PEA Soup

UPDATE: The murderer at the door: What Kant might have said

UPDATE, June 26, 2009: Anyone interested in how I ended up developing this argument should check out the paper just published in PPR.

One of the more difficult issues for Kantian moral theorists is how, if at all, our moral obligations should be sensitive to others' wrongdoing. It seems fairly obvious that what we are morally required to do can change in response to others' immoral conduct. A clear example is promise keeping: If A and B agree to a mutually beneficial promise, but A doesn't fulfill the terms of their promise, B is presumably not obligated to fulfill them either. So A's wrongdoing influences B's moral obligations. Another example is punishment: Since punishment is the infliction of harm, suffering, or deprivation (which is typically wrong), it must be the case that the wrongdoer's wrongdoing justifies inflicting otherwise wrongful harm, suffering, or deprivation on her. This issue is acute for Kantians because Kantianism has long been seen as somehow more "principled" than consequentialism. The challenge for Kantians is to offer an explanation of how our moral obligations should be sensitive to others' wrongdoing that invokes key Kantian values or principles (rational autonomy, the categorical imperative, etc.) without becoming so sensitive to others' wrongdoing that Kantianism becomes indistinguishable from outright consequentialism.

The example that has of course stimulated much of the discussion surrounding this problem is Kant's treatment of 'the murderer at the door' in his essay "On a Supposed Right to Lie." There Kant seems to say that lying to a would-be murderer about the whereabouts of the innocent victim he intends to kill would be morally wrong. Most Kantians (and most reasonable people in general) find this conclusion troubling if not absurd: If ever there were a situation in which lying is not only morally permitted, but even morally required, that would be it!

What follows is my own (admittedly long-ish) attempt to answer the 'murderer at the door' problem in Kantian terms. Whether my attempt is of value in addressing the larger theoretical problem of how our moral obligations should be sensitive to others' wrongdoing, I'm not sure, but here goes:

Evolution, Emotion, and Metaethics Workshop

University of Sydney, Aug 6-7
Organizer: Richard Joyce (richard.jo...@arts.usyd.edu.au)

SPEAKERS:

David Copp (UC Davis)
Justin D'Arms (Ohio State)
Janice Dowell (Nebraska-Lincoln)
Jamie Dreier (Brown)
Josh Gert (Florida State)
Daniel Jacobson (University of Michigan)
Don Loeb (Vermont)
David Sobel (Nebraska-Lincoln)
Kim Sterelny (ANU)

Further info, including venue, will be announced in due course. There is no formal registration, but if you think you might come along, please send Richard Joyce an email so that we get a sense of numbers.

Nietzschean Expressivist Semantics

One of the more serious attempts to provide an expressivist semantics for moral terms (broadly construed) is Gibbard’s.  The basic idea is that they express plans.  “I should pack” expresses my plan to pack; “You should pack” expresses a contingency plan for the (unlikely) case that I am you.  “Journal editors should move papers along faster” expresses a plan for being a journal editor.  And  so on.  Call this view the Gibbard Semantics, or GS.

It seems to me that there are other possible semantics along this line.  Consider plans for what I would have someone do, if I were in control.  For example, if I were in control of the government, I would have the government give philosophy professors large cash subsidies.  If I were in control of journal editors, I would have the editors accept all my manuscripts without revision.  Etc.  Perhaps I could express these plans somehow.  Perhaps like this:  “The government should give philosophy professors large cash subsidies; editors should accept all my manuscripts without revision.”  In the normal case, I am in control of myself, so “I should…” sentences would express normal plans.  Call this the Nietzsche Semantics for moral terms, or NS.

The ethics of the faculty furlough

Let's get a little down to earth here at PEA Soup: I may have to confront an actual ethical quandary in a few months, and I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts about how I ought to respond.

Budget woes in the California State University system are severe.  One possibility being considered for the fall is to reduce personnel costs by imposing 'furloughs' on all CSU employees, faculty included.  This would mandate that faculty take 1-2 days off per month and take about a 5% cut in their gross pay. Now, as I gather most people understand, I don't actually teach, attend meetings or even come to my campus 5 days a week. The norm is that I come three or four days a week, and often spend the other weekdays, my evenings, and my weekends doing much of the work that constitutes my job (preparing class meeting, grading papers, doing my philosophical research and writing). There's definitely five days per week of work, just not five days per week at work.

The issue is: Should I respond to the furlough mandate by working less, the equivalent of 1-2 days per month? And if so, where should I reduce my efforts? Some possibilities:

 

2009 Mad Meta: Program announced

Russ has released the program for the 2009 Madison Metaethics Workshop. Needless to say, it looks good.

Too many distinctions in value

Perhaps three isn't too many, but it does feel unwieldy.  Nevertheless, it seems to me these are all different distinctions in value, even though many people write as if they are the same:

1. Extrinsic-intrinsic

2. Conditional-unconditional

3. Priceable-priceless

Whether something has extrinsic or intrinsic value is a question of where it gets its value—i.e. from something else or from itself.  (Instrumental value is thus one kind of extrinsic value, but it is not the only kind; Rae Langton, in her 2007 Phil Review paper, “Objective and Unconditioned Value,” proposes symbolic value as an example of noninstrumental extrinsic value.)  This is “something else” intensionally, and not necessarily extensionally, so constitutive value is a form of intrinsic value.  E.g. if Mill is right that virtue is valuable because it is a part of happiness, which has intrinsic value, then virtue has intrinsic value.

Whether something has conditional or unconditional value is a question of whether it has its value in virtue of its relation to something else, or rather in all circumstances.  Constitutive value is thus an example of intrinsic but conditional value.  (And Langton gives the additional example of self-conferred value.) 

Whether something has priceable or priceless value is a question of whether there is anything for which one could rationally trade it.  I suppose if something has extrinsic value then it must be priceable—it would always be rational to trade it for either the thing from which it gets its value.  But consequentialism embodies the notion that intrinsic value can also be priceable. 

The issue I’m trying to work out is the relation between un/conditionality and priceability.  I think there’s such a thing as conditional priceless value.  Consider, for example, the value of time spent with a loved one—it might be priceless, but only on the condition that the relationship hasn’t fallen apart.  Is there unconditional priceable value?  It strikes me that there could be, but you could rationally trade a thing of unconditional priceable value only for another thing of unconditional value (either priceless or of equal or higher price).

I care about this, obviously, because the Kantian idea that humanity or rational nature is an end-in-itself usually contains all of these: intrinsic, unconditional, priceless value. And I suspect different kinds of value are carrying more weight than others, in different arguments.  More specifically, I suspect the really crucial Kantian insight is that something or things have value without price.  And, yes, I'm ignoring the subjective-objective distinction, for now.

What do you think?

Paying People Not to Do Good: A Puzzle about Superogation

First, thanks to Doug and the other editors for the invitation!  I'm happy to be here.

For my first post, I wanted to share an issue that has been puzzling me.  Ultimately, this relates back to issues in voting ethics, but I want to submit the problem in the abstract.  I'm not sure what to say about it. I'm curious what others think (and if there's relevant published work on it.)

Suppose Alf plans to do X.  X is supererogatory--it's nice of him to do, but he isn't morally required to do it.  Betty doesn't want Alf to do X, so she offers to pay him not to do so, because she doesn't want him to do something supererogatory.  (Suppose also that it's legal for him to accept money not to X.)  My question: Is Betty doing something morally wrong?

Note: I'm not asking about what making the offer reveals about Betty's character.  That is, I'm not asking whether Betty's offering to pay Alf not to do something supererogatory shows that she has vicious character.  

Note also that there are cases where it's morally right to pay something to do Y, even though this foreseeably might prevent them from doing some supererogatory action X.  So, for instance, it's not wrong for our various universities to pay us our salaries, even though our working as philosophers prevents us from devoting our lives to charity work in the poverty-stricken regions.  [EDIT: Our employers are paying us to teach, not paying us not to do supererogatory volunteer work.]

Sometimes, Betty's actions seem wrong to me.  But other times, it seems like she's doing something permissible, though she has bad character.  After all, since X is supererogatory, it's morally permissible for Alf to refrain from X-ing, even for morally frivolous or vicious reasons.  (His reasons for refraining bear on his character, but generally not on the deontic status of the act.)  If so, why wouldn't it be morally permissible for Betty (for morally frivolous or vicious reasons) to pay Alf not to X?  [EDIT: Let's assume for the sake of argument that Alf is permitted to accept money not to X.]  

What do you think?

Welcome, Jason Brennan

We're pleased to announce that Jason Brennan has accepted our invitation to become a contributor. Here's a brief biography, which I borrow from his web site: "JASON BRENNAN (Ph.D., 2007, University of Arizona) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Research, at Brown University, and a member of the Political Theory Project, an interdisciplinary research center at Brown. He specializes in metaethics, normative ethics, and political philosophy. His current research is on voting ethics, and he is developing a new liberal, pluralistic theory of civic virtue that emphasizes the public value of private, non-political activity. Together with David Schmidtz, he is the author of A Brief History of Liberty, forthcoming from Blackwell in August 2009. His second book, The Ethics of Voting, is under contract with Princeton University Press." Please join me in welcoming Jason.

Flexible Contextualism about 'Ought's

Thanks to everyone for sharing their intuitions about the cases in my previous post. Here I’m going to back up and say something about my interest in the cases. Among linguists, the canonical view about modal expressions like “might”, “may” and “must” is that they are quantifiers over possibilities where the domains of quantification are contextually restricted. The view is an extremely powerful one; if correct, it provides a simple, highly unified explanation of a wide variety of language use. Recently, the canon’s neat story has come under attack on two fronts, in its treatment of bare epistemic modals (BEMs) and bare normative modals (BNMs). (A bare modal statement is a modal statement that doesn’t contain a restrictor phrase like “in view of my evidence” or “in view of what the law requires”.) I’ve got a manuscript defending a general, flexible contextualist account of bare modal statements and an application of that account to BEMs. (Here: http://www.unl.edu/philosop/people/faculty/dowell/dowell.shtml) Now I’m working on defending an application of that account to BNMs. (NB: My apologies in advance; this post is both long and oversimplified.) 

Korsgaard on Moral Realism

I’ve just been reading Christine Korsgaard’s new book Self-Constitution – Agency, Identity, and Integrity. It’s a marvelous book, one of the best I’ve read in long time. It presents an appealing picture of actions, agency, practical deliberation, normativity, morality, and interpersonal relations, it draws from the history of philosophy in a rich way (not just from Kant, but also from Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and many others), and it’s wonderfully written. I do have a problem though. I don’t understand her argument against standard moral realism (which she calls dogmatic rationalism). I would be very thankful if someone could help me with this. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read the book yet, I’ll try to give the argument in full.