PEA Soup

Good and Bad

Sometimes I hear people (well, philosophers) compare the goodness of one thing with the badness of another. They say, for example, the goodness of pleasure is less than the badness of pain; or pleasure is less good than pain is bad. Do such comparisons make sense?

Here's a reason to doubt that they do. They seem similar to comparisons such as the following:

• Ben Wallace is less tall than Mugsy Bogues is short.
• Sydney is less hot than Glasgow is cold.
• Wood is less hard than feathers are soft.

But it's not clear what these could mean.

Can anyone make sense of this?

[Update: I neglected to say before that my thinking about this issue was prompted by an interesting talk which Tom Hurka recently gave here at Edinburgh.]

To be bold or cautious?

Some philosophers are bold; they defend strong positions with few hedges or caveats. Others are cautious; they defend weak positions with many hedges and caveats. Which of these two approaches, bold or cautious, is better?

Worries about Wide-scoping

It seems the following is nowadays a popular view:

Wide scope view: sentences of the form "If p, then it ought to be the case that q" have the logical form

O(p -> q)

where O is an "ought" operator and -> denotes a material conditional.

The operator O has wide scope; it "governs" the whole conditional, not just the consequent (as in p -> Oq). Although less faithful to surface grammar, the wide-scope reading is thought to have other advantages over the more natural narrow-scope reading. But I won't go into those advantages here. Instead I want to raise some worries about the wide scope view.

A life worth living

Update (13 August, 2007). I've now written a very short paper on this issue: How to Live a Life Worth Living. As you'll see, it was significantly influenced by useful comments I received here.

The recent discussion of McTaggart initiated by Kris has been very interesting. Among other things, it has got me thinking about the notion of "a life worth living". Although ubiquitous in population ethics, this notion resists easy analysis. One wants to say that a life is worth living just in case it would be better to live it rather than live no life at all. But on reflection, that seems mysterious. How does one live no life at all? It seems like one of the relata of the "better than" relation has gone missing. We're trying to compare something, a life, with nothing.

Here I shall propose an analysis that avoids such mysterious comparisons. On my proposal, whether a life is worth living depends solely on whether it is better than certain other lives.

Taxonomy in Ethics

Lately I've been thinking about taxonomy of philosophical views, especially in the area of normative ethics.

Here's a fragment of a common taxonomy of ethical theories. (This will be a bit rough; but the details aren't important here.) To begin, we distinguish consequentialist from non-consequentialist views, according as they accept or reject the claim that we ought to maximise the good. Then, within the category consequentialist, we distinguish between utilitarian and non-utilitarian views, according as they accept or reject the claim that the good is overall wellbeing. Then, within the category utilitarian, we distinguish between henonistic and non-hedonistic views, according as they accept or reject the claim that wellbeing consists solely in pleasure. Then, within the category hedonistic, we distinguish between phenomenological and non-phenomenological views, according as they accept or reject the claim that pleasure is just a mental state with a particular phenomenology. And so on and so forth.

So, here's what I'm wondering about. Can we go on like this forever, adding distinction after distinction without end? Or will we at some point find that we cannot distinguish any further? Will we eventually reach the "basic unit" of ethical theory? And if so, how will we know when we get there? What would be wrong with stopping at some more general level? Why not, say, simply distinguish consequentialism from non-consequentialism and leave it at that?

Was I Ever a Fetus?

In his paper "Why Abortion is Immoral", Don Marquis urges a reorientation of the abortion debate. Metaphysical issues concerning the personhood of fetuses, which previously held center stage in philosophical discussions of the morality of abortion, have proven to be intractable, he says. As long as the debate is left to rest on such issues, it will be at an impasse. In his view, we would do better to focus on a different question: does abortion cause harm, in particular, harm to the fetus? Once the debate is framed in these terms, he argues, it is clear that abortion is prima facie morally wrong, since abortion surely does harm the fetus, at least in the "standard" case.

But Marquis commits a crucial error. Although Marquis does not say so explicitly, he must assume that the question of harm is independent of the issue of personhood; otherwise, he could not hold that the latter was any more tractable than the former. As I shall argue here, however, that assumption is mistaken. We cannot get away from metaphysics so easily. My aim here is to show that, given certain widely held metaphysical views, including views about personal identity, his argument for the immorality of abortion rests on highly implausible premises. Marquis could, of course, reject the metaphysics. But that would be to concede that issues of personhood are of central importance, after all.

Actualist Utilitarianism and Practical Impotence

Actualist Utilitarianism (AU) is, roughly stated, the view that we ought to act so as to maximise the sum total of actual people's utilities. (By utility is here meant a numerical representation of a person's level of wellbeing, or welfare.) It is distinguished from regular utilitarianism in that it excludes the utilities of "merely possible people" from figuring in our moral judgements. And, for this reason, it might be motivated by various "person-affecting" intuitions to the effect that merely possible people are morally insignificant. I shall not, however, try to develop that line of motivation here. Rather, I want to focus on an objection to AU advanced by John Broome in his recent book Weighing Lives. (Although Broome doesn't consider the case of AU in particular, he does object to "actualist axiologies" more generally, and his objection is applicable to AU. With that clarification noted, I shall for simplicity proceed as though Broome's objection is aimed specifically at AU.)

The objection, in short, is that AU is incapable of giving practical adivice. As Broome understands AU, it implies that what the agent ought to do in a given situation of choice may sometimes depend on what he actually does in that situation. Thus, if the agent were to ask "ought I to do X?", then the best practical advice that AU could give him would be prefaced with "well, that all depends on whehter or not you actually do X." But that would be no practical advice at all; usually we want to know whether or not it's permissible to do something in advance of our having done or not having done it. Understood in this way, then, AU will be practically impotent -- of no use at all in deciding what to do.

As I shall argue, however, AU need not be understood in this way. Below I suggest two formulations of AU, and show that only one of these is vulnerable to Broome's objection.

Praise in Poker and Ethics

Within consequentialism, it's common to draw a distinction between two kinds of rightness: an act X is said to be objectively right just when, among the alternatives open to the agent, X will, as a matter of objective fact, have the best consequences; whereas X is said to be subjectively right just when the agent believes (or may reasonably believe) that X will have the best consequences. Thus, the question arises -- at least for consequentialists -- which of these two varieties of rightness is primary in ethics. Which, if either, is the more important or relevant kind of rightness? (I imagine that a similar distinction can be drawn in non-consequentialist ethics; so this is a question for everyone. But it'll simplify things to frame the issue in consequentialist terms.)

A common argument given by subjectivists -- i.e. those who hold that subjective rightness is primary -- appeals to the notions of praise and blame. Surely, it is said, when it comes to praising and blaming people's actions, it is only subjective rightness that is at issue. We cannot hold a person responsible for the (reasonably) unforeseen consequences of her actions. If a person acts in the (reasonable) belief that by so acting she will bring about the best possible world, given her alternatives, then she should not be blamed for so acting, even in the event that her belief turns out to be false. Hence, if ethics is primarily an exercise in apportioning praise and blame, subjective rightness is primary.

I want to suggest that common practises of praising and blaming, as exemplified by poker players, put pressure on the argument just outlined.

More Supererogation for Maximisers

In an earlier post, Supererogation for Maximisers, I tried to reconcile two apparently irreconcilable claims: first, that maximising consequentialism is true; and, second, that supererogatory action is possible. Subsequently, the same topic has received significant attention in the comments to another post, Favourite Objections to Consequentialism, prompting me to revise my position. In this post I shall (1) briefly review my old position, (2) show why I'm no longer inclined to accept it, and (3) propose something new.

Hobbes and the Problem of Succession

Thomas Hobbes argued famously that, if a group of human individuals were ever to find themselves in the conflict-ridden "state of nature" that he envisioned -- an unenviable situation in which every individual faces the rather grim prospects of a "nasty, brutish, and short" life fighting for his or her own survival -- then their only means of escape would be to collectively enter into a social contract, thereby empowering one of their number as an absolute sovereign to rule over them all. It is, of course, a matter of some controversy whether this Hobbesian strategy (or something closely resembling it) could ever be successful in effecting an exit from the state of nature. But let us set such controversies aside and suppose that some group of human individuals do, in fact, manage to institute, in Hobbesian fashion, an absolute sovereign, whom we shall dub unimaginatively "Rex I".

It seems clear that, insofar as this provides a remedy to the perils of the state of nature, it does so only temporarily. For the time will surely come when Rex I, being a mere mortal, is no longer capable of ruling. At such a time, unless there is a successor capable of taking over the reigns, everyone will once again be plunged into turmoil. In order to effect a permanent remedy, then, our group of individuals needs, not only a method by which an absolute sovereign might be appointed in the first place, but also a method by which the first absolute sovereign so appointed might then be succeeded by second, then the second by a third, and so on. Call this the problem of succession.

Below I shall (1) suggest one obvious solution to the problem; (2) show how the suggested solution might be thought to give rise to a dilemma; and (3) argue that the dilemma can be resolved through careful analysis of the notion of absolute sovereignty.