Value Theory

Contemporary approaches to metaethics

Organization chart of metaethical theories

PhilosophicalEthics

Metaethics Normative ethics

Cognitivism

Naturalism

Intuitionism

Error Theory

Constructivism

Sensibility Theory Contractualism

Noncognitivism

Emotivism

Prescriptivism

Expressivism

The “open question” argument1. For some natural property N, suppose good =df

N.

2. Then it shouldn't even make sense (be an "open question") to ask whether something you recognize as N is good. It would be tantamount to questioning a tautology, asking: “Is this good thing good?”

3. But for any N, the question whether an N is good makes sense (is intelligible, or "open").

4. So for any natural property N, good ≠df N.

Problematic areas

Criticisms of Moore’s intuitionism tend to cluster into three main areas:

(1) knowledge: appeal to self-evident faculty of intuition rests merely on analogy to sensory perception

(2) disagreement: clearly exists, but extent hard to reconcile with a human faculty of self-evident knowledge

(3) motivational force: too easy to imagine an agent who intuits nonnatural objective good but isn’t moved by it (“the amoralist”)

Stevenson’s criteria of “relevance”

1. makes sense of disagreementvs. Hobbes’ subjectivist interest theory (which makes disagreement impossible)“disagreement in interest” = opposing practical aims (vs. simple “Boo/Hurrah!” as expressing the speaker’s emotions)

2. possesses a certain “magnetism,” or subtle influence on others

vs. Hume’s (alleged) “majority-rule” interest theory amounts to “(judgment-)internalism,” in contemporary terms

3. not confirmable solely through scientific method (i.e. nonnaturalist)

vs. all (previous, i.e. descriptivist) interest theoriesapplies Moore’s open question argument

Parallel problems for traditional alternatives

cognitivism

knowledge:no real account

disagreement:can’t explain extent

motivational force:merely contingent

noncognitivism

knowledge:no possible object

disagreement:speakers not contradicting each otherno privileged status for rational argument in resolving disagreement in interest

motivational force:necessary in every caseproblem of unasserted contexts (“Frege-Geach”)

Harman’s science/ethics comparison

science

theoretical posit

protons

[needed for best explanation of:][needed for best explanation of:]

observation

“There goes a proton.”

circumstances

sees vapor trail

ethics

theoretical posit

wrongness/moral facts

[not[not needed for best explanation of:]needed for best explanation of:]

observation

“That’s wrong.”

circumstances

sees kids burning cat

Mackie’s arguments for error theory(listed by section; numbers refer to summary, p. 100):

(1) relativity: widespread disagreement, better explained as reflecting divergent ways of life than in terms of inadequate degrees of evidence or distorted perspectives on a common object of perception

queerness: objective values (assumed to have built-in normative/motivational force) would be

(2) impossible (pp. 96f.) as properties of things or situations in the world: metaphysical version, also applicable to:

(3) the relationship of supervenience between moral and natural properties, which also would be

(4) knowable only through an obscure sui generis faculty of moral intuition: epistemological version

(5) objectification: talk of objective moral properties can be explained as a projection of social demands onto the world in order to give them authority (= categorical status).

Normativity vs. motivational force

Mackie’s discussion of “objective prescriptivity” seems to conflate normative with motivational notions (as do some authors whose views he’s opposing, e.g. Kantians).

Motivational force (Stevenson’s “magnetism”) implies a degree of influence over the agent (making him act accordingly), though the influence is mediated by belief in, or acceptance of, the value in question.

Normative force (providing a reason to act accordingly) doesn’t require awareness on the part of an agent, but it involves only the right to have an influence, i.e. authority, over his behavior. “Force” here just means “import”and doesn’t imply any actual influence.

The terms Mackie uses to illustrate “prescriptivity” sound normative rather than motivational: “to-be-doneness” (for an act deemed right) and “to-be-pursuedness” (for an end deemed good).

But at least part of what he finds metaphysically inexplicable is the thought that an objective moral value could make us act, in the manner of Plato’s Form of the Good (see pp. 96f.).

Railton’s naturalist moral realism

characterization of view (pp. 138f.): cognitivist, objectivist, potentially reductionist, naturalist, empiricistmoral judgments noncategorical [= judgment-externalist for normative force] but universal; nonrelativist (though moral judgments relational), but pluralist `

aims of argument: defend the possibility of reducing values/norms to natural properties show that values/norms serve to explain changes in desires/moral codes

Stages of Railton’s argument

1. derive facts about nonmoral value for a given agent (= his objective good, or interests) from his actual desires (=subjective good) as modified to reflect what an idealized version of himself would want himself to want.

2. derive facts about individual rationality by understanding rational norms in terms of criteria for assessing an agent’s behavior in light of its success or failure in achieving his objective good

1. derive facts about moral norms by applying 2 to collective or social rationality, understood in terms of the aggregate of individual goods.

Two forms of “internalism”Some of the confusing aspects of Railton’s discussion in Section II may be explained by the introduction of a new form of internalism that we’ll read about later:

reasons-internalism (Williams): a reason must be connected -- via a “sound deliberative route” (involving

imagination as well as reasoning) -- to some desire in the agent’s “motivational set”“internal” here means “internal to the agent’s motivation”; what’s said to be internal is a reason

judgment-internalism:holding a judgment of the kind in question (usually, a moral judgment) implies some degree of motivation to act on it“internal” here means “internal to the meaning of the judgment”; what’s said to be internal is motivation

Like most consequentialists, Railton denies judgment-internalism, though he assumes reasons-internalism in his discussion of fact/value and in his denial of categorical status to moral facts (p. 155).

What concerns Railton is the normative (reason-giving) rather than the motivational force of moral judgments; but this gets linked to motivation by reasons-internalism.

Establishing value realismstart with the subjective interests of A = what A happens to want

A’s desires (= mental “valences”) amount to secondary qualities of Athey supervene on primary qualities (of A’s constitution, circumstances, etc.) = the reduction basis for subjective interests

take A’s objective interests as what an idealized version of A, A+ (with full information and imaginative/cognitive capacities), would want A to want

= A’s “objectified” subjective interests, what really is in A’s interests, whether or not he actually wants it reduction basis = those facts about A that A+ would take into accountnote that the question is not what A+ wants, or would want in A’s situation, since that might depend on his idealized aspects

recognize a wants-interests mechanism = a feedback loop whereby unreflective trial and error resulting in better satisfaction of A’s objective interests modifies his wants to fit them better

since the mechanism operates independently of changes in A’s beliefs, it wouldn’t fall subject to a version of Harman’s argument referring to the availability of a better explanation in terms of upbringing instilling certain beliefs what’s explained by objective values, though, isn’t an evaluative “observation,” but rather a change: the evolution of subjective interests in the direction of objective interests (cf. Lonnie example)

Extension to normative and then to moral realism

criterial explanation:relies on a process selecting for achievement of a contextually fixed goal (what a roof is for; what a person wants, his objective interests, etc.) explains normative facts (e.g. about rationality) in terms of effectiveness in achieving the goal normative facts in turn explain changes (becoming more rational)via unreflective wants-interests mechanism

extension to moral norms:interpreted in terms of social rationality, on an Ideal Observer model (what would be rationally advised under circumstances of full and vivid information, counting everyone’s interests equally, p. 150) criterial goal = satisfying everyone’s aggregated interests (to the extent possible)wants/interests mechanism here operates by way of social dissatisfaction and unrest (as negative consequences of discounting the interests of a social subgroup), which need not rest on forming a belief that society is unjust [so that a better explanation in terms of other sources of moral belief isn’t available]

Some objections to Railtonidealization problematic: questionable whether A+ (or, on the social level, an Ideal Observer) is conceptually possible, given the need for knowledge of the future ad infinitum

leaves out normativity: a moral fact just amounts to a descriptive fact: that x will lead to less than the maximum possible social satisfaction or etc. – as opposed to the fact that x is to be avoided

aggregation unsupported: questionable rational backing for view of social end as aggregating of individual interests; equal consideration of individual interests as a value imposed on instrumental rationality, rather than justifiable in terms of it

Gibbard’snorm-expressivism

vs. emotivism (and Blackburn’s expressivism): what’s expressed by a moral judgment is not an emotion but acceptance of a norm for assessing certain emotions

relevant emotions = those associated with moral blame (anger/guilt)assessed for rationality (= rational warrant, weakly interpreted as “making sense,” i.e. rationallly permissible)though moral emotions can be explained as evolutionary successors of complementary bodily reactions in animals (aggression/submission), the recognition and assessment of norms requires human linguistic encodinga more complex understanding of what’s expressed can then be formulated to extend also to nonassertoric contexts: the rejection of certain combinations of facts and norms

definition of “wrong” (p. 181): a modification of Mill’s definition in terms of the appropriateness of sanctions, here limited to others’resentment (or other forms of anger viewed as justified) and the agent’s guilt

claim that an emotional sanction is warranted for the act in question = judgment of blameworthiness (= prima facie wrong, p. 182)recast in complex hypothetical form to identify wrong acts as those that would be blameworthy if the agent were not excused

A noncognitivist account of norm-acceptance

acceptance needs to be distinguished from belief, but can’t be identified just as a state of motivation, since that covers norms in conflict with those we accept:, as in

weakness of will: agent is “in the grips of” animal motivations in conflict with norms he accepts Milgram experimemt: agent is in the grips of another norm he’s internalized, in conflict with the one he accepts (as overriding in the case at hand)

picked out instead as a mental state that plays a significant theoretical role in evolutionary psychology:

biological function = social coordinationevolutionary fitness enhanced by normative discussion = achievement of advance consensus on how to act, think, and feel, via individual agents’normative avowals and response to group pressure toward consistencydepends on ability to refer to absent situations, and hence on languageextended to individual reflection via human capacity for imaginative rehearsalinternalization of norms allows for normative governance = influence on individual’s behavior

can then be identified by its characteristic causes and effects: as a mental state with motivational effects that results from a certain kind of fitness-enhancing group discussion

Answering Frege-GeachGeach, following Frege, objected to earlier versions of noncognitivismon the grounds that they lacked a univocal account of the meaning of moral judgments in asserted and unasserted contexts, as needed to represent logical inferences such as modus ponens

but on Gibbard’s account we can explain such inferences by reference to a mental state of ruling out, applicable without change of meaning to facts, norms, and various combinations of them. Applying this to fact/norm combinations rests on

working out a descriptive correlate of normative claims by relativizingnormative predicates (forbidden, optional, required) to a given system of norms Nthinking of ordinary, incomplete systems of norms as disjunctions of complete systems, i.e. systems applying one of the predicates to every possible state of affairs

for a truth-semantics applicable to normative inferences, Gibbardelsewhere sets up the notion of a “factual-normative world” <w, n>, conjoining facts w and norms n:

to say that a normative judgment “holds” in a world is to say that the corresponding descriptive judgment (e.g., “x is N-permitted,” for the judgment that x is rational) is true of that worldan inference then can be seen as ruling out factual-normative worlds <w,n> at which its premises hold but not its conclusion

Some objections to Gibbard

weak defense of noncognitivism (elsewhere): assumes internalism; account of norm-acceptance shows, at most, that noncognitivismis tenable, not that we have to abandon cognitivism

too dependent on language: can’t prelinguisticsocieties (or even some groups of primates) be said to follow moral norms?

too mind-dependent, relativistic, etc.: still subject to versions of the general objection to noncognitivism from its failure to fit the phenomenology of moral experience

Wiggins’s socially-based subjectivism

standard subjectivist accounts of value subject to well-known objections, most notably that they can’t make adequate sense of disagreement. They analyze “x is good (or right, beautiful, etc.)” as1. “S (the speaker) approves of x” or2. “We approve of x”or take it as expressing approval (as in emotivism). Where they allow for disagreement at all, they miss the fact that it involves different ways of representing something external to our sentiments.

instead look back to Hume’s account, reconstructed as:“x is such as to arouse a certain sentiment of approbation” (Hume),

but revised to allow for an internal standard of correctness: “x is such as to make a certain sentiment of approbation appropriate.”

modified (cognitivist) account can handle disagreement by making sense of the fact that we do disagree (and also that we care so much about it; cf. p. 234), andallowing for an internal standard of correctness (i.e. one that doesn’t rest on a nonsubjective foundation), as supplied by the social process of refining the relevant sort of judgment,

while at the same time exhibiting the dependence of value judgments on the sentiments (vs. analyzing it in terms of them, which would yield a vicious circle)

Constructing an internal standard of correctness

problems with Humean account: exaggerates the analogy to sensory taste, where there’s an organ of perceptiondepends on ideal conditions of observation/judgment, along with nearly homogeneous human nature, as nonsubjective foundations of the value in question

alternative = mutual dependency of property-response pairs, with standard of correctness built up from (and hence “internal”to) the social practice of refining the relevant sensibility

identification of reaction depends on specifying what it’s a reaction to, as well as vice versa (cf. amusement and the property of beingfunny)objective property and subjective response “made for each other”in the sense of resulting from the same social process of refinement (vs. the Humean “true judge” or ideal observer)evolution into critically assessable sensibility via survival of more viable pairs = those capable of serving in process of interpersonal education, mutual enlightenment, etc. Some generate further pairs; see p. 232.

Some objections to Wigginsvery rough sketch of refinement process, meant to cover very different forms of evaluation (aesthetic, moral, etc.), and left particularly vague in application to moral evaluation

adequate answer on questions of cultural relativism? What can be said of a morally objectionable sensibility that appears to be viable, e.g. caste-based morality? Just that it’s correct in its own terms, but not in ours?

allows for knowledge of moral properties? Apart from the analogy to evolution, is there any reason to assume that the process of refinement has by now resulted in stableproperty/response pairs?

Morality and RationalityMoral philosophers typically take ethics to be founded in some way

on rationality, but on importantly different interpretations of the relevant notion of rationality

only theoretical rationality seems to figure in Harman’s skeptical argument, which denies ethics a foundation, but practical rationality comes up in Mackie and is made to serve as a foundation for ethics by Railton, in a form limited to instrumental (means-end) rationality

Gibbard and Wiggins introduce a further notion of appropriateness(warrant, justification, etc.) as relevant to the assessment of ethical norms, though they leave the notion unanalyzed

Rawls in effect assigns noninstrumental notions to a separate category by distinguishing between rationality and reasonableness, taking the former as instrumental, while allowing the latter a moral connotation

Rawls’s normative view according to Rawls’s argument in The Theory of Justice, agents in an “original position” characterized by

the veil of ignorance: deprived of information about themselves in particular (position in society, natural talents, psychological tendencies, conception of the good, etc.) rational self-interest: aiming only to promote their own advantage

would agree unanimously to arrange the basic structure of society according to two lexically ordered principles serving tomake the worst situation for any individual as good as possible without sacrificing liberty for themselves or others. In simplified form:

the principle of liberty: maximum basic liberties compatible with similar liberties for all the difference principle: inequalities in distribution of primary goods must be justified by their benefit to those worst off

the result of setting up society according to the two principleswould be a “well-ordered society,” which Rawls argues would be stable, since people could be educated to act from a sense ofjustice reflecting the two principles

Rawls’s metaethical“model-conceptions”

in Rawls’s metaethics, a procedure of construction works from two basic conceptions modeling “justice as fairness,” the aim or ideal outcome of adopting his two principles:

the well-ordered society: structured according to the two principles, with members as free and equal moral persons, viewing ourselves and others as having an effective sense of justice the moral person: the new element in this account; our sense of ourselves and others in the well-ordered society as rationally autonomous, each with an effective sense of justice and a conception of his good

with the starting point of his normative argument taken as connecting these in a third model-conception, embodying a fair contract situation:

the original position: assumes rational autonomy of parties, with constraints on knowledge ruling out arbitrary self-preference; “represents” full autonomy insofar as background features incorporate reasonableness

note that the original position is not depicted as ideal — or alternatively, as what people would be like without government, i.e. in a “state of nature” — but just as embodying a fair procedure that ensures the fairness of the resulting principles

Rawls’s constructivismRawls’s constructed principles (= the two principles of justice, the outcome of agreement in the original position) are said to be

reasonable (= “most reasonable for us, given our conception of persons as free and equal, and fully cooperating members of a democratic society,” p. 253) objective (= issued from “a suitably constructed social point of view that is authoritative with respect to all individual and associational points of view”)

rather thantrue (= descriptive of “moral facts,” in a sense taken to imply general mind-independence, as in intuitionism, or in naturalism of the sort that grounds classical utilitarianism)

the Kantian element in Rawls’s constructivism is its basis in moral psychology, i.e. the concept of a moral person as fully autonomous (contra earlier authors’ interpretation of Kantian principles as purely formal)

evidence comes from “reflective equilibrium,” the mutual adjustment of general principles and particular intuitive beliefs about cases