PEA Soup

Gibbard's expressivism and reasons for believing consequences

I have just started studying Gibbard's Thinking How to Live, and have a question about it.

Consider the following, apparently valid, argument:

    (1) Either it is before 5 or I should leave now

    (2) It is not before 5

    Therefore, (3) I should leave now.

Presumably if Stan believes (or accepts) 1 and 2 for good reasons, then he has some reason to believe (accept) 3.  Some would go further and say, for example, that Stan is rationally required to believe 3, but let's stick with the less contentious claim that, in these circumstances, he has some reason to believe (accept) 3:

    (SR) Stan has some reason to believe 3

My question is whether Gibbard can account for SR's being true in the situation I have described (or a suitably cleaned up cousin situation).

I have my doubts, based on the following Gibbardian translation of Stan's "beliefs" that 1 and 2 are "true" – my source here is Chapters 3 and 4 of Thinking How to Live:

    (BG1) I rule out [rejecting that it is before 5 & rejecting that I should leave now]

    (BG2) I reject that it is before 5

Presumably if Stan has good reason to adopt attitudes BG1 and BG2, then he also has good reason to adopt this attitude:

    (BG3) I rule out [rejecting that I should leave now]

But that is not the same as

    (BG3*) I accept that I should leave now

which is, I think, the Gibbard translation of

    (B3) I believe I should leave now.

Moreover, it is hard to see how having reason to adopt BG1 and BG2 leads to your having some reason to adopt BG3*, because, on Gibbard's view I could "conform" to BG3 by either (i) being agnostic about whether I should leave now or (ii) adopting BG3*.  So, by being agnostic, Stan could consistently adopt BG1, BG2, BG3, and not adopt BG3*.  And it is not clear why he would have a reason to change his mind.

I do not have command of Gibbard's new system or the secondary literature yet, and worry that my doubt is based on a confusion.  I would love to clear any such confusion up, before I keep studying the book.

Does Gibbard have a good response to my worry, perhaps one based on his concept of hyper-plans?  Has anyone (maybe Gibbard) discussed this objection?  Is it based on a mistake or misunderstanding?

New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility (N.O. W.A.R.)

Thanks to the generous support of Tulane University's Murphy Institute, I'm very pleased to announce that the first New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility (NO WAR) will take place November 3-5, 2011 (yes, that's 2011, not 2010).  I'm announcing this now so as to get it on your radar and whet your appetite.  It will be run on the same model as the Madison metaethics workshop and the recently-instituted Tucson normative ethics workshop.  The keynote speakers will be Sarah Buss (Michigan) and Gary Watson (USC).  For more on the motivation for the workshop and its structure, see below the fold.

Business Ethics Dissertation Award

SOCIETY FOR BUSINESS ETHICS
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION AWARD
(Submissions due May 15, 2010)

The Society for Business Ethics is soliciting dissertations completed between May 1, 2008, and April 30, 2010.  While dissertations must focus on business ethics, work from all disciplines are welcome.  Those wishing to be considered for the award should submit a 10-page abstract.  (From amongst the abstracts three finalists will then be selected and asked to submit their full-length theses.) 

Objective Consequentialism and Deliberation

I’m starting to warm up to the objectivist form of act-consequentialism (partly because I think it lacks content) which Doug defended in the previous post. One worry people have is that this kind of a view severs the connection between what is right/wrong and how ordinary, good people deliberate and advice one another. This argument has recently been made forcefully by Uri Leibowitz in his ‘Moral Advice and Moral Theory’ paper (Phil Studies). So, I want to explain this objection first, and then why act-consequentialism (and many other monistic views) do not actually suffer from this problem.

Speeding up the journal review process: How economists are doing it

Leave it to our colleagues in economics to find an efficient way to speed up the journal review and publication process. Inside Higher Ed reports that authors whose papers are rejected by the American Economic Review, one of that discipline's most prominent journals, can opt to have the referee reports forwarded to one of four other journals published by the American Economics Association. The second journal can then use those reports (augmented in some cases by referee reports it solicits) to make a relatively quick publication decision.

Consequentialism and Uncertainty

Let us define objective consequentialism and subjective consequentialism, respectively, as follows:

OC: S’s performing x is morally permissible if and only if, and because, there is no alternative that would produce more value than x would.

SC: S’s performing x is morally permissible if and only if, and because, there is no alternative that would produce more expected value than x would.

Philosophers, such as Frank Jackson, have argued that we should reject OC and accept instead SC. In doing so, they use the following sort of example, which I borrow, with some minor revisions, from Derek Parfit:

Welcome Matt Bedke!

We are pleased to announce that Matt Bedke has accepted our invitation to become a contributor here at PEA Soup.  Matt is Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia and specializes in ethics and normativity, with additional interests in philosophy of law and social and political philosophy.  Welcome, Matt!

Meta-Ethics Conference in NYC, May 1, 2010

If you will be in the NYC area on May 1st, consider going to this conference; looks like fun!

** Experimental Philosophy and Meta-ethics **

A series of recent experimental studies have examined people's intuitions about meta-ethical issues. Participants in this workshop will discuss the implications of these studies both for questions about people's ordinary folk views and for broader philosophical questions about moral realism, moral relativism and expressivism.

Invited Speakers: Stephen Darwall, Geoff Goodwin, Gilbert Harman, Jesse Prinz, Hagop Sarkissian and David Wong

All details available at: http://www.yale.edu/cogsci/metaxphi.htm

Templeton Foundation's Big Question Series: "Does Moral Action Depend on Reasoning?"

    PeaSoupers may be interested to read a series of essays sponsored by the Templeton Foundation on the question, "Does Moral Action Depend on Reasoning?"  Al Mele, Joshua Greene, and Christine Korsgaard contribute, as well as several other philosophy-ish intellectuals, neuroscientists, etc. 

Emotion, reason, and moral convictions

In Nature, psychologist Paul Bloom has published a short rejoinder to 'social intuitionist' claims that rational deliberation has no role in shaping our moral convictions. His chief argument is that evolved emotional responses cannot explain how our moral sympathies change. A taste below the fold: