PEA Soup

Happiness on MSNBC

Check out this interview on MSNBC with Psychiatrist Dr. Donald E. Rosen, conducted by MSNBC health editor Jane Weaver. I’m breaking it down FJM-style.

Philosophical Utilitarianism

In “Contractualism and Utilitarianism” Scanlon introduces what he calls “philosophical utilitarianism” (PU). PU is the view that “the only fundamental moral facts are facts about individual well-being.” PU is supposed to be answering a different question from the one answered by more familiar versions of utilitarianism. It is a view in what Scanlon calls “philosophical ethics,” which means that it is supposed to explain “why anyone should care” about morality at all; to “make clearer to us the nature of the reasons that morality does provide.” It’s supposed to do some other things too.

I don’t understand PU, nor do I understand how it could be thought to do any of the things Scanlon wants a philosophical theory of morality to do.

Utilitarianism and Decision Procedures

This got to be too long to be a comment on Michael C's post.  People sometimes criticize utilitarianism for being "inapplicable," or for entailing that you shouldn't try to use it as a decision procedure.  I don't think there is any way to interpret this criticism such that utilitarians should worry about it.

The Irrelevance of Harm

In Mike Almeida's recent post, this topic came up:  what is it for a person to harm someone?  I'm interested in a more general question: what is it for an event or state of affairs to harm someone?  Here's the view I like best:

(H) X harms S iff X makes S worse off than S would have been had X not occurred or obtained.

Below the fold I defend the following disjunction:  either (H) is the correct account of harm, or harm is irrelevant (or maybe both).

Saving the greater number

Suppose you find yourself in a situation in which you can either save A and B or save C. A, B and C are relevantly similar – all are strangers to you, none is more deserving of life than any other, none is responsible for being in a life-threatening situation, and so on. John Taurek (“Should the numbers count?”) argued that when deciding what to do in such a situation, you should flip a coin, thereby giving each of A, B and C a 50% chance of survival. Taurek seemed to be employing the “Equal Greatest Chance” principle (EGC), according to which, when deciding whom to save, one must give each person the greatest possible chance of survival consistent with everyone else having the same chance. Others, including Jens Timmermann, have endorsed a “weighted lottery” that gives each person a chance to live, but gives a greater chance to those in the larger group. Finally there is the “Save the Greater Number” principle (SGN), which needs no elaboration. Here is a story that refutes the EGC and weighted lottery principles. (The story shares important features with one given by Judy Thomson in The Realm of Rights. For some reason, Thomson did not think her example refuted EGC. If anyone knows why, I’d like to know.)

Ethics Journals

I'm curious what people think about the specialty ethics journals - which ones do you read?  Which ones do you think are good?  Which ones do you think other people read and think are good?

Philosophical Genealogy

Josh Dever is working on a Philosophy Family Tree.  He has a new blog where he is collecting information.  If you aren't on the tree, you're not really a philosopher, so check it out and get yourself on the tree!

Against Satisficing Consequentialism

Satisficing consequentialism (SC) is the view that an act is morally right iff its consequences are “good enough.” Michael Slote came up with a few well-known examples in support of SC. One involves a fairy-tale hero who, when rewarded by the gods with whatever he asks for, just asks for himself and his family to be comfortably well-off. Another involves a motel owner who gives some stranded motorists the first available room rather than the best available room. I think SC is untenable. It permits agents to bring about a submaximal outcome in order to prevent a better outcome from obtaining.

Paradoxes of Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism

Fred Feldman (Pleasure and the Good Life) and Chris Heathwood (“The Problem of Defective Desires”) point out the following paradox for desire satisfaction theory, which seems to have been first suggested by Richard Kraut. People sometimes desire to be badly off. Desire satisfactionists say that A’s desire to be badly off is satisfied iff A’s desires are on the whole not satisfied. This leads to paradox, at least in certain cases. If having a desire satisfied is good for you, then satisfying the desire to be badly off makes you better off; and in some cases, the result will be that you are not badly off; which means that the desire is not satisfied after all, so you are badly off. Paradox. (For a clearer formulation of the paradox, read Chris’ paper.)

Patching up a regress argument for intrinsic value

    Proponents of intrinsic value have sometimes attempted to argue for its existence via the following sort of regress argument:

Something is valuable; but if it is valuable, it must be valuable either as a means to something else that is valuable, or else valuable in itself.  If all valuable things were good merely as a means, there must be an infinite chain of instrumental goods extending into the future, without ever leading to any intrinsic good.  Such a chain is impossible.  Therefore, something is intrinsically good.

    Both friends and foes of intrinsic value have found this line of argument problematic.  It is possible, they say, for there to be an infinite chain of merely instrumental goods extending into the future.  This objection gains strength from the obvious parallels between the regress argument and first-cause arguments for the existence of God.  Many philosophers have found it reasonable to reject first-cause arguments for God in light of the possibility of an infinite chain of cause and effect stretching into the past; why, then, should we not reject the regress argument for intrinsic value as well?
    I think a little tinkering can make the regress argument fairly plausible.   I wonder if anyone will agree, and if anyone will think the argument is interesting at all.