter of analyzing the concept of the word.
Therefore
(D). Our normative beliefs cannot be justified unless we are able to recognize in some other way that these beliefs are true.
Since we can't know what things are good based on empirical investigation, apprehension of properties, or conceptual analysis, we need another way to be able to identify what things are objectively good.
And, Parfit says, we do have this capacity. Some of our normative beliefs give us reasons in favour/against certain actions and we are responsive to these reasons. Some of our normative beliefs are "self-evident, and intrinsically credible".
For example: Poking children in the eyes with needles for fun is wrong. According to Parfit, we just know that this normative belief is true. We know this to be true just as we know that a something and its negation cannot both be true (at the same time and place).
Of course the big question is how do we know these assertions to be true without appeal to our sensory perception or definitions? It's not like I need to see someone poke a child in the eyes to know it's wrong...Parfit proposes intuitionism: The theory that we have intuitive abilities to respond to reasons and recognize some normative truths.
Parfit is well aware of the problems with intuitionism. Where was people's moral intuition during slavery? Back then people often argued it is intuitively true that Africans ought to be slaves. And what about wars? People do horrendous things because they take it to be intuitively true that the other side is evil or that they're on the side of good (see: US military culture, or any military culture for that matter...).
Nevertheless, in the less clear cases we ought not to rely only on intuition about the act. This is where Parfit adds in a requirement that we assess the strengths and weaknesses of conflicting reasons, arguments, and principles. The idea is that, as with particular acts, our intuition gives us "similar abilities to recognize truths about what is rational, and about what we have reasons to believe, and want, and do."
I'm not sure I agree with him here. I think all one has to do is look at American politics to see that people clearly do not agree on what truths are rational "and what we have reasons to believe, and want, and do". However, I do agree with him (and Scanlon) that appeal to reasons for/against committing a particular action "is the only defensible method". I mean, for serious, if you can't give reasons for why you did something, beyond "I just felt it was the right thing to do", then you is wack.
The problem for Parfit is in trying to show that people's intuitions will magically aligne regarding what they think are good objectives, reasons and/or principles for action. To deal with this objection Parfit argues that just because there might be disagreement over what 2 people find to be "self-evident", doesn't imply that we don't have the capacity to find out.
Consider our other senses. People can disagree over what they see or hear, yet we don't conclude from that that they are blind and deaf. Well...sometimes, I do. Nevertheless, despite their infrequent lapses, we don't conclude that vison and hearing aren't reliable ways of coming to know truths about the world.
One more reply to the anti-intuitionists is that people might find that the beliefs over which they disagree aren't of the self-evident variety; that's why they're disagreeing. Well, that's sounds like a mighty convenient argument for Parfit. "No, no, no! it's not that one of your intuitions is wrong, it's that regarding this particular matter, there is no self-evident truth--that's why you're disagreeing". But this reply avoids one difficulty by creating another.
How is it that we are supposed to distinguish between intuitive beliefs that are self-evidently true and those that only appear to be self-evidently true? If Parfit's answer is that we should resort to our intuition to sort it out, I'm gonna punch him right in the face! Oh! I shouldn't say that. Parfit's a nice guy. Almost all accounts of him never fail to mention how nice he is. But anyway, you know what I mean. There's a vicious circle goin' on here, and it's making me dizzy!
Introduction
Before getting into the philosophy, for those of you who aren't familiar with the trolley thought experiments, answer these questions before proceeding:
Trolly Q1: You are driver of a runaway tram which you can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other. You are currently on the track to kill the five. Do you flip the switch to change tracks and cause the one man to die to save the 5?
Trolly Q2: This time you aren't the driver of the runaway tram. This time there's only one track, and there are 5 workers working on it. If the train reaches them, they'll all die. You are on an overpass. You notice a fat man whose body weight is such that if you pushed him off he'll cause the tram to derail and the 5 workers will be saved. Yay! But only at the expense of the fat man's life. Boo! Do you push him off?
Was your answer different for the 2 questions? The outcome was the same, so why might it be different? What's the difference between the situations? And most importantly, how do you justify your position? Keep these questions in mind as we discuss this section. In a way Parfit wants to argue that under ideal conditions we'd all give the same answer. There's a fairly large body of empirical evidence to the contrary, but he'll probably reply that in some way the ideal conditions hadn't been met.
Overview
Yo, check it! (That means I'm about to drop some knowledge) We is about to talk about D-Rock Parfit's replies to the argument from disagreement (and some variations). The argument from disagreement is one of the classical arguments against moral realism (that there objectively true moral values). I did a more detailed account of the argument from disagreement in my post on Mackie (Mackie calls it "the argument from diversity") but for the one or two of you not familiar with the argument it goes a lil' somethin' like this:
1. There is somes peoples.
2. The peoples is disagree very muchly about what is goodly and badly.
3. If there were such a thing as objective moral values, we would expect to find agreement, not disagreement.
C. Therefore, it is seeming there are no objectively true moral values, only relative values. I.e., Moral truth is always relative to social/cultural/historical context; it is never objectively true.
Parfit says this argument is badly. He does not like it. Not one little bit!
Two last definitions, normative belief: A belief about something's value. For example, "telling the truth is good" or "causing unnecessary pain is baaaaaaaad."
Normative reason: That's a reason in favour of doing 'x'. Or, that's a reason against doing 'x'. Or, that's a good/bad reason to do 'x'.
Ok, enough lol catz language. Lets look at his criticisms. (Can you imagine turning in a whole paper in lol catz language? That'd be awesome. lol.)
I will add one more point. Parfit is going to advance the thesis that ultimately it is our intuition that tells us that certain actions and reasons for actions are morally good. This thesis is contrary to other realist positions that say we can know that something is good either by empirical means or by conceptual analysis.
Parfit's Main Claims
Yo, check it! Parfit is a moral realist: He thinks that there are objective moral values. More specifically he makes several claims:
(A). There are some irreducibly normative reason-involving truths, some of which are moral truths.
This means there are objective truths about moral values. For example, there are certain things that are objectively good--in the moral sense--to do, and knowing what these things are gives us reasons for or against an action. Morally good things aren't good because of their consequences, but they are good in themselves. Maybe, helping people is one of these things. "But helping who?" "I don't know, people who need help!"
(B). Since these truths are not about natural properties, our knowledge of these truths cannot be based on perception or on evidence provided by empirical facts.
This one's pretty self-explanatory. Things aren't good because of some property they have, things are good because they are essentially good. Morally good things are intrinsic goods.
(C). Positive substantive normative truths cannot be analytic, in the sense that their truth follows from their meaning.
Whether something is good is not discoverable by analyzing the meaning of the term. E.g., That "justice" is good, isn't discoverable through its definition the way that we can discover what a bachelor is by understanding the meaning of "unmarried man". Identifying something as good isn't a matter of analyzing the concept of the word.
Therefore
(D). Our normative beliefs cannot be justified unless we are able to recognize in some other way that these beliefs are true.
Since we can't know what things are good based on empirical investigation, apprehension of properties, or conceptual analysis, we need another way to be able to identify what things are objectively good.
And, Parfit says, we do have this capacity. Some of our normative beliefs give us reasons in favour/against certain actions and we are responsive to these reasons. Some of our normative beliefs are "self-evident, and intrinsically credible".
For example: Poking children in the eyes with needles for fun is wrong. According to Parfit, we just know that this normative belief is true. We know this to be true just as we know that a something and its negation cannot both be true (at the same time and place).
Of course the big question is how do we know these assertions to be true without appeal to our sensory perception or definitions? It's not like I need to see someone poke a child in the eyes to know it's wrong...Parfit proposes intuitionism: The theory that we have intuitive abilities to respond to reasons and recognize some normative truths.
Parfit is well aware of the problems with intuitionism. Where was people's moral intuition during slavery? Back then people often argued it is intuitively true that Africans ought to be slaves. And what about wars? People do horrendous things because they take it to be intuitively true that the other side is evil or that they're on the side of good (see: US military culture, or any military culture for that matter...).
Nevertheless, in the less clear cases we ought not to rely only on intuition about the act. This is where Parfit adds in a requirement that we assess the strengths and weaknesses of conflicting reasons, arguments, and principles. The idea is that, as with particular acts, our intuition gives us "similar abilities to recognize truths about what is rational, and about what we have reasons to believe, and want, and do."
I'm not sure I agree with him here. I think all one has to do is look at American politics to see that people clearly do not agree on what truths are rational "and what we have reasons to believe, and want, and do". However, I do agree with him (and Scanlon) that appeal to reasons for/against committing a particular action "is the only defensible method". I mean, for serious, if you can't give reasons for why you did something, beyond "I just felt it was the right thing to do", then you is wack.
The problem for Parfit is in trying to show that people's intuitions will magically aligne regarding what they think are good objectives, reasons and/or principles for action. To deal with this objection Parfit argues that just because there might be disagreement over what 2 people find to be "self-evident", doesn't imply that we don't have the capacity to find out.
Consider our other senses. People can disagree over what they see or hear, yet we don't conclude from that that they are blind and deaf. Well...sometimes, I do. Nevertheless, despite their infrequent lapses, we don't conclude that vison and hearing aren't reliable ways of coming to know truths about the world.
One more reply to the anti-intuitionists is that people might find that the beliefs over which they disagree aren't of the self-evident variety; that's why they're disagreeing. Well, that's sounds like a mighty convenient argument for Parfit. "No, no, no! it's not that one of your intuitions is wrong, it's that regarding this particular matter, there is no self-evident truth--that's why you're disagreeing". But this reply avoids one difficulty by creating another.
How is it that we are supposed to distinguish between intuitive beliefs that are self-evidently true and those that only appear to be self-evidently true? If Parfit's answer is that we should resort to our intuition to sort it out, I'm gonna punch him right in the face! Oh! I shouldn't say that. Parfit's a nice guy. Almost all accounts of him never fail to mention how nice he is. But anyway, you know what I mean. There's a vicious circle goin' on here, and it's making me dizzy!
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