Hyperplans and vagueness

We’ve been having a reading group on Gibbard’s Thinking How to Live. It’s been really interesting to go back to it after there having been so much discussion about it recently. At the heart of Gibbard’s expressivist semantics lie ‘the hyperplans’. This is a technical notion that is supposed to be helpful in elucidating the content of our normative judgments. I’ve started to become worried about whether there are or could be any hyperplans as Gibbard understands them. I’m uncertain about how big of a worry this would be for him. So, after quickly explaining my worry, I’ll leave you with some options about how he might proceed.

According to Gibbard, hyperplans have two central features. They can be understood as the following two claims:

1. Hyperplans are maximal contingency plans (54).
2. Plans must be couched in recognitional concepts (104).

First, a couple of words about what these claims mean and what motivates them. 1. says that hyperplans are fully decided and complete states. A planner (a hyperplanner) who accepts just one hyperplan has decided which one action to do in every conceivable situation he could be in. He has thus ruled out all other options in every possible situation of acting.

Gibbard is trying to give an account of the content of normative utterances in terms of the mental states they would conventionally express. These expressed attitudes would thus have to have the kind of logical qualities (of conflicting with and entailing one another) that would explain the ordinary logical features of indicative sentences. So, he tries to give an account of the content of normative utterances in terms of the attitudes of allowing some hyperplans and ruling out (or disagreeing with) other hyperplans. For instance, roughly, to say that Ben ought to phi is to rule out all the hyperplans in which one does not phi in Ben’s situation.

The hope is that, in virtue of this, he can provide a semantics of normative claims such that it resembles possible world semantics so closely that the logical features of the claims are preserved. Of course, James Dreier and Mark Schroeder have written much on this suggesting that Gibbard’s account does not work in the end. It seems like for being able to account for negation, Gibbard must allow that hyperplanners could have distinct attitudes of indifference towards plans. And, it’s not clear whether even that solves the problem. This is not my worry though. I'm worried whether he can even have the tools required for this theory.

What about 2.? Gibbard makes this claim as a part of the argument that planners are committed to thinking that natural properties constitute being okay to do even if there is a difference between normative and naturalistic concepts. I think the motivation for saying this is the following. Plans are mental states which we form for a purpose, and not wordly entities like possible worlds. This means firstly that they must be couched in terms of concepts (and not in terms of properties).

Plans are also something the planner forms for herself to follow. A plan that was couched in terms of non-recognitional concepts is not anything that one could follow. Following requires being able to recognize what the given plan says about the situation in which one believes to be in and the alternatives one has in it. So, to follow a plan, one must be able to match one’s conception of the circumstances to the descriptions of the circumstances in the plan. This is why the concepts of the plan cannot outstrip one’s recognitional capacities. As Gibbard puts this, we form thought of what to do with concepts we can use in recognising our circumstances and alternatives.

Gibbard is explicit that this goes for the hyperplans too: ‘only recognitional concepts figure in plans fully specified’.

So, here’s the obvious worry. All recognitional concepts there are and there could be are and must be vague concepts. For any concept such that it allows us to recognise in some cases that it applies and in others that it doesn’t, there are going to be cases in which we fail to recognise either that it applies or that it doesn’t apply. I take it that this is a basic fact of our concepts and recognitional abilities. And, it goes all the way to scientific concepts too. True, they are also recognitional concepts as Gibbard says, but they too are also vague concepts.

This means that, if a hyperplan is couched in recognitional concepts (as 2. requires), then it will have situations in which some options are neither an action which is planned to do nor an option planned not to done. As a result, the hyperplan won’t be fully decided (contra 1.) – and thus not a hyperplan after all. In contrast, if hyperplan is a fully decided, complete state (as 1. requires), then it cannot be couched in recognitional terms (contra 2.) which create undecidedness via the unavoidable vagueness. So, there won’t be any plans that satisfy both 1. and 2.

To illustrate this, imagine that I am decided on going to the beach if it is warm and to the cinema if it is not warm. Well, there’s still going to be cases in which, as far as what I am able to recognise, the circumstances are inbetween – when it’s neither warm nor not warm. For these cases, my plan won’t tell me what to do. And, no matter how I try to sharpen my plan, it’s not clear whether I could ever get rid of this sort of cases and still be using concepts that I could use to recognise other cases. Assuming that there’s higher-order vagueness, even making a contingency plan for the cases when it’s neither warm nor not warm will not help.

 

So, what could Gibbard do?

a)      He could give up the idea that hyperplans are fully decided. So they could as decided states as possible for us but still they would not say what to do in each case. Maybe even such almost fully decided states could help him to give an account of the content of our normative judgments. Our judgments would be either allowing or ruling out these almost-hyperplans. Maybe this would fit the vagueness of our judgments too.

b)      He could give up the requirement that hyperplans are couched in recognitional terms and thus the idea that they are plans proper. They could still play the right theoretical role in his theory (perhaps – not sure what would happen to the natural constitution argument in this case).

c)      Finally, I’m not always sure how much he needs the hyperplans in the first place. A lot of the stuff he can do with the smaller contingency plans. So, maybe it wouldn’t matter for him that there are no hyperplans.

d)      Hyperplanners have special concepts and recognitional skills such that they get rid of all the vagueness. But, would this be conceivable? How could we then disagree with them with our concepts?

Comments

[Sven Nyholm]

Interesting question, Jussi.

Is this yet another route Gibbard might take?

(e) He could say that any complete hyper-plan would say something about what course(s) of action to take in the contingency of not being sure exactly what circumstances one is facing.

[Jussi Suikkanen]

Well, I was thinking about that and I'm not sure. That's why I brought up the bit about higher-order vagueness quickly. Say that in the beach case, I plan to stay at home if I cannot determine if it's warm or not warm. The concept of being in that state too will have to be recognitional concept - so I have to be able to recognise whether I am in it or not. And, usually, sure enough, I will be.

However, that concept too will be a vague one. There will also be borderline cases in which I will not be able determine whether or not I am able to determine if it's warm or not warm. This is because there are not supposed to be completely luminous psychological states either. Of course, I can plan for these contingencies too but then we get vagueness again one level up. So, it seems like just as long as I make the plans in recognitional concepts, I'll never get rid of the indeterminacy.

[Eric]

Maybe the hyperplanner will need something more detailed that the "warm/not warm" distinction for the plan to work. It would be much easier to follow a hyperplan of the sort you mention with clearer parameters: "I will go to the beach if it is 72 degrees Farenheit or above, and I will go to the movies if it is 71 degrees Farenheit or below" would be considerably less vague. I'm not sure if those two options fit the bill of 'recognitional concepts' pace Gibbard, and it seems overly detailed, but it would prevent the vagueness worry.

My inclination, from your options, is that Gibbard could go with b) and scrap (or massively alter) the idea of recognitional concepts.

Option d) would seem to turn Gibbard into some kind of intutionist, which would be weird but not implausible.

[Jussi Suikkanen]

It's true that with accurate recognitional concepts you could get rid of a lot of the indeterminacy. I think that, in order to get fully decided plans for all contingencies, you'd need to get rid of all of it. I doesn't seem like temperature in degrees is a recognitional concept. We cannot directly recognise how many degrees is. But, of course, we can use measuring instruments and we could plan how to act given what the measuring devices say. You could have a plan - if the thermometer (or many of them) shows 72 or more, then beach, if it shows anything less, then cinema.

This would get us back to recognitional concepts. However, it given the vagueness of the concept thermometer showing 72, I'm not sure this would give us a plan for all contingencies. What if the thermometer is flickering between 72 and less, and so on.

Also, I'm worried that even the definition of the scientific concept it being 72 degrees is going to leave us with some borderline cases no matter how you defined them. So, even if we were not using recognitional concepts but rather concepts that can outstrip our recognitional abilities, it's not clear that we even then would get rid of all indeterminacy in plans.

I'm also starting to be worried about something about b) and d). Not sure how to put this. But, they both lead to the idea that the hyperplans are couched in different concepts from ours. Then I start to worry that his account of our normative thoughts would be an account given in terms of our attitudes of disagreeing with planners whose plans are couched in concepts very different from anything like our concepts. But, how could we have the attitudes of disagreeing or ruling out plans that are couched in concepts inaccessible to us? I know this is a mere rhetorical question to which there might be an answer.

[David Faraci]

Jussi,

I'm not totally convinced by your reply to Sven. Is the second-order vagueness really going to be a problem? Can't I just have a plan about what to do if I feel any vagueness at all? I say I'll go if it's warm. If I am certain it is warm, I'll go. If I am uncertain whether it is warm, I'll go, too. What if I'm uncertain whether or not I'm really uncertain that it's warm? Heck, I'll go then, too! There is a regress, but it doesn't seem like a troubling one. I plan to φ if I feel any uncertainty at any level.