PEA Soup

Metaethics, Semantics, and Metasemantics

One thing I’ve become much more aware of in Leeds is the distinction between semantics and metasemantics. There is a worry that ignoring this distinction is creating some confusion. Metaethicists have traditionally claimed to be doing moral semantics whereas in fact they have mainly been doing metasemantics. Today, there is a new debate in which people also say that they are doing semantics. This time this claim is actually true. However, as a consequence, the new debate is not at the same metasemantic level as the previous debates. I know this is a bit confusing but let me try to elaborate a bit.

 

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.

2009 Mad Meta: Program announced

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

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.

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!)

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.

Expressivism and Self-Refutation

Here is a worry for (pure) expressivism.  I think it is new.  I am not sure how cogent it is, and this is probably not its most elegant formulation.  So help is welcome.  Consider

(1)    No ought-claim is true.

Construe ‘ought-claim’ to include (1) itself.  Then (1) is necessarily false:  if it is true, then it says of itself that it is false.  (You might think (1) is a pretty good statement of error theory; I will leave that as a problem for the error theorist.)   Consider now

(2)    No ought-claim ought to be accepted.

This is contingent.  It might be, for example, that one ought to do what has the best consequences and the best consequences happen when people never think about ought-claims.  If someone finds themselves accepting (2), of course, the first thing they ought to do is figure out how to abandon it.  That doesn’t affect its truth however. 

G. E. Moore and his young godson

There’s a story that I heard from my father many years ago, which I’m tempted to share with PEA Soupers. G. E. Moore was a Cambridge friend and contemporary of my great-grandfather Ralph L. Wedgwood (1874-1956), and so when my grandfather John H. Wedgwood (1907-1989) was born, Moore agreed to be his godfather.

According to the story, my grandfather, then a small boy, had the following conversation with Moore, while Moore was visiting my great-grandparents’ house for a couple of days.

Small boy: What are you doing, Mr Moore?

Moore (earnestly): I’m writing a book, about the meaning of the word ‘good’.

Small boy: You mean, like when we say that something’s “gone for good”?

Moore (taken aback): Oh! I hadn’t thought of that!

The trouble with this story is that I really doubt that it’s true.

Expressivism and Moral Certitude

I’ve been reading Krister Bykvist’s and Jonas Olson’s wonderful paper entitled ‘Expressivism and Moral Certitude’ (HERE). Krister and Jonas argue that ecumenical forms of expressivism are unable to give a reply to Michael Smith’s objection to non-ecumenical forms of expressivism according to which expressivists cannot account for moral certitude. I have no quarrels with their arguments but I fail to see Smith’s problem for expressivists in the first place on which their argument is based. Here’s why.