PEA Soup

Intuitions about Bare Normative Modal Statements

Right now I’m thinking about the proper descriptive semantics for bare, normative modal statements, statements that use expressions like “must”, “ought”, and “may” normatively but don’t contain explicit restrictor phrases like “legally”, “morally”, or “given what I know”. I’m developing my own account of their semantics and my plan is to discuss the issues raised in at least two separate posts. Right now I’d just like to hear other people’s intuitions about possible assertions in different cases. Since the ideal would be responses unpolluted by theory, I want first to present the two cases that now most interest me and just elicit reactions, holding off my own theory of these uses for a second post. (Some of you may recognize these cases as similar to others that arise in discussions in linguistics and philosophy of language, others in the ethics literature. I’m hoping that in your comments, you just address the question of your intuitions, holding off your comments on the theoretical issues raised until my second post, since I’m hoping that the comments also won’t pollute the reactions of later commentators. I’m also hoping yours aren’t polluted by knowledge of others’ reactions, so please post your own before reading the earlier comments. Sorry to be so fussy!)

Moral Dimensions Meets the Empirical Data

Tim Scanlon's new book Moral Dimensions provides an elegant account according to which an agent's mental states are relevant to the question as to whether that agent is blameworthy but not to the question as to whether the agent's behavior itself is morally wrong. 

As the philosopher Kristen Bell points out to me, however, the empirical data indicate that people's actual judgments show exactly the opposite pattern. People's wrongness judgments actually depend more on the agent's mental states than their blame judgments do. 

Happy Fifth Birthday!

Thank you all—contributors, commentators, and readers—for another great year in the Soup!   This month marks PEA Soup's fifth "birthday" on the blogosphere, and because of all of you, it was clearly the best.  Thank you!

To celebrate, we've introduced a new design theme—Lone Tree Green!—and we've added a list of our contributors' most recent books.  Most importantly, we've put together a small "2008-2009 Yearbook" to highlight some of the noteworthy events that happened this year on the Soup, and, especially, events that happened to and for some of our contributors.  If contributors or readers have any more good news to share, please feel free to add it in the comments section.  So, thank you all again, and… drum roll please…

Scanlon on Moral Responsibility & Blame (Part 1)

I’ve just read T.M. Scanlon’s chapter on blame in his latest book Moral Dimensions. The discussion is subtle, provocative, and quite insightful. It has already caused me to rethink some of my own views on moral responsibility in general and blame in particular. Nevertheless, I have a few questions/worries about the account that may be worth discussing over the course of a few posts. In this post, I’ll just focus on his account of moral responsibility, and in later posts I hope to focus on his accounts of blame and the ethics of blaming. (And I apologize in advance for the length of this post.)

Welcome, Janice Dowell

We're pleased to welcome Janice Dowell as the newest PEA Souper.  Janice is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska, and she works in metaethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.  Welcome aboard, Jan!

Reasons not to intend

The distinction between the 'right' and 'wrong' kind of reasons is taken to play at least three important roles: 'right' kind but not 'wrong' kinds of reasons contribute to standards of correctness, and in the case of reasons for attitudes, 'right' kind but not 'wrong' kinds of reasons can serve to make attitudes rational, and exhibit at least a strong asymmetry, in that it is at least substantially easier to believe or intend for the 'right' kinds of reasons, if not outright impossible to believe or intend for the 'wrong' kind.

Toxin-puzzle style considerations often lead philosophers to endorse the following thesis:

R is a RK-reason to intend to do A iff R is a reason to do A. 

This is because it seems difficult, if not impossible to intend to drink the toxin directly for the reason that so intending will result in a reward, and moreover that believing that so intending will result in a reward doesn't make intending to drink it rational, but only makes acting to get oneself to have that intention rational - corresponding to at least two of the earmarks of a 'wrong'-kind reason.

Proponents of the so-called 'state-given/object-given' distinction appear to go further than this, and claim that all RK-reasons which bear on intention are reasons for or against the object of that intention.

Workshop on Practical Reasoning

University of Edinburgh
28-29 June 2009

Speakers: Simon Blackburn, Campbell Brown, Matthew Chrisman, Jonathan Dancy, Jamie Dreier, Graham Hubbs, Kent Hurtig, Elinor Mason, Sean McKeever, Michael Ridge, Michael Smith, and Jay Wallace. (Notice a couple of PEA-Soupers in there.)

More information here.

My Problem with Torture: The Solution

Here is an inconsistent triad of propositions:

1. There are certain pure “ticking bomb” cases (e.g. of the sort that I considered in my last post on this topic), in which torture (even on the part of a state official) is all-things-considered morally permissible.
2. It is right for the law to impose an absolute prohibition on torture (at least as practised by state officials) and to make all cases of torture liable to criminal punishment.
3. It is not right for the law to make an act liable to criminal punishment if that act is all-things-considered morally permissible.

If (like me) you find each of these three propositions prima facie plausible, how should you resolve this inconsistency?

Conference - THICK CONCEPTS

Friday 3rd - Sunday 5th July 2009
University of Kent, UK
Sponsors: The Analysis Trust, The Mind Association, The University of Kent.

Speakers include: Jonathan Dancy, Daniel Elstein, Allan Gibbard, Edward Harcourt, Chris Hookway, Adrian Moore, Michael Smith, Alan Thomas, Pekka Vayrynen, and Nick Zangwill, as well as PEA Soup's very own Brad Cokelet, Simon Kirchin, Jussi Suikkanen and Eric Wiland!

Philosopher's Digest

BGSU alums John Milliken and Galen Foresman, along with current grad student Ben Dyer, have recently launched The Philosopher's Digest, a site featuring "timely reviews of current philosophy articles."  Good luck with the venture, gentlemen!