Objectivism, Subjectivism, and Relativism in Ethics: Volume 25, Part 1 (Social Philosophy and Policy) (v. 25)

SUBSTANTIVE MORAL THEORY* By Philip Pettit I. Introduction Philosophy serves two functions in relation to the moral thinking that all of us practice, philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. First of all, it provides a metaethical commentary on the nature of moral thought, as the methodology or the philosophy of science provides a commentary on the nature of scientific thought. Second, it builds on the common presumptions deployed in people’s moral thinking about moral issues, looking for a substantive moral theory that they might support. Metaethics receives a lot of attention among philosophers, but substantive moral theory receives less. Philosophers pursue substantive theory, to be sure, but they often fail to distinguish this pursuit from metaethics. My essay seeks to repair this neglect. The body of the essay is divided into three sections. In Section II, I give a general characterization of metaethics and show why there is room and reason to seek out a substantive moral theory. In Section III, I offer an overview of some well-established styles of substantive theory. In the final section, I sketch out a theory that I find appealing myself. II. From Metaethics to Substantive Moral Theory A. The role of metaethics True to its name, metaethics consists in higher-level reflection on the nature of moral talk and moral thought. It deals with questions of the following kinds. • The cognitivism question. Do moral predications have truthconditions, as cognitivists claim? Do they serve to say how things are and not just play an expressive or related role in people’s psychologies? When I say “That’s the right option to take,” do I characterize the action in some way, or do I just give expression to the fact that I approve of it? * I was aided in preparing this essay by comments on an earlier draft by Tristram McPherson and by conversations both with him and with Michael Smith. I am grateful for the written suggestions that I received from the editors of this volume and from Jan Narveson and Michael Huemer. DOI: 10.1017/S0265052508080011 © 2008 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA.

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• The realism question. If moral predications are truth-conditional, do they predicate real, bona fide properties, so that their truthconditions are routinely fulfilled? Does the rightness I ascribe to certain options, if cognitivism is correct, constitute a real property? Or is it as imaginary and unreal as phlogiston proved to be? • The objectivism question. If the moral properties predicated are bona fide in character, do they answer to our intuitions about the character of moral properties —intuitions to the effect that they are not just properties of our subjective reactions, for example, and not properties that are relative to a variable framework, cultural or otherwise? Does the rightness that belongs to certain options, if realism is correct, consist in a property of the options in themselves, rather than in a relationship to us, and in a property that is accessible in principle from different cultural and other standpoints? Other, more specific questions come up in metaethics too, depending on the line taken on the cognitivism issue. If we endorse cognitivism, there will be a question about how moral predicates come to designate the properties or alleged properties they assign, and if we adopt expressivism, there will be an issue about how those predicates connect up with the attitudes they express. These are questions in moral semantics, particularly in the foundational semantics that seeks to explain how certain terms, in our mouths, latch onto the items they are said to denote or assign or express.1 And those semantic questions lead to corresponding questions in moral epistemology, bearing on what sort of knowledge or evidence supports us in our making one or another moral predication. Metaethics, understood in this way, plays a higher-level role in relation to moral or ethical thinking, similar to the role that methodology or philosophy of science plays in relation to scientific theorizing. Metaethics offers a descriptive, insider-based picture of moral thinking, as such thinking is practiced by ordinary people, and it goes on in a more critical style to articulate, regiment, and perhaps revise that practice. The descriptive account of how people think in the moral domain provides the critical exercise with the data on which it works, and, unsurprisingly, there is a lot more convergence on the data than there is on the critical revisions proposed. B. The data of metaethics This convergence appears in the fact that a large number of the following assumptions are taken to be endorsed among the folk (that is, ordinary people) by different metaethical philosophies: 1 Robert Stalnaker, “Conceptual Truth and Metaphysical Necessity,” Philosophical Studies 18 (2004).

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(1) Domain: Moral predications predicate thin values of rightness and wrongness, goodness and badness, and thick values and disvalues such as fairness and kindness, cruelty and inequity. Thin values do not have descriptive connotations, but thick values do. (2) Status: Moral predications are matters on which people agree and disagree in apparently the same way that they agree and disagree on matters of belief. (3) Independence: The properties predicated are not properties of our subjective reactions, and are not relative to a variable frame. They are intuitively objective. (4) Internalism: To predicate rightness (wrongness) of an option is to be disposed (not) to choose it, without reliance on any independent desire to do right (avoid wrong). (5) Justifiability: A right option and only a right option is justifiable. There is no ground for resentment or indignation by others, and no ground for guilt on our own part. (6) Grounding: A right option normally has rightness-making properties involving thick values; a wrong option has wrongnessmaking properties involving thick disvalues. (7) Supervenience: No difference in moral predication is defensible unless there is a nonmoral difference between the items of which the moral property is predicated. (8) Universal supervenience: The nonmoral differences that support differences in moral predication do not privilege particular times, places, or persons in their particularity, only universal, replicable properties. (9) Accessible supervenience: The nonmoral features that are of moral significance are accessible to reflection. People’s moral competence will be put in question to the extent that they prove unable to cite the features that shape their moral judgments. (10) Paradigms: There are certain independently fixed paradigms of right and wrong options on which people broadly agree.

Short of being utterly iconoclastic, a metaethical theory will start from presumptions of this kind, or at least from those presumptions that it takes to be embodied in folk moral thought. It will provide a construal of those presumptions under which they provide answers to the questions of cognitivism, realism, and objectivism. And it will provide a more or less limited endorsement of the presumptions, so construed —that is, of the views ascribed to the folk. There will be three levels, then, at which a metaethics may distinguish itself: in determining which of the candidates are genuinely folk presumptions; in construing those presumptions so that they take a particular line on the three questions distinguished; and

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in endorsing or rejecting the presumptions so construed, whether in whole or in part. C. Moral functionalism My preferred metaethics assumes that all or most of the ten candidates listed above are folk presumptions and argues that moral predications are truth-conditional and that the properties they predicate are selected as candidate semantic values (at least their selection is partly determined) 2 by the fact that they satisfy such presumptions. Why will a property deserve to count as the semantic value of a given predicate —the property that the predicate assigns? It will deserve to do so because it has suitable connections with paradigms and nonmoral features, with motivation and justification and action, and with the properties that count on similar grounds as the semantic values of other moral predicates. Reference is fixed under this account by the functional profile that the referent of a moral term or concept is required to fit. For that reason, Frank Jackson and I have described this account as a moral functionalism.3 On this account, then, a property will count as the property of justice insofar as (1) it is exemplified in certain procedures, (2) it makes sense of why someone might choose actions that bear it, or might think they are justifiable, and (3) its apparent presence in an action counts in ordinary reasoning as a ground for thinking the action is the right choice. Justice is that property, whatever it may be in itself, that meets those usage specifications; it is individuated functionally by playing the role that they characterize.4 And as the referent of “justice” will be determined by its place in a network of such connections, so the same will be true of the semantic values of other moral terms as well. Those terms or concepts will have their referents determined simultaneously with the referent of “justice,” and the mastery of any one term —the identification of its referent —will go hand in hand with the mastery of others. Semantic competence will be achieved in a package deal. 2 Philip Pettit, “Descriptivism, Rigidified and Anchored,” Philosophical Studies 18 (2004): 323–38. 3 See Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, “Moral Functionalism and Moral Motivation,” Philosophical Quarterly 45 (1995): 20–40; reprinted in Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Michael Smith, eds., Mind, Morality, and Explanation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For further background, see Frank Jackson, “Critical Notice of Susan Hurley’s Natural Reasons,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (1992): 475–87; Frank Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Philip Pettit, “Embracing Objectivity in Ethics,” in Objectivity in Law and Morals, ed. Brian Leiter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 234–86. 4 Or, to gesture at a variant, it is the higher-order property of there being some property present that meets those specifications; it may be the role property, as it is sometimes called, rather than the realizer property that plays the role. On this distinction, see Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, “Functionalism and Broad Content,” Mind 97 (1988): 381–400; reprinted in Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, eds., Mind, Morality, and Explanation, 95–118.

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Moral functionalism, so characterized, endorses cognitivism and suggests a distinctive semantics for moral predicates. Moral predications are truth-conditional, under this account, and the predicates they deploy pick out certain properties as their semantic values insofar as those properties satisfy the usage specifications given by the features listed, or some subset. Depending on exactly which subset is valorized, of course, the moral functionalism embraced may take one or another specific form; in that sense, it directs us to a family of metaethical views rather than any particular position. And as moral functionalism gives us a moral semantics, so too it will provide us with a moral epistemology. According to the implied epistemology, we will know when to make one predication or another, depending on the usage specifications that appear to be fulfilled. Nonetheless, moral functionalism does not yet commit us on the issues of realism and objectivism. According to the account that I find appealing, there will be suitable, naturalistic properties available, however disjunctive in character, that fit the required roles. And in that case moral properties will be real and objective features of the world. Moral functionalism might equally be squared, however, with a nonnaturalistic story about the realizers of the roles. And it might even be maintained consistently with an error theory about the realizers: a theory according to which moral thought is deeply misconceived, there being no properties available to fit the roles that it projects for them.5 D. The folk’s schematic moral theory The idea in moral functionalism is that we master the different moral predicates by coming to understand, at one and the same stroke, what is required for each of them to have application —what is required for the property a predicate ascribes to be present. To achieve a mastery or understanding of moral language, then, will be to have recognized how those properties that answer to the moral terms relate to one another and how they relate en bloc to evidence and action. And to take moral language seriously, treating it as a way of representing how things are, will be to have endorsed a theory —a formal or schematic theory —as to the existence of properties that satisfy such a network of connections. According to moral functionalism, there is no engaged moral talk or thought —no serious, literal usage of moral terms and concepts —without a commitment to this modicum of moral theory.6 5

For an example of an error theory, see J. L. Mackie, Ethics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977). The approach represents an analytical functionalism in the moral area that parallels the analytical functionalism that is often defended in the area of mind. It identifies different moral properties, at least in part, by the ways in which they are connected up in the practice, and in the implicit thought, of participants. Notice that the connections signaled involve the way people treat properties and the sorts of practices they follow. The connections are different, but not so different, from the causal connections that figure in functionalism within the philosophy of mind. In particular, they are not themselves normative connections. 6

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Is moral functionalism unusual or even unique in postulating a folk moral theory of this schematic kind? I do not think so. There are two salient ways in which a metaethics might break with the family of moralfunctionalist doctrines. One is by holding that moral predications are not truth-conditional but expressive; and the other is by holding that they are truth-conditional but that the reference of moral terms or concepts is fixed on a purely direct basis, not by satisfaction —not even in part by satisfaction —of suitable usage-specifications. Under either of these variations, however, it appears that the metaethics in question will still have to countenance the existence of a folk moral theory. Under the first variation, where the truth-conditional character of moral predication is denied, the folk will be said to regard moral predications as purely expressive and to see moral agreement and disagreement as different in character from agreement or disagreement in matters of belief. But this expressivist story does not relieve the folk of having to accept some or all of the other presumptions listed above (in subsection II.B). Presumably, it will remain the case that in order for people to become competent in the non-assertoric practice that moral thinking allegedly involves, they will still have to take guidance from such presumptions. They will have to recognize the role of thick in relation to thin values; they will have to see the motivational connection and the justificatory role of moral predication; and they will have to employ such predications with sensitivity to requirements like supervenience and universalizability. If they commit themselves seriously to moral talk and thought, then they will still have to understand and adjust to this set of presumptions. They will have to endorse the theory that these presumptions constitute but now in a different role from the role the theory plays under a moralfunctionalist approach. Under the second variation from a broadly moral-functionalist approach, moral terms and concepts can gain their semantic values on the basis of exposure to suitable candidates, without a requirement that those candidates should satisfy any presumptions that the folk make about them. Suppose the folk use a moral term “t.” Assuming that error theory is false, the idea is that that term will pick up a property in the world as its referent on the basis of something about the property that may in no way register with users of the term. What selects it as the referent of the term may be the fact that the property, unbeknownst to speakers, is at the causal origin of a use of the term that they take as authoritative, or the fact that it uniquely co-varies with the general use of the term, or the fact that among the properties that co-vary with that use, it is a uniquely eligible referent, on some independent criterion of eligibility. The folk’s presumptions about the property that they assign with the term “t” may be quite false, then; the reference is fixed by factors that may escape the notice of speakers, and thus the beliefs that the speakers form about the referent properties may be quite misconceived.

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This direct theory of reference for moral terms and concepts is hardly a plausible theory for all the moral predicates there are. But if it is a theory only of some predicates, then it will leave moral functionalism, or something like moral functionalism, in place for the remaining predicates. Thus, it will leave room for a version of the schematic moral theory that moral functionalists ascribe to the folk. Nonetheless, even if the theory is said to apply to all moral predicates, it will still have to keep a role for such a folk theory. If the referents of moral terms are fixed in a manner that puts them potentially beyond our ken, leaving us prey to endorsing nothing but falsehoods about them, then that opens the way for a radical, incredible scepticism. We will each be held to engage unknown properties in our assertions about different options or policies or persons and to ascribe those properties without any reliable basis —indeed, without any basis at all —for determining whether they actually apply. Making moral predications will be like throwing darts in the dark. In order to guard against this outlandish scenario, those who opt for the direct theory of reference for moral terms will have to tell a story according to which there are reliable guidelines and grounds available for the correct or presumptively correct application of such terms. But where are those guidelines to come from, if not from a body of judgments and presuppositions that are ascribed to the folk and treated as fallible but reliable? And where are we to find such folk commitments if not in the sorts of presumptions listed above? This approach will also have to countenance a folk moral theory, though a theory that serves primarily in an epistemological rather than a semantic role. E. From schematic to substantive moral theory If we hold a schematic moral theory, and if that theory guides us in an analysis of moral issues, then reflection on where it guides us —reflection on the pattern we are disposed to follow in our judgments —may enable us to articulate what I call a substantive moral theory. I will argue this line, on the assumption that moral functionalism holds, and that it directs us to genuine properties, not illusions. This is for reasons of convenience only, however, since there will be a parallel line to argue under any metaethics. The folk will be ascribed a schematic moral theory under every approach, as we have seen, and in each case there will be a base for seeking out a substantive theory to which it points. Suppose, then, that presumptions like those given in the earlier list serve for me as semantic markers or indicators of what is right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust, and so on. And suppose that working with these presumptively common guidelines, I argue for the rightness or wrongness, the goodness or badness, the justice or injustice, of one or

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another action or policy. I will do so under the assumption that while there are trade-offs to be made and fine lines to be drawn in the course of the exercise —it will involve the search for a reflective equilibrium between the presumptions I maintain and my intuitions about the cases adjudicated 7 —still there is a correct and an incorrect way of extrapolating to other cases, and a way of extrapolating on which I may expect a degree of convergence with others.8 Assuming that the extrapolative, judgmental dispositions that the schematic presumptions underpin will guide me fairly determinately, there is an immediate prospect that I can work my way toward a substantive moral theory. I will be able to explore this possibility, it appears, using a familiar philosophical method of analysis: the method of cases. Equipped with the judgmental dispositions, I can envisage any number of different moral issues and I can investigate where the schematic presumptions would lead me across those possible, imagined cases. With those judgments of possible cases more or less secure, I can then look at the moral configuration they assume, in order to see whether there is any substantive commonality in the extension of rightness and wrongness, or goodness and badness, or justice and injustice, and so on. The challenge will be to find a commonality that is more specific and more salient than the pattern given by the schematic presumptions, as I interpret and apply them. According to any moral-functionalist metaethics, or at least one that rejects wholesale error, the schematic presumptions associated with moral terms or concepts will serve like a net with which I can trawl the different cases and issues, real and imagined, that I consider. That net will sift out some options as instances of the right actions or policies to adopt in given cases, for example, and leave others as instances of actions or policies that are wrong. The idea in pursuing a substantive moral theory is to see whether there is a salient pattern to be found in such instances of rightness or wrongness over and beyond the pattern that consists in the fact that they are caught or not caught by the net. That they are or are not caught by the net is presumably due to their inherent character, and substantive moral theory is built on the hope that this character can be 7 On reflective equilibrium, see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). 8 If I take myself to be guided by common markers of value and disvalue, after all, then I will have to assume that that guidance is not peculiar to me. The common meanings established for terms like “just” and “good” and “right” hold out the prospect of convergence in judgments of value, and so long as that possibility is live, I will find a point in talking with others, exchanging comments on what differences and continuities register with us, how different presumptions are weighted in relation to one another, how they are amended in the course of reflective equilibration, and so on. I may come to believe, of course, that the meanings available leave issues of value indeterminate, and I may come to treat those issues, like various issues of baldness and color and the like, as vague at certain margins. But I will presumably retreat to this sort of quietism only as a last resort; it amounts to throwing in the conversational towel.

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identified, using something like the method of reflection on cases, by those who make moral judgments.9 There may not prove to be any interesting characterization available at the level of substantive theory, of course, but that is not a reason for despairing at the outset of the enterprise. At least, it is not a reason for despairing, under the assumption that cases can be morally adjudicated on the basis of how they are described, and that adjudication does not require causal exposure to the case assessed, or even to a vivid simulacrum on stage, in a film, or in a novel. This assumption, which is implied in the claim that I described as accessible supervenience, is validated in the way we expect someone to be able to explain a disparity in the moral judgment made over two cases by pointing to a descriptive difference between the cases —in particular, by pointing to it as a factor that justifies the disparity, not merely as a conjectural source of the disparity. Suppose some individuals report a moral judgment about one or another issue: a considered judgment, not just a dogged but not necessarily endorsed intuition. If they are unable to justify the judgment by reference to some descriptive characterization of the case, then we will doubt their skill at making moral judgments. And if they are unwilling to acknowledge the need for such descriptive justification of the judgment, then we will doubt their very understanding of what moral judgment involves.10 9 For an argument that there must be an inherent character there to explain the semantic competence of moral speakers, in particular their ability to catch on to the reference of a term like “right,” see Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Michael Smith, “Ethical Particularism and Patterns,” in Moral Particularism, ed. Brad Hooker and Margaret Little (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). This argument challenges the radical version of particularism, according to which there need be no independent pattern of any kind in the extension of a term like “right.” A more moderate form of particularism would defend the aesthetic model of moral judgment mentioned below in note 10; this model holds that there need be no pattern in the extension of “right” that is accessible, at least in principle, to reflection on the part of competent speakers. See Jonathan Dancy, Ethics without Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 10 This assumption is rejected under what may be described as the aesthetic model of moral judgment. When I make an aesthetic judgment on a painting, I must do so on the grounds of how it impacts perceptually and causally on me. It would be absurd to have a painting described and then, on the basis of that description alone, to pass aesthetic judgment —to say, for example, that the painting must be very beautiful, or elegant, or whatever. See Philip Pettit, “The Possibility of Aesthetic Realism,” in Pleasure, Preference, and Value: Studies in Philosophical Aesthetics, ed. Eva Schaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 17–38. The aesthetic model of moral judgment would suggest that I can only form a moral judgment about an action on the basis of how it impacts experientially on me. There may be a substantive pattern to identify across the aesthetic judgments we defend (or across moral judgments, if they are conceived as similar to aesthetic ones), but it will be there to be identified only on the basis of empirical research; there will be no possibility of relying on reflection in order to bring it to light. Those who passed a positive judgment on the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, and a negative judgment on various imitations, were in no position to identify the substantive pattern that physicists have since claimed to unearth in Pollock’s paintings —a pattern of self-similarity at different grains of analysis. See Richard P. Taylor, “Order in Pollock’s Chaos,” Scientific American (December 2002): 117–21.

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F. Looking for substantive moral theories With the case made for why substantive moral theory, like metaethics, is a quarry that philosophers may pursue, we are in a position to look for some examples of such theorizing in the tradition, and indeed among contemporary figures. I pursue that task in the next section. The theory I ascribe to some thinkers may be conceived by them as an exercise in metaethics, not as a substantive moral theory. Consider utilitarianism, Kantianism, contractualism, or virtue ethics. These are sometimes taken as metaethical theses to the effect that insofar as they bear on rightness, the schematic presumptions in our earlier list, whether or not the folk realize it, can really be boiled down to a single, favored thesis. The claims made under such approaches would be that the concept of the right is just the concept of that which maximizes happiness, or that which can be coherently willed as a universal law, or that which is immune to reasonable complaint, or that which the virtuous would choose. It is not really plausible, however, to cast the claims in this way. For in supporting the claims, defenders generally appeal to background assumptions about the rightness property, thereby displaying an adherence to a distinct schematic theory. They try to show that if we identify instances of the right on the basis of such schematic assumptions, then we will find that the favored account applies across those judgments; the account identifies a substantive pattern in the extension of “right” and “wrong,” as those words are used under the guidance of the schematic assumptions. One reason for the failure to recognize various theories as substantive moral theories, not as contributions to metaethics, may derive from an uncertainty about the point of such theory. So what purpose is a substantive theory —say, a substantive theory of the right —likely to serve? Such a theory may be comprehensive or restricted; it may claim to identify a common character in all instances of rightness or just a character common to instances of rightness in one or another area. In either case, its use will be twofold. In relation to moral analysis, it will provide a basis on which judgments about particular cases can be facilitated or supported. And in relation to schematic theory, it will provide some vindication of the presumption that the marks of rightness identify a more or less clearly patterned and learnable extension —an extension such that it is possible for those who are exposed to some proper subset of instances to extrapolate to further cases. III. Five Substantive Moral Theories There are at least five substantive theories of morality in the grand tradition. They focus on some central demands that morality intuitively imposes —some allegedly salient patterns in the distribution of the rightness property —where these demands may include both strict imperatives

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and looser ideals. The theories identify the central constraints of morality with requirements, respectively, of nature, self-interest, benevolence, reason, and justifiability. A. Nature The identification of moral requirements with requirements of nature takes a number of different forms and is common in classical and medieval thought. The Aristotelian equation of the demands of morality with what is required by nature if we human beings are to flourish and enjoy eudaimonia offers one version of the idea; this approach retains a place among neo-Aristotelians like Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse.11 Another version is the Stoic conception of laws of human nature that are available to our reason from the intimations of instinct, laws such that by being faithful to them we bring ourselves into line with the order of the cosmos. The medieval synthesis that was achieved by Thomas Aquinas built on both of these foundations, identifying the prospect of human fulfillment with obedience to laws whereby the natural instincts for selfpreservation, procreation of the species, life in society, and knowledge of god could be reconciled and satisfied. The metaphysics of naturally based requirements gave way, toward the end of the medieval period, to a metaphysics of natural rights, under pressures that are still much debated.12 Natural rights are supposed to place demands, not on their holders, but on those who deal with their holders. Absent an agreement to be treated otherwise, such rights are meant to require that in dealing with one another we treat certain areas of choice, usually related to life, liberty, and property, as sacred; we allow each other more or less total discretion within those boundaries. The moral metaphysics associated with natural flourishing, natural law, and natural rights is not likely to appeal on a broad front in contemporary discussion. There is no consensus about what human flourishing involves, or what natural instinct intimates, so that neither base identifies a determinate set of requirements. And while many people talk the language of natural rights, this metaphysics also fails to deliver the sorts of posits that are likely to satisfy us. If talk of rights is reduced to other terms, as it frequently is, then it does not give us distinctive requirements; it becomes a mere facon de parler. And if it is not reduced, so that natural rights are taken to make primitive, unanalyzable claims, then they cease to be obviously plausible entities to posit; they begin to look meta11 See Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 12 See Annabel Brett, Liberty, Right, and Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

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physically dubious: “simple nonsense,” as Jeremy Bentham thought, even “nonsense upon stilts.” 13 B. Self-interest In the history of ethical and political thought, the moral metaphysics that supplanted that of nature was one of self-interest. Sixteenth-century thinkers such as Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes continued to use the language of natural law, but, especially in the work of Hobbes, natural laws came to be more or less synonymous with maxims of self-interest, in particular, self-preservation —in Hobbes’s words, “conclusions or theorems” that people could work out by reason “concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves.” 14 There is more determinate content to the idea of what is required for our self-interest and self-preservation than there is to the idea of what is required by our nature. But how could such requirements ever hope to count as moral requirements? In particular, how could they justify what is done in their name, especially when this may impose a risk of disadvantage on others? The answer that Hobbes gave, and the answer given by contemporary Hobbesians like David Gauthier, is that if the requirements of self-interest are adjusted for life with others, they begin to approximate intuitively moral demands.15 The idea is that self-interest will give each individual a reason to help establish certain principles whereby the common life of members of the community can be organized to maximum mutual advantage and, even more important, a reason to abide by the principles accepted. But still, there is a problem. Won’t people want to exploit others by free-riding on their efforts, whenever this is in their self-interest? Indeed, won’t this be required when such exploitation maximizes personal advantage by giving the agent enough benefit to outweigh the damage that others suffer? It seems quite counterintuitive to identify moral requirements with imperatives that allow, even mandate, such exploitation. And that problem is exacerbated by the fact that the pursuit or implementation of such prescriptions will often be self-defeating for the collectivity; if each individual acts on these prescriptions, then overall self-interest will not be well served.16 Hobbes’s answer to this problem, which is scarcely persuasive, is that free-riding will not be in people’s self-interest, given the likelihood of 13 Jeremy Bentham, “Anarchical Fallacies,” in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. J. Bowring (Edinburgh, 1843). 14 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. E. Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994), 15.41. 15 David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). On the Hobbesian approach more generally, see J. S. Kraus, The Limits of Hobbesian Contractarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 16 Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), part 1.

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detection. Someone “that breaketh his covenant,” being readily detectable, “declareth that he may with reason do so,” and “can in reason expect no other means of safety than what can be had from his own single power.” 17 Gauthier’s answer, which is only a little more satisfying, is that the disposition to abide with an agreement made will generally be in people’s self-interest. While this may be correct, it doesn’t really address the problem: people are presumably able to act against their dispositions, especially when self-interest requires it.18 C. Benevolence Despairing of the resources of self-interest, or at least of self-interest taken on its own, the eighteenth-century British philosopher Francis Hutcheson introduced the idea that moral requirements are just the requirements of benevolence.19 Hutcheson argued that people like others to be happy and do not like them to be unhappy, and that this benevolence leads people to perform and approve of suitable actions, and to eschew and disapprove of others. Where Hutcheson took this to be an innate desire, David Hume argued that it could be explained by reference to the sympathy we feel when others suffer what we think would be painful, or enjoy what we think would be pleasant.20 Exercised within the general point of view in which we put aside our own particular concerns, sympathy, according to Hume, makes sense of the benevolence that Hutcheson postulated.21 What we are offered here is essentially a utilitarian account of the requirements of morality, as indeed Hutcheson already advertised in 1725: “that action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest 17 Hobbes, Leviathan, 15.5. See K. Hoekstra, “Hobbes and the Foole,” Political Theory 25 (1997): 620–54. 18 Gauthier argues, in later work, that rationality can oblige people to take a temporally extended course of action (say, promising at one time and then actually delivering on the promise later) even where promising-and-not-delivering has higher expected utility than promising-and-delivering. See David Gauthier, “Resolute Choice and Rational Deliberation,” Noûs 31 (1997): 1–25. See also Edward McClennen, Rationality and Dynamic Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). But this is an unorthodox and highly controversial view, since it introduces an artificial way of limiting the options that agents can rationally consider; it rules out the option of reconsidering whether to deliver on the promise, even when that possibility has become salient. It may, of course, be rational to have a policy of not in general reconsidering one’s options —a policy of not reconsidering except when the red lights go on. See Michael Bratman, Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). But this does not mean that rationality rules out reconsideration, period. 19 Gilbert Harman, Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chap. 11. 20 David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. J. B. Schneewind (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1983); David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2d ed., ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 21 Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, “On Why Hume’s ‘General Point of View’ Isn’t Ideal —and Shouldn’t Be,” Social Philosophy and Policy 11, no. 1 (1994): 202–28.

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numbers; and that, worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery.” 22 The account was later given full formal dress in the work of Jeremy Bentham and other utilitarians. It identifies the requirements of morality, quite simply, with the requirements associated with maximizing the expectation of happiness, whether among human beings or among sentient creatures more generally. It retains a prominent place in contemporary moral philosophy, figuring in the work of Peter Singer and many others.23 The value of benevolence is only one among a number of different values —thick values —in our folk moral theory, and it is counterintuitive to construe all moral requirements as dictates of benevolence. Equally, since benevolence is so demanding, it is counterintuitive to take everything that benevolence might dictate as a requirement of morality. Utilitarianism would not substantiate our intuitive conception of moral requirements so much as replace it with a novel conception; utilitarians, as they were seen to be in the nineteenth century, are philosophical radicals. D. Reason Reacting against the focus on sentiment and sympathy in Hume’s work, Immanuel Kant argued that moral demands were not requirements of benevolence but rather requirements of reason, under his particular conception of reason. He gave rise thereby to one of the major strands in contemporary moral theory. This strand is faithfully maintained in the work of many contemporary Kantians, such as Barbara Herman and Christine Korsgaard, but it is also represented in non-Kantian form by the work of other, very different thinkers, such as R. M. Hare.24 The Kantian claim is that the very idea of acting on reason imposes requirements of a kind that can plausibly be identified with the requirements of morality.25 There are many variations on the argument for this idea, and many versions of each of those variations, but one central line of thought is this: If I am in causal charge of what I choose, as I naturally assume in any choice, then I must choose in accordance with a universal law. Causation, Kant assumes, is essentially lawlike. It follows that if I fail to choose in accordance with a universal law, then it is not I who is in causal charge of what is done but an alien, heteronomous force within me. Choosing in accordance with a universal law would mean choosing in accordance with a maxim that can be coherently imposed as a universal 22

Quoted in Harman, Explaining Value, 186. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 24 R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 25 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 23

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law. Thus, if I am to vindicate the natural assumption that I am in causal charge of what I choose, then I must choose in accordance with a maxim that I can will as a universal law. This is a constraint that binds any agent of reason unconditionally; it is a categorical imperative, as Kant calls it. Kant’s view is that the requirements of morality just are the requirements imposed by the categorical imperative of choosing in accordance with coherently universalizable maxims. Let the maxim by which I act be universalizable and I will be acting morally; let it be nonuniversalizable and I will be acting immorally. Imagine that I steal someone else’s property, acting on the maxim of a thief. The Kantian idea is that I cannot coherently will this maxim of stealing what belongs to another as a universal law because if everyone acted on that maxim, then there would be no such thing as property and no such thing as stealing. The Kantian proposal is hard to defend, at least in this version, since the issue of whether I can will a maxim as a universal law turns on how that maxim is described. I may not be able to endorse the maxim of stealing as a universal law, but I can endorse many more-specific versions of that maxim as universal laws. For example, there is no reason why I should not be able to endorse, as a universal law, the maxim of stealing another’s property in very specifically characterized circumstances, such as those I happen currently to be in. I might endorse as a universal law the maxim of stealing a book from someone who no longer needs it urgently, on the eve of an examination that requires me to have read that book. R. M. Hare’s “prescriptivism” is an attempt to build on roughly this Kantian idea, avoiding the sort of problem I have just raised.26 Saying that an option is right, on Hare’s approach, is just prescribing it universally, so that an action will be right just in case it is universally prescribable. But it is not enough for universalizability in this sense that universally prescribing the option is a coherent strategy. What is also required is that I be able to think that this is the option I would prescribe for me now, no matter what position I occupied and no matter what impact I suffered. Universally prescribing the option must be a psychologically feasible strategy, as we might say, not just a coherent one. That is why Hare’s test of universalizability is supposed to avoid the indeterminacy problem. Hare assumes that in prescribing an option for myself, without universalizing, I will always take into account the desires that I expect the option to satisfy: I will prescribe the option on the grounds that it promises satisfaction of those desires. He argues that when I prescribe the option universally —that is, not just for me now, but for anyone in a relevantly similar situation —I will prescribe it on the grounds that it best provides for the overall satisfaction of the desires of affected parties. Thus, on this approach, there is an even more specific commonality to right options over and beyond that of being universally prescribable. This is that the 26

See Hare, Moral Thinking.

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options maximize expected desire-satisfaction —that is, that they have the character prized by the preference-based form of utilitarianism. Hare offers substantive theories at two levels; at one level, universal prescribability is the common feature of right options; at a second level, utilitarian desire-satisfaction plays that role. Hare’s approach suffers, for this reason, from all the problems associated with utilitarianism, but it is also subject to a more damaging objection.27 The argument for the determinacy of universal prescribability, and thus for Hare’s utilitarianism, depends crucially on the assumption that in prescribing an option for myself, without universalization, I will always do so on the grounds that it promises maximal desire-satisfaction. And that assumption is very questionable. It may well be true that whenever I prescribe an option for myself, I do so out of a corresponding desire, but that does not mean that I prescribe and choose it on the grounds that it will satisfy such a desire. It does not follow, then, that in prescribing something universally I will prescribe it on the grounds that it does as well as possible by desire-satisfaction overall. Socrates prescribed drinking the hemlock for himself on the grounds that this is what respect for the law required, not on the grounds that doing so would satisfy his desires, in particular his desire to show respect for the law. Thus, he would have prescribed the choice of the hemlock for anyone in any situation where those grounds remained valid. And he would have prescribed it in that universal way, regardless of whether or not it happened to increase the net balance of desire-satisfaction. E. Justifiability A fifth and distinct conception of the requirements of morality was provided by Adam Smith, a friend and admirer of Hume.28 Taking up the Humean idea of sympathy, he developed it on different lines.29 We sympathize with the actions and reactions of others, Smith said, but only insofar as we would display more or less similar responses in their circumstances; if others underreact or overreact, by the criteria we employ in an impartial viewpoint, then we disapprove. Given the notion of impartial sympathy, Smith tells a distinctive and persuasive story about how we come to identify certain requirements for ourselves; these, by his 27 For a critique, see Philip Pettit, “Universalizability without Utilitarianism,” Mind 96 (1987): 74–82; and Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, “Backgrounding Desire,” Philosophical Review 99 (1990): 565–92; reprinted in Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, eds., Mind, Morality, and Explanation, 131–53. See also Philip Pettit, “Preference, Deliberation, and Satisfaction,” in Preferences and Well-Being, ed. Serena Olsaretti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 131–53. 28 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. McFie (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1982). 29 Here I follow Harman, Explaining Value, chap. 11.

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account, are the requirements of morality. The elements in the story are as follows: (1) We sympathize with others just so far as their actions and reactions seem fitting to their circumstances, being responses we can imagine ourselves having; (2) we learn that others sympathize with us in turn, forming positive or negative appraisals, in the same impartial and critical manner; (3) we learn to put ourselves in the shoes of others, and to see our own actions and reactions as they would see them from their impartial, critical point of view; (4) we are naturally motivated to seek the approval of others, and to avoid their disapproval; and so (5) we come to be motivated to act and react in a manner deserving of more or less impartial sympathy. According to this complex story, then, the requirements of morality should be identified with what is required, not for the sympathy that the ignorant or biased may bestow, but for the impartial sympathy of others. The requirements of morality are those requirements that we have to satisfy if, on the negative side, we are to avoid the reasonably based complaints of others and if, on the positive side, we are to win their reasonably based plaudits. Where Hutcheson and Hume had equated the requirements of morality with the requirements of benevolence, then, Smith was led from a similar starting point to take a rather different view. He identifies the requirements of morality with the conditions whose realization would put us beyond the complaint of others, and within the ambit of their approval. We might describe these, in a generic phrase, as requirements of justifiability. The requirements to which Smith directs us have great appeal. They are not obscure, like natural law and natural rights. They are not counterintuitively egocentric like the requirements of self-interest, nor counterintuitively altruistic like the requirements of benevolence. And they do not suffer, on the face of it, from the indeterminacy problem associated with Kant. The justifiability feature is a very promising way of unifying at least a good portion of those options that count intuitively —that is, count by our presupposed, schematic theory —as right. Two contemporary theories build on broadly the same base as Adam Smith’s, at least as I see them. One is the contractualist approach of T. M. Scanlon.30 Right actions, for Scanlon, are those that are not wrong; and wrong actions are those against which others can raise complaint on the basis of principles that no one could reasonably reject as principles for the 30 T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

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general regulation of social behavior. While Scanlon does not cite Smith as a predecessor, the approach represents something close to a negative version of the justifiability line. The requirements of morality are identified as those whose fulfillment makes for immunity to reasonable complaints, though no mention is made of requirements whose fulfillment would serve to attract corresponding plaudits. Scanlon differs from Smith in giving us a quasi-contractual rather than a genealogical story as to why certain complaints are reasonable: they are backed by principles that no one could reasonably reject as principles of social cooperation. But Scanlon’s approach and Smith’s still clearly belong in the same family. A second contemporary theory that shares a common base with Adam Smith’s is that of Michael Smith.31 Where the linking idea between Adam Smith and Scanlon is that of immunity to complaint, the linking idea here is that of the impartial spectator. Adam Smith’s impartial spectator is the internalized other, as we have seen; Michael Smith’s is the idealized self. The demands of morality, on this approach, belong among those requirements that I would advise my actual self to satisfy in any situation, were I, the advising self, to be beyond criticism —were I to be fully informed, for example, to have fully coherent and unified attitudes, and to be thinking in a fully logical way. These are requirements, therefore, such that satisfying them ensures that I am justified; I pass muster with the impartial spectator of my ideal advising self.32 There is one salient problem that arises with Adam Smith’s theory, and it is inherited by the contemporary variants I have mentioned. The problem is that we are given no reason to think that the demands of justifiability will have the stability that we naturally expect in any requirements that count as moral. Nothing that Adam Smith says provides a ground for expecting stability across cultures, for example, in the standards to which impartial sympathy would hold us. Such an expectation would have to be premised on an empirical claim that the psychological mechanisms identified operate in the same way, and to at least a related effect, across different contexts. Scanlon is also exposed to a problem of stability. For what sorts of considerations count as good reasons for rejecting a principle or making a complaint? Scanlon emphasizes that they must be “personal” or agentrelative reasons that vary from individual to individual.33 For all that he shows, however, the sorts of personal reasons that count as good reasons 31

Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). These are requirements of reason on two counts, and in that respect connect also with the Kantian approach. First, they are requirements associated with the perfect, informed operation of reason within the advising self. Second, they are requirements that the advisee self, as a creature of reason, will want to satisfy. As between the self that does satisfy them and the self that doesn’t, there is no question about which is the more rational. 33 See Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other; and Michael Ridge, “Saving Scanlon,” Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (2001): 472–81. 32

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for rejecting a principle or making a complaint may vary from culture to culture. Michael Smith’s proposal also faces a problem of stability, this time across individuals as well as across cultures. Why should people be expected to converge on the requirements that their idealized selves would impose, especially if they start from very different standpoints? Why shouldn’t it be the case that my idealized self would recommend that I take lines of action that your idealized self would reject? Why shouldn’t our idealized selves represent impartial spectators who work with different terms of appraisal? In response to this problem, Michael Smith makes two points, one bearing on the possibility of convergence in what our idealized selves recommend, the other bearing on the necessity of such convergence. The possibility claim is that although our actual selves may have quite different tastes and inclinations on certain fronts, our idealized selves might still agree that any person with the one set of tastes and inclinations should do such and such and any person with the other should do so and so. The necessity claim, which is much more important for the problem raised, is that anything that an idealized self would recommend for a person of a particular mentality, in particular circumstances, has to be something that any idealized self, no matter whose, would recommend for that person; otherwise, it wouldn’t pass muster as a rationally compelling recommendation. These claims, however, are far from conclusive. Someone with a particular goal or allegiance —say, an allegiance to a particular religion —may just not be ready to regard that feature as a contingent circumstance of positioning such that there is a good, position-free question about how a person, so positioned, should act. And, taking this view, such an agent would naturally refuse to treat as idealized any counterpart who, not recognizing the true faith or religion, lacked that allegiance. Asked to defend this line, the interlocutor might argue that an idealized counterpart who failed to recognize that particular faith or religion would just not count as fully informed.

IV. A New Departure In this final section, I sketch a sixth substantive theory that equates the central requirements of morality with the preconditions for the practice, surely more or less inescapable among human beings, of relating to one another in a co-reasoning, conversational mode. This approach breaks from those considered in Section III insofar as the obligations that it unifies on this basis are artificial in the sense in which Hume thought that obligations of justice were artificial. The approach presupposes a disposition on people’s part to generate a certain institution or practice and

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identifies the relevant requirements by reference to that institution or practice. The best way to present the approach in the brief compass available is to reduce it to a number of propositions, without expanding in elaboration of these.34 My aim is not to give a full-dress defense of the theory but rather to show that it is available, and how it fits in relation to the other forms of substantive moral theory that I have surveyed. A. Human beings are not just rational animals; they are reasoning creatures as well To be rational is to be a locus of evidence-responsive beliefs and desires, and to be disposed to act in the way that is required according to those beliefs, for the satisfaction of those desires. While various other animals may be rational without ever reasoning, we human beings are not among them: not only are we rational, or at least close to rational, we also reason. Reasoning involves intentionally asking oneself questions such that by answering them, one may hope to guard against certain failures of rationality in the evolution of one’s beliefs and desires; it consists in the sort of activity we naturally ascribe to Rodin’s figure of Le Penseur but never to the dog or the cat. The questions typically considered bear on how far a certain body of evidence supports a proposition, whether two propositions are consistent, and whether making a certain proposition true will be a means of realizing another. By asking oneself questions of this kind about propositions, and forming meta-propositional beliefs in response (beliefs about the relationships and properties of relevant propositions), one may hope to put extra checks on the ordinary process in which intentional attitudes materialize and mutate. If one prompts oneself to recognize that “p” and “q” are inconsistent, for example, that ought to correct or inhibit the belief that it is the case, or indeed the intention to make it the case, that p and q. B. Human beings co-reason with one another, as well as reasoning with themselves Having access to language, human beings are able, uniquely among animals, to reason with one another as well as with themselves. They call on one another as advisers or informants or critics, and they try to guard against any irrationality in what they accept in common or attempt to achieve together. People who converse and co-reason in this way do for 34 For the central, motivating idea, see Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, “The Truth in Deontology,” in Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, ed. R. J. Wallace, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, and Michael Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). And for a fuller account, see Philip Pettit, “Joining the Dots,” in Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit, ed. Michael Smith, H. G. Brennan, R. E. Goodin, and F. C. Jackson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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one another what they try to do for themselves in personal reasoning. They lend one another their reason, as we might say, each serving in the forum of the other’s mind as an amicus curiae, a friend of the court. The service aspect of the activity comes out in the fact that although they may influence one another significantly, neither will impose on the other. The information or advice or guidance each provides is given on a take-it-orleave-it basis; it is of the essence of co-reasoning that no one forces another’s hand.35 C. Co-reasoning requires the eschewal of force and coercion and related activities Any social activity, whether it be checkers or chess or co-reasoning, puts constraints in place that all participants must honor, on pain of no longer taking part in that activity; these are the constitutive rules or requirements of the practice. As the counterpart of personal reasoning, co-reasoning rules out a variety of intuitively objectionable activities in this manner. These are activities such that one cannot pursue them and claim at the same time to be reasoning with others, as those persons might reason with themselves. They include overtly forcing people to do something by removing one or more options; overtly coercing people to do something by penalizing and thereby changing one or more of their options; and overtly purporting to have contracted or changed the options in this manner. But they also include the covert activity of pretending to co-reason while actually undermining the practice, whether through misinforming others, or triggering some background manipulation of their ability to choose, or relying on the intimidating effect of one’s power over them, or watching over and riding herd on their performance —surveying how it goes, while remaining disposed to resort to a corrective intervention in the event that co-reasoning does not lead them in the desired direction. D. These are presumptively moral requirements of respect The relationship established in co-reasoning allows one person to influence the choice of another but does not allow anyone to undermine another’s power of choice; in that sense, its requirements enforce a regime of mutual respect. In deliberative decision-making, I have to assume with respect to each of the options among which I am deciding that it is within 35 Co-reasoning need not involve any degree of rigor or formality. It may often be wholly implicit, as when you draw my attention to something and let me fill in the missing lesson. And it may be quite rhetorical in form. It may involve a story or a parable, in which you invite me to see things another way; it may introduce ironic or sarcastic or mocking comment; and it may employ metaphor and image, and all the colors of persuasive overture. Such rhetoric may be needed in order to knock me out of my complacency, let me see how stupid my point of view is, and make your standpoint seem truly habitable.

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my power; in choosing among three options, x, y, and z, I must be able to think with respect to each option: “I can do that.” 36 If such can-do assumptions were not true, or if I did not think they were true, there would be no point in deliberation. Co-reasoning is an inherently respectful form of interaction insofar as it leaves both the truth and the thinkability of can-do assumptions in place. It does not undermine the truth of any such assumption by reducing my capacity to choose, contracting my range of options, or changing an option in the choice-set, say by the imposition of a penalty.37 And it does not force me to reject any true assumption, misleading me about how things stand. Co-reasoning may make me aware of an extra option, as when you inform me that someone (perhaps you yourself ) would be willing to offer a refusable reward for the choice of a particular option, x. But this does not directly affect the truth or thinkability of the can-do assumption with respect to option x or y or z; it merely adds the extra option, x+, of doing x and taking the reward.38 E. Co-reasoners purport to satisfy the requirements of respect One can aspire to reason with others only on the basis of a shared understanding of the practice and an acceptance of the demands it imposes. Thus, to present oneself as co-reasoning is to purport to endorse those demands as constraints on how one is going to behave toward those with whom one means to reason. It is to renounce any resort to force or coercion and any reliance on resources of duplicity or intimidation or correction, and to present oneself as embracing a relationship of respect for one’s partners. Those who purport to co-reason with others but then fail in some way to practice respect are hoist by their own petard. They can be indicted with failing to live up to the expectations that their presentation invited others to form; they can be condemned by criteria they are on record as endorsing. F. Would-be co-reasoners also purport to satisfy the requirements of respect Might a person subscribe to the requirements only when embarking on an episode of co-reasoning and not more generally? Not plausibly. I can 36 We may sometimes describe an option in a way that reaches out to a desired consequence, as when we think of it as hitting the target rather than firing the gun, but each option has to be accessible also as something we can just do. 37 For relevant arguments, see John Broome, Weighing Goods (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); and Philip Pettit, “Decision Theory and Folk Psychology,” in Essays in the Foundations of Decision Theory, ed. Michael Bacharach and Susan Hurley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); reprinted in Philip Pettit, Rules, Reasons, and Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 38 See Pettit and Smith, “The Truth in Deontology.” The making of offers may not have this cast outside what I later describe as the circumstances of respect, where everyone is sufficiently well-off to be able to function properly in the local society. Extreme conditions might make it rational for someone to accept the offer of a slave contract, but that offer could hardly be said to be respectful. See Philip Pettit, “Freedom in the Market,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 5 (2006): 131–49.

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hardly fail to honor these requirements in dealing with others and expect to have access to co-reasoning on an opportunistic basis. What assurance could others have of my willingness to respect them in the course of co-reasoning, if I present myself as someone ready to use force or coercion against them? What assurance could they have, indeed, if I present myself as ready in this way to use force and coercion against others who occupy a comparable position? In order to make it possible to resort to co-reasoning as opportunity requires, or inclination prompts —in order to have access to the practice —I must show myself ready to respect those with whom I might wish to co-reason, and any others who are likely to count as comparators. I must purport to relate to my community as someone who is respectful of others, disavowing any attempt to influence them other than by appeal to co-reasoning or to overtures (say, of camaraderie and bantering) that are congruent with co-reasoning.39 G. The requirements of respect have a default status in social life It is possible for someone to opt out of a regime of mutual respect, manifestly displaying an attitude of aggression, or an assumption of occupying superior status. However, there is no need to opt in, at least not in circumstances where resources are sufficiently rich and well distributed to enable everyone to function properly as a member of the society —that is, not in what we might call the circumstances of respect.40 The default assumption, absent hostility, will be that one is accessible to coreasoning —at least to the extent that time and other constraints allow for such interaction —and that one eschews any resort to force or coercion or deception or the like in dealing with others. If natural life is lived in the precincts of battle, as Hobbes maintained, then civil life is lived in the precincts of conversation and co-reasoning. By not displaying hostility, one acquiesces in the manifest fact that others assume one is accessible to co-reason and ready to honor the associated demands of respect. One is naturally taken to endorse the requirements of respect as expectations to which one may be held, criteria by which one may be judged. H. The requirements of respect are defeasible requirements: excuses That the requirements of respect have this default status, however, does not mean that they are nondefeasible, and that a breach is never excused. 39 The lesson is akin to that of the master and slave. What sensible slave would be honest in speaking his or her mind with a master? What sensible master would expect the slave to be honest? What sensible slave, indeed, would expect to be expected to be honest? Notice that if a class of masters is saliently distinguished, as under an apartheid regime, then masters may disrespect those in the slave class without disturbing their own reputations as persons who respect other masters; slaves will not count as comparators of the masters. That is why it is important, not just to focus on the instantiation of respect, but also on the promotion, as I describe it later, of respect-enjoyment. 40 On such functioning requirements, see Amartya Sen, Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985).

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So long as the practice of co-reasoning is in place, one will be strictly obliged by its rules.41 But often the practice will not clearly be in place, and then a breach of the rules will be excusable. No one can be bound to display respect for those who would do him harm, for example, since those others thereby reject the relevance of the practice. Nor, by a plausible extension, can anyone be bound to display respect for those who would do harm to others who are party to the practice; no one can be bound to tell the truth about a victim’s whereabouts to a would-be murderer. Nor can anyone be bound to display respect under such dire distress —such “moral catastrophe” 42 —that the very practice of respect is in jeopardy; the circumstances of respect, as I called them, would not then obtain. Disrespect is excused in cases like these, because the rules of co-reasoning do not clearly apply. I. The requirements of respect are defeasible requirements: justifications But are there grounds on which a breach of the requirements of respect in these or in other cases might be positively justified, not just excused? Is there any value, accessible to all, whose promotion might argue that whereas satisfying those requirements is generally for the best, there are cases where it is not and where a breach may be justifiable? Arguably, the very practice of respect points us to something that is valuable in this way: namely, the status that people enjoy insofar as they command the respect of others —if you like, “respect-enjoyment.” The demands of such a value might argue for the justification of disrespect in perverse cases where, by showing disrespect to some innocent persons, the extent to which people enjoy respect overall is increased —at the limit, they may be saved from death or destitution. The recognition of such a value or target makes room for a consequentialist perspective on respect. One might argue that while it is generally for the best to practice respect, there may be cases where the promotion of respect-enjoyment (or, indeed, some other such value) justifies a temporary suspension of the practice, even in dealing with an innocent party.43 The practice of friendship is not jeop41 Thus, one will not be able to argue that one is co-reasoning with another, on the grounds that while one is violating the requirements of respect in some way, that is because this promises to maximize the respect of others for others. One might as well argue that one is playing chess, on the grounds that while one is violating the rules of chess, that is because such violation promises to minimize violations overall. The practice of co-reasoning requires one to instantiate respect toward those with whom one co-reasons, not to promote such respect overall. This may not be for the best, but it will be required for being able to claim to co-reason. 42 See Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 30n. 43 Consequentialism might prescribe the honoring of the requirements of respect under the proviso that this is for the best overall. Or, more plausibly, it might prescribe it under a stricter proviso that imposes constraints on how far agents should check on what is for the best (because such checking might itself be bad for respect-satisfaction). One such proviso would prescribe the honoring of the requirements except when there is independently

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ardized by the fact, acknowledged on all sides, that the demands of friendship are only compelling provided that they do not put innocent life at risk, or create some similar horror. Neither should the practice of respect be jeopardized by the recognition of a parallel, consequence-based proviso. J. From ethics to politics Not only is the emerging point of view consistent with a consequentialist perspective, but it is consistent with a consequentialism that would argue for the formation of a state —specifically, a state that would ensure that the circumstances of respect are realized for all and that there are sufficient guards against the strong riding herd on the weak that respect is widely commanded and enjoyed. Thus, the cause of promoting respectenjoyment overall may argue for a collective, political arrangement under which the weak are protected and empowered and a regime of mutual respect is shaped so as to be for the best overall.44 If the argument encoded in the foregoing ten points is on the right track, then many moral obligations are really obligations under the code of co-reasoning, the ethic of respect. This ethic is grounded in the fact that, uniquely among animals, we human beings are creatures of the word and can relate to one another in the co-reasoning manner that speech makes possible. The constraints of the code are those associated with being, as we say, on speaking terms with one another. They describe the only possible basis for civil relationships in which conversation is the norm — not coercion, and not command. And they make salient the inclusive ideal of extending the enjoyment of respect and status to all. They do not cover the treatment we should offer to animals, of course, nor any of a range of salient reason to think that this is not for the best overall; conformity to the requirements would become a default option under this proviso, but not an unconditionally compulsory one. See Philip Pettit, “A Consequentialist Perspective on Ethics,” in Marcia Baron, Michael Slote, and Philip Pettit, Three Methods of Ethics: A Debate (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). One way of seeing T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism is as a theory that endorses, broadly, the requirements of respect in dealings between the respectful, and that argues for a distinctive, nonconsequentialist form of modulation for other cases: the right way to behave in those second-best cases is in accord with the principles for such cases that we might expect to prove reasonably unobjectionable among people respectfully debating with one another. See Philip Pettit, “Can Contract Theory Ground Morality?” in James Dreier, ed., Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). 44 I take it that the sort of regime envisaged would maximize freedom in the republican sense of nondomination. See Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Another approach that might be taken to politics, starting from the practice of respect, is to ask in contractarian style about the sort of global regime that people might be led to adopt as a result of reasoning with one another in a situation of mutual respect. Yet another approach would be to ask about the global sort of regime that would emerge as a result of the different local arrangements that we might expect people to make with one another in co-reasoning contracts. The first approach is in the spirit of Rawls, the second in the spirit of Nozick.

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duties to ourselves, but they account for a good part of what we naturally think of as the moral realm. How does this substantive theory of morality —this theory of a central subset of moral obligations —relate to the theories already canvassed? The most striking point of contrast is that, in Hume’s terms, it is a theory of artificial obligation and virtue. It presupposes an artificial, cultural practice, one of conversation and co-reasoning, and presents the relevant obligations as preconditions for the survival and prosperity of that practice. The obligations are not presented as preinstitutional, inescapable laws of nature (or self-interest or benevolence or reason or justifiability), but as requirements of an institutional practice in which co-reasoning and respect are at the center. They are laws, in a word, of civility. Their institutional character means that the laws of respect only have hypothetical or conditional status. They identify what is required of people if they are to have access to the practice of co-reasoning and to all the associated benefits. But this conditionalization is relatively innocuous, since it involves only a very small “if.” The practice of co-reasoning is at the very center of human life and has an inescapable hold on us, at least in the normal case where it serves to promote the value associated with respect-enjoyment. If the laws of respect are requirements for access to that practice, as argued here, then they are conditional on a goal that is close to unrejectable. Unlike most hypothetical imperatives, they are tied to an aspiration that human beings can scarcely disavow, and thus they have the assured status that we would expect moral requirements —as distinct, say, from requirements of etiquette —to display.45 Substantive moral theories, as I have emphasized, seek out unifying patterns among the requirements that pass as moral demands, by the tests associated with our schematic theory of rightness. While a number of theories might each have something to be said in their favor, especially if they focus on different subsets of demands, they are clearly in competition. So how, finally, does the theory sketched here compare with the five theories we looked at earlier? The laws of respect identify conditions for human flourishing, and connect on that front with the laws of nature. But they identify conditions that it could scarcely be in anyone’s interest to violate, at least not in any general way, and thus they also make contact with the tradition that links morality with egoistic interests. How do the laws of respect relate to the remaining three theories we surveyed? These laws point us to requirements of benevolence that emphasize the evil of disrespect and the neutral ideal of prompting respect-enjoyment overall. They constitute ideals of reason in the sense of prescribing a mode of treatment that is saliently universalizable. And they connect with the idea of justifying oneself to 45 See Pettit and Smith, “The Truth in Deontology,” and Mark Schroeder, “The Hypothetical Imperative?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2005): 357–72.

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others insofar as the regime they put in place generally allows each individual to exercise only the sort of influence that others should welcome; this would facilitate individuals’ rationality without restricting their power of choice. These observations suggest that the theory sketched here is on the right track, picking up a pattern that would explain why the other approaches have each seemed plausible to so many. If such a substantive theory is sound, then it means that there are two different standpoints from which we can survey the terrain of moral obligation. From the standpoint of the schematic theory described earlier (in Section II), moral obligations present themselves as requirements to which we are pointed by the battery of connections and paradigms that establish the very reference of terms like “right” and “wrong.” From the standpoint of the substantive theory developed in this section, a core set of obligations stand out as requirements that derive from the code of co-reasoning, the ethic of respect, on which the very possibility of civil life is premised. Morality, under this picture, has a dual aspect and can be investigated in philosophy on either of its two fronts. Philosophy, Princeton University

VIRTUE AND NATURE* By Christopher W. Gowans I. Introduction That human beings are rational animals is such a platitude in so much of Western moral philosophy that it may seem unlikely that additional insight is to be gained from further reflection on the meaning and implications of this phrase. Traditionally, by and large, it has been supposed that rationality is our most important feature. In recent years, however, it has been suggested by some advocates of virtue ethics rooted in Aristotle that a renewed emphasis on, and understanding of, the fact that we are animals, as well as rational, offers a promising avenue for defending an objective justification of morality. The best-known proponents of this approach are Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse.1 Since they each depict their position as a form of ethical naturalism, their shared outlook may be called Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism (hereafter NAEN). Many of the facts about our animal nature highlighted by Foot and Hursthouse are certainly relevant to ethical deliberation, and to this extent their new outlook is a welcome contribution. Nonetheless, my thesis in this essay is that NAEN is inadequate because, by its own standards, it does not provide a naturalistic justification of its ethical commitments. In what sense does NAEN purport to be a form of ethical naturalism? In moral philosophy, naturalism ordinarily is taken to preclude any appeal to the supernatural (for example, to God), and Foot and Hursthouse are ethical naturalists in this respect. Beyond this, ethical naturalism usually implies that (a) there is some significant connection between moral values and natural facts, where (b) the natural facts include only facts countenanced by contemporary science (including, in particular, psychology and evolutionary biology). Proponents of NAEN certainly affirm (a). At a minimum, they believe that the justification of virtues is, in some impor* I would like to thank my colleague John Davenport as well as the other contributors to this volume, and its editors, for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I would also like to express my appreciation to Fred D. Miller, Jr., and the Social Philosophy and Policy Center for inviting me to contribute to this volume. 1 The main sources are Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), and Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. part III. Foot and Hursthouse both appeal to a crucial idea in Michael Thompson, “The Representation of Life,” in Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn, eds., Virtues and Reasons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 247–96. For a similar position, see Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), esp. 78.

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tant sense, dependent on facts about human nature and the circumstances of human life. For example, Foot says that “the grounding of a moral argument is ultimately in facts about human life.” 2 Sometimes it seems to be suggested, more strongly, that some moral facts are natural facts. According to Foot, “the fact that a human action or disposition is good of its kind will be taken to be simply a fact about a given feature of a certain kind of living being.” 3 With respect to (b), matters are less clear. Foot and Hursthouse make no appeal to evolutionary biology. Instead, what plays a crucial role in their arguments is a set of statements about plants and animals —and about human beings as a kind of animal —called “naturalhistory sentences” or “Aristotelian categoricals,” which are said to be true descriptions of objective facts in the natural world.4 This distinguishes NAEN from many other forms of ethical naturalism, and it raises a question about what kind of natural facts Foot and Hursthouse have in mind (about which I will have more to say below). However, my critique of NAEN is not that it is inadequately scientific. Rather, my main argument is that it cannot account for the concerns of moral universalism, the view that each human being has moral worth and thus deserves significant moral consideration.5 After explaining the main contours of NAEN (in Section II), I explore ways in which it might deal with moral universalism, and I argue that each of these ways is inadequate (in Section III). I then broaden the discussion (in Section IV) and maintain that the ends concerning other persons proposed by NAEN seriously underdetermine the virtues that are said to promote these ends. My conclusion (in Section V) is that those attracted to an Aristotelian virtue ethics would be wise to abandon its naturalism, at least beyond a minimal and fairly uncontroversial appeal to some facts about human nature and circumstances. II. The Basic Argument of Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism NAEN was first formulated by Foot and later developed by Hursthouse. Their positions are close, but not identical.6 I will proceed by explaining 2

Foot, Natural Goodness, 24. Ibid., 5. See ibid., 29. 5 Foot and Hursthouse both put forward their accounts in a rather tentative spirit, and Hursthouse says that justice is a gap in her theory. Nonetheless, I believe NAEN does not have the resources to deal with the issues I raise. 6 Hursthouse’s understanding of Foot is based, not on Natural Goodness (which had not yet been published), but primarily on two earlier essays, “Rationality and Virtue” (1994), and “Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?” (1995), both reprinted in Philippa Foot, Moral Dilemmas and Other Topics in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 159–74, 189–208. Hursthouse’s own position is also expressed in a more recent paper, “On the Grounding of the Virtues in Human Nature,” in Jan Szaif, ed., Was ist das für den Menschen Gute? Menschliche Natur und Güterlehre (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 263–75. 3 4

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and commenting on Foot’s main line of argument, noting Hursthouse’s amendments along the way. In the end, however, my critique will concentrate on Hursthouse’s more elaborate position. Their argument divides into three phases: a set of claims about the evaluation of living things, especially animals; application of this framework to the evaluation of human beings; and discussion of the difference human rationality makes to this application. Phase one. Foot begins by stating that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are “attributive adjectives” whose criteria of application depend on the noun (or noun expression) they modify.7 This appears true in a wide variety of contexts in which ‘good/bad X’ is meaningful on account of some human activity, interest, or concern. However, according to Foot, there are some things that may be evaluated as good or bad, not by reference to any human perspective, but simply in virtue of the kinds of things they are. In particular, living things such as plants and animals may be evaluated on the basis of standards that are implied by the nature of their species. Foot’s explanation of this is as follows. The life cycle of a member of a species includes development, self-maintenance, and reproduction. Teleological statements (the “natural-history” statements or “Aristotelian categoricals”) explain the function of something —a part, characteristic, or operation —in this life cycle. For example: (F) “[T]he male peacock displays its brilliant tail in order to attract a female during the mating season.” 8 Statements such as F are said to be neither universal nor statistical generalizations. Rather, F explains an operation by reference to its function in reproduction. It asserts that the purpose of a male peacock’s raising its tail is to attract a female. This is not taken to mean that the peacock has this purpose nor that it was consciously designed for it. Teleological statements such as F are said to be factual: they are determined by the nature and life cycle of the species (including its needs, capacities, and natural habitat). Hence, their truth-value does not depend on the needs or wants of other species, including human beings. Moreover, these statements are necessary for properly describing and understanding the natural history of a species. According to Foot, these teleological statements imply evaluative or normative statements about individual members of the species. For example, F entails: (E1) An individual male peacock needs to or should be able to display its tail during the mating season. 7 8

She takes this point from P. T. Geach, “Good and Evil,” Analysis 17 (1956): 33–42. Foot, Natural Goodness, 31.

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And F also entails: (E2) An individual male peacock that is able (unable) to display its tail during the mating season is good (defective) in this respect. Hence, the teleological statements provide a basis for judging natural goodness and defectiveness in living things. An individual’s having the forms of goodness appropriate to its species contributes to its living a good life for a member of its species, a life of proper development, selfmaintenance, and reproduction (though whether it succeeds in doing this also depends on other factors). In conclusion, Foot says at this stage of her argument, “the norms that we have been talking about so far have been explained in terms of facts about things belonging to the natural world.” 9 There are, she says, “patterns of natural normativity.” 10 Hursthouse accepts the essentials of Foot’s position in these respects, but she develops it with respect to higher social animals such as wolves and horses. Hursthouse summarizes her view as follows: Teleological Framework. A good social animal (of one of the more sophisticated species) is one that is well fitted or endowed with respect to (i) its parts, (ii) its operations, (iii) its actions, and (iv) its desires and emotions; whether it is thus well fitted or endowed is determined by whether these four aspects well serve (1) its individual survival, (2) the continuance of its species, (3) its characteristic freedom from pain and characteristic enjoyment, and (4) the good functioning of its social group —in the ways characteristic of the species.11 The Teleological Framework is said to provide a basis for objective evaluations of certain animals. For example, similar to E2, these animals “are defective —something is wrong with them —when they do not want to eat or reproduce” (“the continuance of its species” refers specifically to reproduction).12 Much of my argument below focuses on item (4) in the Teleological Framework as Hursthouse applies it to human beings. She has little to say about what constitutes a social group. The phrase is used to make a distinction between animals that live rather solitary lives, such as tigers, and those that live more social lives. The latter belong to a social group (such as a wolf pack). In the case of animals, these groups vary enormously in character across different species, and among human beings there are many different kinds of social groups. Hursthouse does not 9

Ibid., 36–37. Ibid., 38. 11 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 202. I have added the title. 12 Ibid., 200. 10

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discuss these differences. Presumably, she supposes that social groups are fairly small, in comparison with the species as a whole, and involve some notion of membership such that members of the group act in various ways for the well-being of other members of the group (and perhaps for “the group as a whole”).13 An obvious worry about Foot’s and Hursthouse’s position arises from questions about its status vis-à-vis evolutionary biology. Foot speaks explicitly of Aristotelian categoricals and necessities, and she states that the term ‘function’ in her account is used in an “everyday” sense rather than in the “technical” sense of evolutionary biology.14 Moreover, Hursthouse says that “the non-ethical evaluations of living things that I have outlined are ‘Aristotelian’ rather than Darwinian.” 15 These comments may invite the complaint that Foot and Hursthouse are relying on an Aristotelian approach that has been refuted by Darwinian biology.16 However, they clearly believe that teleological statements such as F, as well as evaluations such as E1 and E2, are part of the natural histories of animals as understood by contemporary science. Hursthouse says that these evaluations of living things are “scientific” and are employed in botany, zoology and ethology.17 In fact, natural histories do contain many statements of this kind (albeit expressed in a variety of ways). Moreover, Foot and Hursthouse need not, and do not, deny that F states a scientific fact that is explained by natural selection.18 Hence, they are best interpreted as intending to present an account that is compatible with evolutionary biology, and as hoping to avoid as much as possible engaging in debates about the proper role and understanding of concepts such as teleology, function, purpose, and design in biology.19 It is doubtful that a full defense of their position can avoid this engagement. Their claim is that statements such as F, E1, and E2 are intelligible and essential to properly understanding living organisms. A critic, at this stage of the argument, would need to show that statements of this kind could be eliminated without loss of descriptive or explanatory power in biology and related sciences. Foot and Hursthouse appear committed to supposing that these statements could not be eliminated by this standard. There is a sense, then, in which they think a form of evaluation is essential to understanding plants and animals, and I am willing to accept this 13

See ibid., 201–2. Foot, Natural Goodness, 32 n. 10. See also ibid., 40 n. 1. 15 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 257. 16 For example, see Philip Kitcher, “Biology and Ethics,” in David Copp, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 164–65. 17 See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 202, 229. 18 See Foot, Natural Goodness, 92. 19 For examples of these debates, see Colin Allen, Marc Bekoff, and George Lauder, eds., Nature’s Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998). Hursthouse enters these discussions a bit more than Foot; she expresses doubts about whether Darwinian standards could replace Aristotelian ones (see Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 258). 14

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claim here for the sake of argument. It is important to note, however, that the evaluations E1 and E2 only identify species-dependent forms of goodness and defectiveness. There is no suggestion, for example, that peacock reproduction is good simply speaking or from the standpoint of nature as such (whatever that might mean).20 Reproduction is only a characteristic good of peacocks in virtue of the nature of the species. Foot and Hursthouse can agree with a critic who claims that, though reproduction plays a central explanatory role in evolution, there is no overall (not simply speciesdependent) sense in which it is good —say, from the standpoint of nature itself, or of evolutionary theory —that an individual peacock (or indeed any peacock) reproduces. Of course, for zookeepers, animal breeders, farmers, gardeners, and the like, the reproduction of living things is sometimes a good thing (and sometimes a bad thing). But these judgments depend on their specific interests; they are not dictated by nature itself. However, given their interests, Foot and Hursthouse maintain, evaluations based on natural facts such as F take on importance. Phase two. The next step in Foot and Hursthouse’s argument asserts that evaluations of human actions and dispositions have the same conceptual structure as the aforementioned evaluations of plants and animals. The meaning of ‘good’ and related terms is the same in both cases. Evaluations of human beings, Foot says, including moral evaluations, “can only be understood in these terms.” Hence, she regards “moral evil as ‘a kind of natural defect’.” 21 She acknowledges that there is a major difference: human beings, unlike plants and other animals, have a rational will and perform voluntary actions. However, she believes it is essential to start with the purported similarity. Though human good is “different from good in the world of plants or animals,” she says, “there is a ‘naturalhistory story’ about how human beings achieve this good as there is about how plants and animals achieve theirs.” 22 The first part of this story is that, despite cultural diversity, there is a “quite general account of human necessities, that is, of what is quite generally needed for human good.” 23 For example, these necessities include food, housing, and clothing as well as relationships of love and friendship. The second part of the story is that we need virtues such as industriousness, loyalty, and kindness to attain these necessities. Hence, Foot says, following P. T. Geach, “virtues play a necessary part in the life of human beings as do stings in the life of bees.” 24 There is thus a common structure of evaluation of all living things: teleological (“in order to”) statements provide a factual basis for evaluations about what is good, needed, or should be the case. Hence, Foot appears committed to claim20

See Foot, Natural Goodness, 50. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 51. 23 Ibid., 43. 24 Ibid., 35. Cf. ibid., 44. 21 22

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ing that, just as F is true and implies E1 and E2, so (in an example emphasized by Foot): (F*) A human being is trustworthy in order to (among other things) promote the exchange of goods needed for material well-being is true and implies: (E1*) A human being needs to or should be trustworthy and: (E2*) A human being who is trustworthy (untrustworthy) is good (defective) in this respect. F* explains a characteristic of human beings by reference to the characteristic’s function in self-maintenance: among human beings, given our nature and circumstances, self-maintenance typically requires the exchange of goods, and this in turn requires trustworthiness. As with F, F* is supposed to be a particular kind of factual statement —a teleological statement. It is neither a universal nor a statistical generalization. It depicts one form of being virtuous and says that the function of being virtuous in this respect is the fulfillment of certain human needs. However, though factual, F* is said to imply evaluations such as E1* and E2*. This is the conceptual parallel Foot thinks is essential to establish. Once again, Hursthouse accepts Foot’s basic argument and elaborates: since human beings are sophisticated social animals, the aforementioned Teleological Framework provides a basis for ethical evaluations of us. For example, Hursthouse says: Human beings who are good in so far as they are courageous defend themselves, and their young, and each other, and risk life and limb to defend and preserve worthwhile things in and about their group, thereby fostering their individual survival, the continuance of the species, their own and others’ enjoyment of various good things, and the good functioning of the social group.25 Hursthouse thinks similar accounts can be given of other virtues such as charity, honesty, generosity, loyalty, justice, and trustworthiness. Phase three. The final step in the argument for NAEN concerns what is distinctive about human beings. Foot does not believe that the conceptual parallel stated above means that human good is the same as the good of 25

Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 209.

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plants and other animals. “Human good,” she says, “is sui generis.” 26 The main difference is that human beings have a rational will: we act voluntarily for reasons. This gives rise to greater diversity and complexity. More important, this means that we have a capacity to understand and that, for any proposed action X, we can always ask, “Why should I do X?” An answer to this question purports to give us a reason for action based on what is judged to be good. According to Foot, “Kant was perfectly right in saying that moral goodness was goodness of the [rational] will.” However, Kant was mistaken, she says, in not recognizing that “the evaluation of human action depends on [in addition to abstract practical reason] essential features of specifically human life.” 27 Since human beings can understand the teleological facts and their implications, we can answer the question “Why should I do what a trustworthy person would do here and now?” by appealing to, among other things, the truth of F* and the fact that F* implies E1* and E2*. More specifically, we can understand the facts about human necessities and our circumstances that warrant us in saying that “in giving a promise one makes use of a special kind of tool invented by humans for the better conduct of their lives, creating an obligation that (although not absolute) contains in its nature an obligation that harmlessness does not annul.” 28 Rationality does not change the fact that human goodness is a form of natural goodness. For Hursthouse, the fact that human beings, unlike other animals, are rational, does not modify the Teleological Framework cited earlier by way of addition or subtraction (there are the same four aspects and four ends), but it does transform the framework in ways similar to those envisioned by Foot. Rationality gives rise to greater diversity as well as to the capacity to understand the rationale of the virtues and the possibility of rationally revising the virtues we currently accept. Moreover, rationality enables us to choose whether to act virtuously or not. Hursthouse says that “our characteristic way of going on . . . is a rational way” —that is, “any way we can rightly see as good, as something we have reason to do.” 29 Nonetheless, the nature of our species imposes significant restrictions on what we have reason to do. “Human beings are ethically good,” she says, “in so far as their ethically relevant aspects foster the four ends appropriate to a social animal, in the way characteristic of the species.” The Teleological Framework, she adds, “really does constrain, substantially, what I can reasonably maintain is a virtue in human beings.” Hence, in determining whether a character trait is a virtue, we have to consider whether it “would foster or be inimical to 26

Foot, Natural Goodness, 51. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 51. I take this to mean that, for Foot, the fact that breaking a promise brings about no harm does not by itself annul the obligation to keep the promise. 29 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 222. Cf. ibid., 228. 27 28

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those four ends.” 30 In ethical evaluation, Hursthouse claims, “we evaluate ourselves as a natural kind, a species which is part of the natural biological order of things.” 31 These comments suggest that she accepts the following criterion: A character trait C is a virtue only if (a) C promotes in a substantial way at least one of the four ends, and (b) C does not significantly inhibit the four ends. With respect to (a), it seems too strong to say that C is necessary for an end or that C relates to all four ends. A virtue may be very important even if not necessary for advancing an end, and different virtues may promote different ends. What Hursthouse requires is that C furthers at least one of the ends to some substantial extent. With respect to (b), it seems too strong to say that any inhibition of the ends would prevent a character trait from being a virtue. Otherwise, courage could not be a virtue, since it can require us to risk our life. But some reference to the negative impact on ends is surely needed. Otherwise, a character trait that promoted one end, but virtually precluded all the others, would be a virtue. For example, extreme self-centeredness might promote self-preservation but seriously damage other ends. The expressions ‘promotes in a substantial way’ and ‘does not significantly inhibit’ are obviously vague and in need of interpretation, but they are sufficiently meaningful for Hursthouse’s purpose and my discussion. The criterion says that (a) and (b) are necessary conditions for a character trait’s being a virtue. It does not say, and I am not supposing that Hursthouse thinks, that these conditions are sufficient. Beyond this, it seems clear that Hursthouse supposes that the Teleological Framework makes a contribution to the correct conception of the virtues. This is evident in her comment, quoted above, that people are good “in so far as their ethically relevant aspects foster the four ends,” as well as in her discussion of Peter Singer (considered below). For example, suppose two competing conceptions of courage both met conditions (a) and (b), but the first promoted the ends in a more substantial way than the second, or inhibited them to a lesser extent. Surely, in this circumstance, the first conception has a better claim to be a virtue than the second, all other things being equal, because the first better fulfills conditions (a) and (b) than the second. Unless there were some special consideration not evident here (for instance, that once an end is fulfilled to a certain point, it does not matter if it is fulfilled to a greater extent), it 30 Ibid., 224. The four ends are individual survival, continuation of the species, characteristic freedom from pain and characteristic enjoyment, and the good functioning of the social group. 31 Ibid., 226.

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would be odd to accept the criterion, but reject this consequence. Hence, it is reasonable to suppose that Hursthouse is committed to the following: Teleological Criterion. A character trait C is a virtue only if (a) C promotes in a substantial way at least one of the four ends, and (b) C does not significantly inhibit the four ends; and if two character traits, C1 and C2, in competition for the status of virtue, both meet conditions (a) and (b), but C1 promotes the ends in a more substantial way than C2, or inhibits them to a lesser extent, then, all other things being equal, there is more reason to regard C1 as a virtue than C2. The intuitive idea of Hursthouse’s version of NAEN, then, is that those character traits that best promote and least inhibit the four ends are virtues. The Teleological Criterion provides a criterion for determining whether or not a character trait is a virtue. But which character traits fulfill this criterion? Hursthouse is also, at least tentatively, committed to the following: Justification Thesis. The standard list of virtues meets the Teleological Criterion. According to Hursthouse, the “standard list” of virtues includes many of Aristotle’s virtues (including courage, temperance, and justice), plus some non-Aristotelian virtues such as charity and benevolence. These are the virtues Hursthouse is prepared to defend. The Justification Thesis says that, for each virtue on the list, the virtue promotes in a substantial way at least one of the four ends and does not significantly inhibit the four ends (and presumably meets these conditions better than any competing conception of the virtue). The details of Hursthouse’s Teleological Framework, with its specification of four aspects and four ends, and the employment of this framework in the Teleological Criterion as well as the Justification Thesis, are more substantial than Foot’s presentation of NAEN. For this reason, I will focus primarily on Hursthouse’s position in the critique that follows. There is another important difference between Hursthouse and Foot. At the outset of her discussion of naturalism, Hursthouse says her aim is to show the feasibility of establishing the objectivity or rationality of neoAristotelian virtue ethics in accordance with John McDowell’s “Neurathian procedure.” 32 According to this procedure, “validation must take place 32 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 165. She cites John McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” in Hursthouse et al., eds., Virtues and Reasons, 149–79. McDowell’s view is part of a broader philosophical project expressed in several places in his work. It is unclear to what extent Hursthouse endorses this project, and I interpret her here on the basis of what she (rather than McDowell) says.

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from within an acquired ethical outlook, not from some external ‘neutral’ point of view.” 33 The acquired outlook is that of the virtuous agent (as understood by Hursthouse). The Neurathian approach rejects the plausibility of justification on the basis of a foundation of non-ethical beliefs such as those provided by science or logic. This is taken to imply that there is no aspiration to convince “anyone whose ethical outlook or perspective is largely different from” that of the virtuous agent.34 At the same time, the Neurathian account is not merely to re-express or rationalize the virtuous agent’s perspective: it “may serve to provide rational credentials for our beliefs about which character traits are the virtues.” 35 This is because, by allowing (in W. V. O. Quine’s terminology) “plank-by-plank” rebuilding of our ship while at sea, there is “the possibility of radical ethical reflection, the critical scrutiny of one’s ethical beliefs which could be genuinely revisionary.” 36 In fact, it could eventually be shown that the virtuous agent’s ethical outlook is completely wrong, and this possibility is said to provide us with a suitable notion of ethical objectivity. There is nothing in Foot’s account resembling this Neurathian understanding of justification. Hursthouse neither defends nor develops her Neurathian approach, and we are mostly left to speculate on its implications. The possibility of plank-by-plank rebuilding, even to the point of eventually replacing every plank, is itself no guarantee of objectivity. An arbitrary rule (“replace every seventeenth plank”) repeatedly applied, or a random procedure, could have this result, but would contribute nothing to objectivity. At a minimum, rebuilding must be in response to relevant facts, and a key question is whether Hursthouse’s account relies on such facts. Her main claim is that the justification of central features of her position is —or may be —epistemically available to a virtuous agent, but not necessarily to others. This should not be rejected out of hand. Loving and sympathetic persons sometimes see facts that others do not. Perhaps a case could be made for saying that virtuous persons see facts that others —for example, those who are morally corrupt, deeply egotistical, or flatly amoral — do not. However, since Hursthouse does not make this case, skeptical suspicions may be hard to suppress. As we move from the Teleological 33 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 165. In light of this, David Copp and David Sobel appear mistaken in supposing that Hursthouse is relying on a “morally neutral investigation of animal nature.” See their essay “Morality and Virtue: An Assessment of Some Recent Work in Virtue Ethics,” Ethics 114 (2004): 537. However, as I note below, they do raise a legitimate question. 34 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 193. It has been argued that this aspect of Hursthouse’s position disqualifies it from being a significant form of ethical naturalism. See William Rehg and Darin Davis, “Conceptual Gerrymandering? The Alignment of Hursthouse’s Naturalistic Virtue Ethics with Neo-Kantian Non-Naturalism,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 41 (2003): 583–600. 35 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 193. She adds that the procedure “is not intended to produce motivating reasons” (194). 36 Ibid., 165.

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Framework to the Teleological Criterion to the Justification Thesis, the perspective of the virtuous agent seems increasingly important. The Teleological Framework is based on an examination of social animals, and it would seem that, if it were correct, any sufficiently informed and impartial observer should be able to see this (as we might put it, only epistemic as opposed to ethical virtues would be necessary) —and Hursthouse appears to assume as much in her presentation of it. In contrast, accepting the Justification Thesis would seem to require a detailed knowledge of the virtues, and it might plausibly be said that only a virtuous agent could possess this knowledge. What about the Teleological Criterion? Why should the four ends be central criteria of virtue? For my purpose, this is the crucial question for Hursthouse’s version of NAEN. If the purported facts supporting acceptance of the Teleological Criterion could only be apprehended by the virtuous (by her lights), then Hursthouse’s defense would be plausible only on the basis of an epistemology that shows the virtuous to be in an epistemically superior position in the relevant respects. But it is not clear that this is her position. She certainly tries to render the Teleological Criterion plausible to a diverse philosophical audience that is not presumed to be fully virtuous by her standards, and in this respect her aspiration to objectivity does not differ markedly from Foot’s. III. The Challenge of Moral Universalism Why, then, should we accept the Teleological Criterion? Even if we agree that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are attributive adjectives whose criteria of application are fixed by the kind of thing they refer to, and even if we accept the Teleological Framework as a proper framework for evaluating social animals, we can still ask whether this framework is relevant, and indeed especially relevant, for judging human virtues. This question might be pursued from different directions. We might wonder why the facts presupposed in the Teleological Framework are the morally relevant ones insofar as there are other facts, equally scientific, that might be relevant as well (or, at least, relevant from a different moral perspective).37 Or, beginning with the Teleological Framework and the Teleological Criterion as they are presented by Hursthouse, and reflecting on our considered moral convictions, we might ask whether we should accept the Teleological Criterion, and hence the Justification Thesis, in light of these convictions. My argument presses a particular form of this second question.38 The difficulty that arises for proponents of NAEN centers on the thought that each human being is morally significant. Various forms of this thought have been expressed, in diverse ways, in numerous and very different con37

This is the question stressed by Copp and Sobel, “Morality and Virtue,” 534–37. Much of the discussion of Foot, and especially Hursthouse, is devoted to arguing that a virtuous agent would tend to live a life of genuine happiness (eudaimonia). I am not concerned with this aspect of their position. 38

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texts. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” 39 Among philosophers, Immanuel Kant declared that “the human being and in general every rational being exists as an end in itself,” and he took this to mean that every human being possesses “an inner worth” or “dignity” that entitles him or her to moral consideration.40 In the utilitarian tradition, Jeremy Bentham declared, in the dictum cited by John Stuart Mill, “everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one.” 41 These last two statements are expressions of the Enlightenment (arguably, all three are), but there are much older formulations of the idea that each human being has moral importance. For instance, the Christian command to love one another meant that we were to love all persons, as is made clear in the story of the Samaritan who helped the beaten man on the road and in Paul’s statement that “there is neither Jew nor Greek.” 42 Similar beliefs are also central to Buddhist traditions, especially in the aspiration of the Bodhisattva to seek enlightenment out of compassion for all beings. According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we should “respect and appreciate the sameness of ourselves and others as human beings.” 43 In the ancient Greco-Roman world, such ideas are especially associated with the Stoics. For example, Hierocles urged us to have concern for “the whole human race.” 44 These statements do not all express the very same thesis (much less would they be supported by the same rationale). Nonetheless, there is considerable overlap among these statements, and it is this overlap, vague though it may be, that is important for my purpose. Let us say that they all agree, more or less, in affirming: Moral Universalism. Each human being has moral worth or standing, and hence deserves serious moral consideration. Moral Universalism does not entail an impartialist morality according to which there is one and only one moral principle that states that each human being deserves the same moral consideration. Though some of the 39 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in United Nations Department of Public Information, ed., The United Nations and Human Rights, 1945–1995 (New York: United Nations Reproduction Section, 1995), 153, first paragraph. 40 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 428, 435 (standard Prussian Academy pagination). 41 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Oskar Piest (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1957), 76 (chap. 5, par. 36). 42 Galatians 3:28. The story of the Samaritan is in Luke 10:25–37. 43 Tenzin Gyatso, The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, “Hope for the Future,” in Fred Eppsteiner, ed., The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1988), 3. 44 See A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, eds., The Hellenistic Philosophers: Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 349.

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aforementioned sources may have accepted such an impartialist morality, this is a much stronger position than Moral Universalism. An adherent of Moral Universalism need not maintain that each person deserves the very same moral consideration nor that this is the only moral principle. Nonetheless, it does make a moral difference whether or not Moral Universalism is accepted. For those who accept it, all human beings —including “strangers” with whom we have no direct or close relations, or with whom we are seriously at odds —deserve significant moral consideration in virtue of being human beings. For example, on this view, proper treatment of prisoners of war is always a moral issue. However, for those who do not accept Moral Universalism, this need not be the case. Some of these persons may think that some human beings have moral standing and others do not. This is a common view and will be the main alternative at issue here. Nonetheless, not accepting Moral Universalism may also mean thinking that no one has moral standing or not taking a position on the question, even implicitly. It is plausible to suppose that, for many persons, Moral Universalism is a considered moral conviction. My contention is that it cannot be shown, within the framework of NAEN, that a virtuous agent would necessarily act in accord with Moral Universalism. We are told by Foot and Hursthouse that a virtuous person is just, charitable, kind, etc. I will argue that, if a person with these virtues is understood to presuppose or act in agreement with Moral Universalism, then these virtues do not meet the Teleological Criterion. Since the Justification Thesis says that these virtues do meet this criterion (they are on Hursthouse’s standard list), my argument will be that this thesis is false. Some proponents of virtue ethics in the Aristotelian tradition may grant that a virtuous agent need not act in accordance with Moral Universalism.45 However, there is every indication that, for Foot and Hursthouse, a virtuous agent thinks that, or at least acts as if, all human beings have moral standing (though Foot and Hursthouse are not inclined to articulate general principles of this kind).46 Foot speaks of “one who recognizes 45 John Cottingham agrees that Moral Universalism does not naturally arise out of the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. See his “Partiality and the Virtues,” in Roger Crisp, ed., How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 68–70, 75–76. 46 In a discussion of applied ethics, Hursthouse says we should not think about the “moral status” of a fetus in reflecting on the morality of abortion, or of animals in deliberating about the morality of eating animals. See Rosalind Hursthouse, “Applying Virtue Ethics to Our Treatment of the Other Animals,” in Jennifer Welchman, ed., The Practice of Virtue: Classic and Contemporary Readings in Virtue Ethics (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 136–55. I am not claiming that Hursthouse or Foot would explicitly endorse Moral Universalism, but the remarks I cite in this paragraph are sufficient to show that their virtuous agent acts in accordance with this position. My argument is that the virtues, as understood in these remarks, cannot be warranted by the Teleological Criterion. In this respect, my argument could be made without bringing Moral Universalism into the picture, though I think it is important to keep it in.

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the claim of any human being to a certain kind of respect.” 47 However, implicit recognition of Moral Universalism is especially true of Hursthouse’s virtuous agent, and it is her position that I feature in this discussion. To see this, let us focus on charity, a virtue emphasized by the Neo-Aristotelians (though not by Aristotle) that is clearly related to issues raised by Moral Universalism. Charity involves helping other persons. But which persons? Hursthouse says, perhaps with the Samaritan in mind, that charity imposes a requirement to help a “wounded stranger” along the road.48 More importantly, in a discussion of how racism distorts charity, she speaks of charity with respect to “our fellow human beings” and “other groups.” 49 In view of these remarks, my critique is internal in this sense: the neo-Aristotelian naturalistic framework cannot provide a basis for the virtues as Foot and Hursthouse understand them.50 Let us suppose, then, something such as the following: A charitable person would recognize that there is a requirement (perhaps overridable by other moral considerations) to help any human being in serious need, including a stranger, when in a position to do so. According to the Teleological Criterion, charity, understood as implying this requirement, must (a) promote in a substantial way at least one of the four ends and (b) not significantly inhibit the four ends; and it must meet these conditions better than any competing virtue. Here is what Hursthouse says about the naturalistic justification of charity: I have read that, amongst the social animals, both wolves and elephants have patterns of action that resemble our charitable and benevolent acts, and again it seems plausible to say that the patterns play similar roles in the different forms of life. Charity directed to the young and helpless particularly serves the continuance of the species; directed more widely it serves the good functioning of the social group by fostering the individual survival, freedom from pain, and enjoyment of its members, and also by fostering its cohesion.51 On the model of other social animals, charity in this passage is understood to promote two ends directly: the raising of our young children (this is the meaning of continuance of the species) and, “more widely,” the well-being of our social group. Hursthouse also suggests that a person’s 47

Foot, Natural Goodness, 103. Cf. ibid., 114. See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 6, 36. 49 Ibid., 118. 50 I focus on charity primarily because it is a virtue that is accepted by Foot and Hursthouse and is relevant to Moral Universalism. The main issue, however, is the moral standing of human beings as such. Hence, my critique could be made even with respect to a minimal form of Moral Universalism that states that a virtuous agent would recognize a prima facie requirement not to harm any human being. I am indebted to several other contributors to this volume for pointing this out. 51 Ibid., 209. 48

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charity promotes his or her own individual survival, but mostly in indirect ways. There is no reference in this discussion to charity directed to the well-being of human beings generally speaking. This is not surprising, since none of the four ends refers to human beings in general: the four ends involve only oneself, one’s children, and one’s social group. It might be observed that charity in the broad sense, as directed toward all human beings, would nonetheless promote the four ends (since one’s children and social group are included in all human beings). However, even if this were true, it would not follow that such charity could be justified by the Teleological Criterion, because charity in the narrow sense, as directed only to one’s children and social group, would better serve the four ends than charity in the broad sense. This appears to be the tacit assumption in the passage quoted above, and that this is Hursthouse’s assumption seems to be confirmed by her critique of Peter Singer’s view that “completely impersonal benevolence” toward all sentient beings is a virtue.52 She argues that impersonal benevolence cannot be a virtue because it would substantially interfere with the two ends featured in the justification of charity: continuance of the species (raising our own children) and the good functioning of our social group. This point is offered as an example of her claim, already quoted, that the structure of the four ends “really does constrain, substantially, what I can reasonably maintain is a virtue in human beings.” 53 It is evident that charity (or benevolence) might be construed more narrowly or more broadly as we move from one’s children, to one’s social group, to all human beings, and finally to all sentient beings. Hursthouse thinks, or is committed to thinking, that teleological facts about human nature dictate at least the approximate point in this sequence to which charity should extend. But there is an ambiguity in her position. She often speaks of charity as extending to all human beings, but no further. However, in her justification of charity quoted above she extends it only to one’s children and one’s social group. Moreover, charity in this narrower sense appears to serve the four ends much better than charity in the broader sense because it does not dilute or interfere with our concern for these ends. Hence, by the Teleological Criterion, the narrow sense of charity is more justified than the broad sense. Indeed, there is nothing explicit in the Teleological Criterion that encourages us to extend charity beyond our children and our social group, and thus there is nothing to support the idea that in some respects our charity should reach any other human beings. It might be said, in Hursthouse’s defense, that the Teleological Criterion could be interpreted or modified so as to justify charity as she usually understands it (that is, so that all human beings, and not only 52 53

See ibid., 224–26. Ibid., 224.

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members of one’s social group, fall within its scope). There are two general approaches that might be taken in this endeavor. One is to leave the criterion as it stands and to give an indirect argument on this basis for the broader understanding of charity. The other is to formulate the criterion so as to directly include the well-being of all other members of the human species as one of our ends. There are obstacles to both of these approaches. Hursthouse suggests that racists and sexists often have misunderstandings about other races and sexes. The implication is that correcting these misunderstandings would provide a reason for abandoning racism and sexism. In a similar way, it might be argued, proper understanding would reveal that there are no morally relevant differences between our own social group and other social groups. Hence, since we have reason to care about our own social group, we have comparable reason to care about other groups as well. On the basis of this line of thought, we could be shown to have reason to care about all human beings, irrespective of social group. The difficulty with this argument is that, according to the Teleological Criterion, the fact that this group is our own social group, and these others are not, is a morally relevant difference. Group membership is what counts, and it does not matter that there are other similarities. Concern for our social group is not inferred from a set of non-indexical properties possessed by the group such that, were the same properties possessed by another group, concern for that group should also be inferred. Concern for our group is said to be based on the fact that the natural ends of our species are normative and the well-being of one’s specific group is one of those ends. Though the expression ‘social group’ is not defined by Hursthouse, it is obviously used to express the idea that human beings, like other social animals, are not solitary creatures and naturally live together in fairly small and local groups. What is morally relevant is precisely membership in some particular group. Hence, there is no basis for extending concern to all human beings in the way envisioned by this argument. In this connection, it is worth considering a suggestion, offered as a friendly amendment to Hursthouse, that fair treatment of those outside our community could be warranted by appeal to a broader notion of community than was originally maintained in the Aristotelian tradition. According to Karen Stohr and Christopher Heath Wellman, “given the facts of economic, social, and environmental interdependence of cultures and communities in our world today, we must also think about ourselves in the context of a global community.” 54 An initial difficulty with this proposal (somewhat reminiscent of Hierocles’ suggestion that we extend our circles of concern to the whole human race) is that it stretches the 54 Karen Stohr and Christopher Heath Wellman, “Recent Work on Virtue Ethics,” American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (2002): 69.

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notion of community or group, as originally employed by Hursthouse, to the breaking point. Once all human beings become members of one’s group, the distinctive features of membership in a particular group will be lost —features presupposed, for example, in Hursthouse’s critique of Singer and in her discussion of loyalty. Moreover, the facts of interdependence are not sufficient to establish a community or group with normative significance. Though various forms of interdependence are presupposed by groups in Hursthouse’s use of the term, much more is involved. For example, comparatively small groups often involve bonds of affection and concern that arise from a common place, history, and ensemble of mores. Indeed, it is usually thought to be an advantage of the Aristotelian tradition that these are stressed. By their nature, such bonds cannot be extended indefinitely. Hence, there is a clear qualitative difference between the local groups presupposed in Hursthouse’s Teleological Criterion and any conception of a global community. Another indirect argument is based on the claim that different social groups would all benefit from mutual cooperation. Realization of this gives each group a reason to cooperate with other groups, and a commitment to mutual cooperation provides a basis for the belief that there is reason to help any human being, irrespective of social group. Even if this approach went some distance in addressing the concerns of Moral Universalism, it is not likely to go far enough, because it provides only a tenuous, instrumental justification of concern for human beings beyond our social group. In conflicts in which other groups are disinclined to cooperate, or worse (e.g., actively opposed to cooperation, or threatening violence), the fact that all groups would benefit from mutual cooperation does not give us a reason to cooperate. If our only primary concern is for the well-being of our own group, then in these circumstances there is no basis for concern about other groups. In general, on this approach, as reasonable expectations that other groups will cooperate decline, so too does our reason to cooperate. However, for many proponents of Moral Universalism, it is especially in circumstances of conflict and noncooperation that it is important to have a firm conviction that each human being, irrespective of group membership, deserves serious moral consideration. Given the strong propensity to protect our own group (a propensity that Hursthouse highlights), it may be said, there must be a basis for believing that each human being has moral worth or standing, regardless of social group, that does not depend on how cooperative human beings actually are. For example, many would argue that respect for human rights should persist even in warfare. There is another difficulty with the cooperation argument. Similar arguments, based on the benefits of mutual cooperation, have been given to show why each individual, presumed to be only self-interested by nature, nonetheless has reason to have concern for other individuals. A distinctive feature of NAEN is to take a different approach than these argu-

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ments: namely, that we are social by nature and thus there is no need to show why self-interested individuals nevertheless have reason to cooperate. This is part of the point of appealing to the good functioning of social groups as one of our natural ends.55 But if this claim is inadequate because we are, as it were, insufficiently social by nature (by nature, our concern only extends to our own group), and an appeal to the benefits of mutual cooperation needs to be made anyway, then it is unclear why we should accept this mixed approach rather than a pure mutual-cooperation approach. Either way, a mutual-cooperation argument needs to be sound, and the mixed approach has the additional burden of establishing that concern for our social group is an end we have by nature. If an indirect approach will not work, perhaps a direct one will. It might be argued that the Teleological Criterion could be modified so as to include as an end the well-being of all members of the species (either as an additional, fifth end or as a modification of the social-group end), and that this would overcome the difficulties with the indirect approaches. The key question here is: What is the basis, within the framework of NAEN, for understanding the Teleological Criterion in this way? In the original argument, the fact that the four ends were ends for social animals in general appeared to play a crucial role in the claim that, since we are also social animals, these are ends for us as well. But it is implausible to suppose that social animals in general are concerned about all members of their own respective species. Since they are social animals, they are concerned about the well-being of some —typically, very few —members of their species (and there is great variation in the forms this may take). But this does not mean that they are concerned with all members of their species, and there is no reason to think this is true of social animals overall. They may well be indifferent or even hostile to members of their species outside their social group. Hence, no argument of this form could be credible. In her critique of Singer, Hursthouse seems to imply, at one point, that partiality toward or caring about members of our own species, in contrast with members of other species, is part of our biological nature.56 However, even if this were true, it need mean only that we have concern for some members of our species —for example, our relatives, friends, and neighbors —that we do not have for members of other species. (The role of pets in many people’s lives suggests that even this claim would require qualification.) Such partiality is consistent with an absence of concern for members of our species beyond those just mentioned. 55 According to Hursthouse, “that ‘man’ is by nature an entirely self-centred egoist must surely be a view that could only come about through its proponents overlooking the fact that if their mothers had not cared for them for many years in their infancy they would not have survived” (On Virtue Ethics, 252–53). Cf. Foot, Natural Goodness, 16. 56 See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 225–26.

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If the well-being of human beings as such were to be included among our ends, the argument for this would have to appeal to some difference between human beings and other social animals —presumably, for Foot and Hursthouse, our rationality. It would have to be shown that human beings, as rational, have as an end (among others) the well-being of all other members of their species. This claim need not go as far as Kant, for example, who argued that we should have concern for any rational being, human or otherwise (were other rational beings to exist). The proponent of NAEN would only need to show that a characteristic end for human beings as rational is the well-being of any member of their own species. The point might be put this way: Just as animals, in virtue of their distinctive nature, have ends that plants do not have, so human beings, in virtue of their distinctive nature —that is, their rationality —have an end that neither plants nor animals typically have. Unlike them, human beings have as an end the well-being of all members of their own species. At this stage, it is not clear to what facts proponents of NAEN could appeal. In other cases —for example, self-preservation, raising children, and living in social groups —there are some evident facts about human nature that might be thought to lend prima facie plausibility to the claim that our ends should include reference to these. From what we know about human beings, it is difficult to envision a human society that is indifferent to these ends (even though particular individuals sometimes are). In this sense, it might be said, there is something “natural” about these ends. However, it is hard to see what fact about human nature could play an analogous role in an argument for the claim that our ends should include the well-being of human beings generally. It is not difficult to envision a society that is indifferent to this end (i.e., a society in which concern for the well-being of others extends only as far as relatives, friends, and neighbors). In any case, the extent to which human beings actually accept this end is not thought to be what is primarily relevant. The question is whether or not concern for all human beings is a natural end for a species of rational, social animals such as ourselves. By way of comparison, it might be maintained that communication via language is a natural part of human life in view of our nature as rational, social animals. Hence, it might be said, linguistic communication is a natural end and thus we cannot imagine a human society without language. What is needed is a similar argument that establishes that the well-being of all human beings is a natural end for rational, social animals.57 Moreover, in order to be consistent with naturalism, rationality in such an argument would need to be seen simply as a natural fact about us, and not, for example, as something that reveals our participation in the divine or in a cosmic order (as the Stoics supposed). In short, even if it could be shown 57

219.

Hursthouse does not think our use of language itself has ethical significance. See ibid.,

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that our natural ends include the well-being of some human beings, the challenge for proponents of NAEN whose virtuous agent acts in accord with a form of Moral Universalism is to show that these ends also include the well-being of all human beings. It might be suggested that Hursthouse’s Neurathian procedure is relevant here. For it could be argued that a virtuous agent —someone who is just, charitable, etc. —comprehends that the well-being of all human beings is one of our ends even though there is no fact that the virtuous agent could point to that would show this to be true from a neutral perspective or from other ethical points of view. In effect, only the virtuous, as understood by NAEN, can perceive the relevant fact, whatever it may be.58 However, merely to assert this is surely to succumb to the danger, adverted to by Gary Watson, that this would “no longer ground moral judgment but rather express it.” 59 The point of the Teleological Criterion is explicitly to avoid this danger and provide, as Hursthouse says, “rational credentials” for the virtuous person’s belief that character traits such as justice and charity (as Hursthouse understands them) are in fact virtues. To achieve this goal and remain properly naturalistic, there must be a plausible story that takes us from a version of the Teleological Criterion to the conclusion that the virtuous agent has concern for all human beings — and this story must be available to anyone with proper epistemic qualifications, however these may be understood, and not simply to those who, in effect, already accept it. This issue may be approached in a somewhat different way. Hursthouse accepts Bernard Williams’s contention that objectivity in ethics requires that ethical disagreements be rooted in factual disagreements. In particular, she supposes that, within the framework of virtue ethics and naturalism, disagreements about the virtues can be resolved by reference to facts about human nature and the circumstances of human life.60 In view of this, let us imagine that the following dispute arises among those who accept Hursthouse’s overall approach and are at least moderately virtuous (they are all on board the H.M.S. Virtue Ethics, we might say, and they are debating about whether and how to replace some planks). All agree with the Teleological Criterion and its general implications for virtues such as justice and charity with respect to one’s own children and one’s social group (henceforth, I will refer to these two together as “the local group”). What they disagree about is the implications of these virtues for human beings beyond the local group (perhaps they have only recently 58 It might be said that Moral Universalism is a constitutive part of “the moral point of view,” and that a virtuous agent, but not necessarily others, apprehends this conceptual truth. However, even if this claim could be defended, it would be a point independent of NAEN; and there is no reason to attribute it to Hursthouse or Foot. 59 Gary Watson, “On the Primacy of Character,” in Daniel Statman, ed., Virtue Ethics: A Critical Reader (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1997), 67. 60 See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 241–42.

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interacted with people outside their local group in significant ways). No one thinks there should be equal concern for all human beings; they all believe there should be some special concern for the local group. In the debate that ensues, four basic positions emerge: (1) The strong partialists say there should be concern for members of the local group and no one else. (2) The weak partialists say there sometimes should be concern for all human beings, but only if this concern in no way harms the well-being of the local group. (3) The weak universalists say there occasionally should be concern for all human beings even though this harms the well-being of the local group. (4) The strong universalists say there often should be concern for all human beings even though this harms the well-being of the local group. These positions are vague, and, in a real debate, they would be elaborated by reference to specific sorts of concerns. Nonetheless, the range of outlooks indicated by the four positions has clear relevance to some of the different views taken in contemporary debates about issues raised by Moral Universalism vis-à-vis virtues such as charity and justice. Of course, there may be a truth about which position most humans beings overall are inclined to accept. However, no statistical fact of this kind is thought to be relevant according to proponents of NAEN.61 Hursthouse is committed to the view that there is some teleological fact (or facts) about human nature that provides genuine guidance for resolving this controversy and shows which position across this spectrum is at least approximately correct. Moreover, this fact is available (at least) to those on board the H.M.S. Virtue Ethics. What is elusive, for the reasons already given, is what this fact might be. We may suppose that all parties to the disagreement acknowledge that members of the local group and other human beings are all members of the same species. Those inclined to positions 2, 3, and 4 take this similarity to have increasingly greater moral weight, while those inclined to position 1 take it to have no moral weight. Suppose, for example, that the weak-universalist understanding of charity and justice is correct. What fact establishes this that all the partialists, as well as the strong universalists, are failing to understand? It might be said that debates such as this would be resolved, not by directly appealing to any teleological facts, but by pointing out that, for example, in some circumstances ignoring the well-being of human beings outside one’s social group would be callous (or some other rather specific term from the vocabulary of the virtues and vices). Hursthouse says that 61

See ibid., 223.

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“reasons for acting are the reasons people with the relevant character trait do, or would, give . . . not the fact that the character trait in question sustains any of the four ends.” For example, loyal people stick by their friends because they are their friends, not because this fosters “the good functioning of the social group.” 62 Nonetheless, it remains the case for Hursthouse that loyalty is a virtue (at least in part) because it promotes the well-being of the social group. Likewise, presumably, callousness is a vice because it undermines one or more of the four ends, and the question remains why, in terms of these ends, it would be callous to ignore the well-being of human beings outside one’s social group. Hursthouse insists that there is no direct path from the Teleological Criterion to the determination of right actions. The Teleological Framework is said to provide a basis for determining which character traits are virtues, but it requires practical wisdom ( phronêsis) on the part of the virtuous to determine, for example, what would be callous in a given situation. This is fair enough so far as it goes. However, in assessing NAEN, everything then depends on elaboration of the deliberations of the virtuous. If it turns out that these deliberations are largely dependent on culturally informed understandings of the virtues with no real anchor in the four ends, then the Teleological Criterion substantially underdetermines the virtues. IV. The Normativity of Natural Ends Let us now broaden the discussion and ask more generally to what extent the Teleological Criterion is helpful in thinking about the virtues. I have already argued that it is not helpful in reflecting on issues raised by Moral Universalism for virtues such as charity. Consider next a different issue, one that is directly discussed by Hursthouse and briefly mentioned by Foot — the morality of homosexual ways of life. Both Hursthouse and Foot believe that a virtuous agent could live an active homosexual life and not reproduce or raise children.63 Hence, they do not think that homosexual activity as such is morally wrong. Does NAEN support their position and do so in the right way? Hursthouse herself raises the question of whether the end of continuance of the species (that is, reproduction) implies that “practicing homosexuals” are not virtuous insofar as they fail to promote this end. In response, she claims that forms of sexuality are not themselves character 62

Ibid., 235. See ibid., 214–15. Hursthouse’s discussion of homosexuality was criticized by Brad Hooker in “The Collapse of Virtue Ethics,” Utilitas 14 (2002): 36–37. She responded to this critique in “Virtue Ethics vs. Rule-Consequentialism: A Reply to Brad Hooker,” Utilitas 14 (2002): 43–46. Foot mentions homosexuality in passing in Natural Goodness, 109, and in “Rationality and Goodness,” in Anthony O’Hear, ed., Modern Moral Philosophy: Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 54 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 11. 63

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traits and that the relevant character trait for addressing this issue is temperance. Hence, those who engage in homosexual activity would not be virtuous only if they were intemperate. Naturalism itself does not imply that such persons are intemperate, she says, and she thinks there is no reason to believe they are (for example, by being “all wildly, willfully, promiscuous”).64 The fact that homosexual activity cannot result in reproduction is irrelevant. In one respect, this is a perplexing response, at least in light of Aristotle’s remark that the temperate person “finds no pleasure at all in the wrong things.” 65 Many people think the pleasure produced by homosexual activity is of the wrong sort, and (leaving religious considerations aside) they often think this because they believe it is, in some sense, “contrary to nature.” It might be thought that NAEN provides a rationale for this belief. After all, Hursthouse and Foot both think there are actions that are absolutely prohibited so that (at least ordinarily) a virtuous agent would not perform them.66 Presumably, these prohibitions have their warrant in the fact that the prohibited actions in some way counter or undermine the natural ends of our species. This is what gives rise to the suspicion that NAEN could provide a basis for the aforementioned critique of homosexual activity. In fact, however, this suspicion is misguided. Practicing homosexuals can and do reproduce and raise children. As long as they did this, they would be promoting the end of continuance of the species. The fact that they also engage in homosexual activity need not undermine this end. (Similarly, eating food that has no nutritional value need not be contrary to the end of health, so long as one also eats food that has nutritional value.) However, this is not the response Hursthouse gives, for she thinks that her outlook does not imply that each individual is required to reproduce and raise children —and Foot agrees. Moreover, they both suggest that a celibate person could be a virtuous person in some circumstances.67 Hence, the end of continuance of the species is regarded as optional for individuals, and this acknowledgment is the feature of the discussion of homosexuality that I take to be important. Are other ends optional as well? Hursthouse’s example of a celibate contemplative implies that some enjoyment (and also freedom from pain?) might be optional. Still, individual survival could hardly be optional in this sense: Any way of life presupposes that individual survival is important (even though a virtuous person might sometimes risk his or her life, or perhaps even intentionally end it in special circumstances). What about the good functioning of one’s social group? It is hard to see how a person 64

Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 215. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin, 2d ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999), 1119a14. 66 See Foot, Natural Goodness, 49; and Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 58. 67 See Foot, Natural Goodness, 42; and Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 215. 65

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who is kind, charitable, and just could fail to have this as an end, and both Foot and Hursthouse clearly think that this end is not optional in the way that reproduction is. This reveals a striking asymmetry in their account. They are both fond of saying that, even as there is something wrong with a “free-riding wolf” that enjoys the benefits of the hunt without participating in it, so there is something wrong with a human being who is not charitable or just.68 They also think there is something wrong with animals that do not reproduce,69 but they do not say in this case that likewise there is something wrong with human beings who choose not to reproduce. Hence, in the determination of the virtues, our natural ends as social animals are appealed to in a highly selective way. What determines the selection, pretty clearly, is an assumed ethical outlook according to which everyone is expected to be charitable and just in some respects (at least) in the sense of promoting the well-being of one’s social group, but not everyone is expected to be temperate in the sense of sometimes engaging in sexual intercourse and reproducing. When we combine this result with the earlier conclusion concerning Moral Universalism, we can see that the Teleological Framework is doing rather little work in providing a rationale for the virtues. In particular, the two ends that are other-regarding —continuance of the species, and the well-being of the social group —significantly underdetermine, if they do not undermine, virtues such as temperance, charity, and justice that are understood to relate to these ends. The Teleological Framework is not the substantial constraint Hursthouse claims it is. A straightforward application of the Teleological Criterion would suggest that virtuous human beings would have character traits that (among other things) lead them to reproduce, raise children, and promote the interests of their own social group. If we think (as many, including Foot and Hursthouse, do) that virtuous persons need not conceive and raise children, and should be concerned about human beings well beyond their social group, then we are relying on considerations that have no basis in the Teleological Framework. This is not an isolated point: it is a persistent feature of Hursthouse’s approach. Here, briefly, is a final example. Hursthouse says that in situations in which meat is produced by factory farming and is not necessary for survival, the virtuous would be vegetarians because eating meat would be callous and cruel (among other things) in light of the suffering of nonhuman animals raised for food.70 Elsewhere, she says that “vegetarianism is required” in many circumstances by the “virtues of temperance 68 See Foot, Natural Goodness, 16; and Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 196. Hursthouse says that a virtuous contemplative need not live a life that is social (see ibid., 228), but that is different from having the good functioning of one’s social group as an end, as a charitable person presumably does. 69 See Foot, Natural Goodness, 29–30; and Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 200. 70 See Hursthouse, “Applying Virtue Ethics,” 141–43.

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and compassion.” 71 There is no reference to the Teleological Criterion in arguments for these claims, and, indeed, there appears to be no connection at all between these vices and virtues, taken to have this implication (concern for the suffering of nonhuman animals), and the four ends, which make no reference to nonhuman animals. Hursthouse says that her argument relies on an “ordinary understanding” of these virtue and vice terms. But this only brings out the significant gap between the very thin sense of the virtues that plausibly could be sustained by the Teleological Criterion and the very thick sense that is assumed in particular discussions such as this. V. Conclusion: Minimal Naturalism We need not suppose, in light of this critique, that the facts of human nature adduced by Foot and Hursthouse are irrelevant to our ethical outlook. But their relevance is much more limited and indirect than Foot and Hursthouse envision. There are clearly some facts about us, rooted in our animal nature and our circumstances in the physical world, as well as in our capacity for rational reflection, that are important for ethical deliberation. For example, there are facts about our basic needs and vulnerabilities (physical and mental), our interdependence (on one another as well as on our physical environment), our tendencies toward conflict and capacities for cooperation, our sexuality, reproduction, and development from birth to maturity, and our forms of social relations and kinds of enjoyments. Some of these facts pertain to virtually every human being. In other cases, the relevant facts concern ranges of “typical” needs, capacities, and the like. At some elementary level, these facts are obvious and virtually beyond controversy. No one would deny that human beings need to eat and are vulnerable to a variety of physical ailments. Of course, ethical reflection requires a great deal more detail than this, and, in more specific accounts, controversies are likely to ensue. However, this need not mean that there are no relevant facts about which people disagree nor that there is no prospect of a more or less objective understanding of these facts. These facts about human nature sometimes have great ethical significance. For example, the need for nutrition is a presupposition of ethical issues concerning hunger. To a large extent, however, the importance of such facts is to help give shape to the ethical issues that confront us. As such, in some ways these facts do constrain what acceptable resolutions to these issues could be like. An adequate ethical theory needs to take into account the facts of human nature that give rise to our ethical concerns. To this extent, an adequate ethical theory needs to be, as we might put it, 71 Hursthouse, “Virtue Ethics vs. Rule-Consequentialism,” 48. Cf. Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 227.

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minimally naturalistic. This is not to say that every theory currently on offer adequately meets this criterion. Nonetheless, even Kant —who might be thought problematic in this regard —accepts the criterion (on the evidence of discussions in The Metaphysics of Morals), though his success in properly applying it is rather mixed.72 One of the dangers of even this minimal naturalism is that there is a strong propensity to assign to various purported features of human beings the status of “natural,” with the suggestion that what is natural is fixed or part of an order we must respect, when in fact beliefs about the features in question reflect mere convention or prejudice. Appeals to nature have an unfortunate history of disguising, for example, an unreflective acceptance of the status quo, or a complacent acquiescence to the thought that we human beings are too limited or weak or sinful to live up to ethical demands or aspirations that we might otherwise have good reason to accept. There is need to take into account what really are facts of human nature, but there is also need to exercise great care in ascertaining just what these facts are. Minimal naturalism is but one fallible element in ethical reflection.73 The proponents of NAEN obviously aim to be minimally naturalistic, and to this extent their efforts are to be applauded. But in their claim that there are teleological features of human nature that significantly constrain what the virtues are, their ambitions clearly go beyond minimal naturalism. Though Foot and Hursthouse allow for considerable diversity among virtuous agents, they both think that the teleological features they identify establish rather definite contours for the virtuous life. This is certainly the main purport of Hursthouse’s Teleological Criterion. In this they have the precedent of Aristotle, whose function argument is evident in the not-too-distant background of their discussions.74 But this precedent has little inherent weight. In view of the issues I have raised here, those attracted to a virtue theory, even one that is Aristotelian in some familiar respects, are not well-advised to follow Aristotle’s naturalism beyond what minimal naturalism implies. The main problem is not that Aristotle relies on an outmoded teleological biology that has been replaced by evolutionary biology. The difficulty is that the relevant facts of human nature are too sparse, and the diversity and richness of actual ethical practices are too substantial, for us to suppose that an understanding of 72 For example, Kant refers to “our need to be loved (helped in case of need) by others” in an argument for the conclusion that “the happiness of others is . . . an end that is also a duty.” See Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 393 (standard Prussian Academy pagination). 73 In some respects, though not all, minimal naturalism is closer to what Julia Annas calls, somewhat oddly, “a stronger form of naturalism” in Annas, “Virtue Ethics: What Kind of Naturalism?” in Stephen M. Gardiner, ed., Virtue Ethics, Old and New (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 22–29. 74 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I.7. The function argument purports to establish that the human good is a life of virtue on the basis of the fact that the distinctive function (ergon) of the human species is to live in accordance with reason.

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these facts could do the main work, and oftentimes even significant work, in providing an objective rationale for one specific ethical outlook. The concerns raised by Moral Universalism might be, and have been, addressed in a variety of ways. I have argued that the Teleological Criterion is unhelpful in addressing these concerns and that it provides little support for Foot’s and Hursthouse’s own understanding of virtues such as charity and justice. The claim that human beings are social animals no doubt expresses a biological truth, but this truth is too blunt an instrument to provide an effective criterion for understanding the virtues. Hursthouse has suggested that she would give up her naturalism before she would give up her understanding of the virtues.75 Since her understanding of the virtues is generally more sound than her version of naturalism, she would be better off seeking a different approach to justifying the virtues. What, then, is the alternative? A virtue theory that draws on Aristotle — for example, by emphasizing his understanding of character, happiness, emotions, friendship, and the like —might be compatible with a number of metaethical outlooks (though probably not all). Insofar as proponents of such a position are committed to rejecting non-objective accounts of morality, as Foot and Hursthouse are, such proponents might turn in the direction of intuitionism, or perhaps a reflective-equilibrium account, and make their case for objectivity on those grounds. Some of Hursthouse’s comments on the Neurathian model might be understood in these terms. A different approach would be to follow Aristotle in important respects, but abandon the claim that the basic commitments of a virtuous agent admit of objective justification. Perhaps a form of relativism could be embraced instead. Yet another approach would be to combine an objective account with some relativist elements, as Foot herself, many years ago, suggested might be possible.76 Whatever approach is taken, many of the purported advantages of an Aristotelian virtue theory might well be retained without any appeal to naturalism in the form of the Teleological Criterion or a close approximation of it. Philosophy, Fordham University 75 See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 211; and Hursthouse, “Virtue Ethics vs. RuleConsequentialism,” 52. In the article, a response to criticism of the book, Hursthouse appears to downplay and modify the importance of the Teleological Criterion. She continues to be impressed by the purported similarities between ethical evaluations and evaluations of social animals. But she says that, in view of her Neurathian outlook, the Teleological Criterion “is ‘justificatory’ only in a pretty thin sense” (“Virtue Ethics vs. Rule-Consequentialism,” 50), and that “it would be better to think of it as an explanatory, in contrast to a justificatory,” principle (ibid., 52). In the book, the criterion is clearly offered as the central element in a justification project (see On Virtue Ethics, 164, 166, 193–94). 76 See Foot, “Morality and Art” (1970), and “Moral Relativism” (1979), reprinted in her Moral Dilemmas, 5–19, 20–36. In the introduction to this volume, Foot said she was reprinting these essays “only hesitantly” in view of her current acceptance of NAEN (ibid., 2). Cf. Foot, Natural Goodness, 23–24. In this connection, see David B. Wong, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), esp. chap. 2.

THE IMPORTANCE OF METAPHYSICAL REALISM FOR ETHICAL KNOWLEDGE* By Douglas B. Rasmussen Kant’s glory . . . is to say that the very fact that we cannot separate our own conceptual contribution from what is “objectively there” is not a disaster. . . . Similarly . . . Kant rejects the idea that we have something analogous to the medieval “rational intuition” with respect to moral questions. And again he argues that this is no disaster, that on the contrary it is a Good Thing. The whole Kantian strategy . . . is to celebrate the loss of essences. . . . —Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism The fundamental reason that I myself stick to the idea that there are right and wrong moral judgments and better and worse moral outlooks . . . is not a metaphysical one. The reason is simply that that is the way that we —and I include myself in this “we” —talk and think, and also the way that we are going to go on talking and thinking. —Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy What do you mean, “We’re” in trouble? —Indian scout to General Custer I. Introduction: Essentialism without Realism Recent works in ethics evidence a resurgence in the belief that an appeal to human nature is crucial for an understanding of the central components of the moral life.1 This resurgence represents in many cases a heightened appreciation for the wisdom of the Aristotelian tradition and that * This essay has benefited from the helpful suggestions of Douglas J. Den Uyl, Harry Dolan, David Gordon, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Ellen Paul, Tibor R. Machan, Jan Narveson, and the other contributors to this volume. 1 I have the following works in mind: Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Douglas J. Den Uyl, The Virtue of Prudence (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001); Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1999); Anthony Lisska, Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Michael Thompson, “The Representation of Life,” in Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn, eds., Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 247–96; and Warren Quinn, Morality and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. chap. 11.

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tradition’s view that there is not in all cases some great ontological divide between what is and what is valuable. Particularly, there has been the growing realization that such a divide need not exist if one’s ontology affords a place for some form of natural teleology 2 and essentialism.3 Yet to see the importance of natural teleology and essentialism for dealing with the question of whether there is a basis in the “is” for grounding an “ought,” it is necessary to look at this issue from the context of ontological and epistemological realism.4 Indeed, the entire debate between those who hold that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the way things are and what ought to be, and those who do not, only has a point if this debate is ultimately about (1) the fundamental character of reality —most importantly, human nature —and (2) our ability to know it. It is then for these reasons most important to consider the foundations of an argument that is antithetical to the Aristotelian tradition and holds not merely that ontological and epistemological realism are unnecessary for ethical knowledge but that their downright rejection is required if the so-called divide between what is and what is valuable is to be avoided. Martha C. Nussbaum illustrates this argument most vividly in her advocacy of what she calls “internalist” essentialism.5 This version of essentialism rejects the claim that “there is some determinate way the 2 Natural teleology holds that for at least some class of entities, usually living ones, the natures of those entities are also those entities’ ends or functions. Though natural teleology is often thought of as requiring a worldview in which the natures of things are seen as reflecting the will of a deity, this need not be so. As Michael Thompson notes, “I think we are very far from the category of intention or psychical teleology. . . . Natural-teleological judgements may . . . be said to organize the elements of a natural history: they articulate the relations of dependence among the various elements and aspects and phases of a given kind of life. . . . [E]ven if the Divine Mind were to bring a certain life-form into being ‘with a view to’ securing an abundance of pink fur along the shores of the Monongahela, this would have no effect on the natural-teleological description of that form of life.” Thompson, “The Representation of Life,” 293–94. See also Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature,” Social Philosophy and Policy 16, no. 1 (1999): 1–43, esp. Section V. 3 In its most general sense, essentialism holds that to be is to be something, and thus that there is something about a thing without which that thing would neither exist nor be that thing. See the works cited in notes 115 and 121 below. 4 Ontological realism holds that there are beings that exist and are what they are independent of and apart from our cognition; epistemological realism holds that we can come to know, though not without great difficulty, both the existence and nature of these beings. See Roger Trigg, Reality at Risk: A Defense of Realism in Philosophy and the Sciences (Sussex: Harvester Press; and Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1980), for a discussion of these views. 5 Martha C. Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism,” Political Theory 20, no. 2 (May 1992): 202–46. Nussbaum claims that her rejection of ontological and epistemological realism has its origins in Aristotle’s understanding of “appearances.” She claims that “we can have truth only inside the circle of the appearances, because only there can we communicate, even refer, at all.” Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 257. Christopher Long notes, however, that Nussbaum fails to do justice to Aristotle’s view: “Aristotle operates with a naturalistic conception of the relationship between being and language that allows him to recognize that our very speaking about beings reveals something of the nature of these beings themselves.” Long, “Saving Ta Legomena: Aristotle and the History of Philosophy,” The Review of Metaphysics 60, no. 2 (December 2006): 251–52.

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world is apart from the interpretive workings of the cognitive faculties of living beings,” 6 and, more particularly, it rejects the claim that the nature or essence of a human being is “part of the independent furniture of the universe.” 7 Instead, an internalist essentialism holds that a deep examination of human history and human cognition from within . . . reveals a more or less determinate account of the human being, one that divides essential from accidental properties. . . . Separating these two groups of properties requires an evaluative inquiry: for we must ask, which things are so important that we will not count a life as a human life without them? Such an evaluative inquiry into what is deepest and most indispensable in our lives need not presuppose an external metaphysical foundation, clearly: it can be a way of looking at ourselves, asking what we really think about ourselves and what holds our history together.8 In other words, an internalist essentialism is an essentialism without realism; that is to say, it does not make the ontological claim that things are what they are independent of and apart from how people think about or interact with them. Part of Nussbaum’s motivation for rejecting the realist ontological claim is tied to her acceptance of the now common, and ultimately Kantian, view that a realist epistemological claim —namely, that people can know the character of things as they really are or, as Nussbaum puts it, the “real structure as it is in itself” —is not sustainable.9 There is no access to reality independent of human cognitive activity or apart from human history and interpretation (that is, without the use of conceptual systems), and since this is so, “the hope for a pure unmediated account of our human essence as it is in itself . . . is no hope at all but a deep confusion.” 10 Of course, Nussbaum’s plan is not to throw in the essentialist towel and give up the fight to the proponents of extreme relativism or subjectivism.11 She is against those who would say there are no norms for defending an account of what a human being essentially is. Nonetheless, her tack is to defend internalist essentialism without recourse to either realist ontological or realist epistemological claims; the essentialism she seeks to defend is, as she puts it, an essentialism without “metaphysical realism.” 6

Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice,” 206. Ibid. 8 Ibid., 207–8. 9 Ibid., 206. 10 Ibid., 207. 11 Ibid., 212. 7

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Once we rid ourselves of thinking that we need metaphysical realism and its illusory promise of providing some transcendent grounding for our evaluative judgments, Nussbaum thinks that we can get on with the business of reasoning in which we are already engaged. “We have everything that we always had all along: the exchange of reasons and arguments by human beings within history, in which, for reasons that are historical and human but not the worse for that, we hold some things to be good and others bad, some arguments to be sound and others not sound.” 12 In support of her thesis, she appeals to Hilary Putnam’s argument that the demise of metaphysical realism may even raise the cognitive status of ethical evaluation.13 Nussbaum states: For the metaphysical realist frequently made a sharp distinction between fact and value, believing that truth of the sort the realist is after is available in the scientific realm but not in the realm of value. Bringing science inside human history makes what we already believed to be in there look better, not worse —because its claims are no longer contrasted sharply with claims that look “harder” and more “factual.” Thus, the polarity between scientific fact and subjective ethical values on which much of neoclassical economics rests is called into question by the collapse of realism —from the side of science, to be sure, but this reopens the whole question of the relationship between ethics and science and makes it possible to argue, as Putnam does, that ethics is no worse off than any science.14 Thus, not only is metaphysical realism unnecessary for explaining which accounts of human nature are better than others, but the demise of metaphysical realism, as argued by Putnam, provides an avenue by which the fact/value dichotomy can be overcome and, in turn, another way of understanding ethical evaluations. Indeed, there is the promise of a better means of defending the cognitive status of such evaluations than what metaphysical realism affords. In this essay, I plan to consider whether the alleged demise of metaphysical realism actually does provide a better way of defending the cognitive status of ethical judgments. It will be my contention that the rejection of a realist ontology and epistemology does not help to establish the claim that ethical knowledge is possible. More specifically, I will argue 12

Ibid., 212–13. Nussbaum also mentions Donald Davidson, W. V. O. Quine, and Nelson Goodman as critics of metaphysical realism. I will not be considering these thinkers because, for the most part, they have not used their criticisms of metaphysical realism as a basis upon which to build an account of ethical knowledge. 14 Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice,” 213–14. 13

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that Putnam’s argument does not succeed in making a case for ethical knowledge. In fact, his account of the procedures by which our valuations are warranted ultimately begs the question in a number of crucial ways. Moreover, his account prejudices the moral and political discussion in certain ideological respects. Finally, though Putnam has apparently modified to some extent his approach to the issue of realism in recent years,15 I will suggest that these modifications are not fundamental and do not help to advance the case for ethical knowledge, and that ultimately Nussbaum’s use of Putnam’s argument works against the revival of Aristotelianism in contemporary ethics. I will proceed as follows. In Section II, I will consider the essentials of Putnam’s argument. This will involve examining his reasons for rejecting metaphysical realism and espousing conceptual relativism, his view of truth and objectivity, and, most importantly, his account of how values become objective or valuable through a procedure that makes full use of human intelligence or, as he also describes it, by an appeal to the criteria of “idealized inquiry.” In Section III, I will examine whether the criteria of idealized inquiry do indeed provided a basis for ethical knowledge. Here I will begin by considering whether Putnam’s account of idealized inquiry achieves his ultimate political goal (namely, showing that a social-democratic political/legal order is the precondition for the full use of human intelligence), or whether a classicalliberal political/legal order might instead be necessary for the full use of human intelligence. This question will also involve the issue of whether a classical-liberal order might better respect the autonomy of persons than a social-democratic one. My point will be simply that the criteria of idealized inquiry fail to provide a way for choosing between these two opposed forms of political order. I will next consider whether Putnam’s account of idealized inquiry packs into its criteria assumptions about ethics and human nature that are very controversial and whether these criteria can, without deeper claims about human nature, withstand a series of basic objections. Overall, the aim of Section III will be to indicate that Putnam cannot succeed in making a case for ethical knowledge without returning to an account of human nature that involves the very viewpoint he has rejected —that is, metaphysical realism. In Section IV, I will consider, but only in a limited manner, whether Putnam’s arguments for the demise of metaphysical realism are in fact compelling and whether they might not rest on basic ambiguities in his thought. Finally, in Section V, I offer my overall evaluation of Putnam’s argument. 15 In part 1 (“Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind”) of Hilary Putnam, The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), Putnam discusses his earlier mistakes regarding realism, but he still maintains his rejection of metaphysical realism. Part 1 first appeared in The Journal of Philosophy 91, no. 9 (September 1994): 445–517.

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II. Finding Facts in a World of Values A. Metaphysical realism and conceptual relativity Hilary Putnam does not think that metaphysical realism is false. Rather, he thinks it is unintelligible,16 and he thinks this is so because he believes that it makes no sense to claim to know reality as it is “in itself.” 17 The reason this makes no sense is that “we have no access to unconceptualized reality.” 18 Furthermore, attempts to get a precise or clear formulation of metaphysical realism do not succeed, for when we try to do so, such formulations “become compatible with strong forms of ‘antirealism.’ ” 19 Thus, they do not succeed “because there is no real content there to be captured.” 20 Putnam’s overall strategy in dealing with metaphysical realism is one of trying to provide a reductio ad absurdum by showing that when applied to various issues metaphysical realism leads to antinomies. Indeed, his bottom-line position is a version of conceptual relativism that is a mitigated form of Kantianism. Putnam writes: If objects are, at least when you get small enough, or large enough, or theoretical enough, theory-dependent, then the whole idea of truth’s being defined or explained in terms of a “correspondence” between items in a language and items in a fixed theory-independent reality has to be given up. The picture I propose instead is not the picture of Kant’s transcendental idealism, but it is certainly related to it. It is the picture that truth comes to no more than idealized rational acceptability. 21 Putnam’s picture of truth as nothing more than idealized rational acceptability —as well as his adjustments 22 to this picture —will be considered later, but for now, we need to concentrate on his conceptual relativism. Putnam ultimately holds that referring to something is only accomplished internally through a system of practices —that is, a conceptual 16 Hilary Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” in James Conant, ed., Words and Life (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1994), 300. 17 Ibid., 302. 18 Ibid., 297. 19 Ibid., 303. 20 Ibid. 21 Hilary Putnam, “A Defense of Internal Realism,” in James Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1990), 41 (emphasis added). 22 Putnam has more recently qualified this picture. He no longer defines truth as warranted assertibility. Rather, he does not think that a definition of truth is necessary, though he claims that he can examine the concept of truth in relation to other semantic and epistemological concepts. See Putnam, The Threefold Cord, part 1, and Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” in Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 107.

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scheme. It is only within a system of practices that a reference is fixed or an object described.23 The ability to use signs in the right ways in the right circumstances consists in following the practices of a community of users. For example, using “horse” but not “cat” to refer to horses, or saying “There is a brown bear” but not “There is a bearish brown,” is only possible and situationally appropriate within a conceptual scheme. Further, to employ an example 24 Putnam often uses to illustrate his conceptual relativity,25 consider a world with these objects: x1 ; x2 ; and x3 . Do three objects exist in this world or do seven (x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x1 + x2 ; x1 + x3 ; x2 + x3 ; x1 + x2 + x3 ) exist? For Putnam, such a question is, apart from a system of practices regarding the use of the word “exist,” silly. He writes: Signs do not intrinsically correspond to objects, independently of how those signs are employed and by whom. But a sign that is actually employed in a particular way by a community of users can correspond to particular objects within the conceptual scheme of those users. “Objects” do not exist independently of conceptual schemes. We cut up the world into objects when we introduce one or another scheme of description. Since the objects and signs are alike internal to the scheme of description, it is possible to say what matches what.26 Reality itself does not fix the reference to any term, even terms such as “reality” and “exist.” There are no metaphysically privileged references or descriptions. All references and descriptions are context-sensitive and interest-relative. They occur only in a given human situation and relative to our aims or goals. As Putnam states in his Carus Lectures, “the trail of the human serpent is over all.” 27 Accordingly, the problem of how mind or language “hooks on to the world,” which is how Putnam describes the problem of intentionality, 23 Contrary to some deconstructionists, Putnam does not see his view as threatened by some regress of interpretation, because he thinks, with Wittgenstein, that we can follow a rule without first having an interpretation attached to it. See Hilary Putnam, “Skepticism about Enlightenment,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), 120. 24 This example does not note some of the qualifications Putnam usually makes, but this does not affect its usefulness here. See Hilary Putnam, “A Defense of Conceptual Relativity,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 38–40. 25 This also involves the issue of conceptual pluralism. Putnam notes: “The whole idea that the world dictates a unique ‘true’ way of dividing the world into objects, situations, properties, etc. is a piece of philosophical parochialism. But just that parochialism is and always has been behind the subject called Ontology.” Ibid., 51. 26 Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 52 (emphasis in original). 27 Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism: The Paul Carus Lectures (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987), 16.

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only makes sense for him within a system of practices.28 It is not that one appeals to the intentional character of our signs or concepts to explain how it is that our practices are able to refer to or describe some independently existing reality. Indeed, Putnam thinks such a view is part of what he calls the “magical theory of reference,” where “noetic rays” connect signs to referents.29 Rather, our practices are fundamental.30 They are what make talk about such things as “reference” and “reality” intelligible in the first place. Thus, the question of how thought or language hooks on to the world, if understood as some underlying and transcendent metaphysical problem, is not genuine and is simply something we should get over. Despite some of his own formulations of his position, Putnam does not hold that references, descriptions, and quantifications are all merely different ways of providing form or structure to an independently existing reality. Putnam rejects the cookie-cutter metaphor in which our conceptual contribution gives form or structure to the “dough,” the independently existing reality. The cookie-cutter metaphor assumes that, apart from our conceptual schemes, we can speak of the dough that “exists,” but this is the very thing that Putnam’s conceptual relativity denies. “One person’s ‘existence’ claim may be another person’s something else.” 31 We not only cannot say what exists or what the facts are independent of our conceptual choices, we cannot even speak of a reality to which we give form or structure. As I have noted, for Putnam our conceptual choices or practices are fundamental. Perhaps the best statement, then, of what Putnam takes to be the central and basic problem with metaphysical realism is as follows: What is wrong with the notion of objects existing “independently” of conceptual schemes is that there are no standards for the use of even logical notions apart from conceptual choices. . . . The alternative to this idea is not the view that, in some inconceivable way, it’s all just language. We can and should insist that some facts are there to be discovered and not legislated by us. But this is something to be said when one has adopted a way of speaking, a language, a “conceptual scheme.” To talk of “facts” without specifying the language to be used is to talk of nothing; the word “fact” no more has its use fixed by Reality Itself than does the word “exist” or the word “object.” 32 28

Hilary Putnam, “Aristotle after Wittgenstein,” in Conant, ed., Words and Life, 63. Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, 51. 30 For an examination of this claim, see Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Realism, Intentionality, and the Nature of Logical Relations,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 66 (1992): 267–77. See also Laird Addis, Natural Signs: A Theory of Intentionality (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989), 87–94. 31 Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism, 34. 32 Ibid., 35–36 (emphasis in original). 29

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There is no way to understand reference as pertaining to “reality” if that term means something that is transtheoretic/transconceptual/ translinguistic.33 Putnam does not hold, however, that one cannot be a realist; indeed, he differentiates himself from what he calls Richard Rorty’s “extreme linguistic idealism which teeters on the edge of solipsism.” 34 But on Putnam’s view, one must be a realist who understands that referring to realities that are what they are independent of the practices that constitute our conceptual schemes simply makes no sense.35 Ultimately, it is Putnam’s aim to show how it is possible to develop a “deliberate naïveté” or return to what William James called “natural realism.” 36 Putnam understands this view as common-sense realism 37 and as being part of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s view that ordinary language provides a safe-haven from the raging conflicts over scientific and ontological commitments. As a result, Putnam thinks, contrary to Rorty, that there is a metaphysically innocent way of saying that our words represent things outside themselves.38 Yet, for Putnam, the journey from “the familiar to the familiar,” 39 which he regards as the true path of philosophy, still involves conceptual relativity, and it requires that we understand the meaning of “truth” in a manner that in no way involves a commitment to metaphysical realism. B. Conceptual relativity and getting it right Putnam forthrightly states that “conceptual relativity . . . holds that the question as to which . . . ways of using ‘exist’ (and ‘individual,’ ‘object,’ etc.) is right is one that the meanings of the words in natural language, that is the language that we all speak and cannot avoid speaking every day, simply leave open.” 40 Such conceptual relativity does indeed mean that the right way of using terms is a matter of convention. Yet this is not 33 Putnam also notes that there is “the common philosophical error of supposing that the term reality must refer to a single superthing instead of looking at the ways in which we endlessly negotiate —and are forced to renegotiate —our notion of reality as our language and our life develop.” Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses,” 9 (emphasis in original). 34 Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” 306. See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). 35 Putnam initially described this form of realism as “internal realism,” but he has more recently described it as “pragmatic realism” or “realism with a small ‘r.’ ” See his “Reply to Gary Ebbs,” in The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam, Philosophical Topics 20, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 353. 36 Putnam, “Realism without Absolutes,” in Conant, ed., Words and Life, 284. 37 Putnam states that there is “common-sense realism: the realism that says that mountains and stars are not created by language and thought, and yet can be described by language and thought. . . . [The] metaphysical kind of realism is ‘incoherent.’ ” Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” 303. 38 Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” 101. 39 Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” 300. He also references John Wisdom, “Metaphysics and Verification,” Mind 47, no. 188 (October 1938): 452–98. 40 Putnam, “A Defense of Conceptual Relativity,” 43 (emphasis in original).

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mere convention. When it comes to characterizing our knowledge of what is the situationally appropriate use of a term, it would be a mistake to see Putnam as claiming that we can analytically discern the factual from the conventional. Rather, what is factual is relative to certain alternatives, and what is conventional is relative to certain others —and these alternatives change. There are no unadulterated factual or conventional components of our knowledge.41 Putnam also understands “convention” to be a set of practices that are a response to problems that require a solution. The alternatives arise because of the problems. Just as the problems we face can vary —and thus the alternatives as well —the contrast in our account of what is factual and what is conventional in our knowledge can vary. But the aim of our conventions remains one of meeting some difficulty or fulfilling some goal. Just as the convention to drive on the right-hand side of the road in the United States and the convention to drive on the left in the United Kingdom are solutions to a coordination problem, so are the conventions that determine what is the appropriate use of terms. Nevertheless, this does not mean for Putnam that it is necessary to deny “that truth genuinely depends on the behavior of things distant from the speaker. . . . [Still, it is necessary to acknowledge that] the nature of the dependence changes as the kinds of language games we invent change.” 42 Indeed, he claims that we have practices of interpretation. Those practices may be contextsensitive and interest-relative, but there is, given enough context — given, as Wittgenstein says, the language in place —such a thing as getting it right or getting it wrong. There may be some indeterminacy of translation but it isn’t a case of “anything goes.” 43 For Putnam there is, then, a notion of truth, or, as he prefers, of “getting it right,” that can be used to protect knowledge from the threats of extreme skepticism and relativism. Putnam holds that just as Quine showed that the whole idea of classifying every statement as either “factual” or “conventional” is a hopeless confusion,44 the same holds true for the fact/value dichotomy. Values are as much a part of the fabric of “facts” as conventions are, and they are just as ineradicable. It is impossible to determine what the facts are apart from an appeal to epistemic values. There is no way of telling what the facts are or what is true apart from such values as coherence, simplicity, predictive 41

Ibid., 45. Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” 309. 43 Hilary Putnam, “The Craving for Objectivity,” in Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face, 122 (emphasis in original). 44 W. V. O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 20–46. 42

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efficacy, preservation of past doctrines, beauty, naturalness, and so on.45 Our sense-experience does not provide us with some immediate access to reality but rather only becomes informative through our employment of conceptual schemes, and since these schemes are themselves practices that we adopt in order to find solutions to problems, they already carry these values with them. These values are presupposed by the very possibility of our learning from experience and acting in the ways in which we do. As Putnam states: Without the cognitive values of coherence, simplicity, and instrumental efficacy we would have no world of facts, not even facts about what is so relative to what. And these cognitive values . . . are simply part of our holistic conception of human flourishing.46 Thus, the fundamental question is not “How do we find values in a world of facts?” Rather, it is “How do we find facts in a world of values?” 47 It is important to understand, however, that Putnam is not claiming to offer merely an instrumental justification of these epistemic values. Instead, the very contention that we will, on the whole, come closer to truth about the world by choosing theories that exhibit these epistemic values than we would by simply relying, for example, on the authority of some tradition is itself guided by these values. Putnam admits that this is circular justification, but he thinks that we should make the most of it. To say that these epistemic values enable us to more correctly describe the world than any alternative set of epistemic values “is something we see through the lenses of those very values. It does not mean that those values admit an ‘external’ justification.” 48 Those values are part of the practices by which we determine what is rational or warranted, and this is where the search for justification ends. Of course, Putnam is arguing that we need to free ourselves from our fixation with a powerful belief —namely, the idea that objectivity rests 45 Hilary Putnam, “The Entanglement of Fact and Value,” in Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, 31; and Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” in Conant, ed., Words and Life, 154. 46 Hilary Putnam, “Beyond the Fact/Value Dichotomy,” in Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face, 139 (emphasis in original). 47 Putnam does not deny that one can distinguish between facts and values; rather, he denies that there is some metaphysical divide between them. See Putnam, “The Empiricist Background,” in Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, 19. Further, he states: “I . . . find it convenient to use the term valuings as a general term for value judgments of every sort. . . . [M]y position isn’t simply that ‘valuings are not descriptions’; my position is that some valuings, in fact, some ethical valuings, are descriptions (though not of anything ‘nonnatural’), and some valuings are not descriptions. Valuings do not contrast simply with descriptions; there is an overlap, in my view, between the class of descriptions and the class of valuings.” Putnam, “‘Ontology’: An Obituary,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 74 (emphasis in original). 48 Putnam, “The Entanglement of Fact and Value,” 33 (emphasis in original).

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fundamentally on a correspondence with some metaphysical reality. To counter this picture of objectivity and to help us overcome our craving for some sort of ontological resting point, he notes Quine’s argument that mathematics would be no less successful if we did not interact with the abstract entities some philosophers posit to account for its success.49 Putnam claims that the justification for accepting the truth of set theory rests not on its correspondence with some metaphysical reality but in its indispensability to mathematics, and since mathematics is one of the paradigms of knowledge, metaphysical worries about the existence of sets do not carry much weight. Thus, Putnam wants us to see that when the chips are down, what we need in order to continue our practices trumps the ontological concerns of “first philosophy.” Justification fundamentally amounts to continuing the practices that allow us to solve our problems. If we can only come to see that practice is primary in philosophy,50 then this realization will in turn help us to understand objectivity. As Putnam clearly states, it is time we stopped equating objectivity with description. There are many sorts of statements —bona fide statements, ones amenable to such terms as “correct,” “incorrect,” “true,” “false,” “warranted,” and “unwarranted” —that are not descriptions, but that are under rational control, governed by standards appropriate to their particular function and context.51 Once we free ourselves from our craving for an objectivity that requires correspondence to metaphysical objects, then we can come to see the indispensable role that epistemic values play in our pursuit of the truth. Putnam does differentiate ethical values from epistemic ones, but both types of values are part of the set of practices by which we determine what is “objective.” According to what Putnam calls “the pragmatist enlightenment,” 52 ethical values are part of the ways in which humans deal with problematic situations. These values are not concerned with some special problem that exists in splendid isolation apart from the rest of life’s problems. Rather, 49

Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” 153. Ibid., 154. Putnam does qualify this claim, however. He notes that the emphasis on practice does not mean that we should “get rid of metaphysics once and for all.” In fact, he states that “revisionary metaphysics is not always bad.” Ibid., 159–60. I will discuss the importance of this qualification in Sections III and IV. Yet it is important to realize that, for Putnam, “revisionary metaphysics” includes not only those metaphysical views that would overturn or replace our everyday practices and common-sense views, but also those metaphysical views that seek to explain such practices and views —that is, metaphysical views that attempt to offer something more primary than practice. 51 Putnam, “The Entanglement of Fact and Value,” 33 (emphasis in original). 52 Hilary Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 96. 50

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any human problem at all, insofar as it impacts our collective or individual welfare, is . . . “ethical” —but it may also be at the same time aesthetic, or logical, or scientific, or just about anything else; and if we solve a problem and cannot say, at the end of the day, whether it was an “ethical problem” in the conventional sense of that term, that is not at all a bad thing. Thinking of logic, as Dewey did, as the theory of inquiry and not as a branch of mathematics that happens to be taught in philosophy departments, and of ethics as the relation of inquiry to life —so the same book, e.g., Dewey’s Logic, viewed one way is a text in logic (or in epistemology, even if Dewey disliked the word) and viewed another way is a book about social ethics —is, I believe, the right way, indeed the only way, to open up the whole topic of ethics, to let the fresh air in. And that is an essential part of what “the pragmatist enlightenment” calls for.53 Thus, ethical values are for Putnam part of the process of inquiry, but he means “inquiry” in the widest sense of the term —namely, human dealings with problematical situations. Therefore, it is in the practices that constitute inquiry in this broad sense that we find ethical as well as epistemic values. The mutual interpenetration of facts and ethical values is shown, Putnam notes, in how many of our experiences are entangled with thick ethical concepts. For example, such concepts as “cruel,” “brave,” “generous,” “elegant,” “skillful,” “weak,” “vulgar,” and so on are counterexamples to the fact/value dichotomy. He argues that we cannot successfully divide their meaning into descriptive and prescriptive components. If we try, for example, to provide the “descriptive meaning component” of “cruel” without using “cruel” or a synonym, we find that we cannot do so.54 Alternatively, if we think that “brave” simply means “not afraid to risk life and limb,” then we would not be able to understand the distinction between foolhardiness and bravery.55 If we will but look to our actual experiences and not the world of sense data we inherited from the British empiricists, then we will find that value and normativity permeate our experiences. In answer to the question of whether we make or discover values, Putnam also follows what he understands as John Dewey’s view. Putnam states, “We make ways of dealing with problematical situations and we discover which ones are better and which worse.” 56 Understanding which ways are better and which ways are worse is not, however, a matter of simply consulting our experience for Putnam. Though our experience is 53

Ibid., 107 (emphasis in original). Putnam, “The Entanglement of Fact and Value,” 38. 55 Ibid., 39–40. 56 Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” 97. 54

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not “neutral” and comes to us “screaming with values,” 57 it would be an error to suppose “that merely being valued, as a matter of experiential fact, suffices to make something valuable.” 58 Putnam writes: Dewey’s answer to the question, “What makes something valuable as opposed to merely being valued?” in a word, is criticism. Objective value arises . . . from the criticism of our valuations. Valuations are incessant and inseparable from all our activities, including our “scientific” ones, but it is by intelligent reflection on our valuations, intelligent reflection of the kind Dewey calls “criticism,” that we conclude that some of them are warranted while others are unwarranted. (Philosophy, by the way, is described by Dewey as criticism of criticism!) 59 Putnam is aware, however, that with this response, he must now answer the further question: What are the criteria by which we decide that some valuations are warranted and some are unwarranted? Moreover, he is aware that he must do so in ways that do not require him to reintroduce metaphysical realism. C. Idealized rational acceptability and the democratization of inquiry Putnam continues to follow what he understands as Dewey’s view and distinguishes three parts of Dewey’s answer to the question of what warrants our valuations.60 First, it should be realized that we are never in a position of having to justify how we reason from an “is” to a most basic “ought,” because in judging the outcome of an inquiry we never come to it simply having a stock of factual judgments and no value judgments. We always bring many valuations that are not the specific object of dispute to bear on our judgment of the outcome of the inquiry. Warranting our valuations is like rebuilding a wooden ship at sea one plank at a time.61 We warrant our valuations by showing their ability to withstand criticism that arises from problems encountered, not by comparing them (either singly or wholly) 57

Ibid., 103. Ibid. 59 Ibid. (emphasis in original). 60 Ibid., 103–6. 61 Putnam would not want the “sea” in this analogy to be interpreted as a reality that exists apart from our conceptual practices —not even a Kantian “noumenal reality.” The sort of Kantianism that Putnam endorses considers metaphysical realism, even as a noumenal reality, unintelligible. See Putnam, “Model Theory and the ‘Factuality’ of Semantics,” in Conant, ed., Words and Life, 361–62. The ship analogy originates with Otto Neurath. See Otto Neurath, “Protocol Sentences” (trans. George Schick), in A. J. Ayer, ed., Logical Positivism (New York: The Free Press, 1959), 201. This essay first appeared in German as “Protokollsätze,” Erkenntnis 3 (1932/1933). 58

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to some metaphysical reality.62 The process of warranting is not free from the values that are inherent in the practices by which we have learned to solve our problems. Second, the authority of philosophy to judge the process of warranting valuations (that is, the authority of “criticism of criticism”) does not come from some store of philosophical knowledge or methods that provide a criterion or set of criteria. There is no appeal to metaphysical realities that provide standards for judging our valuations, no special access to what does and does not warrant our valuations. The authority philosophy does have, however, is the authority of intelligence. Third, what the authority of intelligence amounts to is what we have learned 63 about inquiry from the conduct of inquiry in general, and this applies to value inquiry in particular.64 What we have learned is to make full use of human intelligence, and this in turn establishes the makeup that inquiry must have if it is to determine what valuations are warranted. Thus, one warrants valuations by engaging in inquiry that meets the set of criteria that are the precondition for the full application of human intelligence. According to Putnam, to meet the criteria for the full employment of human intelligence, inquiry (1) must be a cooperative activity and not done in isolation. It must involve working together to actively intervene with and manipulate the environment in order to form and test ideas. This in turn involves trying different solutions to problems or at least considering ways of solving problems others have tried and reflecting on the consequences; (2) must treat its judgments as fallible —as open to being revised or falsified; (3) must respect autonomy, symmetric reciprocity, and follow principles that are much akin to those that characterize Jürgen Habermas’s “discourse ethics.” These principles are: (a) communicating honestly and authentically, trying to win by the force of the better argument and not by manipulation or involvement in relations of hierarchies of dependence; (b) not excluding persons affected by any proposed action from participating in the discussion; (c) not preventing the consideration of any proposal or the expression of any person’s attitudes, wishes, or needs; (d) neither assuming there will be no disputes over which valuations are warranted nor trying to eliminate all such disputes; 62

Problems, for Putnam, are part of the practices in which we are engaged. See Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” 89–108. 64 Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” 170–77. 63

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(e) keeping the communication going by not allowing coercion or violence or total refusal to discuss; and (4) must insist on applying the criteria noted in (1)–(3) to more and more institutions and relationships.65 For Putnam, as well as for Habermas, these criteria provide an account of idealized inquiry or rational acceptability that we have learned from the development of science, and thus they constitute the modern conception of rationality. Since facts and values are interdependent and interpenetrating, these criteria show us how to proceed in determining whether our judgments, be they of “fact” or of “value,” are warranted. Nonetheless, the criteria do so without any appeal to metaphysical realities. They are, rather, the norms that we have learned from our practices. Our ability to apply intelligence fully to solving human problems presupposes these norms. It should be emphasized that Putnam’s understanding of idealized rational acceptability differs from that of Habermas in two significant ways. First, Putnam does not, as he once did, regard truth as being defined as warranted assertibility under ideal conditions. He thinks that it is possible for the truth about some subject matter not to be verifiable even under such conditions.66 Putnam comes to this realization, however, not from any acceptance of some metaphysical definition of truth (in fact, he does not think a definition of truth is necessary) but rather from an understanding of the practices of science and common sense. He finds such a contingent relationship between truth and warranted assertibility “deeply imbedded in the world views of both science and common sense.” 67 Yet Putnam is also anxious to combat the idea “that truth can always transcend warranted assertibility under ideal (or good enough) conditions.” 68 He holds that idea to be as illicitly metaphysical as the ideas of metaphysical realism and insists, “Truth cannot be so radically non-epistemic.” 69 Thus, he does not accept the idea that the norms that characterize idealized rational acceptability are sufficient to determine the truth in every case, but he does think that these norms suffice when talking of familiar objects such as furniture in a room or when dealing with the subject matter of ethics and law. He writes: There is no reason to suppose that one cannot be what is called a “moral realist” in meta-ethics, that is, hold that some “value judg65 Ibid. See Jürgen Habermas, “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification,” in Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholson (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990), 43–115. 66 Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” 106–9. 67 Hilary Putnam, “Values and Norms,” in Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, 124. 68 Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” 107 (emphasis added). 69 Ibid., 108.

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ments” are true as a matter of objective fact, without holding that moral facts are or can be recognition transcendent facts. If something is a good solution to a problematical human situation, then part of the very notion of its being a good solution is that human beings can recognize that it is. We need not entertain the idea that something could be a good solution although human beings are in principle unable to recognize that it is. That sort of rampant Platonism is incoherent.70 For Putnam, truth in ethics and law does not transcend warranted assertibility under ideal (or “good enough”) conditions. Still, if the norms that characterize these ideal conditions are to work in ethics and law in determining (as well as we as fallible and limited human beings can expect) what is true, then another perspective is needed. This involves the second way in which Putnam’s understanding of idealized rational acceptability differs from Habermas’s understanding — namely, in Putnam’s employment of an Aristotelian perspective when it comes to understanding these norms. Putnam states that “in ethics we need both Aristotelian and Kantian insights.” 71 As a result, there is for Putnam neither a norm/value nor a reason/inclination dichotomy. He argues that it is impossible to understand the norms of idealized inquiry apart from valuations. The “‘maxims’ and ‘laws’ that we impose upon ourselves by universalizing them, themselves contain value terms, in particular the so-called ‘thick ethical words’ . . . such as ‘kind,’ ‘cruel,’ ‘impertinent,’ ‘sensitive,’ ‘insensitive,’ and so on.” 72 These terms are not neutral descriptions of mere natural psychological impulses but are a part of our attempts to achieve —and have our lives express —the goods, virtues, and intellectual skills that we take to be constitutive of human flourishing. These terms are the lenses of value concepts that give idealized inquiry a point. Accordingly, we need to see the entire process of inquiry as functioning within the context of the development of human capabilities. Thus, Putnam holds, contrary to Habermas, that our value judgments regarding goods and virtues are capable of being warranted. They must not be treated in a noncognitive manner if the norms of idealized inquiry are not to be empty. We need to employ the value concepts that are generated from our practices that make up the human activities of meeting opportunities and solving problems: Contrary to the Kantian picture, in our moral lives we cannot and do not get by with a vocabulary obtained by supplementing a starkly naturalistic vocabulary with a single moral notion (the notion needed 70

Ibid., 108–9 (emphasis in original). Putnam, “Values and Norms,” 134. 72 Ibid., 118. 71

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to indicate that one is “imposing the form of law on psychologically generated incentives,” say ought). Without our human manifold of values, there is no vocabulary for norms . . . to be stated in. 73 When it comes to making value judgments regarding the issues and problems that arise when one seeks an admirable and worthwhile life, if there is no such thing as a correct answer, then to what does the effort of trying to determine better reasons through idealized inquiry amount? Putnam’s answer to this question is ultimately “nothing,” for this effort would not belong to our practices of living. We would have neither reason nor motivation to be involved.74 Putnam does not assume that there is a single conception of human flourishing or that there might not be disputes about what ought to be done. Moreover, he does not see it as philosophy’s task to produce a “final” system of ethics or set of rules of conduct. He does think, however, that moral philosophy can participate in an examination and evaluation of what first-order rules should govern our conduct by subjecting our valuations to criticism. This requires, as I noted before, engaging in a process of inquiry that meets the norms that express what it is to make full use of human intelligence. That is to say, we need to examine our valuations according to the norms of idealized inquiry or rational acceptability. Such a process of inquiry also constitutes for Putnam “the democratization of inquiry.” The norms of such inquiry not only tell us what is necessary for warranting our valuations; they tell us what form of social life is necessary for the full application of human intelligence. Thus, if we understand “democracy” as social life that is organized in accordance with the norms of idealized inquiry, then “democracy is . . . the precondition for the full application of intelligence to the solution of human problems.” 75 Moreover, Putnam makes it quite clear that this sense of “democracy” is to be understood as both “deliberative” and “social.” Taking what he understands as Dewey’s position, Putnam holds that the citizens should do more than vote every so many years for legislators and other government officials. They should participate in the actual decisionmaking process.76 Further, Putnam holds that this process should issue in a social democracy:

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Ibid., 119 (emphasis in original). For a criticism of Habermas from a point of view that is more or less Aristotelian but does not assume the primacy of practice, see Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Political Legitimacy and Discourse Ethics,” International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (March 1992): 17–34. 75 Hilary Putnam, “A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy,” The Southern California Law Review 63 (1990): 1671. 76 Such direct participation does not require, however, that they refrain from calling upon experts to assist them in their decision-making. 74

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That our communities . . . should be social democracies follows from the fact that huge inequalities in wealth and power that we permit to exist effectively block the interests and complaints of the most oppressed from serious consideration, and thus prevent any serious attempt at the solution of such problems as the alleviation of stubborn poverty, or deeply entrenched unemployment, or the inferior educational opportunities afforded to the children most in need of education from ever getting off the ground.77 Finally, Putnam also makes it clear that a “liberal democracy” that provides the framework for the protection of “negative liberty” will not suffice, because it does not allow for “serious consideration” of the interests and needs of those with lesser wealth and power. He quotes Dewey at length to drive this point home. Here is the salient part of Dewey’s statement: The notion that men are equally free to act if only the same legal arrangements apply equally to all —irrespective of the differences in education, command of capital, and that control of the social environment which is furnished by the institution of property —is pure absurdity, as the facts have demonstrated. . . . This “free” action operates disastrously as far as the many are concerned. The only possible conclusion, both intellectually and practically, is that the attainment of freedom conceived as power to act in accord with choice depends upon positive and constructive changes in social arrangements.78 Trying to provide people with a political/legal order that merely protects their so-called negative liberty is not enough. Only a political/legal order that seeks to provide them with “positive liberty” is fundamentally consistent with a social system based on the demands of democratized inquiry. III. Questioning Idealized Inquiry In Section II, we learned that Putnam considers metaphysical realism unintelligible because there is no way to talk of what is real apart from a conceptual system. Further, we learned that on Putnam’s view conceptual 77

Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” 105. Putnam, “A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy,” 1696. Dewey also states: “Since actual, that is effective [as opposed to original or native or ‘natural’], rights and demands are products of interactions, and are not found in the original and isolated constitution of human nature, whether moral or psychological, mere elimination of obstructions is not enough. The latter merely liberate force and ability as that happens to be distributed by past accidents of history.” Ibid. The quotation is drawn from John Dewey, “Philosophies of Freedom,” in H. M. Kallen, ed., Freedom in the Modern World (New York: Coward-McCann, 1928), 249–50. 78

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systems carry with them both epistemic and ethical values, and it is by an appeal to these values that we determine what it is “to get things right.” In fact, it is by appeal to these values that we determine “what is real.” Regarding the question of whether we construct or discover values, Putnam follows Dewey in holding that “we make ways of dealing with problematical situations and we discover which ones are better and which worse.” 79 Nevertheless, it is ultimately by a set of procedures that make full use of human intelligence that we determine what values are indeed objective or valuable. It is by use of this set of procedures, which is called “idealized inquiry,” and not by reference to metaphysical reality (particularly not by reference to anything about what human beings are) that we determine what is true for the ethical and political/legal orders. The basic issue for this section, then, is whether this method of inquiry succeeds in determining what is true or whether, in order to defend its very criteria and make sense of itself, it must ultimately appeal to something beyond itself. I will proceed by raising a series of questions that begin at the political level, work down through normative ethics, and come finally to the very foundations of idealized inquiry. A. Whose freedom? Which way of expressing human intelligence? Putnam makes no bones about the political implications of his account of idealized inquiry; it requires a social-democratic political/legal order. Yet how does Putnam deal with the view that the process of democratic inquiry must itself be subject to strict limitation? How does he respond to the view that holds that since individuals are ends and not merely means, there is a moral side-constraint on the political/legal order which prohibits it from sacrificing or using individuals in order to achieve ends not of their own choosing? 80 Particularly, how does Putnam respond to Robert Nozick’s claim that whether it is done through taxation on wages or on wages over a certain amount, or through seizure of profits, or through there being a big social pot so that it’s not clear what’s coming from where and what’s going where, patterned principles of distributive justice involve appropriating the actions of other persons. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. If people force you to do certain work, or unrewarded work, for a certain period of time, they decide what you are to do and what purposes your work is to serve apart from your decisions. This process whereby they take this decision from you makes them a part-owner of you; it gives them a prop79 80

Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” 97. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 30–31.

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erty right in you. Just as having such partial control and power of decision, by right, over an animal or inanimate object would be to have a property right in it.81 Putnam accepts, of course, the notion that democratized inquiry should treat people as ends and not merely as means.82 Yet he considers Nozick’s use of that principle to be an example of a priori ethical argumentation that “prove[s] too much,” 83 because this argument requires that there be no welfare spending —that, for example, taxation cannot even be used to fund orphanages. Putnam states that Nozick’s position “contradicts the moral outlook of the whole Western tradition. . . . The idea that there are trade-offs between rights to property, protection of the poor and helpless, and other interests of the community has long been central to our moral practice.” 84 Thus, what is wrong with an argument such as Nozick’s is that it assumes that we can have moral knowledge of what ought to be done apart from the system of practices that have developed in response to the issues of living —be they individual or social issues. Further, such an argument assumes that instances of ethical decision-making call for final solutions to moral problems, as opposed to adjudications or readings of what needs to be done that are part of an ongoing process of a community of inquirers. Putnam thinks that ethical decision-making according to the norms of idealized democratic inquiry should be understood in terms of two metaphors —adjudication, which is taken from law, and reading, which is taken from interpreting a text —and he thinks that this communitarian process requires the rejection of an “absolute perspective” in ethics and an acceptance of openness and nonfinality.85 The problem with the arguments of such analytic philosophers as Nozick is that they are “curiously evasive or superficial about the relation of the premises of these arguments to the ideals and practices of any actual moral community.” 86 Thus, whether individuals have the right not to have their lives, resources, and actions used for or directed to purposes for which they have not consented is to be determined by the norms of the idealized inquiry process. The freedom to partake in this process is paramount for Putnam and overrides any claim (be it to negative liberty or anything else) that is not first subjected to this process; and since the freedom to partake in this process requires the positive liberty that a social democracy promotes, the 81

Ibid., 172 (emphasis in original). Putnam, “Values and Norms,” 115. Putnam lists respect for autonomy among the criteria of idealized inquiry; see Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” 173. 83 Hilary Putnam, “How Not to Solve Ethical Problems,” in Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face, 180. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., 181–83. 86 Ibid., 180. 82

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fundamental right not to have one’s life, liberty, or property directed or used without one’s consent is ruled out from the beginning. Nonetheless, Putnam does not think that all issues remain problematic. Human slavery, racism, and male chauvinism are now “just plain wrong.” 87 Thus, it is possible for judgments, even ethical ones, to become settled and no longer subject to democratic deliberation. Yet, if this is so, then the question can be asked: What prevents the process of idealized inquiry from coming to accept what Nozick suggests —namely, that the use of taxation for the achievement of distributive justice is itself a form of human slavery and thus just plain wrong? Maybe this process of inquiry has not yet reached an adequate understanding of all that is involved in treating human beings as ends and not merely as means. Indeed, maybe the right to private property will come to be seen as the fundamental expression of this very idea. Moreover, what prevents this process from concluding that respect for the principle that people are ends and not merely means requires that strict limits be placed on what valuations are to be adjudicated and interpreted? Putnam might reply: “Nothing prevents this, but that does not change the initial judgment that Nozick’s position is too extreme and out of step with the Western moral tradition and practices of actual moral communities.” However, it now appears that such a reply begs the question. It assumes that having the ability to partake in the inquiry process —that is, having a social democracy which aims to achieve positive liberty —is the fundamental expression of the idea that people are ends and not merely means. Yet this is the very point that is at issue. Nozick’s position is, in fact, a challenge to the idea that participation in this inquiry process is the paramount value. Is such participation really the fundamental expression of human intelligence? The questions do not stop here. Nozick’s position can be interpreted as an even more fundamental challenge —namely, are the criteria of idealized inquiry something fixed once and for all? Are we clear about their meaning? Do we know, for example, what it means to respect autonomy or not engage in coercion? Given Putnam’s account of the criteria, Nozick’s position loses. However, might it not be necessary to modify or reinterpret these criteria in order to test Nozick’s position? In other words, could not the openness of the idealized inquiry process and its willingness to consider any proposal require that it change some of its own criteria? If the process of validating our values is like rebuilding a wooden ship at sea one plank at a time, then there seems to be no reason not to consider such a change when it comes to examining the very criteria of idealized inquiry. Thus, there 87 Ibid., 183. Interestingly enough, Putnam never really explains how the process of idealized inquiry concludes that slavery, racism, and male chauvinism are wrong. We know we believe they are wrong, but why should we think that our belief conforms to the result of idealized inquiry? For additional concerns regarding Putnam’s account of democratic inquiry, see Matthew Festenstein, “Putnam, Pragmatism, and Democratic Theory,” The Review of Politics 57, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 693–721.

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seems to be no reason to assume that idealized inquiry must continue to uphold social democracy and not embrace a liberal democracy in which individuals have a moral space or territory that strictly limits the scope of democratic deliberation. And finally, since we are asking fundamental questions, what prevents the inquiry process from realizing that there are standards beyond the inquiry process itself to which inquiry must appeal, and that practice is not always or necessarily primary? Putnam’s reply to this sort of questioning is to wave the bloody-shirt of metaphysical realism and to accuse anyone who asks such questions of assuming what is not the case —namely, “that there is a workable philosophical notion of ‘objective fact’” 88 and that there is some standard beyond human practices to which to appeal. This reply will be considered in the final section of this essay, but it is worthwhile now to note what was referenced above. Putnam does not hold that practice always trumps over philosophical reflection. The emphasis on practice does not mean that we should get rid of metaphysics finally or that revisionary metaphysics is always bad. “We owe many insights, in science and morals and in politics, to various kinds of revisionary metaphysics.” 89 But if some metaphysical revision of our practices is okay, and some is not, the obvious question is: How do we determine which is which? Of course, Putnam’s answer is to stay within the circle: the process of idealized inquiry itself must work out this question. I will have more to say about this reply later, but what are we to conclude regarding Putnam’s claim that a social democracy must be a result of the commitment to idealized inquiry? Has he shown this? Has he shown that a liberal democracy that makes negative liberty the paramount value of the political/legal order is morally inferior to a social democracy that makes the promotion of positive liberty the chief aim? Has he shown that the sort of freedom espoused by the classical-liberal tradition and its practices could not be the expression, or at least an expression, of what the criteria of idealized inquiry demand? It certainly does not seem so. Indeed, it even seems that Putnam’s account of the criteria of idealized inquiry begs the question against a position such as Nozick’s. Much remains to be determined. The only thing we may safely conclude is this: we do not know whose account of freedom or which way of expressing human intelligence is to be preferred or why. B. Ayn Rand and universalizability, or Asking questions you were always afraid to ask In holding that idealized inquiry could not conclude that negative liberty should be the paramount value for the political/legal order, Putnam 88 89

Putnam, “How Not to Solve Ethical Problems,” 184 (emphasis in original). Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” 160.

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seems as guilty of a priorism as Nozick. If idealized inquiry is inspired by what it takes to make full use of human intelligence, then should not the possibility be considered that a classical-liberal political order (and not social democracy) is the precondition for the use of human intelligence? Particularly, how does Putnam know that free and open markets might not be, as F. A. Hayek argued,90 the basic social mechanism by which to use human knowledge in coordinating and determining the best and most useful ways to use resources, direct human effort, and solve problems? Could not free and open markets themselves be a vital expression of human intelligence? Indeed, it seems that Putnam’s account of the criteria that determine the full use of human intelligence stacks the deck. It discounts the view that much of the most important knowledge that we use in seeking human flourishing is not found in a community of knowers examining a common issue, but is instead diversified in many individuals and concerned with only particular and contingent matters. Despite Putnam’s claim that there must be a role for human flourishing in idealized inquiry, he offers little or no discussion of how such diversified knowledge is brought to bear on determining what is best and most useful. In short, what is singularly lacking in Putnam’s work is any discussion of the virtue of practical wisdom.91 When it comes to understanding the nature of ethics, Putnam’s account of the criteria of idealized inquiry stacks the deck in even more fundamental ways. His remarks about the relationship of the views of Ayn Rand to those of Habermas reveal this clearly. He states: “Habermas certainly believes that one must act so as to treat the other always as an end, and not as a mere means. This is what the rational egotist violates. (Ayn Rand’s rejection of altruism is precisely a rejection of this formulation of the categorical imperative.)” 92 Putting aside such questions as whether Rand might be more accurately identified as an egoist (rather than an egotist) or whether rejecting altruism is indeed equivalent to rejecting concern for others, what is important to see is that Putnam considers Rand’s views as beyond the ethical pale. Her views fail to meet what Putnam regards as the minimum prerequisite for the ethical life — 90 F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (September 1945): 519–30. 91 Practical reason is the intellectual faculty employed in guiding conduct, and practical wisdom is the excellent use of practical reason. Practical wisdom is more than mere cleverness or means-end reasoning. It is the ability of an individual at the time of action to discern, in particular and contingent circumstances, what is morally required. It involves the intelligent management of one’s life so that all the necessary goods and virtues are coherently achieved, maintained, and enjoyed in a manner that is appropriate for the individual human being. It is the intellectual virtue of a neo-Aristotelian conception of human flourishing. See Fred D. Miller, Jr., “Rationality and Freedom in Aristotle and Hayek,” Reason Papers, no. 9 (Winter 1983): 29–36. See also Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Capitalism and Morality: The Role of Practical Reason,” in Robert W. McGee, ed., Business Ethics: Social Responsibility in Business (New York: Quorum Books, 1992), 31–44. 92 Putnam, “Values and Norms,” 115.

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that is, having a community of human beings who consider the ends of others to be as important as their own. 93 Indeed, it is clear that Putnam not only thinks this, but also feels it, because he resorts to personal attack. He says of Rand that she is an “influential if amateurish philosophizer —I cannot call her a philosopher.” 94 Rand’s views are not part of the practices that constitute ethical thinking, talking, and acting as far as Putnam is concerned. It is important to note here that Rand does indeed hold that each human being is an end in her- or himself and not a means to the ends of others.95 Moreover, she holds that one should not treat others as mere means, but the point is that she also holds that someone else’s human flourishing should not be as important for a person as that person’s own. The development of one’s own life and character is each person’s primary ethical obligation. There is thus a distinction drawn between recognizing that each human being is an end in her- or himself and requiring that one value the lives of others as much as one values one’s own. Thus, it may be that her views are not as easily dismissed as Putnam seems to believe. My purpose here is not to engage in an evaluation of Rand’s ethical views. Rather, my purpose is to show that Putnam is actually assuming something that is quite controversial in his account of the criteria of idealized inquiry, and that he is stacking the deck against all ethical theories that see ethics as resulting from an individual’s basic concern with her or his own flourishing or self-perfection.96 Specifically, Putnam is assuming that the Categorical Imperative or the principle of universalizability 97 requires that one should approach all moral judgments in an impersonal fashion. This means that all morally salient 93 Ibid. Putnam regards Kant’s great achievement in moral philosophy to be the Categorical Imperative. He understands by this “the idea that ethics is universal, that insofar as ethics is concerned with the alleviation of suffering, it is concerned with everyone’s suffering, or if it is concerned with positive well-being, it is with everybody’s positive well-being.” Hilary Putnam, “Ethics without Metaphysics,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 25. For a critique of this type of reasoning, see Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, “In Search of Universal Political Principles: Avoiding Some of Modernity’s Pitfalls and Discovering the Importance of Liberal Political Order,” in Stephen Elkin and Stephen Simon, eds., Seeking Common Principles of Justice: The Prospects, Challenges, and Risks of Universalism in a Divided World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008). 94 Putnam, “Values and Norms,” 114. 95 Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” in Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: New American Library, 1964), 27. 96 I hasten to add that these theories need not be understood as necessarily egoistic, at least in the usual sense of that term, for it is quite possible for the welfare of other persons, though not every person, to be an essential feature of, and not a mere means to, one’s own flourishing. Moreover, an ethics of human flourishing or self-perfection neither denies the profoundly social character of human life nor assumes an atomistic perspective. See Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for NonPerfectionist Politics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 127–43; and Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “The Myth of Atomism,” The Review of Metaphysics 59, no. 4 ( June 2006): 841–68. 97 He also uses the term “symmetric reciprocity.”

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values, reasons, and rankings are construed as “agent-neutral,” and what makes them so is that they do not involve as part of their description an essential reference to the person for whom the value or reason exists or the ranking is correct. As Douglas J. Den Uyl notes, “For any value, reason or ranking V, if a person P1 is justified in holding V, then so are P2 –Pn under appropriately similar conditions. . . . On an agent-neutral conception it is impossible to weight more heavily, or indeed to weight at all, V, simply because it is one’s own value.” 98 On an agent-neutral view, when it comes to describing a value, reason, or ranking, it does not ethically matter whose value, reason, or ranking it is. In other words, it does not matter ethically speaking whose human flourishing it is. In contrast to this view of morality, there is the agent-centered view that treats morally salient values, reasons, and rankings as fundamentally personal. What makes them so is that they are ultimately “agent-relative,” and they are agent-relative if and only if their distinctive presence in world W1 is a basis for some person P’s ranking W1 over world W2 , even though they may not be the basis for any other person’s ranking W1 over W2 . Simply put, there are no morally salient values, reasons, or rankings full stop. Rather, they are always and necessarily values, reasons, and rankings for some person or other. Human flourishing is always and necessarily human flourishing for some person or other. Universalizability as a logical matter does not mean or require impersonalism. Let us say that values, reasons, and rankings V1 , for a person P1 , are agent-relative, and further let us say the same holds true, respectively, for values, reasons, and rankings V2 –Vn for persons P2 –Pn . Conduct based on such agent-relative values, reasons, and rankings can be universalized as follows: if V1 provides a basis for P1 to act, so does V2 provide a basis for P2 to act, as well as Vn for Pn . One cannot claim that V1 provides P1 with a legitimate reason to act without acknowledging that V2 provides P2 with a legitimate reason to act, and so on. What is universalized here is the knowledge that something’s being a value, reason, or ranking for some person is what provides a basis for that person’s conduct. Yet nothing about universalization requires that what is a value, reason, or ranking for one person must be so for another.99 It might be objected, however, that the account of universalizability being used here is exceedingly thin and that Putnam might respond that the conception of universalizability used by idealized inquiry is thicker — 98 Den Uyl, The Virtue of Prudence, 27. See also Eric Mack, “Moral Individualism: Agent Relativity and Deontic Restraints,” Social Philosophy and Policy 7, no. 1 (1989): 81–111. 99 However, agent-relativity alone does not require that P1 be an ethical egoist, for it is perfectly possible for P1’s morally salient values, reasons, or rankings to be agent-relative and entirely altruistic. Yet this possibility does not show that these values, reasons, and rankings are agent-neutral, because benefiting others must still be a value, reason, or ranking for P1 , and not necessarily for P2 –Pn . Further, there is still the question of whether it is desirable for P1 to be entirely altruistic. See Rasmussen and Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty, 134–36; and Rasmussen, “Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature.”

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namely, universalizability involves rules of conduct that all rational individuals would agree upon. If we understand universalizability in this way, then we might be able to see that the ethical life cannot be understood in a personal and agent-relative manner. Of course, the response here is simply: What is the basis or standard that rational individuals use in determining which rules to agree upon? If there is no basis or standard, then what is it about these individuals that justifies the adjective “rational”? If there is a basis or standard (let us say some value, reason, or ranking V), then we still have the question of whether V should be considered in an agent-neutral or an agent-relative manner. We are back to where we started. Clearly, this gambit will not work without much deeper premises. There is also the question of just what makes V desirable or choiceworthy for someone, but Putnam cannot answer that question apart from the idealized inquiry process. There can be no appeal to the nature of human beings to understand human flourishing, for that would involve us in metaphysical realism. Human flourishing must itself be understood in terms of the criteria of idealized inquiry, and thus, given Putnam’s approach, there is no way to warrant valuations of personal flourishing. There is no way to see ethics as a practice that is concerned primarily with one’s own human flourishing or self-perfection. Indeed, Putnam is quite explicit about this. He holds that one must be educated into the ethical life and believes that this involves a transformation of one’s understanding of one’s good such that one thinks in terms of “we” and not simply “me” and does not look outside the practices that constitute “ethical living” for reasons to be ethical.100 If this is so, however, this impersonalist rendering of universalizability creates a problem for Putnam’s claim that practice is primary. Why should one ever agree to follow these so-called ethical practices? Beyond namecalling, what can Putnam say in reply to those who ask why one ought to be moral in an impersonal sense? Since the very intelligibility of speaking of ethical matters in this impersonal way requires the personal to which it is contrasted, it is perfectly coherent to ask why it would be good, worthy, or appropriate for me to adopt these “ethical” practices. So, what can Putnam say? Of course, Putnam can say that following certain practices is not merely a matter of choosing to do something. Rather, the practices are actually part of our understanding of ourselves as well as how we think and act, and as such are not so easily overcome. However, this only shows just how radical someone may need to be in order to get us to reconsider or revise certain practices. Why isn’t someone like Rand, who asks questions about the very legitimacy of certain practices, an example of someone who is offering a revisionary metaphysics or, more precisely, a revisionary 100

Putnam makes this point in many places, but see Ethics without Ontology, 3, 29, and 102.

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way of thinking about ethics? Putnam’s account of ethical knowledge really has no way to deal with someone like Rand. Alternatively, his approach to ethics seems particularly blind to those ethical traditions and practices that see the ethical life as primarily a project of personal development, and, as such, his approach seems to imply that ethical practices are unconnected to the lives of real people. C. The human capabilities approach, or Legislating for human flourishing It might seem unfair or simply inaccurate to accuse Putnam of having a blind spot to an ethics of personal development. In fact, part of his motivation for attacking ethical noncognitivism 101 is to express his solidarity with Martha Nussbaum’s and Amartya Sen’s attempts to make universal development of human capabilities the aim of both political theory and welfare economics.102 In other words, Putnam wants to make a case for moral knowledge so that he can make the development of human capabilities the standard by which to legitimate political projects and economic institutions. In turn, he sees this as furthering his social-democratic ideals and advancing a version of egalitarian liberalism. And while there is certainly nothing wrong in desiring to assist or help as many people as possible with the development of their human capacities, there is an issue that Putnam’s approach to ethical knowledge passes over in silence —specifically, why should one assume that developing human capabilities is the aim of the political/legal order? More generally, what is it that justifies moving from the ethical order to the political/legal order? Simply put, no great issue seems to be at stake for Putnam in determining what it is that justifies making an ethical concern a political/legal one. Following Dewey, as well as Hegel, he holds that “we are communal beings from the start,” and even the idea, as a thought experiment, that we are beings who belong to no community is “utterly fantastic.” 103 Accordingly, as I have indicated, Putnam sees the ethical process as largely a communitarian affair, and thus the discussion is already in terms of what “we” ought to do. The ethical and the political, if they are not 101

Ethical noncognitivism holds that moral claims are not knowledge claims. See the following works by Martha C. Nussbaum: Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Women and Human Development: The Capability Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach,” in Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds., The Quality of Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 242–69; “Human Functioning and Social Justice”; and “Aristotelian Social Democracy,” in R. Bruce Douglass, Gerald Mara, and Henry Richardson, eds., Liberalism and the Good (New York: Routledge, 1990), 203–52. See the following works by Amartya Sen: Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 2000); “Capability and Well-Being,” in Nussbaum and Sen, eds., The Quality of Life, 30–53; Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). 103 Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” 107. 102

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identical for Putnam, are certainly coextensive. There is certainly no principled difference between them. Clearly, this is a major gap in Putnam’s thinking. If we were ancient Greeks living in a polis, it might be reasonable to see no difference between one’s community or society and the political/legal order, but this is certainly not the case for humankind now. It is one thing to belong to a community or society and quite another thing to be subject to the laws of a political/legal order. Thus, just what is it, if anything, that legitimates a political/legal order? Furthermore, assuming there is some connection between the ethical order and the political/legal order, what is the nature of the connection between the two? That is to say, what is it that justifies moving from the judgment that X-ing is right (or wrong) and ought (or ought not) to be done to the judgment that X-ing ought to be politically/ legally required (or prohibited)? These two judgments are not semantically equivalent, and a political philosopher needs to know what justifies connecting the two and thus how political and legal institutions might be legitimated.104 Indeed, this is the datum explanandum of political philosophy. However, it may be that Putnam agrees with Alasdair MacIntyre that we should not think in terms of political/legal orders or in terms of nation-states but rather in terms of much smaller political units where the search for human flourishing is supposedly a much more cooperative affair and where everyone aims at the same goal.105 But even if this were so, there would still be a gap in Putnam’s thinking. Attempting to develop human capabilities through laws that are supposed to apply to everyone in a community raises the problem of preferring one form of flourishing to others. How can Putnam seek to develop human capabilities through universal laws and not ultimately end up creating a system that, as a matter of principle, requires the sacrifice of one form of flourishing to another —that is to say, a system that treats people as mere means? This is, of course, the well-known problem of “liberal neutrality.” However, it is important to see this issue clearly, or the difficulty it presents for Putnam will not be fully appreciated. This issue does not concern whether, as a result of the everyday conduct of individuals in various communities and societies, certain forms of human flourishing are easier to achieve than others are, or even whether some are in fact impossible to achieve. Indeed, if that were the issue, then the attempt to have a society that is “neutral” to all the various forms of flourishing would be an illusory goal, because there are always more factors involved in the actual practice of achieving flourishing than can be legislated or planned. Such a goal would 104 The point here is not that a political conversation is separate from an ethical one, or from any other one for that matter. Rather, the point is that there is a distinction —a difference in the issue that is being addressed. 105 Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1999), 99–118.

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be a case of hubris born of an ethical rationalism that fails to see the complexity and particularity of individual moral lives. However, trying to achieve “liberal neutrality,” in the foregoing sense, is not the issue. The issue is one of trying to determine what political/ legal principles, if any, will provide parameters for conduct in society that, as a matter of principle, will not require that any form of flourishing be preferred structurally to another. It is thus an issue of structural neutrality. Can one even find a basis for such political/legal principles, and what might they be? Douglas J. Den Uyl and I have expressed this issue in a set of questions, which we have called “liberalism’s problem”: 106 How . . . is the appropriate political/legal order —the order that provides the overall structure to the social/political context —to be determined? What is its ethical basis? Since the structure provided by the political/legal order will rule over all equally, how can the universalism of political/legal structural principles square with the pluralism and self-direction required by human flourishing? Hence, how is it possible to have an ethical basis for an overall or general social/ political context —a context that is open-ended or cosmopolitan — that will not require, as a matter of principle, that one form of human flourishing be preferred to another? How, in other words, can the possibility be achieved that various forms of human flourishing will not be in structural conflict? 107 To what, if anything, in an account of human flourishing can one appeal to solve this problem? To the extent that Putnam seeks to advocate a political/legal order that applies to everyone in order to develop capabilities for human flourishing, he needs to answer this question. Putnam is, of course, correct to hold that political and ethical problems cannot be solved without there being some moral knowledge, and thus the “justificatory neutralism” of much contemporary liberal theory is simply a nonstarter. There must be moral knowledge. Putnam is also correct to hold that many of the underlying metaphysical and epistemological views of analytic philosophy are insufficient to provide a basis for this knowledge. Moreover, he realizes that neither the capabilities for flourishing nor human flourishing itself are Platonic Forms. They come in many variations. However, he does not seem to realize fully that even if so-called generic goods and virtues, or, more precisely, the capabilities for pursuing these goods and virtues, must in fact be present in every form 106 The reason we label it so is that liberalism has been, largely, the only political tradition to recognize the fundamentality and importance of this problem. Yet this does not mean that liberalism has always done so coherently. See Rasmussen and Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty, chap. 3. 107 Ibid., 271 (emphasis in original).

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of flourishing, their exact character and role in each person’s life will vary from individual to individual. Individuals are more than mere repositories for these capabilities or generic goods and virtues. The circumstances, interests, histories, endowments, and, most importantly, choices of individuals give shape, form, and value to these goods and virtues. Individuals do more than simply locate these goods and virtues or capabilities in space and time. Thus, attempting in the name of human flourishing to find an ethical basis for political/legal principles that will apply to all equally and achieve structural neutrality requires that Putnam deal with the individuality of the practices that constitute human flourishing. So-called generic goods and virtues or human capabilities do not provide a solution. The point here is not only that human flourishing is agentrelative in its fundamental character but that it is individualized as well.108 Finding a solution to liberalism’s problem thus cannot be achieved at the price of adopting an impersonalist reading of human flourishing.109 Regrettably, Putnam never addresses this problem. Not only do Putnam’s criteria of idealized inquiry make no principled distinction between an ethical concern and a political/legal one, they also take little or no notice of the agent-relative and individualized character of human flourishing. Thus, my earlier charge that Putnam’s approach to ethics seems unconnected to the lives of real people seems both fair and accurate.110 D. Questioning the criteria of idealized inquiry Despite Putnam’s admission that practice does not always trump other concerns and that there is a place for revisionary metaphysics, it is quite clear that he is going to insist that any ethical or political dispute be adjudicated or interpreted by an appeal to the criteria of idealized inquiry. After all, one cannot appeal to the nature of things. It is only through our idealized inquiry procedure that we may determine what beliefs and valuations are warranted. This much is clear. However, are the criteria 108 Human flourishing involves an essential reference to the individual for whom it is good as part of its description. Further, it is not merely achieved and enjoyed by individuals. It is itself individualized. See Rasmussen and Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty, 132–38. 109 There are two related points here. First, to hold that human flourishing is “objective” does not mean (or require) that it amounts to the same activity for each person in practice. Human flourishing is not one-size-fits-all. Thus, it is not sufficient either for determining the aim of the political/legal order or for developing a standard for welfare economics. (On its insufficiency for welfare economics, see David Gordon’s review of Putnam’s book The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, “The Facts of Economic Life,” The Mises Review [Winter 2002], http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=217&sortorder=auth.) Second, structural neutrality is a function of recognizing real diversity. Ethical impersonalism is a function of dismissing or flattening real diversity. 110 Real people are engaged in a quest for answers and solutions. This means that what they say or conclude is often less important than the basis for their conclusions. This brings us back to the idea that there is something more than human practices when it comes to finding answers and solutions.

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themselves so clear? Are they helpful in addressing basic ethical issues? We have already seen that the criterion of freedom or noncoercion that Putnam employs is very much a matter of dispute, as is the claim that every valuation must be subject to examination. Indeed, do we really want to hold that every relationship must be evaluated in terms of these criteria? Further, we have seen that the Categorical Imperative or principle of universalizability does not necessarily carry with it an impersonalist ethical perspective, and thus cannot be used as a basis for rejecting a personal or agent-relative view of the ethical life. It offers no way to choose between personalism and impersonalism. More importantly, the view of ethics that idealized inquiry generates also ignores the longstanding traditions of ethics that make the development of one’s own self-perfection or flourishing the central aim of the ethical life, and thus this view separates ethical practices from actual human life. The problems with the criteria of idealized inquiry do not end here. There is also the question of whether the criteria are themselves adequate for attaining ethical knowledge or whether they stand in need of something more. What follows is a series of interrelated questions. Each of these questions could be developed in detail, though I do not develop them here. The questions should be sufficient, however, to indicate some of the grave difficulties that idealized inquiry faces. 1. What if the process of idealized inquiry had not concluded that slavery and racism were “just plain wrong”? Wouldn’t these ways of treating human beings nonetheless still be wrong? If truth is not defined by warranted assertibility under ideal conditions, as Putnam now admits, why must the criteria for warranted assertibility under ideal conditions be the last word in determining ethical truths? If such criteria might not suffice in the scientific arena, then might they not also be insufficient in the ethical arena? Despite his intention to the contrary, is it possible that Putnam is maintaining a fact/value dichotomy, or at least some version of it? Is there a polarity between scientific fact and ethical value after all? 2. Since the strategy behind the rejection of metaphysical realism was to show, as Nussbaum put it, “that ethics is no worse off than any science,” 111 it certainly seems that Putnam does not want to maintain that the standards for truth in science are different from those in ethics. But if so, then what is the basis for ethically dismissing the practices of slavery and racism? Are the practices of slavery and racism just plain wrong because the process of idealized inquiry judges them to be, or does the process of idealized inquiry judge the practices of slavery and racism to be just plain wrong because of what these practices are? 112 111

Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice,” 214. It might be replied that Putnam’s decision not to define truth as warranted assertibility under ideal conditions is based on understanding that the contingent relationship between truth and warranted assertibility is deeply imbedded in the worldviews and practices of both science and common sense. Thus, Putnam seeks to take advantage of metaphysical 112

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3. Putnam regards metaphysical realism as unintelligible; thus, he cannot appeal to the nature of slavery and racism as they are apart from the conceptual scheme employed by a community of knowers. Yet, if there is no metaphysical difference between what these practices are and how a community of knowers conceptualizes them, then what these practices are (which includes how they are valued) will vary with different communities of knowers. What, then, can Putnam say to a community that does not employ the same conceptual scheme or share the same valuations as Putnam’s? Are slavery and racism just plain wrong only for us in our community? 4. Putnam wants to insist that without a sense of community we cannot begin to adjudicate ethical problems successfully.113 Nevertheless, upon what is this sense of community supposed to be based? This question is not grounded on any atomistic conception of human beings but rather on the recognition that human sociality comes in various forms and at numerous levels. So, among the many social practices that make up the human form of life, what determines which practices are relevant for having a community that has the requisite sense of “ethical” practices? What entitles us to expect that the communities that develop will be based on ethical values that “we” find legitimate? 114 5. If Putnam is to remain consistent, he cannot appeal to some set of human practices that express values that are valuable apart from idealized inquiry. This he regards as Platonism. He might avail himself of a transcendental argument that attempts to show that certain epistemic values are necessary for the very possibility of our speaking of what is “true” or “objective,” but even if we suppose that such a gambit works, there remains an ultimate difficulty: Putnam never actually shows that these epistemic values carry with them any substantive ethical values. What he shows is that human experience is shot through with valuations, but he does not show that the valuations are valuable in the sense that they are worthy of being chosen or followed. In other words, Putnam may indeed show that there is no ontological chasm between facts and values, but he does not show that values are valuable in the sense that they themselves ought to be valued. 6. The ultimate value for Putnam seems to be human intelligence, and he is concerned that we make full use of it. Particularly, he is concerned realism’s view of truth while at the same time maintaining the primacy of practice. I discuss the problems with this maneuver in Section IV. 113 Putnam, “How Not to Solve Ethical Problems,” 185. See also Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” 101–4. 114 Furthermore, how is “we” idealized? Why idealize along the lines of educated cosmopolitans rather than middle-class folks with mediocre educations, or the uneducated, or those who have to live with the results, and so on? It is never clear how this is done, except, of course, to assume simply that universality and consistency are the standards. Yet why must these values be the standards? Why must science and the values of modernity be our guide? Obviously, these questions are not just theoretical any longer, if they ever were.

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that we make full use of what we have learned from the process of inquiry, especially what we have learned from scientific methods and procedures. This is what is supposed to guide us, and this is what makes the criteria of idealized inquiry so important. They are the second-order principles that we use to judge our first-order rules as well as conduct. Nonetheless, for what purpose is the full use of intelligence to be employed? If we answer simply “employing intelligence even more,” we have only widened the circle and explained nothing. We can quite intelligibly ask, “What is intelligence for?” Is it for anything that we choose? Are any choices better than others are? And if so, why? Does it matter? Intelligence is a valuable tool, but we do not know its function. The criteria of idealized inquiry provide no answer. 7. It might be said, however, that intelligence is for knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge is certainly a fundamental human practice. However, does this show that knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is the standard by which human conduct and institutions are to be judged? Does this even show that we ought to pursue knowledge? 8. Can we not also ask, “What is knowledge for?” Knowledge is, as Putnam admits, part of a holistic conception of human flourishing, and he further admits that human flourishing is an activity that is not uniformly the same. Yet, if this is so, then where are we to rank knowledge when it comes to other human practices such as pursuing leisure, beauty, pleasure, or friendship? And even if the pursuit of knowledge is more basic than these other pursuits, does it follow that pursing knowledge ought in every case to be valued more than these pursuits? Certainly, it is possible for there to be forms of flourishing, as well as communities and societies, in which knowledge is not given as much importance as the values of leisure, beauty, friendship, or pleasure. Therefore, there might be persons and societies whose practices do not value the criteria of idealized inquiry as much as we do, and thus the criteria of idealized inquiry may not have as privileged a place as Putnam supposes. This section has sought to engage in a “criticism of criticism” that shows that something more than the criteria of idealized inquiry is needed if there is to be ethical knowledge. If this criticism has succeeded, then a question asked earlier is more pertinent than ever. What, if anything, prevents the idealized inquiry process from concluding that there are standards beyond itself to which it must appeal? The answer is simply “nothing.” Nothing prevents there being a transcendent standard. To say that human practices are necessary for and inclusive of all explanations of ethical knowledge does not show that these practices are a complete and sufficient explanation of ethical knowledge. Moreover, the criteria of idealized inquiry do not themselves prevent the recognition of standards beyond the idealized inquiry process. There is nothing about the importance of cooperative activity, the admission of fallibility, making one’s beliefs open to revision, universalizability, honesty, sincerity, and non-

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coercion that is incompatible with there being some standard beyond inquiry itself to which it can appeal. Thus, it is time to consider what else is necessary for ethical knowledge. This is, of course, a tall order and is not something that can be completed here, but now that the adequacy of the criteria of idealized inquiry as a basis for moral knowledge has been called into question, the first step can be taken —namely, a return to realism. IV. Reconsidering the Demise of Metaphysical Realism A. Getting clear on metaphysical realism and Aquinas’s distinction It should be recalled that metaphysical realism involves both an ontological thesis and an epistemological thesis. The ontological thesis is that there are beings that exist and are what they are independent of and apart from anyone’s cognition. The epistemological thesis is that these beings can be known, more or less adequately, often with great difficulty, but still known as they really are. A number of things need to be said about each of these theses as well as Putnam’s approach to them. To hold that there are beings that exist and are what they are independent of and apart from anyone’s cognition of them does not require that the natures of these beings are universals existing either ante rem or in rebus. In other words, there is no need to assume that ontological realism requires the existence of universal natures either in some supersensible reality or as metaphysical parts or elements of individual beings. It is perfectly possible that while all individuals are natured, all natures are individualized, and it is therefore possible to reject the idea that reality comes already conceptually divided for us without rejecting the idea that beings are what they are apart from our conceptual processes.115 The debate regarding the status of universals has a long and important philosophical history, and much of Putnam’s aversion toward metaphysical realism seems to be born of his desire to avoid “Platonism” with regard to mathematical entities. Much depends here, of course, on one’s view of abstraction,116 but it is strictly speaking not necessary to affirm 115 See Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Quine and Aristotelian Essentialism,” The New Scholasticism 58 (Summer 1984): 316–35; and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “The Significance for Cognitive Realism of the Thought of John Poinsot,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68 (Summer 1994): 409–24. See also John P. O’Callaghan, Thomistic Realism and the Linguistic Turn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 194–98 and 257–74; and Paul A. Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 35–38. 116 I cannot discuss this in detail here. For some important insights regarding the “moderate realist” approach to abstraction, see Joseph Owens, Cognition: An Epistemological Inquiry (Houston, TX: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1992), 139–65; and Owens, “Common Nature: A Point of Comparison between Thomistic and Scotistic Metaphysics,” Mediaeval Studies 19 (1957): 1–14. See also Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, 2d rev. ed., trans. Armand Maurer, C.S.B. (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968).

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such Platonism in order to affirm ontological realism. Nonetheless, this brings us to the vexing issue of epistemological realism. To affirm that we can know the natures of things requires that we recognize at the start a distinction made by Aquinas. He states: For although it be necessary for the truth of a cognition that the cognition answer to the thing known, still it is not necessary that the mode of the thing known be the same as the mode of its cognition. (Summa contra Gentiles, II, 76) This distinction allows us to acknowledge many of the important points often advanced against epistemological realism by its critics, without having to give up the claim that we can nonetheless come to know things more or less adequately. The general point made by critics of epistemological realism is, of course, that human cognition has a nature. Yet Aquinas’s distinction holds that cognition need not be without a nature in order for it to be able to be of or about the natures of things. Cognition is not something miraculous; it has a certain modality and proceeds in a certain manner. Thus, one should not suppose, without argument, that if cognition has a specific nature, it impossible to know the natures of things. There is no need to suppose, at least initially, that epistemological realism requires that we get “outside our skins” or adopt “a view from nowhere.” I turn now to various points often made by critics of epistemological realism. Given our understanding of Aquinas’s distinction, we can show that these criticisms are not so devastating as they might initially appear to be. 1. In nearly every case, we must employ some conceptual scheme or language, use some set of words, or engage in some set of social practices in order to know anything. Nevertheless, that does not show that conceptual schemes, languages, or social practices determine the natures of things.117 Jumping to such a conclusion would trade on the same ambiguity found in Berkeley’s well-known claim that since beings cannot be thought of as existing apart from a thinking mind, their existence and nature are impossible without a thinking mind. Of course, one cannot think of beings without thinking (for us, the relevant terms are “conceiving” or “saying”), but that is some distance from claiming that the existence and nature of beings are dependent on or determined by our thinking. Likewise, it is some distance from claiming that the natures of things are determined by our conceptual scheme, language, or system of social practices. That we must use concepts and words or engage in social practices 117 Of course, the natures of many things have been shaped by human purposes. See Rasmussen, “The Significance for Cognitive Realism of the Thought of John Poinsot,” 411 n. 6.

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in knowing something does not show that they determine the ultimate character of what we know. 2. That we employ conceptual schemes, languages, or social practices in cognition is undeniable, but it is unnecessary to treat these as “third things” that we must somehow know first before we gain access to reality. Such a view of cognition, the so-called “way of ideas” that Descartes and Locke are often charged with introducing into modern philosophy, had some currency in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but even then, thinkers such as John Poinsot and Thomas Reid challenged it. The view quickly degenerated into skepticism. It is only one model of the cognitive relation, and not a very good one. Indeed, according to at least one version of Wittgenstein’s private language argument, it is a nonstarter.118 3. We do not know all of reality at once in all its detail. We are not God, and so we must start somewhere. Our needs, interests, and concerns, as well as our historical, social, and cultural circumstances, at least initially determine the breadth and the depth of our examinations of reality. Yet these admissions do not preclude epistemological realism. Our knowledge of reality just is partial, incomplete, and capable of being revised. It does not, cannot, and need not operate from some absolute perspective. 4. Human beings are measurers of things. Indeed, cognition is for the most part not something that happens to us but something that we do. Concepts, classifications, theories, hypotheses, judgments, evaluations, and so on do not exist independently of or apart from human cognitive effort. They are our cognitive tools, and we are responsible for their existence. However, this does not mean or show that what they are about, or what they classify, explain, or assert as true or good, is simply a matter of convention.119 Some of our claims are still better than others are. Nonetheless, it is not necessary to hold that the structure of logic is the same as the ontological structure of existence in order to defend this claim. Logic can be understood as an organon or tool of knowledge and need not be seen as an ontology. 118 See the following works by Sir Anthony Kenny: The Legacy of Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), chap. 5; The Metaphysics of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); The Unknown God: Agnostic Essays (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), chap. 11; and Wittgenstein, rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), chap. 10. John McDowell seems to share this view of Wittgenstein as well, because he suggests that Wittgenstein’s private language argument should not be understood as upholding the primacy of interpretive practices. Instead, it should be understood as providing reasons for abandoning the “master thesis” — that is, the view that whatever one has in one’s mind when one knows just “stands there” and needs some interpretation to relate it to the world. See John McDowell, “Meaning and Intentionality in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 17 (1992): 40–52. 119 Obviously, a crucial issue is whether sense perception only becomes intelligible by having form imposed on it by our conceptual schemes or whether sense perception becomes intelligible by having the form it implicitly carries discovered by our conceptual tools. For an important defense of the latter view, see Thomas A. Russman, A Prospectus for the Triumph of Realism (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987).

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5. We are fallible, and while this does not mean, as J. L. Austin once noted,120 that we should infer from this alone regarding any particular claim that we might be mistaken, we must understand that the entire epistemological enterprise only exists because we are fallible beings. Infallible beings would have no need to consider the standards, methods, procedures, and criteria that are involved in knowing. Discovering that we are not God does not invalidate epistemological realism. Obviously, each of these points could be made the subject of a booklength examination, but they are at least sufficient to show that many of the arguments that Putnam (and Nussbaum) use against metaphysical realism (which I noted in earlier sections of this essay) are subject to serious challenge and indeed are quite dubious. However, it might be objected that in the foregoing remarks I have actually adopted much of Putnam’s pragmatism; for I have acknowledged the role of human interests and needs in human cognition, and I have admitted that human knowing is fallible and subject to revision. I could respond that these observations, and others like them, have long been part of the epistemological realist’s repertoire.121 Indeed, Putnam seems to have recognized this recently.122 Yet such a debate would be neither very fundamental nor very interesting. Let us instead cut to the chase and ask, “What is it that makes metaphysical realism, at least as described in this section, superior to the so-called ‘common sense’ or ‘pragmatic’ realism endorsed by Putnam?” B. “Early” and “later” Putnam and rejecting the primacy of practice The answer to this question requires that we deal with both an “early” and a “later” Putnam, for his views on these matters have apparently not stood still. The essential thing about the “early” Putnam is that he endorses the primacy of practice, and the essential thing about the “later” Putnam is that he at least appears at times to have some doubts about its primacy. Let us begin by considering the “early” Putnam. The “early” Putnam’s appeal to the primacy of practice as an account of human knowledge does not succeed, because it cannot differentiate between the explanandum, what it seeks to explain (that is, human knowledge) and the explanans, the explanation (namely, practice). It fails to explain the very phenomenon of cognition. Here is why. For any expla120 J. L. Austin, “Other Minds,” in Austin, Philosophical Papers, 2d ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 98. 121 For a few contemporary examples, see Baruch Brody, Identity and Essence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); Tibor R. Machan, “Epistemology and Moral Knowledge,” The Review of Metaphysics 36, no. 1 (September 1984): 23–49; Edward Pols, Radical Realism: Direct Knowing in Science and Philosophy (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1992); and Henry B. Veatch, Two Logics: The Conflict between Classical and Neo-Analytic Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1969). 122 Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses,” 22–24.

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nation E, it only counts as an explanation if it can be distinguished from the thing explained, T. But E is distinct from T only if one can see that E is distinct from T. Therefore, it is fallacious to derive E from T. So, if our explanation of human knowledge holds that the objects of knowledge are simply constructs of practice, while at the same time we hold that knowing is also a practice, then we have fundamentally failed to differentiate between our explanandum and our explanans. We have explained nothing.123 Putting this point in a linguistic vein and using it against a certain reading of Wittgenstein that Putnam so often employs in defending the primacy of practice, we can ask the following question, “What is it about our practices that allows us to make a mark, sound, or movement into something that conveys linguistic significance?” To respond that it is simply our form of life, our conventions and rules —that is, our practices — only repeats what we want explained and adds nothing fundamental to our understanding of the phenomenon. There is a difference between a mark, sound, or movement as such and as conveying linguistic significance. What is it about the human form of life and its practices that makes it possible for us to turn marks and sounds into words? Saying that we just do amounts to nothing more than spinning our intellectual wheels. Language has indeed gone on holiday here, but what has left the job is not the question being asked but the proposed answer. Practice simply does not suffice.124 It is, of course, true that not all words have the same function, and it is a mistake to suppose that for every word there must be a thing to which it corresponds. Further, and as I noted earlier, we must be careful when it comes to arguments that seek to populate reality with “abstract entities.” There is always the threat of Platonism, and this is important not only for ontology but for ethics as well. When it comes to understanding human 123 It might be replied that this argument works only if we cannot imagine two different conversations —one which is the explanandum and one which is the explanans. If so, then maybe another way of putting the same objection is to say that for any conversation C, if practice is primary, then there is no way in principle to tell whether this conversation is an explanandum or an explanans. I owe this point to Douglas J. Den Uyl. 124 Putnam would object, of course, that I have now asked one question too many. But why? The reason seems to be this: When it comes to explaining linguistic significance, a crucial premise behind the thesis that practice is primary is the claim that all other proposed explanations actually presuppose what they are supposed to explain. That is, they presuppose our linguistic practices. Putnam (at least, the “early” Putnam) believes this to be a particularly devastating objection to any account of linguistic significance that would have a role for concepts or mental powers to play. Indeed, this is how he interprets Wittgenstein. See the works cited in notes 28 and 29. Yet what one finds in Wittgenstein is not an objection to concepts or mental powers per se but an objection to a certain conception of them: namely, one in which they are treated as “intermediaries” or “third things” that somehow occupy mental space and are the basis for some “private language.” As I noted earlier, there are really no good reasons to adopt such a view of concepts or mental powers, and no good reasons for thinking that the thesis that practice is primary follows from a rejection of a “third thing” view of concepts or mental powers. See also notes 30, 115, and 118, and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Rorty, Wittgenstein, and the Nature of Intentionality,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 57 (1983): 152–62.

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flourishing, one need not understand it as some good that exists in isolation from the needs and interests of individual human beings. As I argued earlier, human flourishing can be understood in a personalist or agent-relative fashion. However, none of this shows that we must be content with “explaining” our knowledge, our world, our good, or ourselves ultimately in terms of practices. It is still the case that we need something for our thoughts and words to be about and something for our practices to be for. Ultimately, we need an overall context in which to operate, and this is why metaphysical realism continues to exert its legitimate and powerful pull. It is here, however, that the careful reader of Putnam might well say, “Well done! You have really made Putnam’s basic point! It may be a point that he has been struggling to make for many years, but it is nonetheless what he holds.” So let us now consider the “later” Putnam. We can begin by noting this lengthy observation: William James . . . employs the example of someone choosing how to describe beans that have been cast on the table. The beans can be described in an almost endless variety of ways depending on the interests of the describer. And James asks, Why should not any such description be called true? James insists that there is no such thing as a description that reflects no particular interest at all. And he further insists that the descriptions we give when our interests are not theoretical or explanatory can be just as true as the ones we give when our interests are “intellectual.” . . . A traditional realist philosopher might reply to James as follows: “If that is all you are saying, then I do not see that any of your fulminations against philosophers who believe in a ‘ready-made world’ are in order. . . . Suppose you decide to classify the beans by color, or by whether they are next to beans of the same size, or in some other way. The reason that such a classification is possible, and can be extended to other similar collections of beans in the future, is that there are such properties as colors, sizes, adjacency, etc. Your beloved ‘interests’ may determine which combinations of properties you regard as worth talking about, or even lead you to invent a name for things with a particular combination of properties if there is no such name already in the language, but it does not change the world in the slightest. The world is as it is independently of the interests of any describer.” 125 Putnam follows this statement with the remark, “I do not, myself, side completely with James, nor do I side completely with the traditional realist critic. I agree with the critic that the world is as it is independently of the interests of the describers. James’s suggestion that the world that 125

Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses,” 5–6 (emphasis in original).

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we know is to an indeterminate extent the product of our own minds is one I deplore.” 126 What are we to make of this remark? Has Putnam totally reversed himself? 127 Does the “later” Putnam now hold that it is intelligible to talk of a world that exists and is what it is independent of and apart from our interests and practices? Moreover, how does this admission affect his arguments against the fact/value dichotomy and on behalf of moral cognitivism? After all, these arguments depended in many ways on rejecting the idea that we are supposed to find a basis for our valuations in the natures of things. For Putnam, it is not human nature that grounds ethical knowledge, but our practices —our ways of thinking and talking. This is indeed a complicated matter. However, the statement about William James cited above comes from a work that was published before Putnam’s recent ethical works, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (2002) and Ethics without Ontology (2004). Thus, it is doubtful that Putnam regards his apparent endorsement of traditional realism as affecting the plausibility of his ethical views. Further, Putnam insists that metaphysical realism is committed to a view that he regards as a sheer flight of imagination: The metaphysical fantasy is that there is a totality of Forms, or Universals, or “properties,” fixed once and for all, and that every possible meaning of a word corresponds to one of the Forms or Universals or properties. The structure of all possible thought is fixed in advance by the Forms.128 Thus, he still wants to distinguish his position from metaphysical realism. How does Putnam do this? Putnam’s major concern here seems to be that there are properties “fixed once and for all.” This concern can be understood in a number of ways. First, it may simply mean a rejection of the existence of what was earlier called “universal natures” —that is, the idea that reality comes already conceptually divided for us. But it is certainly possible to be a metaphysical realist and not accept universals as part of one’s basic ontology. Second, Putnam’s concern may be to avoid the idea that the forms of our knowledge claims and the ways in which they can be adequate to reality have already been determined. He seems clearly to want to reject that view, because he states: It is true that a knowledge claim is responsible to reality, and, in most cases, that reality is independent of the speaker. But reflection on 126

Ibid., 6. See Colin McGinn, “Can You Believe It?” The New York Review of Books 48, no. 6 (April 12, 2001): 71–75. 128 Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses,” 6. 127

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human experience suggests that neither the form of all knowledge claims nor the ways in which they are responsible to reality is fixed once and for all in advance, contrary to the assumptions of the traditional realist.129 This is a most ironic statement, because despite what Putnam says about “the traditional realist,” this is not something that is generally denied by traditional realists. Indeed, Putnam’s point here is but a version of the distinction made by Aquinas that I discussed earlier.130 Third, Putnam may be objecting to the claim that all the properties are known or that they all exist. Yet a metaphysical realist need not deny that knowledge progresses or that new things come to be. Fourth, Putnam may want to reject the idea that there actually are a totality of properties that have existed in the past, exist in the present, and will exist in the future, and that these are what we have been, are, and will be in the process of discovering. That is, he may want to reject the idea that there are beings that exist and are what they are independent of and apart from our interests and practices. If this is what he wants to reject, then despite the statement cited above, he is not abandoning the primacy of practice. So what is his position? Putnam states that “the notion that our words and life are constrained by a reality not of our own invention plays a deep role in our lives and is to be respected.” 131 Note that this statement does not say that there exists a reality not of our own invention that constrains our words and lives. Rather, it says that the notion of a reality not of our invention that constrains us plays a deep role in our lives. To say this is not to give up the primacy of practice. The real remains dependent on practice.132 Putnam is subtle, and he is adopting a strategy described earlier: namely, he is trying 129

Ibid., 7. Aquinas also states: “[I]t ought to be said that it is not necessary to assume diversity in natural things from the diversity of intelligible characters or logical intentions which follow upon our manner of understanding, since the intelligible character of one and the same thing may be apprehended in diverse ways.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I. 76.3, ad 4. 131 Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses,” 9. 132 As I have already noted, Putnam states that “we have no access to ‘unconceptualized’ reality.” Yet this statement is followed shortly by this remark: “But it doesn’t follow that language and thought do not describe something outside themselves, even if that something can only be described by describing it (that is by employing language and thought); and, as Rorty ought to have seen, the belief that they do plays an essential role within language and thought themselves and, more importantly, within our lives.” Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” 297 (emphasis in original). Two things should be noted here: (1) Putnam does not say that whatever language and thought describe outside themselves has a character or nature apart from the describing; and (2) he explains the belief that there is something outside language and thought that they do describe as a belief that comes from within language and human practices. Finally, Putnam has more recently remarked that he finds the explanatory value of appealing to the form of something to be either “tautological or nonsensical.” Hilary Putnam, “Comments on John Haldane’s Paper,” in James Conant and Urszula M. Zeglen, eds., Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 108. 130

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to adopt an attitude of “deliberate naïveté” and return to “natural realism.” Yet how does one cross over the bridge to natural realism given the philosophical waters that have flowed beneath it? How does one adopt what Putnam now calls a “second naïveté”? 133 The only way Putnam can do so is by discrediting metaphysical questioning and making practice ultimate. But now this must be done on one hand while not letting the other hand be part of the process. Practice must somehow be both primary and not primary. Thus, Putnam has succeeded in showing not the antinomy of realism but rather the antinomy of practice.134 V. Conclusion The problem of finding a basis for moral knowledge is one of the central issues of philosophy, and as I noted at the beginning of this essay, there has recently been a resurgence in the belief that an appeal to human nature is crucial for understanding and defending moral knowledge. This essay has not examined this resurgence; rather, it has considered Martha Nussbaum’s claim that Hilary Putnam’s argument against metaphysical realism provides a better way of defending moral knowledge. Putnam’s arguments do a magnificent job of destroying those remaining elements of logical positivism in analytic philosophy that assume there is some ontological chasm between facts and values, but Putnam never provides an account of ethical knowledge that can adjudicate between competing views in ethics and politics. Moreover, the account of idealized inquiry that Putnam presents leaves many gaps. It has no way to accommodate an ethics of human flourishing or self-perfection that sees personal development as the central aim of ethics. It makes no principled 133 Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses,” 15. David Macarthur argues that natural realism is not merely common sense and that its success hinges on its ability to provide a more satisfying account of perception that can withstand skeptical threats motivated by the traditional realist/antirealist dispute. See David Macarthur, “Putnam’s Natural Realism and the Question of a Perceptual Interface,” Philosophical Explorations 7, no. 2 ( June 2004): 167–81. 134 Putnam does not clearly distinguish between (1) those metaphysical views that would overturn or replace our everyday practices and common-sense views and (2) those metaphysical views that seek to explain more deeply such practices and views. As a result, he does not fully appreciate that it is not necessary to reject metaphysics in order to show that realism needs no defense. Moreover, he does not fully realize that it is only by engaging in metaphysics of this latter sort and showing the errors of those who think that they can either deny or escape realism that a “second naïveté” can be achieved. As John Haldane has noted, “Realism with a human face requires the support of a metaphysical skull” (Haldane, “Realism with a Metaphysical Skull,” in Conant and Zeglen, eds., Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism, 97). Indeed, it has not been for lack of metaphysical investigation that philosophers in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition have argued that realism is perennial. As Etienne Gilson states: “The first step on the path of realism is to perceive that one has always been realistic; the second is to perceive that, whatever one does to become otherwise, one will never succeed; the third is to ascertain that those who do pretend to think otherwise, think in realistic terms as soon as they forget to act their part.” Gilson, “Vade Mecum of a Young Realist,” in Roland Houde and Joseph P. Mullally, eds., Philosophy of Knowledge: Selected Readings (Chicago, Philadelphia, New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1960), 386.

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distinction between an ethical concern and a political/legal one and takes little or no notice of the agent-relative and individualized character of human flourishing. Further, idealized inquiry never comes to grips with what ultimately makes a valuation valuable and so never shows what makes something worthy of valuing. There is thus a failure to explain what it is that obligates one to pursue some value or end. Putnam’s account of idealized inquiry begs the question when it comes to grounding basic ethical obligations. Though there is nothing in the criteria of idealized inquiry that prevents it from appealing to standards beyond itself, it is the attempt to do without deeper metaphysical commitments and make practice primary that is the source of its insufficiency. Not only does the rejection of metaphysical realism not provide a better way of defending moral knowledge, the claim that metaphysical realism is in demise is itself dubious. The arguments advanced by Putnam against metaphysical realism are by no means compelling, and in various ways they reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the position as well as a failure to make the distinctions necessary to avoid basic ambiguities. Overall, the suggestion that we might find a better way of establishing moral knowledge by rejecting metaphysical realism fails. It simply does not work. Thus, the attempt by Nussbaum to develop an ethics of human flourishing by embracing Putnam’s rejection of metaphysical realism ultimately undercuts what is distinctive and compelling about the Aristotelian ethical tradition. It makes fundamental ethical values something that we construct rather than something grounded in our nature. Yet, even more, the attempt to do without metaphysical realism hampers the progress that has been made in contemporary ethics by distracting us from our efforts to understand human nature and reality —efforts that are vital to the ethical enterprise. Philosophy, St. John’s University

WHY MORAL JUDGMENTS CAN BE OBJECTIVE* By Tibor R. Machan I. The Desirability of Objectivity Are we able to make objective moral judgments? By “objective” I mean “supportable by reference to facts about the world in contrast to what we may feel, desire, wish, or hope for vis-à-vis those facts.” 1 By “moral judgments” I mean, broadly, “judgments pertaining to how human beings ought to conduct themselves, how their institutions should be set up, and so forth.” 2 This perennial philosophical —yet at once popular 3 —topic needs often to be revisited because it is central to human life. Judgments about how people conduct themselves, about the institutions they devise —in short, about whether they are doing what is right or what is wrong —are ubiquitous. Even if one complains that people are judgmental or that they mistakenly think they can make true moral judgments or assessments (when, in fact, that is supposedly unjustified), one is making judgments that one intends to have taken seriously, to be correct, even as one is rejecting the wisdom of doing so. “You shouldn’t think moral judgments are objective” is itself a moral judgment, albeit one pertaining to a special undertaking, one of a restricted scope. Those making it seem to treat it as objectively true.4 In short, moral skeptics or relativists, too, criticize those who disagree with them, making note of their opponents’ supposedly misguided thinking about this metaethical issue. And they expect that they are correct when they do so —objectively right, that is. Some may hold that such judgments are no more than expressions of what is desirable —that is to say, they express what some desire. But that * I wish to thank Professors Randall R. Dipert, Kenneth Lucey, Aeon Skoble, the other contributors to this volume, and its editors, for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Of course, all of what appears here is my responsibility. 1 For a fuller explanation of the nature of objectivity, see Tibor R. Machan, Objectivity: Recovering Determinate Reality in Philosophy, Science, and Everyday Life (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2004). 2 Moral judgments here also cover political judgments, in other words. 3 Whether objectivity is possible, for instance, in journalism, self-understanding, or psychotherapy are issues of popular interest and not solely the concern of professional philosophers. 4 Truth is objective in any case. To add “objectively” to “true” serves to signal that no other kind of truth is possible. There can be subjective feelings or experiences or phenomena, but there can be no subjective truths. As to whether criticisms in philosophy qualify as ethical or moral, it seems to me that they do, as part of professional ethics.

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is not what most people mean when they make such judgments —they take these judgments to be true and, thus, objective. The mere expression of a desire does not amount to a criticism. Yet such dialectical points are not sufficient to make out the case for the objectivity of moral judgments —that is, to defend the position that it is possible to gain knowledge of (and demonstrate) the truth or falsity of moral judgments as we do with other judgments (for example, those in physics, biology, engineering, or drivers’ education). All that these dialectical points make evident is that denying the objectivity of moral and other evaluations leads to self-referential inconsistency; then, perhaps, what follows is only that we ought to remain silent on the topic (as Wittgenstein appears to have believed).5 One promising approach in defense of objectivity in ethics is to work out a sound, naturalistic idea of what the human good amounts to and to go on to demonstrate that certain ways of acting advance this good while others thwart it. If one can show that there are such ways of acting, this would satisfy the requirement of objectivity, since whether certain ways of acting advance the good or not is a matter capable of being established, shown to be true based on evidence and argument. In this essay, I plan to deploy a neo-Aristotelian naturalism in order to keep the “is-ought” gap at bay and place morality on an objective footing.6 I will do this with the aid of the ideas of Ayn Rand —as well as, but only by implication and association, those of Martha Nussbaum and Philippa Foot. It is important to mention at the outset that in defending the objectivity of moral judgments, one is not defending the universal applicability of all of them, except where identical circumstances obtain. Thus, if in fact Mrs. George ought to send her child to take piano lessons, it does not follow 5 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, “A Lecture on Ethics,” in Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 11–12, and the last sentence of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company; London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1922): “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” As Arto Tukiainen says, “Wittgenstein regarded the point of the Tractatus as ethical. His purpose was to show that there cannot be any meaningful ethical sentences.” So Wittgenstein is supposed to have denied that ethics is objective. See http://examinedlifejournal.com/articles/printerfriendly.php?shorttitle=wittmoralval& authorid=54. But see also Tibor R. Machan, “Heretical Essay in Wittgenstein’s Meta-Ethics,” Analysis and Metaphysics (forthcoming). 6 Among those who have made this attempt within the naturalist, neo-Aristotelian school are Henry B. Veatch, For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971); John Cooper, Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), as well as several others. Only Ayn Rand identifies herself explicitly as an Objectivist. One of my own early efforts to defend a naturalist-objectivist metaethics appears in Tibor R. Machan, “Epistemology and Moral Knowledge,” Review of Metaphysics 36, no. 3 (September 1982): 23–49. I try to sketch the appropriate conception of human knowledge in support of this task in Tibor R. Machan, “Education and the Philosophy of Knowledge,” Educational Theory 20, no. 3 (1970): 253–68.

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that everyone should. It is irrelevant that the truth of such a claim is universally ascertainable; the point is that it doesn’t have to apply universally, to all moral agents, although there may be some moral judgments, very basic ones, that are universally applicable in this sense. (I have elsewhere defended this point.) 7 Nor is objectivity about ethics the same as impartiality or neutrality: that someone ought morally or ethically to advance his or her child’s welfare can be the case without whoever knows this having to be indifferent to the matter. “Objective” in this context, then, means —at the minimum —that judgments are supported by facts that are themselves independent of human wishes, hopes, desires, or similar states of mind not concerned with grasping facts.8 As the philosopher Raimond Gaita has put the point: Hardly anyone will deny that it requires disciplines of mind and character to “see things as they are” as opposed to how they appear to be and, especially in the case of psychological phenomena, how for many and subtle reasons we fantasize them to be. Nor are many people likely to deny that we must often distance ourselves from our subject so that our fears, fantasies and affections do not interfere with our sense of what is objectively the case.9 Thus, within the limitations of my purpose (to show that objective moral judgments are possible), I will focus primarily on showing that Ayn Rand and similar neo-Aristotelians have made a very promising case for placing ethical or moral judgments on an objective footing.10 Rand called her philosophy “Objectivism” because she defended the view that there is an independent reality (including ethical or moral reality) that we can come to know objectively, that is, based on evidence and reasoning that yield understanding without distorting what is being understood. The principles of ethics, for an Objectivist, are principles no less objective than, say, the rules of some game or sport. In important respects, these rules are similarly conditional, though not relative —which is to say, they presuppose some facts (e.g., the choice to live) but are not predicated on 7 Tibor R. Machan, “Why It Appears That Objective Ethical Claims Are Subjective,” Philosophia 26, nos. 1–4 (1997): 1–23. A recent critique of the is-ought gap is Hilary Putnam’s The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). Putnam’s critique, not unlike Martha Nussbaum’s and Philippa Foot’s efforts, comes several decades after Rand briefly laid out her case for the objectivity of value judgments. (See note 11 below.) 8 I discuss a wide range of issues related to objectivity in Machan, Objectivity. 9 Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice (London: Routledge, 1998), 248. 10 There is a subtle difference between what Rand means by “objective” when it comes to ethics and what she means by the term in other, more straightforwardly epistemological, contexts. For more on this, see Jason Raibley, “Rand on the Objectivity of Values” (2002), http://www.ios.org/events/advsem02/JRObjectivity.pdf.

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contingencies (such as where one lives, the weather, one’s cultural background, etc.). The idea is that it can be objectively shown, for example, that “If one is to live the good human life, one ought to be honest.” Furthermore, Rand argued both that objective ethical knowledge is possible and that the “is-ought” gap is bogus. For Rand, “objective” means “neither revealed nor invented, but as produced by man’s consciousness in accordance with the facts of reality, as mental integrations of factual data computed by man —as the products of a cognitive method of classification whose processes must be performed by man, but whose content is dictated by reality.” 11 That is to say, reality exists independently of us, and for us to apprehend or grasp it correctly, we must do the mental work she describes in her book on epistemology (from which the foregoing quotation is drawn). In relation to morality, however, this reality involves a certain kind of relationship between who and what we are and what it is that enhances living for such a being as we are. So while objective, morality as Rand, and indeed many others, understand it is agent-relative. II. Objectivism and Objective Ethical Judgments In her essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” 12 Rand argues against David Hume that moral judgments can be validated or shown to be well founded. She rejects the passage in which Hume denies that one can deduce from true statements about what is the case certain true statements about what one ought to do. Rand goes on to develop her case, as we have already gleaned above, that human life is normatively pregnant, as it were, meaning that it is bound up, through and through, with a normative dimension.13 The concept of value, Rand argues, is tied intimately to the concept of life, so when something is a living organism there is no escaping 11 Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (New York: New American Library, 1970), 54 (emphasis added to indicate the source of objectivity apprehended by human consciousness). Ayn Rand preceded Martha Nussbaum and Philippa Foot in making a case in recent philosophy for an objectivist, neo-Aristotelian metaethics. Both Nussbaum and Foot published their discussions of these metaethical matters three decades after Rand came out with her discussion of the topic in her essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” in her book The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: New American Library, 1961). Incidentally, this title is often misunderstood to indicate that Rand is defending some normative version of Hobbes’s psychological egoism. In fact, her ethical egoism is more in line with Aristotle’s eudaimonism, whereby ethics per se stands in service of living a good human life. Thus the subtitle’s reference to “a new concept of egoism.” 12 Ibid. 13 Accordingly, it would be a mischaracterization of Rand’s view to suggest that she proposes to derive moral conclusions from nonmoral facts. The facts from which she proposes to derive moral conclusions do contain normative elements, but they are in no way disqualified as facts for that reason alone. The qualification of these facts as “moral” or “ethical” is, in crucial respects, similar to the qualification of other facts as “biological” or “sociological”; the qualification locates these facts ontologically.

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certain normative considerations about such a being. Living beings, for example, do well or badly. “Epistemologically, the concept of ‘value’ is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of ‘life.’ To speak of ‘value’ as apart from ‘life’ is worse than a contradiction in terms. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.” 14 (This, by the way, is a point also implicit in the works of Martha Nussbaum and Philippa Foot; see The Therapy of Desire 15 and Natural Goodness, 16 respectively.) Because of the human capacity for choice, however —for freely deciding to do one thing or another or yet another —in the lives of human beings this normative component is transformed into an ethical or moral one. Thus, not only is it possible to consider whether a human being is doing well or badly, it is also possible to consider whether one is choosing and acting responsibly in doing well or badly. Rand does not try to establish that one can provide deductive arguments for moral judgments. She does argue, however, that moral judgments can be validated or derived from other judgments that are not explicitly moral (though they would normally be normative or value-laden). These derivations are not deductions but inferences, more akin to inductions or conceptual implications than to formal deductions —for example, “If one acts prudently, generously, honestly, and/or courageously, one will (for the most part) live a successful, good, or happy life.” This is how best to understand what Rand proposes in opposition to Hume, based on her understanding of the nature of concepts and definitions and how they work in propositions and arguments. We can glean what Rand set out to do if we consider that in the sciences there would also be a gap (call it the “is-must” gap) if we were to expect that scientific reasoning needs to be deductive. But that isn’t so. Scientific arguments that rest on research and testing —and lead, optimally, to objective knowledge of scientific facts, laws, or principles —involve inferences whose conclusions are true not beyond a shadow of a doubt but beyond a reasonable doubt. Hume could have no complaint about such reasoning, and as Rand understood moral reasoning, Hume might not have had grounds for complaint about what she set out to defend. It has the following form: “It is good for a human being to thrive, and the choice to be prudent (or courageous, generous, and so forth) is required for thriving, so it is good for one to choose to be prudent.” 17 The precise nature of this 14

Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 18. Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 16 Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 17 Thus, Eric Mack is correct when he writes that “[b]eing an objectivist with respect to claims about the effectiveness of means to chosen ends no more removes an advocate of the choice doctrine from the basic subjectivist camp than it removes Hume from that camp” (Mack, “More Problematic Arguments in Randian Ethics,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7 [Spring, 2006]: 301). It is not this that removes the choice doctrine from the basic subjectivist camp; rather, it is the nature of the end chosen, namely, the ultimate end of human life. For 15

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choice is, of course, complicated; it would ordinarily involve the cultivation of the virtues that constitute and help promote one’s happiness.18 III. Beyond the “Is-Ought” Gap The famous “is-ought” gap that Hume identified expresses the philosophical claim that a conclusion that contains moral terms such as “ought to” or “ought not to” cannot be deduced from premises that lack those moral terms, because a valid deductive argument can only have in its conclusion components that are fully supported by its premises. If the premises fail to give complete support to the conclusion, the conclusion is not valid. Here is how Hume put the point: In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it should be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason. . . .19 Hume discredits all rationalist —or deductivist —efforts to prove moral judgments true. He does this by arguing that they beg the question because such a proof would have to have premises that already contain the crucial Hume, that end appears to be anything one might desire, whereas in reality, Rand claims, it is only the one ultimate value that is possible for us: human life. Any other choice would amount, in time, to the annihilation of ends. 18 The happiness at issue here is not what so many contemporary social scientists take to amount to happiness —cheerfulness, even giddiness. See, for example, Jean-Paul Pecqueur, The Case Against Happiness (Farmington, ME: Alice James Books, 2006). On my own view, happiness is the self-awareness of living successfully. 19 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1961), 423.

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term, “ought” or “ought not,” thus simply pushing the problem back a step in each case, leaving the moral judgment ultimately unprovable.20 In response to Hume’s passage, Rand says: In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.” 21 She writes that the passage from Hume “purports to mean that ethical propositions cannot be derived from factual propositions —or that knowledge of that which is cannot logically give man any knowledge of what he ought to do. And wider: it means that knowledge of reality is irrelevant to the actions of a living entity and that any relation between the two is ‘inconceivable.’ ” 22 However, what Hume actually appears to have contended is not what Rand claims he did, namely, that “knowledge of reality is irrelevant to the actions of a living entity and that any relation between the two is ‘inconceivable’,” or that “ethical propositions cannot be derived from factual propositions.” Rather, what Hume argued is that it is impossible to deduce 20 For a recent effort to address Hume’s concerns, see Mark H. Bickhard, “Process and Emergence: Normative Function and Representation,” Axiomathes 14, nos. 1–3 (2003): 121– 55. Bickhard also reads Hume as saying that one cannot derive “ought” from “is,” whereas Hume said that one cannot deduce “ought” from “is.” 21 Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 19 (emphasis in the original). Did Rand claim to have derived an “ought” from an “is” in this essay, as Mack states (“More Problematic Arguments,” 297)? Let me reiterate that Rand is using the term “validation” in her discussion of value judgments. This idea of “validation” is not the same as the Humean idea of deduction; nor, it seems, is it the same as Mack’s idea of derivation. What Rand seems to me to be doing is arguing (in some legitimate fashion or other) that moral judgments can (objectively) be shown to be true. She does not develop in detail just what such validation consists of. I surmise, from the full context of her approach to demonstrating the truth of her ideas, that hers is a type of conceptual rather than syllogistic “proof.” At the risk of sounding heretical, Rand’s form of validation smacks of the kind of reasoning we find in Wittgenstein or in criminal prosecution, akin to the argument to the best explanation. So her showing that moral claims can be objective rests on a different idea of what it takes to validate such claims from what Hume appears to have regarded as required for such a task (and then denied is possible). See Tibor R. Machan, Ayn Rand (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 57ff. It is also necessary to note here that when Rand and others in this tradition of naturalistic metaethics and ethics defend a principle, they do this “for the most part” and not “necessarily in every conceivable case.” 22 Journals of Ayn Rand, ed. David Harriman (New York: Dutton, 1997), 683 (emphasis in the original).

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what one ought and ought not do from what is or is not the case. The difference is not at all negligible. IV. Not All Reasoning Is Deductive A deduction is deemed by many philosophers to be a formal logical operation, capable of involving only concepts with closed, final definitions. On this view, deductions are treated as timeless proofs. This is a tradition of thinking about knowledge along lines suggested by Plato, with his theory of forms or the natures of things, and continued, especially, by Descartes. Both of these very influential philosophers appeared to suggest that for us to have knowledge of anything, this knowledge must be capable of being stated as a necessary truth. That, in turn, suggests that whenever reasoning is performed invoking facts that human beings know, this reasoning must amount to a species of logical deduction comparable to that which occurs in formal logical (indeed, symbolic) operations. In such reasoning, the operative terms and propositions are symbolic of closed, final definitions and propositions comprised of terms with such definitions. Such reasoning is, in consequence, timelessly valid, and whatever truth might be achieved by means of it would also amount to timeless, necessary truth. However, when logic is deployed to produce proofs involving facts that may imply other facts, this is not a formal (let alone symbolic) deduction but another type of proof —another way to derive a factual proposition from other factual propositions.23 David Hume did not discuss the difference between this type of derivation and formal deduction, and as I argue in my book Ayn Rand, 24 Rand’s Objectivist epistemology holds out a credible promise for the success of such a derivation but does not establish that the strict formal deduction Hume thinks is inconceivable is actually available in establishing or proving the truth of any moral propositions.25 23 Ken Lucey has objected with the rhetorical question, “Does Machan think a fact is such that it can have implications?” Yes. For example, the fact that there is an ashtray on a table in a restaurant implies that smoking is permitted there. Or the fact of someone’s racism implies the appropriateness of moral contempt for that someone. 24 Machan, Ayn Rand, chap. 2. 25 Rand can be interpreted as holding that the kind of strictly formal deductions that others think exclusively deserve the term are simply very broad, symbolic models of logical reasoning. So she would argue that deductions do, in fact, obtain between judgments of facts involving concepts that are themselves contextually (as distinct from timelessly) defined, possessing essential attributes that make logical deductions possible. Her objection to Hume, then, is that Hume failed to see that concepts such as “ought to” and “ought not to” can be derived from definitions of “human goodness” as, in part, essentially involving choices and ultimate values. In other words, Rand would argue that a sound, valid theory of human goodness deductively yields moral conclusions, conclusions regarding what one ought to do, so long as by “deduction” one does not mean logical arguments involving closed definitions of concepts. For more, see Machan, Ayn Rand, and Machan, Objectivity.

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V. Conceptualization Versus Deduction The idea of concept formation clarifies why Rand does not accept either Hume’s or G. E. Moore’s idea of what it is to know something and how to define a concept.26 Put plainly, what is at issue here is the claim that the way we acquire knowledge is by developing and organizing our ideas based on awareness we have of the world for the time being, by means of our perceptual organs, guided by axiomatic concepts (which I have discussed elsewhere and which are central to Rand’s Objectivism).27 In a bit more detail, the process goes on roughly as follows. One detects various similarities and differences by means of the sensory organs; one recognizes that nothing like that is usually, normally possible unless something exists that is being perceived, and then one carefully, parsimoniously, arranges a system of ideas in which principles of logic are followed, all the while keeping in continued focus the initial differences and similarities, thus learning what it is that exists. The result is a system of sound —well-grounded —ideas that best (but not necessarily finally) capture for us aspects of reality that we set out to understand.28 When we know reality, moreover, we do not know it by grasping it forever. We know it at a given time, not for all times. One reason it isn’t easy to give an account of knowing reality is that knowing isn’t like other accomplishments with which we are familiar. The way human beings know is unique in the world; they know conceptually, not perceptually as most other living beings do, and they have the capacity to reflect on their conceptual knowledge —to become self-aware —a process that needs to be identified and understood without the benefit of easy analogies. But some analogies come closer than others. For example, we know somewhat analogously to how we grasp —or grab —something as well as we can, but not without the possibility of improvement, and we can observe our grasping —or grabbing —as well. All efforts to understand the nature of human knowledge must admit that there is nothing quite like it in the rest of nature and that the best we can do is depend on our ordinary, nonsystematic familiarity with cases of knowing, something that runs the risk 26 I examine both Hume’s and Moore’s criticism of “naturalism” in Tibor R. Machan, Human Rights and Human Liberties (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975), and Machan, Individuals and Their Rights (Chicago: Open Court, 1989). For both Hume and Moore, definitions appear to amount to necessary truths, whereas in the neo-Aristotelian, Randian epistemological tradition they are understood to be contextual and open-ended. See Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. 27 Machan, Ayn Rand, chap. 2, and Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. 28 By “in which the principles of logic are followed” I am referring to the policy of being consistent, avoiding contradictions, and avoiding all the more specialized fallacies involved in bad reasoning. I do not, however, have in mind adhering to the strict requirements of formal or symbolic logic, wherein one aims for purely deductive reasoning. For example, substantive reasoning (including moral reasoning) need not result in conclusions that are logically impossible to deny. For more on this, see Tibor R. Machan, “Another Look at Logical Possibility,” The Personalist 51, (1970): 246–49. See also Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Logical Possibility: An Aristotelian Essentialist Critique,” The Thomist 47 (October 1983): 513–40.

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of begging the question. In a certain respect, an attempt to give an account of human knowing involves starting out on an entirely new endeavor.29 In any case, when we draw conclusions in everyday life (about whether to open a door when trying to go through it, or about how to build a bridge or a helicopter, or how to construct an argument for objective 29 A fatal flaw of much of philosophical reflection about what it is to know has been (from Plato through Descartes to our own time) that knowledge has often been understood to require timeless certainty. If one knows, it must be impossible to even conceive that one is wrong. Knowledge must be absolute, perfect, incorrigible, finished, and, as it is sometimes put, in the final analysis. For a discussion of a different view of knowledge, see Adam Leite, “Is Fallibility an Epistemological Shortcoming?” The Philosophical Quarterly 54, no. 215 (April 2004): 232–51. The Platonist view (not necessarily Plato’s view) of what knowledge must be is an impossible ideal. This comes across when, for example, Socrates notes that he knows only that he knows nothing. Socrates is arguably invoking the idealist view of perfect knowledge of Forms and disclaiming having achieved it. Given the prevalence of the Platonist view of knowledge, the result has been a great variety of more or less skeptical ideas about knowledge, such as the prominent view that we cannot really know anything, or if we can, perhaps, it’s just an approximation; maybe we can have probable or approximate or fallible knowledge. In contrast, I would say that sometimes we probably know this or that; sometimes we have approximate knowledge; sometimes our knowledge is fallible. At other times, however, we simply know, without qualification. It is only the model of ideal (Platonic) knowledge that inclines one to place the qualifiers before “knowledge” in every instance. Currently, Richard Rorty’s communitarian view of knowledge is widely respected, according to which one knows in terms of one’s group and objectivity is not possible but solidarity is. For the full story, see Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). All this has been especially influential with regard to knowledge about right and wrong, good and evil, producing some disturbing practical results in crucial areas such as the way personal misconduct, professional malpractice, crime, and terrorism are widely understood and discussed. For more on this, see Tibor R. Machan, “Terrorism and Objective Moral Principles,” International Journal of World Peace 4, no. 4 (October–December 1987): 31–40. (The ideas of this paper are incorporated in Machan, Objectivity.) What Rand has proposed is that human beings, if they do the hard work, can obtain knowledge just fine and dandy. There is, of course, ample evidence of this throughout the sciences, in technology, and, let’s not forget it, in ordinary life. But what is this human knowledge? As the name of her system makes evident, the key to knowledge is objective validity (meaning that knowledge must be “reasonable or justifiable in the circumstances”). As she put the point in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 46:

Objective validity is determined by reference to the facts of reality. But it is man who has to identify the facts; objectivity requires discovery by man —and cannot precede man’s knowledge, i.e., cannot require omniscience. Man cannot know more than he has discovered —and he may not know less than the evidence indicates, if his concepts and definitions are to be objectively valid. Ayn Rand’s position is, I believe, the one that Gilbert Harman expressed well: namely, that we must “take care not to adopt a very skeptical attitude nor become too lenient about what is to count as knowledge” (Gilbert Harman, Thought [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976], 145). Another prominent contemporary philosopher who has advanced this understanding of human knowledge is J. L. Austin, in his essay “Other Minds,” in Austin, Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). Arguably, in his On Certainty (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), Ludwig Wittgenstein also suggests such a view of knowledge.

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ethics), the conclusions are not strictly speaking deduced —as formal logicians would characterize deductions —but are conceptually inferred from successive facts that are known contextually. Moreover, the state of our knowledge is subject to change. We may learn that what we knew once (e.g., regarding history or biology) is now understood somewhat differently. Given this, it is also possible to imagine that in the future, the state of knowledge will change once again. That is to say, the premises of substantive (including moral) arguments are not finally certain in the way that those of formal, logical arguments are; nonetheless, these premises, and the conclusions they support, can be objective and contextually certain.30 The reason this is different from pure logical deduction is that such deductions are formal and symbolic, and thus not dependent on actual concepts, but only on symbols of concepts. As such, strictly logical deductions are timeless. Let us look first at a simple syllogism from term logic, and then at one from propositional logic. We will see why they can mislead us about the nature of logical argumentation about substantive matters. First: All As are Bs. All Bs are Cs. So, all As are Cs. This argument does not pose the problem that A is open-ended, not finally identified —or, to put it slightly differently, that the concept of A (unlike the concept “human being” or “apple” or “lion”) isn’t finally closed. That is because A is not a concept but a formal symbol. Now let’s consider an argument from propositional logic: Given that P implies Q, and that Q implies R; therefore, if P then R. As I have noted, A (or B or C) is not a concept but a symbol for one. The point to take to heart is that the way symbols behave in formal arguments must not be confused with how concepts would behave. Nor are P, Q, and R propositions —they simply stand in for them. But to appreciate the nature of substantive reasoning, it is necessary to explore the nature of propositions and concepts, not only their symbolic representations in formal logic texts. 30 Thus, if one reasons, “I just left and locked my car in the faculty parking lot, and it is reasonable to hold that no one has moved it, so that is where my car is now, so that is where I will find it upon my return,” this is not quite the same sort of formal reasoning as “Since p strictly implies q, and q strictly implies r, and since p, therefore r.”

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Compare the formal symbolic syllogism with the following: “All human beings are biological entities; all biological entities are mortal; so all human beings are mortal.” The concepts here are not finally locked in, so it is intelligible to propose that the conclusion does not follow since the second premise might be false. The mortality of animals is not a logical truth, as one might put it in terms of contemporary analytic philosophy. But so what? Indeed, science fiction writers create plausible enough stories by often denying various parts of such syllogisms. The conclusions are, thus, formally valid only if the statement of what is an animal or biological entity is treated as closed or finally true, the last word on the subject. But then some will object that definitions merely stipulate and do not confirm reality’s unchangeable nature. Purely formal deductive arguments do not have these problems. This is why most reasoning does not involve deductive inferences but conceptual (logical) ones, in which a very significant role is played by theories and definitions. Rand made this a central part of her epistemology. In any case, Hume’s view about our inability to deductively prove ethical claims has had an enormous impact on the social sciences and on moral philosophy. Nonetheless, Hume himself did not appear to have embraced the full-blown ethical and political skepticism to which his argument is thought to have given rise. Hume, after all, argued forcefully in support of many normative claims. What he did not do, however, is lay out a cogent explanation for how such support could be provided apart from deductive inferences. I would argue that this was due to Hume’s (as well as many other philosophers’) embrace of the idea that unless something is necessarily true, it cannot count as bona fide, certain human knowledge, knowledge that can be defended against skepticism. Thus, by affirming what to many appeared an unbridgeable gap between factual and value judgments, Hume’s anti-rationalism laid the foundation for positivism. This is the view that while what are called empirical facts are something we can know about, values are not within the province of the knowable. This may be said to be a major reason why social scientists have mostly kept away from making value judgments. With respect to such judgments, social scientists invoke the “is-ought” gap, saying, in essence, that talking about values would be unscientific, since values are not subject to factual confirmation. Since the hard sciences had always been closely associated with the idea that factual judgments can be confirmed, the social sciences, in order to carry “the mantle of science,” were fashioned to mimic them. The method by which the evidence and reasoning of the hard sciences was supposed to proceed —data gathering and unbiased analysis —needed to be followed in the social sciences, and this appeared to preclude dealing with values, including morality and politics.

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Rand, like many other philosophers, gave no sign of taking into account the distinction between Hume’s claim that we cannot deduce moral conclusions from factual premises and the possibility of this leaving it open that we could derive or infer them from factual premises in some other way. Rand took the former claim to be affirming the impossibility of rational moral judgments, thus showing a tendency toward rationalism, even though in her epistemological works she disavowed it. VI. Morality Rightly Understood Along with Martha Nussbaum, Philippa Foot, Henry Veatch, John Cooper, and others, Ayn Rand was a naturalist; all of these theorists, in fact, developed what can be regarded as Aristotle’s biocentric metaethics (as well as ethics). Such an approach resembles the foundations of medicine: the biocentric approach develops a conception of what can be construed as broad healthfulness and rests on it a set of guidelines for “healthy,” flourishing living (which, of course, extends beyond the narrowly biological aspect of a person to the entire, robust living human being involved). Once such an understanding is achieved, various practices are identified as promoting a generally healthful life for the kind of living entities at issue, namely, human beings. These practices then are identified as moral virtues, guiding the acting agent toward living and achieving a good human life where that is a matter of choice, akin to how medicine teaches us how to lead healthful lives.31 This approach is, of course, applicable to all living things, so far as what is of value to them is concerned, but with human beings the fact that they conduct themselves by choosing to do so (to embark on their human lives) introduces the ethical or moral element (i.e., the self-responsible, selfdirected element).32 Morality amounts, then, to the principles of the selfdirected fulfillment of the purpose of human flourishing. Let me now turn to the issue of what would be the most general understanding of the good life for human beings. To get a clue on how this would best be answered, let us consider how a general understanding of the goodness, excellence, or well-being of any living thing would have to be understood. 31 Can flourishing and justice conflict? I would say they can, in very exceptional cases — when, as John Locke is supposed to have said, “politics is impossible.” See H. L. A. Hart, “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review 64 (1955): 175–91. Flourishing for human beings comes about through the practice of the virtues, including justice. 32 The precise way one makes this choice is a complicated matter because it happens incrementally in one’s life, starting with tiny decisions reaffirmed over and over again, as well as neglected now and then (and, by some, even frequently). For more on this, see Tibor R. Machan, Human Rights and Human Liberties (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishing Co., 1975), 94ff. See also Tibor R. Machan, “Rand and Choice,” in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7, no. 2 (Spring 2006), 257–73.

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A good (or healthy) life of a gazelle or worm, generally considered —as, say, from the viewpoint of someone who studies such living things and has occasion to identify specimens that are good versus mediocre or bad ones —involves knowing the kind of being at issue.33 To be able to identify the specimens that are doing well, one needs to know what kind of living thing is being evaluated. The condition of such a living being cannot be assessed without knowing (even if only roughly) what is its nature, what are the characteristic attributes that could be in better or worse shape for the life of such an entity. Birds that get on with their lives by flying long distances, to use a simple example, require healthy wings, and if they lack them, they would not be good specimens of such birds. To assess how well a human being is doing in terms of its physical or medical condition, one would have to be well informed about the central physical constituents —organs, faculties, anatomical and physiological features —of such a being and how well they are doing and are likely to do in the future. That is how a good (versus mediocre or poor) specimen would be identified. This is what is meant by calling this a naturalist approach —taking as one’s starting-point knowledge of the nature of the thing being assessed or evaluated.34 When it comes to broader or more robust attributes than those bearing only on the physical or medical condition of a living entity, it is even more necessary to a have a clear grasp of what kind of being we have in mind to evaluate. Given the complexity of human beings, a clear grasp of human nature, the kind of biological entities humans are, is required in order to assess how well they are doing at living a human life.35 VII. Human Nature and the Objective Human Good The history of thought is, of course, replete with attempts to identify human nature —that is, to learn what a human being is as such. The attempt has been made difficult because what has been deemed to count as a success in this undertaking has been influenced largely by the Platonist notion of what the nature of something is, and by the Cartesian notion of what it is to know something. Both notions offer up impossible ideals, and both, therefore, encourage skepticism.36 Definitions, which purport to state the nature of something, can nonetheless be understood along lines that Rand and others suggest, namely, 33 Such an examination may take place in a survey of such animals or other living things after some natural calamity, such as a severe drought or flood. 34 I consider in some detail the oft-discussed problems with such naturalism —with the idea of an objective “nature” —in Machan, Individuals and Their Rights, chap. 1. 35 In some cases, seriously impaired persons can excel in certain very significant respects (e.g., astrophysicist Stephen Hawking), though no one could reasonably deny their being impaired. 36 For more, see Machan, Objectivity, chap. 1.

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contextually.37 The idea is that a definition of something has just the degree of rigor or exactitude that it is reasonable to expect within the ontological region in which the kind of thing defined is located. To be sure, some things may be given highly formal definitions along lines required in geometry or some other formal systems such as mathematics. Yet when it comes to human beings, which are biological entities, the definition is open-ended and can admit of some borderline grayness; for example, such a definition need not fully fit a damaged specimen or an infant.38 We might say that the definition picks out the normal cases without barring extraordinary ones.39 Although it is accurate enough (within this conception of what a definition must be) to state that human beings are best understood as the sort of beings that are rational animals, there is no need for it to be true that every member of the species is at all times fully capable of rationality (e.g., while asleep, as an infant, or as a member in extreme old age afflicted with senility). All these instances can be accounted for as belonging within the kind in question without needing to fulfill the criteria of membership as a square would fulfill its definition in geometry. (Recall here J. L. Austin’s discussion of goldfinches, where he shows that what counts as knowing what a goldfinch is does not include predicting what it will always be!) 40 To put it another way, experience tells us that rationality is typically a vital part of the life of human beings. While some appear to do without exercising much rationality, they are typically parasitic on others who exercise it routinely. This neo-Aristotelian conception of definitions, developed by Rand and approximated by some others, is as good as it gets in what we require to think reasonably about human affairs,41 and can serve as the standard for moral evaluation of human actions and institutions. VIII. Objective Ethics and Rational Individuals For our purposes, special heed must be paid to the fact that human nature implies the individuality of each human being. A rational or thinking animal engages its rational capacity by choice, volitionally, as a matter of its free will. The point is evident on the basis of several considerations —the explanatory force of the idea, introspection, scientific analysis, 37

Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, chap. 5. For more on this, see Tibor R. Machan, Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature’s Favorite (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). See also Austin, “Other Minds.” 39 This is not the place to develop a full case for the contextualist position. The position faces many challenges, especially with respect to how a contextual definition tracks the ontological features of what is being defined, the nature of the thing. 40 Austin, “Other Minds.” 41 For more along these lines, see Hilary Putnam, Words and Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), esp. Part I, “The Return of Aristotle.” See also Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature,” Social Philosophy and Policy 16, no. 1 (1999): 1–43. I too have addressed the issue in Machan, Individuals and Their Rights, 68–83. 38

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etc.42 Not only is each human being an essentially unique (and, in a fundamental respect, irreplaceable) individual, but once a human being has activated (or has failed to activate) his or her rational capacity, results will emerge that extend the individuation process even further, in various creative, productive, destructive, or obstructive ways.43 The reason this is vital to our concern here has to do with what is implied by the central place of individuality in human nature. The central place of individuality implies that although ethics can be objective, it is rarely universal: different human individuals ought (and ought not) to do different things, ought to conduct themselves differently. While no contradictory moral judgments can be part of ethics or morality, there are enormous differences in how people should act. (We can draw an analogy here to the field of medicine, where there are some general principles of healthful conduct, but where particular judgments about cures, dosages, etc., will vary enormously.) Along these lines —very much in the spirit of Aristotle’s metaethical approach, but with some variations from the specific understanding he proposed —while certain moral virtues are indeed to be practiced by everyone so as to live a morally good human life, there will be different ways of exercising these virtues. Some persons will need to practice certain (but not all) virtues quite vigilantly, while other persons will need to practice different ones more vigilantly (e.g., soldiers may need to be more courageous than, say, accountants, while accountants may need to be more prudent than soldiers). In all cases where we are concerned with what is the right thing to do, the answer can be ascertained objectively, based on facts and reasoning, but facts pertaining to who one is will matter alongside facts pertaining to what one is —indeed, considerations of the latter will place limits on those of the former. What career one ought to choose, what political party one should support, what kind of diet one should follow, and myriad other questions can be answered in this way, well supported by relevant facts and principles.44 42 For more on this, see Edward Pols, The Acts of Our Being (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983); Roger W. Sperry, Science and Moral Priority (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); and Tibor R. Machan, Initiative —Human Agency and Society (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2000). 43 For more, see Tibor R. Machan, Classical Individualism: The Supreme Importance of Each Human Being (London: Routledge, 1998). An Al Capone or an Adolf Hitler becomes individuated in destructive or obstructive ways. 44 Arguably, many so-called “self-help” books are, in fact, books of ethics, but they have not been treated as such under the influence of the prominent conception of moral philosophy according to which morality pertains only to interpersonal conduct. For a good critique of this position, see W. D. Falk, “Morality, Self, and Others,” in Morality and the Language of Conduct, ed. Hector-Neri Castaneda and George Nakhnikian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965). Proper consideration of how one ought to act as the individual one is will be constrained by general principles based upon one’s membership in the human species: e.g., rationality, respect for human rights, etc.

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Much else could be said about all of this, but I want now to turn to a particular issue that arises in connection with Rand’s idea of the objectivity of morality or ethics.45 She ties this objectivity to a choice a human being makes to live his or her life, and this has provoked some to suggest that she has, in fact, given away the ballgame and caved in to subjectivism.46 IX. Randian Objectivity Rests on Choice Eric Mack and Douglas B. Rasmussen have both argued that since Rand rests the moral principles she believes should guide us on a prior choice to live, her substantive ethics —the set of virtues she considers binding on human beings —is conditional, not categorical, and thus subjective rather than objective. Since I share the Randian idea that without a prior choice there is no grounding for ethics, and since I also believe that her ethics has objective foundations, it will be important to spend some time discussing these criticisms.47 If, as I believe, Rand is right that we have free will, so that there is a choice that we can (continually) make to live and to think,48 then prior to 45 Some have objected that Rand does not manage to derive ought claims from true claims about what is the case. See, for example, David Friedman, “Some Problems with Ayn Rand’s Derivation of Ought from Is,” posted on the newsgroup humanities.philosophy.objectivism (reportedly circa November 1996). The criticism rests on a formalist or Platonist conception of definitions and concepts. (See also Robert Nozick, “On the Randian Argument,” The Personalist 52 [Spring 1971].) As such, it misunderstands Rand and her neo-Aristotelian naturalist metaethics and the conception of definitions she adopts. (See also Putnam, Words and Life.) Actually, Friedman focuses not on ethics per se but on politics, complaining (as does Mack) that Rand cannot show, based on her ethical egoism, that one ought to respect another’s right to life, liberty, property, etc. For a very good discussion of why Rand’s ethical egoism is often misunderstood along similar lines, see Robert White, “A Study of the Ethical Foundations of Ayn Rand’s Theory of Individual Rights” (Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland, a thesis submitted 2005). White shows, among other things, that Rand’s egoism is peculiar in that it sees ethics as such as egoistic or eudaimonist. 46 Eric Mack, “Problematic Arguments in Randian Ethics,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 5, no. 1 (Fall 2003); and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Rand on Obligation and Value,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 4, no. 1 (Fall 2002). 47 Douglas Rasmussen makes the following challenging point about this issue: “Rand’s derivation of an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ seems of limited value: if I choose to live, then I ought to do such and such, but since there can be no obligation without this choice, there is nothing, either logically or morally, that obligates me to choose to live and thus no reason to be moral. Possibly, there was something to Hazel E. Barnes (1967) including a chapter on ‘Objectivist Ethics’ in her book, An Existentialist Ethics. Morality seems to be based on an irrational or arational commitment —the very thing Rand vehemently rejects” (Rasmussen, “Rand on Obligation and Value,” 75). The claim, however, that this makes Rand’s view “of limited value” assumes that “objective” must mean exactly what Rand denies it must mean, namely, “intrinsic” —that is, that for a moral standard to be objectively true, it would have to amount to a set of categorical imperatives and could not amount to a set of conditional imperatives. For more, see Machan, “Rand and Choice.” 48 Or, to put it as I would, it is possible for us (that is, for each normal human individual) to keep up the initiative to live and to think. Let me stress that the choice to live is a fundamental or first choice, or is best so conceptualized. It may be envisioned as being made, in the initial stages of one’s life, haltingly, implicitly, gradually, over and over again,

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such a choice we are at most surviving physically (fully dependent on others) with a mind that is at most dormant, as yet unfocused, and thus not ready to be aware of any alternatives among which an individual might select one and reject the others. And if no commitment has yet been made to keep focusing one’s mind and thus keep identifying what the right course of conduct amounts to, there cannot be any responsibility. Ignorance may not be an excuse in the law, but total lack of engagement in reality is an excuse in morality. I should like to suggest that the parable of the Garden of Eden might illuminate what is at issue here: Prior to eating from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve had the potential to be fully human. But only after embarking upon gaining knowledge by eating the apple from the tree did this potential become realized and lead to having the personal responsibility to choose right from wrong. The rest of the animals, however, remained in a state of innocence, as it were, because gaining knowledge remained out of their reach. Arguably, every human being replays this development from being an amoral infant/animal to a developing human/ moral agent. David Kelley has provided some promising analysis here, spelling out the foregoing point in less metaphorical terms: For humans, the choice to live plays the same role that hard-wired instinct plays for lower animals. Our own choice is the source of our commitment to life; it is what gives us a lock on life as a goal. If the commitment is not there, if I do not actually value my life, then my life cannot be a value for me. It is not something I act to gain or keep. Of course I am still subject to the facts of reality, [which include the fact] that life is the only thing capable of serving as an ultimate value. If I try to make something else my highest value —say golf, or chocexpressing (as one might put it) the will to live, to be the human being one can become. The choice —or initial emergence of conceptual consciousness —I am considering is a logical first step in action and thus cannot be motivated by some desire or knowledge. It is not a choice in the sense of a selection process, going into force with prior information at hand; rather, it is the exertion of an initial effort by a rational agent who at that stage of its development lacks other decisive prompters to action. This initiative is, as it were, the act of free will. (For more on this perennial topic, see Machan, Initiative —Human Agency and Society.) As one commentator has noted, what I am defending is a view of morality that is reminiscent of its characterization as “a system of hypothetical imperatives.” Only in this case, as the comment goes, “the hypothetical can only really go one way. We might think of the decision to live as one that is inconceivable to reject. . . .” Only the decision is unlike others, since it is not considered but commences or initiates any and all considerations. I should note, also, that although the choice to live commits one to flourishing, it does not necessitate it. One can start off with the choice to live but then default on what it implies, namely, to think and act virtuously. But a consistent alternative to choosing to live with this implicit commitment to aiming to flourish still would amount to implicitly choosing to wither away. Indeed, if one chooses to live —to survive as a human being —instead of to perish, the implicit choice does involve attempting to flourish. For human beings, the choice to live is not merely the choice to survive —as one survives a plane crash by merely not dying in it —but the choice to live as human beings can.

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olate eclairs, or service to the proletarian revolution —just because they give me the most pleasure or inner satisfaction, then I am acting on subjective whim, in denial of the facts of reality. It would be OK on Hume’s or Sartre’s theory, because they are indeed subjectivists. Objectivism does not permit this sort of arbitrary and unconstrained choice. But neither does it commit the opposite fallacy of intrinsicism by ignoring the fact and the role of human choice. If I do not choose to live, if it is a matter of indifference to me whether I live or die, then from a moral standpoint there is nothing more to be said.49 The precise account of the prior state of mind —prior to the time when, gradually or by leaps and bounds, the individual commences the thinking he is equipped to do and needs to do —is complicated by the fact that it is yet impossible to administer a test for it. At that stage of human development, there is no self-consciousness by which what is going on in the minds of infant human beings could be brought to light.50 Indeed, because it is hypothesized that in such a state the crucial process of conceptual thinking has not yet commenced, and because it would have to be such conceptual thinking that brings to light the introspective data that would enable us to observe or take note of what goes on prior to the choice to live and to think, the only way to grasp what goes on prior to that choice is by a kind of rational reconstruction. This would involve a consideration of what must have preceded that choice, given what we know of those who have indeed developed, grown up, and made progress in their human living and carried on accordingly. Might it be the case, however, that the infant who fails to make the choice to live and to think is in fact doing something that amounts to “lazy thinking”? Might it not, after all, be a moral failure not to take up the task of gradually but relentlessly becoming aware? Yet, prior to when one makes the choice to think, no alternatives as to what one might do 49

David Kelley, “Choosing Life” (unpublished paper, 2005). Neuroscientists, of course, have made observations of the brain’s behavior in infancy that correlate with what (in later life) turn out to be mental activities, thus suggesting that such activities do take place in infancy and perhaps even before. Bernard Baars, author of In the Theater of Consciousness (London: Oxford University Press, 1996), made some interesting observations to me via e-mail on this topic: “My friend Stan Franklin, who is a mathematician/computer scientist, talks about ‘autonomous agents.’ Humans are nothing if not autonomous agents —not in a mystical sense, but in a very specific and causal sense. One of the ways we are autonomous is in terms of substitutability of resources. On the level of food, we like to eat meat, but if that runs out, potatoes will do. So there are options. In terms of human relationships, we’d like to have Julia Roberts as our playmate, but there are other fish in that sea. In terms of making a living, we’d all like to be paid for our books, but . . . (etc.). I think that’s one of the keys to autonomy, substitutability of resources. Another is flexibility in acquiring knowledge. Humans are by far the best learners in the animal kingdom, obviously. But acquired knowledge also shapes who we are and how we define our purposes and interests. Gerald Edelman . . . makes a big thing about the distinctiveness of the individual human brain. His Neural Darwinism gives a conceptual account of individuality from solid biological evidence.” 50

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could have come into focus, and the process of selection could not yet have commenced. But after the choice (or, as I prefer to put it, taking the initiative) to think has occurred, even if in an incremental, small-step-bysmall-step fashion, then to choose to reject the alternative to remain in focus and continue to think can be seen to involve an evasion of something accessible and of enormous value —a case of self-betrayal, in light of the original choice to live.51 It is worth noting that the political philosopher Leo Strauss, someone very different from Rand but also, arguably, within the same philosophical tradition, suggests a similar way of understanding the birth (emergence) of morality. For Strauss, the good life for man is simply the life in which the requirements of man’s natural inclinations are fulfilled in the proper order to the highest possible degree, the life of a man who is awake to the highest possible degree, the life of a man in whose soul nothing lies waste.52 In the Randian sense of objective morality, the principles of ethics emerge and are true because they further the goal one has acknowledged one has in life, something fundamental that the agent has decided (at the moment conceptualization has commenced): namely, to embark on living a human life. One may view this decision as a very basic commitment —an oath taken, as it were —to embark on living a human life. The principles one then becomes aware of, following one’s taking of this oath, are akin to the objective principles of, say, mechanical engineering that become required once an engineer chooses to embark on building a bridge or a skyscraper. Given the initial choice, these principles are necessary and clearly identifiable as such.53 Even as one embarks on playing some game, such as bridge, one commits oneself to following certain rules that are objective, though they are conditional upon the existence of the game (which did not need to exist). 51 The word “choose” can mislead because it is often used to mean “select,” and for selections there need to be several alternatives. This fundamental choice, however, is of the “on versus off” type, so “taking the initiative,” which involves moving from rest to motion, more accurately characterizes what may well be going on here. 52 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 127. 53 For a detailed discussion, see Machan, “Rand and Choice.” At this point, I should make clear that the choice not to live, made at the initial stage of one’s life (that is to say, the choice not to initiate one’s living) is premoral. One must embark upon life before one is bound by the principles that guide it. Yes, one’s flourishing human life is potentially one’s end, but it is not one’s end in fact without one’s having embarked upon living. I should also note that not choosing to live, not initiating one’s life process, as it were, is not the same as embarking upon suicide, which is done when one has lived for quite a while and is certainly open to moral criticism by that stage of one’s life. Should one decide to commit suicide —maybe justifiably —the method used would also be subject to moral evaluation.

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Of course, the Randian version of objective morality assumes free will and assumes that there is a point when a young human being summons himself or herself to the task of thinking. If one rejects these assumptions, which neither Mack nor Rasmussen does, one is opting for a radically non-Randian approach to ethics. X. Why Is Morality Objective? As I have already noted, by “objective” I mean that the claims about what one ought to do or ought not to do are capable of being shown to be true by reference to our very long history of experience with and study of facts that are open to any rational mind’s apprehension (although not beyond a shadow of doubt).54 The fact that someone has chosen to embark on living a human life is one such (very general) fact. Other such facts include what the agent’s life requires to flourish, namely, the practice of various virtues in the context of who that individual is, what his or her options and resources are, etc. Indeed, a Bill Gates would have to practice the virtue of generosity in very different ways from someone at the poverty line: the specific judgment of how much they each ought to give to charity would be different, though the general judgment that people ought to act generously would hold true. Without the choice to embark on living one’s human life, the selfbinding nature of ethics would be missing. Why should one act as ethics — the virtues of living a good human life —would require one to act? The answer is that one should act this way because one has freely accepted the fact that one’s primary goal is to live as a human being (i.e., to live in a way that is fitting for the kind of organism one is). Thus, one has committed oneself to what this kind of life requires, on analogy to the more particular case of being bound by the ethics of a given profession that one has taken up as a matter of free choice. For instance, only those not conscripted into the military can be said, properly, to be bound by military ethics, not those who were drafted and made no commitment to live by the principles of military life (although this isn’t what, misguidedly, military law requires from conscripts). The same goes, arguably, for any other profession.55 In summary, then, what I have tried to show is this: In a naturalist metaethics such as what we find in Ayn Rand’s “The Objectivist Ethics” —as well as in Martha Nussbaum’s Therapy of Desire and in Philippa Foot’s 54 This is why objecting to conclusions on these matters on the grounds that it is logically possible (i.e., that there is no formal contradiction in the denial) that they aren’t so is irrelevant. As Wittgenstein puts it, “The reasonable man does not have certain doubts” (Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 29e). That is, some doubts are unreasonable. 55 For more on this point, see Tibor R. Machan and James E. Chesher, A Primer on Business Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). See also the introductory essay, “Ethics and Its Uses,” in Tibor R. Machan, Commerce and Morality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988).

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Natural Goodness —an objective ethical position can be developed based on a sound understanding of human nature (that is, an understanding derived from experience and the study of and reflection upon human nature). In Rand’s and my version, however, two vital issues are central to the substantive ethics that emerges: namely, individuality and freedom of the will.56 What comes out of this inquiry is a system of moral virtues to guide one in living a good or excellent human life to which one has made a commitment as a rational individual, a commitment that binds one to act according to judgments based on such a system of virtues. The particulars, of course, will be quite cumbersome to identify and will require, in most cases, knowledge of the individual agent who is to act in one or another way (“local” knowledge). But this is no different from how, in attending properly, prudently to one’s physical well-being, one will need to know one’s body, as well as general principles of sound medicine, nutrition, and the like. It seems to me that this approach to ethics preserves a reasonable conception of objectivity for ethical judgments. It is also an approach that reflects quite faithfully how most people make their day-to-day ethical decisions in life (especially if they aren’t guided by various skeptically conceived metaethical theories). What may be important to mention here, although the development of the idea would require considerably more space than I have at my disposal, is that the concept “objectivity” could itself be contextual rather than what it is widely taken to be, namely, just one sort of process or method involved in gaining knowledge.57 Objective knowledge of A will most likely reflect in certain important respects the ontology of A —what type or even kind of being A is. Obtaining objective knowledge, in short, will not amount to an identical process in each case because what this knowledge is of will be reflected in what it is to know it objectively. To put it somewhat differently, since objectivity concerns the means by which knowledge is obtained —the type of evidence and argument required to gain knowledge of the world as it is —it makes good sense to suppose that if different facts about the world provide different sorts of evidence and argument by which to learn of them, the objectivity at issue will itself be different in these cases.58 This explains, in the most general terms, why objectivity in ethics is not identical to objectivity in, say, chemistry or psychology. Objectivity is in 56 Martha Nussbaum, in contrast, seems to be concerned with the human good without giving a central role to choice. I discuss Nussbaum in Tibor R. Machan, Libertarianism Defended (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), chap. 19, “Two Philosophers Skeptical of Negative Liberty.” 57 Of course, if (in fact, in the realm of ontology) everything is the same type or kind of being (e.g., matter-in-motion, sense data, spirit, or whatever), then objectivity will involve just what it takes to properly grasp this one type or kind of being. 58 In this account, truth is a property of judgments or statements, not of abstractly existing propositions. An unknown or unknowable truth is, accordingly, nonsense.

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part related to what type or kind of being one knows. In ethics, since objectivity involves coming to know the guidelines for human conduct (the conduct of a volitionally conscious living being), it follows that the very objectivity of the knowledge will reflect this. Accordingly, unlike in, say, chemistry, in ethics objective knowledge is conditional upon whether the being that is to be guided by the principles of ethics has made the choice to commence or embark on its life. Objective knowledge is also, following Aristotle, a matter of “for the most part,” not akin to principles in geometry but more akin to those in medicine. The point of such an ethics is to provide guidelines toward achieving the good life of the organism in question —in this case, of a human being. If this is the right way to understand objectivity as far as moral knowledge is concerned, what are we to make of an influential viewpoint considered by Thomas Nagel in connection with Bernard Williams’s ethical position? 59 Nagel notes that Williams ridicules the idea that “if liberalism is correct, it must apply to all those past people who were not liberals: they ought to have been liberals, and since they were not, they were bad, or stupid, or something on those lines.” 60 The suggestion from Williams is clearly that the idea of objective morality is misguided because moral judgments are not universalizable.61 Yet the contextual theory of knowledge that Rand develops and others have elaborated would address the issue with which Williams is concerned (according to Nagel’s succinct statement of Williams’s point). Certainly Williams’s viewpoint is a very plausible one: few would insist that the interpersonal ethics or political institutions of ancient Greece ought to have conformed to modern principles of right conduct or of justice. This is what is so insightfully developed by the political theorist Hanna F. Pitkin in her analysis of the concept of justice as both stable and variable throughout human history.62 Thus, to repeat a point I have made elsewhere, “certain principles and truths do endure despite all the variations. For example, although there are options in how children might be raised, some basic ideas do remain true in any human community, any era. It is understood that parents have the responsibility to prepare their children for adulthood —a basic and universal moral assumption. . . .” 63 Of course, just what will constitute such preparation in the fourth century b.c., as 59 Thomas Nagel, “The View from Here and Now,” London Review of Books 28, no. 9 (May 11, 2006). (For my purposes, Nagel’s summary captures the critical point that Williams voices.) 60 Ibid., 10. 61 For more on this, see Machan, “Why It Appears That Objective Ethical Claims Are Subjective.” 62 Hanna F. Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). See also Tibor R. Machan, “Can There Be Stable and Lasting Principles?” International Journal of Social Economics 32, no. 1/2 (2005): 218–27. 63 Machan, “Can There Be Stable and Lasting Principles?” 225.

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compared to the twenty-first century a.d., will differ, so the moral claims valid at each time will also differ, even though they can be equally true and though they are based on lasting and stable moral principles. Moreover, we can multiply examples by considering how we ought to act in innumerable circumstances. The point Nagel attributes to Williams —that “personal ethics and political morality cannot aspire to the kind of objective validity that is a reasonable aim for science and mathematics” 64 —is not accurate. In science, there is variation based on historical context, not unlike in ethics and political morality, given that the facts available for cognizance at different points in the history of science vary in both the natural and the social sciences. Mathematics is different —although even there some similarities arise, based on context 65 —mainly because mathematics is a formal discipline, like logic. XI. Summing Up for Objectivity This has been a short discussion of an issue that arises in metaethics. The issue has been addressed via Ayn Rand’s attempt to defend the objectivity of ethics. I have attempted to briefly but accurately show why Rand believed that ethical knowledge is objective —that human beings can know what is morally right and wrong —based on her understanding of “objective” as “neither revealed nor invented, but as produced by man’s consciousness in accordance with the facts of reality, as mental integrations of factual data computed by man —as the products of a cognitive method of classification whose processes must be performed by man, but whose content is dictated by reality.” 66 Ayn Rand called her philosophy Objectivism because she wanted to be known as someone who defended our ability to know the world as it is, not as distorted or constructed by our minds, not as we wish it to be, etc. Subjectivism and relativism propose these other positions and Rand was against them; indeed, she considered those who promoted them, such as Immanuel Kant, vicious. When it came to one of the most controversial areas of human knowledge, namely, ethics or morality, Rand insisted that she was an objectivist here as well, unlike, say, the economists Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises, who denied that we can know (objectively) what is right or wrong. Friedman, for example, wrote: The liberal conceives of men as imperfect beings. He regards the problem of social organization to be as much a negative problem of 64

Nagel, “The View from Here and Now,” 10. For an example of how context matters in formal disciplines, see Imre Lakatos, Mathematics, Science, and Epistemology, ed. John Worrall and Gregory Currie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978). 66 Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 54. 65

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preventing “bad” people from doing harm as of enabling “good” people to do good; and, of course, “bad” and “good” people may be the same people, depending on who is judging them.67 Yet Rand’s ethical objectivism isn’t all that simple. She isn’t a straightforward realist who believes that ethical principles are evident in the world independently of human existence. This is what is implied by objectivity in, say, the natural sciences. If a principle of physics or chemistry is objective, that means the principle is part of the world regardless of whether anyone knows it to be so. For Rand, ethical objectivism is not like this. The reason is that without human beings or some beings very much like them, there would be no principles of ethics or virtues. For Rand, ethics emerges with human (or possibly some very similar) life only. Once we have human beings living their lives, ethics does apply to them, and this is knowable by us as an objective fact. Nonetheless, there is something conditional about this type of objectivity, namely, the fact that human life is a free option to each individual. Rand advanced the view that only when one makes the choice to live and think (which are practically the same thing, as she understood them) does one become bound by the principles that must guide human living. This idea has proven to be quite controversial. Do people generally make a choice to live and think? Or are they pretty much living and thinking beings without any choice to be such ( just as they have no choice about whether to be born)? If the latter, then it would seem that the principles of ethics are binding on them independently of any choice, as a necessary and not conditional aspect of their lives. Why would Rand think that this isn’t the case? Before answering that question, it bears noting that conditional principles can be every bit as objective as unconditional ones. For example, let us take it that the principle of gravitation is unconditional and necessary (although in some very broad metaphysical sense it might well be conditional: if no objects with mass existed, there would be no gravitation). Let us take the principles of a sport or game in which, while the game (say, baseball or bridge) need not have existed at all, once it does, there are principles or standards of conduct that are (conditionally) necessary. In bridge or baseball, if one wants to get something done —make a bid or hit a home run —there are certain ways one must go about doing it; not just any way will do. Of course, the rules of the game could be changed, but similarly, if (improbably) human nature were to change, the principles of ethics would change as well. And this could be objectively ascertained. Rand believed that human beings have free will, so whether they will take up the task of living and thinking is up to them. They initiate these 67

12.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962),

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tasks; they are not instinctual or automatic. Rand held, in consequence, that whether a person is bound by the principles of ethics is in the last analysis up to him, although the alternative would be annihilation (and thus effectively irrelevant). As she put the point: Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course.68 As with many aspects of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, her views on the objectivity of ethics and on free will are only sketchily laid out by her. Only in the field of epistemology did she advance a fairly detailed and in-depth theory. Nonetheless, as sketched by her and related here, there seems to be nothing amiss in the Randian idea of objectivity in ethics. Once we commit to living our human lives —and there is no other option, other than fading out of existence —we are freely but firmly bound (by our own choice to live our human lives) to the principles of ethics which are knowable by us. (In the special areas of human life, the same holds: it is only once one decides to become a doctor or a lawyer, for example, that the ethics of the profession become binding.) In the end, then, I believe I may now conclude that it is most likely true that objectivity is possible in ethics, provided that knowledge is conceived in an essentially non-Platonist, non-idealist fashion and provided that “objective” is not taken to mean that moral values are intrinsic.69 Business Ethics, Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University

68 Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It? (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), 118. But see also her hero’s statement in her novel Atlas Shrugged (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1992): “This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero” (1020). This suggests that even what Rand takes to be the premoral choice is subject to moral evaluation. I take her here, however, to be referring to the choices one makes following having made the basic choice that, so to speak, constitutes one’s entry into the moral universe. One might see it, again, on analogy with someone having made the choice to be a doctor, after which he or she is committed to paying close attention to medical matters. But prior to that choice, no such obligation exists. 69 This is a crucial point stressed by Ayn Rand throughout her discussion of objectivity in all her writings, but especially in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT IN OBJECTIVE MORALITY: DISTINGUISHING OBJECTIVE FROM INTRINSIC VALUE* By Tara Smith I. Introduction Why does the claim of objectivity in morality spook us so —more so than in other realms? Claims of objectivity hardly enjoy unanimous confidence in other spheres, yet in many areas, people are much more ready to accept that knowable facts govern and we can definitively answer our questions (in chemistry, computers, baking, biking, and so on). With ethics, however, more people are hesitant to say, “These views are right.” Obviously, not everyone is reticent. Many people, sometimes fueled by religious ardor, are unequivocally devoted to the certainty of their moral views. Nonetheless, we do find more people who are hospitable to claims of objectivity in other realms to be decidedly less sure-footed when it comes to ethics. Why is this? Numerous factors, no doubt, contribute. 1. People disagree a great deal about moral issues. Standards and practices across cultures and within the same culture often diverge dramatically. Many people resign themselves to such disagreement as a permanent, unalterable fact of life and conclude that it testifies to the absence of objective moral truths. 2. It is difficult, in ethics, to prove that you are right. From the fact that it is difficult to prove that a moral position is correct, some conclude that it is impossible to prove a position correct and that there are no right answers. 3. People are uncertain of how to measure moral judgments; they are not sure what yardsticks are properly used to assess competing claims. This, in turn, results from widespread uncertainty about the purpose of ethics and exactly what ethics is. The prevailing view is that morality governs social relations and is a means of getting along with other people. Its goal (at least, among those who think that it has one) is to facilitate a certain ease in social * Thanks to Ellen Paul and Harry Dolan for helpful editorial comments on an earlier draft. The essay has also benefited greatly from questions raised by the other contributors to this volume, as well as from conversations with Marc Baer, Greg Salmieri, Onkar Ghate, Leonard Peikoff, Darryl Wright, and Allan Gotthelf.

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relations, to promote the smooth functioning of society. Such ease and smooth functioning are themselves liable to be taken to mean different things, however. And this haziness in understanding what ethics is leaves us without a clear standard for evaluating differing codes of ethics or more specific moral claims.1 4. Ethics is emotional. It occupies touchy territory. Those who disagree often care fervently about the issues in dispute. People are wary of challenging views that are so deeply felt, since doing so can seem like an attack on the person who advocates those views. The overlay of ethics with emotion, moreover, often leads people to regard differing thoughts about moral issues as merely expressions of emotions. 5. Ethics is abstract. The claim that something is good or bad or right or wrong stands atop layers of reasoning.2 Yet the basic subject matter of ethics —how each of us ought to lead his life —leads people to expect knowledge of moral truths, if such exists, to be more readily available than knowledge in other abstract areas where the need for specialized and advanced study is plain, such as medicine or engineering. How to lead one’s life, people presume, shouldn’t be rocket science. If it is difficult to understand moral truths, that must be because no such truths exist. 6. Finally, skepticism about the credentials that qualify those who profess to know moral truths fuels doubts about objectivity. Who’s to say what’s right or wrong? This is far from an exhaustive catalog, and it ignores the interplay of various factors that explain people’s reluctance to embrace moral objectivity. What I wish to focus on are the philosophical roots of this attitude. Philosophically, I think that the issue primarily comes down to two factors: misunderstanding of the function of ethics, and misunderstanding of the nature of moral objectivity. In this essay, I shall address the latter. I will elaborate on Ayn Rand’s conception of moral objectivity because I believe that it offers an illuminating perspective on the traditional debate between subjectivism and objectivism that can help to move that debate forward. The opposing camps in this debate are long entrenched. The more that is written in defense of each side, it sometimes seems, the more deeply entrenched advocates’ commitments to their respective positions become. And the alternative between the two sides seems clear as day. Essentially, moral objectivists affirm moral truths that are independent of any human 1 While some philosophers in recent years have defended ethics as a means of achieving eudaimonia or personal flourishing, this is not a common idea outside the academy, and many within as well as outside academia reject such a notion as a characterization of prudence rather than of morality. 2 This claim is admittedly controversial.

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beliefs or attitudes concerning the content of those truths; subjectivists deny this, maintaining that moral truth is always dependent on the views of a particular person or persons. (I will speak of “subjectivism” throughout to encompass all forms of subjectivism and relativism.) Yet in fact, Rand maintains, the defense of objective value has been dominated by advocates of intrinsic value, which is not the same thing. Confusing these two conceptions of value bolsters the credibility of subjectivism and distorts the entire debate. Genuine objectivity is rarely on the table. Rand distinguishes between three central alternatives: subjectivism, intrinsicism, and objectivism. In what follows, I shall focus on the distinction between objectivism and intrinsicism so as to clarify the distinctive nature of the moral objectivity that she espouses. Doing so will reveal a crucial element that is usually overlooked: the importance of the subject in objective morality. My presentation of Rand’s view is sympathetic, but it is not a full defense of her moral theory. While I will naturally need to present certain points of argument to convey the plausibility of relevant portions of her theory, my mission here is to present a perspective that can enhance our understanding of the traditional debate. Regardless of whether one accepts Rand’s larger moral theory, if she is right about the frequent confusion of objective with intrinsic value, her trichotomy offers a more accurate picture of the alternatives and thereby places us in a better position to assess the relative merits of moral objectivism and subjectivism.3 The essay is divided into three main parts. I shall first present Rand’s view of moral intrinsicism; next, elaborate on her own view of the nature of moral objectivity; and lastly, underscore certain features marking the distinctiveness of her view. Throughout, I will speak primarily of the objectivity of value because value serves as the foundation for all other moral judgments, in Rand’s view. I shall also use “ethics” and “morality” interchangeably. II. The Intrinsicist Model of Moral Objectivity When people contemplate the objectivity of ethics, very often what they have in mind is the notion that value or propriety resides in certain things. They conceive of objective value as roughly some sort of substance or property that exists “out there in the world,” independently of human attitudes. Value is considered a type of external existent, and the question for objectivists and subjectivists to settle is whether any of this hypothesized stuff actually exists. 3 For more in defense of her view, see Tara Smith, Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); Tara Smith, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Dutton, 1991), esp. chap. 7.

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Rand maintains that many accounts of objective ethics actually thus reflect intrinsicism, the view that “the good resides in some sort of reality, independent of man’s consciousness. . . .” 4 Intrinsicist theories hold that “the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to the actors and subjects involved. It is a theory that divorces the concept of ‘good’ from beneficiaries, and the concept of ‘value’ from valuer and purpose —claiming that the good is good in, by, and of itself.” 5 What —or who —is Rand talking about? Plato represents the paradigm of the intrinsicist view. A champion of objective morality, Plato holds that all moral goodness reflects the Form of the Good. Every Form, on his account, is an essence or universal that exists on its own —in a realm apart from the realm of particulars. All of the individual things that people encounter in everyday experience are what they are insofar as they partake of the relevant Form. (The relationship of partaking is notoriously elusive.) What is important for our purposes is that it is only due to the freestanding existence of something that is goodness, on Plato’s view, that anything else can be good or possess any of the derivative moral properties (such as being right, wrong, permissible, virtuous, vicious, etc.).6 This intrinsicist outlook, in various permutations, continues to the present day. Consider several more-recent presentations of the objectivity of morality. Michael Huemer, an intuitionist advocate of moral objectivity, sounds thoroughly Platonic in writing that “[m]oral claims are assertions about a class of irreducible, objective properties, which cannot be known on the basis of observation.” 7 Geoffrey Sayre-McCord describes moral objectivists as holding that the truth conditions of moral claims “make no reference to anyone’s subjective states or to the capacities, conventions, or practices of any group of people. Underlying objectivism is the sense, well articulated by [W. D.] Ross, that ‘it is surely a strange reversal of the natural order of thought to say that our admiring an action either is, or is what necessitates, its being good. We think of its goodness as what we admire in it, and as something it would have even if no one admired it, something that it has in itself.’ ” 8 4 Ayn Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” in Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1967), 22. 5 Ibid. Rand offers a fuller statement of the three views (subjectivism, objectivism, and intrinsicism) there. See also Peikoff, Objectivism, 254. 6 In dialogues other than the Republic, Plato sometimes departed from this account and portrayed value as conditional on a person’s making proper use of it. See, for instance, Euthydemus 281ff., Laws II.661, Laws I.641c, and Gorgias 470e. See also Mark LeBar’s discussion of this in his essay in this volume. Thanks to Mark LeBar for reminding me of this. 7 Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 99. 8 Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, “Introduction: The Many Moral Realisms,” in Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays on Moral Realism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 19–20. The material

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Ross eloquently articulates the intrinsicist model again when he affirms that “the moral order” expressed in propositions claiming that something is prima facie right “is just as much a part of the fundamental nature of the universe . . . as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic.” 9 G. E. Moore’s contention that a beautiful world has more value than an ugly one, regardless of whether anyone occupies or observes these worlds, is another example of objective value conceived as residing in select things.10 More recently, Thomas Nagel echoes Moore by claiming that when a culture dies out, “something valuable has gone out of existence. This cannot be explained by the harm to existing individuals, all of whom will have other things to do and other ways to flourish. . . . [I]ts disappearance would be a loss nonetheless, though a loss to no one. . . .” 11 Yet another statement of the self-sufficiency of objective morality comes from Russell Shafer-Landau, who contends that moral facts exist “independently of what any human being, no matter his or her perspective, thinks of them.” “Moral obligations constitute reasons for everyone to act as they direct, regardless of whether such reasons bear any relations to one’s existing commitments.” 12 According to Rand, these depictions of moral objectivity suggest that the alternative to subjectivism —to value’s existing “in people’s heads” —is value’s existing “out there,” lodged within particular things. This is a mistake, however. In fact, objective value relies on contributions of both quoted is from W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (New York: Oxford University Press, 1930), 89; emphasis mine. In exactly the same vein, Ronald Dworkin holds that it is natural to say that we want to look at a Rembrandt because it is wonderful, and not that it is wonderful because we want to look at it. Ronald Dworkin, Life’s Dominion (New York: Knopf, 1993), 72. For statements in which Dworkin clearly divorces a thing’s intrinsic value from its being good for anyone, see ibid., 69–71. 9 W. D. Ross, “What Makes Right Actions Right?” in Wilfred Sellars and John Hospers, eds., Readings in Ethical Theory (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1952), 184. 10 Moore does, however, disavow an equation of objective value with intrinsic value in “The Conception of Intrinsic Value,” in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1922), 255. 11 Thomas Nagel, “The Many in the One,” The New Republic (February 27, 2006), 32. Nagel describes intrinsic values as those values that are “not reducible to their value for anyone.” Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 153; emphasis his. For closely related claims, see ibid., 154–55, 162; and Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 96. 12 Russell Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 8. For similar statements of moral objectivity understood in terms of independence of people’s beliefs, see Peter Railton, “Moral Realism,” Philosophical Review 95 (April 1986): 164; and David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 20. For a brief examination of intrinsicism in the work of another contemporary ethicist, see my “Comment on George Sher, ‘Perfectionism: A Theory’ —Chapter 9 of Sher’s Beyond Neutrality,” paper delivered at a conference on “Concepts and Objectivity” held at the University of Pittsburgh, September 22–24, 2006, esp. pp. 8–9. Notice that Rand’s thesis does not demand that all advocates of objective value be intrinsicists. Pointing out that many are intrinsicists usefully clears brush that typically obscures the alternatives in the debate.

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consciousness and external reality. Moral objectivity is a function of the relationship between subject and object. It is neither located in nor a product of either, to the exclusion of the other. While one might be able to find elements of the intrinsicist and subjectivist schools with which Rand would agree, it is crucial to understand that such elements represent only partial truths, in her view, that need to be supplemented by the full explanation of the dynamic that gives rise to values.13 Let us turn, then, to Rand’s account of what this third alternative to subjectivism and intrinsicism is. III. Objectivity Without Intrinsicism: Rand’s View To understand Rand’s account of the objectivity of morality, we need to understand some of the framework within which it is set. Thus, I will first sketch Rand’s broader view of morality and then zero in on the features that distinguish its objectivity. A. The nature and origin of value As I have explained in greater depth elsewhere, the function of ethics, in Rand’s view, is to enable human beings to flourish.14 Ethics is “a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions —the choices and actions that determine the course and the purpose of his life,” she writes.15 A value, 13 Jorge Gracia offers a broadly similar perspective to Rand’s in his “The Ontological Status of Value,” The Modern Schoolman 53 (May 1976): 393–97. Note that what Rand dubs “intrinsicism” does not refer only to the explicit assertion of the existence of intrinsic values. While advocates of intrinsic value certainly qualify as intrinsicists, so does anyone whose theory, in essence, divorces claims about value and morality from things’ effects on human beings. For an argument against the existence of intrinsic value in particular, see my “Intrinsic Value: Look-Say Ethics,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 32 (1998): 539–53. For more on Rand’s understanding of the intrinsicist conception of value, see Darryl Wright’s essay in this volume. Rand’s statement that the intrinsicist believes that “the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences” should not be taken to imply that intrinsicism precludes consequentialism. A consequentialist could be an intrinsicist about which states of affairs (which types of consequences) are valuable and are thus to be promoted. Bear in mind that consequentialism is a view about what makes actions right or wrong, rather than about which things are good or bad. Intrinsicism is a view about value or goodness. Rand is not maintaining that intrinsicists hold that “context and consequences” are irrelevant to rightness or wrongness. Rather, the context of her statement makes clear that she is speaking of views about what things are good (and good as ends, rather than good as means). She is observing the nonrelational character of value, on the intrinsicist view, rather than making claims about the consequentialist character of rightness. While Rand does refer to “actions” as well as to “things,” one could hold that an action has intrinsic value if one believes that it is good (as opposed to: right) independently of its consequences. Thanks to Michael Huemer for prompting me to clarify this. 14 See Smith, Viable Values, esp. chaps. 4 and 5. 15 Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” in Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness (New York: Signet, 1961), 13.

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in turn, is “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” 16 Values range from material objects to relationships, conditions, positions, qualities of character, psychological dispositions —things such as coats, cars, friendship, freedom, a career, knowledge, perseverance, initiative. Ethics’ concern is to identify the most basic, abstract values necessary to steer a person to the achievement of more concrete values. The reason for having ethics is that its guidance is a necessity of survival.17 Each living organism’s life depends on goal-directed action that satisfies the organism’s needs. However simple or sophisticated the life-form in question —be it a sycamore, a silkworm, a hawk, or a human being —it must engage in certain activities in order to obtain and process the fuel that its sustenance depends on. Life is a process that consists of selfgenerated, self-sustaining action. Every organism must do certain things in order to maintain that process. For human beings, unlike lower life-forms, much of the requisite action must be deliberately chosen. Consequently, we must know how to choose and what to choose. This creates our need for morality. A moral code identifies the kinds of ends that a person should seek (values) and the kinds of actions that he should take to secure values (virtues).18 (It does so, again, at a fairly abstract level, with concretes to be filled in as objectively validated by a particular individual’s context.) The phenomenon of value in the normative sense —of things’ being good or bad, of certain ends as worthwhile and others not —is intelligible only against this background.19 Nothing can be valuable to inanimate objects. All sorts of things can happen to them, of course, many of which may be good or bad for particular people who have reason to care about the objects in question. (It is bad for me when my car’s front tire goes flat.) But it is only relative to goals and purposes —which are the exclusive province of living organisms —that events can be good or bad. Nothing can be good or bad for an entity unless something is at stake for it; it must stand to lose or gain something. While numerous layers of goals or purposes may be needed to understand how something is a net gain or loss in a given case, the fundamental alternative that gives rise to any “gain16 Ibid., 16. I will use terms such as “gain,” “acquire,” “obtain,” and “secure” as shorthands to refer to gaining and/or keeping. 17 Throughout, I will be speaking of “life,” “survival,” and “flourishing” interchangeably, such that “life” and “survival” refer not to the minimal clinging of a heartbeat, but to a life that is led in an optimal, life-furthering manner. For a detailed explanation of the relationship between survival and flourishing and of the justification of my usage, see Smith, Viable Values, chap. 5; and Smith, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, 28–33. See also Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 25–27; and Peikoff, Objectivism, 219–20. 18 I explain Rand’s understanding of the nature of virtues and their relationship to moral principles in Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, 48–52. 19 I will sometimes use “value” in a neutral sense to refer to things that a person does in fact seek, whether with or without good reason, and sometimes in the stricter, normative sense to refer to those things that a person objectively should seek. It should be clear from the context which sense I am using.

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ing” or “losing” is the alternative between life and death. Impact on an organism’s living provides the basis by which we can objectively distinguish good from bad.20 On Rand’s view, accordingly, for any human being who seeks to live, those things that enhance his life are good; those things that jeopardize or detract from his life are bad. “Good” means good for the person in question, and “bad” means bad for the person.21 As this quick introduction indicates, Rand’s moral theory is naturalistic. It is facts of man’s nature that give rise to value and set the terms of morality because it is these facts that create our need to treat certain things as valuable and certain things as threats or impediments to values. Just as researchers in medicine seek to learn the sorts of substances and actions that are most conducive to peak physical flourishing for human beings, Rand maintains that the role of ethicists is to identify the sorts of ends and actions (albeit, at an abstract level) that are most conducive to allencompassing human flourishing, material and spiritual.22 A value is an end that contributes to a person’s flourishing. The basic normative guidance that emerges from this foundation is egoistic: a person should act in the ways conducive to his well-being. (In this respect, Rand’s view is unlike the views of most naturalists, but egoism is not my focus in this essay.) 23 It is important to emphasize that a person should act in this way if he seeks to live. Unlike many advocates of the objectivity of morality, Rand does not regard the commands of morality as a given; we do not bear any unchosen duties. “Reality confronts a man with a great many ‘musts,’” she writes, “but all of them are conditional. The formula of realistic necessity is: ‘you must, if . . . if you want to achieve a certain goal.’” This applies to morality as much as to anything else. If a person wishes to live, he should follow the prescriptions of a rational moral code that tells him how.24 20 Peter Railton offers a similar argument about goodness and badness being intelligible only to things for whom other things’ differing effects could matter. See Railton, “Facts and Values,” Philosophical Topics 14, no. 2 (Fall 1986): 9. 21 For much further explanation, see Smith, Viable Values, 83–97, and Smith, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, 19–25. 22 Rand understands the spiritual as that which pertains to one’s consciousness (“The Objectivist Ethics,” 35). Obviously, medicine is not indifferent to psychological well-being. Whereas medicine is concerned with dimensions of human functioning over which a person has no direct control as well as dimensions over which he does, however, ethics is ultimately concerned exclusively with the latter. 23 Henceforth, I will confine my discussion to values for humans and leave aside values for plants and animals, unless the context indicates otherwise. 24 Ayn Rand, “Causality versus Duty,” in Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), 118–19. For fuller explanation of this important aspect of Rand’s thought, see all of that essay as well as Peikoff, Objectivism, 244–45; and Smith, Viable Values, 101–3, 105–11. Douglas Rasmussen’s recent discussion of Rand’s account of the foundation of morality, I think, gives insufficient weight to this aspect of her view and thereby delivers an overly naturalistic rendering of it. See Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Regarding Choice and the Foundation of Morality: Reflections on Rand’s Ethics,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 309–28; see esp. 318–19.

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Values, then, are conditional —as is all of the derivative moral instruction that rests on the identification of values. Values are based on facts that are not of man’s making —his nature and the needs of his survival —as well as on a fact that is of his making: his embrace of his life, his commitment to living. All of this indicates the basic manner in which value is objective, in Rand’s view. Ethics serves a practical mission; things are good or bad according to whether they help to accomplish that mission. Life is the standard of value.25 To appreciate the difference between objective value and intrinsic value, however, we need to turn to her more exact account of what the objectivity of values consists in. B. The relational character of objective value Rand writes: The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of “things in themselves” nor of man’s emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value. (Rational, in this context, means: derived from the facts of reality and validated by a process of reason.) The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man —and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man. Fundamental to an objective theory of values is the question: Of value to whom and for what? An objective theory . . . does not permit the separation of “value” from “purpose,” of the good from beneficiaries, and of man’s actions from reason.26 Notice that Rand characterizes the good as both “an evaluation” (by a rational standard) and “an aspect of reality.” In his elaboration of Rand’s view, Leonard Peikoff makes value’s two-dimensional nature equally plain: “The good designates facts —the requirements of survival —as identified conceptually, and then evaluated by human consciousness in accordance with a rational standard of value (life).” 27 One might well wonder: how can it be both? But there is no great puzzle here. A distinction from Christine Korsgaard may be helpful. Korsgaard has observed that the term “values” can refer to at least three different things: valuable objects themselves (such as operas, flowers, friendships); the properties in virtue of which we deem certain things 25 For more on this, see Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 13–27; Peikoff, Objectivism, 206–20; and Smith, Viable Values, 83–95. 26 Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” 22; emphasis in original. 27 Peikoff, Objectivism, 243; emphasis added. See a similar statement on p. 397, which also stresses that the evaluation must be rational, i.e., determined according to the facts of reality.

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valuable (in flowers, for example, their appealing colors and scents); and the valuableness that we attribute to the objects in virtue of those properties.28 In Rand’s usage, a value is a thing (such as a flower or an opera —Korsgaard’s first sense), insofar as it possesses the properties (Korsgaard’s second sense) that render it rationally to be pursued by a particular person (Korsgaard’s third sense). (There is actually a little more to Rand’s view, but we’ll get to that shortly.) In their statements presenting the nature of objective value, Rand and Peikoff are simply indicating the different aspects of a value that can be important to stress in different contexts. The main substantive message is that objective value is relational, in Rand’s view. Value neither exists nor is created entirely in our heads nor entirely in external reality. Values are not reducible to psychological states, as in subjectivism; nor are they independent of them, as in intrinsicism. Both external and internal conditions are necessary for values. To be a value, the thing in question must, in fact, serve a person’s life, and that person must seek his life. It is important to understand each of these.29 First, a value must in fact be beneficial to a person; it must bring him some net gain. Given Rand’s argument that the phenomenon of value is intelligible only in the context of impact on a life, no freestanding value “in” various external things could exist. Nothing is valuable apart from its bearing on a life. What a particular thing’s impact is, of course, can sometimes be difficult to judge. Moreover, the magnitude of impact can range from the life-changing to the quickly forgotten. Winning a tendollar bet is not typically as valuable as gaining a job promotion; discovering a restaurant you like is not typically as valuable as discovering a passion for a particular field of work. Nonetheless, any objective value, be it modest or momentous, must offer some positive contribution to the person’s flourishing. And, contrary to subjectivism, whether a given thing does so is a matter of fact rather than of anyone’s beliefs or wishes. People can be as mistaken about what is good or bad for them —about the effects that various things carry on their well-being —as about anything else. I should caution, however, against reading this feature of objective value in an unrealistically rigid way. Rand’s contention is not that the designation of something as an objective value for a particular person requires infallible advance knowledge of things’ ultimate impact on our lives. If it is truly, objectively rational for Blake, in his context of knowledge, to believe that item x or activity y would be a net benefit for him but he turns out to have been mistaken about this, it remains the case that it 28 Christine Korsgaard, “The Dependence of Value on Humanity,” in Joseph Raz et al., The Practice of Value, ed. R. Jay Wallace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 67. 29 Moral naturalists such as Philippa Foot similarly see value as relational to human well-being. Their accounts of the necessary ingredients of that relationship are not always the same as Rand’s, however. For succinct statements of the subjectivist and intrinsicist views, see Peikoff, Objectivism, 245–46.

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was objectively valuable from his perspective. When discussing the objectivity of value, it is important to always bear in mind the different perspectives of the relevant individual himself at the time of choice or action and that of a more fully informed or hindsighted observer. This is not a concession to relativism, but a simple recognition of the fact that any assessment of something as objectively valuable is necessarily someone’s assessment and that humans are fallible, non-omniscient beings. Consonant with this, we can legitimately evaluate the same object or event (Blake’s having that house, taking that medicine, accepting that job) in opposing ways from the two perspectives, so long as we are clear about which perspective is being employed. There is no contradiction in simultaneously holding that a particular job was not objectively valuable for Blake insofar as it did not deliver the expected net benefit and that the job was objectively valuable for Blake insofar as it was objectively rational for him, at the time he accepted it, to expect that it would deliver this benefit. Error is not proof of a failure to be objective.30 Another way of viewing this might seem more natural. We should distinguish between assessments of whether a person is being objective in reaching a conclusion about a thing’s value and assessments of whether the thing in question is in fact beneficial to him. Judgment of the latter requires the more fully informed perspective that is not always available. Accordingly, when I say that an objective value must be beneficial to the relevant person, on Rand’s view, I mean that it must be beneficial as far as he has objective reason to expect.31 The objective character of this belief should become clearer as we proceed. It is not enough that something stands to benefit a person, however, for it to be an objective value to him. Further, he must seek his life. (This is the second critical element of the value relation that I noted above.) Moreover and closely related, he must identify the thing’s beneficial impact on that end. Unless a person chooses to embrace his life —to maintain it, by seeking to achieve his well-being —all the facts in the world about various things’ effects on his life will not matter. They will carry no value significance. Those causal relationships themselves will remain, of course (protein will still be nutritious, certain activities will still be dangerous while many others will still be life-enhancing), but it is only in the context of the quest for life that values arise. It is a person’s desire to live that converts clinical, impersonal facts about things’ effects into values: things that he should act to gain or keep (because he seeks his life and because of the nature of 30 This is similar to the case of a jury that proceeds with scrupulous objectivity in reaching a verdict but later discovers that, for reasons that reveal no deficiency of objectivity on its part, its verdict was factually incorrect. (The jury convicted an innocent man, for instance.) 31 I will leave aside here the further details of what this involves, but certainly it is incompatible with objectivity for a person to be casually indifferent to pertinent knowledge that is readily available.

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the things in question and their impact on that end). In an essay, Rand observes that “material objects as such have neither value nor disvalue; they acquire value-significance only in regard to a living being — particularly, in regard to serving or hindering man’s goals.” 32 Goals, however, are things that human beings deliberately adopt.33 I noted above that a thing’s being an objective value for a person also requires his recognition of the thing’s potential benefit to him. This recognition is important because a value is a thing to go after; it is the object of action (“that which one acts to gain and/or keep,” quoted in Section III.A above). Human beings must act in order to acquire many of the things necessary for our existence. We need to engage in life-sustaining activities; we need to secure life-sustaining ends. While some of the requisite actions occur automatically thanks to our genetic coding (digestion, circulation, etc.), many other requisite actions are volitional and must be chosen from among alternatives. Consequently, a person must know which things to choose. A person will not act for the sake of x unless he thinks x worth acting for, among the things that he has reason to seek. What this means is that no beneficial thing can function as a value for a person without his having identified it as beneficial. Nothing can function in the way that some things must function, in other words (namely, as prods to life-sustaining action), unless they are seen as worth the effort.34 That will only be the case if the person wants to live and sees a particular end as a means of furthering that larger end. When a person does recognize something’s potential benefit for him, his attitude, in effect, is: “Yes, okay, this is likely to get me some of the sort of thing I am seeking.” If he fails to recognize a thing’s potential benefit, however, while the object in question may continue to carry some of its effects on his existence (the antibiotic will still heal a wound; milk will still nourish), it will not be a value to him. One might object that I am begging the question here by assuming Rand’s definition of value as something that a person acts to acquire. If that is what a value is, then of course the recognition of a benefit will be necessary for the existence of a value. But isn’t hers an odd definition of value? The validity of Rand’s definition rests in the fact that a value is more than a benefit. While it is useful to know which things stand to benefit 32 Ayn Rand, “From the Horse’s Mouth,” in Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, 96. Although Rand was speaking of material values in the passage cited, I am aware of no evidence suggesting that she would restrict this claim to apply only to material values. Moreover, in a workshop with students, Rand observes that “that which satisfies a need is not necessarily a value . . .” (“The Objectivist Workshop —#4, Ethics and Politics,” transcribed by Ben Bayer, Ayn Rand Archives, Ayn Rand Institute, 11). 33 While we do refer to the goal-directed actions of a person’s bodily organs, when speaking of the goals of a human being (as opposed to the goals of one of his body parts), “goals” refers to objects of deliberate choice. 34 Since human action is volitional, the prods in question are not mechanical.

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human beings, it is useful to know this because human beings must take action in order to acquire many of the goods that our lives depend upon. While, again, certain of the necessary actions occur automatically, it is because numerous equally vital activities do not so conveniently transpire that we need to identify the further types of actions that will enable us to achieve life-furthering ends and flourish. For this reason, we must identify not simply benefits, but values —that is, ends whose attainment would be beneficial but whose attainment is possible only if we take appropriate action. The rewards of a particular friendship or career, for instance, are benefits that depend in part on a person’s taking certain actions. The rewards of a desired commodity, for that matter, such as a coat or a car or a house, also typically depend on a person’s actions enabling him to acquire and maintain the item. I should thus refine my claim above that a value is “more than a benefit.” More exactly, a value is a particular type of benefit. Many things benefit human beings without any deliberate cooperation on our parts (sunlight, rainfall, episodes of fortunate coincidence that help a person to be hired for a job when he is one of several who are equally qualified, for instance). Identifying benefits is not sufficient to sustain us, however. Among all potential benefits, we further need to identify those whose benefit depends on or can be enhanced by our action, so that we can subsequently take the relevant action. We need, in other words, to distinguish benefits from the subset that constitute values, things we must act to acquire. Rand’s definition, I think, is thus vindicated.35 The larger point vis-à-vis the relational character of objective value, again, is that because flourishing requires deliberate action of certain sorts, a value is not simply something that stands to benefit the person who embraces his life. It is also something that he recognizes as such.36 We now, I hope, have a fuller grasp of the relationship that constitutes objective value, in Rand’s view. For something to be a value is for it to be a benefit to a particular person who wishes to live and who identifies its benefit. The relationship involved is to a person’s consciousness as well as to his existential condition. As Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri have summarized it, for Rand, values “are formed by a consciousness in accordance with the facts of reality. To be a value something must be identified by an agent as furthering his life. The identification is, in Rand’s terminology, man-made, as is the choice to live that gives it meaning. But the relationship between the value and the agent’s life is metaphysically given, 35 For more on the relationship between values and benefits, see Smith, Viable Values, 84–85. On the related issue of the inability to impose or force a value on another person, see Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” 23. 36 A benefit, in contrast, does not require a person’s embrace of his life or his recognition of the beneficial thing’s salutary effects. Certain things are beneficial for a person insofar as they are life-preservative. This holds, regardless of the person’s attitude toward his life. Whether something strengthens a person’s prospects of living is quite independent of whether he wishes to live.

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as is the need to identify this relationship conceptually.” 37 The objectivity of values thus reflects both facts that are independent of a person’s mental states and facts that are not. C. The broader character of objective morality We can now step back from the details of this relationship to appreciate Rand’s broader image of the objectivity of morality. One significant implication of the relationship I have described is that objectivity pertains primarily to people, rather than to things “out there” in the world. Objectivity, at bottom, is a normative rather than a descriptive concept. The two are intimately connected, in Rand’s view; any valid normative claim must be grounded in an accurate description of the relevant facts. Indeed, the practical purpose of morality makes facts all-important to the determination of what a person should and shouldn’t do. The immediate point, however, is that objectivity refers primarily to a manner of using one’s mind. In any sphere of knowledge, objectivity concerns the method that guides a person’s thinking about an issue and the basis on which he reaches conclusions. Whatever the subject matter —biology, economics, history, cooking, snorkeling, brick-laying —an objective truth is one that has been reached and can be validated by adherence to all and only the relevant evidence, governed strictly by logical inferences therefrom. What Rand stresses is that the same holds in the realm of morality. A moral claim is objective when it can be validated by objective methods. Rand allows that objectivity is not entirely methodological. She distinguishes two senses of “objective”: Objectivity is both a metaphysical and an epistemological concept. It pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Metaphysically, it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver’s consciousness. Epistemologically, it is the recognition of the fact that a perceiver’s (man’s) consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain rules (logic). This means that although reality is immutable and, in any given context, only one answer is true, the truth is not automatically available to a human consciousness and can be obtained only by a certain mental process which is required of every man who seeks knowledge. . . . Metaphysically, the only authority is reality; 37 Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri, “Ayn Rand,” Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, ed. John R. Shook (Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005), 1998. For Rand’s discussion of the importance of appreciating the difference between the man-made and the metaphysical, see Ayn Rand, “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” in Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, 28–41.

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epistemologically —one’s own mind. The first is the ultimate arbiter of the second.38 What Rand finds undeniable in the metaphysical sense of moral objectivity is that some things are such that a person should seek them. Doing so would advance his life. Moreover, human beings are capable of knowing of these things. When we do know of them, however, it is because we have identified them as values on objective grounds. To say that morality is objective is thus largely a comment on how we attain knowledge of what is good. Strictly, facts are not objective. They are not the sort of thing that could be. It is only human beings who can be objective or nonobjective in how we think about facts and in the claims that we make about them. Statements asserting facts can become objective when they result from the objective method.39 Given my claim that a moral claim is objective when it can be validated by objective methods, one might wonder about the order of dependence here. Rand’s distinction between metaphysical objectivity and epistemological objectivity is widely accepted, but which, in her view, is primary? 40 Am I saying that, for Rand, epistemological objectivity determines metaphysical objectivity? 41 No. Recall her claim that reality is “the ultimate arbiter” of epistemology. This certainly means that epistemological objectivity does not determine reality. The relationships involved are somewhat intricate, however, in part because the question itself can be taken to refer to either epistemological or metaphysical primacy. The answer is best understood, I think, by considering: What is it that leads human beings to devise the concept of “objectivity” in the first place? What leads us to differentiate valid from invalid means of gain38 Ayn Rand, “Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics?” in Rand, The Voice of Reason, ed. Leonard Peikoff (New York: New American Library, 1988), 18. Notice that both senses of “objective” were reflected in the statements from Rand and Peikoff that I quoted earlier, claiming that the good designates facts, conceptually identified and evaluated by a rational standard. 39 Accordingly, Rand does not believe that the phenomenon of objective value arises, strictly, prior to the conceptual level of consciousness. The term “objective,” Peikoff stresses, applies “only to values chosen by man. The automatic values that govern internal bodily functions or the behavior of plants and animals are not the product of a conceptual process. Such values, therefore, are outside the terminology of ‘objective,’ ‘intrinsic,’ or ‘subjective.’ ” Peikoff, Objectivism, 243. Further, Rand remarks in the workshop cited in note 32 that the claim that values are objective reflects a relationship in reality as identified by a human consciousness. 40 See Brian Leiter’s characterization of the distinction between metaphysical and epistemic objectivity, for instance, in his “Introduction,” in Objectivity in Law and Morals, ed. Brian Leiter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1–2. I also discuss this distinction briefly in my “ ‘Social’ Objectivity and the Objectivity of Values,” in Science, Values, and Objectivity, ed. Peter Machamer and Gereon Walters (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 143–71; see esp. 150–56. 41 Thanks to Scott MacDonald for prodding me to clarify this.

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ing knowledge? Answer: the recognition of certain facts about human consciousness —in particular, its fallibility and its means of gaining knowledge. What we are responding to, in conceiving of the objective and the non-objective, is the independent character of reality (external reality as well as the pertinent features of the nature of the human mind). Yet the reason that we need the concept “objective” stems most directly from the fact that we control our consciousnesses —what we think, whether we think, how we think. Human beings make choices that determine the course of our thought; we do not automatically make rational choices or think in ways that reach accurate conclusions about reality. For this reason, we find it necessary to distinguish reality-tracking methods of using our minds (objective) from non–reality-tracking methods (non-objective). On the question of which type of objectivity is primary, then: What qualifies as epistemologically objective is grounded in and must be faithful to the nature of reality. In that respect, one might say that metaphysical objectivity is primary. Yet given that the concept of objectivity arises in order to govern human beings’ thinking about reality, in an equally important sense, one might say that epistemological objectivity is primary. While reality “comes first” insofar as it dictates the need for the concept of objectivity as well as what constitutes (epistemological) objectivity, it is significant that we coin the concept of “metaphysical objectivity” only after realizing the need for objectivity in our method of thinking (that is, after recognizing the value of distinguishing the epistemologically objective from the epistemologically non-objective). Indeed, speaking very strictly, the claim represented by a thing’s purported “metaphysical objectivity” (namely, that a given thing’s nature is as it is independently of us) is not properly characterized as a “metaphysically objective” fact or existent.42 Facts are simply facts. The concept of objectivity arises because we come to realize the need to discipline our thinking about reality, but reality is what it is —facts are what they are —quite independently of that thinking. To put this last thought in a slightly different way: Strictly, the question of objectivity does not arise for reality. Reality cannot be either objective or non-objective. (Any purportedly “non-objective reality” is not truly reality.) The question of objectivity and the alternatives of being objective or non-objective arise for us, rather, in distinguishing ways of thinking about reality. Then, once we have developed that epistemological concept of objectivity, we can ascribe the concept in an indirect way to reality itself, calling certain things “objectively” so or “metaphysically objective.” But the concept of metaphysical objectivity is derivative from the prior concept (epistemologically prior) of epistemological objectivity. 42 The parenthetical is a somewhat crude statement of the claim of metaphysical objectivity and leaves aside, for present purposes, certain exceptional sorts of “things” (such as certain of our own mental states).

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Thus, on reflection, even the statement that in one sense, metaphysical objectivity is prior seems not quite right. For it is not that “metaphysical objectivity” is prior to epistemological objectivity. Rather, reality is prior. Reality is what sets the terms of objectivity, what determines what counts as objective —epistemologically objective as well as metaphysically objective. Our fallible means of gaining knowledge of reality leads us to distinguish between objective and non-objective methods of thought (epistemological objectivity), and we subsequently apply that distinction indirectly to reality itself, via the concept of metaphysical objectivity. The upshot, for our purposes in differentiating Rand’s understanding of objective value from intrinsicism, is this. In Rand’s view, the assertion of objective values is not a report on the ontological status of certain preexisting good things woven into the fabric of the universe. The search for objective values is not akin to a treasure hunt, driven by the question: Where is the stuff? References to objectivity in the moral realm are, to a considerable extent, prescriptive. They instruct a person not so much in what to think, as in how to think —how to use his mind in order to answer moral questions and to evaluate competing answers.43 The essence of the objective method, again, is deliberate, logical adherence to reality, to relevant facts.44 Thus, the moral objectivity that Rand affirms consists in the fact that moral truths —whether assertions of moral goodness, badness, or derivative moral claims —can be validated by employment of this method. And, to tie this back to her view of the overall function of morality, the reason that a person should be objective in thinking about moral matters is that objectivity offers his only means of identifying the facts that he needs to identify, in order to chart a course of action that can result in his flourishing. Reality — or a person’s successful navigation of reality — demands objectivity. A second noteworthy implication of Rand’s conception of moral objectivity is her denial of a thesis often associated with moral objectivism, the belief that objective values form a single set, identical for everyone. In her view, not all values are universal or equally applicable to everyone. Many things, to be sure, will be valuable to all human beings in virtue of our common human nature. Protein, exercise, and hygiene, for instance, as well as certain spiritual values such as friendship, art, education, and purpose, will be values to everyone who seeks to live.45 At the same time, the exact means by which a person achieves such universal values can vary, within limits. It is morally optional whether a person satisfies his 43 Rand once described ethics as “a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of living one’s life,” which suggests that ethics is not primarily concerned with identifying the appropriate objects of our pursuits, objects that antecedently possess intrinsic value. Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, expanded second edition, ed. Leonard Peikoff and Harry Binswanger (New York: Penguin, 1990), 36. 44 See Peikoff, Objectivism, 116–21; and Darryl Wright’s essay in this volume. 45 I do not mean that everyone is aware of the value of these things or that their value is self-evident.

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needs for art and relaxation through jazz and crossword puzzles or through theater and pinochle. It is morally optional whether he obtains his exercise through running or walking or playing basketball. The boundaries of optional values must be respected, in order for the more specific “values” to be genuine. Not any form of recreation will pass muster, since some are antithetical to human flourishing (binge drinking or Russian roulette are obvious examples). The parameters defining the permissible range are themselves objective insofar as they are grounded in the natural requirements of human life. Rand is not saying, then, that honesty may legitimately mean one thing for Ben and another for Jerry. The basic principles by which a person can achieve the values that serve his objective well-being are uniform for all human beings. She is acknowledging, however, that many particular things can play objectively life-enhancing roles in some individuals’ lives without doing so in others’. Correlatively, moral objectivity does not entail a single, exhaustive set of values that are identical for all persons.46 IV. The Distinctive Character of Rand’s Moral Objectivism All of this presents the core of Rand’s understanding of moral objectivity. My suggestion at the outset was that this perspective could facilitate progress in the long-standing debate over moral objectivity. Let me underscore, therefore, how hers is a distinctive view. Like the subjectivists, Rand maintains that value is relational. Unlike in the subjectivist view, however, it is not relational simply to individuals’ beliefs or attitudes. Rather, value is a function of a thing’s relationship to a person’s life, which encompasses his existential status as well as his consciousness. Matters of independent fact are indispensable to objective value. In order to advance our lives, human beings must respect certain facts that are not of our choosing. (Human beings need sleep, for example; therefore, I should value sleep. Unprotected intercourse is risky; therefore, to avoid pregnancy and disease, I should value contraception. That colleague is unreliable; I should not depend on him. That sister-in-law tends to be insightful; I should speak with her more often.) The person aware of objective value is recognizing that the object in question has certain qualities, rather than creating that fact. In this, obviously, Rand sides with the traditional defenders of moral objectivity. She differs from these intrinsicist “objectivists,” however, insofar as they treat moral values as metaphysical existents. They conceive of objective values as givens of the universe, akin to rocks and minerals, prefabricated and contained in nature. The intrinsicists, in Rand’s view, reify an abstraction. They treat the product of objective thought —the 46 For more on optional values, see Peikoff, Objectivism, 323–24; and Smith, Viable Values, 99–101.

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identification of a particular thing as standing in a life-furthering relationship to an individual —as if it were a freestanding entity. It is important, in this vein, not to mistake Rand for a “relational intrinsicist.” Her contention is not that life is inherently valuable and that whatever bolsters life is thereby a value,47 nor that certain things are inherently valuable but must be linked with a particular beneficiary in order to constitute “working” or full-fledged values. On her view, more distinctively, value does not exist for a person until and unless he seeks to live and appreciates the positive role that the would-be value can play in his life. Prior to that, all that exists are potential values. Because value is not free-floating within certain specially endowed things, on her view, the relevant relationship is not one of simply finding some of this gold dust and directing it to the benefit of a particular individual. What is necessary is not awareness of preexisting value, but identification of the positive relationship in which a given thing stands to one’s life.48 Rand holds that moral objectivity, like all objectivity, is essentially a matter of method. The intrinsicist, by contrast, believes that no particular method for discerning value is to be followed. Instead, you “just know” which things are good and right. According to Ross, “We have no more direct way of access to the facts about rightness and goodness and about what things are right or good, than by thinking about them; the moral convictions of thoughtful and well-educated people are the data of ethics, just as sense perceptions are the data of a natural science.” 49 This, however, is mysticism. It is utterly arbitrary. To the rational question of how one knows that a particular thing is valuable, the response “It just is” or “Some of us can tell” is a reassertion rather than an answer. And it is every bit as subjective as subjectivism. Ross provides an especially stark disavowal of method. Many intrinsicists are not intuitionists, as he is, of course, and many are not nearly as forthright or as self-aware about their underlying methodology. What is significant to all intrinsicism, however, is the fact that, because no intrinsic value can be found or shown “in” things (as intrinsicists themselves often admit), assertions of intrinsicist moral truths inevitably reduce to projections of the non-objective opinions of the speaker. These are nonobjective insofar as we have no means of objectively validating assertions of value that are put forward as, at bottom, independent of rational foundations. The discipline imposed by evidence and logic is precisely what 47 Rand explicitly rejects this notion, as we saw in the passage cited earlier that insisted on the conditional character of value. 48 Rasmussen, I think, in the piece cited above (in note 24) fails to appreciate that the sheer fact that a thing stands in a beneficial relationship to a person does not render it a value. Such a relationship is part of what is necessary for objective value, on Rand’s account, but not all. 49 Ross, “What Makes Right Actions Right?” 192. Along the same lines, Moore appeals to “the sober judgment of reflective persons.” G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 94.

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the intrinsicists set aside. Whether one posits a Form of the Good in a realm apart from sensible experience from which all other goodness and rightness derive (as in Plato), or one proclaims a less grandly titled “goodness” that inheres in all good things (as in Ross, Moore, et al.), or one asserts moral obligations that bear no necessary relation to the obligated person’s beliefs or commitments (as in Shafer-Landau and a train of others), the known absence of rational demonstration of the professed moral qualities means that they are professed as independent of the standards of rationality. The intrinsicist version of objectivity, in other words, shorn of its misleading labeling, collapses into subjectivism. A recent defense of an intrinsicist form of intuitionism against charges of subjectivism offers a telling example.50 Michael Huemer contends that an intuitionist does, contrary to critics, have a means of confirming an intuition’s truth: by asking other people whether they share that intuition as well as by “seeing whether it coheres with other intuitive beliefs” of one’s own.51 What apparently escapes Huemer is that these tests are themselves subjective. Whether one checks one’s intuitions against the beliefs of many subjects or of one subject (oneself ), subjects remain determinative of moral truth. Subjectivism is again in command when Huemer responds to alleged caricatures of intuitionism in part by employing the test of whether disputed examples are controversial.52 Degree of controversy, he fails to notice, is simply an index of popularity; it reflects the views of a large quantity of subjects. Thus, this intrinsicist attempt to avoid subjectivism also fails. To regard what most people think of any given case as the arbiter of objective truth is, at bottom, merely another form of subjectivism.53 Certainly, Huemer does not mean to be a subjectivist; he is explicitly resisting it. Huemer’s view collapses into a subjectivist one, however, insofar as it renders the subjective contents of individuals’ minds determinative of objective value. Its effect, in other words, is the equivalent of subjectivism. If I understand his position correctly, Huemer would not maintain that people’s intuitions create moral reality. Rather, our intu50 Bear in mind that intuitionism per se is not a direct marker of intrinsicism. What is salient to certain intuitionists’ also being intrinsicists is the kind of value that they believe is intuited. Also recall that intrinsicism encompasses a wider stable of thinkers than those who openly assert the existence of intrinsic values as such. See note 13 above. I examine the relationship between intuitionism and belief in intrinsic value in Viable Values, 66–71, 77; see also 20–28 on intuitionism. 51 Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, 109. 52 Ibid., 133–34; see also 21 for related discussion. 53 In offering this last defense, Huemer is contesting a portrait of Samuel Clarke and using degree of controversy as the test of whether Clarke meant a specific moral claim to be infallible. Thus, Huemer’s more precise contention is that degree of controversy is the barometer of a claim’s fallibility rather than directly of its truth. Nonetheless, even if it is only allegedly infallible truths that are purported to be known through intuition (either by Clarke or by Huemer), as long as the defense of the existence of such truths is made by appeal to the level of controversy that these claims engender, Huemer is employing subjective props for claims that he asserts to be objectively valid.

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itions are our only means of access to such reality. For this reason, my charge of subjectivism may initially appear off-target. Huemer’s account nonetheless cedes intuitions too much power to forestall subjectivism. For on his view, the alleged objectivity of a moral truth depends entirely on people’s beliefs, rather than on the nature of the object. Because his account of objectivity includes no requirement that people’s intuitions be grounded in the actual nature of the object in question, the account ends up, in practical application, being no different from subjectivism. What is objectively so, in morality? What a consensus of thinkers agrees is so. This is but one example of a wider phenomenon. Rand’s contention, in short, is that the dominant traditional image of moral objectivity, intrinsicism, is false to both the metaphysics and the epistemology of value. It assigns values an ontological status they do not actually possess and breeds a mental passivity (“open your eyes and see value”) that is directly contrary to the thoughtful, rational evaluation of relationships that human life requires. Intrinsicism invents value where none exists and fails to provide the type of guidance that a person needs in order to identify values (namely, a rational, evidence-anchored assessment of whether a given thing will in fact further his life and thus should be pursued). While the subjectivists are right to preserve a role for the subject in their explanation of moral truth, then, and the intrinsicists are right to insist on the significance of the object, neither camp accurately captures the role of its favored feature, and both miss the crucial interaction between the two. Rand argues for recognition of the role of both subject and object. Objectivity in ethics is attained neither through revelation of the intrinsic property of goodness nor through the subject’s creation of goodness, but through a rational procedure of evaluation that is strictly governed by the method of objectivity. Rand’s theory identifies the process by which a subject can rationally identify objects as genuine values. Rand’s conception of moral objectivity does not, accordingly, purport to reflect a “view from nowhere.” Any view originates somewhere. The question that a person faces, in aspiring to moral objectivity, is not how to escape his vantage point, either literally or figuratively, but how to make his view conform with reality. What is the nature of this thing that I am considering? And what sort of impact is it most likely to exert on my life? These are the principal questions that a person must address. The basis for evaluating answers to these questions is rooted in the object, although the evaluation, as well as the person’s embrace of his life, are also necessary for the facts in question and the benefits they stand to offer to be objectively valuable to him. Thus, to the perennial challenge to assertions of objective truth in ethics —“Who decides?” —Rand’s response is: it is not a matter of decision. She explains: “Nature does not decide —it merely is; man does not decide, in issues of knowledge, he merely observes

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that which is.” 54 On her theory, again, objective value reflects recognition of mind-independent facts coupled with a person’s seeking his life and correlatively seeking the specific values that propel his life. V. Conclusion The long-standing debate over the objectivity of morality has been hampered, in Rand’s view and in mine, by a skewed portrait of the alternatives. The dominant understanding of objective value is actually intrinsicist, reflecting the belief that certain things are good or right “in, by, and of” themselves. While the appeal of firm moral answers that are not contingent on people’s ever-shifting opinions is understandable, what is missing from most assertions of objective moral truth is appreciation of the significant role of the subject, the person to whom and for whom anything can be valuable. Moreover, because assertions of intrinsic value ultimately collapse into subjectivism, the prevalent conception of objectivism in ethics does not offer a genuine alternative to subjectivism. Rand’s view, I think, helps to refine our understanding of what objectivity in ethics actually is. To claim objectivity for any particular assertion of value is to make a claim about the nature of the mental processes that led to that conclusion. It is not the assertion of some sort of particles of reality that exist as values, independently of us, but a statement of our ability to learn of the positive or negative impact that different things have on our existence. Claims about the value of specific things are claims about factual matters and, as such, are true or false. The positing of the objective value of particular things thus tells a person not where to look to find values, but how to use his mind in order to determine whether various things are values. One of the significant strengths of this theory is that its account of morality’s objectivity is entirely of a piece with the basic nature of objective knowledge in any field. Morality’s objectivity is no different in kind, qua objective, from medicine’s objectivity. I suggested at the outset that the philosophical roots of popular trepidation about morality’s objectivity were essentially twofold: misunderstandings of the nature of moral objectivity, which I have examined here, and misguided views of the function of morality. Ultimately, the two cannot be severed. Rand’s commitment to objectivity in ethics rests on her belief that the function of ethics is a practical one that can only be served by adherence to an objective course. This obviously raises even larger questions about the nature and function of morality. Examination of these questions is vital, however, not simply for reaching a verdict on Rand’s view, but for progress in the objectivism-subjectivism standoff. For how54 Rand, “Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics?” 18; emphasis in original. She also observes that the question’s presupposition that it is a matter of decision itself reflects subjectivism (ibid., 19).

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ever deficient some of people’s more superficial reasons for resistance to moral objectivity may be, people are right to be spooked by assertions of objective value that are, in essence, arbitrary. And this is what intrinsicist versions of moral objectivity offer. To escape the arbitrariness in subjectivism as well as in intrinsicist “objectivism,” we need to recognize that what answers to moral questions depend on (which is the central bone of contention between objectivists and subjectivists) itself depends on what answers to moral questions are for. It is only by also confronting this, I think, that real progress can be made. Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin

EVALUATIVE CONCEPTS AND OBJECTIVE VALUES: RAND ON MORAL OBJECTIVITY* By Darryl F. Wright I. Introduction Those familiar with Ayn Rand’s ethical writings may know that she discusses issues in metaethics and that she defended the objectivity of morality during the heyday of early noncognitivism.1 But neither her metaethics, in general, nor her views on moral objectivity, in particular, have received wide study.2 In this essay, my aim is to elucidate some aspects of her thought in these areas. That elucidation, I hope, will also exhibit her account of the objectivity of morality as innovative and plausible, though for reasons of space I will not mount a direct defense of the account here, but will focus on interpretive issues. There are two dimensions on which, I believe, Rand’s account has something new to offer current discussions: first, in its conception of the way in which moral values serve a biologically based human need; second, in its conjunction of two ideas that have seemed hard to reconcile without appealing to a questionable nonnaturalism about values —the idea that moral concepts and judgments have an essentially practical or action-guiding function, and the idea that moral judgment can be objective in fundamentally the same way as science. I emphasize both of these dimensions in what follows. Rand’s account of moral objectivity depends on features of her general epistemological views, views that are also richer and more extensive than is usually recognized.3 Specifically, the account of moral objectivity depends * This essay has benefited from comments I received on previous versions of some of this material from Allan Gotthelf, Fred Miller, Ellen Frankel Paul, Peter Railton, Connie Rosati, Greg Salmieri, Geoff Sayre-McCord, and audiences at the University of Pittsburgh and at Bowling Green State University. Much of the final work was completed with the support of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University, through the Center’s Visiting Scholars program. I am most grateful to the Center’s directors and staff for providing a comfortable and supportive work environment during my time there in the Spring 2007 semester. 1 See Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” in Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: Signet, n.d.), 13–39. 2 The only book-length treatment is Tara Smith, Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). My account of Rand’s metaethics in this essay differs significantly from Smith’s (and some of the issues I will take up lie beyond the scope of Smith’s book). 3 These can be found mainly in Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, expanded second edition (New York: Meridian, 1990). DOI: 10.1017/S0265052508080060 © 2008 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA.

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on general views of hers about the nature of objective judgment. Further, the general norms or standards of objectivity that Rand puts forward furnish a useful template for understanding her approach to norms in other areas, including in morality. Thus, before proceeding to her metaethical views, I will explore some issues in her epistemology. That means I will aim to cover quite a bit of terrain and, as a result, will discuss Rand’s views in perhaps regrettably broad terms. But given that Rand’s defense of moral objectivity is so largely unfamiliar, a wide-angle shot of it may well be the best way to begin. The next section introduces some terminology for thinking about questions of objectivity. Sections III and IV then focus on Rand’s general views of the canons of objective judgment, including, in Section IV, a principal objection that her views may elicit, and that might seem to prevent her account of moral objectivity from even getting off the ground. Sections V and VI take up her account of moral objectivity. Section VII is a conclusion. II. Conceptions of Objectivity—Some Preliminaries In a helpful recent discussion, Brian Leiter contrasts two kinds of claims about objectivity. Claims about metaphysical objectivity concern whether (or in what respect or degree) “things are what they are independent of how we take them to be.” 4 Objectivity in this sense comes to mindindependence. If I say that the facts in some domain are what they are regardless of anyone’s beliefs about them, I am attributing metaphysical objectivity to those facts.5 By contrast, claims about epistemic objectivity concern whether (or to what extent) “the cognitive processes and mechanisms by which we form beliefs about the world [are] constituted in such a way that they at least tend toward the production of accurate representations of how things are.” 6 As this formulation makes clear, a cognitive process can qualify as objective even if it errs, provided that the error is not systemic —provided that, over time and all else equal, its continuation would tend to be self-correcting. The candidates for objectivity in this epistemic sense are not reality or a set of facts, but our methods for getting at the facts. By extension, one might characterize as “epistemically objective” those conclusions —the claims or bodies of theory —that emerge from epistemically objective methods. Although Leiter is not explicit about this, unlike “metaphysical objectivity,” “epistemic objectivity” is a nor4 Brian Leiter, “Introduction,” in Objectivity in Law and Morals, ed. Brian Leiter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 2; emphasis in original. 5 Metaphysical objectivity is not the same as what Rand calls the “metaphysically given.” She contrasts the latter with the man-made. Thus, institutions of government are not metaphysically given, for instance, but once in place are metaphysically objective: they exist and are as they are whether or not a given person is aware of them, and whatever a given person might believe about them. See Ayn Rand, “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” in Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet, 1984), 23–34. 6 Leiter, “Introduction,” 1.

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mative concept, a concept by means of which we evaluate cognitive processes and their products. Epistemic objectivity in a process or product of cognition is a form of cognitive success, and failures of epistemic objectivity constitute cognitive deficiencies, at least in those areas where we take it that objectivity might have been attained. In contrast, metaphysically objective facts are not on that account “successful” facts (what could this mean?) —they’re just facts. If one understands issues involving objectivity in these terms, then, for instance, the “objectivity of the natural sciences” would consist roughly in the epistemic objectivity of the methods of the natural sciences —the aptness of those methods for accurately representing metaphysically objective natural facts. The “objectivity of the social sciences” would consist roughly in the epistemic objectivity of the methods of the social sciences — the aptness of those methods for accurately representing metaphysically objective social facts (which, of course, in a broader sense of “natural,” can also be considered natural, even if they are not reducible to the sorts of facts that the “natural sciences” study). In a parallel fashion, we might think of moral objectivity as consisting in the epistemic objectivity of certain methods of moral reasoning, where this is understood as the aptness of these methods (whatever they may turn out to be) for accurately representing metaphysically objective moral facts. Moral facts, in turn, might be seen either as a species of natural or social fact, or as a sui generis order of nonnatural, nonsocial facts —facts that in some way transcend or sit apart from the facts investigated in the natural and social sciences. But some defenders of moral objectivity would balk at this characterization of it. Some defenses of moral objectivity are domain specific: they deny that ethics attains objectivity by sharing those features which are widely held to make science objective, such as its accurately representing a mind-independent world.7 According to domain-specific accounts, moral objectivity need not be modeled on scientific objectivity; it might, for example, require only that ethical claims be capable of intersubjective justification or that ethics have room for a distinction between being right and seeming right, even if objectivity in science would require more (or other) than the satisfaction of these criteria.8 As I will try to show, Rand views moral objectivity as continuous with, but not isomorphic to, objectivity in the natural sciences. Thus, the conception of moral objectivity envisioned in the last paragraph, which was modeled on Leiter’s conception of epistemic objectivity, is not quite broad enough to encompass Rand’s conception of moral objectivity. What it 7

On the issue of domain specificity, see ibid., 2. For examples of domain-specific approaches, see, e.g., John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); and Christine Korsgaard, “The Reasons We Can Share: An Attack on the Distinction between Agent-Relative and Agent-Neutral Values,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds., Altruism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 24–51. 8

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omits is the distinctively evaluative nature of moral reasoning, which, for her, is not reasoning directed at a new set of facts —morally evaluative ones —but rather reasoning of a new kind —evaluative rather than investigational and explanatory —about (some of ) the same sorts of facts that concern us in other departments of thought.9 At the same time, the canons of objectivity that apply to such reasoning, in Rand’s view, are of fundamentally the same nature as those that apply to scientific and other forms of reasoning. In this sense, Rand’s conception of moral objectivity remains non-domain-specific. As a preliminary formulation, then, we might say that, for her, moral objectivity comes to the epistemic objectivity of certain methods of moral reasoning, where this is understood as the aptness of these methods for accurately evaluating what one morally should do, in view of certain metaphysically objective natural facts. This formulation will require modification later; in addition, we will see shortly that Leiter’s characterization of epistemic objectivity —though, in the respect just indicated, too narrow for Rand to accept —also turns out to be, in a different respect, too broad for her to accept. For the time being, however, I will leave both this preliminary conception of moral objectivity and Leiter’s conception of epistemic objectivity in place as rough orientations to the terrain ahead. (Hereafter, references to objectivity are to epistemic objectivity unless otherwise specified.) I turn now to the epistemic foundations of Rand’s metaethics, and then to the metaethics itself. III. Rand on Objectivity Rand rejects what might be called the self-transcendence model of epistemic objectivity. It has been common to view objectivity as demanding the transcending of obstacles that human nature throws in the way of cognition. Plato expresses this view insofar as he sees sense perception as a cognitive obstacle, a form of cognitive distortion.10 More recently, this sort of view seems implicit in Thomas Nagel’s conception of objectivity as the effort to see the world as if from no particular vantage point.11 Nagel does not quite say, but seems to assume, that the view from where we are could not fail to be a “subjective” one. Though he lacks Plato’s contempt for subjectivity thus conceived, he thinks we properly aspire to something more. In Rand’s view, however, the ideal of a self-transcendent grasp of the world amounts to an aspiration to a magical kind of cognition, in which reality impresses itself on our minds by no identifiable means, and, like Potter Stewart spotting pornography, we know truth when we see it 9 For this point, see Rand’s discussion of moral evaluation in “What Is Capitalism?” in Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1967), 22; and in Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, revised edition (New York: Signet, 1975), 18. 10 For example, in the Phaedo, 64e–65d. 11 Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford, 1986).

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but can never manage to say how we recognized it.12 But if anything lacks objectivity, according to Rand, it is the sort of unaccountable truth claim made by someone who purports to know something but cannot say how. There is no need to idealize such invocations of cognitive magic, she thinks, if we reject the idea that our active involvement in a cognitive process must distort its results. For then we can regard objectivity not as a process of getting around the obstacles that human nature throws in the way of the needed magical deliverances, but rather as a process of exploiting the cognitive resources that human nature puts at our disposal, in just those ways in which they are (biologically and psychologically) suited to being exploited. Broadly speaking, objectivity will be a matter of adhering to cognitive methods tailored to our distinctively human cognitive needs and capacities. In this section, I will elaborate this broad characterization, with attention to one central demand of objectivity (as Rand conceives it) that may raise both general concerns and concerns about the prospects for moral objectivity. Let us begin, however, by exploring Rand’s views about the source and structure of norms of objectivity, for these norms will serve as a useful reference point in working through her views about the source and structure of moral norms. In one respect, Rand’s conception of epistemic objectivity is narrower than the conception that Leiter’s formulation (discussed in Section II) suggests. Whereas Leiter’s formulation makes no distinction between the automatic and the volitional aspects of cognition —between, for example, the way in which our sense organs function and the way in which we reason —in Rand’s use of the term only the volitional aspects of cognition can be assessed for epistemic objectivity. As she views it, epistemic objectivity is not merely normative but prescriptive: it concerns, as we might put it, not the mechanisms and processes of cognition in general but specifically its methodology, that is, those component processes that are at least potentially under the subject’s conscious control. One reason for this narrowing is that Rand considers skeptical doubts about the reliability of the automatic aspects of cognition self-undermining, whereas the existence of a sphere of cognitive autonomy or volition, within which the subject can regulate his or her own cognitive activities, does not undermine worries about reliability, but is precisely what generates such worries.13 Although a person’s sensory capacities or memory can, of course, become impaired, and thereby impair cognition, specifically epistemic failures, in Rand’s view, are failures within the sphere of our cognitive autonomy. Some of these, presumably, are all but unavoidable: we overlook things, we hit the wrong key on the calculator, and so forth. But the 12 For the point about Rand, see Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 79–80. For Justice Potter Stewart’s statement that he knew hard-core pornography when he saw it, even though he might never succeed in defining what it was, see his concurrence in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964). 13 Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 78–79.

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central threat to the reliability of cognition in its autonomous aspects lies elsewhere, namely, in the lack of adequate cognitive methods (either general methods or methods of specialized inquiry). We need canons of epistemic objectivity in order to remedy this deficiency. Perception, for Rand, is an aspect of the life-functions of certain living organisms and is thus subject to biological norms. Our perceptual capacities can function well or poorly in a biological sense. But there are no cognitive norms for perception, in her view; perception fulfills its cognitive function just in case it functions well in a biological sense (e.g., we do not need a methodology for seeing material objects lying before us, though we need one for understanding what we see).14 Conceptual thought, however, is subject to cognitive as well as biological norms. Our conceptual capacities can be in biologically good order and yet not deliver cognition. Rand’s explanation for this is that, beyond the stage at which we form our earliest, perceptually-based concepts (such as those for perceivable entities like chairs or dogs), our conceptual capacities do not function automatically, nor have we any built-in grasp of how to utilize them properly, since such a grasp would itself have to be held in conceptual form and thus result from the right use of those very capacities. There is a distinction to be drawn, then, between the right and wrong use of our conceptual capacities that is not reducible to the distinction between their being healthy or impaired (biologically excellent or defective). Norms for the right use of our conceptual capacities fall into two broad categories, in Rand’s view: norms for concept-formation and norms for conceptual judgment (roughly, for epistemic justification, i.e., for certifying a judgment as warranted). Her conception of epistemology is broader than prevailing conceptions in that it encompasses the delineation of both types of norms. But what is the standard of “right use” here? Rand says that “the rules of cognition must be derived from the nature of existence and the nature, the identity, of [man’s] cognitive faculty.” 15 Cognitive norms, as she views them, are teleological norms; their telos is cognition, knowing. We formulate them by asking how we must use our cognitive faculties, given their nature and the nature of reality, if we are to attain knowledge.16 Settling 14 We may also need instruments for seeing them, of course (a microscope, a telescope, corrective lenses), and (in some cases) a methodology for using these instruments. But Rand’s point is that we need no methodology for using our eyes. 15 Ibid., 82. 16 The content of Rand’s norms of objectivity depends on the end or telos to be reached and on the nature of the means at our disposal for reaching that end —the nature of a human being’s cognitive capacities. But in a sense it is not just the means (the norms of objectivity) but the end they serve (knowledge) whose specification would have to depend on us. For how exactly are we to think of the end of acquiring “knowledge”? What counts as success here? Rand seems to think that epistemology assumes this end, and perhaps helps specify its satisfaction-conditions precisely. But she does not seem to view the delineation of the end as a wholly epistemological matter. Fundamentally, it would seem that this has to be a matter for ethics, which prescribes the basic ends of human action. Since, as we will see below, it is our needs as a certain kind of living organism that set the standards for moral

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this requires settling certain issues in metaphysics, as well as settling certain questions about the nature of our cognitive capacities. On the metaphysical side, Rand defends particularism; she holds that, apart from our minds, only particulars exist —that there are no abstractions or universals inherent in reality. Her particularism is promiscuous: it admits not only particular entities but also particular property- and relationinstantiations (the roundness of this particular ball, or the nutritiousness of this particular apple). Conceptual thought, then, does not disclose abstract features of reality but serves as “a cognitive device of man’s type of consciousness,” a device that we need because “the range of what man can hold in the focus of his conscious awareness at any given moment, is limited.” 17 According to Rand, “[c]onceptualization is a method of expanding man’s consciousness by reducing the number of its content’s units,” and thus “concepts represent condensations of knowledge, which make further study and the division of cognitive labor possible.” 18 Broadly speaking, the normative standards for concept-formation must consider which procedures of conceptual classification are cognitively productive; as Rand puts it, “[t]he requirements of cognition determine the objective criteria of conceptualization.” 19 Not all classifications will serve equally well; at the same time, there are bound to be options, between which we must simply choose.20 Classification is therefore not a subjective process, according to Rand — there are standards by which to evaluate our classificatory preferences — but neither are conceptual classifications correct because they reflect a mind-independent conceptual order, intrinsic in reality as such. Rather, correct conceptual classifications are, as she puts it, objective —correct as evaluated by a nonarbitrary standard whose grounds lie in the functional nature of the process of conceptualization, that is to say, in what concepts do for us and in the cognitive need they fill. More broadly, objectivity, as Rand conceives it, is a matter of adherence to cognitive norms —norms governing our cognitive methods —derived in the manner indicated above. She contrasts her conception of objectivity with two archetypical views of concepts and conceptual thought that have been influential historically (and continue to have influence). What she calls intrinsicism sees conceptuality as a feature of reality, rather than of our methods of cognition, and sees conceptual thought as a fundamentally passive process of receiving conceptual content. Intrinsicism denies that the process of receiving concepevaluation, on Rand’s view, it would seem to be those needs that should most fundamentally determine the content of the end of acquiring knowledge. The end might be seen as that of attaining the full range of conceptual knowledge that human beings need in order to live fully human lives (an end whose attainment would, of course, require cooperation and a division of cognitive labor). 17 Ibid., 67, 63. 18 Ibid., 64, 65; emphasis in original. 19 Ibid., 72. 20 Ibid., 73–74.

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tual content has any distinctive nature —asserting that it is receptivity and nothing more —in order to preserve its cognitive character, that is, its standing as a source of knowledge about a mind-independent world. What she calls subjectivism sees conceptualization as an active process but takes the objects of conceptual thought to be constituted by our conceptual framework. Subjectivism denies that conceptual thought yields knowledge of a mind-independent world, in order to give due recognition to its active character, its dependence on our activity and on the nature of our cognitive equipment. In contrast, Rand’s conception of objectivity seeks to reconcile the active character of conceptual thought with its cognitive character, by jettisoning the assumption that cognitive success requires self-transcendence. What, then, does objectivity look like in more detail, according to Rand? One of its central demands, she argues, is the systematic integration of our thinking into a unified whole. Integration functions to ensure the consistency of our thinking; to ensure that conclusions reached in one area are not cast in doubt by those reached in other areas, and to modify them when they are cast in doubt.21 But integration presupposes material to work on, and objectivity’s other central demand concerns the source and initial justification of such material. This demand grows out of a certain kind of epistemic foundationalism that Rand embraces, which is summarized in the following passage from her writings: Concepts are the products of a mental process that integrates and organizes the evidence provided by man’s senses. . . . Man’s senses are his only direct cognitive contact with reality and, therefore, his only source of information. Without sensory evidence, there can be no concepts; without concepts, there can be no language; without language, there can be no knowledge and no science.22 Objectivity, for Rand, depends on respecting the foundationalism implied here, both in concept-formation and in judgment. In regard to concepts, “one must be able to retrace the specific (logical, not chronological) steps by which they were formed, and one must be able to demonstrate their connection to their base in perceptual reality.” 23 Finding these connections is not a simple matter of finding referents for every concept, or evidence for every judgment, in perceptual reality; Rand is explicit that many concepts (perhaps most) either lack perceptual referents altogether or have referents that can be perceptually identified only by the inter21 Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual (New York: Signet, n.d.), 125–26; Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Meridian, 1993), 118–28. 22 Ayn Rand, “Kant Versus Sullivan,” in Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, 90; emphasis in original. 23 Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 51.

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position of other concepts (she gives the example of “furniture,” whose instances can be perceived but are recognized as furniture by being recognized as tables, chairs, and so forth).24 Thus, different concepts will, in her view, be “based” in perception in different ways. In the formation of psychological concepts, she argues that the “basing” involves a recognition of intentionality —that, for instance, to see is to see something. 25 In other cases, she argues, the “basing” may advert to ways in which a concept facilitates theoretical generalization and explanation, or mathematical computation, bearing on our ability to comprehend (and act in) perceptual reality.26 Rand, then, can allow quite intricate ways of basing concept-formation and judgment on perceptual evidence. If such “basing” is central to objectivity, then exploring her conception of moral objectivity must involve exploring how her “basing” requirements apply to moral evaluation. (A wider treatment of her views would also consider the role of the demand for integration; however, I set this aside for another time.) But before getting to that, let us now take up an important objection to the “basing” requirements themselves. IV. Rand, McDowell, and the “Myth of the Given” I can present the objection by briefly rehearsing some arguments of John McDowell’s. The “basing” requirements, it might be objected, are just Rand’s resurrection of the infamous “Myth of the Given.” The “Myth of the Given” —or, as McDowell calls it, the “dualism of [conceptual] scheme and Given” 27 —is the view that the epistemic justification of an empirical belief is, in the last analysis, a matter of its being warranted by experience, where experience is seen as the raw material for conceptformation but as being, in itself, conceptually unstructured. How do those who view epistemic justification in this way view the concepts employed in empirical thought? McDowell suggests that they must take the view that the content of an empirical concept is fixed by the justificatory relations that hold between bits of the Given and predications of the concept, which in turn are fixed by what bits of the Given the user of the concept initially forms the concept to refer to. The same conception of empirical warrant, then, plays into the dualism’s account of the epistemic justification of empirical beliefs and its account of the content of empirical concepts. In McDowell’s view, however, the dualism’s conception of empirical warrant rests on a confusion. 24

Ibid., chapter 3 and passim. Ibid., 29–30. Ibid., 148–49, 304–6, and chapter 7, passim. 27 McDowell, Mind and World, 4. Below, I will refer to the dualism of scheme and Given as simply “the dualism.” 25 26

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Unlike coherentists, such as Donald Davidson, McDowell does not propose to do without the idea of empirical warrant, for this idea, he thinks, is presupposed in the idea of an empirical belief. We cannot reject it, therefore, without undermining the intelligibility of this latter idea.28 Where the dualism goes wrong, McDowell suggests, is not in invoking the idea of empirical warrant but in supposing that there are justificatory relations spanning the boundary between the “conceptual sphere” and the raw, conceptually unstructured material of experience, and therefore that, as McDowell puts it, “the space of reasons is . . . more extensive than the space of concepts.” 29 In McDowell’s view, however, the apparent plausibility of the dualism’s expansive view of the space of reasons depends on a failure to see that “a bare presence cannot be a ground for anything[,]” 30 because “we cannot really understand the relations in virtue of which a judgment is warranted except as relations within the space of concepts: relations such as implication or probabilification [and so forth]. . . .” 31 A “bare presence” is all an experience could be, on the dualism’s conception of experience. But relations bearing on epistemic justification are relations between pieces of propositional content. This seems clear if we think about what sort of thing justifications or reasons are: considerations that give rational support or, as Stephen Darwall calls them (in discussing practical reasons), dicta —statements in a language or the propositions expressed in such statements.32 Bare presences are precisely not dicta and thus are not the type of thing that could figure as a term in a justificatory relation. According to McDowell, therefore, the dualism’s attempted expansion of the space of reasons fails. McDowell argues that it is possible to retain the idea of empirical warrant while jettisoning this way of construing what such warrant amounts to. We can do this if we allow that experience itself comes “equipped with conceptual content.” 33 He elaborates: In a particular experience in which one is not misled, what one takes in is that things are thus and so. That things are thus and so is the content of the experience, and it can also be the content of a judgment: it becomes the content of a judgment if the subject decides to take the judgment at face value. So it is conceptual content. But that things are thus and so is also, if one is not misled, an aspect of the layout of the world: it is how things are.34 28

Ibid., 14–18, esp. 18. Ibid., 6. 30 Ibid., 19. 31 Ibid., 7. One judgment “probabilifies” another if the truth of the first would make the truth of the second more probable. 32 See Stephen L. Darwall, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 31. 33 McDowell, Mind and World, 25. 34 Ibid., 26; emphasis in original. 29

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McDowell’s view is not idealism, because although it claims that the world is nothing over and above the totality of “thinkable contents,” it does not claim that the world is nothing over and above thinking. 35 The world is independent of our thinking, in his view, and empirical justification demands that we square our beliefs with an independent reality, since it demands that we square our beliefs with experience. But his view does share, with coherentism —and in opposition to the dualism —the premise that epistemic justification is always a matter of how one piece of propositional content stands with respect to others. In that sense, as McDowell points out, his conception of justification is Neurathian: it sees justification as proceeding always from within our going conceptual scheme and framework of beliefs.36 The “dualism of scheme and Given,” as McDowell presents it, is based on an internalist conception of epistemic justification, according to which what makes it the case that a belief is justified is a rationale for the belief that could, in principle, be the believer’s reason for holding it, and that, if it were, would justify the act of believing. McDowell shares that internalism and, therefore, does not challenge it. What he challenges is the dualism’s conception of what could qualify as a rationale, specifically, the view that experiential inputs from outside the conceptual sphere could be part of such a rationale. Now, like the dualism, an externalist conception of justification could make room for justificatory linkages that extend outside the conceptual sphere. But since externalist accounts of epistemic justification do not construe justifications as reasons for belief, such a view would not be vulnerable to the charge that it had illicitly extended the space of reasons beyond the conceptual sphere. In order to reject an externalist view that incorporated justificatory linkages extending outside the conceptual sphere, McDowell would have to attack not the appeal to extra-conceptual justificatory linkages, but the underlying externalist picture of epistemic justification.37 I will not pursue the issue of externalism further here, however, because I believe that Rand’s views of epistemic justification are largely internalist, and that where they diverge from 35

Ibid., 28. Ibid., 52–53. McDowell’s explicit reference to Neurathian reflection comes in his discussion of practical thought (see ibid., 81), but the earlier passage I cite here seems to make a similar point in criticizing Gareth Evans’s conception of “non-conceptual content.” Otto Neurath (1882–1945) was an Austrian philosopher of science and Vienna Circle member who likened scientific progress to the attempt to rebuild a boat while at sea. Just as the boat could only be rebuilt plank by plank —not all at once —since those aboard would need somewhere to stand while they worked, so our beliefs about the world can only be revised in stages, since it is only by holding some part of our worldview fixed that we gain grounds for challenging and improving other parts. “Neurathian reflection” refers to such staged belief revision and stands opposed to the project of finding external justificatory grounds for our worldview as a whole. 37 Two forms of externalism need to be kept apart in this context. One is externalism about justification, which is the position I discuss in the text. The other is externalism about knowledge, which denies that justification is a necessary condition of knowledge. 36

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standard forms of internalism, it is not just by pulling in externalist elements. Instead, I want to suggest a fairly modest defense of Rand’s epistemology against the charge that it buys into a myth about given-ness. Other, more aggressive lines of defense may be available to Rand, but this one is modest in that it concedes a good deal of the framework from which the “myth” charge derives —but, crucially, not all of that framework. Besides being modest, it also strikes me as being correct. The dualism maintains that conceptually unstructured experience constitutes the ultimate rational ground for epistemically justified empirical beliefs. If experience is to play this role, it must be capable of figuring into a person’s reasons for believing something: it must be possible for a person to hold a belief because he sees (extra-conceptual) experience as warranting it. In order for that to be possible, however, it would seem necessary for the contrast between the Given and our conceptual scheme and beliefs to be an object of some form of direct acquaintance. For, otherwise, it would seem impossible to appeal to elements of the one in order to launch (or, looked at from the opposite direction, to terminate) a justification of elements of the other. Suppose, then, that you acquire the belief, “The house key is on the kitchen table,” upon going into the kitchen and looking on the table. How is an appeal to the Given to proceed? What you see before you are things that you immediately recognize as falling under various concepts —the concepts “table,” “key,” and so forth. Is it that, in some sense, you have the experiential elements and the conceptual overlay or structuring both in view at once? If so, then this contrast must present itself even to someone whose capacity to recognize justifications is as limited and undeveloped as could be, since the justifications at issue here are those which are supposed to supply the rational ground of all the more sophisticated empirical justifications a person might later come to recognize. It seems dubious, however, that any such contrast presents itself to direct acquaintance, for it is not as though the Given and the conceptual overlay sit next to one another, like two contrasting patches of color on a fabric. Whatever distinction there is to be made between them is a fairly advanced and abstract one. It seems unlikely that Rand would want to claim that we are directly acquainted with the contrast between scheme and Given. The type of acquaintance involved here would have to be partly introspective, since (according to the dualism) a conceptual scheme is something constructed by our minds. But Rand regards introspection as a relatively difficult and highly fallible process. Moreover, she thinks that, as a psychological matter, many people remain unaware of the distinction between perceptual input and the conceptual processing of such input; as a result, they “treat . . . the first-level abstractions, the concepts of [perceivable] physical existents, as if they were percepts. . . .” 38 Yet surely even such people are able 38

Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 76.

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to grasp elementary empirical justifications. It is hard to see how Rand could think that people could remain unaware of the distinction between scheme and Given if she thought that it were one that we could be directly acquainted with at a relatively early level of cognitive development. Indeed, according to Rand, we see the world through our conceptual scheme; our conceptual scheme is part of our means of cognition and not, except in special cases, the object of our awareness. On this view, one would expect the scheme/Given distinction to be more elusive than evident. If Rand does not think we have the distinction between scheme and Given in view all at once, is it possible that she thinks we learn to make a kind of Gestalt shift, from a conceptually structured experience of the world to one that is all Given and no conceptual structuring? That also seems very unlikely. Consider what, by her lights, would have to be involved in our being able to make that kind of Gestalt shift. Rand thinks that to remain on the purely perceptual level (her term for the stage of our cognitive development that precedes our having any explicit concepts) is to be without the subject-object distinction; this is the position that she thinks animals and very young children are in.39 It is also the position in which she thinks adults remain in experiencing the “emotional meaning” of music —a position in which we cannot tell what is objectively attributable to the music and what depends on us.40 But is it conceivable that we could lose (and regain) the subject-object distinction in adult perceptual experience by an act of will? That seems flatly inconceivable, and I can see no reason to ascribe such a position to Rand. What seems true, and what it seems more likely that she herself believes, is that the development of our conceptual capacities irrevocably transforms adult perceptual experience, and, specifically, transforms its form. Phenomenologically, there seems to be no psychological distance at all between seeing something and seeing it as a table, once one has the concept “table”; even when we cannot quite make out exactly what something is (something off in the distance, say) we see it, for example, as something up there on the hillside. 41 To my mind, the view that makes most sense, and that it also makes most sense to ascribe to Rand, is that —rather than something that we are directly acquainted with —the distinction between the conceptually unstructured Given and our conceptual scheme is a theoretical one. That is not, of course, to impugn it. I do not have any very precise criterion in mind for what counts as a theoretical concept. But what I mean to suggest is 39

Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, 55. Ibid. 41 A further point, which I do not have space to develop here, is that Rand views human perceptual experience as implicitly conceptual from the very first. See, for instance, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 5–7. Her idea that there are implicit concepts requires analysis, but that she sees the need to describe perception in such terms suggests how far she is from the dualism of scheme and Given that McDowell attacks. 40

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that the idea that, before we begin acquiring any concepts, we have a conceptually unstructured form of perceptual awareness, is one that we arrive at not by having or recalling perceptual experiences matching this description, but, rather, in the course of building up a theoretical account of how we think. It is something that we infer, after having built up a fairly sophisticated conceptual framework for raising and addressing questions about human cognition. If this is correct, then the idea of the Given has an epistemic status analogous to that which Rand assigns to the concept of a sensation. Percepts, she says, are automatic, neurological integrations of sensations. But “the knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later; it is a scientific, conceptual discovery.” 42 To treat the distinction between scheme and Given as a theoretical one is to eschew the idea that epistemic justification has inputs from outside the conceptual sphere. If this is how Rand views the scheme/Given distinction, then she can agree with McDowell that what forms the starting point (or the terminus) of epistemic justifications is not something outside the conceptual sphere, but just some such conceptually structured bit of perceptual content as that the house key (or maybe only a key) is on the kitchen table. McDowell says that perceptual experience is “equipped with conceptual content.” 43 Rand, perhaps, would not say just this —it depends on how we take the notoriously ambiguous term “content.” Since McDowell regards experience as passive,44 to say that it has conceptual content is to locate the source of its conceptuality outside of our minds, on the side of the object rather than of the subject. If those are the only possibilities, then we must locate conceptuality in what we experience in order to reject the view that there are conceptually unstructured experiential inputs to justification. But, for Rand, awareness always involves not only a subject and an object but a form, which depends on both. Rand denies that conceptual structuring is inherent in what we perceive. This denial, however, need not commit her to recognizing conceptually unstructured justificatory inputs, for she can maintain, and I believe does maintain, that adult perceptual experience has an ineliminably conceptual (or conceptualized) form. But can Rand exclude conceptually unstructured inputs from her account of epistemic justification consistently with her theory of concept-formation? Her theory holds that perceptual input is the conceptually unstructured raw material for concept-formation or, more precisely, for the formation of our most basic concepts; other concepts, she thinks, are formed by conceptualizing already conceptualized material —by engaging in “abstraction from abstractions,” as she calls it.45 If McDowell is right, however, 42

Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 5. McDowell, Mind and World, 25. 44 Ibid., 10–13. 45 Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 19. 43

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abstractionist theories of concepts like Rand’s must explain the content of basic empirical concepts in terms of the justificatory relations between bits of the Given and predications of these concepts.46 In that case, Rand’s theory of concepts would commit her to the very conception of justification that I have suggested that she can (and should) avoid. It is significant, I think, that in Rand’s view, early-stage conceptformation is not a deliberate process. The acquisition of language obviously depends on guidance from current speakers, but the psychological side of the process, the side that allows language to be used with understanding, unfolds more or less automatically, she believes.47 In the initial stages of conceptual development, we do not seek out a conceptual perspective but fall into one. What must this seem like to the subject? If Rand is correct that concept-formation is a process of classifying things according to observed similarities, but that the nature of this process is not transparent to the subject from the outset, then it is plausible to suggest that in the early going, we find ourselves confronted by the impression of a wholly external sort of normativity —the impression that certain things just are all of a kind and just do belong together under the same concept or term. On the picture I am suggesting, we do not (initially) see ourselves as having put them together but as recognizing them for what they are; matters of classification do not seem to depend on us —they seem to depend entirely on the way things are in the world. I am suggesting, in effect, that McDowell’s description of how perceptual experience works is a correct description of how it seems to work pre-reflectively. That is, pre-reflectively, perception seems to be “saddled with conceptual content” right from the start, where the “start” is the point at which we begin learning language. But I also want to suggest that this account of how things pre-reflectively seem can cohere with Rand’s account of how things actually are. According to Rand, classificatory normativity is not wholly external to our minds, nor is conceptual content there for the perceptually experiencing whether or not we ever experience it. Its being right to classify certain things together as “chairs” or “keys” or “dolphins” depends both on mind-independent facts about those things and on facts about our means of cognition, such as that certain ways of classifying (but not others) facilitate the expansion of knowledge through generalization. Classifications are not right in themselves —intrinsically right —but right relative to the goals of cognition. Similarly, “conceptuality” is not there in the world apart from our experience but rather is a property of our developed perspective on the world. But even assuming Rand is right in all this, as I think she is, nothing in what she says about concepts requires us to conclude that the nature and mechanics of con46

McDowell, Mind and World, 19. Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 150–51; see also ibid., 144–45, and Ayn Rand, “The Comprachicos,” in Rand, Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, ed. Peter Schwartz (New York: Meridian, 1999), 54–55. 47

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cepts and concept-formation are transparent to the subject all along. What is, psychologically, a process of mental sorting can seem initially to be a process of coming to know a presorted world. It is, I suggest, this apparent presortedness and the normativity it entails that anchors our initial conceptual classifications. There need be no thought to the effect that these bits of conceptually unstructured experience justify the predication of, and thereby help to constitute the content of, this concept. V. Evaluative Objectivity and the Structure of Norms The model of objectivity as self-transcendence suggests that we find out what is (objectively) morally good by detaching moral reflection from the context of our own aims and interests —by reflecting on our aims and interests, impartially considered as those of one person among others, rather than through those aims and interests. Because Rand rejects the general self-transcendence model of objectivity, she also rejects this model of moral objectivity. What, then, does she put in its place? In general, moral objectivity will involve forming and deploying moral concepts according to the general canons of objectivity adumbrated in Section III. In considering these canons of objectivity, I have focused on the basing requirements, and I will continue that focus in taking up Rand’s views about moral objectivity. Besides being integrated with one another and with other knowledge, Rand holds, moral concepts and judgments must conform to the basing requirements in order to attain objectivity and thus earn their place in our conceptual schemes, theories, and practical activities.48 In the last section, I suggested one fairly modest way of defending the basing requirements from the charge that they themselves are based in a myth about the given-ness of conceptually unstructured perceptual data. Even if Rand is not vulnerable to this objection, though, one might wonder how the basing requirements can come into play for moral concepts. On the face of things, fitting moral concepts to the basing requirements — giving them the right sort of connection to their “base in perceptual reality” 49 —seems fairly daunting. For it is not even clear where in the perceptually given environment we could find a basis for these concepts. If we set aside our own responses, and consider only what is available perceptually, it seems clear that moral concepts do not refer to anything that we can directly observe in perception, although of course they may apply to such things. This seems to be agreed on all sides. G. E. Moore, for instance, thought that goodness could be predicated of things that we 48 This is implied, for instance, by her view that objective moral judgment must employ a standard derived from mind-independent facts of reality. See Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” 22. 49 Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 51.

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perceive, but insisted that it could not itself be perceived.50 His answer to the question of how we gain moral knowledge sometimes seems to appeal to a quasi-perceptual process that delivers abstract knowledge, without the involvement of the sense organs.51 But Rand would consider the appeal to such a process just another invocation of the magical. What if we bring our own responses back into the picture? In Rand’s view, it is through our own pleasure-pain and emotional responses that we first become aware of normative issues.52 In that respect, the role of these responses in the formation of normative (but not yet moral) concepts bears a certain resemblance to the role of perception in the formation of cognitive concepts. Through these responses, the world strikes us as normatively valenced (that is, as containing things that are good and bad, things that are worthy of being sought or avoided). The philosophic question these responses raise is how to understand them. Physical pleasure and pain, Rand claims, are the forms in which we experience the immediate beneficial and harmful effects of their sources on our physical well-being.53 They are sources of normative information, albeit limited in their reach. But Rand denies that they supply an adequate foundation for moral concepts, as opposed to a rudimentary generic concept of one’s good.54 Emotional responses she views as the affective form in which we experience our own (sometimes implicit) evaluations (thus fear, she holds, is the form in which we experience the judgment that something is to be avoided on account of its dangers). Emotions cannot be treated as even limited purveyors of normative information, she argues, except when we can be sure of the evaluations that underlie them.55 The world strikes us through our emotions as being normatively valenced, because we make implicit evaluations before we realize that we are doing so, and before we are in a position to reflect critically on the concepts and standards by means of which we do so. Unlike our early conceptual framework for perceptual judgment, Rand regards our early evaluative framework as demanding more cognitive work to structure appropriately and, accordingly, as far more error-prone.56 Whereas our early perceptual concepts 50

G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 38–39, 41. Ibid., 16–17. 52 Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 18; Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 228–29. 53 Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 18–21. 54 This is clear both from her rejection of hedonistic standards of moral judgment in “The Objectivist Ethics” (see 32–33) and from her comments during a workshop on her ethical theory attended by a group of university faculty in the late 1960s, a recording and transcript of which are part of the collections of the Ayn Rand Archives at the Ayn Rand Institute (Irvine, California). She is asked whether moral evaluation is reducible to a process of gauging the long-range consequences of alternative choices on the basis of the amount of physical pleasure and pain that they would be likely to yield. Her answer is that such calculations could not give rise to the idea of morality. The workshop was one of a series covering both ethics and epistemology. The relevant material occurs on pages 11–14 of the transcript of Workshop #4. 55 Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 30–31. 56 See, e.g., ibid., 31. 51

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are a basis from which to move forward, whatever minor corrections they may require, an implicit, emotionally articulated evaluative framework may demand substantial reflection and reconstruction. It is not apparent, then, how perception or anything analogous to perception in its concrete immediacy —such as pleasure/pain responses or emotional responses —could provide a foundation for moral concepts and judgments. In bringing out Rand’s views about this, I will first argue that she considers the teleological structure exhibited by her norms of objectivity (and by other cognitive norms that she would endorse) to be characteristic of all norms, including moral norms. That argument will occupy the remainder of this section. In the next section, I will explore her conception of (teleological) moral norms in greater depth. There I will focus on how she thinks the telos of moral norms should be established, and then on how moral norms thus conceived stand with respect to the basing requirements. The teleological structure of cognitive norms is not atypical, in Rand’s view, but is characteristic of all genuine norms, including moral norms. When something is evaluated, Rand maintains, it is always appropriate to ask for the standard of value; and objective evaluation, she holds, is always a matter of assessing something by an appropriately chosen standard.57 In this sense, she views properly formed normative concepts as teleological concepts. For something to be good (for instance) is for it to satisfy the relevant standard of value, which in some way specifies what the evaluated object should be or attain. This, Rand thinks, provides a clue to how normative discoveries, beyond those enabled by physical pleasure and pain responses, are made. One finds out what is good by applying the relevant standard of value to the case being judged. Rand calls this process teleological measurement.58 As long as the standard and its criteria of application are sufficiently determinate, questions about what is teleologically good will have objective answers, answers that can in principle be discovered, not magically, but by the application of a specific method of discovery. This may seem like a pretty big “as long as,” though. How optimistic can we be about the prospects for determinateness? One point that Rand makes is that what teleological measurement aims for are ordinal rather than cardinal judgments —judgments of better and worse that facilitate choice.59 That relieves some of the pressure for determinateness or, more precisely perhaps, gives us an understanding of what determinateness in teleological measurement should mean that offers grounds for optimism about attaining it. Further, sometimes, of course, making standards more determinate is just a matter of getting clearer about what we want —say, from a set of student papers. But the more 57 See, e.g., Ayn Rand, “The Shanghai Gesture, Part II,” The Ayn Rand Letter 1, no. 14 (April 10, 1972): 62–63; and Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” 22. 58 Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 32–34. 59 Ibid., 33.

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sway we give to what we want, the more we open up another source of worry about objectivity —a worry not about lack of determinateness in our standards but about arbitrariness. How would Rand address these worries? If we are interested in teleological evaluation, the first question is really where to get nonarbitrary standards for it. Determinateness is no virtue in standards picked out of thin air; it would hardly reassure one’s students to tell them that one will assign grades to papers according to a rule based on the order in which they end up stacked in one’s mailbox on submission. What does Rand say about the provenance of teleological standards? She says at one point that the standards for evaluating inanimate objects are “determined by the particular purpose for which one evaluates them.” 60 On its face, this may seem like an endorsement of a fairly extreme relativism about standards, a relativism that reinforces the worry about arbitrariness. But the relativistic reading of her point is hasty, for she does not say that we get to pick the purpose for which we evaluate things, or get to pick it arbitrarily. Further, elsewhere she says that in evaluating human activities in (to use a quaint, early American term) the useful arts, such as medicine or manufacturing, the correct standards depend on the constitutive aims of these activities.61 Evaluation in the useful arts is relative to purposes, but it is not up to the evaluator to decide arbitrarily what purposes a manufacturing technique is to be judged by, so that one might, for example, legitimately say that a good agricultural technique was one that wasted time. More generally, when we judge something “good of its kind” — good farming, good automotive manufacturing, a good pen, a good reading lamp —it is not up to the evaluator to set the standards, and even where those standards require significant interpretation (raising our other worry, about determinateness), we must hold our interpretations answerable to something beyond themselves. We might call this sort of evaluation “functional,” meaning evaluation with respect to the function (or in the case of activities like farming, the aim) that a kind of thing has and that helps constitute its identity as that kind of thing. It seems to me that the statement above that raised concern about relativism can just as easily be read to embrace functional evaluation for inanimate objects. Rand does apply this form of evaluation to one category of inanimate objects, namely, works of art. The purposes by reference to which art is to be evaluated as art, she argues, are not those that we might happen to bring to the judgment of an artwork but, rather, depend on the psychological function that the creation and experience of art has in our lives.62 Further, as we have seen, she applies the same functional, teleological form of evaluation to another category of human artifacts that are 60

Ibid., 51. Ayn Rand, “Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics?” in Leonard Peikoff, ed., The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (New York: Meridian, 1990), 18. 62 Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, 42; see also chapters 1–3, passim. 61

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of central concern within her thought, namely, to concepts themselves. Concepts, in Rand’s view, are functional devices whose purpose is to expand the range of human cognition (and action) beyond the perceptually given environment —to enable us to think about and act with a view toward that which is not perceptually present (including importantly, in the case of action, desired future states of affairs). We (epistemically) justify a given concept, in her view, by showing that it is needed for these ends. Thus, for Rand, the epistemic assessment of concepts involves a process of “teleological measurement” broadly similar to that employed in the other forms of assessment mentioned above. Indeed, it is such functional teleological assessment that underlies Rand’s basing requirements for concepts. Concepts, in her view, need to be connected in certain ways to perceptual data because their cognitive function is to enable us to organize and make inferences from perceptual data. (I am admittedly condensing and oversimplifying a good deal here.) I think that Rand considers all objective evaluation to be both teleological and (more specifically) functional; that, at least, is how she treats every case of evaluation that I am aware of her mentioning. It is of particular interest to note, here, that this is the approach she takes to moral evaluation. It is in a discussion of the objectivity of moral evaluation that Rand refers to teleological evaluation in the useful arts. She analogizes moral evaluation to teleological evaluation in the useful arts, suggesting that it, too, is a form of teleological evaluation.63 The question of what is the morally right way to live a human life is no less amenable to objective resolution, she maintains, than the question of what is the right way to cure an illness or build an automobile.64 In some sense, despite clear differences, the questions are analogous. Why is this? In a general way, the actions of any living thing can be evaluated teleologically by reference to the requirements of its particular form of life, since any life-process must be carried on in a certain way, appropriate to the nature of the particular living thing in question, in order to be sustained. Now Rand’s analogy to medicine and manufacturing refers specifically to the moral evaluation of human actions, not to the generic biological evaluation of the actions of living things. But Rand’s aim is to assimilate moral evaluation to biological evaluation, by arguing that moral values are needed in the life of a human being. Thus, elsewhere, she treats moral values teleologically. The proper standard for assessing moral values, she argues, is to be drawn from “the function of moral values in human life.” 65 If moral values have a biologically related function, then in principle they are amenable to objective, functional assessment analogous to the functional assessment of medical or manufacturing techniques and to the functional assessment of artifacts. 63

Rand, “Final Authority,” 18. Ibid., 18–19. 65 Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, x. 64

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But if this is Rand’s aim, then her analogizing moral evaluation to functional, teleological evaluation in the useful arts may seem peculiar. In effect, that analogy treats moral values as analogues of medical or manufacturing techniques. One can see some of the point of this analogy easily enough: elsewhere, Rand describes ethics as a science of method, and in another place she analogizes it to engineering.66 The moral values promulgated by an ethical theory function as methods for attaining a certain end, in her view, and in this respect they are analogous to medical and manufacturing techniques. But the biological basis that Rand seeks for them —their grounding in the needs of human beings as a certain kind of living thing —may seem to render the functionality of moral values (if Rand is correct in ascribing a kind of biological functionality to them) quite different from the technical functionality of medical and manufacturing techniques, but similar to the functionality of the parts and systems of living things. The analogy to medicine and manufacturing highlights the artifactual nature of moral values and virtues —their status as human contrivances. That status may seem to stand in tension with the biological status that Rand also wants to claim for them. Moral values, on Rand’s conception of them, seem to be both artifacts of human culture —ways of conducting ourselves that we devise —and subject to biologically based norms of assessment. It may seem problematic to accord moral values both statuses, since the teleology of human artifacts seems to be driven by the purposes for which we create them, whereas biological teleology is independently given. But surely this dichotomy is too stark. In the first place, it may not be true that the functions of artifacts are always as closely tied to the intentions of their designers as the foregoing comments imply. Although a tight connection is often assumed,67 there are arguments in the literature on artifact functions suggesting that artifact “functions” (in at least one sense of this multifaceted term) may depend not only on the intentional causes of the design and production of artifacts but on the intentional causes of their continued reproduction, and that the bearing of the latter can sometimes be to pull function and designer’s intent apart from one another.68 Leaving that aside, the creation of artifacts (and thus the functions intended by their creators) is clearly driven in significant part by recognized biological needs. Sometimes these needs are clearly grasped and artifact functionality is precisely targeted; other times, perhaps, the relevant needs are grasped only inchoately and we grope around. That, I believe, is the situation Rand finds in regard to moral values: that an 66

Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 36; Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, 169. See, for example, Paul Sheldon Davies, Norms of Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), chapter 1. 68 For an account of artifact functions according to which this is the case, see Beth Preston, “Why Is a Wing Like a Spoon? A Pluralist Theory of Function,” Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998): 215–54. 67

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inchoate awareness of our need for them has driven the creation of moral codes and theories, but that we have groped around without a clear view of this need’s nature and source.69 In any event, though, there is no inconsistency in the supposition that although we have a biologically based need to shape our moral characters in certain ways, we must identify and respond to this need by our own wits and choices, through the delineation and adoption of a code of moral values.70 The question we will need to raise is not how moral values can be both artifactual and biologically based, but rather what makes the biologically based need for moral values —if such a need can be established —decisive for their evaluation. What makes a standard of moral value based on such a criterion objectively correct, by Rand’s lights? I take this up toward the end of the next section. First, though, I turn to a sketch of Rand’s argument that moral values do have a biologically based function —that we need them in order to live. VI. Moral Objectivity and the “Function of Moral Values” In a discussion of the role of art in moral development, Rand gives the following general characterization of the normative function of morality: [M]orality is a normative science —i.e., a science that projects a valuegoal to be achieved by a series of steps, of choices —and it cannot be practiced without a clear vision of the goal, without a concretized image of the ideal to be reached. If man is to gain and keep a moral stature, he needs an image of the ideal, from the first thinking day of his life to the last.71 What the realization of moral values “gains and keeps” for a person, in Rand’s view, is what she calls a moral stature. One’s stature, of course, is one’s standing, usually one’s height (physical stature) or one’s standing in a profession (professional stature) or in some other endeavor. Some dictionaries link these nonphysical senses of the term with reputation gained by virtue of achievement or growth within a field, or simply with achievement or growth itself. It is clear from her fiction and nonfiction writings that moral stature, in Rand’s sense, is a function of a person’s own choices 69 Rand does not think moral values are unique in this regard. She thinks the same is true of both art and (perhaps to a lesser extent) government, and her arguments concerning the proper standards for evaluating art works and institutions of government run parallel to her argument concerning the proper standard of moral value. See Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, 42; and Ayn Rand, “The Nature of Government,” in Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, 125–34. 70 Indeed, it is precisely this dual status that, for Rand, gives rise to issues of objectivity in regard to moral values. It is the combination of dependence on choice and choice-independent grounds of assessment that generates both a need and a source for a standard of moral value, and the corresponding need and possibility of making epistemically objective evaluations. 71 Ayn Rand, “Art and Moral Treason,” in Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, 147.

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and does not depend on reputation, but it does seem to depend on achievement and growth. To develop a moral stature is to become a certain kind of person, a person distinguished by the sort of character he or she has formed. And although Rand does not ascribe to art a primarily didactic function, she does see art as an important source for “learn[ing] the concept of moral values and of a moral character in whose image [one] will shape [one’s] soul.” 72 How, though, can moral character have a biological function for us? In outlining Rand’s argument here, I will focus on three of the character virtues that she emphasizes in her discussions of substantive moral theory: rationality, productiveness, and pride.73 Each of these deserves much fuller treatment than I can give it here, but what I will say should suffice to indicate the central idea behind Rand’s claim that moral values have a biological function. Roughly, Rand understands rationality as a commitment to using and developing one’s intellectual capacities to their fullest, facing facts and refraining from magical or wishful thinking, and not acting on unconsidered desires or emotions. She understands productiveness as involving “the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability. It is not the degree of a man’s ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind.” 74 Pride, for Rand, centrally involves “moral ambitiousness,” pri72

Ibid., 146. Although, in some places, Rand distinguishes between moral values and moral virtues, there is a wider sense of the term “moral values” in her writings that includes the moral virtues. In this essay, I employ the wider sense, since the distinction between virtues and (in the narrower sense) values has no bearing on the arguments I make. In the narrow sense, moral values are the ends attained by moral virtue. Thus, for example, Rand designates “rationality” as a moral virtue and “reason” as the corresponding moral value, since one values reason by developing and practicing the virtue of rationality. A person of good moral character values reason (values his mind) and nourishes and protects that value through rationality. However, in a larger sense, rationality is itself a moral value, for Rand, since in deliberately practicing rationality one makes rationality one’s end. The wide sense of “moral values” is in play, for instance, in Rand’s discussions of the role of art in moral development in her book The Romantic Manifesto, and in her discussion of moral objectivity in her essay “What Is Capitalism?” See Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, 146; and Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” 21–22. 74 Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 29. The qualifiers “productive” and “rational” are clearly intended to constrain what forms of activity can satisfy the requirements of this virtue, so that, for instance, earning a living as a drug dealer would presumably not count. Although I cannot argue the point here, it seems to me that Rand’s criteria for the rationality and productiveness of a “line of endeavor” would primarily involve consideration of whether one’s activity contributes to the fulfillment of a genuine human need (including needs for pleasure and recreation, and “spiritual” or psychological needs such as those to which the fine arts respond) —whether a need of one’s own or, through the division of labor, of others. Much further work is needed here to unpack Rand’s conception of productiveness, but this at least indicates the direction in which I think Rand would argue in order to exclude activities such as drug dealing or organized crime from the scope of the virtue of productiveness. For further discussion, see Rand, For the New Intellectual, 130; and Tara Smith, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chapter 8. 73

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marily in the form of a commitment to the consistent, uncompromised development of rationality and productiveness; it is what might be called a second-order virtue that one maintains by always according first-order virtues such as rationality and productiveness primacy over other considerations in deliberating about what to do.75 Rand outlines her view of the role of moral values in human life as follows: Just as man’s physical survival depends on his own effort, so does his psychological survival. Man faces two corollary, interdependent fields of action in which a constant exercise of choice and a constant creative process are demanded of him: in the world around him and in his own soul (by “soul,” I mean his consciousness). Just as he has to produce the material values he needs to sustain his life, so he has to acquire the values of character that enable him to sustain it, and that make his life worth living.76 According to this passage, moral values (“values of character”) have two broad functions. They enable one to sustain one’s life, and they make one’s life worth living. Developing and maintaining moral virtue involves “a constant exercise of choice and a constant creative process” in a person’s own soul. The passage claims, first, that this inner process is an enabling condition of the “constant exercise of choice and [the] constant creative process” that is required of a person “in the world around him” to “produce the material values he needs to sustain his life.” That is, rationality and productiveness, in Rand’s view, are needed in order to produce the material values that our survival depends on, and they qualify on that account as human virtues.77 Her discussion of these virtues 75 A number of Rand’s moral virtues have this second-order status, not only pride but also integrity and justice, both of which “operate” on and thus presuppose other, first-order virtues. Integrity involves the refusal to sacrifice one’s convictions, including one’s moral convictions, to the wishes or opinions of others; justice involves (among other components) judging other people by objective moral standards. See Rand’s discussion of these virtues in “The Objectivist Ethics,” 27–30; and For the New Intellectual, 128–31. See also Peikoff, Objectivism, chapter 8. 76 Ayn Rand, “The Goal of My Writing,” in Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, 169. 77 This claim raises some obvious questions about free-riding: for instance, about whether, if rationality and productiveness qualify as human virtues on this account, a person has a reason to be virtuous rather than to free-ride on the virtue of others. Although these issues are largely outside the scope of the present essay, the discussion in the text of Rand’s conception of psychological survival is relevant to how she would address them. Reasons of psychological survival militate against free-riding and, in her view, undermine the appearance that free-riding could be beneficial to a person. I intend to address these matters in an article in preparation on John McDowell’s criticisms of what he calls “neo-Humean naturalism” in ethics. For McDowell’s argument about how naturalistic virtue ethics should and should not deal with free-rider problems, see his “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” in Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn, eds., Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory, Essays in Honour of Philippa Foot (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 149–79.

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makes it clear that what is at issue is long-range survival, “throughout the whole of [a human] lifespan.” 78 But Rand also sees moral values as having a psychological function, which is more complex and, in a sense, more important than their function of enabling the production of material values. What does Rand mean by “psychological survival”? For any living organism with some form of consciousness, its consciousness will be the source of its actions. The actions of a conscious being will be governed by a system of motivation and reward that depends on its psychological capacities. The rewards will be that for the sake of which it acts —the end or goal of action —as well as the incentive for further action toward more of the same kinds of rewards. In nonhuman animals, of course, the pursuit of such reward-incentives, although purposive, is instinctual rather than intentional. In humans, it is intentional and runs through our conceptual capacities —our capacities for thought. In a generic (not strictly moral) and descriptive (not normative or evaluative) sense, the rewardincentives sought in purposive action are values sought by human beings and other species that engage in purposive action. From a psychological perspective, the pursuit and attainment of such reward-incentives —of values —is what the “life” of any living organism possessing consciousness consists in. Psychologically, for such organisms, the process of pursuing values just is the process of living. Rand notes that there is nothing biologically discontinuous about the purposive action of conscious organisms, in contrast with the nonconscious, merely vegetative action of plants, for instance. For in an even broader sense of the term “value,” the life of a plant is also made up of value-pursuit. Although plants do not act purposively, they act goal-directly in a more general sense. Thus, we say that plants turn their leaves in order to expose them to sunlight. In Rand’s view, the nutrients that plants draw from the soil and the sunlight toward which they turn their leaves qualify as plant-values, even though they are not objects of conscious or purposive pursuit.79 Like the reward-incentives driving the actions of conscious species, they are the ends of the plant’s action and (a central element in) the cause of its further action toward more of the same kinds of ends. Thus, they are values in the broadest sense of “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” 80 Fundamentally, the survival of a plant consists in the maintenance, primarily through its own activities, of its capacity for (nonconscious, nonpurposive) value-pursuit. Something analogous is true for other kinds of living things: the survival of a human being or an animal consists, fundamentally, in the maintenance, primarily through its own activities, of its capacity for conscious, purposive value-pursuit —its capacity to 78

Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 26. Ibid., 16–17 and 17n. 80 Ibid., 16. 79

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pursue reward-incentives. But Rand sees a central difference between the kind of self-initiated action required to maintain an animal’s capacity to value and the kind of self-initiated action required to maintain a human being’s. Self-maintenance, for an animal, consists in physical selfmaintenance. Although animals can experience externally inflicted psychological damage (e.g., through psychologically taxing laboratory experiments), absent such damage the maintenance of an animal’s capacity to value follows on the maintenance of its physical capacities; there is no such thing as psychological self-maintenance in the case of nonhuman animals; an animal’s psychological capacities remain intact provided it obtains the nutrition, shelter, and so forth that it needs physically (and, again, absent external sources of psychological damage). But, for Rand, a human being’s self-maintenance of his capacity to value is primarily a matter not of physical but of psychological self-maintenance. Even absent external psychological dangers (such as psychological abuse by other people), a human being, in Rand’s view, must take certain kinds of psychological action —that is, must make certain kinds of choices —in order to maintain his or her capacity to value. What does human psychological self-maintenance —the maintenance of the capacity to value —involve, according to Rand? Return to the point that our human incentive-reward system runs through our conceptual capacities. Every kind of conscious organism has a range of psychological rewards that its nature “fits” it to receive and enjoy. There is overlap, of course; a human being and a dog can both be incentivized by the smell of a juicy steak and rewarded by its taste. But Rand maintains that human beings have a distinctive need for rewards whose attainment and enjoyment calls upon the volitional exercise of our conceptual capacities, and, further, that we are psychologically debilitated by the absence of such rewards; without them, we experience the process of carrying on our lives as unhappy, as a burden, as a source of anxiety, as motivationally draining.81 Let us call the rewards at issue here conceptual pleasures. In more familiar terms, the need for conceptual pleasure comes to the need to have one’s life mean something or, as Rand puts it in the foregoing passage, the need for it to be worth living. I take it that what Rand means by “making one’s life worth living” is not primarily making it a life that, considered third-personally, is worthy of being lived, but rather making it a life that the person living it experiences as a life worth living. For, as we will see below, Rand contends that the only normative standards that apply to living one’s life are standards derived from the nature and requirements of the human life-process itself. To find one’s life worth living, then, must be to experience the process of living —the activities that define and give substance to one’s life —as intrinsically motivating, as a source of pleasure and fulfillment. 81

Ayn Rand, “Our Cultural Value Deprivation,” in Peikoff, ed., The Voice of Reason, 103–4.

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How, then, does Rand view the sources of conceptual pleasure? I do not have the space here to cover her views in detail, for on her account there are several important sources of such pleasure that need to be considered, including art, human relationships, sex, and certain forms of recreation, all of which importantly depend on our intellectual capabilities and are inaccessible (tout court or at least in the forms in which we experience them) to creatures lacking these capabilities.82 But since my aim in this section is to sketch her account of the function of moral values, let me comment on the sources of conceptual pleasure that she sees as being most directly related to morality. Rand holds that the two primary sources of conceptual pleasure for a human being are precisely the “thinking and productive work” that make up the core of moral virtue.83 These are our fundamental sources of meaning in life and of a person’s sense of identity; further, because of the ways in which the other major sources of conceptual pleasure noted above depend on one’s sense of identity, Rand sees the accessibility of these other sources of conceptual pleasure as depending on one’s having fitted oneself for the primary sources. Fitting oneself for these primary sources of conceptual pleasure involves developing and sustaining the self-chosen commitment to the virtues of rationality and productiveness described above. It is by making oneself into a rational, productive person that one accesses the forms of conceptual pleasure on which the maintenance of a human being’s capacity to value depends. The lack of these virtues leads to what Rand calls “value-deprivation”: The choice to think or not is volitional. If an individual’s choice is predominantly negative, the result is his self-arrested mental development, a self-made cognitive malnutrition, a stagnant, eroded, impoverished, anxiety-ridden inner life.84 What explains the connection Rand makes between rationality, productiveness, and other moral virtues, and conceptual pleasure? The moral virtues, for her, are self-chosen postures of mind —ways of functioning mentally in one’s intellectual and practical lives. What moral virtue serves to do is to bring oneself fully into being as a human organism —to complete the human life-process which, unlike that of other species, does not 82 The inclusion of art here tells us something important about the passage most recently quoted in the text. Rand describes the two fields of human action that she mentions —inner and outer —as “interdependent.” The field of outer action centrally involves the production of material values, and it might be supposed that this field of action concerns itself exclusively with the provision of our physical survival. But works of art are material values that answer to psychological rather than physical needs. This, it seems to me, is a good example of the sort of interdependence that Rand sees between the inner and outer fields of action. Although I mention one other sort of interdependence in the text below, I defer fuller discussion of these interconnections to another time. 83 Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 25. 84 Rand, “Our Cultural Value Deprivation,” 102.

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unfold automatically in our case. There is a real sense in which a person who does not utilize his mind and his capacities for productive action fully or consistently is not wholly engaged in the process of living a biologically human life. The psychological depletion that Rand claims such a person would feel is the psychological correlate of the biological incompleteness of such a life. By contrast, the psychological fulfillment that she claims comes with the full use of our capacities (at least absent external misfortune) is the correlate of the biological completeness of the lifeprocess. Of course, it is primarily for the psychological rewards of living that we do want to live; merely soldiering on as a physical organism has no independent value for us. Thus, the bearing of moral virtue on our long-range physical well-being can assume importance for us only once we have some reason to care about our long-range physical well-being. On Rand’s view, it is the direct psychological rewards of moral virtue — the forms of meaning or conceptual pleasure that we access through the exercise of our rational and productive capacities —that lead us to care and thus that make a person’s life “worth living.” I have only sketched a view that, of course, needs considerable elaboration and argument. My intent has been simply to outline the kind of biological functionality that Rand ascribes to moral values. According to Rand, rationality and productiveness enable the production of the material values that human beings need in order to survive; but they also enable the various forms of conceptual pleasure that our psychological survival depends on. Further, the requirements of our psychological survival are as much an aspect of our biological nature as a certain kind of living thing as the requirements of our physical survival are. In both respects, then, these aspects of human character have a biologically based function that provides a reference point for evaluating them as moral virtues (and for evaluating their opposites as vices). With this sketch in place, let us turn to the connection of this framework for moral evaluation with Rand’s canons of epistemic objectivity. In asking about the function of moral values, Rand assumes at least a loose shared understanding (among us as inquirers) of what moral values are, but not necessarily any shared agreement as to what the correct moral code is (if any). There needs to be some kind of shared understanding of what it is whose function is in question, or else we cannot even pose the question intelligibly. But if this shared understanding is to allow for variations among people’s substantive moral views, pending the derivation of an objective standard for making moral evaluations, then our loose shared understanding must itself be a loose functional (rather than substantive) one. Rand’s point of departure is the thought that moral values function to shape a person’s character and thereby to shape a person’s life. The question is then whether something with this narrow function has any wider function from which a standard of assessment might be drawn and, if so, what this wider function is. (Any code that we can

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adopt will function to shape our characters, but the question is whether we ought to shape them in a particular way, whether shaping our characters also has a function.) Rand’s claim is that if moral values have no biological function —if there is no way in which we need them in virtue of our human nature —then there will be no objective standards available for assessing them. This is why she argues, in her essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” that the derivation of an objective code of morality depends on an answer to the question of whether and why human beings need moral values.85 It is the biological function of moral values, Rand claims, that properly sets the standard for what is to be counted as an objectively correct moral value to hold. Rationality and productiveness, for instance, are to be evaluated as objectively correct moral values — as genuine virtues —on the grounds of their contribution to our physical and psychological survival. Correspondingly, irrationality and slothfulness are to be evaluated as vices by the same standard. But what anchors moral values to this particular teleology, to this particular standard of assessment? In effect, Rand is proposing a reconstruction 86 of the concept of a “moral value,” on which a moral value is (1) a value in the generic sense of “that which one acts to gain and/or keep”; (2) functional in the narrow, (relatively) uncontroversial sense of serving to shape the character of the person who espouses it; and (3) functional in the wider sense of playing a certain kind of role in furthering the physical and psychological survival of the person who espouses it. On this reconstruction of the concept, something that was either not characterized by (1) or not characterized by (2) could not qualify as a moral value at all. (To that extent, the proposed reconstruction substantially accords with ordinary usage and therefore cannot be accused of changing the subject.) Something that was characterized by (1) and (2) but not by (3) would qualify as a moral value but would be evaluated negatively, as a deficient or improper moral value (as morally bad). Something that was characterized by (1), (2), and (3) would be evaluated positively, as a proper or genuine moral value (as morally good). What we need to know is how Rand would justify this reconstruction of the concept of a “moral value,” in terms of her canons of epistemic objectivity for concepts and, particularly, in relation to the basing requirements. 85

Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 13–14. I draw the idea of viewing Rand’s project as one of conceptual reconstruction from Harry Binswanger, “Life-Based Teleology and the Foundations of Ethics,” The Monist 75 (1992): 84–103. 86

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We have said that, for Rand, moral concepts do not have the kind of grounding in perception that our concepts for observables like tables and trees have, or even the extensively (and theoretically) mediated grounding that concepts in the natural sciences have. On her view, moral concepts need to be linked to perception in a different way from these others, corresponding to the difference in the nature of moral thinking noted in Section II above. Moral thinking serves to evaluate a certain class of natural facts —namely, certain human choices —rather than to disclose a set of moral facts. If Rand is correct, moral thinking, when objective, evaluates those choices in relation to the needs of the agent’s physical and psychological survival. Now this way of viewing moral evaluation can be justified by reference to Rand’s general view of evaluation as teleological measurement. That would make the connection of her standard of moral value, and of the corresponding conception of “moral values,” to the basing requirements dependent on the connection of her general conception of evaluation (as teleological measurement) to those requirements. We can evaluate other things besides moral choices, and to have the idea of evaluating moral choices, we need to have the general idea of “evaluating” things, of gauging or measuring their value. Here, of course, we mean not gauging whether or not they are things we do in fact “act to gain and/or keep,” but rather gauging what to act to gain and keep (and what not to). What, then, does Rand think is the “base in perceptual reality” of the idea of gauging what to act to gain and keep? It may be helpful to bring out her view on this issue through a contrast with a line of argument that Christine Korsgaard sets out in taking up a very similar issue. Korsgaard argues that it is not the case that we have normative concepts because we have “spotted some normative entities, as it were wafting by”; 87 rather, we have normative concepts because we have normative problems: we have choices to make and action to decide upon, and normative concepts are primarily tools for choosing and acting, rather than tools for investigating and theorizing about the world. Rand, I believe, would agree with Korsgaard about this. Rand maintains that a being that could only observe the world but could not respond to it in any way could form no normative concepts; it would not notice any normative entities wafting by (for there are none to be noticed), nor would it have any normative problems due to its utter lack of involvement in the world it observed.88 Korsgaard argues that we have normative concepts in virtue of our capacity to reflect on our actions.89 It is our capacity to reflect that gen87 Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 44. 88 This is part of the point of a thought experiment she proposes involving an “immortal, indestructible robot” incapable of being affected or changed. The robot, she argues, could have no values and no sense of good or evil. See Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 16. 89 Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 92–93.

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erates the normative problems that we fashion normative concepts in order to help us sort through and resolve. Thus, I can step back from what I am about to do —say, stop working for the day —and reflect on whether or not that is a good thing for me to do, whether or not it might be better to go on working a while longer. But this account of the source of our normative concepts is open to the objection that it treats reflection as something sui generis and unaccountable (and, indeed, Korsgaard argues precisely that since it is reflection that generates normative problems, reflection must supply its own internal standards for resolving these problems).90 Rand, I think, would agree with Korsgaard that we have normative concepts because we have normative problems, but she would locate the source of these problems differently. Rand locates the source of normative problems not in reflection itself, but in that which prompts, and occasions a need for, reflection —for we do not reflect spontaneously but in recognition of some need (or apparent need) to do so. If I hesitate before stopping work, and reflect on whether I should, it is presumably my sense that something of consequence hangs on whether or not I stop that prompts me to reflect on whether it might be better to work a bit more instead. Rand’s view is that the idea of gauging what to gain and keep —the idea of practical deliberation —is grounded in facts about our nature as living things. A living organism faces an alternative between life and death the outcome of which depends, in substantial part, on its own actions. The maintenance of a living organism’s life depends on what it acts to gain and keep, what values it pursues. The concepts and judgments through which these biological facts are expressed themselves satisfy the basing requirements if the biological sciences do so. But this biological context furnishes a standard for gauging what is good for a living thing; the good for a living thing will be that which is required by its nature for sustaining its life. Nonhuman organisms, of course, have no capacity or need to deliberate about their actions; it is only from our vantage point in studying and tending to them that questions about their good get raised. According to Rand, however, it is this same general biological context that supplies the basis, in our own case, for the idea of deliberating about what to act for. The “base in perceptual reality” for the idea of deliberation, of gauging what to gain and keep, is the alternatives that a human being faces between physical and psychological survival or destruction, which are grasped in the first instance as alternatives between both physical and conceptual pleasure and pain. This means that there is a “base in perceptual reality” for (but only for) a conception of evaluation as teleological measurement. Outside the context of human survival needs, Rand maintains, there is no basis for a concept of human practical good —good to be sought through action. That is, there is no concept of 90

Ibid., 93.

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the good that can satisfy the basing requirements. Thus, the question of what is morally good must also, in Rand’s view, be resolved according to what moral values a human being’s physical and psychological survival depends on. VII. Conclusion This broad-brush account of Rand’s metaethics has been aimed at elucidating how, in her view, moral values are connected to our survival, and how, for her, this connection secures the epistemic objectivity of moral evaluation. Certainly there is much more to be said on both of these fronts, even to elucidate her views fully, let alone to defend them adequately. But I want to close by indicating the sense in which, for Rand, morality is essentially practical or action-guiding. Rand takes the needs of one’s psychological and physical survival to be the fundamental source of all one’s reasons for action. Life or death is the fundamental alternative each of us faces, and it is only in the face of that alternative that there is any need or context for practical deliberation and the evaluation of options concerning what to seek. The relativization of practical reasons to life-based needs means that for Rand there will be no practical reasons directing us to live. The use of our distinctive capacities can be a source of meaning and pleasure that make life a value to us; but that is just to say that we come to value our lives by living them, since to use our capacities is precisely to throw ourselves into the process of living a human life. There is no standpoint outside all the activities that make up our lives from which we can take up the question of whether or not to live, according to Rand. Living is in this sense an end in itself, on her view. Rand says that the source of practical reasons lies in the choice to live. There is such a thing as letting the needs of one’s survival, particularly of one’s psychological survival, go —such a thing as not taking pains to attend to them. Practical deliberation, in Rand’s view, responds to the generalized commitment to bring oneself fully into being as a human organism —the generalized commitment to set in motion the pattern of choices that is required to sustain one psychologically and physically.91 That generalized commitment supplies a motive for filling in the details, that is, for finding out and doing what is required. Thus, practical rea91 If my interpretation of Rand is correct, this generalized commitment is equivalent to what Rand calls the “choice to live.” But it bears an interesting resemblance to the virtue of pride described in Section VI of the text. Pride, as Rand understands it, might be viewed as a more fine-grained, articulated form of that same comprehensive commitment to one’s life. The choice to live, on my interpretation, would amount to the commitment to develop and maintain the kind of moral character one needs in order to live. Pride would be the commitment to live up to a (more) specific vision of what kind of moral character that is. But it might also be said that the choice to live amounts to a rudimentary form of pride —a generalized form of the commitment that characterizes someone with the full virtue.

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soning is largely constitutive reasoning —finding out what living a life geared to the needs of our physical and psychological survival consists in. What it most fundamentally consists in, according to Rand, is rationality and productiveness, for the reasons discussed in Section VI, as well as the practice of the other moral virtues that she defends on similar grounds. But this means, in her view, that a person who has any practical reasons at all will have (overriding) moral reasons. There will still be no unconditional rational requirements, requirements that could bind a person whatever his choices and values. The essential practicality of morality will lie not in its commanding us unconditionally but in our never having reasons to act immorally. Philosophy, Harvey Mudd College

ARISTOTELIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM* By Mark LeBar I. Introduction Constructivism about practical judgments, as I understand it, is the notion that our true normative judgments represent a normative reality, while denying that that reality is independent of our exercise of moral and practical judgment. John Rawls put constructivism on the map for political theory with his monumental work A Theory of Justice, which argued that criteria for the justice of basic social institutions were constituted (or constructed ) through deliberation conducted under certain highly specified conditions. Rawls credited Immanuel Kant for the basic structure of the approach, and, more recently, Christine Korsgaard and others have followed Rawls in developing more general constructivist accounts of moral and practical truths. Indeed, the Kantian strain of practical constructivism (through Rawls, Korsgaard, and others) has been so influential that it is tempting to identify the constructivist approach in practical domains with the Kantian development of the outlook.1 In this essay, I will explore a somewhat different variety of practical constructivism, what I call “Aristotelian constructivism” (hereafter “AC”). My aim is to establish conceptual space for this form of constructivism by indicating in what ways AC agrees with its Kantian counterparts and in what ways it differs. I shall claim that AC is, in one sense, more faithful to the constructivist enterprise than the Kantian varieties, in that its understanding of both the establishment of practical truth and the vindication of the theory itself is constructivist. The essay proceeds as follows. In Sections II and III, I survey the Kantian constructivist enterprise, considering both Kant’s own view as constructivist (in Section II), and Korsgaard’s contemporary developments of Kantian constructivism (in Section III). In Section IV, I sketch AC in light * For helpful discussion and comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I thank Julia Annas, Alyssa Bernstein, Chris Freiman, Nathaniel Goldberg, Chris Gowans, Tom Hill, Mike Huemer, Paul Hurley, Simon Kirchin, Dan Layman, Tibor Machan, Eric Mack, Fred Miller, James Petrik, Dan Russell, Valerie Tiberius, Mark Timmons, Elizabeth Willott, David Wong, Tad Zawidzki, the other contributors to this volume, and its editors. 1 There are other kinds of accounts, such as ideal observer theories, which may also plausibly be made out as “constructivist”; however, they typically do not lay claim to the label, and I shall have little to say about them. One which does self-identify as constructivist is the account in Ronald Milo’s essay “Contractarian Constructivism,” Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995): 181–204. Like Rawls, Milo is concerned only with “social norms,” not with a comprehensive account of practical truth, and I shall not address his view.

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of the nature of constructivism discernable from the Kantian approach. But this sketch lays the groundwork for a challenge to AC that can be expressed as a dilemma: either AC is implicitly not ultimately constructivist, or, if it is, it can be so only by giving up any plausible claim to objectivity and opening itself to an objectionable relativism. Sections V and VI argue that AC is constructivist “all the way down,” and Section VII contends that this does not eventuate in an objectionable relativism, but that AC can vindicate a claim to a plausible and attractive form of objectivity in ethical judgments.2 A preliminary note about terminology: Some theorists identify constructivism with a sort of proceduralism about practical rationality.3 This, I believe, is a mistake. I follow what I take to be Rawls’s conception of what is distinctive about constructivism: a commitment to the metaphysical posteriority of practical truths to our apprehensions of them, as I shall explain in Section II. In this light, identifying constructivism with proceduralism amounts to taking a species for a genus. Though no substantive issues hang on the terminology, I believe the understanding of constructivism I employ here makes it easier to see how an Aristotelian constructivism can address some of the concerns about constructivism in ethics. II. Kant’s Constructivism I take Kant’s view to be constructivist in at least the following sense: there are truths about what we have reason to do (or how we have reason to act), and those truths are themselves established by the exercise of practical reason. They do not, that is, exist as objects of moral cognition prior to the activity of practical rationality in us as agents. Kant himself 2 The significance for constructivism of Rawls’s work —both in political theory and in interpreting Kantian themes for the purposes of that work —cannot be overstated. Here, however, I will mostly set aside his deployment of constructivism for the defense of justice as fairness, for several reasons. The most important is that Rawls’s positive view makes no claims to be a “comprehensive moral doctrine.” Rawls sets out his theory of justice not only as more limited than a complete moral theory, but with a focus on the basic structure of society which falls short even of specifying a full social ideal; see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971, 1999), sec. 2, esp. p. 9. Elsewhere, Rawls explicitly distinguishes the aims and content of that view from “comprehensive doctrines,” including, specifically, Kant’s “moral constructivism”; see Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 12ff., 99ff., 125. My aim, by way of contrast, is to consider constructivism as a more comprehensive doctrine about the nature and content of normative practical truth. 3 This identification is suggested by Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, in “Toward Fin de Siècle Ethics: Some Trends,” in Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, eds., Moral Discourse and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 12–15. See also Sharon Street, “Constructivism about Reasons” (manuscript). This is also suggested by Christine Korsgaard’s contrast between “substantive realism” and “procedural realism”; see Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 35. However, Korsgaard drops this terminology in later work, and I believe her considered view is that it is most useful to understand constructivism as a thesis about ontological priority, as I suggest here.

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makes just this priority claim for the nature of good and evil and their conceptual dependence on the moral law, which is the form of pure practical reason: [T]he concept of good and evil is not defined prior to the moral law, to which, it would seem, the former would have to serve as foundation; rather the concept of good and evil must be defined after and by means of the law.4 The contrasting view would be one in which the order of explanation would be reversed. For Kant, this would mean that the moral law would be understood as undertaking the realization of good conceived as somehow prior to and independent of that law; as Rawls frames the contrast, it would involve an order of moral facts prior to and independent of our investigation of that order, which it is the aim of moral cognition to detect and represent accurately (a view he refers to as “rational intuitionism”).5 Berys Gaut calls this contrasting view the “recognitional model” of practical reason, and says that it construes practical reason as “the capacity to recognize and be motivated by what has objective value.” 6 Constructivism, as I understand it, may be seen as one form of nonskeptical negation of recognitionalism, as a competing theory about the ontological priority of practical truth and our recognition of it. “Practical philosophy,” Korsgaard says, “is not a matter of finding knowledge to apply in practice. It is rather the use of reason to solve practical problems.” 7 In speaking of “finding knowledge,” she refers to the recognitionalist conception of the role of practical reason which constructivists reject. The model of the normative world and our relation to it is, on the recognitionalist conception, very like the model of the empirical world and our relation to it. We gain empirical knowledge when we are impinged upon by elements of that world which exist prior to our apprehension of them. In a similar way, the recognitionalist sees us as being impinged 4 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1956), Ak. pp. 62–63. (“Ak.” refers to the pagination of the standard Prussian Academy edition.) 5 John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” in John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 343; see also Rawls, “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in ibid., 510. 6 Berys Gaut, “The Structure of Practical Reason,” in Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 183. 7 Christine Korsgaard, “Realism and Constructivism in Twentieth-Century Moral Philosophy,” in Journal of Philosophical Research, APA Centenary Supplement (Charlottesville, VA: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2003), 115. In this work, Korsgaard refers to what I am calling “recognitionalism” as “realism”; this is somewhat confusing because in The Sources of Normativity she refers to it as “substantive realism.” However, my concern is the question of order of explanation between recognitionalists and constructivists, both of whom think practical judgments bear representational content, so I will not concern myself further with these taxonomic questions.

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upon in some fashion by elements of a moral or normative order —again, elements which exist prior to our apprehension of them. By way of contrast, on the constructivist conception our relation to those elements is essentially active, and in some fashion our activity explains the existence of the normative truths themselves. Kant’s primary motivation for constructivism, as I understand him, arises from his conviction that our autonomy as moral agents can be preserved only if we give to ourselves the laws governing our conduct. Autonomy, as Kant makes it out, is the capacity we have for the “determining grounds” of our wills to be self-imposed by the exercise of our reason, rather than imposed on us by natural law, as is the case with nonrational animals.8 Such autonomous willing is necessary, he maintains, for the very possibility of value in the world. The only unconditional good —and the condition of all the good that there is —is good willing.9 And good willing is just willing that is determined by reason —by the application of practical rationality to the principles upon which we choose to act. From this framework follows the nature and extent of Kant’s constructivism.10 True claims about how we ought to conduct ourselves are made true in virtue of a certain property of the principles (or maxims) on which we act. That property is, in its most perspicuous formulation, the property of being suitable for willing as universal law. Kant’s idea is, first, that to see ourselves as acting —as being the causes of the actions and outcomes we will to bring about in the world —our willings and our actions must be connected in a law-like (that is, uniform) way. We must, that is, act according to laws. For our willings to have moral worth, however, the laws upon which we act must be rational, not merely causal.11 Moral worth depends on willing in ways that are determined by reason, and this means that the principles upon which we intend to act —our maxims — can be morally valuable only when they pass a certain test of reason. The test of reason Kant proposes is the most basic and indispensable of rational tests: the bare avoidance of contradiction. Kant says of this test that it is needed “in general for the possibility of any employment of reason. . . . 8 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Allen Wood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), Ak. pp. 440, 452. 9 Ibid., Ak. p. 396. 10 In addition to Korsgaard’s well-known readings of Kant as constructivist, Andrews Reath offers a carefully-worked-out interpretation in Reath, “Legislating the Moral Law,” Noûs 28 (1994): 435–64; and Thomas Hill offers a more limited constructivist conception in Hill, “Hypothetical Consent in Kantian Constructivism,” Social Philosophy and Policy 18, no. 2 (2001): 300–329. It is certainly not beyond controversy that Kant should be read as constructivist. For an argument that he should not, see Patrick Kain, “Self-Legislation in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 86 (2004): 257–306. Barbara Herman also argues for limits on the extent of “creation” in Kant’s constructivism: see Herman, “Justification and Objectivity: Comments on Rawls and Allison,” in Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, ed. E. Förster (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), 131–41. 11 Kant, Groundwork, Ak. p. 412.

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[It is] the condition of having any reason at all.” 12 Impermissible maxims, he tells us, are those that cannot be willed as universal because doing so involves the agent in a contradiction of one sort or another. Thus, the crucial property that establishes the truth of claims about how we ought to act is that of surviving a certain process of rational scrutiny —a process that it is incumbent upon us, as moral agents, to undertake in determining how to act. In this sense, the truth-makers for true normative judgments are constructed by a process we engage in as rational agents. The judgments are true in virtue of their surviving this process, and since the process is one in which our practical rationality is the effective agency, we can be said to have constructed that truth.13 The contrast to this sort of constructivism —an archetypical recognitional view —might be represented by a proposal we might take from Plato’s Republic. 14 Suppose there is a Form of the Good —an idea that exists in a world of ideas, and which is the essence of what is common to all things good; their resemblance to (or “participation in”) this Form is the reason we call all these divers things good. On this picture, when a practical judgment is true, what would make it true is X’s standing in a certain relation with the Form of the Good.15 Our task as rational agents would be to recognize and respond to that Form as best we could; this is just what rational agency would consist in. Why does Kant reject recognitionalism and see moral truth as constructed instead? The best place to look for an answer to this question is Kant’s response to the only viable alternatives he considers to the autonomy approach: theological voluntarism, and what he calls “the ontological concept of perfection.” 16 The latter amounts to one way we might construe the Platonic proposal. Kant’s objection is that the requisite concept of perfection is uselessly indeterminate: [The ontological concept of perfection] is, no doubt, empty and indefinite, and consequently useless for finding in the boundless 12

Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Ak. p. 120. Some care is required here. The content of the moral law holds not only for all human beings, but for rational beings generally, and necessarily so (Kant, Groundwork, Ak. pp. 389, 408, 411–12). So the sense in which we might see ourselves as constructing practical and moral truth can be only that we are “legislating” this universal law for ourselves: we are imposing it, making it authoritative, determining our wills by it, or (as Kant puts it) authoring not the law itself but its “obligation” (Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], Ak. p. 227). I owe this way of thinking about the limitations on autonomy to Patrick Kain. 14 I make no claim that this proposal is Plato’s own considered view; I offer reason for thinking otherwise in Section IV below. 15 Cf. Plato, Republic 517c. 16 Kant, Groundwork, Ak. p. 443. Rawls offers a somewhat different account of Kant’s reasons for rejecting “rational intuitionism” in Rawls, “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” 520. “Theological voluntarism” makes value depend on divine will. Kant rejects that approach, and I will not attend to it. 13

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field of possible reality the greatest amount suitable for us; moreover, in attempting to distinguish specifically the reality of which we are now speaking from every other, it inevitably tends to turn in a circle and cannot avoid tacitly presupposing the morality which it is to explain. . . .17 Clearly, Kant believes that a focus on a rationally intuited moral ideal must “turn in a circle” —it must inevitably lead back to the very process he has been engaged in, namely, attempting to identify what principle could govern an “absolutely good will.” But why? Kant might have in mind something like the following.18 In earlier work, Kant considered how our representations come to “agree with” their objects.19 He thinks there are only two ways this is possible: our intellect is either passive or active with respect to its objects, and we can construe the issue as taking the form of a dilemma. First, consider any representation we might have of this “ontological perfection.” It makes no sense to suppose it could be the result of our being acted upon by this object (viz. that we are passively receptive to it). Kant sees no way to understand such receptivity outside the causal order. He identifies passivity with the “world of sense” and activity with the “intellectual world”; 20 rationality just is a form of activity, so the proposal that we could passively experience a rational intuition of such an object is unintelligible.21 And the involvement of our sensible natures would entail that the resulting principles of the will must be heteronomous and thus useless as a source of moral authority. Suppose, then, that we take our intellect to be active in the apprehension of this object (the Good). What we would need to understand, then, would be the content of the representation such an active intellect could have, as an active intellect. But that is precisely the question Kant has been attempting to answer in the second section of the Groundwork. In other words, if we take the only promising branch of the dilemma, we end up just where Kant had brought us before considering the objection that there could be a recognitional alternative to his construal of the good will and autonomy. This, then, is the “circle” Kant is referring to. The alternative 17

Kant, Groundwork, Ak. p. 443. Here I am grateful to James Petrik for helpful discussion. See his letter to Marcus Herz, reprinted in Lewis White Beck, ed., Kant: Selections (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 81–33 (Ak. X:130–31). 20 Kant, Groundwork, Ak. p. 451. 21 Kant says that Plato “assumed a previous intuition of Divinity as the primary source of the pure concepts of the understanding,” which makes no sense: “the deus ex machina in the determination of the origin and validity of our knowledge is the greatest absurdity one could hit upon and has —besides its deceptive circle in the series of inferences from our human perceptions —also the additional disadvantage that it provokes all sorts of fancy ideas and every pious and speculative sort of brainstorm” (Kant, letter to Herz, 131). While Kant is referring here to theoretical rather than practical knowledge, I take the proposal that knowledge of the Good could give us reason to act to be an unholy synthesis of the two. 18 19

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is vacuous because it fails to supply the content of such a representation from an analysis of what the active, practical intelligence must be like. Since the activity of the intellect must somehow be essential to the content of the representation itself, constructivism is inescapable. Now, if Kant’s theory succeeds, it yields a constructivist understanding of normative, practical truths —truths about what we ought to do. In an important sense, however, Kant’s constructivism does not go “all the way down”: the overall justificatory structure of his account is foundational, resting on considerations that are not themselves constructed.22 The argument for the authority of the moral law in the Groundwork is driven, first, by reflection on common-sense intuitions about moral value. Kant sees himself as developing the concept of the good will, “just as it dwells already in the naturally healthy understanding, which does not need to be taught but rather only to be enlightened.” 23 Kant thus takes our recognition of the value of the good will as something like a datum, not itself an article of construction. Further, the reality of the instantiation of this concept in us —the fact that it is not merely a “chimera” —is shown by Kant’s argument in Section III of the Groundwork that we must see ourselves as under the “idea of freedom,” and hence as subject to the moral law.24 In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant famously reverses the direction of this argument and holds that, since we know that we are subject to the moral law, we know that we are free: “[T]he moral law is given, as an apodictically certain fact, as it were, of pure reason, a fact of which we are a priori conscious.” 25 Thus, while Kant is a constructivist about normative truth, his argument for the account of that truth seems to depend on cognitions that do not seem to have as their objects constructions, but rather antecedent normative facts about our nature and the nature of value. As Rawls suggests,26 this constructivism is built upon principles that are not themselves constructed. This structure, to which I shall develop a contrast below, is also characteristic of Kant’s constructivist legacy, in Korsgaard’s neo-Kantianism, to which I now turn. 22 Larry Krasnoff is, so far as I know, the only person to have explicitly distinguished these structural features of Kant’s theory. See Krasnoff, “How Kantian Is Constructivism?” Kant-Studien 90 (1999): 385–409. However, Hill also argues that Kant’s constructivism is limited in ways similar to those I will suggest, in Hill, “Hypothetical Consent in Kantian Constructivism.” 23 Kant, Groundwork, Ak. p. 397. 24 Ibid., Ak. pp. 445, 448. 25 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Ak. p. 47. 26 Rawls maintained that the facts pertaining to just basic social institutions and the persons that realize them were a subset of all the moral facts there are, and denied that the proposal that constructivism could go “all the way down” was even intelligible: “Thus, we don’t say that the conceptions of persons and society are constructed. It is unclear what that could mean. . . . We should not say that the moral facts are constructed, since the idea of constructing the facts seems odd and may be incoherent. . . .” (Rawls, “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” 514, 516; reiterated in Political Liberalism, 104, 121–22). See also Political Liberalism, 108: “The conceptions of society and person as ideas of reason are not, certainly, constructed any more than the [procedural] principles of practical reason are constructed.”

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III. Korsgaard’s Kantian Constructivism In her early constructivist work in The Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard understood the essential activity of our practical reason in constructing moral truth as a function of the development of practical identities. 27 These identities are “descriptions under which you value yourself . . . find your life to be worth living and your actions to be worth undertaking.” 28 We see ourselves in certain ways (as child, teacher, lawyer, neighbor, Lutheran, and so on) that shape our conduct, and from these ways of seeing ourselves —from these “practical identities” —flow our obligations and reasons for action. But the fact that we are so constituted that we need reasons to act, and find such reasons in the various practical identities each of us acts from and is obligated by, gives us a further practical identity, to which reflection on the nature and source of obligation leads us. This is our identity as moral beings, our “moral identity” or “humanity,” which Korsgaard understands as tantamount to seeing ourselves as citizens of the Kingdom of Ends on Kant’s conception.29 Only the recognition of this identity can afford us the sort of reflective success that, Korsgaard argues, our quest for the source of normativity demands. As Korsgaard acknowledges, however, this argument alone does not deliver all of what morality involves; in particular, it does not deliver the right story about our obligations to others. For that, an additional bit of argument is required, one which denies that it is possible to have reasons only to value one’s own humanity without similarly valuing the humanity of others. Korsgaard chides various forms of “neo-Hobbesian” and “neo-Kantian” theories for attempting to begin with “private” reasons and then argue to conclusions that we are committed, by some sort of rational inference, to recognize the humanity of others as a source of “public” reasons.30 Instead, she argues —drawing a parallel to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s argument that no private meanings are possible —that reasons must be shareable to be reasons.31 Because they are shareable, if my humanity is to be reason-giving for me, it must be reason-giving for you as well, and of course, on the same grounds, your humanity must be reason-giving to me. Our most essential practical identity establishes something like the Categorical Imperative understood under Kant’s Formula of Humanity. Thus, our activity as moral agents consists in the reflection upon and adoption of these identities, and in our acting on the reasons that emanate 27

Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, lectures 3, 4, and 9. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 115. Korsgaard also thinks her argument for the grounding work performed by the moral identity is “a fancy new model” of Kant’s Formula of Humanity (which requires us to treat the “humanity” in ourselves and others always as an end, never merely as a means; ibid., 122). Since Kant thinks his formulations of the Categorical Imperative are equivalent, it is hardly surprising that Korsgaard sees elements of both in her conception. 30 Ibid., 133. 31 Ibid., 135. 28 29

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from them. However, we have these obligations only in virtue of the identities we endorse through reflection.32 In considering an objection from G. A. Cohen, Korsgaard makes clear that it is our activity in endorsing that does the normative work. What, Cohen asks, is an “idealized Mafioso” obligated to do, given that he takes his identity to be that of a loyal soldier for the family, with a code of strength and honor? If he is asked to murder by his paterfamilias, is he thereby obligated to do so? 33 Korsgaard bites the bullet in her reply. The Mafioso’s obligation is real, she says: “And this is because it is the endorsement, not the explanations and arguments that provide the material for the endorsement, that does the normative work.” 34 This is an expression of Korsgaard’s constructivism: if she were to hold that it is the “explanations and arguments” that do the work, she would be open to the suggestion that, at bottom, her picture is one of agents discovering through reflection normative facts that are there antecedent to their inquiry. And that is the model she rejects. It is only the constructive activity of moral agents that brings into existence normative truth. But, surely, having to maintain that the Mafioso has any obligation to carry out his repugnant assignments is a high price to pay to maintain constructivism, and Korsgaard appears to have thought better of it. Her later constructivist work (in particular, her “Locke Lectures”) makes little use of the notions of practical identity or endorsement. The emphasis instead is on self-constitution. Her argument (drawing on threads recognizable from The Sources of Normativity) is that our human predicament is such that we cannot help but act; however, action itself is constituted by certain rational norms. “Principles of practical reason,” she argues, “are principles of the unification of agency.” 35 The option for us is not whether to will badly or well, relative to Kantian imperatives; it is whether or not to constitute ourselves as agents at all. Korsgaard argues here (as earlier) that particularistic willing —that is, willing that is intended to bind just in a particular case —is impossible.36 Either we identify ourselves with the “principle of choice” in deciding to act, or we are not agents at all —we are merely theaters in which a conflict of causal impulses plays out. But particularistic willing, she argues, amounts to collapsing the distinction between these two alternatives. A particularistic will would be one that simply identified with whatever impulse was decisive in a particular case, and thus really ceased to be a will at all. So agency requires willing in ways that are not particularistic. On Korsgaard’s view, that entails willing universally; and thus, to constitute ourselves as agents, we must govern ourselves by the Categorical Imperative. 32

Ibid., 252. Ibid., 183. 34 Ibid., 257. 35 Christine Korsgaard, “Locke Lectures,” 1.3.4 (http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/ ;korsgaar/#Publications). 36 Korsgaard, “Locke Lectures,” 2.5.2. 33

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Like Kant, Korsgaard emphasizes that principles of practical rationality are principles governing activity, not bits of knowledge to be apprehended. In his essay “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles,” Lewis Carroll made the point that there is no reducing rules of inference to mere premises; rules of inference govern something we do, and cannot be taken without remainder as truths that themselves form only premises for further inferences.37 Korsgaard deploys just this argument to hold that standards of practical rationality cannot obligate us to act. To think of standards in this way —as things that can be objects of knowledge, and carry with them obligations —is to make just the mistake poor Achilles made. We must instead see these principles as constituting agency; to be an agent just is to be governed by principles of practical rationality, in precisely the same way that to have a mind just is to be governed by rules of inference.38 Construction, as activity, is what norms of practical rationality and morality are about. Practical truth is constructed, not discovered, because it is activity in accordance with the norms of practical rationality, which are themselves constitutive of agency. In Korsgaard’s work (both earlier and later), as in Kant’s, we can see both constructivism and foundations for the enterprise of construction. In The Sources of Normativity, practical agency is characterized (at times, or when conflicts in motivation arise) by a reflective search for a “source of normativity” —an answer to the question of why I must do what I would rather not do. That search can be terminated only by recognizing that the fact that I am searching for such a reason reflects something important about the kind of creature I am, namely, a creature who craves and acts upon reasons. That recognition is a recognition of my “moral identity,” and that is the source of normativity. As in Kant, the justificatory quest ends with the discovery of a more fundamental fact, though in this case a fact about the sort of creature that could seek justification in the first place. In Korsgaard’s “Locke Lectures,” the argument is more nearly Kant’s own, though here the grounding argument rests on what is constitutive of agency —namely, governing how one acts by the Categorical Imperative. Once I recognize that I am an agent, and that I act, I recognize that doing so is impossible without doing so on principles, and indeed on principles that are (so it is claimed) universally binding. In both versions of the story, the truth-makers for normative practical claims are the objects of construction rather than recognition: they do not exist except through 37 Lewis Carroll, “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles,” Mind 4 (1895): 278–80. Achilles tries to persuade the Tortoise (in effect) that, given P and P r Q, he must conclude Q. Tortoise asks why, and Achilles responds that it is logically necessary that he do so. Tortoise then asks why a skeptic must accept the inference, and Achilles unwisely suggests that it is because of the truth of the proposition that P, P r Q, and (P & P r Q) r Q. When Tortoise asks why that inference must be accepted, Achilles even more unwisely suggests that that is due to the truth of a further proposition, and an infinite regress has begun. The moral: no number of premises can substitute for a rule of inference. 38 Korsgaard, “Locke Lectures,” 2.4.1ff.

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our rational agency. As in Kant, however, the processes of construction involve rationally mandated procedures of deliberation that are successfully concluded only upon recognizing some fact that gives us reason to acknowledge the truths in question. With that framework as our background, I now turn to sketching a form of constructivism that is, by way of contrast, constructivist “all the way down.” IV. Aristotelian Constructivism Aristotelian constructivism (AC), as I shall call it, shares with Kant’s and Korsgaard’s versions of constructivism a comprehensiveness of ambition: it claims to give a general account of the nature of what is true about what we have reason to do that sees such truth as constructed rather than recognized. It differs from its Kantian cousins in the nature and justification of the method of construction which constitutes the truth-makers for normative practical claims. Kant’s view is constructivist in holding that truths about what we ought to do are constructed through a procedure applied to the maxims or principles upon which we propose to act. Korsgaard amends this story to maintain that the procedure of maxim-testing constitutes us as agents, unifies the diverse parts of our “souls,” and thus constructs the “forms” of our selves as the particular persons we are. In contrast, on AC the enterprise of construction involves not merely procedures but substantive normative judgments. Truth about what we have reason to do is established in light of the aim of living well, where what counts as living well is an object of construction, though not the upshot of any formal procedure. Part of the Aristotelian legacy drawn upon here is the idea in Aristotle (as in Plato and later Hellenistic philosophies) that eudaimonia (happiness) is the ultimate end for us as human beings, both in the psychological sense that it is, in fact, what people want for themselves, and in the normative sense that it is what we have greatest reason to seek in living and acting. As in Kantian constructivism, the heart of AC is the denial that the truth about how to live and act is out there somehow, waiting for us to recognize and act on it, even in the substantive judgments that are incorporated as part of the enterprise of construction. The role of such judgments has led some to see Aristotle as exemplifying a recognitionalist view. Gaut maintains that Aristotle begins with “an independent account of the conditions under which actions are good, and [derives] from this an account of practical rationality.” 39 At some points, Aristotle’s language does invite a recognitionalist reading —in particular, 39 Gaut, “The Structure of Practical Reason,” 13. See also Ralph Wedgwood, “Practical Reasoning as Figuring Out What Is Best: Against Constructivism,” Topoi 21 (2002): 139–52.

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his description of practical wisdom as a kind of perception.40 Aristotle’s many claims that virtuous action aims at the fine or noble (to kalon) are also not incompatible with such a reading. Though I shall challenge these textual claims briefly in what follows, my main argument to the contrary draws on what I take to be the broader thrust of Aristotle’s view.41 The constructivism of Kantian value theory is closely related to its emphasis on the conditional nature of the value of everything but the good will. Constructivism flows from this thesis about value, since the idea just is that value is established through acts of rational willing. Now, less well-known is the widespread endorsement of a similar but distinct conditionality thesis in ancient eudaimonism, and this is the place to begin grasping the constructivism in it. Plato says that in themselves “both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ things are valueless,” 42 and that all the things commonly called good are “possessions of great value to the just and pious, but . . . to the unjust they are a curse.” 43 Aristotle also is explicit that their goodness is conditional upon their deployment in accord with virtue: “to the noble and good man things profitable are also noble; but to the many the profitable and the noble do not coincide, for things absolutely good are not good for them as they are for the good man.” 44 Even starker is the Stoic doctrine that things besides virtue are themselves never good; they are at best “indifferents” that may be “preferred” as the objects of wise or virtuous “selection.” 45 On all these accounts, value depends on virtuous agency, and this conditionality of value leads to constructivism in these accounts just as it does in Kant’s.46 40 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (EN ) VI.8.1142a25–32. Quotations are from the Ross/ Urmson translation, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 41 Still, I do not claim to be offering an interpretation of Aristotle; instead, I believe the view is one naturally congruent with major themes in his ethics. 42 Plato, Euthydemus 281d. 43 Plato, Laws II.661b; see also Gorgias 470e. It is not easy to reconcile the metaethical outlook expressed in these passages with the sort of robust realism that the theory of the Forms in, e.g., the Republic is taken to exhibit. But the fact that these passages are drawn from both what are taken to be some of Plato’s earliest dialogues, and what is without a doubt his last, suggests that it is an outlook from which he likely never departed. 44 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics VII.15.1249a10–12. Should a constructivist worry about the notion of “absolute good” here? No. Elsewhere (EN V.1.1129b2–7), Aristotle holds that the goodness of such goods is conditional, and (EN III.4.1113a32) that the good man is the “norm and measure” of good. 45 Cf. Cicero, De Finibus III.53–55. The Stoic value theory on which nothing but virtue can properly be called “good” is the clearest case of an account of conditional value in the ancient world. However, as the text indicates, I think different versions of the notion that value is conditional (and thus that it is not some nonrelational property of things, waiting for us to recognize it) are found in Plato and Aristotle as well; and, in fact, Aristotle’s view offers the best overall understanding of the tacit value theory at work in the other accounts. I thank Fred Miller for pressing this point. 46 In this way, the ancient accounts are vulnerable to the objections Gaut offers against Kant’s conditionality thesis just as Kant’s account is (Gaut, “The Structure of Practical Reason,” 165–170). I do not believe these arguments are telling against conditionality in either case, but I do not have space to address these questions here.

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According to AC, value or goodness is constructed in the following sense: the reasons we have for undertaking particular actions, realizing particular aims, etc., are not a matter of recognizing or responding to any sorts of normative properties to be found in the objects of our actions. In outline, the idea is that the goodness of such things is conditional upon their contribution to a good human life. The goodness of (say) a cold beer is not anything one recognizes and responds to. Instead, one recognizes and responds to the beer’s natural properties (these, of course, are not constructed), and to the extent that, in virtue of its natural properties, it contributes to one’s living well, only in that way does it have value —only in that sense is it good. In turn, the goodness of a good life is crucially dependent on the exercise of practical rationality in the right way (that is, on practical wisdom, or phronêsis). This is true both because good lives require the direction of practical wisdom and because only successful practical rationality can determine which lives are genuinely good. Conversely, the criterion for success in practical rationality —practical wisdom — just is the construction of a good life. Neither eudaimonia nor practical wisdom can be specified without essential reference to the other. Now this story is patently circular, so there is at least a threat of vacuity here. But that threat is empty, for two reasons. First, the circularity at issue is not conceptual, but metaphysical. The claim is not that our concepts of either living well or practical wisdom are mutually dependent. Instead, the claims of AC are substantive claims about what in the world these concepts should rightly be seen as picking out. In each case, what is picked out makes essential reference to the other. Second, what is picked out is something about which we can learn in other ways. For example, the considerable work in recent years on theories of well-being can contribute to our understanding of what makes human lives good ones, as can common-sense judgments about successes and failures in living.47 The eudaimonist insight into that work is that such lives cannot be successful except when they recognize the appropriate place for practical wisdom. And as for practical wisdom, there has been no shortage in human history of reflection on what courses of human conduct are wise. Here eudaimonism gives point and focus to that reflection, and can add what we learn about thinking about virtue more generally. These examples are hardly exhaustive, but I trust their point is clear. While we can fully understand neither what a good life is nor what practical wisdom consists in independently, the way they are interdependent does not leave us with a vacuous circularity. This is not to say that there isn’t work to be done in expanding the interdependence between 47 The history of Greek ethics is itself a lively debate over exactly what lives are good lives, and why. I think it is useful to see the enterprise of answering these questions as one of establishing reflective equilibrium between judgments about particular cases and abstract principles attempting to unify and harmonize those judgments.

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eudaimonia and practical wisdom, but there is no reason to assume at the outset that that task is impossible. In contrast to the structure of Kantian constructivism, the constructivism in AC goes “all the way down,” in that the fundamental normative elements at work in the account are themselves products of construction. Now this does not mean that everything is constructed; as Rawls points out, every construction needs materials.48 For AC, those materials are the natural facts that bear on normative judgments and properties. These facts are not themselves constructed, but are straightforwardly objects of recognition. Thus, the sense in which AC’s constructivism goes “all the way down” refers to the nature and content of its fundamental normative elements —eudaimonia and practical wisdom —and indicates that AC has no normative “primitive” or base notion on which the normative structure of the account is founded.49 I will explore this picture by explaining how AC addresses a problem any constructivist view must face. The problem takes the form of a dilemma.50 One horn of the dilemma is a concern that the construction cannot succeed without appeal to some normative standard that is not itself constructed (so that constructivism is really just window-dressing on recognitionalism). The other horn is the charge that, in avoiding the first horn, constructivism becomes arbitrary or unacceptably relativistic: in repudiating any independent standard of evaluation, it loses the footing necessary to establish the kinds of normative judgments we want to make against noxious practices and beliefs.51 I contend with this second horn in Section VII of this essay; in the next two sections, I undertake a two-part explanation of how AC avoids the first horn, and in doing so try to explain further how its fundamental normative elements are objects of construction. I take up the construction of eudaimonia in Section V, and of practical wisdom in Section VI, with the aim of showing that both elements are constructed, not recognized. V. Eudaimonia The ancients agreed that a good human life must be the life of a good specimen of our kind, and that what is distinctive of our kind is the 48 Rawls, “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” 514; see also Rawls, Political Liberalism, 103–4. 49 I thank David Wong for pressing for clarity on this point. 50 Various Euthyphro-style dilemmas have been posed as problems for constructivism; for two recent examples, see Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 42; and Mark Timmons, “The Limits of Moral Constructivism,” Ratio 16 (2003): 400ff. The version I set out here differs somewhat from both these formulations, but I think it is the natural concern given the species of constructivism I offer. 51 We might understand Cohen’s Mafioso objection to Korsgaard to take this form: Korsgaard’s practical-identities account is impaled on this second horn in virtue of its “content-neutral” emphasis on reflective endorsement. Cohen presses his objection in these terms in Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 184.

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capacity for reflective practical rationality. Our practical reasoning can take as its object any number of things, including its own operation: we can reason not only about what actions to perform, but about how we should reason. Aristotle, like Kant and others, is struck by the fact that we have this capacity; and it is distinctive of us that we characteristically live via its exercise. One implication of this fact is that because we live this way, doing so well establishes normative standards for action for us. That is the basic point of Aristotle’s notorious ergon argument in Nicomachean Ethics I.7: while we share nutritive, perceptual, and motor capacities with other living beings, what is distinctive about us is that we reason about how to think and act. So living well as the kind of things we are involves reasoning well, and that is why successful practical rationality —practical wisdom —plays such a crucial role in living well as a human being. Nonetheless, while the attention to practical rationality is something Aristotle shares with Kant, Aristotelian constructivism departs from the Kantian variety in attending to the deep and complex connection between this rational capacity and our animal natures, and in maintaining in light of this complexity that there is no hope for a merely formal or procedural account of success in practical rationality. I return to the latter point in the next section; at present, I want to attend to the significance of this connection for living well. AC couples the attention to reflective rationality with the recognition that we are organisms and share a biological nature with other animals and plants. We are ourselves animals, with the full suite of nutritive, perceptual, appetitive, and affective systems which suffice for life in simpler organisms. However, in addition we have reflective rationality, as the ergon argument observes, and it is no overstatement to say that this changes everything. One important effect of this change is captured nicely by Kant, who says: Freedom of the power of choice has the characteristic, entirely peculiar to it, that it cannot be determined to action through any incentive except so far as the human being has incorporated it into his maxim. . . .52 Kant’s point, with which the ancients agree, is that our capacity for reflective rationality opens up a critical distance between the conative states we experience as animals and our eventual response in action.53 This effects an important transformation in these conative states: they call into play 52 Immanuel Kant, “Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,” in Religion and Rational Theology, trans. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Ak. p. 24; emphasis in original. Henry Allison calls this Kant’s “Incorporation Thesis,” and claims that it “underlies virtually everything that Kant has to say about rational agency.” See Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 40. 53 Cf. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 93, 223; Korsgaard, “Locke Lectures,” 4.2.4.

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practical rationality, and can for the first time become reasons for action. John McDowell indicates how this critical distance is manifest in the Aristotelian picture in writing of our need to be trained in the deployment of practical reason: Moral education does not merely rechannel one’s natural motivational impulses, with the acquisition of reason making no difference except that one becomes self-consciously aware of the operation of these impulses. In imparting logos, moral education enables one to step back from any motivational impulse one finds oneself subject to, and question its rational credentials.54 It is not simply that what would otherwise be merely sources of motivation now have simply become reasons; it is that action has become possible, as an alternative to our being just another link in the extended causal order —patients of prior causes, channeling them to whatever effect natural law dictates. By our nature, then, we are committed to the necessity of some determination of what sorts of lives we will choose to lead by the deployment of our capacities of reflective rationality: how we live and act becomes a matter of choice in a way it is not for other creatures. A second implication of our having this capacity, emphasized far more by the ancients than in the Kantian tradition, is the transformative effect of this capacity on the rest of our animal natures —on our passions and desires in particular. McDowell calls this rational transformation a sort of “second naturalism,” and it is a theme running throughout the ancients.55 Aristotle insists that “habituation” —in large part, a training and education of the passions —is essential for virtue. Less well-known, perhaps, are Plato’s ways of making the same point. In the Laws, Plato emphasizes what we might call the “plasticity” of the objects of our pleasure and pain —the great degree to which we can learn to experience pleasure or pain in consequence of achieving certain aims: I maintain that the earliest sensations that a child feels in infancy are of pleasure and pain, and this is the route by which virtue and vice first enter the soul. . . . I call “education” the initial acquisition of virtue by the child, when the feelings of pleasure and affection, pain and hatred, that well up in his soul are channeled in the right courses 54 John McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” in Virtues and Reasons, ed. Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 170. 55 This form of “naturalism” differs from that developed by some Aristotelian “naturalists” —such as Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), and, to a lesser degree, Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. chap. 9 —in recognizing that our rationality makes an essential contribution to the normative properties of anything that is good. Cf. McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 166ff.

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before he can understand the reason why. Then when he does understand, his reason and his emotions agree in telling him that he has been properly trained by inculcation of appropriate habits. Virtue is this general concord of reason and emotion.56 Just because our experiences of pleasure and pain are plastic in this way, moral education is critical for us. Before our capacity to reflect upon and recognize reasons, we need the benefit of wise guidance to “channel” our affective and conative responses to the right sorts of things. But it is the task of practical rationality to determine what these right sorts of things are, and to establish the canons for moral education. The point is not extirpation of the motivating effects of these other aspects of our animality, nor indeed to bend them to the service of an idealized rationality. Instead, the point is (as so nicely illustrated by the central analogy of the Republic) the thriving of the integrated whole —the good life of a creature that is both essentially animal and essentially rational. This emphasis marks the significant difference between Aristotelian and Kantian forms of constructivism. Whereas, in the latter view, the focus is the nature and exercise of pure practical reason, “fully cleansed of everything that might be in any way empirical and belong to anthropology,” 57 the focus in the former view is a life: a process (or, better, activity) played out over a span of history, with a concrete beginning, a concrete ending, and an unfolding of successive stages of life in between. We not only have these lives but we live and shape them, and the goal of living well is both informed by the fact that we have the capacity for reflective rationality and the object of practical rationality as we exercise it. Indeed, Aristotle goes so far as to suggest that our selves are constructed through the activity of living our lives deliberatively: We exist by virtue of activity (i.e. by living and acting), and . . . the handiwork [ergon] is in a sense, the producer in activity; he loves his handiwork, therefore, because he loves existence. And this is rooted in the nature of things, for what he is in potentiality, his handiwork manifests in activity.58 A good human life is the life of one of a certain kind of animal, in which practical reason molds and shapes the natural drives, motives, and passions, and in so doing creates a self. This is what renders Aristotle’s use of the locution of “perception” (aesthesis) for wise judgment congruent with the constructivist view I am proposing here: he says the perception 56 Plato, Laws II.653a–b (Saunders translation), in Complete Works of Plato, ed. John Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997). 57 Kant, Groundwork, Ak. p. 389. 58 Aristotle, EN IX.7.

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in practical judgment is of “another sort” (allos eidos) than perception of objects.59 He may be suggesting that this capacity for perception is something we are active in shaping; the reflective work of practical wisdom in habituation is a way of coming to see the patterns that are constitutive of living well. Once shaped, the capacities thus formed are capable of detecting, of responding to, the descriptive features of conditions and circumstances that warrant action, and in this sense the capacities engage in perception. What responds is not merely an intellect but a self —the self that is itself the product of construction, through habituation guided by practical wisdom.60 The result is a life that such a creature can judge to be good in light of the criteria we can best identify for evaluating the kinds of lives of which we are capable. The normative success of that life, its goodness, is a construction of the effective exercise of that very capacity for practical rationality. Both what counts as a good life and the goodness of such a life depend on the exercise of our practical rationality. There are no facts about living well as a human being apart from the wise judgments of human agents about living so. The constructivist credentials of AC’s notion of eudaimonia thus come to rest on its notion of practical wisdom. But the canons for success in practical rationality are themselves objects of construction on AC. Practical wisdom ( phronêsis), in Aristotle’s own view and in AC, just is practical rationality, exercised in such a way as to live well: Now it is thought to be a mark of the man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect . . . but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general.61 Thus, the standard of success in practical rationality just is eudaimonia —a substantive, not merely procedural, standard. This is a curious picture, in more ways than one. How exactly is eudaimonia supposed to afford this standard? The challenge for AC is to resist the idea that the norms for success in either living or practical reasoning can be understood in recognitional terms, as normative facts that hold independently of the very processes by which we come to know them. Gaut, for example, maintains that only by understanding effective practical rationality without “ineliminable reference to evaluative content” can a constructivist account avoid collapse into recognitionalism.62 But the eudaimonist account of success in practical rationality manifestly 59

Aristotle, EN VI.8.1142a30. For more on the idea of construction of self in this way, see my “Eudaimonist Autonomy,” American Philosophical Quarterly 42 (2005): 171–84. 61 Aristotle, EN VI.5. 62 Gaut, “The Structure of Practical Reason,” 177–78. 60

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refers to such content (viz. eudaimonia). If Gaut is right, then, the threat of the first horn of the dilemma described above (at the end of Section IV) is especially acute just when we turn to practical wisdom to explicate the notion of eudaimonia. In the next section, I hope to show how that horn may be averted, and, in Section VII, I hope to show that we are not thereby plunged into relativism. VI. The Structure of Practical Rationality The challenge Gaut poses is the worry that, in its account of successful practical rationality, so-called Aristotelian constructivism is just a novel face put on an ultimately recognitionalist view. Many (like Gaut, and perhaps Kant) assume that the only way to avoid this objection is to deploy a purely formal or procedural conception of successful practical rationality. In other words, the canons for successful exercise of practical rationality apply purely to its form or procedure. Constructivism, then, would as a procedural approach be contrasted with recognitionalist approaches that take practical reason to be aimed at some substantive goal, such as the good, and to be assessable in light of that goal.63 This contrast is useful enough when it is Kantian constructivism that is under scrutiny. However, this reflects more on the idiosyncrasies of the Kantian conception of practical rationality than on its constructivism. The hallmark of the Kantian conception of practical rationality is that substantive constraints on practical rationality can be derived from correctly specified formal requirements. From the bare idea of a categorical imperative —which Kant construes as the demand to avoid various types of contradiction in willing —Kant thinks we can derive the substantive rational requirements which constitute the moral law. This twist to the Kantian conception of practical rationality is much of its genius, but it is the real target of Gaut’s charge. If the Kantian account fails (as Hegel and others have argued) in its attempt to extract substance from form, then, just as Gaut suggests, it must covertly rely on principles that are not constructed. Moreover, even if it does not rely on such principles, its structure (as we have seen) situates the justification for the procedure (and the method of construction of practical truth) in substantive (and nonconstructed) a priori concepts of the understanding. This is just to say, again, that on the Kantian approach neither the proceduralism nor the constructivism goes all the way down. Korsgaard argues that Kant’s philosophy generally (that is, both his practical and his theoretical philosophy) should be understood as a search for the “unconditioned” —the stopper of a justificatory regress that itself stands in need of no justification: 63 Cf. ibid., 163; Wedgwood, “Practical Reasoning,” 139–41; and Street, “Constructivism about Reasons.”

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The claim that reason seeks the unconditioned is not based on an analysis of the abstract concept of reason. It is more a claim about the plight of self-conscious beings who because we are self-conscious need reasons to believe and to act. When we go looking for those reasons we find ourselves —via a form of regress argument that is perfectly natural to any rational being —on a road that leads to the unconditioned, a road that threatens to have no satisfactory stopping point.64 The threat is empty, on the Kantian conception, because we can arrive at the unconditioned. In Kant, it is the value of the good will and our freedom or subjection to the moral law. In Korsgaard, it is the nature of agency, or the experience of valuing, itself. These are each in their own way regress-stoppers, and they afford the justificatory foundation for the enterprises of construction of normative truths that are the projects of these various Kantian theories. The foundation provides the warrant for accepting the output of procedures which, when appropriately executed, produce the normative results we seek, and in that way makes the world safe for constructivism. The foundations themselves are not the objects of construction, and it is this foundational structure which invites Gaut’s challenge. Insofar as such a foundation is necessary, the worry that there is an incipient recognitionalism at work gains traction. By way of contrast, the overall justificatory structure of AC is not foundational but coherentist. There is no normative foundation on which the warrant for other normative claims rests; instead, the normative claims of AC draw their justification from their membership in an overall structure that both fits with and explains our substantive normative and theoretical judgments.65 The normative crux of the view rests on judgments about 64

Christine Korsgaard, “Motivation, Metaphysics, and the Value of Self,” Ethics 109 (1998):

61. 65 On Scott MacDonald’s reading of Aquinas (in his essay “Foundations in Aquinas’s Ethics,” elsewhere in this volume), Thomistic eudaimonism takes a “thin foundationalist” form. As I understand MacDonald’s reading, Aquinas is committed to the view that we have happiness (or eudaimonia) given to us as an ultimate end by nature (in virtue of our desire for it), but in only a formal and indeterminate form; and it is the task of practical reasoning (deliberation) to arrive at determinate content for that end. As I read the ancients, they agree that in general we have such a desire, but they offer no claim that it is not, at least in principle, capable of being rejected as reason-giving, just as any other desire is. That is to say, we can step back even from the desire for happiness and ask whether or not we have reason to try to satisfy it (as well as to make it determinate). Because of the reflexive nature of our rational capacities, there is no brute motivational state that can escape this sort of justificatory scrutiny. In this sense, even Aquinas’s “thin” foundations are too thick for the sort of coherentism I am envisioning here. One might imagine an even thinner foundationalism, in which, rather than a desire for happiness, one had a sort of intuition as to its reason-giving nature —an intuition that was nevertheless corrigible and defeasible, as I have insisted, but which carried a sort of prima facie justificatory force nonetheless —which then features (alone or with other intuitions) in a justificatory system for normative practical judgments. Such a foundationalism is getting

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concrete, particular good human lives and about the effective exercise of practical rationality. In a fashion similar to the way Rawls claims we build a conception of political justice from the “materials” of antecedent conceptions of citizen and society, on AC truth about how to act is built on the materials afforded by normative conceptions of a good human life and effective practical rationality. However, unlike the Rawlsian picture, on this picture these conceptions are themselves part of the objects of construction, and (unlike the Kantian picture) there is no fundamental normative notion to stop a justificatory regress. In no case do we begin with normative facts that await our recognition, prior to and independent of our cognition of them. True claims about eudaimonia and practical wisdom are not established prior to the judgments of wise human agents that they are true.66 In this sense, on AC, there is no normative truth that is not the product of construction.67 This approach requires that AC not invoke a merely formal or procedural conception of practical rationality, but a substantive one. AC maintains that practical rationality is effective when it not only satisfies the procedural requirements commonly applied to practical reasoning, but also delivers substantively correct judgments about how to live well. The judgment that I ought to X is true just insofar as it shapes my activity into living a good life. But we have already seen that the content of eudaimonia is itself constructed. Thus, the short response to Gaut’s challenge is the observation that, while on AC practical reason does have a substantive standard, that standard —what we take the good life to be —is itself an object of construction. vanishingly less distant from the coherentism I espouse, and I am unsure what rests on insisting on categorizing either view one way or another. The key point, in my view, is the in-principle defeasibility and corrigibility of any motivational state or apprehension that some course of conduct is right, or of any judgment that something is good. I am uncertain what concerns (apart from epistemological ones) might lie beyond that point. I thank Mike Huemer for discussion of this issue. 66 In this sense, though it is true that multiple agents, equipped with the same knowledge and equally wise, would all arrive at the same judgments for particular cases, the explanation for this is not that they are each discovering an antecedent fact about what practical rationality requires. Instead, that fact just consists in the fact that practically wise agents would see that course of action as the thing to do. There would be no such fact except through the deliberations of practically wise agents. I thank Christopher Gowans for pressing this point. 67 Tom Hill has suggested (in private conversation) that the regress-stoppers in Kant’s account, anyway, might well be seen as the objects of construction. Perhaps a similar case might be made for Rawls’s and Korsgaard’s accounts too. It is striking, however, that in none of these theories is there any account of that constructive process. Certainly it cannot be the same sort of constructive procedure that yields normative truth on those accounts. However, my aim here is less to attack the various Kantian positions than to show how one inviting reading of their structure lays their constructivism open to Gaut’s objection. If their structure is, implicitly, more like the structure of the Aristotelian picture I give here, all the better for them. The point remains: the coherentist structure is the sort of structure that enables this particular recognitionalist objection to be avoided, and it is central to the Aristotelian picture.

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By way of a somewhat fuller sketch: on AC, successful practical rationality involves both successful reasoning (in the sense of marking the proper inferential relations among beliefs and other attitudes) and making substantively right choices about how best to live. First, AC can endorse the procedural requirements on practical reasoning accepted not only by Kant but (for example) by formal theories of rational choice. Any formal or procedural constraint on practical reasoning which we take, on reflection, to be a genuine canon of effective rationality is one that will count as such a canon on AC. So AC can embrace canons not only of deductive inference (e.g., consistency) but also of less formal inferential patterns: coherence more broadly construed, canons of successful explanation, and the like. The warrant for accepting these canons is itself the product of the very faculties to which the canons apply (what else could do the warranting?). In this sense, AC requires that practical wisdom “bear its own survey” (to put the point in David Hume’s way).68 The sticky part of the story, obviously, is what it says about the substantive requirements on practical wisdom. These may not be identified merely as the results of the operation of some purely procedural test. It may be helpful to begin by thinking of AC as endorsing something like an Objective List of things that normally belong in a good human life. It is important to note both the ways in which this picture is accurate, and the ways in which it differs from a recognitionalist way of conceiving such a list. The picture is accurate in according at least prima facie warrant to just those judgments we make about people who do not take the items typically on such a list (e.g., their own health) to be reason-giving; we take such people to be irrational or at least open to rational criticism. Such judgments are part of everyday life and the common-sense exercise of wisdom, and AC endorses such judgments, at least as a starting-point. It is difficult to avoid judgments that health, friendship, knowledge, and so on —the items usually found on an Objective List —typically have such a place in good human lives, and AC embraces them.69 But it differs from recognitionalism in its account of how things come to be on that list. Gaut maintains that the proper way to understand such a list is on the recognitional model: the contents of the list itself are there to be recog68

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 620. This way of putting things breezes past a considerable complication for eudaimonism, taking as it does a “formally egoistic” form: Can the view give the right account of the way that other persons afford us reasons for acting? There are, I believe, two distinct sub-questions here, one pertaining to (roughly) the welfare or well-being of others (perhaps: the demands of beneficence), and the other pertaining to something like their rights and the corresponding obligations of respect we owe them. Both are important issues, but I cannot take them up here. I address the latter question explicitly in “Virtue Ethics and Deontic Constraints” (manuscript). On the former question, see Julia Annas, “The Good Life and the Good Lives of Others,” Social Philosophy and Policy 9, no. 2 (1992): 133–48. I thank Tibor Machan for pressing this point. 69

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nized, prior to our conception of practical rationality, and thus can afford us a canon for assessing which actions are rational and which are not.70 On AC, however, membership on that list is itself the upshot of effective practical rationality. We can, and do, reflect on putative judgments about the constituents of a good life, and it is success in such reflection that warrants our substantive judgments about living well. In this sense, full (as opposed to prima facie) warrant for something’s being on that list is delivered only by broad reflection on living well. A claim that something belongs on that list is established by vindicating to the judgment of practical wisdom that it is an element in a good human life; hence, something is on that list just because it is judged to be. This is the reverse of the order of explanation the recognitionalist offers. Aristotle himself holds that virtuous action (or wise judgment) always aims at the “fine” or “noble” —to kalon. 71 The Greek idea here includes both the ethical force of “noble” and the aesthetic element of being “fine” (or “beautiful”). As Aristotle deploys the idea, both of these elements, as predicates of ethical action, track the degree to which right action is fitting or appropriate (to prepon).72 We make judgments of fittingness concerning both our own lives (How do I strike a balance between time spent on work and time spent with my family?) and the lives of others (Does this episode of plagiarism deserve failure of the course, or a report to University Judiciaries?). We make these judgments on large-grained questions (Am I a good fit for this job?) and on more finely-grained issues (Should I wear a tie to this party?). We make them in theorizing (“This is the better explanation”) and in practice (“That was uncalled for”). Since judgments of fittingness must be highly contextually dependent, they cannot be codified, and consequently cannot be seen as produced or warranted by any purely procedural rationality. They are substantive — this just is fitting or appropriate, and that just is not —but they are not tasks of recognition of some property of appropriateness in their objects. Instead, they are products of the constructive task of piecing together the right contributory elements to living a good life. That is the major work of practical wisdom on the Aristotelian conception. This proposal is quite sketchy, but I hope it suggests the picture I have in mind. It is an outline of a different conception of practical rationality than the procedural accounts often on offer. Whereas on the Kantian story, substantive practical and moral truth is supposed to emerge from a pure procedure, the Aristotelian story countenances and embraces substantive judgments and commitments to ends we must have to be practically rational. This is the reply to the concern that AC has shoved recognitional70

Gaut, “The Structure of Practical Reason,” 183. See, e.g., Aristotle, EN III.7.1115b12–13; III.8.1117a8; III.11.1119b15–16; and many others. This is a dominant theme in Aristotle’s account of virtue and virtuous action. 72 See Kelly Rogers, “Aristotle’s Conception of To Kalon,” Ancient Philosophy 13 (1993): 355–71. 71

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ism out the front door only to usher it in at the back. I have explained that this is not the case, that even the normative foundations (such as they are) of Aristotelian constructivism are themselves products of construction. But that invites just the opposite form of concern: that constructivism allows, or perhaps even just is, a noxious form of relativism. To that concern I now turn. VII. Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Relativism Suppose AC is, in fact, constructivist “all the way down.” That runs the account straight into the objection that it has so little structure that it can be used to justify any number of sets of moral principles, each grounded in some agent- or culture-relative set of assumptions and judgments, with no basis for critical engagement among such constructed sets.73 The challenge is to show that AC can vindicate a claim to sufficient objectivity to lay these concerns aside. This is not a novel objection to neo-Aristotelian theories, and the basis for concern is not entirely the constructivism offered in the present account. The view that the judgment of the wise and virtuous agent —the phronimos —is even epistemically indispensable in picking out virtuous attitudes and actions is itself sufficient to raise many of the same questions about the objective credentials of the virtue approach. Much of the virtue ethics literature on (for example) the impossibility of codification of moral judgments, the impossibility of moral rules, and the like, is aimed at meeting this challenge.74 AC goes beyond the epistemic claims to make such judgments constitutive of what is required by successful practical 73 What this horn of the dilemma looks like in the formulations of Shafer-Landau and Timmons is not clear. Both think the dilemma is between characterizing the constraints on construction in moral terms and eschewing the use of such terms. On the latter horn (what Timmons calls “thin” characterizations), Timmons takes the problem to be indeterminacy among the principles constructed, while Shafer-Landau is concerned that the resulting construction may not even be recognizable as a set of moral principles. On the former horn (what Timmons calls “thick” characterizations), Shafer-Landau holds that the approach is no longer constructivist, since there are moral principles at work prior to the construction, while Timmons worries about “conceptual chauvinism” and “relativism,” in that different sets of moral assumptions will yield different constructed outputs. Both of these formulations seem to me to assume a foundationalist structure to the enterprise of construction, so neither quite fits the structure of the account I have set out here. I hope I have met ShaferLandau’s argument that the approach has the problems of the “thick” characterization; this leaves the concern that the result is no longer recognizable as moral. As I observe in the text, this is a problem for any ancient ethical account, and fully meeting this charge is possible only in a successful defense of a normative, eudaimonist, virtue ethic. Yet the success of such a broad normative theory would set Timmons’s charge of indeterminacy to rest, only to run into his worry about relativism; a similar concern is formulated by Cullity and Gaut (“Introduction,” in Cullity and Gaut, eds., Ethics and Practical Reason, 16). My argument here is directed at the concerns about relativism, though I hope it speaks to Shafer-Landau’s worries as well. 74 In particular, Rosalind Hursthouse considers these points at length in On Virtue Ethics; see esp. chaps. 1, 8–11.

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rationality, so in some respects its problem is more grave.75 My strategy will be to consider what forms of objectivity we might want, to suggest that the desire for some of these forms is unwarranted, and to argue that AC provides a form of objectivity worth having. Bernard Williams has argued that questions about objectivity in ethical discourse boil down to what we will say about ethical disagreement —in particular, the possibility or necessity of at least one party being in error.76 One way to understand the present concern is in this light. For example, there are contrasting beliefs about the moral permissibility of female genital mutilation (“female circumcision”); part of what we want by way of objectivity is a basis for claiming that those who think this practice is permissible have wrong or wicked attitudes, not just different ones, and for defending the thought that such a claim is not merely “chauvinistic,” 77 so that when we disagree with proponents of such a practice we are not merely talking past them. Given the patent objective purport of claims about both morality and practical rationality more generally, Williams is surely right that providing such a basis is a necessary condition for a plausible moral theory. It might be, of course, that no such objective standard can be vindicated, but it will certainly count as an indictment against the objectivity of an approach that it cannot even propose such a standard. Here, Kantian constructivism has a card to play that AC does not. Consider Kant’s aspiration to provide a moral philosophy applicable to all rational beings, considered purely as such. If successful, this aspiration arguably could establish an objectivity drawn from rational necessity. Moral laws, Kant says, “should be taken from pure reason”: we are required, “since moral laws are to be valid for every rational being in general, to derive them from the universal concept of a rational being in general. . . .” 78 If he is right, moral and (in general) practically rational requirements could lay claim to an objectivity which anything known to be true a priori —because necessarily true —must have. Kant virtually equates the objective with what remains after abstraction of everything empirical,79 and at the same time holds that this amounts to the universal validity of practical laws. 75 Nevertheless, it is Aristotle’s problem as well: “Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice . . . this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it” (EN II.6.1107a1–2). 76 Bernard Williams, “Saint-Just’s Illusion,” in Williams, Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 145. This passage is central to Rosalind Hursthouse’s discussion of objectivity in virtue theory (On Virtue Ethics, chap. 11), to which I am deeply indebted. 77 Timmons calls “chauvinistic” those versions of relativism which maintain that moral concepts are such that “where two individuals or groups really do seem to be thinking or uttering contradictory judgments employing those terms and concepts, the judgments in question are not really contradictory at all” (Timmons, “The Limits of Moral Constructivism,” 406). 78 Kant, Groundwork, Ak. pp. 411–12. 79 Ibid., Ak. p. 427.

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If we think ethical objectivity requires necessity, then Kant’s approach may be the only game in town, whether it succeeds or not. However, surely it is odd to think that the most basic truths about how we ought to live our lives must be norms shared with creatures as different from us as other rational beings —considered purely as such —could be. Could it really be that our practical requirements are the same as those would be for creatures that were not mortal? That the principles governing our interactions with others are the same as those that would govern creatures who did not live in characteristic scarcity? Who were not vulnerable to each other? Who reproduced asexually or not viviparously? Though contingent, it is hard to see how the facts about how we differ from such creatures could not be deeply significant for the content of our practical principles.80 As McDowell says, the thought that such contingencies need not be significant is a “consoling myth” in coming to grips with our need for objectivity,81 and there is a history of worries that a priori principles cannot generate the necessary traction for contingent circumstances. In contrast, if the contingency of our natures and circumstances need not preclude the objectivity of prescriptions for action, then we are in position to seek objectivity in something about our natures, contingent though they may be. Like its Kantian cousins, the Aristotelian approach focuses on our natures, not as conative subjects, but as rational agents; however, unlike the Kantian approach, it focuses on that rationality, not as abstracted from, but rather as immanent in, our animal natures.82 We can look to find objectivity in what is called the “publicity of reasons” — the notion that reasons are open to a public discipline, that they are not constrained merely by private and individual attitudes about them.83 Our susceptibility to reasons, and (in turn) their publicity, grounds the hope of identifying a standard of correctness in the exercise of practical rationality, and thus a plausible form of objectivity in AC. This way of establishing a standard has its roots deep in Aristotle. The “mark to which the man who possesses reason looks,” he says, is right reason (orthos logos).84 Unlike Kantian constructivism, AC does not main80 An excellent exploration of some of these contingencies, and their bearing on our ethical life and practice, may be found in Rosalind Hursthouse, Beginning Lives (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 247–59. 81 John McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” Monist 62 (1979): 339. See also his “NonCognitivism and Rule-Following,” in Steven H. Holtzman and Christopher M. Leich, eds., Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 155, where he criticizes the thought that, if rationality is present, it should be recognizable from an “external standpoint.” 82 The fact that we have reflective practical rationality, and characteristically live by deploying it, is a natural fact about us, and thus is unobjectionable as one of the “materials” to be used in a constructivism that goes “all the way down,” as I claim. I thank Dan Layman for raising this issue. 83 Korsgaard has explored this idea at great length in a number of places, including The Sources of Normativity, lecture 4. I shall indicate the ways in which I understand this “publicity” differently than she does. 84 Aristotle, EN VI.1.1138b25.

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tain that this mark can be purely procedural: practical reason must satisfy substantive constraints as well. But because those constraints are subject to the discipline of reason, the standards in question are objective. The normative nature of the enterprise of giving and exchanging reasons for taking a given action or way of living as being conducive to living well both assumes and establishes the standard of correctness for such claims. On AC, these reasons will depend on truths about living good human lives; reasons for engaging in conduct of one sort or another will come down to claims about the conduciveness of doing so to living well — claims which are subject to an interpersonal discipline. This discipline will be partly procedural: as I have said, AC accepts just those canons for inferences that will be endorsed by any plausible view of rationality. But the justification for particular claims about reasons will depend in addition on substantive judgments as to which putative reasons really are reasons, and which are not. In a crucial sense, these candidate claims are subject to a form of public vindication. Now, Korsgaard offers a conception of the publicity of reasons in her development of Kantian constructivism, but the picture of the publicity of reasons on the Aristotelian approach differs from Korsgaard’s. Her aim in establishing her Kantian account of publicity is to argue that there are no “private reasons” —reasons of the sort that would provide a toehold for rational egoism and, in consequence, a basis for asking for a justification for claims about reasons to respect others. Korsgaard maintains that this approach to reasons is wrongheaded. Because reasons are public by their very nature, she claims, they must be shareable. 85 Since this feature of reasons is supposed to show that rational egoism is impossible, the pertinent sense in which reasons are shareable —hence public —must require that they are in fact shared. 86 The sense in which reasons are shareable and thus public (and thus suitable to ground claims to objectivity) on AC differs from Korsgaard’s sense in two ways. First, AC distinguishes between reason-tokens and reason-types. Our reasons fall into indefinitely many types: reasons for prudence, reasons for concern, reasons to come in out of the rain, and so on. Reason-tokens are the particular reasons that fall into these types. One type of reason, for example, may be the reason not to drink to excess. But each of us has a different reason-token in that type. Your reason for not drinking to excess is that it is bad for your health, whereas mine is that doing so is bad for my health. In a recognizable sense, our reasons are similar, though their bases are distinct, and they are reasons for different 85

Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 135. However, at some points, Korsgaard indicates that by saying that reasons are shareable she means merely to deny the claim that they cannot be shared (e.g., The Sources of Normativity, 135, 141). I argue that this ambiguity is fatal to her account of reasons for respecting others in my essay “Korsgaard, Wittgenstein, and the Mafioso,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 39 (2001): 261–71. 86

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conduct by different people. The similarity captures the type, while the differences are reflected in the tokens. Korsgaard does not draw this distinction, and her claims are about reason-tokens; but for AC the publicity of reasons means they are shareable in the sense that their types are in fact shared. On a eudaimonist view, each of us has most reason to make our own life go well. These reasontokens —reasons for making a particular, contingently-situated human life go well —are not necessarily shared, and thus are not shareable in the sense Korsgaard requires. It is not a requirement on your having reason to make your life go well that I must see myself too as having reason to make your life go well, as Korsgaard maintains. Your reasons are, indeed, shareable in the ordinary and unremarkable sense that I can, in various ways, come to have reason to make your life go well (and thus to take your reasons to be mine as well), and you may well have reason to reciprocate. AC maintains, then, that reason-tokens can be shared, but what makes them reasons is their membership in reason-types that are shared; most fundamentally, the relevant type is reasons to live well, but there are indefinitely many other reason-types as well.87 What makes a putative reason-token a token of a shared reason-type? The second difference from Korsgaard’s view is AC’s requirement on such types that they be intelligible. 88 It is difficult to get a precise grip on just what this standard comes to, but that it is a condition on reasons cannot be doubted. Failure of intelligibility is a reason to reject putative reasons.89 Elizabeth Anscombe cites the unintelligibility of the reply “To get my camera” to the question “Why are you going upstairs?” —in the face of the explicit acknowledgment that the camera is in the basement —as an example of this sort of failure.90 Anscombe’s diagnosis is that such a case represents a failure correctly to pick out an intention as a reason for action, and the conclusion she draws as a result is that “[a] man’s intention in 87 Access to shared reason-types and processes of reasoning is the counterpart in this view, I believe, to the way that Kant thinks we can grasp the nature of practical rationality in a completely abstract way, so as to arrive at a “universal concept of a rational being in general” (Kant, Groundwork, Ak. p. 412). On what I am calling the Aristotelian approach, we have no confidence that we can apprehend what such rationality might consist in. The only rationality we know is embodied and shaped by a variety of contingencies. We can distinguish it in kind from our experience of the causal order, but we have no grasp on it independently of our cognition within that order. I thank Tom Hill for pressing this point. 88 Cf. McDowell: “[I]t is our common human nature that limits what we can find intelligible in the way of theses about how human beings should conduct their lives. . . .” John McDowell, “The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Amélie Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 371. 89 Intelligibility cannot plausibly be thought of as a sufficient condition on reasons. We can make perfect sense of a wide range of things people (including ourselves) do out of errors in judging what they have reason to do, or even in the absence of reasons at all. Rosalind Hursthouse characterizes actions of the latter sort in her essay, “Arational Actions,” Journal of Philosophy 88 (1991): 57–68. The point I would make here is that it is in virtue of the intelligibility of such actions that we classify them as actions (as the expression of intentions of agents like ourselves) at all. 90 G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957), 36.

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acting is not so private and interior a thing that he has absolute authority in saying what it is —as he has absolute authority in saying what he dreamt.” 91 While our dreams are private, the reasons to which our intentions respond are not. These two elements of AC’s picture of the publicity of reasons are connected. Part of what makes intelligible the reasontokens that we each derive from our interest in living well is the fact that the type is shared. It is just because I can so readily grasp the reason-giving force of my own eudaimonia that I can appreciate the reason-giving force for you of yours. AC agrees with Korsgaard that the notion that reasons are public is essential to the claim that there are standards of correctness for practical reason and thus to the case that judgments about what one has reason to do (or not to do) may claim a form of objectivity.92 AC disagrees with Korsgaard in holding that no purely procedural set of canons for such judgments will suffice, and that substantive judgments —in particular, judgments about what we have reason to do and seek in living a good life as a human being —are necessarily part of those standards. This is not to deny that there are deep disagreements on such judgments. Mark Timmons argues that a serious problem for moral constructivist views is presented by cases of “moral symmetry.” An example is a case, offered by Hilary Putnam, of deep evaluative disagreement with his colleague Robert Nozick. Here is Putnam’s account of the disagreement: One of my colleagues is a well-known advocate of the view that all government spending on “welfare” is morally impermissible. On his view, even the public school system is morally wrong. If the public school system were abolished, along with the compulsory education law (which, I believe, he also regards as an impermissible government interference with individual liberty), then the poorer families could not afford to send their children to school and would opt for letting the children grow up illiterate; but this, on his view, is a problem to be solved by private charity. If people would not be charitable enough to prevent mass illiteracy (or mass starvation of old people, etc.) that is very bad, but it does not legitimize government action. In my view, his fundamental premises —the absoluteness of the right to property, for example —are counterintuitive and not sup91

Ibid. (emphasis in the original). From the standpoint of any individual agent, the publicity of reasons entails that he or she may be mistaken about considerations taken to be reasons. That, in turn, opens the possibility that the acquisition of wisdom can be a procedure of discovery for particular agents. The constructive enterprise establishes norms governing eudaimonia and practical wisdom, as a matter of a shared and public enterprise of the exercise of reflective practical rationality. But from the first-person standpoint of a particular deliberating agent, this enterprise of construction and the discovery of reasons are indistinguishable. I thank Eric Mack for pressing this point. 92

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ported by sufficient argument. On his view I am in the grip of a “paternalistic” philosophy which he regards as insensitive to individual rights.93 Such disagreements are, of course, not unfamiliar. Putnam uses this example to remark on what sorts of attitudes toward one’s interlocutor occur in such disagreements. In this case, he says, the disagreement results in an attitude of contempt: neither for Nozick’s mind nor for his character nor for him as a person, but for a “certain complex of emotions and judgments” in him.94 This contempt (which Putnam takes to be reciprocal) involves a judgment that the other is, in a certain way, failing to be sensitive to reasons —not just any reasons, apparently, but reasons to which it is a kind of moral failing to be insensitive. The point Timmons draws from the case is quite different: it is a textbook example of the problem of moral symmetry for constructivism. The features he takes the case to exemplify, which make it problematic, are the following: (1) [T]wo individuals or groups are engaged in a moral disagreement over some issue or case, (2) because they are placed in circumstances that are as similar as possible, their disagreement is not explicable owing to [differences in application of universal principles], (3) the individuals or groups are plausibly interpreted as making no factual errors in relation to their moral judgment about the case at hand, (4) their respective moral outlooks enjoy wide reflective equilibrium, and hence (5) their respective moral views on the topic in question are stable.95 The stability of these views under this sort of wide equilibrium, Timmons believes, compels constructivists either to see the interlocutors as simply talking past each other (in only apparent disagreement) or to construe both views as true for the respective sensibilities involved; either way, constructivism is committed to an objectionable relativism. However, I think AC makes perfect sense of disagreements of this sort, and accounts for just the attitudes Putnam cites as flowing from them. If AC is right, there is no reason to accept that the Putnam-Nozick case exemplifies Timmons’s features (3), (4), or (5). Cast in a eudaimonist light, part of the disagreement is due to the differences between Putnam’s and Nozick’s conceptions of what human well-being involves, and in particular their conceptions of the roles of governmental as opposed to other 93 Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 164 (emphasis in original). 94 Ibid., 165. 95 Timmons, “The Limits of Moral Constructivism,” 412–13.

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social institutions for the provision of education.96 But the facts —both the purely empirical facts, and the way these facts fit with other facts in constituting good lives and good relations between persons as parts of those lives —are exceedingly complex. These facts involve substantive judgments about what we have reason to do, and AC need not accept that either party has gotten these judgments right. Furthermore, the way in which AC takes reasons to be public means that the mere fact of this sort of disagreement must result in a degree of disequilibrium. Neither Nozick nor Putnam would be justified in seeing his own position as beyond reasonable doubt; by hypothesis, each is perfectly aware that there is reasonable doubt about his position. That does not mean that Nozick and Putnam may hold their positions only tentatively; given their best assessments of things, they see the conclusions they have reached as irresistible. Still, a considerable degree of epistemic humility is appropriate. Just as Anscombe suggested, claims about what one has most reason to do are always corrigible. If AC is true, then in the dispute between Putnam and Nozick, at most one of them is right; perhaps both are wrong and there is some third position that represents the facts about how human beings may best organize themselves so that they educate their young in a way most conducive to human flourishing. The present point is that both Putnam and Nozick see those facts as objective, and the contempt they feel for the pattern of responses in the other is a reflection of that presumption of objectivity. Those attitudes are perfectly consistent with the claims of AC. Moreover, AC can explain why the disagreement is so deep: it is just because each sees the reasons for his own view as so deeply tied to what is necessary for human welfare that each has the attitude he does toward the other’s insensitivity. But since on AC there is no reason to think that either Putnam or Nozick is in possession of the facts as practical wisdom would see them, AC is not committed to the pernicious relativism that Timmons deplores. AC neither sees them as talking past each other, nor maintains that each may be fully vindicated by his own lights. Instead, it holds that there is a standard of correctness to be applied —the truth about what conduces to good human lives —and that that standard can be vindicated only by the best exercise of reason and judgment of which we are capable. VIII. Conclusion The promise of constructivism about practical rationality is the hope it holds of avoiding both the metaphysical and epistemological problems of recognitionalism and the lack of fidelity to the experience of responding to reasons which is characteristic of views that doubt that there is practical truth, or that our practical judgments aspire to track a 96

Presumably, they do not disagree over the role of education in a good human life.

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normative reality. The Kantian version of the constructivist enterprise lives or dies on its ability to precipitate substantive reasons for action from a conception of rationality as procedural and suitable for rational beings considered purely as such. The viability of Aristotelian constructivism, in contrast, depends on there being truth about how to live well, and on that truth’s being something that is constructed by human judgments about what a good life is. Such truth (if it exists) would be the most hard-won of human intellectual and moral accomplishments, and my aim here has not been to set it out. Instead, in the framework of practical truth constructed from a substantive conception of successful practical rationality, directed at the goal of living good human lives, I hope to have sketched an approach appropriate for understanding objectively wise practical rationality and objectively good human lives. Philosophy, Ohio University

MORAL CONSTRUCTION AS A TASK: SOURCES AND LIMITS By Thomas E. Hill, Jr. I. Preliminary Remarks, Aims, and Preview Many different questions have been debated under the rubrics of “objectivity” and “relativity” of morals. My plan is to begin by distinguishing several of these questions as background discussion. Then, after a few remarks about the earlier questions, I sketch a broadly Kantian position on the last two of these questions: First, how, if at all, can we derive, justify, or support specific moral principles and judgments from more fundamental moral standards and values? Second, how, if at all, can (alleged) fundamental standards be defended? Famously, Kant attempted to provide nonskeptical answers to both questions. His explicit answers and arguments have often been criticized, and there are probably few today who accept them all without qualification. Many contemporary philosophers, however, have been influenced by his ideas about the nature and structure of moral thinking, his attempt to articulate a supreme moral standard, and his strategy for defending moral principles. My sketch here of a broadly Kantian perspective represents my attempt to develop and extend some of these ideas beyond Kant’s texts.1 The influence of John Rawls’s theory of justice may also be evident. To preview, the main features of my broadly Kantian position on our two main questions are these. First, Kant’s later formulations of the Categorical Imperative provide important elements of a deliberative procedure that can be used to guide and constrain our thinking about more specific moral principles in a way that helps to correct for mere personal 1 By calling a perspective “broadly Kantian” I mean to acknowledge that it draws heavily from Kant’s ethical writings but does not follow Kant’s texts in all respects. The broadly Kantian perspective that I sketch here and elsewhere modifies and supplements Kant’s theory in various ways, one of which is its attempt to disassociate normative aspects of the theory from Kant’s theory of noumenal freedom (as this is usually understood). I give a fuller (though still incomplete) description of the broadly Kantian perspective I have in mind in other essays, especially Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Respect, Pluralism, and Justice: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chaps. 2, 4, and 8; Hill, Human Welfare and Moral Worth: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 3; and Hill, “Assessing Moral Rules: Utilitarian and Kantian Perspectives,” Normativity, Philosophical Issues (A Supplement to Noûs), vol. 15, edited by Ernest Sosa and Enrique Villanueva (2005): 158–78.

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DOI: 10.1017/S0265052508080084 © 2008 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA.

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preference and parochial bias.2 The procedure is far less than a determinate decision procedure or strict “derivation” of particular moral conclusions, but it promises a way of supporting judgments that initially may have appeared more doubtful. Second, Kant has two strategies for defending the ideas in his various formulations of the Categorical Imperative. The first has merit, at least when modified and presented more modestly as akin in some respects to Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium. The background of this strategy, too frequently ignored, is Kant’s principled rejection of previous errors in foundational moral theory. Also, though not a major focus here, Kant’s second line of defense, at least in its final modified form, may still serve its purpose in practical, rather than metaphysical, reflection and dialogue. If what is questioned is the rational authority of the basic standards identified by the previous method, the best we can do, and often all that is needed, may be to appeal to deep pervasive commitments and consistency in the practice and serious thinking of each rational moral agent. Words such as “construction,” “objectivity,” and “relativity” are at best blunt instruments for discussion, and by now they have been used in so many ways they may have outlived their usefulness. Nevertheless, to connect my discussion with some recent literature, I propose that the broadly Kantian perspective sketched here leaves us with two ways in which moral construction is an ongoing task. First, and most obviously, defining the broadly Kantian deliberative perspective is an incomplete work in progress —an attempt to articulate for practical purposes an appropriate framework for deliberating about the interpretation and limits of specific moral principles (or “rules”). This construction project starts from the assumption that Kant’s own efforts to articulate a comprehensive supreme moral principle were inadequate for the purpose but contain important, promising elements. The aim would be to put these Kantian elements together, modifying and supplementing them as needed in the light of arguments, to build an account of an appropriate deliberative perspective or stance for addressing more specific moral issues. The challenge would be to identify and defend certain more basic values as constituting the framework for deliberation about further, often more controversial issues, for example, the interpretation and limits of rules about lying, preemptive killing, and torture. To continue the metaphor of construction, this substantive deliberation about more specific principles can be seen as a second, more practical construction project. In any broadly Kantian view, controversies about the interpretation of (and exceptions to) specific moral rules cannot be resolved by science, metaphysics, theology, or appeal to any authority based merely on power, tradition, or convention. Instead, such 2 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Arnulf Zweig, ed. Thomas E. Hill, Jr., and Arnulf Zweig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 222–37 [4:421–38]. Bracketed numbers in all citations of Kant’s works refer to volume and page numbers in the standard Prussian Academy edition.

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principles and their limits must, in a sense, be “constructed” in reflection from an appropriate moral point of view by the moral agents who must be subject to them.3 My remaining discussion will be divided into the following three main sections: In Section II, as background, I distinguish several different questions that arise in debates about moral relativism and objectivity. Then, in Section III, I sketch my broadly Kantian perspective for assessing specific moral principles. Finally, in Section IV, I describe briefly Kant’s grounds for rejecting previous moral theories and his two strategies for defending a proposed deliberative perspective.

II. Different Questions Regarding Relativism and Objectivity Some worry and others happily accept that moral principles and judgments may be “relative” and “subjective,” as opposed to “absolute” and “objective.” These terms, unfortunately, have been understood in so many different ways that they are now more often confusing than helpful toward understanding deep philosophical concerns.4 At least their use in each context needs to be explained and supplemented with discussion in other terms. So I shall try to distinguish several questions without relying on the 3 The idea that moral principles can be constructed is a metaphor that can be illuminating in some respects but is also liable to be misleading. For example, the metaphor is intended to suggest that in order to reach reasonable conclusions about what moral principles require and what exceptions they allow, what is needed for practical purposes is not acute “perception” of natural or nonnatural metaphysical facts but rather reflection and discussion about what standards we have most reason to endorse in the light of certain basic moral values, norms of rationality, and relevant facts about the human condition and the more local conditions in which the principles are to be applied. The metaphor of construction would be misleading if it suggested that we may construct whatever principles we please as if we were children given a pile of miscellaneous materials with which to build something but without any given blueprint, purpose, or standard for construction. When I suggest that we may think of substantive principles (for example, about lying, stealing, and killing) as constructed (or to be constructed) from a broadly Kantian deliberative perspective, I do not mean to imply that they are (or are to be) constructed from morally neutral or value-free assumptions or from values that are themselves constructed in the same sense. In saying, in addition, that we may think of articulating the broadly Kantian deliberative perspective as a task for construction, I mean to suggest only that it remains an unfinished task in moral theory to work out and express as clearly as possible a description of the most basic constraints and guiding values that are reasonable, and appropriately called (broadly) “Kantian,” as a framework for assessing more substantive and derivative moral principles. When understood this way, construction of substantive principles need not be redundant or viciously circular, and construction of the deliberative basic perspective does not necessarily presuppose any particular metaethical theory. A more radical and controversial claim would be that all moral values and principles, including those treated as basic in a broadly Kantian deliberative perspective, are constructed in some further sense. 4 Philosophers have often noted important distinctions among the questions relevant to discussions of relativism and objectivity. An excellent example is Richard Brandt, Ethical Theory (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1959), chap. 11.

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terms “relative,” “absolute,” “subjective,” and “objective,” even though I will use some of these terms as temporary labels for ideas that I explain. A. Linguistic relativity and related deeper disputes Some words are incomplete without explicit or implicit reference to something further. An obvious example is “relevant.” Back in the 1960s, students often clamored for new courses that were “relevant” but without specifying what they were supposed to be relevant to. Some no doubt had the general idea that new courses should be relevant to their interests in stopping the war in Vietnam, reforming or destroying the existing government, living untraditional lifestyles, etc., but others seemed to think that the word “relevant” by itself expressed a complete idea. More commonly, people often talk about various things being important without saying to whom or for what they are significant. No doubt many could pause, if asked, and fill in the assumed or neglected qualification, but too often conversations proceed as if no further comment is required, some things just being important period, not for any specifiable purpose and not to you, or to me, or even to all human beings, to all rational beings, to all living things, etc. In these cases, we naturally wonder what the standards for evaluating such claims are and whether, after all, the claims make sense. Thomas Hobbes says that “good” is always “relative to the person,” usually relative to the person that uses the word but relative to the sovereign authority in a state when the sovereign makes a ruling about what is to be regarded good.5 At least part of the point seems to be that the word “good,” like “relative” and “important,” is incomplete by itself, and to make sense needs to be supplemented, for example, by specifying to or for whom, or from whose perspective, something is alleged to be good. We might add a variety of other possible supplements, such as “good for . . . (a purpose),” “a good . . . (kind of thing),” or “good from the point of view of . . . (a group, project, or institution with shared aims, etc.).” Similar things might be said of “valuable,” “desirable,” “ideal,” and other value terms (including negative terms such as “bad,” “undesirable,” “repugnant,” etc.). If we want a label, we might use linguistic relativity for this idea that familiar value terms, such as “good,” are incomplete without further specification. Underlying any dispute about the linguistic point, however, is likely to be a deeper disagreement in moral theory or metaphysics. Plato held that there is a Form of Goodness that exists independently of existing earthly beings, their purposes, and their natural kinds. Hobbes made his linguis5 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1994), part I, chap. 6, pp. 28–29. This famous passage in Hobbes is open to several different interpretations. My concern here is with the idea I draw from Hobbes, which may or may not be exactly what Hobbes meant.

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tic point in a way that also expressed his antipathy to a Platonic conception of goodness. Unlike Plato, he thought that we call things good because we desire them, not that we desire them because (independently) they are good. Like Plato, G. E. Moore also implied that various things are good in themselves, or good period, as opposed to good for something, good to someone, good of a kind, etc. His underlying point was not merely linguistic but a controversial metaphysical thesis about the existence of goodness as a real nonrelational, nonnatural property.6 Disputes about this go beyond linguistics and more properly fall under later questions about basic standards and justification. B. Causal dependence on culture and history When discussing whether morality is “relative,” one often hears the claim that moral beliefs are determined by cultural and historical factors that vary widely. This is an empirical thesis about the causes of moral beliefs. Its relevance to disputes about the truth or validity of universal moral principles is less clear than is often supposed. There are two main points to consider. First, if true, the thesis would suggest (but does not entail) that there are no moral principles that are universally believed. Although it is not necessary, it is perhaps natural to expect that variable causes will produce variable effects. So the causal dependence claim is significant partly because it can be taken to support a “relativist” position on the next issue on my list, that is, whether or not all moral beliefs vary with cultural and historical conditions. The second and more important point to consider, however, is that the causal dependence of moral beliefs on variable cultural and historical factors is thought to undermine moral theories committed to other sources of moral belief — intuition, conscience, innate reason, divine commands, or universally shared sentiments. It is a fallacy to argue that a belief must be false because it was caused by something other than evidence for its truth. Hence, tracing the causes of moral beliefs to variable cultural conditions unrelated to moral theorists’ alleged sources does not prove that the normative principles of these theorists are false, but it tends to undermine moral theories that depend on alternative causal stories to explain how they know their principles are true or valid. C. Diversity of many or all moral beliefs As I just noted, sometimes the “relativist” position is an empirical thesis that what is accepted as morally right or good varies widely over times and places. A radical version would hold that there are no universally shared moral beliefs or values, and for every moral belief and value 6

G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903, 1959).

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accepted in one culture there are incompatible beliefs and values in some other culture. That many particular moral beliefs diverge (for example, beliefs regarding sex, property, or the conduct of war) is undeniable, but it remains controversial whether there are some general moral values underlying the diversity of particular moral beliefs accepted in different cultures. This is an empirical question that cannot be easily settled. (A complication is that to assess evidence one must first take a position about what beliefs and norms count as moral.) When there is cultural variance in beliefs about facts such as the shape of the earth, there are ways to resolve the issue, showing that certain beliefs are true (the earth is round) and others mistaken (the earth is flat). Mere diversity of belief does not entail that there is no fact of the matter. The claim that all moral beliefs vary with cultural and historical conditions, then, does not entail that there are no true or valid universal moral beliefs. It does, however, raise doubts about moral theories committed to certain explanations of moral beliefs that would lead us to expect almost universal agreement about moral issues. If, for example, the theorists tell us that learning moral truths is like perception of colors or “seeing” simple mathematical propositions to be “self-evident,” then they will be hard-pressed to explain pervasive and persistent diversity of moral beliefs.

D. Normative dependence of specific moral rules and particular judgments on context Some believe that there are fairly specific, substantive moral rules that are true or valid in all human conditions. Many understand the Ten Commandments this way. In a notorious late essay, Immanuel Kant argues that telling lies is always wrong, and even some who espouse “virtue ethics” hold that acts of certain kinds (such as torture or intentionally killing innocent persons) are always wrong.7 By contrast, act-utilitarians maintain that specific conclusions about right and wrong depend on whatever will have (or is expected to have) the best consequences in the context. They typically affirm this act-utilitarian standard as true or valid but grant that the rightness or wrongness of specific acts can vary with the circumstances. For example, according to the act-utilitarian standard, malicious self-serving lies tend to be wrong because they cause more harm than good, though it would not have been wrong to tell a lie to a Nazi at the door to save the Jewish family hiding in one’s attic. Even 7 For Kant’s extreme position on lying, see “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy,” in Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 605–15 [8:423–30]. Elizabeth Anscombe’s view is expressed in her classic essay “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33 (1958): 1–19. Some other philosophers associated with virtue ethics (for example, Philippa Foot) have reportedly endorsed this view in discussions.

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deontologists such as W. D. Ross hold that, although there are true universal principles of prima facie duty, particular judgments about one’s “actual duty” in a situation depend also on the variable facts of the case at hand.8 Contemporary moral “particularists” (for example, Jonathan Dancy) go even further, maintaining that correct moral judgments are determined by the particular facts of each case independently of moral principles.9 Dancy does not deny that particular moral judgments are true, “objective,” and supported by reasons, but only that there are valid and useful moral generalizations. All of these theorists hold that there are true or valid particular moral judgments, as determined either by universal moral principles or by good reasons in a context. Their primary disagreement is about the scope of intermediate-level moral rules or principles — for example, those forbidding lying, promise-breaking, torturing prisoners, and engaging in extramarital sex.10 Are these valid rules or true generalizations for everyone, or only within certain cultures, or only for certain groups or individuals, or not at all?

E. Questions about the scope and authority of basic standards and deliberative procedures Those who hold that specific moral rules and judgments are true or false, or valid or invalid, depending on their context typically believe that there are more basic, general standards or procedures that explain this variability of specific rules and judgments. Both act-utilitarians and ruleutilitarians affirm such basic standards, and so do deontologists such as 8 W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), chap. 2. Ross held that it is the principles of prima facie duty together with the facts of the particular case at hand that determine one’s actual duty, but because none of those principles is absolute and they cannot be ranked with respect to one another, one’s actual duty can vary with even slight changes in circumstance. To say that one has a prima facie duty to keep one’s promise in a particular case is, in effect, to say that the fact that one promised is a pro tanto or defeasible moral reason to keep the promise or, in other words, a reason for doing what was promised that is sufficient in the absence of weightier countervailing moral reasons but not necessarily decisive in all contexts. 9 Jonathan Dancy, Ethics without Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), chap. 1. 10 Principles can be more or less general and comprehensive. In Kant’s moral theory, the various formulations of the Categorical Imperative are supposed to express the supreme moral principle, which is the most general principle relevant to all questions about what we morally ought to do. What I call “intermediate-level principles” (or sometimes just “specific principles”) are not as general and comprehensive, applying only to certain kinds of oftenrecurring cases, for example, cases involving lies, theft, various sexual practices, developing one’s talents, giving aid to the needy, etc. These are intermediate in generality between the Categorical Imperative and extremely specific rules and judgments concerned with a narrowly restricted range of cases (e.g., the special responsibilities of doctors and social workers regarding patients with Alzheimer’s disease). Kant outlines a system of intermediate-level principles for law and individual ethics in Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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Ross and Kant.11 The standards or procedures are commonly regarded as true or valid for all competent adults. They are conceived as the ultimate test of what is moral, and for many they are also (or thereby) an ultimate rational authority. Opposing theorists (and some who are opposed to all theory) deny that there are universally valid basic moral standards or deliberative procedures that can guide and constrain our assessment of more particular moral rules and judgments (or make some true and others false).12 There are different ideas, of course, about what it means for basic standards to be true, valid, and rational. F. The possibility of proof, justification, or defense of basic standards Many who accept that there are true or valid basic moral standards offer arguments of various kinds in support of their position, but some simply pronounce their standards to be self-evident. Kant and John Stuart Mill are two prominent moral philosophers who took seriously the tasks of explaining a sort of “proof” or defense that they believed possible and of offering arguments to serve the purpose. There are different views, of course, about what would constitute a proof, justification, or defense, and many theorists are skeptical about whether these are possible in any form. What constitutes a proof, justification, or defense depends heavily on how a given moral theory construes moral judgments —as stating natural facts, expressing the speaker’s attitudes, ascribing real nonnatural properties to things, applying necessary rational principles, and so on. There are, no doubt, other questions and further distinctions in disputes about moral relativity and objectivity, but my aim here has been only to set the stage for discussion. The primary focus of the rest of this essay will be on the last two issues —more specifically, on a broadly Kantian position on whether there are general and basic moral standards that determine which more specific moral principles and judgments are justifiable and how, if at all, the more basic standards can be defended. These are 11 The act-utilitarian standard (roughly) is that one ought to do whatever brings about, or is expected to bring about, the most good (e.g., pleasure or well-being) in the long run. The standards of rule-utilitarianism are more complex to state because of various necessary qualifications, but the main idea is that one ought to conform to a set of rules (a code) the internalization of which by most people would bring about the most good. See Brad Hooker, Ideal Code and Real World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 1–2 and 33. Ross’s basic standards are his principles of prima facie duty concerning fidelity, gratitude, reparation, justice, self-improvement, non-injury, and beneficence. See note 8. Kant’s basic standards or deliberative procedures are expressed in the several formulations of the Categorical Imperative. See note 2. 12 The opposing theorists include not only nihilists (who dismiss morality entirely) but also subtle expressivists (who deny literal truth and validity to moral principles but do not deny their importance) and particularists (who affirm particular moral truths, possibly even similar ones in different cultures, but deny that there are basic general standards). Another possible view would be that there are general standards that are basic and true or valid within different historical or cultural contexts but no basic moral standards that are true or valid for all contexts.

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difficult questions because they require not only interpreting and extending Kant’s ideas but also discussing them in the terms of our contemporary debates in moral theory. Before turning to the main two questions, however, here are a few brief comments on my broadly Kantian perspective on the other questions — comments which may explain why those are not my focus of concern. The questions in subsections B and C above are entirely matters for empirical investigation. Kant had opinions about them but no relevant expertise, and the main features of his moral theory, arguably, do not depend on his opinions on such empirical questions.13 The main question in subsection A presumably belongs to traditional metaethics because it concerns the meaning, or proper use, of the word “good” and related terms. Kant’s position on this matter could easily be misunderstood. He repeatedly writes 13 The relevance of various empirical facts to Kant’s basic normative claims is not obvious. Kant evidently believed that virtually every mature and competent moral agent, at least every one in relatively “advanced” or “enlightened” parts of the world (and history), has practical reason and a conscience that acknowledges “the moral law,” no matter how badly he or she may behave. He also thought that reason can be latent and conscience dulled, and that “evil” people intentionally elect to subordinate their moral predispositions. See Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 160–61 [6:400–401] and 189–91 [6:438–40], and Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 179–80 [6:184–87] and 45–65 [6:19–44]. Kant’s deplorable anthropological remarks about peoples of other “races” at least suggest that, in his opinion, even the capacity for morality may be more limited than his inspiring words about human dignity would seem to imply. See Bernard Boxill and Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Kant and Race,” in Race and Racism, ed. Bernard Boxill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 448–71. It remains a difficult question to what extent Kant’s main theses and arguments depend on his empirical beliefs and prejudices. Groundwork I starts with assertions about common rational knowledge of morality and proceeds to analyze their presuppositions. If Kant was mistaken about how wide the community that shared the “common” beliefs is, this would limit the interest in his main argument, making it applicable only to those who share the common beliefs. This, however, would not necessarily refute or render useless the sort of conditional (“analytical” style) argument that he admitted the argument in Groundwork I to be. Similarly, Groundwork II argues that our common conception of duty has certain striking presuppositions, but Kant concedes rather dramatically that this does not entail even that “we” who have that conception are really under moral obligations —and, all the more, the argument clearly does not entail that human beings who lack the conception are under moral obligations. In Groundwork III, and the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant tries to convince readers of the stronger claim that all agents with practical reason are subject to the moral requirements prescribed by the Categorical Imperative, but he is committed to the idea that these arguments cannot rest on empirical claims (for example, the claim that, as a matter of fact, all cognitively competent human beings acknowledge these moral requirements or would do so after being given rational arguments). See sections I and II of Kant’s Groundwork and, for an interpretation of the main arguments of those sections, see my “Analysis of Arguments,” in Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Arnulf Zweig and ed. Thomas E. Hill, Jr., and Arnulf Zweig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 195–245 [4:393–445] and 109–14. See also Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 28–64 [5:30–50]. If Kant’s conception of duty and a good will were limited to eighteenth-century Prussians, the interest in his arguments would be severely limited in scope, but there is apparently a wider audience that shares Kant’s conception of duty, or at least the belief that a moral duty is what one has sufficient reason to do and not just because it serves one’s interests. Whether, despite objections, Kant’s arguments have any merit remains a controversial question, not easily settled by reference to anthropological facts and still subject to doubts of other kinds.

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of moral acts as “good in themselves” and thus does not buy into Hobbes’s thesis that “good” is always “relative to the person” (more specifically, to the desires of the speaker or the command of the sovereign). In Kant’s view, however, there is nothing, not even what he calls “good in itself,” that is “good” in a practical sense independent of its relation to actual or possible rational agents and their reasons for intending, willing, and acting. Kant does not believe in intrinsic values in the metaphysical sense that, for example, is central in G. E. Moore’s intuitionist ethics. Regarding the issue discussed in subsection D, Kant famously held that there are some specific moral principles that hold for all people at all times. His notorious example was an absolute prohibition on (serious) lying, but it is noteworthy that even famous advocates of “virtue ethics” (for example, Elizabeth Anscombe) apparently accept some completely inflexible universal principles about other matters, such as the intentional killing of innocent people.14 On my broadly Kantian view, when (if ever) principles regarding lying and killing innocents are subject to exceptions must be determined by reflection from a more basic deliberative perspective. What this is and whether it is defensible —the questions in subsections E and F —are the topics for my remaining discussion. III. A Broadly Kantian Perspective for Assessing Specific Moral Principles Here I can only give a brief summary of relevant points in the Kantian perspective that I have in mind. Kantian moral theory belongs to a rationalistic tradition that maintains that the most fundamental moral values and standards are accessible through the use of practical reason, applicable to all rational human beings, and contrary to reason to dismiss or violate.15 These fundamental values and standards are supposed to be expressed in Kant’s several formulations of the Categorical Imperative and accompanying explanations.16 Kant regarded these basic standards as presupposed by, and even implicit in, ordinary moral deliberation and judgment. He illustrates the guiding function of two versions of the Categorical Imperative by applying them directly to four examples that he 14

See note 7 above. In Kantian theory, as I understand it, “values” are not entities or facts independent of what rational agents would care about (or “value”) in various conditions. To say that humanity is a basic Kantian value, then, is not to claim that it has a perceptible quality that explains and justifies the idea that we have a rational requirement or good reasons to respect it. Saying that humanity is a basic value implies that it should be respected; i.e., we have a rational requirement or good reasons to respect it, because these are just different ways of saying the same thing. The Kantian view, so construed, is an instance of what T. M. Scanlon calls the “buck-passing” view of value —that is, value-claims do not state the justifying basis of reason-claims but rather express the idea that there are good reasons for taking certain (not yet specified) attitudes and actions toward the thing. T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 95–100. 16 Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 222–37 [4:421–38]. 15

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sketches. In his later, more thorough treatment of practical problems, however, he appeals to basic standards together with general facts about the human condition to identify and (sometimes) argue for a system of general principles about property, marriage, legal authority, punishment, lying, self-neglect, helping others, gratitude, respect, and friendship.17 This is a system of principles of mid-level generality, standing between the most comprehensive supreme moral principle (expressed in the Categorical Imperative) and moral judgments in particular contexts. Some principles state juridical duties, which can and ought to be enforced by state authorities. Other principles state directly ethical duties, which require us to adopt maxims of various sorts to promote the ends of self-perfection and the happiness of others. The strict perfect duties have the form “Never . . .” or “Always . . . ,” but the imperfect duty to help others leaves room for judgment and choice regarding when, how, and to what extent to help. According to Kantian theory, then, there is a structure that can guide us to correct moral judgments in particular cases. The ultimate standard, a principle or procedure expressed as the Categorical Imperative, is taken to be a comprehensive, fundamental, and even necessary requirement of practical reason —and so the standard for our reasoning about what we ought to do. Applying this standard to pervasive human conditions, Kant attempts to identify (and justify relative to the standard) a system of mid-level principles of several kinds intended to be applicable independently of variations in local conditions. The principles of perfect duty must never entail contradictory prescriptions, but the “grounds of duty” from which they are drawn may be in tension.18 All the more, imperfect duties may be in tension, for promoting one moral end may limit the ways that one can pursue another. The system is supposed to be structured and consistent, but its imperfect duties allow considerable room for choice, and all duties require interpretation and judgment appropriate to the context.19 When explaining the basic Kantian standard for identifying more specific moral principles, most contemporary reconstructions and developments of Kant’s moral theory concentrate on interpretations of either Kant’s formula of universal law or his formula of humanity as an end in itself.20 Skeptical of these (or any formulas) as case-by-case moral deci17

Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, parts I and II, 1–170 [6:203–413]. Ibid., 16–17 [6:224–25]. Ibid., 153 [6:390]. 20 The formula of universal law states: “Act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 222 [4:421]. A variation that Kant uses in discussing his examples is: “Act as though the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature.” Kant, Groundwork, 222 [4:421]. The formula of humanity states: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in any other person, always at the same time as an end, never as a means.” Kant, Groundwork, 230 [4:429]. Distinguished scholars have interpreted these formulas in different ways, many of which I review in my essay “Kantian Normative Ethics,” in David Copp, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 480–514. 18 19

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sion procedures, I have suggested that a Kantian framework for assessing moral rules (or mid-level principles) might be constructed from Kant’s idea of the perspective of a lawmaking member of a community of rational, autonomous, and mutually respectful persons (what Kant calls a Reich der Zwecke or “kingdom of ends”).21 In section II of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant’s attempt to articulate a basic moral standard unfolds in a progressive argument through the earlier formulas (of universal law and humanity as an end) to the idea of rational persons with autonomy legislating universal laws without basing them on contingent personal desires. Loosely paraphrased, the argument proceeds from “Conform to universal law” to “Respect and place the highest value on humanity in each person,” followed by an explanation that this requires, among other things, respecting each person as a rational autonomous legislator of universal laws. This idea, in turn, is further developed in a formula of the Categorical Imperative that Kant suggests is his most complete characterization of moral requirements, the principle that says that we should conform to the laws of a possible Reich der Zwecke, or ideal commonwealth in which all rational autonomous persons, “abstracting from personal differences,” legislate the moral laws that unite and bind them.22 Although Kant still preferred his famous formula of universal law as the best guide for judgment in particular cases, he obviously regarded this later principle as an inspiring conception of the moral point of view, “closer to intuition” and “feeling.” 23 The main elements of Kant’s idea of moral legislation are the following. The legislators are rational, seeking to legislate a consistent and coherent set of “laws” (moral principles), making no law without sufficient reason or in ignorance of relevant facts. They are committed to finding and respecting laws that apply to all and respect human dignity in all, and so, in legislating, they must rely on reasons that any moral agent can acknowledge and take into account apart from special interests. Their “autonomy” also implies freedom from various distorting and morally irrelevant influences and a genuine acknowledgment that the rational standard 21 See note 1 for references to my fuller discussions of this Kantian perspective. According to David Falk in conversation, the frequent translation of Reich der Zwecke as “kingdom of ends” is due to H. J. Paton’s insistence on using the term in his translation of Kant’s Groundwork despite Falk’s warning that the translation is misleading. H. J. Paton’s translation is Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (New York: Harper and Row, 1964). A Reich (literally) is a state or commonwealth, a governing legal system that may or may not involve a king or monarch. There is a possible analogy with biblical talk of a “kingdom of God” that may have influenced Kant but is not essential to his idea. When Kant describes the “kingdom of ends” (Reich der Zwecke) in the Groundwork, it has a “head” with features only possible for a divine being, but the head has no function apparently but to endorse the same rational principles as every other member. The primary difference is that the “head,” who is not conceived as a political sovereign with independent legislative authority, lacks sensuous temptations to act contrary to reason and so is not “subject to” or “bound by” the rational principles. That is, they are not moral “imperatives” for the divine being. 22 Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 231–37 [4:431–37]. 23 Ibid., 237 [4:436–37].

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behind particular moral reasons is not merely rational prudence or efficiency in the pursuit of one’s own personal ends. Obviously, and for good reason, certain moral values, assumed to be fundamental, are built into this conception of moral legislation. The aim is not to give a bootstrapping argument for basic moral values but rather to construct from these an intuitively appealing and inspiring conception of the moral point of view that should frame our thinking about more specific moral requirements. A more modest application of Kant’s idea, akin to Rawls’s initial theory of justice, would make use of the model of “legislation” from an ideal perspective adapted for a more specific range of practical problems. For example, we might use this approach in addressing the question whether the prohibition of torture is open to exception. Given certain basic moral values, the presumption against torture (as well as against murder, rape, fraud, and manipulation) is rather obvious. The difficult questions are about cases in which moral values conflict. Granting that some particular hard cases may have no resolution, we can still ask whether it is morally important to maintain shared public principles about such matters, independently of law, and what exceptions, if any, these principles should allow. The broadly Kantian idea is that it may be helpful to treat such questions in two stages —articulating the relevant standpoint for joint deliberation (in effect, the rules of debate) and then reviewing arguments for proposed principles. From the Kantian perspective, the most fundamental values that are to guide and constrain deliberation about rules are drawn from the idea of human dignity, or humanity as an end in itself. In Kantian theory, as I understand it, saying that something is valuable is equivalent to saying how we ought to regard and treat the thing that is said to have value. We can interpret the idea of human dignity, then, as a cluster of prescriptions about how to regard and treat human beings. In an earlier essay, I summarized these prescriptions as follows: 24 In sum, they are, negatively, not to regard persons as having a merely commensurable value and not to violate principles that rational autonomous persons would endorse, all things considered; and, positively, to exercise, preserve, develop, and honor rational nature in all persons, to prioritize the needs for rational autonomous living over more trivial concerns, and to count the happiness of others (or, strictly, their permissible ends) as significant in our deliberations. The proposed Kantian perspective regards the second negative prescription as an inflexible constraint on action: never violate the principles that, in one’s best judgment, rational autonomous deliberators would 24 Hill, “Assessing Moral Rules: Utilitarian and Kantian Perspectives,” 168–69; emphasis in original.

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endorse, if guided and constrained by the idea of human dignity and mindful of the complexities of the real world for which the principles are intended. The first negative prescription (“never regard persons has having a merely commensurable value”) and the remaining positive prescriptions are also non-optional demands, but they directly concern our attitudes when we deliberate and act.25

Obviously much more needs to be said, but it may be helpful to conclude my sketch with a few general remarks about a significant difference between the Kantian perspective and some theories that are in other respects similar. For example, the Kantian framework is meant to reflect what deliberation from a moral point of view about the issue at hand would be like, not necessarily what rational self-interested agents would choose in a state of nature or what “mutually disinterested” rational agents would choose under a “veil of ignorance.” 26 Because those who deliberate from the broadly Kantian perspective are directly moved and constrained by basic moral considerations, the Kantian perspective, as construed here, resembles Locke’s social contract theory more than 25 Of course, they will rule out certain acts as immoral and show that others are morally required, but they do so by demanding that our deliberations, choices, and intentions are compatible with the prescribed attitudes. It is not as though one could muster up a motivationally inert and non-reason-giving “inner state of mind,” such as a mere wish or “pure thought,” and then anything one does will be permitted. 26 As Fred Miller has noted in discussion, theories that aim to derive specific principles from a “self-interested” or any other deliberative point of view will not be able to reach any substantive conclusions unless they explain the interests or values that motivate the parties taking the deliberative (or contractual) perspective. “Self-interest” can be conceived in different ways, for example, as having the most pleasure possible, as realizing one’s most important personal ends, or as Aristotelian eudaimonia. In Hobbes’s state of nature, those who make the social contract are conceived as moved by their various desires, especially the predominant desire to survive, and their desires are always for some “good” for themselves. In Rawls’s “original position,” the parties are exclusively motivated to secure, within the constraints of the choice situation, the most favorable mix of “primary goods” (e.g., wealth, income, opportunities, powers, and self-respect) for themselves. They are mutually disinterested for purposes of deliberation under a veil of ignorance that bars them from knowing their special talents and circumstances, but they “represent” themselves as actual persons in the real world who may have deep religious convictions, family ties, and even altruistic dispositions. Both Rawls and Hobbes (on my reading) conceive of the parties in the relevant deliberative position (Rawls’s original position and Hobbes’s state of nature) as not motivated by explicitly moral concerns. The choice situations are deliberately defined to ensure that we can draw moral conclusions from arguments that the parties in those choice situations would endorse certain principles, but the parties themselves are not engaged in moral reflection. There are some theoretical advantages in conceiving of the parties’ motivations as nonmoral, but, following Kant, my broadly Kantian deliberative perspective nevertheless conceives of the “legislators” of specific moral principles as motivated in part by stipulated basic moral values (for example, humanity as an end in itself ). This approach, of course, invites questions about how the stipulated values can be defended and whether, given that moral values are stipulated, arguments for specific principles are circular or redundant. My brief discussion here suggests Kantian responses, but these questions obviously require more attention.

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Hobbes’s.27 In this respect, the Kantian perspective also appears to differ from T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism, for Scanlon stipulates that in determining what principles can reasonably be rejected we must restrict ourselves to comparing the weight of reasons that different agents have from their perspective. 28 The reasons for endorsing or rejecting a principle that must be weighed are not moral reasons, even though the outcome of Scanlon’s contractualist reasoning is supposed to be judgments about what is (or is not) morally wrong. My broadly Kantian approach, then, is just one of several ways of thinking about morality that attempt, first, to define an appropriate point of view for deliberation and debate and then, second, to use this perspective to derive specific principles about how to deal with various recurring practical problems. My approach differs from various contract-oriented theories, however, in explicitly calling for reliance on basic moral values in deliberating about specific principles. IV. Strategies for the Defense of the Deliberative Perspective To sketch Kant’s strategies, we must review three main points: a background of critical arguments and then two different lines of defense for Kant’s own perspective. The background (sketched in subsection A below) consists of objections to previous moral theories. Then the first positive strategy (subsection B) is an attempt to show “analytically” that the basic values in Kant’s deliberative perspective are presupposed in concepts essential to our ordinary understanding of morality. The second positive 27 John Locke’s political philosophy employs the idea of reasonable agreements or contracts that were, or would be, made by persons who take for granted certain fundamental moral norms (the “laws of nature”) as requirements of reason. Locke then tries to justify various specific principles regarding government, revolution, etc., by arguing that these principles would be endorsed by contracting parties who have personal interests but are also committed to these laws of nature (as moral guides and constraints). Thomas Hobbes, by contrast, tries to justify principles regarding government, law, etc., by arguing that rational persons in a state of nature would have sufficient prudential grounds, apart from any independent moral commitments, to accept those principles to be enforced by a sovereign power. Interpretations differ, but on my reading Locke, like Kant, is explicitly arguing from basic general moral values to more specific moral principles. Hobbes is apparently more concerned to avoid potentially controversial assumptions about moral values and instead to justify specific principles as rationally prudent to accept and follow if one is assured that others will. Among those principles are Hobbes’s “other laws of nature,” many of which resemble familiar moral norms, but Hobbes apparently regards these as rationally binding only because following them serves to enhance one’s power to survive and satisfy one’s desires. See John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, in Classics of Moral and Political Theory, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.), esp. chaps. 1–9; and Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, part I, esp. chaps. XIV and XV. We should note, however, that I have been comparing a Kantian moral perspective with the political theories of Locke and Hobbes. A comparison of the latter with Kant’s political and legal theory is complicated because the relation between the Categorical Imperative and Kant’s principles regarding law is unclear and controversial. 28 Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, esp. chaps. 2, 4, and 5.

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strategy (subsection C) is simply to appeal to each reader’s moral consciousness, which Kant thought was a virtually inescapable recognition of being under moral obligation (as Kant conceived this).29 Apart from the details of Kant’s own exposition, arguably these general background arguments and strategies are potentially relevant in assessing contemporary moral theories, including the broadly Kantian perspective sketched here. A. The background: Critique of previous moral theories The background consists of negative arguments to reject other (nonKantian) views about the nature and source of morality. These arguments are most explicit in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason. 30 Kant categorizes all previous moral theories into four types, which we may label “ethical egoism,” “moral sense theories,” “divine command theories,” and “perfectionism.” Having argued that moral concepts presuppose that “autonomy of the will” is the fundamental source of morality, Kant charges that all the previous moral theories are mistaken because they fail to acknowledge this fact. Here, I take it, Kant is engaging in what is now considered “metaethics,” for he maintains that his “analytical” argument in Groundwork II shows that the theories in question fail to understand common moral concepts and, further, that they leave us without any resources to argue (as Kant attempts in Groundwork III) for the rational authority of basic moral standards. Kant alleges that each type of moral theory is open to special objections, but the common error of each theory is to suppose that morality is something other than following principles that moral agents with practical reason and autonomy would give (or “legislate”) to themselves as constraining their social relations and personal choices. We do not need to accept the full Kantian idea of autonomy to appreciate his critique of other moral theories. Roughly, the main negative points, reworked and modified for contemporary discussions, are these: (1) Some moral theories attempt to derive the content and rational authority of moral principles from the idea that, fundamentally, each person should (or has sufficient reason to) 29 Those who were looking for a logical demonstration or empirical confirmation of Kant’s basic value claims are likely to find this appeal to their moral consciousness initially disappointing and perhaps not even worth calling a “defense.” It also falls short of Kant’s ambitious project in Groundwork III to “establish” that anyone who acts for reasons does so “under the idea of freedom” and is therefore committed to the Categorical Imperative as a supreme standard. However, given a background of arguments against other moral theories, the attempt to get us to see, in our own reflections, that we deeply and persistently acknowledge certain basic moral values as rational might suffice, for practical purposes, in response to certain kinds of theory-driven doubts about whether acting morally makes sense. 30 See Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 242–45 [4:441–44], and Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 32–36 [5:35–41].

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do whatever most effectively promotes his or her interests. This approach is inadequate, Kant argues, because it is a constitutive conception of moral requirements that they prescribe what we must do independently of whether they advance our own interests. Thus, even if only the pursuit of self-interest is rational, the requirements that would be prescribed by this method would not be moral requirements. Kant classifies egoistic theories as “empirical,” apparently because their advocates typically base them on psychological egoism 31 and because they make specific moral requirements vary widely with each person’s empirical circumstances. Kant’s main critical point, however, is that moral requirements cannot be derived from egoistic principles of any kind, rational or otherwise. Further, (2) Kant also rejects moral sense theories, presumably in part for reasons that comparable theories tend to be rejected now. Such theories attempt to derive moral conclusions from patterns of moral feelings that human beings typically have in recurrent situations —for example, impartial spectators’ feelings of disapproval of cruelty. The core objection is that judgments about what we ought to do are normative judgments about what we have good reasons to do, and these do not follow (without further premises) from facts about human sentiments, no matter how universal these may be. The point for contemporary discussions would be that empirical psychology alone cannot establish moral claims about what we ought to do, even though it can undermine ill-informed particular moral judgments and cast doubt on our capacity to live by certain alleged moral standards. Assuming (with Kant and others) that moral claims purport to give us good reasons to act, empirical studies by themselves cannot determine which moral claims, if any, are true or valid. Turning to theories that Kant classifies as nonempirical or rational theories, (3) he rejects theories that attempt to derive moral requirements from theology on the ground that either their derivations are circular or the derivative commands are not moral. In other words, either the divine source is defined as giving only rational moral commands or else its commands are nonmoral because the authority comes from divine power, not reason. This objection also poses a challenge for any contemporary moral theory that rests the ultimate reasons for being moral on actual commands, secular or ecclesiastical. Similar considerations might apply to the assumption that the “force” of tradition, custom, or common opinion (alone) is the basis of moral requirements. Finally, (4) Kant rejects forms of perfectionism that base the rational authority of moral requirements on their alleged promotion of the metaphysical value of “perfection,” an idea prominent in the work of Leibniz and Christian Wolff. This idea, Kant suggests, is too indeterminate to be 31 Psychological egoism, as I understand it, is the view that, as a matter of fact, every person is always ultimately motivated by the desire to advance his or her own interests. It can take different forms, depending on how “one’s own interests” is interpreted and how deep or near the surface self-interested desires are taken to be.

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action-guiding unless we interpret “perfection” in a morally loaded way that would make derivations of moral requirements from it circular or question-begging. Again, details aside, we can draw a message relevant in moral theory today. Metaphysical properties, whether labeled “perfection” or “intrinsic value” or whatever, are supposed to be features of the world as it is, not necessarily as it ought to be. What we have reason to do cannot be determined by such facts alone. Although we are not concerned with the sort of perfectionism that Kant explicitly rejected, his objection may be relevant to current theories that rest too easy with “intuitions” about which facts are practical “reasons” (or “considerations that favor” choices), in the absence of any general account of what constitutes reasons of various kinds. Returning now to my review of Kantian strategies for defending alleged basic moral standards, the first main point (which provides background for more positive arguments) has been that certain other strategies are inadequate for the defense of Kantian basic standards and, equally important, that those strategies cannot by themselves refute Kantian proposals about what the rational moral standards are. This is a strong negative metaethical claim that, perhaps for good reasons, most contemporary Kantians do not wish to debate at length, but it is a background idea that, if correct, makes it easier to move on to positive considerations. B. Argument that the perspective is presupposed in common moral judgments Kant’s main attempts to defend his conception of the basic moral standard are presented in the first two chapters of the Groundwork, where he argues that concepts deeply embedded in common morality presuppose the supreme principle expressed in his versions of the Categorical Imperative. His aim in these chapters is not to “establish” his basic principle or standard as rational but only to identify formulations of that standard that express its essential features and can serve to guide moral deliberation. If successful, these arguments taken by themselves would provide an important but limited “defense” of Kant’s basic deliberative perspective as reflecting the indispensable core of our common morality, rather than mere custom or personal preference. Kant’s arguments do not start from a survey of moral opinions about particular matters, such as lying and suicide, but from relatively formal ideas about duty and a good will. An essential feature of these ideas, supposedly pervasive in ordinary moral thinking, is that being good and doing what one ought is, among other things, a matter of respecting constraints that we have sufficient reason to follow and not just because doing so advances our interests. This could be so, Kant argues, only if there is a basic rational standard, distinct from instrumental and prudential rationality, which can support more particular moral judgments. More-

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over, Kant argues that the content of the basic standard(s) is expressible in different ways, which are supposed to be fundamentally the same. Most abstractly expressed, the standard is that we must (rationally) choose in a way that respects “universal laws.” As eventually interpreted, the standard is to respect the more specific principles of conduct that would be “legislated” by rational agents who have “autonomy of the will” and respect humanity in each person. The form of Kant’s argument is conditional, and so is his conclusion. That is, essential concepts of common morality presuppose his basic deliberative perspective as the standard from which genuine moral obligations derive. This defense is distinct from his later attempt, in Groundwork III, to show that common morality is not mistaken in taking its requirements to be rational to follow. Let us set aside details and doubts about Kant’s actual argument (and my brief summary) and focus instead on the kind of positive strategy Kant uses to defend his attempt to articulate a basic moral standard. Kant’s strategy is similar in some respects to Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium, but there are also important differences.32 Some differences in their methods stem from differences in their ambitions and hopes for moral theory, but others reflect Rawls’s greater respect for the empirical realities which influence and provide the context for moral reasoning. These differences understandably make Rawls’s method more acceptable to contemporary philosophers, but the ways in which Rawls’s method remains similar to Kant’s are also instructive. To set the background very briefly, Rawls draws from widely accepted, relatively uncontroversial assumptions about basic moral and political values to develop (or “construct”?) an appropriate idealized point of view (“the original position”) for assessing competing conceptions of justice.33 He proposes two general principles of justice and then argues that these would be preferred to certain alternatives from the perspective of the original position. Then Rawls argues that applications of the principles, in several stages, more or less match the “considered judgments of competent judges” in due reflection. When arguments from the appropriate deliberative standpoint (“the original position”) as this was initially defined lead to conflicts with our “considered judgments,” we need to reflect further on the definition and arguments for the original position, its application, and our own pretheoretical considered judgments. The task of seeking reflective equilibrium is to revise the arguments, refine the original position, or abandon our initial moral judgments, until we can find no more acceptable way to bring our various convictions into a coherent whole. Like Kant, Rawls argues from what he takes to be deep and pervasive ordinary moral ideas to support an account of an appropriate 32 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 18–19, 42–45, and 507–8. 33 Ibid., esp. part I, 10–19.

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deliberative perspective for assessing more specific principles, and then he illustrates the application of the deliberative perspective by applying it to several practical problems.34 Significant differences, of course, should be noted. Most obviously, Kant’s ambition was to present a comprehensive moral standard, whereas Rawls aims to construct a deliberative perspective for a more limited project. That is, even in A Theory of Justice, Rawls constructs his “original position” primarily to assess competing, historically prominent conceptions of justice as they apply to the basic structure of well-ordered, cooperative, closed societies —in particular, with regard to how the basic structure affects the distribution of primary social goods. Later, in Political Liberalism, he restricts his project further to “political conceptions” of justice that reflect background assumptions common in Western liberal democracies.35 A significant feature of Rawls’s arguments for his deliberative procedure for assessing principles is that, unlike Kant, Rawls does not try to make his case by drawing out the implications of a few, relatively formal and allegedly essential features of common morality (such as the idea of duty and the value of a good will). Rawls rightly acknowledges more places where empirical facts are relevant to his arguments, and he is obviously more aware of the possibility that revisions may be necessary. Important similarities remain, however —and for good reasons. Both Kant and Rawls see moral theory as a project with a structure that distinguishes basic deliberative procedures from derivative principles, and both distinguish arguments for the deliberative procedure from arguments from the procedure to derivative principles. Although both rely on assumptions about common moral opinions, neither treats these opinions as self-evident or infallible. Despite his repeated warnings about not basing moral theory on examples, Kant (like Rawls) draws out the (supposed) implications of his principles as some sort of confirmation of them.36 Neither Kant nor Rawls addresses his theory to radical moral skeptics or pretends to have arguments sufficient to show that living a moral life is necessarily in one’s interest. Finally, both Kant and Rawls seem to realize that, in the end, defense of their projects and results 34 Rawls takes up various practical problems in part II of A Theory of Justice, for example, toleration of the intolerant (190–94), governmental institutions to promote just distribution of wealth and income (242–51), justice between generations (251–58), and civil disobedience (319–31). 35 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 36 Kant says: “[M]y claims about this central question [the nature and justification of the supreme principle of morality] would be greatly clarified by seeing the application of that supreme principle to the whole system, and they would be strongly confirmed by the adequacy the principle would manifest throughout.” Kant, Groundwork, 193–94 [4:492]; emphasis added. He nevertheless strongly condemns any attempt to derive fundamental moral principles from examples. See, for example, Groundwork, 208–14 [4:406–12]. The Metaphysics of Morals contains his most systematic attempt to present and support a system of intermediatelevel principles.

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depends on a different sort of appeal to each reader —the subject to which I turn next. C. Appeal to each rational agent’s awareness or acceptance of the basic standards A final strategy for defending an account of basic moral deliberative standards is suggested by Kant’s attempts to address the question that he so dramatically poses at the end of Groundwork II. That is, even if an account is demonstratively reflective of common moral ideas, is it really rationally necessary to accept it? Might it not be that morality’s claim to be rational is just an illusion? Kant tried in Groundwork III to meet the challenge by arguing that whenever we act for reasons, we cannot help but see ourselves as free in a sense that ultimately commits us to the Categorical Imperative.37 To meet the objection that he may have argued in a circle, he adds that in the theoretical use of reason (for example, in scientific investigations) we must take ourselves to be following reason independently of causal determination, and this again commits us to the Categorical Imperative.38 Later, in his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant reverses his argument, apparently conceding the inadequacy of the early arguments. He then proposes that consciousness of the moral law is “a fact of reason,” adequate for practical purposes.39 Scholars debate what he meant, but apparently at least part of the idea is that for us, human beings who take ourselves to be rational moral agents, no further argument is needed because, try as we will to deny and escape moral requirements, we cannot. That is, although self-deception, special pleading, and moral disagreements are all too common, in serious honest reflection we cannot consistently regard ourselves as rationally entitled systematically to ignore the claims of others as not (rationally) binding on us. The rational authority that supports such claims, Kant suggests, is inevitably recognized as the authority of our own reason, however much we may wish to deny it. This is not presented as a demonstration, or a claim to perceive selfevident rational truths, or an appeal to moral feelings. As I understand Kant’s point, it is an appeal to individuals, in their own first-person reflections, to acknowledge that they are under moral obligations or at least cannot help but conceive of themselves in this way. Arguably, despite Kant’s own views, such reflections should not be used to justify assuming that others are as committed to morality as we are —assuming this, for example, when we are inclined to justify harsh moralistic treatment of criminals without regard to their actual background and attitudes. Never37

Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 245–48 [4:444–48]. Ibid., 248–57 [4:448–58]. 39 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 28–64 [5:30–50]. 38

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theless, Kant apparently thought his appeal to each person’s moral consciousness a relevant kind of response to certain kinds of doubts about morality, given the fact (argued earlier) that contrary claims about rational choice could not be proved by science, theology, metaphysics, or social practice. Kant’s expectations for the practical success of this appeal to each person’s moral consciousness were higher, I suspect, than the expectations most of us share. This is especially so if the person’s moral consciousness is supposed to acknowledge Kant’s particular statements of the moral law and associated ideas about freedom of will. But at least when our aim and context is practical, rather than an attempt to establish a universal truth of metaphysics or abstract moral theory, we may find that the best we can do, and all that is needed, is to appeal to the commitments of each rational moral agent. If agents profess to deliberate and debate in terms of shared reasons, reasons about which others outside their circle should care, then they may be able to see, on due reflection, that their moral and reasonbased commitments exceed their wishes to escape moral obligation. And perhaps a more modest, reasonable contemporary account of moral obligations (compared to some ideas in Kant’s actual texts) can facilitate this process, and arguably it can be a (practically) rational process. Rawls’s appeals to each reader to consider, revise, and endorse his theory of justice is similar and, in my view, remains worthy of serious consideration.

V. Conclusion In this wide-ranging essay, I began by distinguishing different questions that are often confused in discussions of moral relativism and objectivity, and then I attempted to sketch the responses that a broadly Kantian theory might give to two of these questions. The first of these questions was: How (if at all) can we derive, justify, or support specific moral principles and judgments from more fundamental moral standards and values? In response, I briefly sketched a broadly Kantian deliberative perspective designed for this purpose, drawing from Kant’s later formulations of the Categorical Imperative. The second question was: How (if at all) can fundamental standards such as those found in the Kantian perspective be defended? In response, I briefly described two of Kant’s strategies for defending his fundamental standards and the important background of arguments against previous moral theories. The Kantian deliberative perspective, like rule-utilitarianism, sets us the task of finding or constructing a set of specific moral principles (or “rules”) that satisfy basic values and constraints but also take into account relevant facts about the human condition and the circumstances in which the principles are to apply. Unlike rule-utilitarianism, however, the Kantian perspective essentially includes values associated with human dignity

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that shape Kantian deliberations about the set of specific principles to be adopted. Kant’s strategies for defending the basic values inherent in the deliberative perspective are, first, to try to show that these values are presupposed in common moral thought and practice and, second, to appeal directly to the moral consciousness of the would-be skeptic. In neither strategy does Kant argue for his standards from (allegedly) more self-evident premises or appeal to intuitive “perception” of an independent moral order. Instead, he analyzes the presuppositions of common moral concepts and appeals to each person to acknowledge his or her own deep and persistent practical commitment to the basic standards as rationally authoritative. How far such arguments can succeed in the world today is an open question. Kant’s own confidence in them was a kind of morally based faith not refutable by empirical studies, but it is hard to share that confidence in today’s world. Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

CONSTRUCTING NORMATIVE OBJECTIVITY IN ETHICS By David B. Wong I. The Problem of Moral Normativity A prominent problem for all naturalistic theories of morality has been to account for the apparent normative force of a moral demand. By “normative force,” I mean the scope of proper application of that demand, along with the conditions for its proper application. To characterize the normative force of a moral demand is to characterize to whom it properly applies and what conditions must be fulfilled for it to be properly applied. In this essay, the crucial issues about normative force are whether and in what manner a moral demand can properly apply to an agent regardless of whether that agent has inclinations or desires that would be served by conforming to the demand. In ordinary moral discourse, it seems that moral demands can apply regardless of the agent’s possessing the relevant inclinations. To judge that U.S. officials have violated a moral duty by imprisoning foreign nationals without charges is not necessarily to refer to any inclination those officials have that would be satisfied by doing their duty. Indeed, one may judge so while assuming they have no such inclination. We talk as if the duty applies regardless of the existence of such a motivation. That moral demands are generally regarded as inescapable or nonhypothetical in this sense has generally dictated two opposing responses: on the one side, attempts to validate the apparent inescapability of moral demands; on the other side, attempts to show that the appearance corresponds to a deep and pervasive error on the part of moral-language users. My response generally falls into the first category and is based on recognition of the role of morality and, more generally, the role of substantive practical reason in shaping basic human motivations. By “substantive practical reason,” I mean to suggest that the apparatus for reasoning about what to do includes not simply rules of inference for passing from premises to practical conclusions about what to do, but also an array of reasons for agents to act in certain ways, where these reasons are situational features that weigh in favor of agents’ acting in certain ways. My conception of practical reason contrasts with the instrumentalist construal that has been dominant within naturalistic approaches to morality: the conception of practical reason as incapable of dictating ultimate ends but rather a formal faculty for guiding the transitions from basic, exogenous (relative to reason) motivations to nonbasic motivations and ultimately to DOI: 10.1017/S0265052508080096 © 2008 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA.

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actions. On the instrumentalist conception, normative demands on an agent ultimately derive from some motivation the agent already has. There is a connection between the way that the apparent inescapability of moral demands poses an explanatory problem for naturalistic approaches to morality and the dominant construal of practical reason. I subscribe to a naturalistic approach distinguished by three features: first, it seeks to understand the role of morality in human life by drawing on the human sciences; second, it rejects any a priori method for yielding substantive truths shielded from questioning informed by empirical evidence; and third, it refuses to take moral judgments, even ones we are strongly inclined to believe as true, as corresponding to some sui generis portion of the universe, existing independently of human needs, feelings, and will. Right away, problems arise from such a naturalistic perspective when we look at the third feature alongside the apparent inescapability of moral demands. What kind of normative content can apply to agents regardless of their inclinations if there is no moral reality existing independently of such inclinations? The dominant instrumentalist conception of practical reason would seem to eliminate the possibility that even if there were any such normative content it could necessarily provide everyone reasons to behave morally. Rather, the existence of reasons contingently depends on the particular inclinations and will of the agent. A classic example of the conclusion a naturalist might draw from this dilemma is Philippa Foot’s 1972 essay “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.” She accepts that whether one has reasons to conform to a moral demand depends on whether one has the appropriate desires or inclinations that would be served by conforming to the demand. On Foot’s instrumentalist interpretation of moral reasons, Immanuel Kant is simply wrong to hold that, regardless of the content of one’s desires, it is irrational to disregard one’s moral duty. It is true, she grants, that moral demands are nonhypothetical in applying to people whether or not they have any desires that would be served by being moral. Foot, however, has another way of explaining how moral demands are nonhypothetical. They are nonhypothetical in the same way that the demands of etiquette are.1 The demands of polite behavior apply even to those who have no interests served by being polite. Rude behavior remains subject to criticism from the standpoint of the institution of etiquette. To say of someone that he is rude does not mean, according to Foot, that he has a reason to be polite or that he is irrational to be rude. The same is to be said of morality, except that morality is taught with more emphasis. In general, it matters more to others that one should be 1 Philippa Foot, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” Philosophical Review 81 (1972): 305–16. In her later work, however, Foot takes a very different position on the force of moral demands. See her “Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 15 (1995): 1–14; and her Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), chap. 4.

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moral than that one should be polite, and this accounts for the feeling of inescapability we generally attach to moral demands. Kant, in Foot’s view, wrongly infers from this kind of inescapability that the moral law is a universally and necessarily binding law of practical reason. We can see the error in this kind of inference by recognizing that, in terms of scope and conditions for application, etiquette possesses the same kind of inescapability as morality. But no one supposes that there is a law of etiquette that is a binding law of practical reason. Thus, Foot preserves a kind of inescapability for moral demands by divorcing it from the having of reasons to conform to them. Richard Joyce, in contrast, argues that moral judgments purport to have a normative grip directly on the agent. To grant that a moral demand applies to an agent and yet to deny that she necessarily has a reason to satisfy it sounds very odd. This is to deprive moral demands of the practical clout or “oomph” they purport to have, to invoke Joyce’s felicitous technical term.2 Joyce correctly observes that Foot could have reformulated her position to admit the existence of reasons to be moral that do not depend for their existence on the agent’s having the right kind of desires. These are reasons offered by morality as an institution, such that, given its rules, for example, everyone has a reason not to harm innocent people. However, Joyce argues that this kind of reason does not supply the practical clout that we seem to attribute to moral demands in everyday moral discourse. Consider the parallel case of etiquette. Everyone has reasons to observe the rules of polite behavior in the sense that the rules of the institution of etiquette require the various forms of polite behavior. Someone who cares not at all for the institution of etiquette can disregard the reasons it offers to wield one’s dinner knife in the polite manner. The fact that reasons of etiquette lack practical clout may be an acceptable result, but it is not acceptable in the case of morality because we seem to expect moral reasons to have this clout.3 Moral reasons seem to be genuine in an institution-transcending sense, Joyce observes, such that they seem to yield genuine deliberative considerations for those to whom they are ascribed. But in the end, Joyce suggests, the appearance may be an illusion. Since Joyce does not see how nonhypothetical reasons could transcend institutions and the motivations of agents to whom they are ascribed (and I think it is fair to say that his version of a naturalistic perspective has something to do with this), he is prepared to attribute a fundamental error to moral-language users. In making moral demands on each other, we presuppose a kind of transcendent normativity that does not exist: there are no nonhypothetical reasons to be moral that are external to or transcend those specified by human 2 3

Richard Joyce, The Evolution of Morality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 202–3. Ibid., 194.

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institutions and the existing motivations of agents. It should be noted, however, that Joyce’s version of error theory, unlike J. L. Mackie’s version, does not end with a definite dismissal of practical clout, but rather with the expression of pessimism that it will ever be vindicated. Unlike Mackie, who flatly denies that moral reasons have the kind of practical clout that is attributed to them in everyday moral discourse, Joyce simply doubts that we will ever find a way of explaining how moral reasons could have such clout.4 His position is closer to a kind of moral agnosticism, rather than being a straightforward embrace of Mackie’s moral atheism.5 But why do we presuppose, in everyday moral discourse, that moral reasons do have practical clout? Joyce’s explanation begins with the idea that moral beliefs promote helping, cooperative behavior and regulate interpersonal relationships in such a way as to avoid great harm as well as produce significant benefit for all concerned. He points to recent developments in evolutionary theory that could explain why helping and cooperative behaviors could have a genetic basis. Joyce’s further hypothesis is that a moral sense, one of the functions of which is to produce guilt when one fails to be helpful or cooperative, could have an innate basis. This moral sense presupposes the concept of moral reasons that transcend institutions and apply independently of the individual’s motivations. Moral conscience, conceived in this way, might provide the extra “oomph” we need to be helpful and cooperative even in circumstances where being so might seem to go against prudence. In the long run, being a steady cooperative partner could enhance one’s reproductive fitness, suggests Joyce, expanding upon a theme taken from Robert Frank.6 The practical clout of moral reasons, in other words, may be an adaptive illusion. How compelling is Joyce’s response to Foot? Joyce is correct, it seems to me, in viewing Foot’s account of the inescapability of moral demands as deflating in its effect. On Foot’s account, moral reasons could apply to all agents, but the sense in which they could apply seems purely formal. Yet there is something unsatisfying about Joyce’s explanation of why we have a concept of transcendent moral reasons. According to him, the mistaken belief that such reasons have a normative grip on us independently of our existing motivations serves the function of nudging us 4

Ibid., 223. J. L. Mackie, in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), holds that it is a presupposition of moral discourse that objective values exist. However, such values cannot exist, he argues, because they are supposed to have a “categorically imperative element” that is “objectively valid” (ibid., 29). He means that objective values are supposed to give anyone reasons to behave in certain ways —reasons that are not contingent on having inclinations that would be served by so behaving. Therefore, Mackie’s position is that moral demands purport to give us noncontingent reasons to behave in certain ways, but such reasons cannot exist. Joyce’s position is more that no one has given a plausible way of explaining how such reasons could exist. He stops short of declaring that there is no such way. 6 Joyce, The Evolution of Morality, 121. See also Robert Frank, Passions within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions (New York: Norton, 1988). 5

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toward cooperation when prudence might move us the other way. But why should the belief in transcendent reasons have such a motivating effect on us? Joyce says that guilt over the thought of acting against such reasons might nudge us toward acting according to them, but why feel guilt if we can make no sense of their normative grip? Either the belief itself is sufficient to motivate us, which does not fit very well with Joyce’s naturalism,7 or it is simply the guilt that motivates us, but then the motivating effect of guilt suggests there is some prior motivation to act on behalf of others in the first place. On two crucial points, Joyce is right. First, we do treat moral demands as if they are not contingent on their serving the agent’s existing desires (on this, he and I agree with Foot). Second, we do treat moral demands as if they provide reasons for action (on this, he and I disagree with Foot). It sounds odd to say that Joe morally ought to stop cheating on his taxes and that he has no reason to do so. It sounds downright contradictory to my ears to say that Joe ought to stop cheating and that he has no moral reason to do so. Ought-to-do’s and duties imply reasons for those who ought to and who have duties. The next crucial question is, “What kind of reason is implied by moral ought-to-do’s and duties?” The reason is clearly a justifying reason. Within the moral perspective, to say that Joe has a moral reason to stop cheating on his taxes is to say that there is something about his situation that justifies his ceasing to cheat: for example, the fact that he would be benefiting from services funded by other taxpayers but not contributing to these services. Perhaps this is what Joyce means when he says that everyone is supplied reasons by the institution of morality. Joyce thinks that something more than a justifying reason from the moral perspective is needed for moral demands to have the practical clout ordinarily attributed to them. Otherwise, a reason that justifies an action from the point of view of etiquette could have as much of a normative grip on the agent as a moral reason. As to the nature of what more is needed, Joyce seems to have in mind something that could license saying to the agent, “You 7 Naturalists generally tend to accept David Hume’s thesis on the motivational inertness of reason: a belief alone cannot move an agent; it can do so only in conjunction with some motivation that has the structure of desire. On Elizabeth Anscombe’s way of distinguishing desire from belief, according to which desire aims to make the world fit with it rather than aiming to fit the world, see Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957). I think the motivational inertness thesis should not be an a priori feature of naturalism, but rather should be accepted on the grounds that it is part of more fruitful explanations of human action. Antonio Damasio’s work on what goes wrong with the practical reason of certain brain-damaged patients is a start at vindicating the empirical fruitfulness of Hume’s thesis. Damasio’s patients are distinguished by the normality of their theoretical reasoning, even about practical matters, and by the abnormal inability to act on reasoning, even in matters of prudential reasoning about which they are able to arrive at sound judgments in the abstract. The damage is to the parts of their brains that process emotions, and Damasio’s thesis is that practical reasoning, in order to be effective, needs to have various action scenarios marked by bodily processes that correspond to emotion. See Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error (New York: Avon Books, 1994), 50.

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are making a mistake if you don’t take this reason into account in your practical deliberation.” And the kind of mistake is not merely going against the norms of an institution, whether the institution is that of etiquette or morality. The intuition behind Joyce’s objection to Foot is that reasons addressed to an agent, if they have legitimate normative force, must go deeper than being based in an institution that claims some kind of authority over the agent. They must go deeper, I think, in three ways. First, the normative force is conceived as rooted in something that is not something purely external to the individual. It is not just, “They judge me to be mistaken if I do not conform to this demand.” Second, the root is not the same as prudential normativity. The normative force is not derived, for example, from concern about being punished by disapproving others. Third, there is a practical point to whatever normative force moral reasons possess, and a practical point that concerns the agent. Otherwise it’s just “browbeating,” to use Bernard Williams’s term.8 That is, it must be possible for the agent to act on the basis of recognizing them as moral reasons. We are now in a better position to understand why Joyce thinks he has to resort to error theory. Moral reasons purport to have a deeper grip on the agent than seems explicable on the basis of an instrumentalist theory of reasoning. It seems as if we do believe in transcendent, nonhypothetical reasons that apply to the individual externally to his motivational system, yet the instrumentalist theory, on a naturalistic view, seems to be the clearest theory we have of how reasons have a grip on us. We must be erring in conceiving moral reasons to be nonhypothetical, and Joyce is looking for an explanation of why that error is committed. He suggests that the error has a use, and if it is not instrumental to the individual’s motivation, perhaps it is instrumental to the “purposes” of natural selection. This explanation does not work well, as I have argued. I will offer an alternative explanation that affirms the existence of reasons to be moral that can get a normative grip on the individual’s motivations, even when the reasons cannot be explained in terms of what serves the individual’s desires and inclinations. I will argue that there is a good naturalistic explanation for their existence and of how they could come to motivate individuals whose existing interests are not served by acting according to them. To see our way clear to such an explanation, we must let go of one assumption that has been dominating the discussion among philosophers such as Foot and Joyce: the assumption that the apparatus of practical rationality exercises normative force only on the individual who is already constituted as an agent and an individual self. In contrast to this assumption, I would argue that the learning of moral reasons must be recognized 8 Bernard Williams says this about the idea of applying a reason requiring an individual to act even though that reason is “external” to the individual’s subjective motivational set. See Bernard Williams, “Internal and External Reasons,” in Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 101–13.

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as going into the very constitution of the agency and selfhood of the person. That is, moral reasons go deeper by influencing the very structure of motivation and by enabling practical deliberation itself. This might sound constructivist and Kantian. To the first, I plead a hearty “guilty.” To the second, I plead guilty if there can be a naturalistic and relativistic Kantianism. So that might be “not guilty.” Section II lays the groundwork for an explanation of the existence of nonhypothetical reasons to be moral by explaining how moral norms play a crucial role in making cooperation possible by shaping and reinforcing the diverse and potentially conflicting array of human motivations so that they are better suited for cooperative life. Section III sets out the way that moral norms are related to moral reasons, and also sets out how a particular set of moral reasons gets established as part of the morality of a group. Section IV explains how moral reasons so characterized help to shape motivation by becoming “embedded” in motivational propensities. Section V argues that given the role that moral reasons play in shaping human motivation and guiding practical deliberation, moral reasons go into the construction of persons, that is, into the construction of who they are as persons. This last theme leads to a naturalistic explanation of how moral reasons can have a deeper normative grip on the individual than can be explained by an instrumental conception of practical reason. Moral reasons do not simply answer to the desires and inclinations that make us who we are; they help to shape and are embedded in the desires and inclinations that make us who we are, and they can be transcendent reasons in that sense. The dominance of the instrumental conception of reason makes it harder to see that moral reasons are not simply based on independently existing desires and inclinations. Section VI attempts to undermine this dominance by arguing that the concept of a self that extends over time is a concept constructed to meet the demands of social cooperation. Prudential reasons are reasons to act on behalf of the self as it extends into the future and are often taken to constitute the paradigm of reasons that are instrumentally based on desires and inclinations of the individual. But such reasons, like moral reasons, are constructed to promote human cooperation and go into shaping the individual’s motivations, and are not merely based on the individual’s motivations. II. Some Scene Setting: The Cooperative Nature of Human Life and the Role of Moral Norms in Making This Possible Let me begin by sketching a picture of the diverse array of motivational propensities that are plausibly considered to be innate to human beings.9 9 Most but not all of the rest of this section draws from ideas expressed in chapter 2 of my Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

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Alongside their instincts for self-preservation, members of the human species (or many of them)10 developed capacities of care for kin, a willingness to engage in mutually beneficial practices of cooperation with others if they show a similar willingness, a willingness to punish those who violate the agreements and norms that make cooperative practices possible (even when the expenditure of resources to punish cannot be justified on the grounds of pure self-interest), and some degree of altruistic concern for nonrelated others. Human beings developed all these capacities because they were fitness enhancing in an inclusive sense, a conclusion that much of the latest work in evolutionary theory supports.11 While human beings certainly evolved as strongly self-interested creatures, they also evolved motivational capacities that allowed them to form cooperative bonds with each other. Human beings, then, were selected to have a diverse array of innate psychological tendencies that can potentially come into conflict with each other if they do not have ways of regulating and tempering the expression of these tendencies. Human nature can be profoundly ambivalent in this way. Cultural norms, I suggest, play a large part in this structuring of motivation. The human capacity to regulate the self through cultural norms coevolved with biological traits. The long period of the Pleistocene during which human beings evolved social instincts overlapped considerably with the period in which people began living in social groups with cultural institutions. If culture was a partner in this biological evolution, then it is plausible to hypothesize that some of our biological traits, as anthropologists Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson have suggested, might prepare us to regulate ourselves through culture: for example, the disposition to follow the majority or to emulate the most successful members of one’s group. (The latter strategy requires people to be selective imitators and to have at least an inkling of what good solutions to common problems are.)12 Such traits could have conferred an evolutionary advantage on 10

The reason for this qualification will surface later in this essay. On the selection mechanism for altruism toward kin, see W. D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1964): 1–52. On the mechanism for selecting a willingness to cooperate with others if they show willingness to cooperate, see Robert Trivers, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1971): 35–56. For a theory of “group selection” as the mechanism behind concern for non-kin, see Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); and for another theory emphasizing the role of sexual selection in altruism, see Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind (New York: Anchor Books, 2000). For evidence supporting the existence of non-self-interested willingness to punish, and to reward others who cooperate, see Herbert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 12 Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Boyd and Richerson, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). In the latter book, they define “culture” as “information capable of affecting individuals’ behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission.” By “information,” they mean “any kind of mental state, conscious or 11

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members of a group by enabling them to adopt satisfactory solutions to problems that were worked out by other members. Individuals do not need to “reinvent the wheel” on their own but can instead follow cultural norms established over some period of time, provided that the group’s environment changes slowly enough so that the solutions embodied in those norms remain satisfactory. Moral norms, on my view, culturally evolved to promote beneficial social cooperation, not simply through requiring behavior that is cooperative and considerate of the interests of others, but also through encouraging, strengthening, and directing the sorts of feelings and desires that make people promising partners in social cooperation.13 A virtue of this functional conception of moral norms is that it helps to organize and systematize many of the most central moral beliefs that appear across cultures and historical periods: beliefs that specify the conditions for permissibly killing or conducting aggression against other human beings; beliefs about the right to assign and distribute the basic resources needed to sustain life; and beliefs that require reciprocation of good for good. There is a lot of variation in how these beliefs are filled in with specific content and in the nature of the particular restrictions and distributions, but a common end these beliefs serve is the regulation and promotion of social cooperation. Some prominent functionalist accounts of morality claim that the primary purpose for which morality is invented is to counteract the destructive effects of self-interest (e.g., Thomas Hobbes) or the limitations on our sympathies for others (e.g., G. J. Warnock, J. L. Mackie).14 I favor a more complex functional picture, under which the profound ambivalence of human nature is managed in a variety of ways and not just through constraint of potentially destructive self-interest. Moral norms need to take into account the strength of self-interest in order to accommodate

not, that is acquired or modified by social learning, and affects behavior” (Not by Genes Alone, 5). I agree with Dan Sperber and Nicholas Claudière (“Defining and Explaining Culture,” Biology and Philosophy 22 [2007]) in their observation that Boyd and Richerson’s use of “information” is too broad in one sense —culture is better taken to include only widely distributed information —and too narrow in another sense —the relevant kind of information can be implemented not only in the form of mental representations but also in the form of behaviors, artifacts, and institutions. 13 This does not mean that directly facilitating social cooperation is the only function of morality. Some moral norms take the form of character ideals and conceptions of the good life specifying what is worthwhile for the individual to become and to pursue. This intrapersonal function of morality comprehends what has been called the “ethical,” as opposed to what might be called the “narrowly moral.” Morality in the broader sense used here comprehends the ethical. This part of morality helps human beings to structure their lives together in a larger sense, i.e., not just for the sake of coordination with each other but also for the sake of coordination within themselves. 14 See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, part 2, chaps. 13–17; G. J. Warnock, The Object of Morality (London: Methuen, 1971); and J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin, 1977), chap. 5.

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that motivation and to encourage its integration with motivations that more directly lead to acting on behalf of others. Effective moralities, then, do not merely restrain actions from self-interest or encourage the development of opposing motivations, though they do these things. Effective moralities provide outlets for the expression of self-interest that can be consistent with the expression of other-regarding motivations. Self-interested motivation can clearly have undermining effects on social cooperation when it motivates noncooperation and aggression against others. However, in the right circumstances self-interest can support, rather than oppose, other-regarding motivations.15 Arrangements that generate some self-interested return to other-regarding behavior can create an “ecological niche,” Jane Mansbridge suggests, that helps to sustain that behavior. By making that behavior less costly, these arrangements can increase the degree to which individuals feel they can afford to indulge their concerns for others.16 Rather than saying that an effective morality should always constrain self-concern and reinforce other-concern, I would suggest that it should often attempt to accomplish a productive balance or reconciliation between those types of concern. Norms of reciprocity that require a return of good for good received play a crucial role in such reconciliation. The need to reconcile self- and other-concern appears first in family relationships. Across widely different cultures, there are duties to respect and to honor parents and others whose roles involve raising and nurturing the young. Performance of such duties constitutes a kind of return of good for good, though what is returned, of course, is not always the same kind of good as what was originally given. Sometimes the return is similar to the original good, as in the case of children’s care of aged parents. Most other times, however, the return is a good that is fitting to the nature of one’s relationship to those who have cared and nurtured: obedience and receptiveness to what is taught, for example. Perfectly selfless parents might not need such reinforcement, but profoundly ambivalent beings might not be able to do without it. Note, however, that the benefit of being reciprocated for an act of helping need not be greater than the cost of helping in order to reinforce that initial act of helping. It need merely generate enough return so that helpers feel they can afford to indulge whatever other-directed concerns they have. Furthermore, we humans cooperate on a scale that is far larger than kin groups and the small groups in which it is feasible to directly reciprocate 15

See Gintis, Game Theory Evolving. Mansbridge has suggested that while other-regarding motivations such as those stemming from empathy do exist in most individuals, they do not have infinite value. Herbert Gintis’s portrait of Homo reciprocans suggests the same qualification. If the costs of benefiting others are very high, many will simply decline to pay. See Jane Mansbridge, “On the Relation of Altruism and Self-Interest,” in Mansbridge, Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990), 133–43. 16

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to those who have conferred benefits upon us.17 Moral norms play a key part in the shaping of motivations appropriate to such widely ranging cooperation. Moral norms, for example, might encourage the favorable evaluation of those who engage in helping and cooperative behavior, regardless of whether one has directly benefited from that behavior. In what has been called “indirect reciprocity,” others become favorably disposed through reputation toward the helper as a potential cooperative partner.18 A morality can help this kind of reinforcement via indirect reciprocity through placing value on trustworthiness. Learning who is trustworthy is learning to assess others for their reliability as potential cooperative partners, and communication of judgments of trustworthiness helps to sort the cooperators from those free-riders who move from group to group to avoid identification and punishment. Gossip may have a moral function after all, and the negative aspect of that function might be at least as important as the positive aspect. There is evidence that cooperators tend to punish freeriders by ceasing to cooperate with them even if noncooperation costs more to the cooperators than cooperation with free-riders.19 Moral norms direct the manner of expression of self- and other-concern so that they are more compatible. Such norms reinforce and strengthen other-concern. The performance of these functions is crucial for making a go of human cooperative life. In the next section, I explain how moral norms are related to moral reasons. III. What Moral Reasons Are: Their Relation to Moral Norms and Their Place in Moralities Reasons are those considerations weighing in favor of or against an agent’s doing something.20 They are structured as three-place relations 17 Explanations of altruism toward non-kin that rely solely on the idea of natural selection over genetic variations rely on rather special conditions being set in place. For example, Charles Darwin (in The Descent of Man) thought that natural selection sometimes operates on groups and not just on individuals, so that in the case of human beings, a tribe with members willing to sacrifice for other members will prevail in competition with other tribes with no such members, or will do well in adverse natural circumstances, and will therefore gradually predominate among the human species. This explanation, however, depends on groups’ preserving the genetic differences between them as the ones with greater proportions of altruists win out over the ones with lesser proportions. Members of a winning group who intermarried with members of a losing group would undermine this special condition, but this seems to have been a common occurrence. In contrast, the tendency toward conformity with cultural norms might preserve intergroup variation and allow groups with prosocial cultural norms to win out over others and continue adherence to those norms even in the face of intermarriage with members of other groups. See Peter J. Richerson, Robert T. Boyd, and Joseph Henrich, “Cultural Evolution of Human Cooperation,” in Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation, ed. Peter Hammerstein (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 368–69. 18 Richard Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987). 19 See Gintis, Game Theory Evolving. Robert Trivers, in “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” identified a crucial role for “moralistic aggression” (negative reactions to perceived violations of reciprocity) in helping to reduce the incidence of free-riding. However, it is Gintis who correctly points out that in many instances there is an altruistic element to the willingness to retaliate against free-riders. 20 This section summarizes ideas expressed in chapter 2 of my Natural Moralities.

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between an agent A, an action X, and a feature F in the agent’s situation that weighs in favor of A’s doing X. For example, A may have a reason to help B in virtue of B’s being in imminent danger of being harmed and A’s being able to help with no risk and low personal cost to herself. As I indicated in Section I, a reason defined in this way is a justifying reason. F is the feature that purportedly justifies A’s doing X. A justifying reason is not necessarily one that would motivate A to do X. It is not necessarily a motivating reason, but I will explain in Section IV how a justifying moral reason can become motivating. We may think of reasons in general as providing the basic vocabulary for thinking and talking about what to do. Judgments as to what a person morally ought or ought not to do or as to what is morally right or wrong for that person to do can be construed as judgments as to what relevant moral reasons require for that person. To think about what we morally ought to do, we need to identify the moral reasons relevant in the given situation, and in cases where more than one situational feature is relevant and the different features weigh in favor of different and incompatible actions, we need to judge what the balance of reasons requires. Moral norms guide our thinking about what reasons require. Sometimes they simply identify and articulate kinds of reasons, such as reasons to do what one has promised or agreed to do, or reasons to tell the truth in communicative contexts where there is a standard expectation of truthtelling. Sometimes norms provide guidance in thinking about what the balance of reasons requires, as in a situation where there are reasons against killing other human beings and reasons permitting one to save one’s own life. The relevant norm permits killing in self-defense. Sometimes a norm marks the relative centrality of a value to a morality, such as the norm requiring respect for individual liberty and autonomy or the norm that emphasizes the realization of one’s humanity in relationship to others. The content of reasons (e.g., which situational features go into the identification of what we have moral reason to do) and of norms (e.g., how to prioritize in cases of conflicts between reasons) is constrained by morality’s function of promoting and sustaining cooperation. That is, a genuine moral reason is such that acting on it under the appropriate circumstances contributes to this function of morality. (The contribution that acting on any single reason might make to morality’s functions might have to be assessed according to the ways in which it works with other reasons recognized within that morality.) Receiving the help of another person, for example, would constitute a reason to reciprocate. The moralities of particular societies yield a diverse and rich set of moral reasons that operate on much more specific levels (e.g., the forms of help that would create duties to reciprocate and the appropriate forms of reciprocation would be specified more concretely), but to have a chance at being genuine moral reasons, the reasons specified within these moralities must satisfy the general constraints.

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How does a set of specific moral reasons get established as part of the morality of a given group? I approach this question as a question about the concepts of moral reasons and how they acquire the reference they have.21 Much recent work on the nature of concepts has undermined the “classical” model that posits necessary and sufficient conditions for their application. One of the proposed replacements for the classical model is prototype theory, according to which concepts include features possessed by their instances, the features embodying the average or most typical instances. To take a frequently used example in the prototype literature, the concept of dog includes features making up a kind of composite “everydog” (has four legs, a tail, emits barking sounds), and an object that is a candidate for falling under that concept is more likely to qualify the more it resembles the composite typical dog.22 Another proposed replacement for the classical model is exemplar theory, which holds that having concepts involves the ability to call up particular instances that serve as the standards of comparison for candidate instances. Having the concept of a dog involves the ability to call up from memory particular dogs one has encountered, and one compares dog candidates to the closest exemplars to see if one gets a close enough match. Concepts need not be limited to one structure. Indeed, some concepts might involve the acquisition of prototypes that are constructed on the basis of exemplars. A child might acquire her prototype of everydog on the basis of encounters with particular dogs she knew while growing up.23 She might call up the dog prototype to categorize most dogs she encounters, but if she were to encounter a difficult case, she might recall an atypical dog exemplar that most closely resembles the present animal. Concepts of moral reasons seem to exhibit this kind of versatility. Consider the concept of a reason to help another person. In acquiring this concept, we might have had certain concrete situations identified as exemplars of a reason to help: a parent demonstrates for us what is to be done when a sibling falls down and hurts himself; the experience of an exchange 21 Much recent discussion of truth and reference has employed the language of concepts where the language of meanings has previously held sway. I prefer the language of concepts because it has become the language for expressing and defending alternatives to the “classical” model which holds that a term (or the concept expressed by it) refers by virtue of a set of necessary and sufficient conditions embodied in the concept. Furthermore, much of the empirical evidence undermining the classical model has come from studies in cognitive and developmental psychology of ways that people categorize things, and these studies are couched in the language of concepts. See Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn B. Mervis, “Family Resemblances: Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories,” Cognitive Psychology 7 (1975): 573–605. 22 See Jesse Prinz, Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books, 2003), 51–72. 23 See Andy Clark, “Connectionism, Moral Cognition, and Collaborative Problem Solving,” in Mind and Morals: Essays on Ethics and Cognitive Science, ed. Larry May, Marilyn Friedman, and Andy Clark (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books, 1998), 109–13. Jesse Prinz’s “proxytype” model of concepts is supremely eclectic in incorporating prototype, exemplar, and other models of concepts. See Prinz, Furnishing the Mind, chap. 6.

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of gifts or favors is in many cultures an occasion exemplifying a reason to reciprocate. Alternatively, people can construct prototypes of such reasons that generalize over these exemplar cases, giving rise to a conceptual representative of a “typical” reason, say, to help or to reciprocate. On many occasions of classification, we might call up a prototype if the current situation seems typical, but in novel or borderline cases, we might call up from memory the closest exemplar and try to determine whether there is a close enough match. Peter Singer’s argument that the relatively affluent have a strong duty to help famine victims drew much of its power from his analogy to the duty to save a drowning child if doing so merely required wading into a shallow pool and ruining one’s clothes.24 Saving the life of a child at very low cost to oneself may be an exemplar of what we have very strong reason to do (or very similar to such an exemplar), and Singer’s argument is that helping famine victims at comparatively low cost to oneself is a very close match to the case of saving the child. Recall that moral norms specify the situational features that go into the constitution of reasons (e.g., the situational feature of having received help is specified in a moral norm as a reason to reciprocate in some manner) and also specify the priorities among reasons in case these reasons require incompatible actions in a given situation (conflict may occur because a situation contains several morally relevant features that call for incompatible actions). People specify reasons and decide on priorities, and hence construct these norms, as they develop their cooperative life together and as they reflect on how well or how badly that life goes. The norms that emerge and get accepted within a group establish the truth conditions for moral judgments made by its members, since these judgments are equivalent to judgments about what there is reason to do or what the balance of reasons requires in a given situation. Therefore, the moral truth is constructed by human beings as they construct the norms that specify what there is moral reason to do, but the task of construction is subject to constraints on adequate moralities that spring from human nature and the functions of morality. I have already implied one such constraint: a morality that lacked norms requiring reciprocation for help received, for example, would be a woefully inadequate morality, given the functions of morality and given the way human beings are. Another constraint follows from the way that morality works through a large degree of voluntary acceptance of its norms. If conformity to its norms and reasons depended solely on the threat of force or coercion, the costs would detract greatly from the benefits of cooperation. It makes sense that human beings evolved a system for regulating and promoting cooperation that governs in this way. A 24 Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229–43.

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further step in the evolution of morality also makes sense for creatures who explain and justify their actions to one another: voluntary acceptance of moral norms came to be seen as based on their justifiability to those governed by them. Hence, another constraint on moralities is that justification for following the norms and reasons of an adequate morality cannot crucially depend on falsehoods. Norms that permit the subordination of the interests of some members to those of others often violate this constraint because they are rationalized on the basis of false presuppositions about the supposedly inferior capacities of the subordinated for rational thought and self-control. I have identified a couple of the ways in which the set of norms that groups actually construct could fail to satisfy the constraints on moralities. A group could fail to include norms that are necessary for the promotion of cooperation. The justification the group gives to some norms could be false or inadequate. When members of a group judge what the balance of moral reasons requires in a given situation, they invoke the norms the group has constructed that specify what moral reasons there are and the kinds of priorities that obtain among them. They invoke these norms on the assumption that they are adequate and meet whatever constraints apply to them, and because this assumption can be wrong, there is always room for criticism and debate over the group’s current norms and over the truth about what the balance of moral reasons requires. In this section, I have specified the structure of moral reasons and the role of moral norms in a group’s specification of what moral reasons there are and the priorities among them. I have given examples of constraints that apply to a set of moral norms that stem from the role of morality in promoting cooperation and from features of human nature. Morality performs this role through shaping human motivation. In the next section, I describe how moral reasons help to shape motivation.

IV. How Moral Reasons Help to Shape Motivation The crucial concepts in my explanation of how moral reasons function in shaping motivation are those of motivational propensities, the intentional objects of such propensities, the embedding of moral reasons within the intentional objects, and the channeling of propensities through restructuring of intentional objects. Motivational propensities are functional states grounding dispositions to act or to feel under certain circumstances. They can take the form of a felt urge toward an intentional object, as in thirsting after a drink of cool water (where the object is the action of drinking the water), but it is not necessary for the intentional object to serve as a phenomenological content of a propositional attitude. That is, it need not be an object of awareness for the agent. When we specify the intentional object of a motivational propensity, we are specifying the motivational

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direction of the relevant dispositions to act and the way they can form an intelligible bundle of action and feeling tendencies. Human motivational propensities are rooted in the imperatives of our biological being, but the basic directions of those propensities can be refined, rechanneled and reshaped. One of the ways in which these directions get changed is through our learning what reasons there are for doing things. The mere learning of such reasons does not assure any motivational propensity to act accordingly. The recognition of reasons must get embedded in the propensity.25 To support the possibility that the embedding of reasons can serve the purpose of channeling motivational propensities, let me point to the phenomenon of moods that become emotions. One way to distinguish moods from emotions is to say that moods are free-floating. They have no intentional object in the way that emotions have —no “aboutness.” One is afraid of something, but one can be anxious about nothing in particular. Free-floating anxiety can easily turn into specific fears. Consider the case of a man who suffered from chronic feelings of anxiety. After the birth of his first child, he became frequently concerned about his child’s safety, to the point of worrying that his child might one day climb onto the garage roof, fall off, and hurt himself on the stone bench below. This motivated the man eventually to hire workmen to break up the bench with sledgehammers and cart away the rubble.26 This case concerns an excessive fear, even a pathological one (though some of us who are parents may admit to taking only slightly less ridiculous precautions for the sake of our children), but it dramatically illustrates how moods acquire intentional objects. Certainly, the man had reason to be concerned about the safety of his child: e.g., the child’s vulnerability to harm and lack of awareness or judgment about what constituted dangerous play. This case also illustrates how reasons can get embedded in motivational propensities. That part of an emotion that is independent of the intentional object (the freefloating anxiety) can provide the motivational energy behind thoughts (the possibility of one’s child falling onto a stone bench) that serve as reasons for action (having the bench broken up), and it thereby is channeled into that specific course of action. The aforementioned case of the anxious man illustrates the mutability of our emotional lives. It has been remarked that flexibility of response is characteristic of creatures with emotions and that such flexibility con25 The theme of reasons getting embedded in motivational propensities is expressed in chapter 7 of my Natural Moralities, and in my essay “Moral Reasons: Internal and External,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2006). The characterization of embedding in the present essay, however, is revised from that previously published material, and is connected to empirical examples that I have not previously discussed. The application of this theme to the debate between the Footian and Joycean views of moral inescapability is not discussed in that previous work. 26 This case is described by Gerald L. Clore and Andrew Ortony in “Cognition in Emotion: Always, Sometimes, or Never?” in Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion, ed. Richard D. Lane and Lynn Nadel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 27.

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ferred some evolutionary advantage on them. If you have a dog, as I do, who is very interested in chasing rabbits, you might have experienced the reaction of rabbits upon spotting a potential predator approaching from a distance. A common initial response is to freeze while blood flows to the muscles in preparation for fleeing. Whether the rabbit continues to freeze or runs away seems to depend in part on the rabbit’s noticing whether the predator has zeroed in and is ready to pounce. Human beings have far greater flexibility of response in analogous situations. A member of a racial minority walks down the street of an unfamiliar part of town. As he notices the looks from those he is approaching, there might be a similar preparation for action, but a lot will depend on how he interprets the looks —as curious in a friendly way, as hostile, as getting ready to deliver an assaultive remark, and so on. As psychologists Gerald L. Clore and Andrew Ortony observe, “there seem to be two fingers on the emotional trigger: one controlled by early perceptual processes that identify stimuli with emotional value and activate preparation for action, and a second controlled by cognitive processes that verify the stimulus, situate it in its context, and appraise its value.” 27 They observe that increased flexibility is connected to an expanded capacity for subjective experience, which “registers the urgency of a situation, provides information, and allows processing priorities to be revised.” People “can entertain alternative courses of action and sample how they would feel about different outcomes,” and in order to do this, “they must be aware of the stimulus that occasions the processing.” 28 Thus, if our passerby registers looks of sullen but silent hostility, he may simply think to himself, “So what’s new?” and walk on by without a further glance. He may consider throwing a hard stare back but may feel that the possible escalated outcome of such an action would not be worth his own emotional disturbance, much less the potential bodily harm. A further bit of complexity in this example is that our passerby can, in some sense, decide how angry he’s going to get. He can decide how he will react to the situation and knows in advance that certain ways of reacting will escalate whatever feelings exist on the other side. He knows that he will react to such feelings, thereby raising the stakes on both sides. Let me clarify. I am not claiming that emotions simply are cognitions of a certain sort but rather that cognition can enter into complex relationships with affective and conative components of emotions, producing new emotions, changing existing ones, and channeling the motivational directions of those emotions. The interactivity of cognition and emotion allows for an adaptive flexibility of response. This flexibility and capacity for a greater self-regulation of one’s emotions characterizes human nature. 27 28

Ibid., 41. Ibid.

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It is not only a capacity exercised by individuals over themselves, but also a capacity exercised by groups over their members. Here is an example of a use of moral reasons to shape motivation. In 1A7 of the Mencius, an account is given of a conversation between Mencius and King Xuan, the ruler of a Chinese state. Mencius is attempting to persuade the king to adopt the Confucian dao or way of ruling by becoming a true king to his people, namely a king who tends to their welfare rather than launching his state into wars of territorial expansion, thereby over-taxing and drafting his subjects into his army. The king wonders whether he really has the stuff to be this kind of king Mencius is describing, and Mencius replies that he thinks so, asking whether the following story he has heard about the king is true. The story is that the king saw an ox being led to slaughter for a ritual sacrifice. The king decided to spare the ox and substituted a lamb (that he did not see) for the ritual sacrifice. The king acknowledges that this story is true, and thinking back on that occasion, recalls that it was the look in the ox’s eyes, like that of an innocent man being led to execution, that led him to substitute the lamb. Mencius then comments that this story demonstrates the king’s capability to become a true king, and that all he has to do is to extend the sort of compassion he showed the ox to his own people.29 The conversation between Mencius and King Xuan portrays, in my view, an attempt by Mencius to embed a reason to care for one’s people in the king’s motivations. The king had shown a prior capacity for compassion in sparing the ox (even if he substituted the lamb, but that is another aspect of the story I cannot linger on), and Mencius is seizing on the king’s recall of that past event in pressing for another expression of that capacity, but now directed toward his people. The king is no moral exemplar, but he is likely to have already learned that the vulnerability of his people to suffering (much of it potentially inflicted by him) is a justifying reason from the standpoint of morality for him to take certain actions and to refrain from others. What would constitute that reason’s being embedded in the motivational propensities that constitute the king’s compassion? The king would see the potential suffering of his people as a reason to act, and that recognition would become associated with so acting, such that alleviating or preventing the suffering of his people would now be part of the intentional object of his compassionate motivational propensities. This does not mean that the king’s recognition of his people’s suffering would invariably result in the appropriate action, but if it did not, it would mean another set of appropriate reactions. One sort of reaction would be to question himself. He would question whether he had failed to do what he 29 For a translation of this passage, see Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, ed. Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan Van Norden (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2001), 116. The version of the text available today is dated from the second century c.e.

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had reason to do. Other appropriate reactions would be remorse and actions such as apology or an attempt to compensate those he had failed. Therefore, the embedding of a reason in motivational propensities means not only that the agent recognizes the reason, but also that recognition of the reason guides the exercise of the propensity in a way it had not before the embedding took place. And in cases where recognition of the reason fails to result in exercise of the propensity, embedding may still show itself in appropriate emotions (such as remorse) or actions (such as apology or attempted compensation). How is such embedding accomplished? The answer to this must ultimately rely on a great deal of empirical study. Here are some ideas to test. Perhaps reminding the king of a previous exercise of his compassion, prompting him to recall it so that he relives and refeels that occasion, while reminding him that he has reason to alleviate or prevent the suffering of his people, is an effective way of trying to embed that reason in his compassion. Perhaps that is why dry philosophy lectures in normative ethics are so ineffective at bringing about genuine moral change in their audiences, and why films, narratives, and poetry can be more effective. The embedding of a reason is more likely if the propensity is activated at the time that the reason is being recognized by the agent. When the propensity involves complex emotion of the sort that can interact with new cognition, we have the possibility of transformation of emotion as the propensity is channeled. Much of the most interesting work in the cognitive neuroscience of emotion and cognition is still very speculative. Allow me to speculate, however, on the neural mechanisms of embedding, using Antonio Damasio’s theory of somatic markers.30 Somatic markers are bodily reactions to a mental image and correspond to emotions. They ultimately derive from our biological drives, though they can become greatly modified through experience. A negative marker, attached to the mental image of a possible action and/or its outcome, can lead one immediately, before any cost-benefit analysis, to reject an option, roughly in the way one might recoil from the sight of a snake. Somatic markers can get connected to predicted future outcomes of certain scenarios. In deciding whether to alienate a friend for the sake of financial gain, one might picture the look on his face when he finds out what you’ve done, for example. Positive markers are beacons of incentives; that is, they highlight a certain response option. One of Damasio’s hypotheses is that when different somatic markers are juxtaposed to different combinations of images, they modify the way the brain handles those images, and thus operate as a bias. The bias might allocate attentional enhancement differently to each component image, the consequence being the automated assigning of varied degrees of attention to varied contents. 30 Damasio, Descartes’ Error, 173–89. Damasio is a behavioral neurologist and neuroscientist at the University of Southern California.

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This hypothesis rings true to me phenomenologically and also as an explanation of how others attach greater weight to certain reasons rather than others. Damasio’s picture provides a way of making sense of the operation of Aristotelian habituation, to which John McDowell refers when he talks about the acquisition of a “second nature” in the process of socialization.31 Consider the example of the negative marking of the scenario of a friend’s face when he finds out you’ve betrayed him for the sake of financial gain. The negative marking biases your attention toward that scenario in considering all the consequences of the betrayal, perhaps eclipsing alternative scenarios of what you would do with the money. It might be so strong a negative marker that it exhibits the phenomenon that McDowell mentions as characteristic of a virtuous person’s deliberations: a moral reason “silencing” other nonmoral considerations that, in other contexts, might weigh significantly in practical deliberation. The thought of betraying a friend “silences” other considerations in altogether diverting your attention from the prospect of financial gain that normally weighs in favor of a course of action. Damasio’s somatic marker theory might be part of the explanation of what happens when moral reasons become embedded in motivational propensities. The situational features designated by reasons get somatic markers attached to them. If Mencius succeeds with King Xuan, the somatic marker that was attached to looking into the eyes of the terrified ox gets attached to images of his people suffering from the wars he embarks his state upon. My suggestion in previous sections has been that human beings evolved to guide themselves through cultural norms that specify reasons and establish priorities among reasons. In this section, I have given an account of the role that moral reasons play in the shaping of motivations. In moral education and socialization, these reasons become embedded in motivational propensities and render individuals more suitable for the forms of cooperative activity that characterize human life. By shaping motivational propensities that can become central to who we are, reasons can enter into the kinds of persons we are. V. The Challenge of Accounting for Normative Objectivity: How Reasons Go into the Construction of Motivations and Persons Let me return to the problem of making sense of nonhypothetical moral requirements that are external to individuals’ existing motivations. Such requirements purport to have a deeper grip on the agent than seems explicable on the basis of an instrumentalist theory of reasoning, according to which these requirements must concern actions that serve some existing 31

John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 84.

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motivations of the agent. Philippa Foot responds by construing the requirements as social demands that individuals only have reason to satisfy when it would serve some of their motivations to do so. Richard Joyce correctly sees that these demands purport to have a deeper normative grip on individuals, but he does not see how individuals necessarily would have reasons to satisfy these demands, independently of their existing motivations. He does not see this because he holds an instrumental theory of rationality. I have proposed an alternative theory of rationality that includes not only forms of correct inference from beliefs to beliefs, and from beliefs and desires to desires and intentions, but also substantive conceptions of what people have reason to do. Such reasons are social constructions in the following sense: the explanation of why we have the moral reasons we have is that they play a crucial role in shaping our motivational systems for the cooperative life. The kinds of reasons we have are not just out there independently of this function they have in enabling human life. Furthermore, they are constructed in the sense that the specific form of the reasons we have is a variable matter that is not dictated by constraints on morality following from its functions and human biological traits. These functions and traits certainly do constrain how we attempt to shape motivation for the sake of cooperation, but they do not dictate specific reasons. For example, moralities are constrained to require reciprocation for the help of another, but a rich and diverse set of moral reasons specify the specific circumstances under which one has a reason to reciprocate and in what manner one should reciprocate. Moreover, I hold that such functional constraints on morality underdetermine what a morality must look like in another sense. In a great number of cases, such constraints do not dictate how a morality guides people in cases of conflict between important values such as special duties to reciprocate to particular others such as members of one’s family (on the one hand) and impersonal duties to care for and act on behalf of strangers (on the other hand). Nor do the constraints dictate whether a morality is to emphasize the value of belonging to and being responsible to a community that is defined by a set of relationships or the value of being left to choose for oneself the kind of life one is to live independently of the community to which one belongs and its social interests. Moralities distinguish themselves from one another precisely in how they guide people’s actions in the case of value conflicts such as conflicts between special and impersonal duties or between community and autonomy. Guidance is provided by particular value priorities, and these priorities are constructed in the sense that they are not there independently of the ways of life that people construct for themselves.32 32 This theme leads to the way in which my theory is relativistic: moralities that are incompatible in the sense of requiring different patterns of action, at least in some types of situations, may correspond to different sets of truth conditions established for moral judg-

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Constructed reasons and constructed moralities contribute to constructed persons. Consider again the idea that human biological nature coevolved with the capacity to act on cultural norms. Moral reasons are an important subset of cultural norms and play an especially important role in fitting persons for the cooperative life. Moral reasons fit persons for such a life if they get embedded in motivational propensities: for example, propensities regarding how much persons care for others; which others they care for, and in what degree and in what ways; and whether the special duties of family take precedence over impersonal duties to strangers (and, if so, under what circumstances). Of course, such embedding does not always take place, and there may be a number of causes for this result. One cause stems from the polymorphism of human motivational traits. For example, one of the hypothesized mechanisms by which altruistic traits could be selected is group selection, under which altruism is selected because it increases the fitness of some groups over other groups. Such a hypothesis does not require the “winning” groups to have nothing but altruists, but only a relatively high concentration of altruists compared to their competitors. Thrasymachus might be the spokesman for the purely self-interested cohort that group selection might have left in place. Members of this cohort are, no less than altruists, shaped by what reasons are constructed in their societies, but in their case, the most influential reasons get embedded in self-regarding propensities. Whether they behave morally might depend crucially on the willingness of others to invest their resources in punishing noncooperators. Another cause for the failed embedding of moral reasons is that cultures provide and shape individuals with different kinds of reasons — the prudential kind, for instance, as well as much more specific reasons, such as the beauty of an elegantly formed sentence as a reason for learning the craft of writing. Institutions and practices within a society may have their own subcultures and may stress reasons other than the moral kind. The degree of importance they put on such reasons can create tensions and outright conflicts with morality. As an increasing number of anthropologists have recently come to recognize, cultures are typically not harmonious and coherent but internally diverse with many different competing strains, containing corresponding differently motivated individuals and significant motivational ambivalence within individuals.33 ment. These different sets of truth conditions may refer to common types of moral reasons, but embody different value priorities in providing instructions as to how to balance and prioritize conflicts between different moral reasons when they apply to the same situation. See chapter 2 of my Natural Moralities. 33 The anthropologist Bradd Shore gives, in a study of Samoa, a striking example of a culture’s internal diversity and of the resulting ambivalence. Following the violent murder of his father, a young man received public counsel from a village pastor in formal Samoan that he must resist the temptation to avenge his father’s death, and must keep in mind the values of peace and harmony and forgiveness. Yet, later, this same pastor, this time in colloquial Samoan, warned the young man that if he failed to kill the murderer of his father,

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Consider that many of the most compelling identities that people possess are social-role identities. To have such identities is to be practically oriented so as to perform the responsibilities and exercise the rights of the relevant roles. In this regard, social roles provide their own sets of reasons for action —situational features to which people inhabiting these roles are prompted to respond in certain ways. Some social roles provide reasons that overlap with or are included within moralities; for example, being a parent provides reasons for responding to children’s needs and nurturing their capabilities. However, the reasons provided by such moralized social roles might not always lead to moral action, as when parents zealously strive to meet their children’s needs at the cost of neglecting and undercutting the welfare of other children. Other social roles, such as those created within economic institutions and practices, create even more potential conflict with moral reasons. Social ideals that are championed by economic institutions may compete with moral ideals as well as affect the content of these ideals. Consider persons in whom moral reasons are not well-embedded or are embedded in motivational propensities that are relatively weak compared to others. Are such persons irrational for not being motivated by moral reasons? Here I agree with those who think that irrationality connotes a more blatant error in reasoning than failure to appreciate some of the reasons there are (where failure to appreciate means failure of embedding in motivational propensities). Irrationality connotes things such as the embrace of blatant inconsistencies.34 Failure to appreciate moral reasons falls into the realm of the unreasonable, where this means something like not being a suitable cooperative partner, but fellows such as Thrasymachus would not be particularly disturbed by that label. Moral reasons, then, have a deep normative grip on the individual in being part of the apparatus of practical reason with which individuals are socialized and made into rational agents. But the depth of the grip does not make it such that every individual will be irrational in failing to be motivated by the normative force of moral reasons. The conception of practical reason defended in this essay bears an important resemblance to the kind of expressivism defended most prominently by Allan Gibbard.35 He denies, as I do too, that reason is purely instrumental. Talk about “what makes sense” to do and feel emerges from the efforts of human beings to coordinate with one another. Gibbard he would not be his father’s son. See Shore, “Human Ambivalence and the Structuring of Moral Values,” Ethos 18 (1990): 165–79. For an influential critique of the older view of culture as a static, uniform whole, see Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989). 34 See John McDowell, “Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?” in McDowell, Mind, Value, and Reality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 77–78; and Thomas Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998), 25–26. 35 Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

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recognizes that talk about what makes sense or what we have reason to do and feel has the crucial function of shaping motivation for the sake of further cooperation (though he does not, to my knowledge, tell a story about reasons getting embedded in motivational propensities). He does not interpret normative talk as straightforwardly cognitive in content. I have articulated a view of how reasons-talk can perform an expressivist and shaping function while being straightforwardly truth-functional. Reasons are situational features that require of agents certain kinds of actions or omissions. Moral reasons are situational features identified in accordance with morality’s function of promoting and sustaining social cooperation. Certain reason types will be universal, required by any morality that has a hope of performing its function. Others will be local, required by a particular morality but not necessarily by all that can perform morality’s function. I have outlined a way that truth-functional talk of reasons can perform the function of shaping motivation through the embedding of moral reasons in the intentional objects of motivational propensities. VI. Constructed Persons and Reasons of Prudence The dominance of the instrumental conception of reason makes it harder to see that moral reasons are not simply based on independently existing desires and inclinations. This section attempts to undermine the instrumental conception’s dominance by arguing that the concept of a self that extends over time is a concept constructed to meet the demands of social cooperation. Prudential reasons are reasons to act on behalf of the self as it extends into the future and are often taken to constitute the paradigm of reasons instrumentally based on desires and inclinations of the individual. But such reasons, like moral reasons, are constructed to promote human cooperation and go into shaping the individual’s motivations, not merely answering to them. To begin my case for this conclusion, consider Thomas Nagel’s argument in The Possibility of Altruism that the interests of an agent’s future self provide her with reasons to act now, even though no presently existing interest grounds such reasons.36 Failure to recognize such reasons constitutes a failure in prudential rationality to recognize one’s future self as equally real as one’s present self. Nagel makes this argument in order to construct an analogy. The failure in prudential rationality is like the failure to recognize others as equally real as oneself. My focus here is not on the analogy but on Nagel’s argument that it is a failure of prudential rationality to fail to recognize one’s future self as equally real as one’s present self. Nagel’s argument is ultimately an appeal to our intuitions: Isn’t it evident upon reflection that one’s future self is as equally real as one’s present self? I do not think this thought is so self-evidently true. 36

Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), chap. 8.

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I agree that reasons of prudence include reasons to act now for the sake of interests we will have in the future, but such reasons are constructed for the sake of constructing agents who can integrate and balance among their interests over time. To learn that one has reasons to provide for the satisfaction of one’s future interests is to learn such integration and balance. The question of what kind of balance is right to achieve is trickier than simply giving each of one’s future selves equal consideration. One might think that all the stages of one’s self are equally real and therefore deserve equal consideration, but the more distant those stages, the less certain one is about their existence, and moreover, the greater the likelihood of there being less psychological continuity and connectedness with those future stages. (Here I use “continuity” in the Parfitian sense to refer to memories of past experiences, intentions formed and then acted upon, resemblance over time between sets of beliefs, desires, and goals, and resemblance over time in character traits; and I use “connectedness” to refer to overlapping chains of psychological connections.) 37 My far-future self may be a much more admirable person than I am now, but for that reason, I may feel less connection with that person and, not unreasonably, may give that person less consideration than my near-future selves. In putting forward these considerations, I do not mean so much to undermine this particular conception of prudence as to indicate that the pragmatic purpose for having prudential reasons is consistent with significant variations in judgment about what we have prudential reasons to do. There is no fact such as the equal reality of various future selves I might be, from two minutes hence to twenty years down the line, that requires a particular conception of prudence. Derek Parfit, in Reasons and Persons, has argued that, in effect, we may have no more reason to care about a future self than we do about other people. This is because there is no deep metaphysical fact that marks our separateness from other people. There would be such a fact if we were separate Cartesian thinking substances, but if one thinks, as Parfit does (and I do), that there are no such separate substances, the most plausible alternative view is that being one person over time is nothing beyond having a brain and body and a series of interrelated physical and mental events (where this relation is characterized in terms of psychological continuity and connectedness). Christine Korsgaard has argued in response to Parfit that the requirements of practical agency in fact confer unity on the self. She agrees with Parfit that there is no deep metaphysical fact about being the same person over a stretch of time —no ontological entity or fact beyond having a brain and body and a series of interrelated physical and mental events (interrelated, that is, through connectedness and continuity). Rather, and here is where she departs from Parfit, the ground for thinking of oneself as 37

Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 206–16.

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a unified agent is the raw necessity for eliminating conflict among our various motives and for the unity implicit in the standpoint from which one deliberates and chooses among these motives. On her view, this standpoint involves some principle or way of choosing that one regards as expressive of oneself and that provides reasons regulating one’s choices among desires.38 Furthermore, she observes that most of our projects extend over periods of time and that we think of our activities and pursuits as interconnected in various ways, comprising plans of life. The unity of the self is a consequence of the practical requirements for coherence over time and among motives and activities. On her view, then, the practical requirements of agency ground prudential reasons directly, and not by way of being founded on a prior notion of unity. I accept Korsgaard’s argument to this extent: the practical requirements of agency do contribute to the importance of identity over time, however we conceive of its basis. But the degree of practical coherence we need, and the duration over which we need it, seems a variable matter and subject to overriding by other practical concerns. A certain degree of conflict among our motives is an inevitable liability of richness of motive and interests. Striving to be true to the goals one has set for oneself in the past makes possible much of what bears great value in human life, but consistency has a cost. Much of the Daoist text Zhuangzi celebrates a life of spontaneity and of concentration on the present moment because a plan-filled, goal-oriented life is one that becomes rigid and creates a filter on one’s perceptions of what there is and what is to be valued in the present situation. Those who are highly goal-oriented tend to see their present situation only in terms of what will satisfy their goals, and not in terms of those things in their present situation that might satisfy and stimulate but fail to fit with those goals.39 One might agree that the nature of human commitments to projects requires a conception of oneself as unified over certain spans of time, but also point out that a project need not extend indefinitely into the future. A young man of twenty-two might commit to trying to make a go of playing in a rock band until he reaches thirty, but leave the future open after that. He thinks of his life as episodic, as Galen Strawson suggests,40 more along the lines of a series of projects, not necessarily unified by overarching goals or motives. A well-known 38 Christine M. Korsgaard, “Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989): 109–15. 39 In the first chapter of the Zhuangzi, for example, Zhuangzi’s logician friend Huizi is given seeds that give birth to enormous gourds. When Huizi tries to find a use for the shells of these gourds, he can only think of using them as water dippers or water containers, but they are too big and heavy for such uses. Failing to find a use for them, he smashes them to pieces. Zhuangzi scolds his friend for having underbrush in his head, pointing out that he could have lashed the shells together to make a kind of raft to ride upon the lakes and rivers. See Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, trans. A. C. Graham (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2001), chap. 1. 40 Galen Strawson, “The ‘Self’,” in Models of the Self, ed. Shaun Gallagher and Jonathan Shear (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 1999), 3–24.

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philosopher, not Strawson, once told me that he did not worry about consistency of theme between his many books. He compared himself to an artist who works on a painting, finishes it, and then goes on to the next without thinking of consistency between them. I am not denying that the requirements of agency might favor a degree of diachronic unity, but they might not reproduce the kind of unity we are accustomed to ascribing to persons over time, nor would they necessarily produce the familiar reasons of prudence that extend into the future. More promising, I believe, is John Locke’s suggestion that the concept of personal identity is forensic in nature.41 That is, it enables the holding of persons as responsible for their past and future actions, making memory one of the crucial psychological threads connecting life slices. Furthermore, a concept of persons enabling ascriptions of responsibility for past and future actions (linking, for example, the one who forms intentions with the one who acts on them) is crucial for the ways in which cooperation is encouraged through punishment of norm violators. Deterrence is possible only with such unity over time. Such enforcement of moral and other cultural norms also seems to require the person as unified to be embodied. It is difficult, at the very least, to imagine a practical way of identifying and punishing noncooperators who fail to be embodied. The concept of the person persisting over time is, I believe, a prototype concept. As such a concept, it would include the feature of having a human body that persists over time, an embodied consciousness of the environment, and memories, thoughts, intentions, and psychological traits that are continuous and/or connected in a high degree. The explanation for why the person prototype has this content and not some other content is bound up with the cooperative nature of human life and with what it takes to sustain that nature. It is not just that agents are needed who conceive of certain intentions as their own and therefore as needing to be carried out, but also that embodied agents need to be identifiable and held responsible for their cooperativeness or lack of it.42 We run into conceptual puzzles when we consider cases, most of them hypothetical or counterfactual, in which some of the prototype characteristics are missing. It then becomes very unclear what the concept of personal identity implies for these cases as to whether the person has 41 John Locke, “Of Identity and Diversity,” in Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), ed. P. H. Nidditch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 42 Philip Pettit has raised the question of whether my proposal has a Euthyphro problem: Do we hold a person responsible because he’s the same person, or do we judge him to be the same person because he is the one in the position to be held responsible? My answer is that the concept of a person persisting over time evolved because the conditions of human cooperative life require relatively long-term persisting agents to hold responsible (the second possibility). But once that concept of a persisting person is in place, with accompanying bodily and psychological criteria for persistence also in place, we hold particular individuals responsible because they are the same persons who did the things for which we need to hold someone responsible.

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persisted or disappeared or become a different person or two different people, and those who react to the cases appear to put forward a variety of intuitions or have none at all (for example, so-called “fission” cases in which a person splits into two who have the same degree of psychological connectedness and continuity with their ancestor; or teletransportation in which one’s body on earth is destroyed but one’s psychological properties and processes are preserved and associated with a new body on Mars). I think there is often no single right answer as to whether the person has persisted in such cases.43 Persons, I believe, do not constitute a natural kind. The concept of persons is constructed at least partly in response to practical considerations of the type I have described. To say the concept is constructed, I again want to make clear, is not to say that the very features of the prototype are somehow fabricated. Rather, it is to say that they were selected as features of the person prototype out of practical considerations. These practical considerations then motivate a concept of personal identity over time, which is presupposed by the concept of prudence and whatever reasons are associated with it. However, the practical considerations that go into the formation of the relevant prototype or exemplars may not dictate an answer to whether a person has persisted in circumstances that go far beyond the context in which the prototype or exemplars are intelligible. That the structure of the person concept is responsive to social and practical considerations, in other words, might explain why it is very difficult to extend the answer to situations where the social practicality vanishes.44 If I am right in my story of how we become selves persisting over time, the reasons we have to provide for our future selves are not based on a necessary and self-evident conception of practical rationality as embodying the fundamental aim of satisfying our desires. Such an aim presupposes a conception of selves persisting over time that is constructed to 43 Or consider the perplexities that Bernard Williams raises in “The Self and the Future,” Philosophical Review 79 (1970): 161–80. On the one hand, if I imagine that A’s memories are transferred into B’s body, and that A’s body is tortured, and if I further imagine that it was my memories that got transferred to B’s body, I would feel fortunate. This seems to favor the psychological criterion for personal identity. On the other hand, if I am told that I am going to be tortured tomorrow, but that I will not remember anything leading up to the torture, and that, moreover, my impressions of the past will be quite different from the ones I have now, I will still be quite frightened and will not take any comfort in the psychological discontinuity. This seems to favor the bodily criterion of personal identity. Perhaps these conflicting intuitions are explicable if both the bodily criterion and the psychological criterion are present in the prototype without the kind of weighting of these different features that would decide which one is more fundamental to identity. 44 I agree with David Shoemaker’s view, raised in discussion of this paper, that there can be different concepts of personal identity; e.g., biological criteria of identity might be relevant in determining whether I am owed compensation for something that happened to me as a fetus, even if the bodily-psychological concept of the person I have been discussing might not make me the same person as that fetus. Different concepts of the person might arise in different social contexts and on the basis of different practical considerations. And it is possible that different concepts of the person could overlap in their application to the same context and come into conflict. In that case, conceptual revision might be necessary.

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satisfy practical requirements of the social life. These practical requirements are the source of our criteria for judging which desires are desires of our persisting selves and not some other selves, and therefore these requirements are presupposed by the reasons we have for satisfying those desires. VII. Conclusion Moral reasons are not given by what will satisfy an individual’s desires. Nor are moral reasons simply expressions of social demands on the individual. Rather, they can have a normative grip that reaches deeply into the individual. They do so by referring to situational features that call for actions that support the cooperative nature of human life. Through moral education and socialization, moral reasons become embedded in the individual’s motivational propensities and thereby become part of what constitutes that individual as a particular person. The requirements of social cooperation also shape the concept of personal identity over time and the reasons of prudence associated with such a concept. While many have taken reasons of prudence to be the paradigm of reasons instrumentally based on desires of the individual, reasons of prudence, like moral reasons, are rooted in normative demands (based in the cooperative nature of human life) that go into shaping the motivations of the individual. The story I have told allows that moral reasons can have a deep normative grip on many (perhaps most) individuals, but not necessarily on all. This is the right result, I believe. The normativity of morality is inescapable and can reach deeply into the individual’s motivations and not simply answer to whatever the individual’s motivations happen to be. However, there will be individuals to whom this inescapability does not matter. These are individuals who are socially constituted, not through moral reasons, but through other kinds of reasons. That is why the common conception is that morality is indeed inescapable, that its normative grip can go deeply into the individual, but also why Thrasymachus is not necessarily irrational for being indifferent to the demands of morality. The fact that morality has the function of reconciling self-concern and other-concern also explains the conception of moral reasons as overriding reasons. Moral reasons are grounded in what is purported to be appropriate consideration of the agent’s self-interest and therefore purport to override reasons of self-interest when such reasons conflict with the appropriate weight given to them in the context of reconciling and balancing self- and other-concern. That is, moral reasons, by virtue of the kind of reasons they are, purport to give due weight to the agent’s self-regarding interests and therefore purport to justifiably override those interests when necessary. At the same time, this explanation of the overridingness of moral reasons is consistent with treating the moral perspective as just one

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kind of normative perspective 45 that, from the agent’s all-things-considered point of view, might not necessarily have overriding force. Moral reasons will fail to have such overriding force if the agent is one in whom such reasons fail to motivationally embed at all, or if the agent cares to some degree about morality but not enough to override other things she cares about.46 On the one hand, moral reasons purport to override other reasons based on their function of helping to organize the individual’s motivational system from the standpoint of promoting and sustaining cooperation. On the other hand, this overriding force is conferred only from that normative perspective. It is a normative perspective that makes human life livable and that goes into the constitution of many or most people, but in the end it can claim superior authority only on the basis of what makes life livable for a community of people. It cannot claim superior authority as a perspective that must motivate each person for that person’s life to be livable. Philosophy, Duke University

45 Other normative perspectives might include the perspective of self-interest, or of other nonmoral ideals to which the agent has subscribed. 46 A question from Michael Huemer prompted me to realize the last possibility: that moral reasons might become motivationally embedded but still be overridden by other embedded reasons.

WHAT DOES MORAL PHENOMENOLOGY TELL US ABOUT MORAL OBJECTIVITY?* By Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons I. Introduction Roughly speaking, moral phenomenology concerns the what-it-islikeness of moral experiences —what it is like, for example, to experience oneself as being morally obligated to perform an action.1 Some philosophers argue that attention to one’s moral phenomenology reveals that moral experiences have “objective purport,” in the sense that such experiences purport to be about some objective moral reality. In general, however, philosophers have not paid much attention to the rich details of moral phenomenology —the details of the what-it-is-likeness of moral experience.2 Rather, when philosophers appeal to moral phenomenology (as they often do), one typically finds mention of such features as prescriptivity, sense of authority, and the like, but not much in the way of concentrated attention on matters of phenomenological detail. Perhaps moral philosophers think they do not need to bother with such detail, which (one might think) is better left to more qualified experts, including psychologists, poets, and playwrights. But if one is serious about having one’s moral theory (whether in normative ethics or metaethics) fit with, or otherwise accommodate, the facts of moral phenomenology, then getting the phenomenological facts straight is crucially important. More specifically, if one wants to make a case for some form of moral objectivity on the basis of appeal to moral phenomenology, one must take a careful look at the phenomenology in question. A fully adequate treatment of moral phenomenology and its bearing on questions of moral objectivity would require examining a vast range of * We wish to thank the other contributors to this volume, and its editors, for helpful comments. We are especially grateful for comments by Janice Dowell, Michael Huemer, Scott McDonald, Philip Pettit, David Shoemaker, and David Wong. We also benefited from comments from Robert Audi, Michael Gill, and Uriah Kriegel. 1 In Section III below, we discuss the subject matter and method of phenomenology in general, and in Section V, we say more about the subject matter and method of moral phenomenology. 2 Nor have they spent much time grappling with questions about the scope, unity, and distinctiveness of moral phenomenology. One major exception is Maurice Mandelbaum, The Phenomenology of Moral Experience (Glencoe, IL: The New Press, 1955). More recently, we ourselves have broached such questions in Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, “Moral Phenomenology and Moral Theory,” Philosophical Issues 15 (2005): 56–77; and in “Prolegomena to a Future Phenomenology of Morals,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7, special issue on moral phenomenology edited by Uriah Kriegel (2008). DOI: 10.1017/S0265052508080102 © 2008 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA.

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types of moral experience, including, for example, experiences that have to do with, or include, judgments of moral obligation and judgments of moral value, as well as experiences that involve the moral emotions — guilt, shame, indignation, and the like. In this essay, we restrict ourselves to questions about the phenomenology of experiences of what we call (following Maurice Mandelbaum) “direct” moral obligation —experiences in which one is presently confronted with a situation or is facing a set of circumstances in which one feels morally obligated to act (or refrain from acting) in a certain way. About such experiences, we ask two questions. First, what are the introspectively accessible elements of such experiences? 3 Second, how do these elements bear on the question of whether, and in what way, moral experiences purport to be about some objective matter; in particular, do such experiences carry objective purport? As we shall explain below, we are here interested in what we will call ontological objective purport —the idea that moral experiences purport to be about some in-the-world moral properties. Given our specific focus, then, there are three competing answers to consider with regard to the second question: Affirmative: It is an introspectively accessible fact that direct moral experiences do carry ontological objective purport. Negative: It is an introspectively accessible fact that direct moral experiences do not carry such purport. Neutrality: It is not introspectively accessible whether or not direct moral experiences carry ontological objective purport. The third answer, Neutrality, presupposes that certain questions about the intentional content of direct moral experience do not have introspectively accessible answers, despite the fact that the experiences themselves are introspectively accessible. A point of clarification is in order concerning Neutrality. This answer does not claim that there is no fact of the matter at all about whether or not direct moral experiences carry ontological objective purport; rather, it only claims that there is no introspectively accessible answer to the question about such purport. Thus, even if Neutrality is right, there might well be a determinate answer to the second question mentioned above; but this answer, whatever it is, would not be obtainable just by attending introspectively to one’s own phenomenology. What we will call “the argument from phenomenological introspection” has as its conclusion the Affirmative thesis and thus purports to provide a pro tanto reason to favor an ontological-objectivist metaethics. 3 By “introspectively accessible elements” we mean elements that are readily introspectively accessible by people with ordinary introspective acuity —as distinct, for instance, from elements that are introspectively accessible only by people with unusually powerful and accurate introspective skill.

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Moreover, this argument purports to get that pro tanto reason directly from the introspectively accessible aspects of moral phenomenology. We ourselves find the issue about moral experience and objective purport somewhat murky, and so much of our work in this essay will be devoted to clarifying the various issues at play in connection with the argument from phenomenological introspection. However, late in the essay (in Section VIII), we shall offer a brief defense of the Neutrality thesis.4 Here is our plan. We begin in Section II by explaining two conceptions of moral objectivity that are prevalent in contemporary metaethical discussion, one “ontological” and the other “rationalist.” Because talk of phenomenology requires clarification, we devote some attention in Section III to explaining how we propose to use the term. We will then be in a position to characterize more precisely (in Section IV) the kind of phenomenological argument we wish to examine —the argument from phenomenological introspection. In Section V, we provide a taxonomy of types of moral experience so that we can zero in on the phenomenology of the type we wish to consider —direct moral experiences of obligation — and in Section VI we provide two examples of such moral experience. Next, in Section VII, we turn to the work of Mandelbaum, whose subtle phenomenological characterization of direct moral experiences of obligation we think is correct and provides a basis for exploring the abovementioned hypotheses regarding ontological objectivity. Having done all of this, in Sections VIII through X we proceed to consider the various elements of such experiences in order to evaluate the argument from phenomenological introspection, and in Section XI we respond to some anticipated objections. Our purpose is to explore how a metaethic that is not ontologically objectivist might provide a basis for challenging the argument from phenomenological introspection. In previous writings, we have defended what we call “cognitivist expressivism,” a view according to which (roughly) moral judgments are genuine cognitive belief states, yet such moral beliefs do not purport to describe some sort of moral reality; rather, they express a certain sort of commitment directed toward a nonmoral state of affairs. We employ our cognitivist expressivism as a basis for exploring a non-ontological-objectivist line of defense against the argument from phenomenological introspection.5 As we shall explain, 4 We also believe, although we will not argue for this here, that moral experiences in fact do not carry ontological objective purport. But even if we happen to be wrong about this, we still could be right about the Neutrality thesis. The truth of the Neutrality thesis would be enough to undercut the argument from phenomenological introspection, even if that argument’s conclusion happens to be correct. 5 Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, “Nondescriptivist Cognitivism: Outline of a New Metaethic,” Philosophical Papers 29 (2000): 121–53; and “Cognitivist Expressivism,” in Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, eds., Metaethics after Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). The construal of moral phenomenology that we will explore below is not ontologically objectivist; nevertheless, it does recognize and accommodate phenomenological features of direct moral judgment that count intuitively as objective. See Section X below.

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there is more that would need to be done beyond what we undertake in this essay in order to mount a full and convincing response.6 II. Two Conceptions of Strong Moral Objectivity In metaethical discussion, there are two main conceptions of objectivity: one ontological, the other rationalist. Both, in their own way, represent what we shall call “strong” conceptions —conceptions that are (respectively) featured in versions of moral realism and Kantian rationalism. Let us take these in order. The ontological conception: This conception of moral objectivity is an instance of the sort of objectivity often associated with ordinary physicalobject thought and discourse, according to which (roughly) there is an “objectively existing” world of objects and instantiated properties (including relations) possessed by (or obtaining among) those objects. Often, this conception of “objective existence” is expressed in terms of “mindindependence.” 7 But thinking of ontological objectivity in terms of mindindependence is arguably too strong for our present purposes, because, on some views, secondary qualities are response-dependent, and hence are not mind-independent, but nevertheless such properties are objective. Indeed, in metaethics, the thesis that moral properties (instantiations of them) are on an ontological par with response-dependent color properties — that a property like intrinsic value is as much “out there to be experienced” as are instantiations of color properties, even if both are responsedependent —would seemingly secure enough ontological objectivity for morality to combat various forms of metaethical noncognitivism, relativism, and subjectivism. So, following contemporary metaethical fashion, we can distinguish two forms or grades of ontological moral objectivism (“realism,” if you like). According to robust versions, moral properties are a kind of, or analogous to, prototypical primary qualities in that their nature and existence (i.e., whether or not they are instantiated in the world) are not mind- (including human response-) dependent. But according to more modest versions, moral properties are a kind of, or at least have the same sort of ontological status as, secondary qualities — color properties in particular. Their being response-dependent in a way analogous to color properties (when colors are construed as “secondary 6 Of course, if cognitivist expressivism cannot accommodate the phenomenological data, and if no other metaethical view that rejects ontological objectivism can do so either, this does not yet guarantee that the argument goes through. For it might be that the phenomenological data can be accommodated by some form of metaethical rationalism that denies ontological moral objectivism. 7 Some moral realists prefer to characterize realism (including moral realism) in terms of “stance-independence” rather than in terms of “mind-independence.” See Russ ShaferLandau, Moral Realism: A Defense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 15–16. Whether this way of characterizing realism allows for a response-dependent account of secondary qualities to count as realist will depend on how one understands the notion of stance.

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qualities”) is still sufficient to say of them that, when instantiated, moral properties are “there to be experienced.” 8 It is worth emphasizing, too, that the ontological conception of objectivity not only claims that moral judgments have descriptive content (i.e., purport to represent facts consisting of the instantiation of moral properties that are “there to be experienced”) but also claims that such facts are not about certain idiosyncratic psychological states of the agent making the moral judgment (states such as preferences or attitudes of approval/ disapproval). Ontological objectivism is a form of metaethical descriptivism, certainly; but it is to be distinguished from the kind of descriptivism that earlier in the century was called “subjective naturalism,” which construed moral facts as facts about the psychology of the morally judging agent. The rationalist conception: Speaking very generally and somewhat loosely, a realm of thought and discourse is objective, according to this conception, if there is a method of thinking or reasoning whose use would yield (under proper conditions of application) convergence in belief about the subject matter in question. The primary examples here are mathematics and logic.9 In metaethics, this view is clearly exemplified by Roderick Firth’s ideal observer theory and Michael Smith’s metaethical rationalism.10 According to these views, there is a nonmoral conception of rational choice involving norms of practical reasoning whose proper application is sufficient to yield a set of richly determinate moral norms or principles. This form of metaethical objectivity, then, is meant to capture the idea, famously expressed by Immanuel Kant, that “a law, if it is to hold morally, that is as a ground of obligation, must carry with it absolute necessity; that, for example, the command ‘thou shalt not lie’ does not hold only for human beings, as if other rational beings did not have to heed it. . . .” 11 This idea of requirements holding necessarily for all rational beings is Kant’s idea of those requirements being categorical. Even though these two conceptions of moral objectivity differ in important ways, they do share a uniting theme: they both try to capture a strong conception of objectivity according to which some realm of thought and 8 This is how John McDowell, “Values and Secondary Qualities,” in Ted Honderich, ed., Morality and Objectivity (London: Routledge, 1985), 170, characterizes a kind of objectivity characteristic of secondary qualities (understood as response-dependent) that he contrasts with a stronger kind that does not recognize response-dependent properties as being objective. See also Jonathan Dancy, “Two Conceptions of Moral Realism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 60 (1985): 167–87. 9 For more discussion of these two conceptions, see Mark Timmons, “Objectivity in Moral Discourse,” in Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2d ed. (Oxford: Elsevier, 2006), 9:5–10. 10 Roderick Firth, “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317–45. Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). 11 Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Akademie volume IV, 1985), 389, in Kant, Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 44–45.

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discourse is objective only when there is some “reality” —some ontology or method —that “backs up” or “stands behind” such thought and discourse and serves to “make true” certain claims in the discourse and “make false” other claims. Before moving on, we make three observations about the relationship between these two conceptions. First, one might hold that the idea of moral objectivity involves a blend or combination of both kinds of objectivity. J. L. Mackie seemed to think so.12 He held that moral thought and discourse are committed to the idea that moral requirements are categorical (in the sense just indicated) and to the idea that there are instantiated moral properties (including moral requiredness) that are strongly objective and thus on a metaphysical par with primary qualities.13 But a secondary quality–like account of moral realism is also (perhaps) likely to attempt a combination: moral properties are “there to be experienced” (ontological claim), and their nature is best captured by a dispositional (response-dependent) account that is basically rationalist.14 Second, it is possible to hold that there are objective moral properties in the ontological sense and yet deny, or be neutral with respect to, the idea that morality is also objective in the rationalist sense. Suppose, for instance, that moral properties are like secondary qualities in that a proper understanding of them requires referring to how human beings in certain circumstances would respond —without supposing that such properties are there to be experienced by all rational beings. Perhaps one could wax Humean on this particular matter: we humans have a certain constitution —maybe a “moral sense” (in a loose sense of the term) — through which we are able to perceive or respond to values that have an ontological status similar to that of colors. The idea would be to combine the claim that there are moral properties possessed by items of evaluation with a rejection of a strong rationalist commitment to claims about all rational beings. Third, at least prima facie it is possible to embrace the idea that morality is objective in a distinctively rationalist way without supposing that there are moral properties possessed by items of evaluation in the way 12 J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), chap. 1. 13 Note that if one claims both (1) that moral properties are analogous to primary qualities in being human-response independent and (2) that moral properties are intrinsically reasonproviding, then one seems committed to the rationalist claim that recognition of moral properties provides all rational agents with reasons. This seems to be why Mackie believed that moral thought and discourse presuppose both ontological and rationalist conceptions of objectivity. 14 This seems to be the view that Smith is advocating in Michael Smith, “Objectivity and Moral Realism: On the Significance of the Phenomenology of Moral Experience,” reprinted in Michael Smith, ed., Ethics and the A Priori (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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that an ontological moral realist might suppose.15 Suppose there are rational norms of obligation that hold for all rational agents. If so, then one can say of some action that it is obligatory, but in saying this one does not have to suppose that in addition to the natural features of the action it has some further property, obligatoriness, that is either identical to, constituted exhaustively by (but not type-identical to), or otherwise something “over and above” the natural properties on which this special property supervenes. One example is R. M. Hare’s metaethical view, according to which moral judgments are “objective prescriptions.” 16 Hare denied that his view involving objective prescriptions committed him to a moral ontology of the sort that would involve moral properties, though he defended the claim that certain features of moral language together with (nonmoral) constraints on rational choice yield an essentially utilitarian moral theory.17 Indeed, contemporary Kantians tout rationalist objectivity as a way of avoiding metaphysical moral realism. Christine Korsgaard writes: “If ethically good action is simply rational action, we do not need to postulate special ethical properties in the world or faculties in the mind in order to provide ethics with a foundation.” 18 In sum, (1) there are two main conceptions of strong metaethical objectivity: ontological and rationalist; (2) the ontological conception covers both robust and modest conceptions of what can count as an objective property; (3) it is at least prima facie possible for a metaethical view to combine either form of ontological objectivity with the rationalist conception of objectivity; however, (4) it is also possible (again prima facie) to embrace the rationalist conception without also embracing the ontological conception (in either of its versions), and the other way around. Thus, in light of these conceptions of moral objectivity and their interconnections, one main question about moral phenomenology is whether it embodies or “carries” the pretensions of either sort of objectivity. Before responding to this question, there is preliminary work to be done which will occupy us in the next three sections. III. Phenomenology: Subject Matter and Method In recent philosophy of mind, the term “phenomenology” is used sometimes to refer to a type of subject matter, comprising certain aspects of 15 The idea that certain forms of discourse, including mathematics, logic, and ethics, can be objective —that claims in these areas can be objectively true —without there having to be a realm of objects and properties that make them true is one main theme of Hilary Putnam’s Hermes Lectures, published as Part I of Hilary Putnam, Ethics without Ontology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). See esp. Lecture 3, “Objectivity without Objects.” 16 R. M. Hare, “Objective Prescriptions,” Philosophy 35 (1993): 1–17. 17 Perhaps an objective moral property can be constructed from the components that Hare posits. But it is enough for present purposes to note, as we do, that embracing rationalist objectivism but denying ontological objectivism is, prima facie, a metaethical option. 18 Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 311.

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one’s mental life that are available to introspection in a distinctive way. But the term is also used to refer to a method of first-person introspection that allegedly carries with it a special first-person warrant attaching to one’s first-person judgments about one’s own experiences.19 We think of phenomenology as involving both the subject matter and the method just mentioned. However, in order to make ourselves clear as we proceed, we will use the term “phenomenology” mainly to refer to subject matter, and we will generally use the term “introspection” for the associated method. In this section, we will make some clarificatory remarks about both the subject matter and the method. Part of our purpose is to situate moral phenomenology, as we understand it, within the context of various ongoing debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. As we will make clear, phenomenology generally, and moral phenomenology in particular, can be characterized in a way that is noncommittal about competing positions in several of those debates. Having a characterization of moral phenomenology that is noncommittal in the ways we will proceed to explain is important for our purposes; we want to work with a characterization of this area of inquiry that does not beg any questions about potential subject matter and methodology that might taint our investigation of the argument from phenomenological introspection. A. Phenomenology and phenomenal consciousness Qua subject matter, phenomenology is closely related to what is often called “phenomenal consciousness” in recent philosophy of mind. Are they one and the same? That depends. Under some positions concerning the nature of phenomenal consciousness, they are indeed the same; but under others, phenomenally conscious states are only a proper part of the full scope of phenomenology. Let us explain. One disputed issue concerns the scope of phenomenal consciousness. On some views, its scope is confined to the realm of sensory experience, or perhaps to sensory experience plus sensory imagery. Phenomenal consciousness is confined to the what-it-is-likeness of sensations: e.g., what it is like to see a bright red tomato, what it is like to smell rotten eggs, what it is like to experience a searing pain in the left toe, etc.20 Such views maintain that the range of mental states that are conscious as opposed to unconscious is much wider than the range of mental states that are phenomenally conscious. Although one’s occurrent beliefs, for example, typ19 Charles Siewert, for instance, in his “Who’s Afraid of Phenomenological Disputes?” Southern Journal of Philosophy 45 (2007), understands phenomenology as primarily methodological. 20 There are various ways that one might widen somewhat the scope of phenomenal consciousness, while still regarding its scope as fairly restricted. For instance, one might hold that moods and/or emotions, in addition to sensations and sensory images, have distinctive phenomenal character.

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ically are conscious rather than unconscious, occurrent beliefs have no distinctive or proprietary phenomenal character; rather, the sense in which they are conscious involves their accessibility to the cognitive agent. Such states are “access conscious” but not phenomenally conscious, to use Ned Block’s influential distinction. A mental state is access conscious when that state is available to the agent for purposes of reasoning.21 On other views, however, the scope of phenomenal consciousness is much broader than just sensory. In the strongest form, these views maintain that all, or virtually all, mental states that are access conscious are also phenomenally conscious, and, indeed, that their first-person accessibility derives from their phenomenal character. (There is a distinctive phenomenal character, for instance, of believing that Hillary Clinton will be the next president, different from the phenomenal character of hoping that she will be the next president. Likewise, there is a distinctive phenomenal character of believing that she will be the next president, different from the phenomenal character of believing that she will not be.) 22 Another disputed issue concerns whether phenomenal consciousness possesses intentionality. On some views (in particular, some views that claim that all phenomenal character is sensory or sensory-imagistic), the answer is no: phenomenal character is inherently nonintentional, and mental intentionality is inherently nonphenomenal. On other views, however, all (or virtually all) phenomenal character is inherently intentional, i.e., inherently represents things as being certain ways.23 Phenomenology, understood as comprising both method and subject matter, can be and should be construed in a way that leaves it uncommitted about these disputed issues. As method, phenomenology does assume that much of one’s conscious (as opposed to unconscious) mental life has a distinctive epistemic status from a first-person perspective: it is directly accessible via introspection. But this leaves open whether or not 21 Ned Block, “On a Confusion about a Conception of Consciousness,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1995): 227–47. 22 For a defense of this broader conception of the scope of phenomenal consciousness, see, e.g., Terry Horgan and John Tienson, “The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality,” in David Chalmers, ed., Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 520–33; Terry Horgan, John Tienson, and George Graham, “Phenomenal Intentionality and the Brain in a Vat,” in Richard Schantz, ed., The Externalist Challenge (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 297–317; Uriah Kriegel, “Consciousness as Sensory Quality and as Implicit Self-Awareness,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (2003), 1–26; David Pitt, “The Phenomenology of Cognition, or What Is It Like to Think That P?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2004): 1–36; and Galen Strawson, Mental Reality (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004). 23 These intentionalist views bifurcate into two broad kinds: one kind maintains that all phenomenal character is sensory or sensory-imagistic (while insisting that phenomenal character is also inherently intentional); the other kind maintains that the scope of phenomenal consciousness is much broader, encompassing all (or virtually all) mental states that are conscious-as-opposed-to-unconscious. The former view is advocated, e.g., in Michael Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995); and Fred Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995). The latter view is advocated, e.g., in the texts mentioned in note 22 above.

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introspective accessibility always rests on first-person apprehension of phenomenal character. On the one hand, if phenomenal character is restricted to sensations and/or sensory imagery, then the range of introspection extends beyond the bounds of phenomenal consciousness — because certain mental states are introspectively accessible even though they lack any distinctive or proprietary phenomenal character. In this case, the subject matter of phenomenology includes aspects of mentality other than what is phenomenally conscious (while also including phenomenally conscious aspects too, of course). On the other hand, if all or virtually all mental states that are access conscious do have distinctive phenomenal character, then it may well be that introspective access to these states is always a matter of apprehending their phenomenal character. In that case, the subject matter of phenomenology is just phenomenal consciousness itself. B. “What it is like” In what follows, we plan to make free use of the locution “what it is like.” Its use is very natural in connection with introspective judgments about one’s own mental life, whether or not one takes those judgments to be grounded in an apprehension of phenomenal character. Consider, for instance, the question: “How do you know whether you really believe that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic primary, or merely hope that she will?” In response, one should say: “Look, there’s an introspectively accessible difference between just hoping something and actually believing it, a difference in what such states are like. And I know that, in my case, the state is belief —because of what the state is like.” So we are going to make free use of what-it-is-like talk in what follows. Is this a broader use of such talk than the common use in philosophy of mind, where the idea of phenomenal character is often glossed as “those aspects of one’s mental life such that there is something it is like to undergo them”? Well, that depends on one’s position concerning the scope of phenomenal character —about which moral phenomenology per se is neutral. Thus, moral phenomenology per se is also neutral about whether its own use of what-it-is-like talk is broader than the use that applies such talk only to phenomenal character. (It all depends on the scope of phenomenal character, about which moral phenomenology is neutral.) 24 C. Phenomenology and the content of perceptual experience Another disputed issue in philosophy of mind concerns the intentional content of perceptual experience —in particular, what kinds of content 24 For some discussion of this matter, see Charles Siewert, “Who’s Afraid of Phenomenological Disputes?”

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are, or are not, aspects of perceptual experience itself. On some views, perceptual experience per se has only fairly limited and primitive content, even though perceptually grounded beliefs often have much richer content. (Such views typically deny, for instance, that perceptual experience per se represents causal connections, even though beliefs with causal content often are directly grounded in perceptual experience.) On other views, the content of perceptual experience is very rich —rich enough, for instance, to include the experiential representation of causal connections.25 Phenomenology, as method, is neutral about this dispute too. After all, perceptually grounded beliefs are themselves within the purview of phenomenology anyway, insofar as such beliefs are introspectively accessible (as they often are). Of particular relevance here, given our concerns in this essay, are spontaneous, perceptually grounded moral judgments — as in Gilbert Harman’s famous example of rounding the corner and finding oneself “just seeing” (as one says) that those hoodlums are doing something wrong in lighting the cat on fire just for fun.26 The moral judgment is spontaneous and, moreover, arises spontaneously from one’s perceptual experience —that’s what matters. Whether or not the wrongness-content is already there in perceptual experience itself, as opposed to being a “cognitive overlay” that only enters in the cognitive transition from perceptual experience to belief, is not important for present purposes. And again, moral phenomenology per se is methodologically neutral about this.27 D. Phenomenology and introspective accessibility As we have characterized phenomenology, both as method and as subject matter, the issue is left open whether or not all aspects of mentality that fall within the subject matter of phenomenology are reliably introspectable. One might think this couldn’t be so, since the subject matter is supposed to be that which is available to introspection. However, one needs to distinguish between what is present in experience or experientially given, and what aspects of the latter are reliably ascertainable introspectively. Here are two examples that illustrate this point. You may recall from a famous essay by Roderick Chisholm the case of glancing at a speckled hen.28 Plausibly, a determinate number of speckles are given in 25 See, e.g., Susanna Siegel, “Which Properties Are Represented in Perception?” in T. Gendler Szabo and John Hawthorne, eds., Perceptual Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), and Siegel, “The Phenomenology of Efficacy,” Philosophical Topics 33 (2005): 265–84. 26 Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 4. 27 Note, however, that careful application of the introspective method —or of a mixed methodology that is partly phenomenological and partly abductive —might well be very relevant to such disputes. See, e.g., Siegel’s mixed-method argumentation for the claim that causation is represented in visual-perceptual experience in Siegel, “Which Properties Are Represented in Perception?” and “The Phenomenology of Efficacy.” 28 Roderick Chisholm, “The Problem of the Speckled Hen,” Mind 51 (1942): 368–73.

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the experience and thus present in experience. But one cannot reliably ascertain that number just via introspection, especially if the experience is fairly short-lived. Here is the second example. Consider the question of whether the content of agentive experience is compatible with statecausal determinism. Plausibly, the answer to that question is fixed just by the nature of the experience itself, as the experience is self-presented to the agent. Arguably, however, introspection alone will not allow one to reliably ascertain that answer.29 The fact that certain features can be present in experience without being available to introspection is very important for our purposes in this essay, because it underscores certain potential limitations in the extent to which facts about experiential character can be ascertained just by means of introspectively attending to one’s own phenomenology. Perhaps, for instance, (1) there is a definite fact of the matter about whether or not direct moral experiences carry ontological objective purport, and yet (2) this fact of the matter (whatever it is) is not introspectively accessible. Then the argument for phenomenological inspection will be in trouble, even if those who propound that argument happen to be correct (though we ourselves doubt this) in their contention that direct moral experiences do carry ontological objective purport. E. Moral phenomenology characterized We have just been emphasizing how one might understand phenomenology in a manner that is noncommital with respect to a number of contested issues about its subject matter and methodology. To briefly review, the key points are these. The subject matter of phenomenology comprises occurrent mental states that have a what-it-is-likeness (broadly construed), whether or not all such states possess a phenomenal character. The methodology of phenomenology is introspection, through which one has direct first-person access to one’s own conscious mental states. Here the point to stress is that one should not assume that all of one’s conscious mental states (or all conscious elements of them) are directly introspectively accessible. With these caveats in mind, we propose the following as a characterization of moral phenomenology: (MP) Moral phenomenology includes as subject matter all of those occurrent mental states with moral content that have a whatit-is-likeness (broadly construed), whether or not all such states (or all aspects of such states) possess phenomenal character. The method characteristic of moral phenomenology involves 29 For more on this theme, see Terry Horgan, “Agentive Phenomenology and the Limits of Introspection,” Psyche 13 (2007): 1–29.

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the use of first-person introspective access to conscious mental states with moral content, whether or not all such states (or all conscious elements of such states) are directly introspectively accessible.30 Although our characterization of moral phenomenology is neutral about whether there is more to the subject matter than what is reliably introspectively ascertainable, not all the positions mentioned in Section I are thus uncommitted. The thesis called Neutrality, we take it, is committed on this issue (at least on one natural assumption, namely, that direct moral experience either determinately does, or else determinately does not, have ontological objective purport). The Neutrality picture is this: on the one hand, there is a fact of the matter about whether or not direct moral experience carries ontological objective purport, but, on the other hand, this fact of the matter (whatever it is) is not ascertainable introspectively. We will return to this thesis below in Sections IX and XI.31 IV. The Argument from Phenomenological Introspection As we have said, a main task of this essay is to zero in on a kind of metaethical argument that appeals to an alleged fact about moral phenomenology that allegedly is introspectively accessible (namely, that moral phenomenology carries ontological objective purport), as a basis for concluding that the phenomenology of moral experiences provides a pro tanto reason to favor an objectivist metaethics. More precisely, we are interested in a species of phenomenological argument that has the following features. 1. The sort of strong objectivity being argued for is ontological. However, it does not matter for our present purposes whether the argument is being made in favor of robust ontological moral objectivity or for a more modest, sensibility form of such objectivity. 30 Our broad characterization of moral phenomenology allows for experiences (or elements of them) that give rise to moral judgments to be included within the purview of moral phenomenology. For example, my experiencing a certain contemplated action as being (in relation to certain elements of my circumstances) unfitting may result in my morally coming down on the matter and judging that the action is all-in unfitting and ought not to be done. (For more on the distinction between experiences of prima facie and of all-in unfittingness and fittingness, see note 56 below.) And, of course, our characterization allows for experiences that include (perhaps exclusively) the having or making of a moral judgment. (This particular point about the breadth of moral phenomenology is prompted by some remarks by Philip Pettit in conversation.) 31 The following point bears emphasis. If indeed not all aspects of mentality that belong to the subject matter of phenomenology are introspectively accessible (say, because some aspects of phenomenal character are not thus accessible but are present in experience nonetheless), then the distinctive phenomenological method (namely, introspection) will not suffice by itself to answer all pertinent questions about the subject matter. Other methods will need to be brought to bear too, over and above introspection.

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2. The argument is supposed to be a distinctive form of metaethical argument, one that is different from arguments appealing to considerations that concern theoretical semantic issues, or to metaphysical and epistemological issues concerning moral thought and discourse.32 3. Part of what makes the argument distinctive is that it relies crucially on an appeal to introspection: the argument appeals to putative features of one’s own moral experience that one allegedly can detect by turning one’s attention inward and focusing on the relevant kind of experience. Those who appeal to matters of moral phenomenology as a basis for defending ontological moral objectivism seem to think that whether or not the phenomenology carries ontological objective purport is something that is introspectively accessible. This entails the denial of the Neutrality thesis. But suppose that the Neutrality thesis is correct. Presumably, then, mere appeal to introspective awareness will not be sufficient in arguing the pro tanto case 33 for ontological moral objectivism; rather, the objectivist will need to bring to bear other, nonphenomenological considerations (e.g., theoretical questions about moral semantics and about moral metaphysics) to make her case. Once this happens, however, the supposed distinctiveness of the argument from phenomenological introspection is lost. 4. Finally, the argument presupposes that people by and large do share a common moral phenomenology whose elements provide a suitably pretheoretical basis to which the metaethicist can appeal in making a case for some form of objectivist metaethics. The idea here is that if the argument in question is to have any evidential weight with respect to the pro tanto plausibility of competing metaethical views, there must be some metaethical theory-independent facts about the phenomenology to which an appeal can be made and which clearly are fully compatible with some but not all existing metaethical theories. Furthermore, for purposes of the phenomenological argument for ontological moral objectivism, there must be some pretheoretical elements of moral experience that specifically favor an ontological-objectivist metaethical view, rather than, for instance, simply ruling out (say) crude emotivist views. To sum up, then, the phenomenological argument we wish to consider is properly understood as an argument from introspection that attempts to pick out commonly shared pretheoretical elements of moral experiences whose ontological objective purport is introspectively accessible. 32 Note that what we are here calling “theoretical” semantic issues are meant to be distinct from issues concerning the introspectively accessible content of intentional mental states. 33 The case is pro tanto, rather than complete in itself, because one theoretical option is an error theory asserting both (1) that it is an introspectively accessible fact that direct moral experience carries ontological objective purport, and (2) that there are no in-the-world moral properties or facts —and, hence, (3) that direct moral experience is systematically nonveridical in its intentional content. Those who seek to defend moral realism by appeal to the argument from phenomenological introspection need to say something about the theoretical disadvantages of such an error theory, in comparison to moral realism.

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V. A Taxonomy of Moral Experience Unfortunately, the term “moral phenomenology,” at least as used by philosophers, is accordion-like in its usage. Sometimes, it is used very broadly to refer to any and all of what are considered to be deeply embedded features of moral thought and discourse including: (a) its grammar and logic; (b) people’s “critical practices” regarding such thought and discourse (including, for example, the assumption that genuine moral disagreements are possible); and (c) the what-it-is-likeness of various moral experiences, including, but not restricted to, occurrent concrete experiences of morally judging some action, person, institution, or other item of moral evaluation. Used very narrowly, the term refers to what we might call “raw affective feeling states” comprising only a proper subset of what-it-is-likeness elements in moral experience. As we explained above in Section III, we construe the scope of phenomenology to range over sensory, cognitive, desiderative, as well as affective experiences. So we do plan to use the term neither very narrowly, nor very broadly, but as referring to occurrent mental phenomena that seem constitutive of a broad range of everyday moral experience. Nonetheless, we need to be more explicit about the kind of moral experience we wish to consider. To do so, we offer a taxonomy of types of moral experience so that we may triangulate a proper part of moral phenomenology that will be the focus later in this essay. To anticipate: we are particularly interested in the what-it-is-likeness of (1) judgment-involving (2) first-order (3) experiences of moral obligation that are (4) direct and (5) intuitive. We now proceed to briefly explain these five characteristics. Judgment-involving moral experiences. Many moral experiences involve as a component coming to have or form a moral judgment. For instance, after thinking it over for a while, one comes to think that the United States ought not to have invaded Iraq. Part of one’s overall experience here is the coming to have or make a moral judgment. Some moral phenomenologists claim that an important variety of moral experience does not involve having or making moral judgments. According to Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, there are cases of what they call “ethical comportment” in which a morally skilled individual spontaneously performs some morally appropriate action in some circumstance without making or having a moral judgment.34 Spontaneously reaching out a helping hand to someone about to slip and fall is perhaps an example. We do not take a stand on whether such cases are properly described as not involving moral judgment (although frankly we doubt it, because we believe that such spontaneous actions are more plausibly construed 34 Hubert L. Dreyfus and Stuart E. Dreyfus, “What Is Morality? A Phenomenological Account of the Development of Ethical Expertise,” in David Rasmussen, ed., Universalism vs. Communitarianism: Contemporary Debates in Ethics (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990), 237–64.

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as the unhesitant effects of moral judgments that are themselves spontaneous rather than deliberative). But in case such actions do meet that description, our focus is properly characterized as being on judgmentinvolving moral experiences. First-order and second-order. Certainly experiences of guilt, shame, indignation, and moral anger are important in the study of moral phenomenology. But these moral emotions are typically second-order moral experiences, since they are directed toward actions and other items of moral evaluation that are judged to be morally wrong or bad. One judges, for instance, that Tracy has benefited from her moral wrongdoing, which arouses in one the moral emotion of indignation. What we are calling first-order moral judgments, then, are those more basic judgments of obligation and value that may prompt some particular moral emotion of the sort just mentioned.35 Judgments of obligation and judgments of value. It is common to distinguish judgments of moral obligation from judgments of moral value. One might suppose that the phenomenologies involving judgments of one type are much the same as the phenomenologies involving the other type. But Maurice Mandelbaum, in his overlooked 1955 treatise on moral phenomenology, made a further distinction that challenges this supposition. Direct and removed judgments of obligation. According to Mandelbaum, there is an important phenomenological difference between what he called “direct” and “removed” moral experience. Direct moral experiences are those in which one is presently confronted with a set of circumstances which one experiences as “calling for” one to either act or refrain from acting in a particular way on that occasion, and in response to which one comes to have or make a moral judgment about what one ought or ought not do. By contrast, removed moral experiences include those which involve the making or the having of an ought-judgment about one’s past self or about someone else, as well as all judgments about the moral goodness or badness of the specific character traits and overall character of oneself and others. Mandelbaum claims that one phenomenological difference between such types of experience is the fact that a direct moral experience evokes emotion [which], like fear or anger, is experienced as a state of the self and is directly related to action. [By contrast] the stirredupness and pressures which are present in direct moral judgments have no counterpart in removed moral judgments.36 35 This is not to deny that, in many cases, one’s moral emotions “run ahead” of one’s first-order moral judgments: in thinking about some past action of his, John begins to have feelings of guilt, and it is through his feelings of guilt that he comes to realize the wrongness of what he did. One way in which this might happen is described by Robert Audi in “The Axiology of Moral Experience,” The Journal of Ethics 2 (1998): 355–75. 36 Mandelbaum, The Phenomenology of Moral Experience, 127.

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For purposes of this essay, we adopt Mandelbaum’s direct/removed distinction. Our focus will be on experiences of the former type, about which we will say more in later sections. Intuitive and deliberative moral judgments. Intuitive judgments are psychologically spontaneous in that they occur “without a conscious awareness of having gone through steps of searching, weighing evidence, or inferring a conclusion.” 37 Earlier, we mentioned Harman’s example where you round a corner and see a group of hoodlums pore gasoline on a cat and set it on fire. As Harman says, “you do not need to conclude that what they are doing is wrong; you do not need to figure anything out; you can see that it is wrong.” 38 By contrast, deliberative moral judgments result from such activities as consciously searching, weighing evidence, and then inferring a moral conclusion.39 Figure 1 presents a “set-aside” sequence that summarizes the various distinctions we have been making. As one moves down levels, the arrows pointing to the right point to a category of experience that is being distinguished and set aside from the type of experience under the vertical arrow. Besides allowing us to specify the type of moral experience that will be the focus of our investigation, the taxonomy in figure 1 is a reminder that one should not assume that moral experiences of all types exhibit some core phenomenological elements that unify these experiences as being distinctively moral.40 This is important for questions about moral objectivity, because it is possible that some types of moral experience include elements that support one conception of moral objectivity, while other moral experiences support a different conception, and perhaps still others support neither conception. Still, it bears emphasis that philosophers who want to argue that moral experience carries ontological objective purport tend to focus on intuitive moral experiences, while those who are primarily interested in defending the rationalist conception tend to focus instead on the phenomenology of moral deliberation. Furthermore, and most importantly for our present concerns, there is the question of whether some type of moral experience —whether 37 Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review 108 (2001): 818. 38 Harman, The Nature of Morality, 4. 39 Cases involving intuitive moral judgments are to be contrasted with cases of “ethical comportment” of the sort that the Dreyfus brothers discuss in “What Is Morality?” in which one spontaneously responds as a matter of reflex. The latter are cases of experiences that do not seem to involve having or making a moral judgment, not even a spontaneous judgment that generates spontaneous, unhesitating behavior. 40 Strictly speaking, moral experiences might exhibit some common features that serve, in a weak sense, to unify them; however, it is possible that such common features do not serve to distinguish moral experiences from certain types of nonmoral normative experiences. For more on this, see Horgan and Timmons, “Moral Phenomenology and Moral Theory.” See also Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Is Moral Phenomenology Unified?” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (2008).

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Figure 1. Taxonomy of Moral Experience

intuitive or deliberative —is neutral with regard to such metaphysical matters and, in particular, whether by introspection alone one can determine whether the experiences in question carry ontological objective purport. As we have noted, our focus will be on the what-it-is-likeness of those moral experiences that combine all of the elements in the left-hand column of figure 1. Henceforth, we will refer to such experiences simply as direct experiences of moral obligation, even though we mean only to be focusing primarily on direct and intuitive moral experiences. And, as we have been saying, our main question about such experiences is whether it is introspectively accessible that such experiences carry ontological objective purport. VI. Two Examples of Direct Moral Experience As we have just explained, “direct” moral experience refers to those experiences in which one presently encounters what one takes to be a morally significant situation, a situation that seems to “call for” one to act

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or refrain from acting and which involves as a constituent an all-in judgment of obligation about what one ought or ought not do in the present circumstances. Here are two examples. A. Sophie’s conversation Sophie and Audrey have enjoyed a close friendship spanning three decades. Despite living in different parts of the world for the past twelve years, their friendship has not eroded. E-mail has made staying in touch on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis easy given their family lives and heavy work schedules. Sophie has just received exciting news that she is to be promoted from her present position to a vice president of the corporation for which she has worked for nearly twenty-five years. This is the sort of news befitting a phone call to Audrey. She calls. But instead of being greeted with Audrey’s typical hearty and cheerful “Hello. Audrey speaking,” she hears a weak and decidedly downbeat “Hello.” Sophie hesitates a moment: “Hello? Audrey, is that you? This is Soph.” Short silence. “Are you there? Are you all right?” Audrey: “Yes, it’s me, Sophie, but I’m afraid I have some bad news. . . . I’ve just been let go . . . my job, I mean.” Sophie: “My God! I’m so sorry! This is terrible news!” This begins a long conversation between Sophie and Audrey during which Sophie is mostly silent, allowing Audrey to express her disappointment, embarrassment, and anger over her job loss. Early on in this conversation, it is patently clear to Sophie that now is obviously not the time to share her good news with Audrey —she should wait for a later, more appropriate occasion. Her judgment about waiting is psychologically immediate: she does not consciously rehearse or weigh various considerations; rather, once she hears Audrey’s voice and what Audrey has to say, her judgment to withhold the news is spontaneous. B. Rashid’s appointment It is Friday, the last day of the semester before finals, and Rashid arrives at the department headed for his office bright and early. In past weeks, he has been working furiously on a paper due yesterday which he managed to send off in the eleventh hour. As he walks through his building toward his office, Rashid is experiencing a sense of calm as he reflects with relief on what he has managed to accomplish during the semester: a paper just completed and sent off; a large introductory course with two hundred students that was for him a new preparation with many hours spent working up slide presentations; meeting every other week with teaching assistants; a departmental hire —not to mention the damaged roof at home and the time spent wrangling with insurance agents, scheduling repairs, training Barkley, his new Lab puppy, and so on. Over the past two weeks,

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Rashid has had to ignore some things, including a flood of e-mail which he plans to spend the morning sorting through. He thinks he really should not have ignored so much e-mail, but he finds dealing with e-mail a huge distraction, so on occasion he has to take draconian measures and ignore the urgent in order to tackle the truly important. Dealing with his inbox ought to take about three hours, he guesses, then it’s home again to pack for a short, much-needed vacation. Teaching assistants are giving the final examination on Monday; he will be back to submit final grades the following Friday. With his e-mail out of the way, Rashid will be able to relax. Ah, sometimes life is good; as he unlocks his office door, he now feels positively cheery. Ready to work, Rashid turns on his computer and, as always, his daily calendar pops up. He is about to minimize it when he notices an entry for today at 8:30 (in about half an hour) —and he remembers. Many weeks ago (so it seems), he made an appointment with a struggling student who had asked Rashid to help him go over comments he had received from one of his teaching assistants on his most recent paper. Rashid allows students to rewrite papers, and this one is due no later than Monday’s final-exam period. Rashid’s cheery mood is replaced by a mild sinking feeling as he begins to realize how much time it will likely take to provide useful help to this student. For one thing, he will need to dig out the student’s paper and reread it, and he can predict that meeting with this student is going to take quite a while. Rashid could, of course, close his door, turn out the light, and just not answer the 8:30 knock. But given the present circumstances, which include his relationship with and promise to his student, Rashid does not need to figure out what he ought to do; it is (in light of his recognition of the circumstances) immediately clear to him. With a deep sigh, Rashid begins to clear the books from a chair so his student will have a place to sit. He then picks up the paper and begins to read; catching up on e-mail will just have to wait. The examples of Sophie and Rashid are cases of direct moral experiences. One might think that there is not much to say in addition to the descriptions of Sophie’s conversation and Rashid’s appointment that we have already given: in such cases (were one to occupy either of their roles), one senses what one ought or ought not to do, which is the content of some occurrent psychological state. Thus (the thought might continue), although there may be a lot to say about the psychology of an individual like Sophie who spontaneously judges that now is not the time to convey good news to her friend, what there is to say has to do with psychological matters that are not occurrent and so not part of her on-the-spot phenomenology. We deny this. We claim that the phenomenology in such cases typically includes quite a lot of rich phenomenological detail — detail that one finds in Mandelbaum’s characterization of the phenomenology of such direct moral experiences.

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VII. Mandelbaum’s Phenomenology of Direct Moral Experiences According to Mandelbaum, the sorts of direct moral experiences had by Sophie and Rashid involve two “levels”: 41 (1) a “felt demand” which is, as Mandelbaum says, “phenomenologically grounded in” (2) an apprehension of a contemplated action being unfitting (relaying her good news in Sophie’s case, not keeping his appointment in Rashid’s case). Let us consider these levels in order. Mandelbaum writes: [A] demand is experienced as a force. Like other forces it can only be characterized through including in its description a reference to its point of origin and to its direction. It is my contention that the demands which we experience when we make a direct moral judgment are always experienced as emanating from “outside” us, and as being directed against us. They are demands which seem to be independent of us and to which we feel that we ought to respond.42 Three exegetical and interpretative comments are in order here. First, in further explaining the “external” source of moral demands, Mandelbaum contrasts them with nonmoral demands such as those associated with hunger, desire for attention, and sexual arousal, which we experience as being “within us.” 43 Second, according to Mandelbaum, this sort of desire/ urge–independence grounds the sense of “objectivity” one takes one’s direct moral experiences to have. In her conversation, Sophie is aware of various features of her present circumstances that she experiences as “calling for” or demanding that she refrain from saying anything to Audrey about her job advancement. Similarly, Rashid’s present circumstances (including considerations about his promise to a student, the student’s circumstances, and so forth) are experienced by him as placing a demand on his current behavior “emanating from” the desire-independent facts of the case. Third, in this phenomenological description, one can distinguish three elements: (1) the raw affective element, which Mandelbaum describes as a felt “pressure” or “tension”; 44 (2) the vector-like force aspect of the experience, involving, as we have seen, a sense of its origin and direction (which, being directed against the one making the judgment, is “reflexive”); 45 and (3) the overall motivational pull that the contemplated action or omission (in the circumstances) seems to exert. 41 “Levels” is our term, but it seems appropriate given Mandelbaum’s talk of felt demand being “grounded in” one’s apprehension of fittingness or unfittingness. 42 Mandelbaum, The Phenomenology of Moral Experience, 54. 43 Ibid., 55. 44 Ibid., 55–56. 45 Ibid., 55.

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Turning now to the second level of phenomenological description, experiences of felt moral demand, according to Mandelbaum, are phenomenologically grounded in the relational characteristics of fittingness and unfittingness. Mandelbaum writes: When I experience a demand to keep a promise this demand does not issue from me, but is leveled against me: it is not that I want to give X five dollars which motivates me, but the fact that I feel obliged to keep my promise. The promise itself appears as an objective fact which places a demand upon me whether I want to keep it or not. . . . In this type of case . . . it becomes clear that the element of moral demand presupposes an apprehended fittingness: the envisioned action places a demand upon us only because it is seen as connected with and fittingly related to the situation which we find ourselves confronting.46 Since the notion of unfittingness, unlike fittingness, seems intuitively to involve, or be closely related to, the idea of a demand, we take it to be the more basic notion here.47 Let us now put all of this together. Experiences of direct moral obligation (of the sort Mandelbaum is describing) have these three main features: (1) They are ought-judgment involving: an agent having or undergoing such an experience judges of herself that in the present circumstances she ought or ought not perform some action. (2) This ought-judgment is part of an overall moral experience in which one experiences a felt demand whose elements include (a) a feeling of pressure, (b) a sense of a vector-like force which has an “external” origin and is directed at oneself, and (c) an associated motivational pull toward either performing an action or refraining from performing an action. (3) This felt demand is experienced as based on an “apprehension” of unfittingness —that is, of a contemplated action or omission’s being unfittingly related to present circumstances (as one takes them to be). We submit that Mandelbaum’s phenomenological description accurately describes most, if not all, of the important elements of people’s typical direct moral experiences (at least we can speak for ourselves). Thus, in 46

Ibid., 67–68. For more on this point, see Horgan and Timmons, “Prolegomena to a Future Phenomenology of Morals.” Interestingly, Roderick Chisholm, “Practical Reason and the Logic of Requirement,” reprinted in Joseph Raz, ed., Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 118–27, distinguishes two senses of fittingness, a strong and a weak sense, both of which he defines in terms of requiredness. (Chisholm mentions Mandelbaum.) 47

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examining this phenomenology for any objective pretensions it may involve, one can ask whether any of these elements carry ontological objective purport. Answering this question, we think, is delicate, which may explain why one finds disagreement among philosophers about how to properly answer the question. Our strategy in trying to answer it will involve two steps. First, we will describe a metaethical view that denies ontological moral objectivity, and that we have elsewhere argued is theoretically attractive for various reasons over and above matters of moral phenomenology; we call it “cognitivist expressivism.” 48 Second, we will consider the three main features of the phenomenology of direct moral experience, asking about each of them whether, alone or in combination, it is an introspectively accessible fact that they carry ontological objective purport. In each case, we argue that the answer is negative, on the grounds that cognitivist expressivism, despite repudiating ontological objectivity, can smoothly accommodate the introspectively accessible aspects of the phenomenological features in question. Note that this line of argument assumes only that cognitivist expressivism is a credible candidate for being the correct metaethical position — not that it is the correct position. If a credible candidate that eschews ontological objectivity can accommodate the introspectively accessible aspects of the relevant phenomenology, then that is enough to show that introspection alone does not yield a positive answer to the question about whether moral phenomenology carries ontological objective purport. These two principal steps in our argument will not quite establish the Neutrality thesis set out in Section I, because they do not preclude the possibility that introspection alone yields a negative answer to the question about ontological objective purport. Nonetheless, the Neutrality thesis does emerge as a corollary, given the very plausible claim (which we ourselves are happy to concede) that various ontological-objectivist metaethical positions can also accommodate the introspectively accessible aspects of moral phenomenology. By executing our two-step argument, then, we will have provided a defense of the Neutrality thesis —the claim that introspectively accessible aspects of direct moral experiences do not themselves determine an answer to the question about whether such experiences carry ontological objective purport. And the Neutrality thesis undermines the argument from phenomenological introspection, since that argument rests on the contention that it is an introspectively accessible fact that direct moral experiences carry ontological objective purport. Thus, in order to ascertain whether or not experiences carry such purport, one 48 See Horgan and Timmons, “Cognitivist Expressivism.” The view we describe does treat moral judgments as objective, in a specific sense to be described in Section X below. But the view is a form of expressivism, and thus it also treats moral judgments as being nondescriptive in their overall content. This precludes them from carrying ontological objective purport, because the latter is a species of descriptive content.

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must look to other considerations, including perhaps other types of moral experience and certain nonexperiential metaethical considerations.49 VIII. The Challenge We think those who defend strong versions of moral objectivism, as well as those who hold error theories,50 tend to move too quickly from considerations of moral phenomenology to claims about the sort of objective pretensions allegedly possessed by the relevant phenomenology. We say this not only because philosophers have tended not to dwell on phenomenological detail, but also because there is one metaethical position, “cognitivist expressivism,” that (a) seems very promising in its capacity to accommodate the facts of moral phenomenology (without overlooking or distorting the facts in question) but (b) denies that moral judgments are robustly objective. The seeming promise of this view is the basis for raising a challenge to advocates of the phenomenological argument. We challenge them to point to those putative aspects or elements of the phenomenology of direct moral experience whose ontological objective purport is introspectively accessible. More specifically, we challenge them to point to putative phenomenological aspects or elements that arguably cannot be accommodated by cognitivist expressivism. To flesh out this challenge, we first present a few of the key elements of cognitivist expressivism, and we then explain why and how this position can smoothly accommodate the phenomenology of direct moral experience. A. A very brief introduction to cognitivist expressivism Cognitivist expressivism is a metaethical position that is largely overlooked because of a widespread but (we claim) mistaken assumption — what we call the “semantic assumption.” According to this assumption, all beliefs are descriptive beliefs. To be more precise: according to this assumption, every belief is to be understood as being a kind of commitment state —what we call an “is” commitment state —with respect to some way-the-world-might-be content (i.e., some descriptive content). So, just as, for instance, one’s nonmoral belief (at some time t) that John took out the trash is to be understood as one’s being is-committed (at t) to a particular descriptive content —that John took out the trash —so it is with moral belief (assuming that moral judgments are beliefs). The belief that 49 Here, again, we emphasize that our thesis concerns what is introspectively accessible in order to distinguish what we are calling the Neutrality thesis from a stronger neutrality thesis according to which moral phenomenology itself is neutral with respect to ontological objective purport. 50 According to an error theory, (1) affirmative moral judgments purport to represent objective moral facts, but (2) since there are no such facts, (3) affirmative moral judgments are erroneous (false).

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John ought to take out the trash is a matter of being is-committed to the following, putative, descriptive content: that it ought to be that John takes out the trash. In both nonmoral and moral cases, then, to believe is to be is-committed to a way the world might be, i.e., to a descriptive content. Thus, if moral ought-judgments are beliefs, then, according to the semantic assumption, they have moral descriptive content.51 And if they do, then they purport to be about in-the-world (instantiated) moral properties. Furthermore, if one denies that there are any such properties instantiated by typical items of evaluation (actions, persons, institutions), then one is committed to an ontological error theory with respect to morals. This was J. L. Mackie’s view.52 Cognitivist expressivism rejects the semantic assumption. This view recognizes two importantly different species of belief: in addition to is-commitments (call them “is-beliefs”), there are ought-commitments (“ought-beliefs”). The latter sort of commitment states share much of the phenomenology of is-beliefs, and also share many key functional-role features possessed by is-beliefs. But what distinguishes these two types of beliefs is the fact that an ought-belief involves a certain kind of commitment — an ought-commitment — directed toward a non-moraldescriptive content. On this picture, to believe that John ought to take out the trash is to be ought-committed to the non-moral-descriptive way-theworld-might-be content: that John takes out the trash. One might capture the idea here by saying that, on this conception of moral belief, the ought is in the attitude, rather than in a descriptive content to which one is (in an ought-ish way) committed.53 This general conception of belief treats moral judgments as genuine beliefs, but, strictly speaking, it is noncommittal with respect to whether moral beliefs also have moral descriptive content. Thus, the framework 51 Here we use the term “descriptive,” as applied to content talk, to include content that purports to attribute irreducibly normative properties to items of evaluation. On this usage, J. L. Mackie’s claim that moral judgments purport to ascribe to actions the alleged normative property to-be-pursuedness counts as a construal according to which such judgments possess descriptive content. 52 J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), chap. 1. 53 On our view, the is in the case of is-belief is also in the attitude. The idea is that the descriptive content of a belief —of either an is-belief or an ought-belief —is most perspicuously expressed not by a declarative sentence but rather by a “that”-clause such as “that John takes out the trash” (or by a nominalized sentence such as “John’s taking out the trash”). In English, an is-commitment is canonically expressed linguistically by asserting a complete sentence in the declarative mood —as in “John took out the trash.” An oughtcommitment is canonically expressed by asserting a declarative-mood sentence whose predicative constituent comprises the modal auxiliary “ought” appended to an infinitival verb —as in “John ought to take out the trash.” On our account, however, the logical structure of is-beliefs and ought-beliefs is more perspicuously revealed via sentences employing a commitment-operator applied to a descriptive “that”-clause, thus: “It is the case that John takes out the trash”; “It ought to be the case that John takes out the trash.”

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could be embraced by a moral realist: the claim would be that the belief that John ought to take out the trash, for example, is both an oughtcommitment to the descriptive content that John takes out the trash and an is-commitment to the putative moral-descriptive content that John ought to take out the trash. However, the framework is also compatible with denying that moral beliefs have moral descriptive content. In some of our past writings, we have argued for a non-error version of metaethical irrealism, in which we combine a cognitivist view of moral judgments (i.e., a view that construes them as genuine beliefs) with a nondescriptivist/irrealist view about such judgments —hence, what we call “cognitivist expressivism.” On this view, then, there is no such way the world might be morally as, for example, John’s taking out the trash being an action that ought to occur. But there is a distinctive type of ought-commitment with respect to a descriptive way the world might be, as in John’s taking out the trash. And this commitment-state is a belief. B. The challenge Of course, there is much to do in defending a cognitivist version of expressivism, and elsewhere we have undertaken its defense.54 The point we wish to make on this occasion is that this sort of view is a metaethical option which promises to accommodate the idea that moral judgments are genuine beliefs (a claim, by the way, that is not beyond question), yet denies that such judgments carry moral descriptive purport (and hence also denies that they carry ontological objective purport). Thus, if the phenomenological argument is going to create a presumption in favor of an ontological conception of moral objectivity, its advocates will need to pinpoint features of concrete moral experience with ontological-objectivist pretensions that are introspectively evident. Our challenge to the advocates of the phenomenological argument is to pinpoint those features of moral experience that supposedly support strong moral objectivity and to argue that it is introspectively manifest that those features really do embody ontological-objectivist pretensions. IX. The Phenomenology of Unfittingness In addition to the belief-like aspects of ought-judgments that are part of direct moral experiences, we have identified two other general features of such experiences: (1) they involve a sense of felt demand whose origin is “external”; and (2) this felt demand is phenomenologically grounded in a 54 Horgan and Timmons, “Nondescriptivist Cognitivism”; Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, “Expressivism, Yes! Relativism, No!” in Russ Shafer-Landau, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, “Cognitivist Expressivism,” in Horgan and Timmons, eds., Metaethics after Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

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sense (“apprehension”) of fittingness. Do either of these features, perhaps in combination, carry ontological objective purport of a sort that is introspectively accessible in direct moral experiences? Clearly, the affective element involved in feeling a demand, which Mandelbaum describes as a pressure or tension, does not itself carry any sort of objective purport. Feeling a pull to perform an action or to refrain from performing one is something one often experiences without the experience carrying any presumption of objectivity. I feel tempted by the piece of chocolate cake on the table before me, and it is as if it were screaming “Eat me!!!” It seems to be tugging me in its direction.55 But here one experiences no objective purport. Of course, the crucial element of felt demand is the “external” origin of the vector-like force —the fact that the demand is, as Mandelbaum says, “emanating from ‘outside’ us,” which he glosses as its being independent of one’s desires. Moreover, this sort of demand is experienced as grounded in one’s sense that a particular action is an unfitting response to those “external” circumstances. The notions of fittingness and unfittingness are, of course, relational. As Mandelbaum sometimes puts it, to say that an action is unfitting in relation to a particular set of circumstances is to say that features of those circumstances “call for” one’s refraining from performing the action. So, if direct moral experiences carry ontological objective purport in a way that is introspectively manifest, then such purport would seem to be located in the following complex experience: a concrete action being called for by desireindependent features of one’s present circumstances. As we explained earlier, if a view like cognitivist expressivism, which denies that moral experiences carry descriptive purport, can accommodate the introspectively manifest aspects in question (regardless of whether this type of view can fully accommodate the phenomenology), and can do so at least as well as a view that attributes to the phenomenology descriptive purport, then we will have secured the Neutrality thesis. To be clear, even if cognitivist expressivism can accommodate the introspectively accessible aspects of moral phenomenology as well as any competing ontological-objectivist metaethical view, this does not show that those aspects don’t carry ontological objectivist purport. Rather, what it shows (we claim) is that whether or not the aspects in question do carry such purport is not something that is introspectively accessible, and that is enough to establish the Neutrality thesis. We now proceed to sketch two interpretations —a cognitivist-expressivist interpretation and an ontological-objectivist interpretation —to lay bare how they each purport to account for Mandelbaumian direct moral experiences. 55 This cake example is from Elizabeth L. Beardsley, “Moral Experience and Ethical Analysis,” The Philosophical Review 68 (1959), 519–30 (critical review of Mandelbaum’s The Phenomenology of Moral Experience).

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We have lately called attention to how cognitivist expressivism understands direct moral ought-judgments as kinds of beliefs. What does the view say about direct moral experiences of being called upon by desireindependent considerations such that these experiences would have an objective feel to them? There are two essential ideas. First, direct moral experiences qua moral have to do with taking what we will rather vaguely call a “non-self-privileging” stance toward one’s action and circumstances. Taking this sort of stance involves being open to being affected by desire-independent considerations that have largely to do with not harming others. Different normative moral theories spell out this vague notion of non-self-privileging in different ways. Second, and most crucially, in coming to be and experience oneself as being ought-committed to some course of action (or inaction), one experiences oneself as (1) becoming ought-committed in a non-self-privileging way, and (2) as becoming so committed because of certain non-normative factual considerations. The idea is that such judgment-involving experiences of direct moral obligation possess a kind of phenomenological unity: not only is one aware of some objective, non-normative features of some object of evaluation (my having promised to take out the trash), and not only does one experience oneself as becoming ought-committed to a certain non-normative descriptive way-the-world-might-be (my taking out the trash), but one experiences oneself as becoming thus ought-committed because of those objective features one is aware of —and, moreover, as oughtcommitted in a non-self-privileging way. Direct experiences of moral unfittingness, then, are a matter of becoming ought-committed in a nonself-privileging way to a certain action, on the basis of (what one takes to be) objective in-the-world nonmoral features.56 56 The moral experiences that we are here calling direct ought-judgment-involving moral experiences are all-in moral experiences of moral unfittingness. We also recognize moral experiences of unfittingness that are like all-in moral experiences except that one does not come to feel ought-committed; rather, one only experiences oneself as having a tendency to feel ought-committed. These are cases in which one would find oneself ought-committed if the relevant non-normative feature in question were the only feature one took to be a reason. In contrast to all-in experiences of unfittingness (or fittingness), such cases are those of prima facie unfittingness (or fittingness). This distinction between two types of experiences of moral unfittingness bears on an example that Julia Driver described (in conversation) in which one comes across a pigeon lying on the ground (apparently hit by a car) that is in pain and obviously cannot be saved. One can walk away or crush its skull (thereby putting it out of its misery). One judges that it is morally best (and hence fitting) to crush the pigeon’s skull, but in doing so one takes the act of crushing to be unfitting. In this case, putting the pigeon out of its misery is experienced as fitting, but the act of crushing is experienced as unfitting. Driver asked whether our model of moral experience, featuring as it does experiences of unfittingness and fittingness, can handle this case. Given what we have just said about the distinction between all-in experiences of moral unfittingness (and fittingness) and experiences of prima facie moral unfittingness, we can say of Driver’s case that, on the one hand, given that the act in question is a crushing of a live animal’s skull, one experiences the contemplated action as prima facie unfitting. On the other hand, given that the animal is suffering and cannot be saved, one experiences the act as prima facie fitting. On our picture, then, one has a ten-

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It is worth emphasizing that this is a two-step construal of direct moral judgment. (The “steps” are conceptually-discernible aspects, which might or might not be sequential links in a causal sequence.) The crucial point to appreciate, in distinguishing this non-ontological picture from an ontological picture, is the second step —the becoming committed because step. Here it is important to notice that the “because” is not simply a causal “because.” To construe it this way would be to confuse matters of causal explanation with matters of normativity. What this picture holds, then, is that the second step involves what we may refer to as a reasonish-because way of coming to have an ought-commitment. In illuminating this reasonish-because way of coming to be oughtcommitted, cognitivist expressivism will want to approach the state of mind corresponding to this way of coming to be ought-committed in a manner similar to the way the view approaches ought-judgments themselves. As we noted earlier, cognitivist expressivism understands an oughtjudgment as a sui generis kind of commitment-state vis-à-vis a core descriptive content such as John’s taking out the trash. Cognitivist expressivism approaches judgments of unfittingness and fittingness in the same way —as involving a kind of psychological commitment-state vis-à-vis a pair of core descriptive contents that is not an is-commitment with respect to a putative in-the-world unfittingness fact. Theoretical understanding of such states comes from what we call “triangulation” —illumination of such psychological states not via some reductive account of them but in terms of both their overall phenomenology and their constitutive role(s) in a morally-judging agent’s overall psychological economy. This is a project that we have partially addressed elsewhere, and it represents a central task for the expressivist.57 dency to feel ought-committed to crushing the skull, and an opposing tendency to feel ought-committed to refraining from crushing the skull. As in typical cases of conflicts of prima facie duties, one must determine which consideration is all-in or most fitting in the circumstances. 57 In the formal language featured in Horgan and Timmons, “Cognitivist Expressivism,” judgments of the form I ought to do A (now) are rendered as O[A], where “O” expresses ought-commitment and “A” expresses a descriptive way-the-world-might-be content (e.g., that I take out the trash now). Likewise, is-commitments are rendered as I[A]. Thus, “O[A]” is the canonical way of expressing linguistically one’s state of being ought-committed to a descriptive content, which is how cognitivist expressivism understands direct moral oughtjudgments. As we have said, the idea is that the “ought” is in the attitude of the psychological state, not in the content toward which the attitude is directed. The formal language also generates constructions corresponding to a whole hierarchy of logically complex commitment-states — e.g., commitment-states of the type {I[ ] or O[ ]}, where such a commitment-state obtains with respect to a pair of descriptive contents expressable by “that”-clauses that would be inserted into the respective bracketed slots. To capture unfittingness judgments in such a formal language, a natural idea would be to augment the range of logically complex formal-language constructions to incorporate an adverbial operator that expresses the “reasonish-because” manner of judging. Judgments of the form, It would be unfitting for me not to take out the trash now because I’ve promised to do so, or equivalently, My promising to take out the trash at this time is a reason for why I ought to take it out now, can be rendered: R(I[B]){O[A]}, which expresses a logically complex commitment-state of

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Now that we have sketched this two-step picture, we can compare it to the three-step picture that is apparently favored by the ontological moral objectivist. On the three-step construal, the following discernible aspects are allegedly involved: (1) apprehending some objective, non-normative, fact(s) (my having promised to take out the trash); (2) apprehending an objective unfittingness fact (my not taking out the trash being unfitting in relation to my having promised to take out the trash); and (3) becoming oughtcommitted to some objective non-normative way-the-world-might-be (my taking out the trash) by virtue of step (2). On the cognitivist-expressivist picture we are urging, in contrast, there is no such step (2). Although I do indeed apprehend my having promised to take out the trash as a reason to take out the trash, such reason-apprehension is constituted by becoming ought-committed in the manner described in the preceding paragraph. And that is a two-step process (albeit a process involving substantial phenomenological unity): it involves (a) apprehending my having promised to take out the trash, and (b) becoming ought-committed to my taking out the trash in a way that is both non-self-privileging and based upon step (a) in a reasonish-because way. Here, then, we have two pictures of the phenomenology of moral unfittingness, and the question is whether there is any introspectively accessible reason (in direct moral experience) to favor one over the other. Our main claim in this essay is that it is not introspectively obvious one way or the other — that, in order to decide the issue, one has to import nonphenomenological theoretical considerations into the metaethical debate between the two camps in question. X. Moral Objectivity with a Small “O” Let us return for a moment to Mandelbaum’s claim that the phenomenology of direct moral experience has an “objective” feel to it. Presumably, the objective feel of direct moral experiences emerges from the aspects of phenomenology we have been describing. Can this sort of feel be being ought-committed to a certain non-moral-descriptive content (namely, that I take out the trash now) in a for-the-reason-that I promised to take it out manner. (More precisely, the manner is a for-the-reason-that-it-is-the-case [that I promised to take out the trash] manner.) That is to say, this is a commitment-state of the logical type R(I[ ]){O[ ]}, with respect to the pair of descriptive contents that I promised to take out trash and that I take out the trash now. (We assume here that one takes the reason to be an all-in reason for the ought-judgment.) Of course, this for-the-reason-that-I[ ] manner of becoming ought-committed is also a nonself-privileging manner, and so to capture this in our syntax, one might render the oughtoperator thus: O i [A], for “ought-impartial.” Thus, the full formal rendering of such an impartial, reasonish-because manner of being ought-committed would be this: R(I[B]){Oi [A]}. Again, such a logically complex commitment-state is not an is-commitment with respect to a putative descriptive content (namely, my having promised to take out the trash being a reason for my taking out the trash now). On the contrary: according to cognitivist expressivism, there is no such descriptive content, and there is no such is-commitment to such a putative content.

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accommodated by cognitivist expressivism? Indeed it can. In capturing the objective feel in question, there are two elements of such experiences that combine to carry a sort of non-ontological-objectivist feel. First, one experiences oneself as judging in a non-self-privileging way —taking, as it were, an impartial stance —and thus as less self-centered and more othercentered. Second, one experiences oneself as becoming committed to what one ought to do (or refrain from doing) in what we have called a “reasonishbecause” way. Thus, one experiences oneself as judging in an impartial, nonarbitrary, reason-based manner. Call this conception of moral objectivity small “o” objectivity; 58 we think it nicely captures the kind of objectivity that is available to introspection when reflecting on direct moral experiences. As we have said, it remains possible that direct moral experiences also carry commitment to a stronger form of objectivity; but, if so, this is not something that is introspectively accessible. We claim, then, that cognitivist expressivism —which does not construe moral judgments (or the experiences that embed them) as carrying strong ontological objective purport (or rationalist objective purport, for that matter) —can capture a notion of moral objectivity that seems to be all that is needed to fully accommodate the introspectively manifest aspects of direct moral experiences. XI. Objections and Replies We anticipate various objections to the Neutrality thesis, at least as we have defended it. Here, in rapid-fire succession, are those objections with our replies. Mistake: A critic might claim that our phenomenological description of direct moral experiences is mistaken, that we leave out or misdescribe some crucial, introspectively manifest element that carries ontological objective purport and that is introspectively accessible. Reply: We think of our defense of the Neutrality thesis as one that shifts a burden onto the backs of ontological moral objectivists. Thus, our opponents need to point to those introspectively manifest features of direct moral experiences that cannot be accommodated by cognitivist expressivism as well as they can be accommodated by some form of ontological moral objectivism. Misdescribe: A critic might claim that it is introspectively obvious that cognitivist expressivism itself just misdescribes the moral phenomenology in question, and that it is implausible for this reason. To be more precise, the claim might be that it is introspectively manifest that (a) moral judgments are beliefs, and (b) beliefs are descriptive in their overall content. (To say, for instance, that the belief that John ought to take out the 58 This phrase is inspired by Putnam’s phrase “realism with a small ‘r’.” See Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987), 17.

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trash is “descriptive in its overall content” is to say that the “that”-clause that John ought to take out the trash characterizes a descriptive way the world might be.) Reply: Elsewhere, we argue against (b) partly on phenomenological grounds.59 We will not rehearse those grounds here. It is worth noting, however, that even if one insists that genuine beliefs must be descriptive, there is a position that is like cognitivist expressivism that construes ought-commitments as, say, quasi-beliefs, which would do the same work for us in defending the Neutrality thesis as does cognitivist expressivism. It is also worth pointing out here that those who just insist that it is introspectively evident to them that their phenomenology does carry objective purport may be guilty of introspective confabulation. Generally speaking, it is easy to “read into” one’s phenomenology what is not really there. For instance, I see a saguaro cactus that strikes me (based on how it looks) as being about forty-five years old. I say, “Well, it looks about forty-five years old.” But here it would be implausible to suppose that the property of being roughly forty-five years old is something that is introspectively presented to me in my visual experience. Rather, the more intuitively plausible thing to say here is that, based on my cacti experience, I am able to reliably form beliefs about the age of cacti based on what is presented to me in my visual experience. Were I to introspect and conclude that my visual experience presents me with the property of being forty-five years old, I would be guilty of introspective confabulation. A similar point holds, we think, for those who would attend to their direct moral experiences and claim that it is introspectively obvious that they have a divine “stamp” upon them or are of divine origin. And the same sort of confabulation is going on (we would claim) when some folks claim that it is introspectively obvious that their own phenomenology of direct moral experience (and perhaps their concrete moral experience generally) has ontological objective purport. Making this case is (we admit) beyond the scope of this essay; it is something we plan to explore in our work in progress. Denial: A critic might deny that cognitivist expressivism is an overall plausible metaethical view in ways other than not being able to accommodate the introspectively manifest features of direct moral experiences. Reply: This objection is beside the point. It is enough for our purposes that cognitivist expressivism (assuming it is a coherent metaethical option) can accommodate the introspectively manifest phenomenology of direct moral experiences. In any case, this objection requires going beyond the phenomenology in question and bringing forth various additional theoretical considerations that are relevant for evaluating a metaethical theory. Elsewhere, we defend cognitivist expressivism as plausible on general philosophical grounds.60 59 60

See Horgan and Timmons, “Cognitivist Expressivism.” See note 54.

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Limit: A critic might claim that, for all we have said, the phenomenology in question may carry ontological objective purport, even if such purport is not introspectively accessible. Reply: We completely agree that this is an option. Our only aim was to take on the argument from phenomenological introspection. So even if moral phenomenology does carry this kind of purport, we think it is important to point out that this putative fact about the phenomenology is not reliably introspectable. This may explain why moral philosophers disagree about the metaphysical purport of moral experiences of the sort we have considered. Myopia: A critic might claim that there are other types of concrete moral experience and other deeply embedded features of moral thought and discourse (including logical embedding, our critical moral practices, and moral deliberation), and that some of these features (perhaps in combination) are best accommodated by an ontological-objectivist metaethics. Reply: Perhaps so. But, as we have said, our aim in this essay has been narrowly focused in order to examine one specific phenomenological argument. We admit that there is more work to be done in defending a metaethical view. It may be, for all we have said, that other types of concrete moral experience involve introspectively manifest aspects that carry ontological objective purport, though we doubt it. Having made a case that one type of concrete moral experience is neutral on this issue, the burden is squarely on the shoulders of anyone who thinks that some other type of moral experience does carry such purport —all the more so because the kinds of moral judgment we have focused on here (namely, direct judgments of moral obligation) are typically the ones most cited by advocates of the phenomenological argument. As for the thought that one must look beyond concrete moral experience to other features of moral thought and discourse in order to make a pro tanto case for ontological objective purport, we note that this thought is one way of making our main point. As we explained in Section IV, the argument from phenomenological introspection rests on the assumption that ontological objective purport can be read off from the phenomenology of concrete moral experiences without appealing to other features of moral thought and discourse. Variability: A critic might note that, arguably, moral phenomenology is theory-laden: theoretical assumptions, including metaethical ones, saturate moral experience. Thus, in all likelihood, the moral phenomenologies of different individuals will vary with respect to whether their moral experiences carry objective purport in general, and whether their direct moral experiences carry introspectively manifest ontological objective purport. Reply: This raises large methodological issues that we cannot pursue here.61 However, this objection is bad news for the argument from phe61 Questions about the theory-ladenness of moral experiences were raised in conversation by David Wong. Michael Gill, in his “Variability and Moral Phenomenology,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (2008), pressed this same worry. We reply to Gill in our “Prolegomena to a Future Phenomenology of Morals.”

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nomenological introspection. As we explained in Section IV, the argument rests on the assumption that the phenomenology of moral experience involves aspects that are pretheoretically there in the phenomenology and are widely shared —aspects about which we can theorize. If this assumption is false, then this is a problem for the argument. Furthermore, even if there is such variability, there may still be a “core” phenomenological layer that is common. (We think there is.) If so, then this is where the present debate should be focused. XII. Conclusion We began with a commonly expressed appeal to moral experience and its phenomenology as a basis for favoring some form of ontological moral objectivism. We also began with the idea that this sort of argument, so far as we can tell, tends to focus on concrete moral experiences of obligation and value. We decided to focus on a very common sort of concrete moral experience —what Mandelbaum calls “direct moral experiences of obligation” —as a basis for exploring what we call the argument from phenomenological introspection. According to this argument, there are introspectively manifest aspects of direct moral experiences that have moral ontological objective purport. We have challenged this claim. We maintain that the introspectively manifest aspects of such moral experiences do not determine whether they have this kind of objective purport. This is our Neutrality thesis, which we defended by explaining how our version of cognitivist expressivism can fully accommodate the introspectively manifest data of direct moral experiences, including the objectivist character of such experiences. Philosophy, University of Arizona

IMAGINATIVE RESISTANCE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL NECESSITY* By Julia Driver Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity, has determin’d us to judge as well as to breathe and feel. . . . —David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature I. Introduction On Hume’s view, there are some things we must believe. In his analysis of and response to skeptical worries in the first book of A Treatise of Human Nature, he repeatedly notes that we are so constructed by nature that we cannot maintain skeptical doubt. Here we have an allusion to psychological necessity. A claim such as “There is a door to my office” (given that I perceive a door to my office, etc.) is psychologically necessary for me. It is certainly not logically necessary or metaphysically necessary. It is simply something that I cannot avoid believing in practice. It seems to me that Hume appeals to psychological necessity elsewhere in the Treatise (though not so explicitly), as when he discusses our moral commitments. When Hume notes that belief is more a matter of sentiment than reason, he is not contradicting earlier claims; rather, he is talking about the practical commitment that goes along with belief. A distinction can be made between the truth of a proposition and appropriate commitment to a belief with that same propositional content. There is a sense in which a good belief is the true one; however, though the point of belief may be truth, the point of commitment to belief may not be. Here is where sentiment properly enters the picture, providing the basis for a sentimentalist account of our commitment to moral norms.1 On this view, such a commitment does not follow from logic and reason, but from passion. In this essay, I discuss psychological necessity as it pertains to moral commitments. I argue that some evidence for a Humean view of the psychological necessity of certain moral beliefs in practice is provided by the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. I also argue that this phenom* For their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, I would like to thank the other contributors to this volume. The paper has additionally benefited from conversations with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Roy Sorensen. I would also like to thank Ellen Frankel Paul for her detailed written comments on the earlier draft. 1 Moral sentimentalism is the view that moral norms derive authority from our passions (what we desire, what we care about). There are many different ways to spell this out in more detail; for example, sentimentalism can be either cognitivist or noncognitivist. DOI: 10.1017/S0265052508080114 © 2008 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA.

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enon, along with the view that there is a difference between truth conditions and commitment conditions, can offer the moral sentimentalist a way to respond to a certain family of criticisms intended to portray the sentimentalist as being committed, in principle, to morally outrageous claims. II. Imaginative Resistance When we read fiction, we tend to accept the author’s authority to establish truth within the text, yet we also tend to reject claims made by the author that are morally outrageous. The attempt to reconcile these two tendencies presents us with a puzzle. After all, the author seems to have authority when it comes to descriptively outrageous claims —so why not morally outrageous claims as well? We happily go along with talking mice and time-travel tales, but we balk if recreational torture is endorsed, or presented as truly permissible within the story. This does not demonstrate that there is an essential difference between the nonmoral and the moral. It simply shows that there are two issues at stake: first, understanding imaginative resistance; and, second, coming up with an explanation of why, as readers of fiction, we have much more resistance to things we deem immoral, as opposed to things we deem impossible (but are able to imagine, at least for the purposes of going along with the fiction). In response to the first issue, I would say that what some writers have referred to as imaginative resistance is a specific instance of a more general phenomenon; and, in response to the second, I would say that the difference in fictional interpretation between descriptive outrageousness and normative outrageousness is tied to different standards for appropriate storytelling in each case. We learn from fictions, just as we learn from considering some possibilities even if, at first, they seem outrageous. But in the case of moral outrageousness, as Tamar Gendler notes, we shy away from it because we don’t want to consider the immoral as moral even within fictional works, where we normally think the author authoritative.2 The reluctance has to do with there being no acceptable moral reasons provided within the story for switching perspectives between the real world and the work of fiction. Further, moral reasons are taken, generally, to have a special authority over our actions, a practical significance that other reasons lack. As we read a work of fiction, we may well have strong views about what a character ought to do —views that would be contradicted by the supposed immoralities of the plot. This is an additional source of the resistance to accepting those immoralities. Let us consider the puzzle of imaginative resistance as it has been discussed in the literature. The puzzle has to do with the fact that we 2 Tamar Gendler, “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance,” The Journal of Philosophy 97, no. 2 (February 2002): 55–81.

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refuse to play along when reading fictions in which normative claims that we do not share are put forward as true. Brian Weatherson asks us to consider a story he calls Death, in which two people, Jack and Jill, are killed by a fellow named Craig because they are blocking traffic while having an argument. The story contains the claim “So Craig did the right thing, because Jack and Jill should have taken their argument somewhere else where they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way.” 3 The puzzle here arises when we are asked to imagine that it is fine for Craig to have killed Jack and Jill for blocking traffic. We just can’t do this —which seems odd because we are willing to play along with authors of fiction when it comes to all kinds of other weird things (e.g., magic rings and the like). Of course, we do not think there could be such things as magic rings, but we are willing to imagine them. We are even willing to go along with logical impossibilities, such as the adventures of Hal the round square, whose curvy points get him into all kinds of amusing scrapes. However, we are not willing to go along with imagining that it is fine to kill people simply because they block traffic. I think that a friend of necessity in ethics should be cheered by this phenomenon, at least initially. In moral phenomenology, people often point to the fact that we feel a kind of necessity when faced with moral claims we take to be true.4 It is not just that claims like “Torturing kittens for fun is wrong” can be true, or just are true; such claims must be true. Likewise, in the case of the Death story, it seems that we simply cannot imagine that it is okay to kill for such a trivial reason. Might imaginative resistance signal a kind of necessity for moral commitments? Perhaps, but it would depend on how we understand the workings of the puzzle. Gendler argues that “the primary source of imaginative resistance is not our inability to imagine morally deviant situations, but our unwillingness to do so.” 5 It is not, presumably, that we can’t go along; we just won’t. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to go along with Hal the round square’s adventures either. Hal is an impossible object. But note that we do, I believe, tend to edit out features of the fiction that are descriptively outrageous and not necessary to advancing the plot. If one knows that one cannot hear explosions in space, one might just ignore that feature in the movie Star Wars. This indicates, I think, a tendency even to resist claims in stories that are descriptively false (in the sense of violating a law of nature, for example). It depends on the purposes of the storytelling. Some3

Brian Weatherson, “Morality, Fiction, and Possibility,” Philosophers’ Imprint 1, no. 3 (2004): 1. For example, in “Moral Phenomenology and Moral Theory,” Philosophical Issues 15 (2005): 56–77, Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons discuss Maurice Mandelbaum’s view that moral judgments seem to impose demands on us categorically (that is, that they have “objective pretensions”). Though these authors do not speak in terms of a feeling of necessity, their description of the categoricity of moral experience implies this. The sentimentalist does not deny that the feeling is there, but only denies that it necessarily indicates something objective “out there” that imposes duties. 5 Gendler, “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance,” 56. 4

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times an author will intentionally flout norms; that is, the author, in a very obvious way, will ignore or counter some norms or conventions so as to point out their absurdity. For example, the movie Blazing Saddles flouts conventional Western storytelling norms. However, if (as in the Hal story) it is clear that these norms are being flouted, we go along out of amusement, or out of a desire to see where the story takes us. Perhaps the point of the Hal story is to illustrate some lessons concerning impossibility, for example. Even so, one could hold that in the moral cases the resistance is more extreme. The imaginative resistance we feel in moral cases reflects our deeply held moral commitments, ones that we reflectively endorse. We cannot go along with moral claims we take to be false, because that would seem to involve a rejection of something we care very much about; after all, we generally take moral reasons to be much more serious than other sorts of reasons, even if we do not actually regard moral reasons as overriding. Humean sentimentalism ties this to our feelings of dismay at the thought of gratuitous harm. We cannot just excise that from our reaction to the fiction, except under circumstances where the dismay is avoided by the clear flouting of norms in the fiction. Thus, we “cannot” take the morally outrageous claims seriously. Recall that Gendler explains imaginative resistance in terms of our desires. On her view, what we are resisting in these cases is being manipulated by the author —“manipulated into taking points of view that we would not reflectively endorse as our own.” 6 I believe Gendler’s desire model is substantially correct, though it can be spelled out differently. A move that Weatherson makes is helpful in this regard. He urges that the following principle, Virtue, is what underlies imaginative resistance: Virtue: If p is the kind of claim that, if true, must be true in virtue of some lower-level facts, and if the story is about those lower-level facts, then it must be true in the story that there is some true proposition r which is about those lower-level facts such that p is true in virtue of r. 7 On Weatherson’s view, Virtue is a “strong default principle of fictional interpretation.” 8 I think Weatherson has a good basic approach in that, on his view, it is understood that for a claim to be true in a story there must be something in the story making it true. My gloss on Weatherson’s view is that there is in the story an implicit commitment to underlying reasons that are the justifiers of the claim in question. When this commitment is flouted, as it can be in some fictions, the result is like a Monty Python skit: 6

Ibid. Weatherson, “Morality, Fiction, and Possibility,” 18. 8 Ibid. 7

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some kind of absurdity is communicated. We do not resist this; indeed, we may go along with it quite happily, precisely because we are picking up on the absurdity that is the result of flouting the commitment. When someone judges something to be wrong, they view it to be wrong for certain reasons. People may differ on whether the reasons need to be internal or external, but, whatever the details, there are reasons. And those reasons can be essentially very different, and yet we still believe that when John says X is wrong (because it displays a lack of respect) and Mary says X is wrong (because it causes unnecessary suffering), they are agreeing that X is wrong. In any case, there are reasons that agents are responding to when they make moral judgments. These reasons may not be foremost in their minds, and under normal circumstances such reasons will not be; but acceptance of them still underlies moral judgment. Weatherson alludes to this when he claims: “We are not imagining [the story] Death if we imagine that Jack and Jill had just stopped arguing with each other and were about to shoot everyone in sight when Craig shot them in self-defense.” 9 To imagine this is to imagine a different story, one that does provide some justification for Craig’s action.10 Weatherson is trying to motivate the assumption that stories typically should be read with a “that’s it” clause in mind. In other words, it is reasonable to assume when reading a piece of fiction that all relevant facts —particularly any facts that deviate from what the audience would be used to or familiar with —have been provided in the story. I believe this points to the fact that at least one factor underlying imaginative resistance in moral cases is that, when we believe something is right or wrong, we typically believe this is the case for some reason —at least in concrete situations. Further (and I take it this is Weatherson’s point), when we read a work of fiction, we understand, as part of the background, that the world described by the author is complete for the purposes of understanding the story. What counts as “understanding” is very loose. When I watch an old episode of Star Trek, I cannot understand Scotty’s explanation of why the engines have failed. But the author of the script is simply trying to convey that there is some explanation or other. The same point can be made with respect to justification. Presumably we do not imagine the story Death if we imagine that there is some justification for Craig’s action, but we don’t know what the justification is. I cannot speak for everyone here, but I would have trouble going along with this. It may be that (again) because of the peculiar authority of moral reasons we believe it 9

Ibid., 20. Connie Rosati and Scott MacDonald have both suggested to me that what underlies imaginative resistance in stories like Death might simply be the fact that the story as a whole just doesn’t seem very convincing. It is not a persuasively told story; thus, we find it difficult to go along with Craig’s claim. This would change the nature of the problem. It would still be puzzling that we go along with poorly told stories that rest on unusual descriptive claims. 10

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incumbent upon the author to provide the justification, just as we would call on an agent to provide it. So we don’t go along with outrageous normative claims even though we let the outrageous descriptive ones slide by (and even enjoy them if they are absurd enough). Imaginative resistance can be overcome when a work of fiction provides reasons for a change in perspective that are good reasons. Sometimes a work of fiction will do this by providing information, or making information salient; but other times it will do this by working on our sympathies, by providing us with alternative points of view. In this way, fiction can be a source of actual moral education —as opposed to being simply a reaffirmation of already-held moral beliefs. (Of course, it can be that, too.) Consider the following review of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin: We conceive, then, that in writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has done more to diffuse real knowledge of the facts and workings of American Slavery, and to arouse the sluggish nation to shake off the curse, and abate the wrong, than has been accomplished by all the orations, and anniversaries, and arguments, and documents, which the last ten years have been the witness of. . . . A slave-holder might read it without anger, but not easily without a secret abhorrence of the system which he himself upholds. It brings out, quietly and collaterally, those incidental features of servitude which are usually little thought of, but which are the overflow of its cup of abominations. . . . [The novel’s] appeal to our sympathies is genuine. It artlessly pictures facts, and the facts make us feel. We have never read a story of more power. We doubt if anybody has. The human being who can read it through dry eyes, is commended to Barnum.11 This reviewer was merely speculating about the likely effects of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but another admirer of the novel wrote a letter to the editor of The National Era (which published the novel in serial form in 1851–52) that included the following claims: The story of Mrs. Stowe, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” is read with interest by persons heretofore violently opposed to everything of an AntiSlavery nature, and is more or less enlisting their sympathies and removing their prejudices, more especially among the young. . . . I know that there are thousands who would die by inches, who would 11 From The National Era, published in Washington D.C. by Gamaliel Bailey, April 15, 1852, quoting from the Congregationalist. Electronic edition published by Stephen Railton, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, Electronic Text Center, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2006; http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/reviews/rere01czt.html.

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give their lives rather than their support to the infamous law for the recapture of fugitive slaves. They never yet have spoken; their will is not yet regarded or known; but they will have a will, and a resolution to back it, only wanting an emergency to make itself known and felt. God grant that that emergency may never come, so that we may be left in our obscurity, with a consciousness that no duty impels us to emerge from it.12 It seems that this work of fiction galvanized previously hostile or indifferent people. Those who started out as indifferent or even hostile to the abolitionist movement were won over once they were presented with a story that made vivid for them all the wrong-making features of slavery. What sense of necessity is at work here, then? I believe that the desirebased account of imaginative resistance —which, I argue, points to some kind of necessity attached to normative commitments —can give a good account of that necessity by taking a leaf from the “ought” implies “can” literature. There are many different senses of “cannot.” There is the “cannot” one uses to indicate logical impossibility, as in “two plus two cannot equal five.” There is the “cannot” of conceptual impossibility, as in “one cannot imagine a round square.” There is the “cannot” of physical impossibility, as in “one cannot fly to the moon.” There is the “cannot” of metaphysical necessity, as in “one cannot have had different parents.” For our purposes, though, the important senses of “cannot” are the two distinct senses associated with psychological possibility. Consider a case from the “ought” implies “can” literature: Mary does not know how to play chess. One might hold, then, that she cannot have an obligation to play chess, since she cannot play chess given that she doesn’t know the rules.13 It is understood that this is psychologically not possible for her. (She can, of course, move the pieces around the chessboard; she is not physically impaired.) That is, understood in one intuitive way, playing chess certainly seems psychologically impossible for her, since she just doesn’t know the rules. However, in another sense, it is not psychologically impossible for her, since it is not something incompatible with the laws of psychology as such. In the second sense, Mary can play chess, since she has all of the cognitive architecture necessary; but, in the first sense, she cannot, since she doesn’t know how to do it. Now for necessity. If Mary cannot play chess, then there is a corresponding sense of necessity attached to her inability. For the sentimentalist, it is an interesting question as to which sense is operative with 12 Letter of S. E. M. from Arispe, Bureau County, Illinois, January 29, 1852, to the editor of The National Era, published online by Stephen Railton, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, Electronic Text Center, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2006; http://www.iath. virginia.edu/utc/notices/noar01tt.html. 13 Peter Vranas, “I Ought, Therefore I Can,” Philosophical Studies (forthcoming).

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respect to our moral commitments (or whether, possibly, both senses are operative). We could reasonably hold that both are operative, and this is the view that I favor. Thus, there are some things we are committed to given our psychological makeup as normal human beings, and then there are some things we are committed to through accidents of circumstance and upbringing. Contrary claims that seem outrageous in the first sense will be much more difficult, and perhaps even utterly impossible, to overcome. But contrary claims that seem outrageous in the second sense should be much easier to overcome. This picture is neutral on the issue of the truth of the claims in question. Moreover, we will need to tell a separate story about the appropriateness of some moral commitments over others (that is, the issue of commitment is distinct from the issue of truth). A moral sentimentalist notes that what underlies our commitment to moral claims is some feeling we have, such as sympathy with other sentient beings. When it comes to the practice of moral judgment, a Humean sentimentalist would hold that we cannot overturn our basic, reflectively endorsed moral commitments at any given time. They are psychologically necessary for us. One cannot overturn them any more than one can make oneself into a true practicing skeptic. But here I would like to add a slight twist, borrowing from the work of Frank Jackson. The truth conditions of a claim are distinct from its acceptance conditions and from its assertability conditions. Some claims may be true, but not assertable or acceptable. Examples that Jackson discusses are non-robust conditionals.14 Appeal to Jackson’s analysis can shed more light on imaginative resistance and help sentimentalism handle a common sort of criticism. III. Truth and Robustness Robustness is a property that some material conditionals have. Generally, when one utters an indicative conditional, one is signaling confidence in the antecedent of the conditional (unlike a counterfactual). But this is not always the case. It is sometimes the case that if the antecedent were found to be true, the conditional would be rejected. In those cases, the conditional is not robust, though this is compatible with its truth. Consider, as an illustration, the following conditional: (1) If phosphorus does not exist, then neither does thought itself. Given my belief that phosphorus is a key ingredient to the workings of the brain, I may utter (1) in full confidence. However, suppose someone were to show me that the element phosphorus does not in fact exist —that, like phlogiston, it has proved illusory. If one attaches to the 14

See Frank Jackson, Conditionals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

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antecedent the probability of 1, would one be willing to stand by the conditional? No. Therefore, it is not a robust conditional. Note, however, that it could still be true. My unwillingness to go along with the conditional, my unwillingness to pull the trigger on it, is not the same as its being false. Frank Jackson’s analysis of what is going on in the case of non-robust conditionals is the following: When an agent asserts the standard material conditional, she is signaling her confidence in the conditional; she is conventionally implying that it is robust with respect to the antecedent. So the truth conditions of the conditional are different from the conventional meaning of the conditional. Thus, a conditional like (1) can be true, but not robust —that is, it may not survive the assumption of the truth of the antecedent. The failure of survival will involve imaginative resistance with respect to the implication. We can think of a piece of fiction as providing us with a set of claims that work as conditionals. Consider: (2) If killing people merely because they are blocking traffic is permissible (in the story Death), then what Craig did was perfectly fine (in the story). Note that in the story (if we go with Weatherson’s “that’s it” assumption), this claim is presented as part of the story. The antecedent is presented as true in the story. For the sake of reading the story, we are supposed to assume that it is true. As interpreters, however, we are quite unwilling to go along with the conditional. The conditional is not robust. But it may still be true (in the story). Gendler and Weatherson’s type of account leaves it open to regard such conditionals as true in the story, even though interpreters are unwilling to accept such conditionals. I am not sure this does justice to the phenomenology of the puzzle of imaginative resistance. This is because it would run counter to the ordinary view that the truth of moral claims is constant as long as the underlying circumstances are constant.15 Alternatively, consider the following conditional that appeals to the norms of storytelling and interpretation (and brings up factors external to the story itself ): (2a) If the story has been properly told and read (and the “that’s it” condition is met, among other conditions), then what Craig did was perfectly fine. Assign a probability of 1 to the antecedent, and we would not go along with this conditional either. Therefore, this conditional is likewise not 15 Someone might hold that conditional (2) is vacuously robust because what is really doing the work is the rejection, plain and simple, of the antecedent. Consider, then, (2a).

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robust, though it could be true. Standards for “properly told” and “properly read” remain open, but would include the “that’s it” condition understood in reading a work of fiction, “coherence” for the story, and so on. However, robustness only applies to material or indicative conditionals, not to subjunctive conditionals. With subjunctive conditionals, one is standardly signaling a belief that the antecedent does not obtain. The issue this presents for fiction is actually rather complicated. One might well argue that some fictions are presented more in the spirit of subjunctive conditionals, or counterfactuals. In the fiction case, then, conditional (2) would need to be read in the following spirit: “Of course it isn’t true (in the story), but if it were the case (in the story) that killing people because they are blocking traffic is permissible, then what Craig did was perfectly fine.” To the extent that a person experiences imaginative resistance to a story, I believe that he or she is reading it as expressing an indicative conditional, where the speaker signals acceptance of the antecedent. This is because in stories like Weatherson’s Death the author does not appear to be rejecting the claim —in the story —that “killing someone simply for blocking traffic is morally permissible.” Now consider a claim that a sentimentalist (who believes something along the lines that it is the contents of our desire set, plus second-order attitudes toward features of the desire set, that determine the content of our moral commitments) would hold: (3) If it is the case that it is normal for humans to feel approval at the prospect of killing and eating another human, then it is permissible to kill and eat another human. This is rather crude, but what is important to my account is that the antecedent be something the utterer believes unlikely to be the case. Of course, we are horrified and repulsed at the thought of killing and eating other humans. For any of us to utter (3), we would have to utter it as a counterfactual. Suppose, however, that we somehow discovered the truth of the antecedent, or a good reason to accept it as true; then we could not utter it as a counterfactual. But what would that prove? Here we get back into imaginative resistance. Suppose the probability of the antecedent were 1. Suppose, for example, that I was able to show you poll after poll that demonstrated that human beings, as a whole, do feel it perfectly permissible to kill and eat other humans —that, in fact, their sympathetic engagement with others is very restricted in scope. We who talk about these issues just happen to be in the small percentage of people who don’t feel right about it. If we accept that the antecedent of (3) is true, would we, even the sentimentalists, continue to accept the conditional and act on it? No. It is not robust. However, and this is an important methodological

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point, that does not mean that (3) is false. Conditional (3) could still be true. Just because a conditional is not robust does not mean that it is false. Thus, sentimentalists who bite the bullet have this to fall back on. The feeling that there is something very wrong about conditional (3) is explained by its lack of robustness. But this does not keep it from being true. And this is the payoff of robustness in terms of practical deliberation and action.16 We certainly would not act on (3). The sentimentalist can argue that, given the way our brains work, we cannot practically question the status of the moral commitments we hold. The commitments impose demands or requirements on us that we, intuitively, feel to be externally imposed. But for the Humean sentimentalist, at least, there is a sense in which these requirements are externally imposed and a sense in which they are not. When a person experiences a certain situation as imposing a demand or requirement, what is responsible for that experience will be his or her desire set. It is because I am sympathetically engaged with others that I feel the requirement to help when I perceive the suffering of others. But there is nothing in their suffering itself that imposes a requirement. A rational creature with a relevantly different desire set will not experience the suffering of others as imposing a demand. Of course, this does not mean that the sentimentalist has no standard to appeal to apart from the contents of an individual’s desire set. Human nature (for example, the fact that sympathy seems to be a universal facet of that nature, at least for normal human beings) provides some standard of correctness. Of course, this contingency on human nature strikes many as deeply unsatisfying, to the point where people such as Richard Joyce hold that it is not what we mean by moral demands.17 Moral demands, rather, are deeply categorical, holding not simply due to individual desires, or to desires typical of the normal human. It seems to me, however, that an error theory can be given for this sense of necessity just as easily as one 16 There are other possible payoffs to be explored. There are other appeals to psychological necessity made in the literature, and they generally occur in contexts in which practical matters are at issue. Do I leave by the window or by the door? Should I give all I own to Oxfam, or should I save some resources for my own family? If we are in a certain frame of mind, we can experience a kind of practical incoherence where some combinations of beliefs and commitments are in conflict. Extreme cases would involve issues of whether to sacrifice one family member to save two strangers. But consider a more normal case: Claudia must decide between paying for her daughter’s expensive orthodontia, or giving the money to Oxfam. Sacrificing her daughter’s well-being even for the much greater well-being of others is something she could do, in a sense, since she is quite physically capable of writing the check and putting it in the mail, but almost all of her emotional commitments militate against it. Thus, there is also a sense in which she cannot bring herself to do it. She knows that if she were to do it she would feel like a miserable failure of a mother. She cannot do it without feeling she has wronged her daughter. It is against the backdrop of these deep emotional commitments (and the norms they reflect) that it is not a real option for her. And, as long as we believe these commitments are good ones, there will be little pressure for change. These commitments can be rationally endorsed. 17 Richard Joyce, The Myth of Morality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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can be given for the view that some moral claims are true. And it is here that the sentimentalist will appeal to psychological necessity, for which imaginative resistance provides some evidence. The sense of “cannot” here is not the sense of logical impossibility. The necessity is not nearly that strong. Certainly Gendler is right here. Instead, the fact that I cannot entertain a certain possibility (e.g., the possibility that killing simply to avoid a traffic jam is permissible) is a matter of its running against deepseated desires that ground my moral commitments. I cannot do it in the same sense in which I cannot accept, in reality, someone’s misuse of moral reasons in providing a pseudo-justification of his actions. Again, the issue is not whether the contents of the felt commitments indicate anything true or false about the world. It is a matter of having no choice but to regard them as true or false for practical purposes. But whatever sentimentalists think about the actual truth or falsity of the moral beliefs that form a part of our commitments, they will tend to agree that the sentiments upon which these commitments are based are subject to revision and correction for the individual; and there is even a possibility that these sentiments could be subject to revision for the species.18 In the case of sentimentalists, my view is that they should opt for viewing the feeling of necessity that is associated with moral commitments (i.e., the phenomenology of the moral experience) as being something about us, not something about the external world. This view is supported by the account of imaginative resistance as an unwillingness, or a weak incapacity, to accept morally outrageous claims presented in fiction. As I noted earlier, there is a sense of psychological impossibility that corresponds to weak incapacity (this is the sense in which Mary cannot play chess, because she doesn’t know how). Commitments may be psychologically necessary for us in that we are not simply unwilling to entertain their negations, but, rather, we do not now have the desires needed to do so. This may be due to a lack of relevant information. In any case, there will be cases where we are simply unwilling, and cases where a psychological deficit of some sort is responsible. If this is persuasive, then we have an account of the (purely psychological) necessity associated with moral commitments that gives us more information, really, about our desire set than about supposed deontic impositions from our environment. IV. Conclusion There are some propositions that we believe, that we are committed to for practical purposes, independent of any consideration as to their actual truth or falsity. Such claims may be psychologically necessary for us, even 18 This possibility raises interesting problems for the sentimentalist regarding how to demarcate social groups. There may be concerns here similar to those that crop up in the philosophy of biology about demarcating species.

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though these claims express neither logically nor metaphysically necessary truths. I have claimed that imaginative resistance points to the psychological necessity of claims we take to be morally true, and that imaginative resistance itself can be analyzed in terms of the non-robustness of certain conditional claims (an analysis which, again, is neutral on the issue of the truth of those claims). Moral sentimentalists, who appeal to psychological necessity in order to keep a sense of necessity attached to moral claims, can also appeal to the non-robustness of certain conditionals to counter some arguments that their views imply, in principle, results that are morally outrageous. Philosophy, Dartmouth College

OBJECTIVISM AND RELATIONAL GOOD* By Connie S. Rosati I. Introduction In his critique of egoism as a doctrine of ends, G. E. Moore famously challenges the idea that something can be “good for” someone.1 Moore asks, “In what sense can a thing be good for me? It is obvious, if we reflect, that the only thing which can belong to me, which can be mine, is something which is good, and not the fact that it is good. When therefore, I talk of anything I get as ‘my own good,’ I must mean either that the thing I get is good, or that my possessing it is good.” 2 As Moore’s remarks indicate, the notion of “my own good” strikes him as strangely proprietary; and, as he goes on to argue, its proprietary nature precludes it from being normative. In this respect, Moore appears to have found the expression ‘good for me’ akin to the peculiar expression ‘true for me.’ 3 Just as the latter expression suggests a kind of truth that the individual herself could have exclusive reason to believe, so the former expression suggests a kind of value that the individual herself could have exclusive reason to promote, and that, Moore evidently thought, would be no kind of value at all. As * I want to thank the other contributors to this volume for constructive discussion of an earlier version of this essay. I also want to thank Richard Kraut and David Sobel for providing me with extremely challenging comments, Ellen Frankel Paul for helpful editorial guidance, and Larry Alexander, Steve Smith, and Michael Jubien for helpful reactions to earlier drafts. The penultimate version of this essay was presented at the 2007 meetings of the North Carolina Philosophical Society, as well as to the philosophy department at North Carolina State University; many thanks to members of both audiences for instructive comments. Finally, I want to thank Don Regan, whose persistence over the years in pressing the Moorean line against “good for” has prompted me to think long and hard about the nature of personal good. Work on this essay was completed during the 2006–2007 academic year, while I was a recipient of the John E. Sawyer Fellowship at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. I am deeply indebted to the Center for its support and for the wonderfully collegial environment the Center and its staff have created for scholars working in the humanities. 1 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903), revised edition, ed. Thomas Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), sec. 59. 2 Ibid. (Moore’s emphasis). 3 See Thomas Hurka, “‘Good’ and ‘Good For’,” Mind 96, no. 381 (1987): 71–73. Hurka, who agrees with Moore in rejecting talk about the good for, makes the analogy to “true for” explicit. In canvassing the sundry meanings of ‘good for,’ none of which he finds unconfused, Hurka considers uses which treat what is good for a person as what she believes good, either in relation to herself or impersonally. He remarks, “If someone falsely believes that p we do not say that p is ‘true for her.’ That would go too far toward endorsing her belief, and we should have the same worry here. If we mean only that someone believes a thing good, that is all we should say, leaving issues of truth or acceptability wide open” (73). I am suggesting that a related, if not identical, parallel underlies Moore’s thinking.

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Moore expresses it, “the only reason I can have for aiming at ‘my own good’ is that it is good absolutely that what I so call should belong to me. . . . But if it is good absolutely that I should have it, then everyone else has as much reason for aiming at my having it, as I have myself.” 4 The expression ‘good for me,’ insofar as it denotes something normative, must simply be a convoluted way of saying that my possessing a thing is good tout court. Moore’s challenge to the notion of “my own good” has implications not just for egoism, of course, but for the very idea of individual welfare, at least insofar as the idea of welfare or good for a person signifies something more than that the thing a person gets is good or that the state of her possessing it is good.5 Insofar as it does have implications for the notion of individual welfare, Moore’s challenge presents a problem not only for welfare consequentialism, the dominant contemporary rival to his own “ideal” utilitarianism, but for any theory of ethics that assigns us a duty to promote individual welfare.6 The challenge might fairly be understood as partly normative, at least in its implications, for ontology circumscribes obligation, but it is, at its core, metaphysical. If Moore is right, the notion of a person’s “own good” or what is “good for her” reflects a fundamental error about the sorts of value properties that exist, and, as a consequence, no plausible objectivism about ethics could be welfarist, at least not in the welfarist’s sense. 4 Moore, Principia Ethica, sec. 59. Jan Narveson has asked why we should bother to consider seriously Moore’s challenge when the claim he makes —that everyone has as much reason for aiming at my good as I do —is, as Narveson sees it, so implausible. If X satisfies one of my desires, Narveson claims, it doesn’t follow that anyone else has a reason to help me secure X. Because Narveson’s puzzlement might be shared, perhaps it would be helpful to highlight at least two points on which he and I evidently part company; our differences with respect to these points help to explain our differing reactions to Moore’s challenge. First, whereas Narveson is inclined to accept a desire theory of welfare, I believe we have pretty conclusive reasons to reject any such theory. I have argued against certain desire theories of personal good elsewhere. See Connie S. Rosati, “Persons, Perspectives, and Full-Information Accounts of the Good,” Ethics 105, no. 2 (1995): 296–325; Rosati, “Naturalism, Normativity, and the Open Question Argument,” Noûs 29, no. 1 (1995): 46–70; and Rosati, “Agency and the Open Question Argument,” Ethics 113, no. 3 (2003): 490–527. For other critical discussion of desire theories, see, e.g., J. David Velleman, “Brandt’s Definition of ‘Good’,” Philosophical Review 97 (1988): 353–71; David Sobel, “Full Information Accounts of Well-Being,” Ethics 104, no. 4 (1994): 784–810; Don Loeb, “Full-Information Theories of Individual Good,” Social Theory and Practice 21, no. 1 (1995): 1–30; and Wayne Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), chap. 5. Second, Narveson apparently maintains what I would deny, namely, that good for can (or does?) give rise only to agent-relative reasons. See note 33 below. I am inclined to take Moore’s challenge seriously, because I think we still need an analysis of good for, as well as a better understanding of the sorts of reasons a person’s good might give to her or to anyone else. 5 Michael Smith has argued that Moore’s challenge also has implications for the very idea of agent-relative value. See Michael Smith, “Neutral and Relative Value after Moore,” Ethics 113, no. 3 (2003): 576–98. 6 That would include the broadly Kantian view I favor, a view that makes central the proper valuing of persons and that regards proper valuing of persons as constituted in part by an appropriate regard for their welfare.

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Moore’s argument has recently been revived in a way that makes explicit the broader challenge it poses to the notion of welfare or good for a person. Donald Regan, a largely unreconstructed Moorean, elaborates on Moore’s argument, employing it, as he says, to “cast doubt on a proposition which many people would regard as the first axiom of moral theory,” namely, that morality is fundamentally concerned with advancing the welfare or well-being of individuals.7 Regan claims we have no need of the notion of well-being or good for a person, which, so far as he can see, captures nothing not already captured by Moore’s idea of good possessed by a person, or as Regan prefers to describe it, good occurring in a person’s life. I will here follow Regan in referring to theorists who treat being good for a person, or being good for P, as a distinct normative property, and who may give normative primacy to individual welfare or personal good, as “good-for theorists,” and I will frequently refer to Mooreans as “good theorists,” which is not, I hasten to add, to endorse Regan’s view.8 Regan makes clear that in denying the distinctness and normative primacy of good for, he does not mean to deny that we ought to be concerned with what goes on in one another’s lives. Moreover, he remarks more than once that the Moorean concept of intrinsic value may well encompass everything encompassed by the good-for theorist’s concept of welfare: the best account of the good, he assures us, will likely include whatever is plausibly the good for individuals, even if it includes a good bit more than this.9 The question that interests him is why we ought to be concerned with what goes on in one another’s lives. As he expresses it, “I 7 Donald H. Regan, “Why Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” (hereafter “Brother’s Keeper”), in R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, and Michael Smith, eds., Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 202. See also Hurka, “‘Good’ and ‘Good For’.” 8 I say that these theorists may give normative primacy to good for, because one can believe that being good for P is a distinct normative property or concept without believing that personal good or welfare has primacy from the standpoint of moral theory. My interest in this essay lies just with whether good-for talk concerns a distinct normative property, though what I say on this score no doubt bears on the question of whether good or good for (or neither) is fundamental to morality and moral theory. I explain my preference for the expression ‘personal good’ in Connie S. Rosati, “Personal Good,” in Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, eds., Metaethics after Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 108–9. 9 Regan says, more precisely, that on the “best versions of each theory of value, ‘the good’ and ‘the good for’ may have the same extension” (Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 209; final emphasis added). But he sometimes seems to think it likely that they will have the same extension. In particular, he seems confident that at least his own view of the good, which includes pleasure as a part of every state that ought to be promoted, will capture everything that good-for theorists deem a good for (210). Indeed, he later considers as a challenge to his view the suggestion that by treating the good as consisting only in pleasurable experiences of worthy objects or activities, the Moorean shows himself really to be interested in the good for (value for an individual) after all (221). As I have expressed it in the text, what is important is that the extension of good, even if broader than that of good for P, is likely to encompass all of the good for. On Regan’s view of the good, the extension of good may in fact be no broader than that of good for P. But whether or not this is so will depend on how Regan ultimately spells out the details of his view, as well as on the correct analysis of good for P.

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do not ask, like Cain, whether I am my brother’s keeper,” but, rather, “why [I am] my brother’s keeper.” 10 The good-for theorist, he maintains, can offer no coherent answer, not one, at least, that does not rest on a prior Moorean conception of value that renders good for otiose. “So far as I can see,” Regan tells us, “well-being as a normative concept does not figure in the best account of why we are obligated to care about what happens in others’ lives (or, for that matter, in our own).” 11 One might be tempted to dismiss the broader challenge. Whatever the merits of Moore’s criticism when directed against egoism, one might argue, it ought not to lead us to abandon common sense.12 After all, what could be more obviously true than that things can be good or bad, not merely in an absolute sense, but for us? What could be clearer than that our lives can go better or worse, not just, to borrow Henry Sidgwick’s memorable phrase, from the point of view of the universe, but from our point of view? Yet as clear and obvious as this may be, I feel the pull of Regan’s rhetoric when he virtually dares the good-for theorist to pony up and offer a genuine analysis of welfare, or at least some story that would vindicate being good for P as a normative concept or property distinct from being good. A striking feature of the rather extensive literature on welfare is, as Regan rightly emphasizes, how little in the way of analysis good-for theorists provide. As far as I have been able to discover, no real effort has been expended trying to explain, as Regan puts it, what the “for” is doing in the notion of “good for,” or for that matter, what the “good” is doing.13 In this essay, I want to explore what I will from here on call the “Moorean challenge,” focusing exclusively on Regan’s recent and more extensive presentation and development of it.14 I am interested in this challenge for 10

Ibid., 202. Ibid., 203. 12 In the context of Moore’s critique of egoism as a doctrine of ends, his claims about “my own good” are preliminary to showing that egoism involves a contradiction. Moore construes egoism as the view that each of us “ought rationally to hold: My own greatest happiness is the only good thing there is.” He claims, as we have seen, that the good of a thing cannot be private; the only reason a person can have for aiming at “her own good” is that it is good absolutely that she possess it, but if it is good absolutely, then everyone has reason to aim at it. So when the egoist holds that a person’s happiness or interest ought to be her sole end, this can only mean that it is the sole good and the only thing at which everyone ought to aim. “What Egoism holds, therefore, is that each man’s happiness is the sole good —that a number of different things are each of them the only good thing there is —an absolute contradiction” (Moore, Principia Ethica, sec. 59). For criticism of Moore’s critique of egoism, see C. D. Broad, “Certain Features of Moore’s Ethical Doctrines,” in Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, 3d ed. (La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Co., 1968), 43–50. 13 Of those who have offered what they claim to be analyses of personal good, only Stephen Darwall, as far as I have been able to discover, has said anything that would bear on Regan’s question. See Stephen Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), in which he offers an analysis of a person’s good as consisting in what one ought to want out of concern for her or for her sake. 14 For a discussion of Moore’s challenge in the context of providing a fitting-attitude or “buck passing” analysis of personal value, see Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, “Analysing Per11

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several reasons, two of which I want to mention from the start. First, although much has been written about welfare or personal good, we still lack a fully adequate theory, and the Moorean’s claims provide a useful entry into the question of how to understand the basic normative idea of something’s being good for a person.15 Second, if objectivism or realism about ethics is true, then our most immediate access to ethical facts, I suspect, is likely to be our access to facts about individual welfare. Ask any parent raising a child or any person engaged in caring for an infirm parent or an ailing partner what he or she is doing —anyone who does these things without ulterior motive, that is —and however skeptical they may otherwise be about morality, they will tell you that they are looking out for their child’s or parent’s or partner’s interests. Ask any person planning a life for herself why she seeks what she does —any person whose choices rest not on avowed self-sacrifice, that is —and she will likely report not merely that she finds those undertakings or pursuits interesting, challenging, important, or valuable but that she believes they suit her and that engagement with them will enable her to lead a happy life.16 If normative facts exist, I conjecture, they get their first grip on us in relation to those we love, including ourselves.17 If these conjectures are correct, then making sense of good for will be important to vindicating a plausible objectivism. sonal Value,” Journal of Ethics 11, no. 1 (2007). As I understand it, the notion of personal value that Rønnow-Rasmussen has in mind is not identical to the notion of personal good or welfare. 15 For preliminary work in this direction, see Rosati, “Personal Good.” 16 Regan, more than once, tries to enlist in support of his challenge to the “usefulness” of good for Joseph Raz’s claim that we do not pursue our goals because doing so will further or enhance our welfare. Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 203–4, 219. See Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 316–17. I think the claim is false. I would go this far with Raz: we often undertake the goals we do because we believe them to be valuable, and when asked why we undertake them, our explanation often appeals to their value rather than to the benefit to us. But I believe these facts are compatible with what I also think is clearly true, namely, that we pursue the goals we do because we believe that they will (or may, where we are uncertain) enhance our welfare. The ordinary person tends not to talk in terms of his or her welfare or well-being, but that is because the terms ‘welfare’ and ‘well-being’ are mainly philosophers’ terms. Suppose we ask any ordinary person not “Why do you pursue X?” but, rather, “Of the many things you believe to be valuable and worth pursuing, why do you pursue X rather than Y?” I conjecture that a typical response would be something along the following lines: “I enjoy X more” or “I believed that, in the long run, X would make me happier.” Of course, a person might also tell us that X would give her a life she found more meaningful, but we often think of the best lives for us as lives that we will find meaningful. 17 Here I express another disagreement with Regan, who suggests, in acknowledging that there is something to the good-for theorist’s position, that “We come to the idea of value through our experiences of wanting and desiring and feeling needs, and so it may seem that when we ascribe value to something, we are necessarily ascribing value ‘for’ ourselves.” Desire, he indicates, seems to him to be “implicated in the aetiology, and to some extent the continuing plausibility, of the idea that value is essentially ‘value for’” (Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 209). Although our desires and felt needs may have something to do with the aetiology of “good for,” I think a more plausible account would appeal to our experience of loving people (including ourselves) and seeing them, apparently, suffer or thrive.

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Before turning to Regan’s arguments, I want to note that some philosophers have argued for a position that is the direct inverse of Regan’s, namely, that nothing is good simply, things can only be good for or good in a way. 18 A few have evidently claimed, even more stringently, that nothing can be good unless it is good for someone. 19 The welfare theorist need not go so far. On the contrary, she can allow that even if good for turns out to have normative priority from the moral point of view, some states are simply good and so ought, other things equal, to be promoted. My aim in this essay is certainly not to argue either that nothing can be good unless it is good for or that good for is less epistemically and metaphysically problematic than Moorean good.20 Instead, my aim will be, in the first instance, to explicate the Moorean challenge, the better to clear away certain confusions. Moore, and Regan following him, and no doubt other neo-Mooreans besides, maintain that good is unanalyzable. 18 See, e.g., Judith Jarvis Thomson, Goodness and Advice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 19 Larry Temkin argues persuasively against this view in “Harmful Goods, Harmless Bads,” in R. G. Frey and Christopher W. Morris, eds., Value, Welfare, and Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Temkin cites for this view Bernard Williams, “The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and the Ambitions of Ethics,” Cambridge Review (1982), reprinted in Williams, Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Essays, 1982–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Philippa Foot, “Utilitarianism and the Virtues,” Mind 94, no. 374 (1985): 196–211.The view Temkin criticizes should not be confused with what Christian Coons has called the “dependence thesis,” which is the view that the value of states of affairs depends on the value of individuals. See Christian Coons, The Value of States and the Value of Individuals (doctoral dissertation, University of California, Davis, 2006). On Coons’s view, states can be good —that is, they can merit promotion —only for the sake of valuable individuals, and states can be promoted for the sake of an individual either out of respect or concern for her. Coons here exploits Darwall’s suggestion that concern and respect are the basic normative attitudes we bear toward persons in order to defend a broader thesis about the structure of value. See Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care. 20 Regan goes to some efforts to explain why he thinks that the concept of welfare faces the same epistemological and metaphysical difficulties as Moorean good, perhaps because some welfare theorists have suggested otherwise. But whether good for faces the same difficulties as Moorean good surely depends on what we may yet learn about what it is for something to be good for someone. So I do not think that the matter can be settled at this juncture. In any event, no part of my efforts to understand good for depend on the claim that good for is less problematic than Moorean good. Regan’s claims assume that the concept of welfare is “irreducibly normative.” He seems to think that means that the concept does not admit of analysis, and, at least, that it could not be a natural property. He invokes an argument of Stephen Darwall’s which he takes to show that the concept of welfare is irreducibly normative. See Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care, 11. But Darwall thinks that the concept does admit of analysis, and he thinks he has provided the correct analysis: on his view, what is good for P is what one ought to want for P out of concern for her or for her sake. Darwall has indicated to me, in an e-mail exchange, that he does not mean to preclude the possibility that the “ought” which figures in his analysis of good for and renders it normative could be a natural property, in the fashion of the Cornell realists; but it cannot be given a definitional reduction and is in that sense irreducibly normative. Regan appears to have a number of related targets in his essay: the idea that good for is better off epistemologically and metaphysically than good, the idea that good for has normative primacy, the idea that good for is fully normative, and the idea that good for is independent of (not parasitic on) Moorean good.

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One could take the position that good for P, too, is unanalyzable, and if that is right, then making out that being good for P is a distinct normative property cannot require that one provide an analysis of it.21 I am not inclined to think that good for P is unanalyzable, and, indeed, I have made preliminary efforts at an analysis elsewhere.22 What I hope to do here is to provide an account of the form and function of good for P, with the aim of characterizing the distinct normative property that apparently figures in talk about a person’s good. The account will elucidate what ordinary good-for talk is about, while making sense of what must arguably be common ground among good-for theorists, regardless of whether they think being good for P is analyzable and regardless of the form of analysis they might favor. I cannot make a complete case for good for, of course, any more than the good theorist can make a complete case for good. I shall not, in any event, be concerned to defend the “axiom” at which Regan takes aim. My interest lies in clarifying our theoretical alternatives so that we might better decide what to admit into our moral ontology and better assess what may be at stake in whether objectivists treat good or good for as fundamental. II. The Moorean Challenge The Moorean challenge is best understood, I believe, on the model of J. L. Mackie’s skeptical critique of objective values.23 Recall that Mackie did not challenge our ordinary understanding of what our normative sentences mean or our understanding of the truth conditions for those sentences. On the contrary, he allowed that we intend to talk about objectively prescriptive properties and that our utterances would express truths about the instantiation of just those properties, if only there were any.24 The good theorist likewise does not challenge our understanding of what our sentences mean (of what we intend by our utterances) when we talk, as we so commonly do, about what is good for people. At least, the good theorist is not best understood as challenging our understanding of what we mean. After all, ordinary speakers are presumably competent with both the concepts good and good for. When we talk about what is 21 Regan himself (“Brother’s Keeper,” 207) seems to allow that the good-for theorist could take the position that good-for is unanalyzable, though he thinks this would reveal a point he means to press, namely, that good for “has no metaphysical and epistemological advantage over Moore’s good.” See note 20. 22 See Rosati, “Personal Good.” Good for is, strictly speaking, a relation, and this is, as I explain later, important to understanding the nature of personal good; those items that stand in the requisite relation to P have the property of being good for P. For ease of discussion, I sometimes talk simply in terms of good for when I have in mind the property rather than the relation, but the context should make clear when I have the property in mind. 23 J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin, 1977). 24 Mackie’s skeptical argument is, as has been pointed out in varying ways, premised on an implausible idea of what objective normative properties would have to be like and of what we are committed to in talking as if there were such properties.

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good for someone, we fully intend, as the good theorist recognizes, to talk about people’s welfare, and the sentences we utter in so doing are best understood as expressing propositions about people’s welfare, not propositions about the good. The good theorist is also not best understood as challenging our understanding of the truth conditions for our claims about what is good for people.25 When we assert the sentence (a) “X is good for P” we express the proposition (b) X is good for P, which is presumably true if and only if (c) X is good for P. It might seem that because the good theorist believes that the only truths about value are truths about the good, we must understand his challenge differently. The good theorist must instead be claiming that proposition (b) is true if and only if (d) X is good, or perhaps that (b) is true if and only if, to adopt Moore’s other phrasing, (e) P’s possessing X is good. Given the platitude that (f ) The proposition that p is true if and only if p, this understanding of the challenge would have the Moorean rejecting the disquoted truth condition, and so accusing us of being confused about the truth conditions for our own claims.26 Alternatively, the good theorist 25 See Gilbert Harman, “Moral Relativism,” in Gilbert Harman and J. J. Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 3–5. Harman likens his claim about moral relativity to Einstein’s claim about the relativity of an object’s mass. He contends that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity does not involve the claim that people are mistaken about the meaning of their judgments about an object’s mass; rather, the truth conditions for their claims are not as they suppose, “because the only truths there are in the area are relative truths” (ibid., 4). Harman, in discussing evaluative relativity (ibid., 14–16), treats good for as relativistic, but if he means ‘good for’ in the welfarist sense, then the good-for theorist would contend that he confuses relativism with relationalism. 26 See Paul Boghossian, “What Is Relativism?” in Patrick Greenough and Michael P. Lynch, eds., Truth and Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). I here follow Boghossian, who rejects Harman’s ideas about how to characterize relativism in the context of his own effort to develop a model for how to understand the discovery that truths in a partic-

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must be accusing us of repeatedly misspeaking. We mean to say “X is good,” which expresses the proposition X is good, and is true if and only if X is good; or we mean to say “P’s possessing X is good,” which expresses the proposition P’s possessing X is good, and is true if and only if P’s possessing X is good. But we continually slip and say “X is good for P.” Putting to one side any difficulties internal to these understandings of the Moorean challenge, what is important for present purposes is that either understanding would fail to capture the Moorean’s claim to be baffled as to what we could be talking about when we talk about what is good for an individual. Were we simply confused about the truth conditions for our own claims, the correct truth conditions being ones the Moorean well understands, or were we merely misspeaking, our slips being easily identified and corrected, there would be nothing to baffle the Moorean. We intend to talk about what is good for P, and we take the judgment that X is good for P to be true if and only if X is good for P. This is what the Moorean finds unintelligible. The good theorist surely means to make a claim about the normative facts: just as Mackie’s more general challenge seeks to call into doubt the existence of objectively prescriptive properties, so the Moorean challenge seeks to call into doubt the existence of a distinct normative property of being good for P. Of course, we talk as if there were such a distinct property — ordinary normative discourse is littered with claims about what is good for us, quite apart from claims about the goodness or value of states of affairs. The good theorist argues, in effect, that we are in error. Obviously, the good theorist cannot endorse a global error theory; rather, he advances a local error theory with respect to good for. A. The anti-good-for argument The good theorist’s “anti-good-for argument” can be presented more formally as follows: ular domain are relativistic. Boghossian first rejects a model according to which the discovery of relativism in a domain is the discovery that the propositions expressed by sentences in that domain are unexpectedly relational. This model, he claims, would not account either for classic cases of relativistic discoveries in physics or for relativistic claims about morality. He then rejects Harman’s model, which would treat the discovery of relativism not as a discovery about the propositions expressed by typical sentences in a domain but as a discovery about their truth conditions. As Boghossian explains, the model would have speakers misunderstanding the truth conditions for their claims and would amount to abandoning the platitude expressed in (f ). He finally arrives at a model that treats discoveries of previously undetected relativism as “correcting our view of what the facts are.” Boghossian’s conclusion regarding how to model relativistic claims treats relativism about a domain, in this regard at least, as akin to Mackie’s skepticism insofar as it corrects for a view about the facts that was “in error.” Of course, the situation I explore in this essay is just the inverse of the one that interests Boghossian: the “discovery” the Moorean means to press is not that truths about value are unexpectedly relativistic but that truths about value, contrary to our good-for talk, are never relational in the way we suppose.

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(1) The sentence “X is good for P” expresses the proposition X is good for P, which is true if and only if X has the property of being good for P. (2) There is no such property as being good for P. (3) So there are no facts about what is good for P. (4) Therefore, all sentences of the form “X is good for P” are, strictly speaking, not true. This much gets us to the good theorist’s negative conclusion with respect to good for. Of course, as we have already seen, the good theorist does not maintain that we point to nothing real when we mistakenly talk as if there were good-for facts. We can, accordingly, understand the argument to continue as follows: (5) There is, however, an absolute or monadic property good. (6) Moreover, this monadic property can be instantiated by things that P possesses, or by P’s possessing X, or by things that occur within the life of P. (7) Therefore, among the truths about value are truths of the form X is good and possessed by P, P’s possessing X is good, and X is good and occurs in the life of P. (8) The only truths about value and persons that approximate to what we might mean to express by utterances of the form, X is good for P, are in fact truths of the form X is good and possessed by P, P’s possessing X is good, and X is good and occurs in the life of P. (9) Therefore, if we are to speak truly and precisely about value and persons, we should make only judgments of the form X is good and possessed by P, P’s possessing X is good, and X is good and occurs in the life of P.27 Having presented his negative case and offered his alternative formulations, the good theorist argues, in short, that either the predicate “is good for” denotes nothing at all or it denotes “good.” From here on, I will focus on the formulation “X is good and occurs in the life of P” or good occurring in the life of P. I do so not merely because that is the formulation Regan 27 In “What Is Relativism?” Boghossian treats the relativist as urging us to substitute for our claims about monadic properties those relational truths that are the “closest truths in the vicinity.” I am here suggesting that the Moorean should be understood as urging a reform in the opposite direction.

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adopts but because I believe that the best construal of it likely provides the best construal of the other formulations as well. Now we will want to be careful in how we understand step 9 of the anti-good-for argument. The good theorist need not be understood as advocating that we purge ordinary discourse of good-for talk (as if we could do that), or even (more realistically) that we theorists refrain from such talk. After all, the good theorist’s point concerns the facts, and so long as we keep ourselves straight about those, the good theorist can allow that no harm need come from our continuing to use good-for talk as shorthand for his more accurate but awkward locutions.28 I want to focus on two steps in the argument —steps 2 and 8. I will consider step 8 in Section III below, but I will begin, here, with step 2. Why, according to Regan, should we doubt that there is any such property as being good for P? Regan argues that good for is a chimera in the classical sense, a fiction cobbled together from not merely incongruous but, in this case, contradictory elements.29 Regan relies on certain critical assumptions in setting out his argument. He assumes that when something is good simpliciter, we are required to care about it: a reason exists to care about it and to promote it.30 The reason in play is an external, agent-neutral reason, so the “we” means just what it says: any agent should care about and, ceteris paribus, promote something insofar as it is good. As Regan acknowledges, some will reject his externalism about reasons, insisting that an agent has a reason to care about and promote something only insofar as she takes an interest in it.31 For purposes of the present discussion, however, we can grant Regan his assumptions. Even if the good-for theorist believes that an individual’s good gives him agent-relative reasons, she can allow that it also gives him —and anyone else —agent-neutral reasons. We needn’t worry here about whether such reasons are also, strictly speaking, external reasons. The main point is that the good-for theorist can and should concede that it would rob personal good of the possibility of any important place in moral theory if facts about what is good for a person only provided 28 Compare Mark Kalderon’s discussion of “revolutionary” fictionalism in Mark Eli Kalderon, Moral Fictionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 136–42. See also Boghossian, “What Is Relativism?” On Boghossian’s construal of relativism, the relativist is engaged in a “reforming project” which would urge us to “abandon the absolutist discourse we currently have in favor of a discourse which accommodates [the relativist’s] conviction that the only facts in the vicinity of that discourse are certain kinds of relational facts.” Of course, we would expect the impact of such abandonment to vary. It is one thing to give up talk about absolute motion in favor of motion relative to a frame of reference; it is quite another to give up talk about absolute moral requirements in favor of moral relativism. In the former case, we still have motion, just better understood; in the latter, we (arguably) no longer have morality. But then, if the relativist is right, we never had it. Still, there may be pragmatic effects of absolutist moral talk that we would want to retain, even if we became convinced that the relativist was right about the facts. 29 Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 218. 30 Ibid., 211 and note 22. 31 Ibid., note 22.

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agent-relative reasons.32 Ordinary ethical thought, in any case, arguably does not treat personal good as purely prudential and normatively agentrelative; and so the good-for theorist would, in my view, make a mistake in treating it as such, at least insofar as she means to capture the notion of good for that figures so prominently in our everyday lives. From the standpoint of moral theorizing, if we suppose that ordinary ethical thought affords some insight into morality, moral theory must be responsive to it, whether or not, in the end, moral theory properly gives primacy to good for.33 32 I am prepared to say, then, that the fact that something is good for a person gives agent-neutral reasons, but I am not prepared to say, as Regan seems to, that we can be required to care about something. Care is, after all, a conative state, and it is uncertain to what extent we have control over our carings. Even if it does not make sense to say that we ought to care, we can still reasonably say both that it is appropriate to care and that one ought to behave as would someone who did care. On the latter idea, see Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care. 33 These last few sentences are intended to provide what I acknowledge to be an all too quick reply to the surprising resistance I have encountered to the suggestion that facts about what is good for a person provide agent-neutral reasons. David Sobel has suggested, for instance, that it is optional whether the good-for theorist treats good for as of great moral significance and as giving rise to agent-neutral reasons. I doubt this, at least if the good-for theorist is interested in whatever property ‘good for P’ expresses and whatever facts there may be about what is good for persons. I doubt it for the reasons I have gestured toward in the text. Ordinary moral thought and talk seem to presuppose that the good of other people makes at least some claim on us, and not merely the good of those with whom we have special relationships or to whom we have special obligations. Of course, a theorist can stipulate a notion of good for that treats it as purely prudential. But it is unclear what interest such a notion could have or how it could be normative. What might it capture that is left out by the notion of good for that figures in our ordinary talk and in the work of most welfare theorists? And why should the individual herself be interested in her own purely prudential good for unless it captures something otherwise missed? Sobel has also suggested that my position may rule out egoism. I am not convinced that it does. Egoism, in my view, is not properly classified as a moral theory; rather, it is a theory of what individuals have most reason to do that competes with morality. The egoist can allow that any person’s good gives one a reason to act, while maintaining that one’s own good alone gives overriding reason to act. It seems to me, then, that the egoist could take on board what I have to say about good for; any difficulties in doing so are internal to egoism itself. Richard Kraut has correctly taken my remarks to imply that we each have reason to promote the well-being of every other person. But we each only need the help of certain others, he has reminded me, and so why suppose all moral agents should help? I am inclined to think that this sort of resistance to the idea that personal good gives rise to agent-neutral reasons can be overcome by further reflection on what that might involve. P’s good, for example, can give everyone a reason to act, even if each of us still has overriding reason to do something other than act to promote P’s good. We have reason, for example, to support some division of labor with respect to promoting other people’s good; it makes sense to attend to those we know well and whom we are best positioned to aid. Not all of us will be equally well-positioned to aid P. Moreover, we have reason to leave it to P, ordinarily, to promote her own good without our aid or interference. After all, P is an autonomous agent, and her good will partly consist in her own active pursuit of a way of life. Except in the case of children or adults who are unable to act on their own behalf, acting so as to promote another’s good involves some risk of subverting her autonomy. Third parties tend, in any case, to be less well positioned to promote an individual’s good than the individual herself. For these reasons, and not because good for gives rise only to agent-relative reasons, the reason third parties have to promote another’s good may be overridden or conditional. The fact that good for gives anyone a reason for action is consistent with recognizing differences among individuals in their

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I want to emphasize that in granting, for purposes of argument, that when something is good we have agent-neutral reason to promote it, I do not take myself to be granting anything special about good. Saying that when something is good we have reason to promote it is, I would argue, just a way of indicating that good is normative. But so are right and ought. And so, the good-for theorist wants to insist, is good for, as Regan well recognizes. B. The dilemma argument Which brings us to Regan’s argument. The notion of good for, Regan evidently thinks, combines incompatible ideas: the concept of good, of something normative, something that makes a claim on any individual, and an unexplained “for,” which involves a restriction to the individual that undercuts that universal claim. As a consequence, Regan maintains, the good-for theorist faces a dilemma.34 On one horn of the dilemma, she can concede that ‘good for’ merely denotes what the Moorean’s ‘good occurring in the life of’ denotes. That would allow the good-for theorist to retain the claim that when X is “good obligations to promote someone else’s good. A parent does not have exclusive reason to promote his child’s welfare, but he has special obligations that the rest of us may lack, so the duty of seeing to his child’s welfare ordinarily falls, in the first instance, on him. Moreover, he may have, in addition to the agent-neutral reasons anyone has to promote his child’s welfare, agent-relative reasons. Finally, much of what we do, and ought to do, in response to the claim that others’ good makes on us takes the form of indirect support. We arrange for public financing or make charitable contributions; we support institutional arrangements that provide aid or otherwise support individuals in their self-development and pursuit of their own good. Kraut has suggested as a counterintuitive implication of my position that since, e.g., a disease is bad for the trees in the forest, we all have reason to ensure that trees do not acquire diseases. I do not believe that ‘good for’ in talk about what is good or bad for trees, artifacts, and so on expresses the same normative notion involved in talk about what is good for a person. For one thing, I do not believe that trees and artifacts are the sorts of things that have a welfare. An adequate response to Kraut would require explaining what things have a welfare and how nonwelfare good-for talk should be understood, but I cannot undertake to address these matters fully here, so I merely register my views. Mark LeBar has questioned my apparent assumption that only agent-neutral reasons can be fully normative. I do not mean to make any such assumption. For purposes of the arguments in this essay, I assume only that good for would be without much interest from the standpoint of moral theory were it merely to give rise to agent-relative reasons. And I claim that whether or not there are fully normative agent-relative reasons, and whether or not good for is also normative in this agent-relative way, good for is normative in the way the Moorean claims it is not. 34 Regan himself describes the dilemma argument as an argument against the “usefulness” of good for, and also as an argument for why good for cannot make a claim on people (other than the individual whose good it is), if it is “genuinely independent of Moorean good.” See Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 213. Challenging the usefulness of a normative concept seems a peculiar criticism unless whether a concept plays a useful normative role bears on whether the concept is of a genuinely normative property. I argue later that judgments about good for play a certain normative role and that judgments about good (or good occurring in the life of ) are not well suited to this role. The claim that good for cannot make a claim on other people is, I believe, best understood as a challenge to the existence of being good for P as a distinct normative property.

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for” P, a reason exists for anyone to care about and promote X for P. After all, promoting X for P would just be one part of promoting the good simpliciter, which, according to the Moorean, is precisely what is to be promoted. But it would amount to acknowledging that being good for P is not a distinct normative property, or as Regan puts it, “That would amount to abandoning ‘good for’ as an independent concept.” 35 On the other horn of the dilemma, the good-for theorist can deny that good for is simply good occurring in the life of, aiming to maintain being good for P as an independent concept or distinct normative property. But Regan contends that if the good-for theorist takes this approach, she must give up her claim that welfare or good for is normative, because she must give up the claim that the fact that something is good for someone provides reasons for anyone, not merely for the individual whose good is in question.36 If X is good for P, P may have a reason to promote or obtain X, but no one else has a reason to promote or obtain X for P. I believe the confusions alluded to earlier (in Section I) lie precisely in Regan’s reasons for drawing the conclusion that being good for P cannot be both a concept or property distinct from good and a normative concept or property. In fairness to Regan, though, this is also precisely where the good-for theorist needs to do some serious theoretical work. What Regan thinks is that if being good for P is to be a concept or property independent of good, it must involve a relativization not merely of the sort involved in talking about the good that occurs relative to one life or another, but a relativization of goodness —of the normativity —itself. As Regan expresses it, “The good for Abel must be peculiarly Abel’s —the goodness or the value must be peculiarly Abel’s —in a way that the mere occurrence of universal good in Abel’s life does not necessarily satisfy. But if the good for Abel is peculiarly Abel’s —if its value is somehow essentially a value for Abel — then why indeed should Cain care? We think there is a deep connection between value and reasons. That suggests precisely that if the good for Abel is a matter only of value for Abel, then it creates reasons for Abel, and 35

Ibid., 211. After presenting the dilemma argument, Regan goes on to “consider how the dilemma manifests itself in connection with” certain contemporary theories of well-being. After discussing the views of Wayne Sumner and James Griffin, he remarks, “[T]he joint lesson of the discussion of Sumner and Griffin is that ‘good for’ is a chimera. If we take seriously the dependence on the agent’s subjective evaluation, which Sumner plausibly claims is the best realization of the ‘for’, we get the very implausible conclusion that a life spent in trivial pursuits can be as valuable as Bach’s life or Darwin’s life if the subject is as satisfied, and that the life of trivial pursuits can make as strong a claim on others to be promoted, so far as intrinsic prudential value is concerned. This is not plausible; the ‘for’, in Sumner’s account, undermines the ‘good’. In contrast, emphasizing the perfectionist element, as Griffin does, seems to attenuate the ‘for’ to the point where it is a mere empirical accident (‘occurring in the life of’) rather than an aspect of the normative concept. In Griffin’s account, the ‘for’-ness is totally unrelated to the nature of the value” (ibid., 218). See Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, and James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 36

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for no one else.” 37 The Moorean idea of good occurring in the life of does not, Regan claims, face a similar difficulty: “If the ‘for’ means ‘occurring in the life of’, this gives us an empirical relativization to the agent, but the normativity involved is still the universal normativity of ‘good’.” 38 It is understandable why Regan thinks that good for involves a relativization of goodness or normativity. As I have already noted, good-for theorists say little that would explain what the ‘for’ or the ‘good’ in ‘good for’ means, and in the absence of an alternative explanation, Regan’s thought seems natural enough. Moreover, theories of welfare —hedonistic theories, desire theories, and even Wayne Sumner’s authentic happiness theory — have tended to be subjectivist.39 (The objective list theory and Stephen Darwall’s recent rational care theory stand out partly because they are exceptions to the dominant subjectivist trend.) 40 Regan rightly questions (for example, in discussing Sumner’s theory) whether an individual’s (subjectivist) good could provide any agent other than the individual herself with a reason. After all, according to Sumner, if an individual is satisfied, say, with a life of self-flagellation, then so long as her satisfaction is informed and autonomous, her welfare lies in self-flagellation.41 Perhaps we should concede that such an individual herself has reason to pursue her heart’s desire, Regan would allow (though he sometimes appears to doubt that welfare claims yield even agent-relative reasons); but surely, he would insist, we have no reason to promote her enjoyment of this (worthless) endeavor. Contrary to what Regan claims, however, the concept of being good for P does not involve a relativization of normativity or goodness, or so I will suggest. If we can sensibly wonder whether we have reason to promote 37

Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 211 (Regan’s emphasis). Ibid., 212. 39 Although disagreement exists as to how best to understand John Stuart Mill’s moral philosophy, he claims to advocate a form of hedonism, which he offers as a theory of the good rather than as a theory of welfare. See John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1979). Mill claims that the sole good is happiness, and he describes a happy life as one relatively free of pain and rich in enjoyments both in point of quantity and of quality. Although he offers hedonism as a theory of the good, or what he seems to think is the same thing, the sole end, Mill’s emphasis on the importance of “experiments in living,” so that individuals may determine wherein their own happiness lies, at least suggests that his real concern was with individual good or welfare. See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978). For a recent hedonistic theory, also offered as a theory of the good rather than as a theory of welfare, see Fred Feldman, Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). For differing kinds of desire theories, according to which what is good for a person is, roughly, what she would desire, or desire for herself to desire, under more or less optimal conditions, see, e.g., Griffin, Well-Being; Peter Railton, “Moral Realism,” Philosophical Review 95, no. 2 (1986): 163–207; and Peter Railton, “Facts and Values,” Philosophical Topics 14 (1986): 5–31. Sumner offers helpful critical discussion of hedonistic and desire theories of welfare before presenting his own theory of welfare as autonomous or authentic happiness; see Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, chaps. 4 and 5. 40 See Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care. See also notes 13 and 20 above. For the idea of an objective list theory, see Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). 41 See Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, chap. 6. 38

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a person’s good as some theory of welfare construes it, then we should doubt the adequacy of that theory, rather than the coherence of something’s being good for a person. Regan claims that unless the ‘for’ in ‘good for’ signals a relativization of normativity, good for cannot be distinct from good, though, of course, it is just this relativization that would prevent judgments about what is good for a person from making a claim on agents other than the individual herself. But this is incorrect. After all, we have a number of other terms —for example, ‘right,’ ‘ought,’ and ‘rational’ —each of which expresses universal normativity, while also expressing a property distinct from good. How, then, should we understand good for? What the Moorean seems to imagine when he criticizes the good-for theorist’s position is that the latter’s good-for judgments must concern a relational complex, X is good for P, with the following structure: X has the monadic property good, but this goodness, or perhaps X’s being good, stands in a (curious) for relation to P. If this were so, then we could begin to see why the Moorean would find talk about what is good for someone unintelligible. The line of thought seems to be that insofar as X has the property good, X is good for P provides agent-neutral reasons, but insofar as the for relation relativizes the normativity or goodness to P, X is good for P provides only agent-relative reasons. Hence, good for is incoherent, combining as it does these incompatible elements; and being good for P lacks normativity, because being a normative property just is being a property facts about the instantiation of which provide agent-neutral reasons.42 In my view, this line of thought misconstrues good-for judgments. The relational complex, X is good for P, does not include the monadic property good at all. Instead, it includes the relational property is good for P: it has X and P as relata and is good for as a dyadic relation.43 We should not be 42 More fully, we might say that on the Moorean picture, being a normative concept just is being a concept propositions about the correct application of which provide or entail agent-neutral reasons; and being a normative property just is being a property facts about the instantiation of which provide or entail agent-neutral reasons. One might certainly challenge this idea. And that suggests a rather different route to addressing the Moorean, though one that will arguably rest on my diagnosis of his argument. That route would take on board something like the claims I shall make about how to understand the words ‘good’ and ‘for’ in ‘good for,’ while holding that personal good provides only agent-relative reasons. As I have made clear, however, I believe that facts about what is good for a person also provide agent-neutral reasons. 43 Alternatively, we might say that the proposition expressed by the sentence “X is good for P” does not have the logical form

(X is good) for P but, rather, xGp (using ‘G’ to express the relation is good for). I have found Boghossian’s discussion in “What Is Relativism?” helpful in clarifying the Moorean’s mistake, as I see it. The Moorean sees the

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misled by the fact that the word ‘good’ occurs as part of the name of the relation expressed by ‘is good for.’ We should not be misled here anymore than we should be misled by occurrences of the word ‘good’ in judgments of instrumental value. Consider the sentence, “A hammer is good for driving nails into wood.” Surely no one supposes that the proposition expressed by that sentence concerns a relational complex with this structure: A hammer has the property good —the property Moore deemed the central subject matter of ethics —and stands in an instrumental for relation to driving nails.44 As an initial matter, then, good for does not involve a relativization of goodness or normativity. Good for P is not goodness relative to P but a distinct relational value.45 Of course, simply to assert, as I have thus far, good-for theorist as making something like the move Boghossian attributes to the relativist, which is to offer “replacing” propositions for our old propositions about morality that are built up out of the old propositions. As Boghossian puts it, “the replacing proposition consists in the claim that the old proposition stands in some sort of contentual relation to a set of propositions that constitute a [moral] code.” My suggestion is that the good-for theorist should be understood not as asserting propositions with the sort of logical form the relativist supposes moral propositions to have —a view which is relativism’s undoing —but, rather, propositions with the logical form Boghossian describes as operative in the physics cases. And propositions about what is good for a person take the latter form for a precisely parallel reason: namely, they express truths about a relational property the concept of which does not contain the concept good as a proper part. 44 Notice that this would yield just the sort of incompatibility that Regan claims for good for. The sentence “The hammer is good” asserts a claim about the intrinsic value of the hammer; the added instrumental relation, “for driving nails,” undercuts the claim of intrinsic value. Lest instrumental uses of ‘good’ seem an aberration, consider occurrences of ‘good’ in judgments of something as an instance of a type. Consider the sentence “The Corolla is a good car.” No one supposes, to put the point differently, that the proposition expressed by that sentence is built up out of the proposition The Corolla is good (in Moore’s sense) and a categorization as to the type of object, car. That there are distinctions in goodness and that these are not distinctions across a single monadic property should be evident, e.g., from Christine M. Korsgaard’s classic discussion in “Two Distinctions in Goodness,” reprinted in Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 249–74, originally published in Philosophical Review 92, no. 2 (1983): 169–95. The expression ‘good for,’ like ‘good,’ appears in a variety of contexts. As I hope is entirely clear, my interest lies solely with uses of the expression in the context of individual welfare or personal good, what is sometimes described as “intrinsic” “nonmoral” good for a person. See note 33 above. 45 Railton has explicitly described good for as relational goodness. See Railton, “Moral Realism,” 183: “It should perhaps be emphasized that although I speak of the objectivity of value, the value in question is human value, and exists only because humans do. In the sense of old-fashioned theory of value, this is a relational rather than absolute notion of goodness. Although relational, the relevant facts about humans and their world are objective in the same sense that such non-relational entities as stones are: they do not depend for their existence or nature merely upon our conception of them.” Treating being good for P as a distinct relational property might seem to invite greater problems down the road. In note 25, Regan remarks, “The need for good simpliciter seems even clearer when we consider the problem of how to balance the (reasons created by the) good for Abel and the good for Seth. Balance we must, and that seems to require a ‘good’ (explicit or implicit) which is not a ‘good for’” (“Brother’s Keeper,” 213). If good is not a proper part of good for, we would seem to have no common value for weighing and balancing. In fact, I think the good-for theorist has plenty to say to address the worry, but here I merely flag the issue and leave questions about commensurability and balancing for another time.

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that good for is not as the Moorean thought only gets us so far in addressing the Moorean challenge. My claim responds to a certain argument for the charge that good for is a chimera —a cobbling together of incompatible elements —by offering a diagnosis of the mistake behind that charge. Still, one can reasonably demand a positive alternative to the view I have claimed is mistaken. The good-for theorist needs to say more to make it plausible that being good for P is a fully normative property distinct from being good. III. Relational Good Recall Regan’s conjecture that on the best theory of the good, the notion of good occurring in the life of an individual will likely pick up every plausible good for. If the extension of good encompasses the good for, then it might seem not to matter whether being good for P is a distinct normative property, as the good-for theorist maintains. But of course, as Regan stresses, the question is not whether but why I am my brother’s keeper. Even if the good theorist can pick up all the good fors that may be of practical, normative concern to the good-for theorist, he will not thereby have succeeded in answering Regan’s question. The good-for theorist could still be right in thinking that talk about what is good for someone concerns a distinct normative property. Now I agree with Regan that once we get to this stage in the debate, it is hard to come up with decisive arguments for one side or the other. He remarks: [W]e are approaching the point, if we are not there already, where the extensions of the Moorean’s ‘good’ and the ‘good for’ theorist’s ‘good for’ are effectively indistinguishable. In such a situation we will not be able to decide between the concepts by adducing counterexamples to one theory or the other —states or events which the proponents of one theory can claim the other theory attaches the wrong valence to. What we need is conceptual arguments, but it is not easy to find arguments that have any purchase on such a fundamental disagreement.46 Regan does offer a conceptual argument for the Moorean view —an unsuccessful one, I believe —which I will touch on briefly toward the end of this essay. One consideration might seem, at the outset, to favor the good-for theorists’ position. As a matter of ordinary observation, different items, activities, undertakings, and relationships seem to suit or fit different individuals, and they do so in such a way that some (and not others) at 46

Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 210.

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least appear, intuitively, to benefit those individuals. But the Moorean presumably recognizes something close to this thought, for he will surely acknowledge that certain goods can “occur in” some individuals’ lives but not in others. The good that consists in the pleasurable experience of playing a piano sonata will occur in the life of the person capable of playing the piano and of taking pleasure in playing it, but not in the life of the person who lacks either the ability to play or to appreciate classical music. Thus, the debate seems even more intractable than Regan suggests: not only might good and good for share an extension, but, at a more theoretical level, the good theorist and good-for theorist can each apparently account for key features of our experience. These considerations suggest a different obstacle to recognizing being good for P as a distinct normative property. Normative concepts figure, in differing and characteristic ways, in the regulation of attitude and action. One reason to doubt the existence of a supposed normative property would be if that property (or the concept of it) seemed to have no distinctive normative role to play. But this, the good theorist might suggest, is precisely the case with good for. Even if the concept of being good for P is not incoherent, why believe there is such a relational property as being good for P when all the normative work is apparently already done by good (occurring in the life of )? 47 I want to approach this question from two directions: the first returns us to step 8 of the “anti-good-for argument” (discussed above in Section II.A) and involves thinking about what is picked up by good for that might be missed by good occurring in the life of; the second involves, much more briefly, thinking directly about the normative role apparently played by good for. As I will try to show, contrary to what Regan claims, the Moorean’s good and good for are not “effectively indistinguishable,” and we can shed light on the distinctness of good for by attending to its special —and pervasive —normative role. A. Good for versus good occurring in a life Regan claims to find deeply puzzling the ‘for’ in ‘good for P,’ and I have undertaken to address his perplexity. But I want to register my own puzzlement as to what could be meant by such expressions as ‘good possessed by P’ and ‘good occurring in the life of P.’ It would be a mistake, in my view, to think that good for is problematic in a way that good occurring in the life of is not. So the question with which I want to begin is this: What might be missing from good occurring in the life of P that is captured by good for P? 47 I think Regan hints at this worry when he raises doubts about the “usefulness” of good for, but he never articulates the point of the usefulness challenge as fully as would be desirable, and I believe expressing the problem simply in terms of “usefulness” obscures the fact that the underlying issue is ontological. See note 34.

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Suppose that a new parent approaches you, a seasoned parent, and asks for advice about child-rearing. You begin to advise him about how to discern and promote what is good for his child. He stops you short and says, “Now wait a minute, I’m a Moorean. Believe me, I love my child every bit as much as the next parent, but I’m not interested in what is ‘good for her.’ In fact, I don’t understand this ‘good for’ talk. I’m interested in promoting good occurring in her life.” You would no doubt be puzzled, and calling attention to this fact is meant to stress a point made earlier in passing, that common sense is on the good-for theorist’s side. Of course, common sense might be confused, but it might instead be tracking a species of value omitted from the Moorean picture, and it is this species of value that the good-for theorist presumably seeks to investigate. So what advice might you offer if you wanted to answer the Moorean parent in terms he would find intelligible? To figure this out, we first need to understand the Moorean notion of good occurring in the life of, and for this, we need a working account of the good. Moore himself famously thought that many things are good, although the greatest goods are certain “organic unities.” As Moore explains, there is . . . a vast number of different things, each of which has intrinsic value; there are also very many which are positively bad; and there is a still larger class of things which appear to be indifferent. But a thing belonging to any of these three classes may occur as part of a whole, which includes among its other parts other things belonging both to the same and to the other two classes; and these wholes, as such, may also have intrinsic value. The paradox, to which it is necessary to call attention, is that the value of such a whole bears no regular proportion to the sum of the values of its parts.48 Moore contrasts the relation among parts of an organic unity with the relation between means and ends. A change of means would leave the intrinsic value of the end unchanged. In contrast, a change of any part would alter the intrinsic value of the whole or organic unity to which the part contributes, even if the part itself has no intrinsic value. Moore tells us that the relation between parts and whole is not causal.49 Nor is it additive; the intrinsic value of the whole bears no regular relation to the sum of the values of its parts.50 Otherwise, though he provides numerous examples, Moore says little to clarify the nature of organic unities, and, in fact, this is in keeping with his view of good as a simple, nonnatural, sui generis property.51 No more can be said to explain why some items com48

Moore, Principia Ethica, sec. 18. Ibid., sec. 22. Ibid., sec. 18. 51 For excellent discussion of Moore’s theory of organic unities, see Thomas Hurka, “Two Kinds of Organic Unity,” Journal of Ethics 2, no. 4 (1998): 299–320. 49 50

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bine so as to produce value in excess of their value as parts than can be said to explain why good supervenes on some things rather than others. I will return to the matter of organic unities later. For now, I want to focus on the fact that Moore allows that a variety of things individually have at least some intrinsic value. In particular, I want to make use briefly of one of Moore’s more controversial claims about the value of an individual thing. Moore famously maintained that a beautiful object has at least some intrinsic value apart from consciousness of it, even if the value of the whole comprised of being conscious of a beautiful object far exceeds the value of the beautiful object alone.52 In a thought experiment, intended as one part of his refutation of hedonism, Moore asks us to imagine two worlds, a beautiful world filled with mountains, sunsets, forests, waterfalls, and everything we most admire, and a filthy, garbage-strewn world filled with all manner of things we find utterly revolting. He asks us to imagine further that no one will be around to experience either world. Still, Moore asks, wouldn’t it be rational to produce the former world rather than the latter? Moore thinks it would: the existence of the beautiful world is better in itself “quite apart from its effects on any human feelings.” 53 Although Moore maintained that ‘good’ expresses a simple, unanalyzable nonnatural property, he sometimes characterized being good as being such as “ought to be” or “ought to exist for its own sake.” 54 In concluding that the beautiful world is better in itself, Moore effectively concludes that it is such as ought to exist. But now consider that you (and the rest of us) are about to be annihilated. You stand in the “Create-A-World” booth with two buttons on the panel in front of you. You push the button marked “beautiful,” and poof! There it is (and there we aren’t). Only, as it turns out, this beautiful new world is not empty of human life —one person is in it, just one, and, indeed, as befits the world around her, she is a beautiful person, only she is endlessly sleeping. Now the question is whether beauty is occurring in her life. In one sense, the answer must be yes; after all, she’s alive, beauty exists, and in the very time and place that she exists —it’s all around her. If we are not prepared to say that the beauty of the world around her is occurring in her life, then at least we might be prepared to say that her own beauty is occurring in her life. And if Moore is right that beauty has at least some intrinsic value, that would seem to be good occurring in her life. Good occurs in the life of P when good occurs in the time and place in which P lives. Call this the time-and-place, or “TP,” characterization of good occurring in the life of. If good occurring in a life required only spatiotemporal coincidence, then individuals could sleep through lives in which a good deal of good 52

Moore, Principia Ethica, sec. 50. Ibid. 54 Ibid., sec. 69. 53

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occurs, and this would have peculiar results for what we ought to do.55 We ought, other things equal, to redecorate meticulously the rooms of the permanently comatose, pipe beautiful music into their rooms, send in the clowns. To be sure, we will promote more good by expending our energies elsewhere.56 But the suggestion that we could have any reason to promote good occurring in the lives of the permanently comatose, at least in this sense, is dubious at best. If this were all the Moorean had in mind, then I think we could reasonably doubt that good occurring in a life makes a claim on us just as much as we can doubt that the self-flagellator’s Sumnerian good for makes a claim on us. Good occurring in the life of P, in the bare sense sketched by TP, does not capture what the good-for theorist has in mind. If coexistence in time and place, even to the extent of physical embodiment, is not enough for occurring in a life, what more is required? Suppose our sleeping beauty awakens, and she becomes conscious of the world she inhabits. The question is not whether her consciousness of her world introduces additional value.57 The question is whether her consciousness of it is enough to make what she is conscious of “occur in her life,” so that if what she is conscious of is good, then there is “good occurring in her life.” 58 Consciousness might seem to be necessary. We 55 However problematic in other regards, this way of understanding good occurring in the life of would at least have the virtue of ruling out alleged cases in which a person benefits from events that occur after her death. 56 Moore remarks, “In any actual choice we should have to consider the possible effects of our action upon conscious beings, and among these possible effects there are always some, I think, which ought to be preferred to the existence of mere beauty. But this only means that in our present state, in which but a very small portion of the good is attainable, the pursuit of beauty for its own sake must always be postponed to the pursuit of some greater good, which is equally attainable” (ibid., sec. 50). 57 Moore himself at least seems to have thought consciousness to be of rather insignificant value. In his discussion of “the ideal,” Moore remarks, “By far the most valuable things, which we know or can imagine, are certain states of consciousness, which may be roughly described as the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects” (ibid., sec. 113). But in introducing the notion of organic unities, he tells us that because consciousness does not always greatly increase the value of a whole, “we cannot attribute the great superiority of the consciousness of a beautiful thing over the beautiful thing itself to the mere addition of the value of consciousness to that of the beautiful thing. Whatever the intrinsic value of consciousness may be, it does not give to the whole of which it forms a part a value proportioned to the sum of its value and that of its objects” (ibid., sec. 18). And in the case of the organic unity involving contemplation of beauty, Moore makes it clear that the most valuable cases of aesthetic appreciation involve not “bare cognition of what is beautiful in an object,” but also an emotional response appropriate to the kind of beauty in question (ibid., sec. 114). Moore later concluded that it is common to all intrinsic goods that they contain “both some feeling and some other form of consciousness.” See G. E. Moore, Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 107. 58 In a further challenge to the hedonist’s claim that pleasure is the sole good, Moore asks, “Can it really be said that we value pleasure, except in so far as we are conscious of it? Should we think that the attainment of pleasure, of which we never were and never could be conscious, was something to be aimed at for its own sake?” Pleasure, Moore concludes, is “comparatively valueless without the consciousness,” and thus is not the sole good. “[S]ome consciousness must be included with it as a veritable part of the end.” Moore,

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think of the life of a person as something she lives, and not merely by being present, but by functioning as an agent. And so it would seem that for good, or anything else for that matter, to occur in her life, it has to be something that at least enters into her consciousness and in that way makes contact with her. Perhaps we should say, then, that good occurs in the life of P when good occurs in the time and place in which P lives and P is conscious of the occurrence. Call this characterization of good occurring in the life of the time-place-consciousness characterization, or “TPC.” We can imagine more stringent characterizations than TPC, depending on what P must be conscious of for good to occur in her life. But because it makes no difference to the arguments to come, let’s leave as an open question whether P must be conscious merely of the occurrence of something that happens to be good or whether P must be conscious not merely of something’s occurrence but of its good-making qualities or even of both those and its goodness.59 At this point, I want to suggest, we can begin to see where the good theorist and the good-for theorist would part company. Of course, some good-for theorists might well say that TPC in fact captures all they ever meant to say when they talked about what is good for a person. Some who accept an objective list theory of welfare, for example, might take such a view. To my mind, however, if they do take that view, then they ought to be good theorists rather than good-for theorists, because they will have accepted a view that falls short of what I think good-for theorists must be tracking —or better, as we will see, attending to —in treating good for as distinct from good. So what does good occurring in the life of leave out that good for might capture? We should notice two points of divergence between good occurring in the life of, in the TPC sense, and good for. First, not all good-for theorists believe that in order for something, X, to be good for P, its occurrence or existence must enter into P’s consciousness. To take some stock examples, some have maintained that P could be benefited by posthumous fame or that P could be harmed by the betrayal of her faithless partner, even if she never learns of his or her faithlessness. Yet both those good-for theorists who allow for such good (and bad) fors and those who deny them, take themselves to be arguing about what is good for an individual, and so about where good for P is instantiated. If all that good-for talk were about was good occurring in the life of as prescribed by TPC, good-for theorists who do not accept a consciousness requirement would not be talking about good for, despite what they may think. These good-for theorists could be mistaken, but I do not think their Principia Ethica, sec. 52. But this is not, as Moore’s later discussion of organic unities makes clear, because consciousness itself has much intrinsic value. See note 57 above. 59 Moore himself, in talking about the organic unity that comprises beauty and the contemplation of it, suggests something like this latter view. See Moore, Principia Ethica, secs. 115–21.

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position should be ruled out prior to our efforts to advance and assess analyses of good for P. This first divergence might seem to suggest that the Moorean ought to have stuck with TP as a specification of what it is for good to occur in the life of someone. But even good-for theorists who reject a mental-state view of the good for would and should contend that TP does not capture all that is involved in being good for someone.60 In any case, good and good for diverge in a second way, even if we suppose that goods must enter into consciousness to occur in a life. Return to our beauty, who is now awake and conscious of the beautiful world she inhabits; add, if you like, that she is conscious of being conscious of beauty. Even if that were enough for good to occur in her life, it seems not enough, intuitively, for good for her to occur. We might cash out this intuition in various ways, and which way makes most sense bears on what a correct analysis of good for P would look like. Suppose she is conscious just as described, yet takes no pleasure in the beauty around her; it is a matter of indifference to her. Or suppose her apprehension of beauty, even if accompanied by immediate pleasure, is promptly followed by crippling prickly sensations or by an overwhelming sense of her own inadequacy that engenders suicidal ruminations. Examples like these suggest that TPC, with its consciousness condition, not only requires too much but too little. As I will try to explain, the problem is not simply that TPC is incomplete but that good occurring in the life of has entirely the wrong structure to get at what fundamentally concerns the good-for theorist. In response to the first claimed divergence between good and good for, the good theorist might simply deny that good can occur in a life where P is not conscious of a good, even if good can also occur outside of a life. As for the cases in which our beauty apprehends beauty but takes no pleasure in it, or takes immediate pleasure promptly followed by physical or emotional suffering, good has not, in fact, occurred in her life; or, more precisely, in the latter cases, the good occurred fleetingly only to be overwhelmed by the bad. Such possibilities do not show, however, that the idea of good occurring in the life of misses something captured by good for; they merely indicate that we do not yet have the right account of the good. As mentioned earlier, Regan himself thinks that the good is pleasurable experience of objectively appropriate activities. For Regan, then, the good consists in something like Moorean organic unities.61 Of course, the mys60 For one thing, TP does not allow us to capture common-sense ideas about when goods either do or do not make a difference to how an individual’s life goes. It seems all the same to the permanently comatose patient’s life, whether the walls of her hospital room remain bare or display a Picasso. 61 Moore remarks that “Pleasure does seem to be a necessary constituent of most valuable wholes” (Principia Ethica, sec. 55), which, of course, leaves open the possibility of valuable

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tery, on the Moorean picture, is just the one mentioned in passing in our earlier consideration of organic unities, namely, what explains the complexity: why do some things but not others hang together in such a way that good supervenes on them? Regan considers a more specific version of the question, as it pertains to his own claims about the good. One might ask, he conjectures, whether by limiting the good to pleasurable experiences, the Moorean is not really concerned with good or value for the individual after all. “Why else should an experience of a beautiful sunset, or a great mathematical theorem, or a Bach cantata, need to be enjoyable in order to be valuable?” Regan responds: I cannot answer this point fully here. The short answer is that what is really valuable (non-relatively) is the appreciative engagement of the subject with a worthy object. The subject’s pleasure is relevant because pleasure is an inevitable concomitant, and therefore a sign, of the right sort of engagement. But it is the engagement of the subject and appropriate object that is valuable. To my mind, when there is the right sort of engagement, we could as well say that the value created is value ‘for’ the sunset, or the theorem, or the cantata, as insist that the value is ‘for’ the subject. The object of appreciation is brought to life by being attended to and appreciated. But in fact, the real value is neither ‘for’ the subject nor ‘for’ the object. The value is just there, in a whole to which both subject and object make an indispensable contribution.62 As far as I can see, this response merely repeats in varying ways the Moorean position, without answering the underlying question. The idea of an object of appreciation being “brought to life” by being pleasingly appreciated seems to me a mere metaphor. As for the claim that we could just as much say that the right sort of engagement creates value for the sunset, this strikes me as exposing a dilemma for Regan. If the expression ‘value for’ has to be understood in the same way in connection with the sunset as it does in connection with a person, and it can only plausibly be understood as an abbreviated expression for good or value occurring in the life of, then value for the sunset would have to be value occurring in the life of the sunset. But what could this mean? Either good occurring in the life of amounts to something along the lines of TPC, in which case good wholes that do not include pleasure. He later came to the view that pleasure is a part of every intrinsically good whole, though he rejected the idea that intrinsic value is always proportionate to the quantity of pleasure. See Moore, Ethics, chap. 7, pp. 103–7. The passage from Ethics quoted in note 57 continues: “and, as we said before, it seems possible that amongst the feelings contained must always be some amount of pleasure.” 62 Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 221. I am not aware of any other place in his published work that Regan addresses the issue in full.

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cannot occur in the life of a sunset and thus be “for” the sunset, or good occurring in the life of is nothing but good, full stop, in which case Regan cannot plausibly claim that good occurring in the life of captures all that the good-for theorist could sensibly mean by good for, even if the good includes all good fors. If Regan’s response provides less illumination than we might have hoped, it nevertheless affords a very useful starting point for getting a clearer grip on the key differences between the pictures offered respectively by the good theorist and the good-for theorist. One difference concerns whether complexity or structure is to be found in substantive values or goods, or whether it is to be found in the value property itself. A view like that of Moore and Regan builds structure into its theory of the good leaving good itself a simple, unanalyzable nonnatural property. And, indeed, that goods have a complex structure seems the only thing that could give the good theorist a prayer of making good on the claim that the good will include any plausible good for. The good-for theorist, in contrast, finds structure in the value property. ‘Good for P’ expresses a kind of relational value, and to give an analysis of the relational property of being good for P —of welfare or well-being —is to give an analysis of a certain normative relation that holds between persons and other things.63 Whether (and this is a point to which I will return briefly) those things are themselves good in something like the Moorean sense, whether, more precisely, they are intrinsically valuable, is a question about the good for rather than a question settled by the nature of the relational property. In the case of both complex goods or organic unities and the good for, a relation of some sort holds between items. On Regan’s view, the relation is between a worthy object or activity and a subjective response, one that fits or “brings to life” that object or activity. The subjective response is a “sign of” appropriate engagement, but we might say, more strongly, that it fits and completes the object or activity so as to produce a whole that is good. Although Regan says that what is “really valuable” is appreciative engagement with a worthy object, in calling objects worthy and activities objectively appropriate he must be supposing that such things have at least some intrinsic value. It’s just that the values that are to be promoted are the wholes consisting of the worthy item or activity and the complementary response. It is important to be clear about the relata in the complex goods that constitute the to-be-promoted. Regan makes clear that he does not subscribe to the view that individuals have value.64 The relata, 63 By a “normative relation,” I simply mean that the relation between the person and the thing gives rise to reasons and obligations or, more generally, that it entails a variety of normative judgments. That X is good for P entails, ceteris paribus, that we have reason to promote X for P, that we are obligated not to deprive P of X, that P’s pursuit of X is rational, and so on. 64 Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 225–30. See also Donald H. Regan, “The Value of Rational Nature,” Ethics 112, no. 2 (2002): 267–91. See also notes 67 and 69 below. Could a Moorean

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then, are not the worthy object and the person herself but, rather, the worthy object and the appropriate response or engagement (pleasurable experience, in Regan’s view, being an indicator thereof ) that happens to be had by an individual. She figures in the mix, it seems, just because it is only agents who can respond in a fitting way to worthy objects or engage in objectively appropriate activities. When the relata are in place, the simple nonrelational property good supervenes, or, if you prefer, the predicate “good” applies.65 What are the relata in the relation that is the focus of the good-for theorist? As I have already noted, good-for theorists have said extraordinarily little about this.66 I believe, however, that the entire project of attempting to discern the elements of personal good or individual welfare rests on something like the following picture. For the good-for theorist, the relation of interest holds between a valuable being —a person or agent — and an object or activity or another being.67 It might turn out that the only objects or activities that can stand in the good-for relation to a person are ones that are themselves worthy, but as far as I can tell, whether that is so is not settled by the very concept of personal good. The relata, then, are persons, valuable beings, and objects or activities or other beings that may or may not themselves be valuable. The question still to be answered by the good-for theorist concerns the nature of the relation that holds between these relata. subscribe to the idea that persons have value? Perhaps he could, so long as he was not committed to the view that states of affairs are the sole bearers of intrinsic value, in which case the idea that persons have value would involve a kind of category error. If the Moorean could, then he could also allow that states of persons getting what is good for them have intrinsic value and even that such states are among the most valuable. 65 See Donald H. Regan, “How to Be a Moorean,” Ethics 113, no. 3 (2003): 651–77, esp. 651–57, where he seems to express some reservations about treating good as a property. 66 Some have, nevertheless, viewed themselves as engaged in providing an analysis of welfare. See, e.g., Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, ch. 6; and Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care. 67 In what does the value of persons consist? This is, in my view, one of the milliondollar questions in ethics, and I confess to having no especially interesting answer to it. Still, we can get a feel for the idea of persons as valuable beings by reflecting on some of the ways in which philosophers have been or might be tempted to answer it. One might say that the value of persons just consists in their being appropriate objects of certain attitudes, such as love, concern, or respect. (Coons, following Darwall’s suggestions in Welfare and Rational Care about care and respect as attitudes we take up toward persons, adopts a view something like this. See Coons, The Value of States and the Value of Individuals, chap. 2.) Or for those who, like me, do not favor “fitting-attitude” analyses of value, one might point to features of persons in virtue of which certain attitudes are fitting. Perhaps the most common feature philosophers have adverted to is, roughly following Kant, their “rational nature.” (But see note 68.) I am tempted to say, as a first approximation, and will simply assert in the text of this essay, that the value of persons consists in their being intrinsic sources of legitimate normative demands. Cf. John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures 1980,” Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 9 (1980): 515–72, p. 543: “People are self-originating sources of claims. . . .” But I have no illusions that this suggestion takes us very far in answering the question.

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Another difference between the pictures offered by good and good-for theorists should, at this juncture, already be apparent: the relations respectively involved in the good and in good for involve differing directions of fit. For the good theorist, fit is object- or activity-directed —attitudes or responses are to fit worthy objects or appropriate activities. Certain responses are, we might say, “called for” by the nature of the valuable item and complete a valuable whole as to-be-promoted. For the good-for theorist, in contrast, fit is person- or agent-directed —items (valuable or not) are to fit or suit a valuable being —are “called for” by her nature —and so are to be promoted in relation to her.68 The views differ, we might say, in what they deem to be the center of normative gravity.69 68 When I say that, in the case of good for, items are to fit the person, I mean to allow that this fit to the person can be achieved in various ways, some of which will involve changes in the individual. Either way, however, the direction of fit normatively speaking is toward the person —she is the center of normative gravity. I have talked about a person’s nature as “calling for” certain items. But her nature includes her capacities as an autonomous agent, and this fact, I have argued elsewhere, has important implications for the nature of personal good. See Rosati, “Personal Good.” 69 As I have explained in a commentary on Darwall’s Welfare and Rational Care, I believe that the deep insight behind his rational-care theory of welfare is that a person’s welfare is in some sense what one ought to want for her out of an appreciation of her value. See Connie S. Rosati, “Darwall on Welfare and Rational Care,” Philosophical Studies 130, no. 3 (2006): 619–35. Of course, this is not precisely how Darwall formulates his own view, but I believe that the appeal of his view lies in how it reflects this idea. In advancing his rationalcare analysis, Darwall is quite explicit that the direct object of care is the person herself, and he claims that concern for the person is “primitive” (Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care, 71). A few philosophers, including Darwall, have suggested that the normativity of welfare rests on the value of persons —our welfare matters because we matter. In addition to Darwall, see Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 26; J. David Velleman, “A Right of Self-Termination?” Ethics 109 (1999): 606–20; and Rosati, “Personal Good.” Of course, the historical roots of this idea lie in Kant’s distinction between conditioned and unconditioned value. See Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 393–95 (Prussian Academy pagination). I believe that the underlying insight, as well as the insight about the normativity of welfare, are best understood as indicating a feature of the relational property, what I have been calling its “direction of fit.” I have explained elsewhere why I do not think that Darwall’s insightful account succeeds as an analysis of welfare. See Rosati, “Darwall on Welfare and Rational Care”; see also Rosati, “Personal Good.” For a reply by Darwall, as well as other commentary on his book, see Stephen Darwall, “Précis of Welfare and Rational Care,” Philosophical Studies 130, no. 3 (2006): 579–84; Fred Feldman, “What Is the Rational Care Theory of Welfare?” Philosophical Studies 130, no. 3 (2006): 585–601; and Thomas Hurka, “A Kantian Theory of Welfare?” Philosophical Studies 130, no. 3 (2006): 603–17. Regan examines Darwall’s theory in the course of making his case against good for. I do not address his discussion of Darwall, in part, because I do not fully agree with his characterization of Darwall’s position; but, more important, I do not believe that most of Regan’s criticisms of Darwall’s view apply to what I say. The one claim he makes that would be relevant to assessing the position sketched in this essay is that he sees no special dignity or worth in persons. Regan has critically examined arguments for the idea that rational nature has value; see Regan, “The Value of Rational Nature.” Although I think he is right to find fault in extant arguments, I do not believe the shortcomings of those arguments by any means end the matter. In any case, my aim in this essay is not to argue for the value of persons but to explain how ‘good for P’ might express a distinct, fully normative property. For a reply to Regan, see David Sussman, “The Authority of Humanity,” Ethics 113, no. 2 (2003): 350–66.

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Notice that this difference in the center of normative gravity tends to upend Regan’s inquiry, or at least his framing of it. As he expresses it, his inquiry concerns not whether but why we are our brother’s keeper. The good theorist, he claims, thinks that we ought to be concerned with what goes on in one another’s lives, that we are our brother’s keeper; he merely offers a different and, Regan thinks, better account of why we are our brother’s keeper than the one offered by the good-for theorist. But now we can see that this is not, strictly speaking, true. Being concerned with what happens in our brother’s life is not being concerned for our brother, and, indeed, if our brother is not himself valuable, such direct concern would appear to be misguided. On the good theorist’s view, we never ought to act, to borrow Stephen Darwall’s edifying formulation, for our brother’s sake, but only for the sake of what goods may occur in his life. Our brother and his responses will be an “inevitable concomitant,” to be sure, and we cannot promote the good without supporting him as a part of that process, but if the question is whether I am my brother’s keeper, the answer must be no. And so, contrary to Regan’s framing of his inquiry, the question “Why am I my brother’s keeper?” can never really arise for the good theorist.70 The difference in what I have been calling the center of normative gravity reflects, in turn, a difference between two types of normative reasons, each of which has the universal normativity that Regan claims good has but that good for, if distinct from good, lacks. Some normative reasons derive from the value of worthy objects when appropriately appreciated or from the value of objectively worthwhile activities appropriately engaged in by an agent. Other normative reasons derive from the value of agents or persons themselves. The normative reasons provided by facts about what is good for a person are of the latter sort, and because the value of persons is an objective value, not a merely relative one, reasons deriving from what is good for a person are reasons for anyone.71 These considerations point us to an important fact about the nature of good for that helps to make clear why the monadic property good is no proper part of good for P and that helps us to see what the ‘for’ is for. ‘Good for’ expresses a relation; the good for is a form of objective value. But whereas ‘good’ in the good theorist’s scheme signals the intrinsic 70 For related reasons, Regan’s view has a problem that is the mirror opposite of a well-known problem for desire theories. Whereas desire theories, as Mark Overvold has argued, seem to leave no room for self-sacrifice, Regan’s view makes no room for selfinterested action, because it recognizes no meaningful notion of self-interest. One could act on one’s desires or what one values, contrary to promoting the good, but that would not be to act self-interestedly in the usual sense. See Mark Overvold, “Self-Interest and the Concept of Self-Sacrifice,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 10 (1980): 105–18. But see Regan’s discussion of the self-sacrifice problem, which no doubt reveals how he would respond to my remarks in this footnote: Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 224, note 52. 71 This assumes, of course, that the good-for theorist is correct in presupposing the value of persons.

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value of an item or whole, ‘good’ in the expression ‘good for’ does not signal the intrinsic value of the item deemed to stand in the good-for relation or to instantiate the relational property of being good for P. We can make the point clearer by reminding ourselves of an important distinction, to which Christine Korsgaard has called our attention, between two ways in which something can have value.72 It can have intrinsic value, which is the value a thing has in itself, a value which has traditionally been taken to depend on a thing’s intrinsic properties.73 It can also have extrinsic value, or value that derives from some other source. Whereas the good theorist’s good is intrinsic value, the good-for theorist’s good for, although just as normative, is a kind of extrinsic value; the good for gives anyone a reason to act, but the source of the “good-for value” of any item that is good for a person is its relation to a being with value. Of course, an item with good-for value might also have intrinsic value, but that is not the sort of value our good-for talk concerns.74 Although good for is a form of extrinsic value, we can still meaningfully distinguish between those extrinsically valuable things that are good for a person directly, or just in themselves, and those that are merely indirectly or instrumentally good for her.75 Those things that are instrumentally good for her are those that are means to the things that are directly good for her. Those that are directly good for her are those that stand in a relation to her of the sort that the good-for theorist still needs to specify —those, we might say, that “fit” her. Insofar as these claims about the structure of the value tracked by our good-for talk are correct, the ‘good’ in ‘good for’ signals not intrinsic value but the existence of a reason for promoting or supporting X in relation to P. Again, the item in question might itself have intrinsic value, but the occurrence of ‘good’ in ‘good for’ does not signal the intrinsic value of that item.76 So how should we understand the ‘for’? If ‘good for,’ in talk about what is good for a person, expresses a relation of “fit” between a person and some object, 72 See Korsgaard, “Two Distinctions in Goodness.” See also Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics, 26. Rae Langton provides helpful refinement of Korsgaard’s distinctions in her excellent essay “Objective and Unconditioned Value,” Philosophical Review 116 (2007). 73 For a challenge to this traditional view, see Shelly Kagan, “Rethinking Intrinsic Value,” Journal of Ethics 2, no. 4 (1998): 277–97. 74 Here might be as good a place as any to acknowledge that it might also be good that persons have what is good for them. But the fact, if it is one, that some or even all valuable states of affairs are states of persons getting what is good for them would not show that being good for P is not a distinct normative concept or property. 75 I talk in terms of things that are directly good for a person rather than in terms of ends, because not everything that is good for a person plausibly counts as an end, at least in the sense of something she could undertake to pursue or promote. 76 I should add here an important qualification to the line of argument I have been pressing. The qualification is that the concept good for does not contain the concept good as a proper part if we understand good in the Moorean’s sense. That leaves open the possibility that, on other understandings of the concept good, we might plausibly understand propositions about what is good for a person as, in some sense, built out of propositions about what is good.

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activity, or being, the ‘for’ indicates the direction of fit.77 As a first approximation, I would suggest that when we say that X is good for P, we indicate that there is a reason to promote X with P as the beneficiary of the action in light of or out of regard for the value of P. An analogy may help to shed light on the structure of the relational property of being good for P. Consider a valuable work of art —valuable aesthetically speaking, that is. When we appreciate the value of a work of art, or what we take to be a valuable work of art, we undertake to preserve it in its valuable condition. That will involve preserving not simply the features of it in virtue of which it is aesthetically valuable, but other features and surrounding conditions which may be necessary to preserve its overall condition. What this will require will vary, of course, with the sort of art work it is; preserving a marble sculpture will involve actions different from those involved in preserving a medieval fresco. Nevertheless, these undertakings have in common an orientation toward the valuable work of art. Good for a person operates in a structurally similar way, presupposing the ethical value of persons. Of course, persons are not themselves “to be promoted”; we face no general duty to produce persons, as many believe we do to produce or bring about the good. Persons are, however, valuable in the sense that their nature renders them sources of a legitimate demand for our considerate and respectful treatment.78 We perhaps most readily appreciate the value of persons in the context of personal affections, and we may be moved to act toward our intimates out of love or concern in precisely the ways we ought to act just out of a regard or respect for them as valuable beings. When we appreciate, and act out of regard for, the value of a person, we seek to preserve her condition as the valuable being she is. That will involve not simply attending to those features she shares with all persons and in virtue of which persons are valuable, but attending to her sundry other features and her circumstances, all of which may bear on what preserves, sustains, or nurtures her. What regard for a person will require will vary, at least in important ways, with the varying features and circumstances of different individuals. Nonetheless, as in the case of a valuable work of art, our orientation in considering what is good for a person is the person herself. Let me quickly sum up the discussion thus far. Good-for value is relational, not relativist value.79 It is objective in that it gives anyone a reason for action, though the good for might, for all that has been said herein, be 77 See Rosati, “Personal Good,” for more discussion of the idea of ‘good for’ as expressing a relation of “fit.” 78 See note 67. 79 A third reason for my interest in the Moorean challenge is a suspicion that relational properties may figure more centrally in ethics than is commonly appreciated, and so a better understanding of such properties would be helpful. Perhaps, for example, actions are never right simply but always right in relation to a context and an agent at a time.

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otherwise subjective; perhaps the normative relation good for itself involves a mental-state requirement, or perhaps the relational property being good for P is instantiated only by items that produce particular mental states. Finally, good for is a form of extrinsic rather than intrinsic value. B. The normative role of personal good Peter Railton has observed, in developing his informed-desire account of good for a person, that our discourse includes alongside the language of the desired, wanted, or preferred, the language of the desirable, valuable, or good.80 These discrete kinds of talk at least purport to do different work; in particular, talk of what is desirable or good purports to provide a critical stance on the merely desired or preferred. I think a like point can be made here. Our discourse includes alongside the language of what is good or valuable or worth wanting, the language of what is good for someone, what is in her interest, what is worth wanting or doing for her sake. These discrete kinds of talk at least purport to do different, if not unrelated, work. Our discourse thus itself provides prima facie evidence for the existence of distinct notions, doing distinct normative work. What normative work might that be, in the case of good for? Assuming that ordinary ethical talk is a reliable guide, good for functions normatively in at least three ways. First, judgments about what is good for a person guide child-rearing. The vast bulk of what effective parents do in raising their children, including what they do in fostering their capacities as autonomous agents and bringing them into the moral community, aims to benefit their children, if not in the present moment, then over the course of a lifetime.81 Second, good-for judgments guide individual decision-making with regard to how to build a life. Of course, in deciding what to pursue and how to live, we attend not merely to our desires but to what we believe to be of value and to “what we owe to each other,” to borrow Thomas Scanlon’s apt expression.82 But except where morality makes demands on us that require that we forgo a benefit, and except where an individual undertakes or is forced into a life of self-sacrifice, an individual rationally forms these judgments with an eye to her longrange happiness or life satisfaction. Finally, good-for judgments guide the setting of social policies. Indeed, their bearing on social policies is evident 80

See Railton, “Facts and Values,” 11. For extended discussion of effective parenting as a model for framing a theory of preference-formation, see Connie S. Rosati, “Preference-Formation and Personal Good,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 81, Supp. 59 (2006): 33–64. See also Tamar Shapiro, “What Is a Child?” Ethics 109, no. 4 (1999): 715–38. 82 T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Of course, my view of personal good and, in particular, my claims about the function of personal good, indicate some disagreement with the central claims of chapter 3 of Scanlon’s book, which presents a revised version of Scanlon’s 1996 Tanner Lecture, “The Status of Well-Being,” Michigan Quarterly Review 36, no. 2 (1997): 290–310. 81

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not only when it comes to questions of public health, education, and welfare, but even in the basic operation of the law, at least in places where the legal system takes seriously the value of persons. The property of being good for a person, as I have characterized it, well matches the normative role of judgments about what is good for a person. Whether from the first-person or third-person standpoint, our focus in making these judgments is on the person herself and what preserves and advances her, presupposing her value and attending to the particulars of her nature and circumstances. The good theorist’s position, in denying the coherence of good for, is conspicuously at odds with the way we find it natural to talk and think about ourselves and others.83 No parent, except perhaps someone like our bewildered Moorean parent, would say that he sees to his child’s education because he seeks to bring about the valuable state of affairs that consists in his child’s pleasurable appreciation of knowledge. A parent aims, in his child-rearing activities, not at the good but at what is good for his child —it is good for the child that she be educated; and he sees to her education, at least in the first instance, out of love and concern for her, not out of a concern for realizing value in the world.84 That a parent aims at the good for his child rather than at the good simpliciter helps to explain why he focuses on his child and what happens to her in a way the Moorean might well regard as quite out of proportion to the overall good to be realized.85 Vast swathes of our social lives, including family law, pediatric medicine, and primary and secondary education, reflect the parental orientation, with its focus on children and their welfare. Of course, a parent may, in aiming at what is good for his child, direct her toward what he thinks is good simply; but it is for the child’s own sake that he wants her not to miss out on valuable pursuits; it is for her sake that he wants the valuable state of affairs that consists in her taking pleasure in learning to obtain. No person, except perhaps a Moorean, thinks of her quest for happiness as a quest to produce valuable states of affairs. A person aims, in seeking to lead a satisfying life, not to increase the quantity of value in the world but to enhance for her own sake the character and quality of her own passage through time. And this is so, even if she enhances her own life to a very large extent by engagement in activities that increase the amount of value in the world as well. Our tendency to talk as we do and to orient much of our thought and action around what benefits ourselves and others seems utterly natural and, for reasons I will suggest shortly, nearly inescapable. 83 True, we may be radically mistaken; we may not be valuable; there may be no normative property of being good for P. But, then, there may be no property of being good either. 84 Darwall’s discussion of welfare, in Welfare and Rational Care, well reflects these sorts of ideas. See also Rosati, “Preference-Formation and Personal Good” and “Autonomy and Personal Good: Lessons from Frankenstein’s Monster” (manuscript). 85 Thanks to David Sobel for urging me to stress this point.

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One might be tempted to think that the good theorist will still routinely issue the prescriptions of a good-for theorist. After all, if, say, the pleasurable responses of individuals are constituents of any valuable whole, then producing the good will be pretty much all about promoting good occurring in the lives of individuals. And as a necessary means thereto, there must be functioning persons; so we will feed, educate, and heal in all the familiar ways. But good occurring in the life of is in fact not well suited to the normative role that good for plays. Even if, in order to promote the good for, we must preserve and promote persons as a necessary means thereto, there is no reason to think that would involve us in all that we ordinarily undertake on people’s behalf. The difference in direction of fit between good and good for carries with it an orientation toward different ends, and thus a difference in what is treated as a means and what is treated as an end. What’s more, because the preservation and promotion of persons must be fundamentally instrumental for the good theorist, he confronts, in principle, the trade-offs that give rise to familiar, vexing problems for utilitarianism. Why, for example, waste any resources on persons whose capacities are such that developing them promises to yield little in our efforts to promote the good? IV. Agency and Value Trade-offs of some sort there will inevitably be, of course, and so in making the foregoing claims, I do not mean to prejudge the question of the normative priority of good versus good for, though we can perhaps begin to see what may be at stake in how we settle the question. I have been aiming simply to make it plausible that ‘good for P’ expresses a distinct, fully normative property and so one with a legitimate place in our moral ontology, whether or not it gets pride of place.86 Regan does, however, offer an argument to settle the question of normative primacy against good for and in favor of good. His argument appeals to a developmental story about agency. Regan’s tale goes roughly as follows. We acquire our idea of value as a result of experiencing our own felt wants, desires, and needs. The origins of our idea of value may, in fact, explain why many are inclined, mistakenly, to think that “value must be relative to a valuing agent.” 87 But even if our ideas of value have their beginnings in our desires and needs, we can develop into complete and competent agents only insofar as we come to see that we must look beyond these inner drives in order to arrive at the whole truth about value, including the truth about value occurring in our lives. The development from our initial, inner promptings to a full understanding of value occurs incrementally. At first, we may experience problems of con86 87

This is assuming, of course, that there are any objective values at all. Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 222; see also 209.

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flicting desires, and so we learn to restrain some desires in the interest of others. As a next or associated step, we may come to assess our lowerorder desires from the standpoint of our higher-order desires. Ultimately, however, we will come to ask about the justifiability of our most fundamental desires and even our entire set of desires: are those desires “justified and directed at worthy ends”? Regan explains: “This is the step, raising what I have elsewhere called the ‘desire-transcending question,’ that makes us agents. When we ask this question, we are asking for a standard for our desires, a standard that cannot be grounded in our desires themselves. . . . [A]cknowledging this question and confronting it . . . is the crucial passage to agency.” 88 At the point at which we realize that we must “transcend our desires,” Regan asks, does an agent who is deliberating about what is to be promoted think in terms of good or good for? So far as I can see, there is no reason why he should assume at this stage, when he first begins his survey of the world and his search for the to-be-promoted, that the to-be-promoted is necessarily limited to occurrences within people’s lives —and even less reason why he should assume that the to-be-promoted is necessarily limited to occurrences within people’s lives that might seem in some intuitive sense to involve benefit ‘for’ them. But these limitations are what would correspond to the claim that the question the agent asks himself should be understood as a question about the ‘good for’. If the agent does not begin with these a priori limitations, then we should understand him as asking about the ‘good’. Even if it turns out that ‘the good’ is entirely constituted by things in people’s lives, and even things that might be thought of as ‘benefiting’ them in some sense, still, the agent’s question is about ‘the good.’ 89 Indeed, Regan claims, nothing would compel an agent “to attend to the fact of her own particularity as an agent.” 90 Although I am not convinced by all of Regan’s developmental story, I see nothing in that story itself that a good-for theorist need deny.91 The good-for theorist might well allow that we come to the idea of value through our own experiences of needing and wanting things, that we gradually come to restrain, assess, and, ultimately, seek full justification for our desires, as we develop into full-fledged agents. But if good for is as I have described it here, then full justification of an agent’s desires will, 88 Ibid., 223. See also Regan, “How to Be a Moorean,” sec. 1, for more discussion along the same lines. 89 Regan, “Brother’s Keeper,” 223–24. 90 Ibid., 224–25. Regan says this in response to an objection which stresses that it is the agent, after all, who must decide what to do. 91 But see note 17.

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in some instances, be provided by facts about her own good rather than facts about the good. What’s more, the good-for theorist would remind us that Regan’s developmental story, while acceptable as far as it goes, omits a critical part: namely, the process or activity of raising full-fledged agents, a process that requires that we attend not merely to the good but to the fledgling agents themselves. Indeed, given the characterization of good for on offer here, we should expect that a fully developed agent’s question regarding the to-bepromoted will largely concern the good for. To be sure, it need not, and should not, in the course of an ordinary human life, concern only her own good for. If she is to be a faithful friend, a loving partner, an effective parent, and a full participant in the moral community, she will inevitably ask how to promote not simply her own good and not even simply the good but also —and often —another’s good. Nonetheless, as an agent, as a being with an interest in the “full truth about value,” the question of her own good cannot fail to press, and legitimately so. I would even be prepared to go further and say inescapably so; if she is to be able to function effectively as an agent in the first place, she must operate from a standpoint that presupposes and responds to her own value. I will not try to defend these stronger claims here, however.92 Perhaps it is possible for a fully developed agent rationally and willingly to regard her life as a mere vessel of valuable states, and herself as merely a vassal of the good. But if that is possible, it is only, I would suggest, because in the course of becoming an agent, other people did not so regard her. V. Conclusion If the claims I have been making about how to understand good for are correct, then ‘good for P’ indeed expresses the concept of a fully normative property distinct from good —and even from good occurring in the life of an individual. Given the difference in direction of fit, we have reason to doubt that in fact the extension of good will include all the good for, although significant overlap will no doubt exist.93 One insufficiently explored question concerns why that would be so. Of course, it still remains for good-for theorists to offer a compelling analysis of the fundamental relation that has as its focus the value of the person. I hope to have at least made it plausible that their efforts would not be wasted. Philosophy, University of Arizona

92 For initial steps in that direction, see Rosati, “Autonomy and Personal Good: Lessons from Frankenstein’s Monster.” 93 See Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care, chap. 4, for an intriguing discussion of the importance to individual welfare of what he calls “valuing activities.”

FOUNDATIONS IN AQUINAS’S ETHICS* By Scott MacDonald I. Introduction Aquinas likes foundations. He famously endorses a form of causal proof for God’s existence because he believes that one cannot go on to infinity in series of what he calls “per se causes.” 1 We might say that he thinks there have to be causal foundations, causes that possess their causal power in and of themselves and do not acquire it from other causes. In epistemology, he argues that one cannot go on to infinity in chains of justification; there must be epistemic foundations that are known just by virtue of themselves and require no further epistemic support.2 In his moral theory, too, Aquinas likes foundations. Here is an application of foundationalist principles in his moral psychology: In all cases of things that have a per se order with respect to one another, it must be that, when the primary thing has been taken away, the things that are ordered toward the primary thing (ad primum) are taken away. . . . Now in the case of ends one finds two sorts of order: the order of intention and the order of execution, and there must be something primary in each sort of order. For a kind of principle that moves the appetite is primary in the order of intention. Thus, when that principle has been taken away, the appetite would be moved by nothing. . . . But the principle in intention is the ultimate end. . . . [T]herefore in this case it is not possible to proceed to infinity, because nothing would be desired (appeteretur) if there were no ultimate end.3

* I read earlier versions of this paper to the philosophy departments at Purdue University, UCLA, and Texas A&M University, and at a conference at the University of Toronto. I am grateful to the audiences on those occasions for stimulating discussion. I am grateful, too, for helpful comments from the other contributors to this volume, and its editors. 1 See the first two of Aquinas’s so-called five ways: Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST ), part I, question 2, article 3. (Hereafter references to ST will cite part, question, and article as follows: Ia.2.3. “Ia” indicates the first part [ prima pars] of ST, “IaIIae” the first part of the second part [ prima secundae], and “IIaIIae” the second part of the second part [secunda secundae].) 2 See Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics book 1, chapter 4. 3 ST IaIIae.1.4. Translations are my own except where noted.

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So just as God is Aquinas’s first mover, ultimate ends are his first motivators. 4 Foundationalist principles and reasoning appear prominently in other contexts in Aquinas’s moral theory, and in this essay I consider one of these contexts. Aquinas sees a close analogy between practical reasoning — the sort of reasoning by which moral thought proceeds —and theoretical reasoning —reasoning about matters of fact. He frequently exploits that analogy to make a point about the nature and structure of practical reasoning, as in this passage: Human reasoning, since it is a kind of movement, proceeds from an understanding of certain things —namely, things that are known naturally without any inquiry on reason’s part —as though from a kind of immovable principle. Moreover, it comes to a stop at an understanding insofar as, by means of principles known naturally per se, we form a judgment about the things we arrive at by reasoning. Now, it is clear that just as theoretical reason reasons about theoretical matters, practical reason reasons about things that are to be done. Therefore, there must be things that are impressed in us naturally: principles regarding things to be done, just as much as principles of theoretical matters. . . . [T]he principles regarding things to be done that are impressed in us . . . pertain to a specific natural disposition which we call synderesis. (ST Ia.79.12) I will have more to say about the details of this passage shortly. But what is immediately clear is that Aquinas thinks that practical reasoning proceeds from foundations: practical principles that are impressed in us naturally, known naturally per se, and possessed by synderesis.5 What I want to suggest here is that Aquinas’s foundationalism about practical reasoning —the sort highlighted by Aquinas himself in passages such as the one I have just quoted —is easily misunderstood. Commentators often suppose that Aquinas takes this foundationalist account of practical reasoning to license a moral theory, and in particular a theory of natural law, with thick foundations: universal, objective, self-evident, substantive moral principles from which all morality can be derived.6 But 4 I have discussed these various applications of foundationalist reasoning in various papers. See Scott MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Parasitic Cosmological Argument,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 134–73; MacDonald, “Theory of Knowledge,” in Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, eds., Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 160–95; and MacDonald, “Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinas’s Aristotelian Moral Psychology and Anscombe’s Fallacy,” The Philosophical Review 100 (1991): 31–66. 5 Aquinas takes the technical term “synderesis” from the tradition. It appears to be a corruption of the Greek “suneisis” (“understanding”). What exactly Aquinas means by it will emerge in Section III below. 6 See, for example, Martha Nussbaum’s description of Aquinas’s moral theory in Nussbaum, Aristotle’s De motu animalium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).

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some foundationalisms are thinner than others, and I will argue that Aquinas’s foundationalism about practical reasoning is among the thin ones and is thinner than these interpreters suppose. Since I think that if one is going to be a foundationalist, thin is better, I will take myself to be going at least some way toward defending Aquinas against thick interpreters.7 In order to get the relevant texts and issues in front of us, I am going to focus on a paper of Terence Irwin’s.8 Irwin is not a thick interpreter of Aquinas; he thinks Aquinas is conflicted as between thick and thin foundationalism about practical reasoning, concluding that Aquinas’s position is inconsistent. I will reject Irwin’s conclusion, but I think his analysis usefully brings the issues into focus.9 Irwin characterizes the conflict he finds in Aquinas not in terms of thick versus thin foundations but in terms of wide-scope versus narrow- or restricted-scope deliberation. But Irwin’s focus on the scope of what Aquinas calls “deliberation” is just another way of coming at the issue of foundations, as will become clear. Irwin argues that certain features of Aquinas’s moral theory commit him to thinking that deliberation has wide scope in our practical thought whereas other features of his account commit him to restricting deliberation’s scope more narrowly. In order to see what this means, we need to have before us a basic picture of Aquinas’s understanding of practical reasoning. II. Practical Reasoning: The Basics Practical reasoning is reasoning about things that can be done (operabilia, agibilia) or are to be done (agenda). (For present purposes, we can leave aside practical reasoning’s application to things that can be made [ factibilia].) Thus, one condition on practical reasoning —part of what distinguishes it from other sorts of reasoning —is its object: things that can be done, actions or courses of action that can be undertaken. But some of our thinking or reasoning about action is not entirely or fully practical —it is theoretical or merely hypothetical thinking about action. To think through the process of changing a flat tire in preparation for writing an automobile owner’s manual, or to muse about what one will do with the winnings, should one win the lottery, is to reason abstractly and theoretically about things that can be done. If reasoning 7 My project here requires supplementing with an account of what Aquinas calls the “precepts of natural law.” I intend to undertake that account in another paper. 8 T. H. Irwin, “The Scope of Deliberation: A Conflict in Aquinas,” Review of Metaphysics 44 (1990): 21–42. 9 Irwin himself no longer endorses the conclusion he draws in “The Scope of Deliberation.” See T. H. Irwin, “Practical Reason Divided: Aquinas and His Critics,” in Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut, eds., Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 189–214; and the chapters on Aquinas in Irwin’s forthcoming History of Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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about action is to be full-fledged practical reasoning, it must also satisfy one other condition: it must begin from or be undertaken in the service of a present desire or intention that one believes would be fulfilled or advanced to some extent by the action about which one reasons. If one desires something (or intends to bring about some state of affairs or obtain or promote some end), then when one reasons about how to satisfy that desire (bring about that state of affairs, promote that end), one is reasoning about how one will proceed in that regard, what one should do, what course of action to undertake. The desire or intention that precipitates the reasoning makes it fully practical. One’s reasoning in that case is not only about what can or might be done but is also actually directed toward acting, toward proceeding in the direction of fulfilling one’s intention. When reasoning of this sort, in these conditions, has run its course, the typical outcome, Aquinas tells us, is a judgment about what course of action to undertake and a corresponding volition or act of will —what Aquinas calls “choice.” On this picture, then, the cognitive enterprise of reasoning about action is fully practical when it is integrated with one’s appetitive states and acts, arising from desire or intention and giving rise ultimately to volition or choice.10 The point of fully practical reasoning is to enable us to act in aid of our desires and intentions by discovering or constructing ways of advancing or fulfilling them. The need for reasoning of this sort is especially clear in cases where the objects of our desires or intentions are relatively general or indeterminate or remote —too general or indeterminate or remote for it to be entirely obvious how to realize them. Reasoning of this fully practical sort, then, connects our relatively general or indeterminate desires or intentions to more specific or determinate ones, and ultimately to concrete courses of action we can undertake to satisfy or realize them. Aquinas develops this picture at some length and in considerable detail early on in the second part of Summa theologiae. In schematic form, the central part of his complex analysis looks like this: Appetitive act: Cognitive process:

Appetitive act:

intention of some end E deliberation about how to attain or achieve E (giving rise to a determinate judgment that some course of action Ø-ing is to be done [or some more determinate end E* is to be pursued]) choice to Ø [or to pursue E*] 11

10 For fuller discussion, see my “Practical Reasoning and Reasons-Explanations: Aquinas’s Account of Reason’s Role in Action,” in Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump, eds., Aquinas’s Moral Theory (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 133–60. 11 Here are three simple examples:

(A) intention: to incorporate regular exercise in my life deliberation: walking to work every day would be a good way of incorporating regular exercise in my life; judgment: so I should start walking to work choice: to walk to work every day (or today) (continued)

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(Terms in caps are Aquinas’s preferred technical terms. There is considerably more complexity in Aquinas’s account than this basic schema presents, but the additional complexity does not affect the present discussion.)12 As I have been describing it, practical reasoning is the cognitive process, the process of reasoning, that spans the distance between the precipitating intention and the concluding choice. This way of characterizing fully practical reasoning focuses attention on the reasoning process to which Aquinas gives the name “deliberation” and its immediate result, a judgment about what is to be done. If we think of deliberation (plus judgment) as what makes practical reasoning reasoning, then we might think of the flanking acts or states of appetite or will as what makes practical reasoning practical or fully practical. And we might think of this three-part schema as displaying the fundamental components (and the relations among them) required for a basic unit of fully practical reasoning. (Henceforth, I will be using the expression “practical reasoning” to mean “fully practical reasoning.”) III. The Scope of Deliberation Once we see the basic schema, we might wonder whether the picture it presents is complete. We might wonder, that is, whether there is more to the reasoning part of practical reasoning than what is captured in the schema by “deliberation” (plus “judgment”). One way of pressing that familiar question in this context would be to ask whether some rational process or activity can play any role in our acquiring our ends, in our coming to have the intentions we have, the intentions from which deliberation begins. If the answer to that question is “no,” then we might suppose that the basic schema I have presented is essentially the whole story of practical reasoning. And in that case we might say that the reasoning in these practical contexts is subordinate to and wholly in the service of antecedent desire. (“Wholly in the service of antecedent desire” sounds a bit more dignified than “slave of the passions.”) Aquinas, however, clearly believes that the answer to our question is “yes”: reason or intellect can —in fact, must —play a role in our discovering or constructing the ends that are presupposed by deliberation. In (B) intention: to walk to work every day deliberation: if I’m going to walk to work every day, I’ll need to get up earlier; judgment: so I should get up earlier choice: to get up earlier (C) intention: to be happy (possess the complete good, live the best life) deliberation: happiness consists in a life containing an appropriate balance of pleasure and virtue; judgment: so I should live that life choice: to pursue a life containing an appropriate balance of pleasure and virtue 12 Aquinas introduces these technical terms at ST IaIIae.11–13. The full discussion in ST IaIIae extends from q. 6 to q. 17. For more detail, see my “Practical Reasoning and Reasons-Explanations.”

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fact, he seems tempted to offer two different accounts of the role reason can play, one of which ascribes a wide scope to deliberation and the other of which restricts deliberation’s scope more narrowly. On the one account — the wide-scope account —deliberation can be about things that are for the sake of our ends (as the schema makes clear), but also, in significant ways to be explained shortly, about the ends themselves. We can deliberate about what will be our ends. This is what it means for deliberation to have wide scope. On the other, narrow-scope account —the account suggested by Aquinas’s foundationalism about practical reasoning —deliberation is restricted to reasoning about things that are for the sake of intended ends and cannot also be about the ends themselves. This is what it means for deliberation to be restricted to a narrow scope. For Aquinas, however, this sort of restriction on the scope of deliberation does not amount to a restriction on reason’s scope in our practical lives, because deliberation is not the only rational process or activity that bears on practical matters. As we have seen, he identifies a nondeliberative cognitive capacity which he sometimes calls “synderesis,” a disposition by which we grasp fundamental practical principles —ends —from or on the basis of which deliberation can proceed. On this account, synderesis and deliberation together —not deliberation alone —constitute the rational components of practical reason. Now, Irwin thinks it is clear that Aquinas sometimes ascribes wide scope to deliberation and sometimes (more often, perhaps, when he is emphasizing the foundationalist structure of practical reasoning and the role of synderesis in it) restricts deliberation’s scope. That is the conflict Irwin finds in Aquinas’s account. Let’s look at the grounds for ascribing these two different positions to Aquinas, beginning with the case for a restricted-scope reading. A. The case for nondeliberative practical understanding (with restricted-scope deliberation) As we have seen, Aquinas has clear foundationalist commitments, and they inform not only his account of theoretical cognitive activity but also his explanation of the nature of practical reasoning. In a passage we looked at earlier (ST Ia.79.12), he develops an extended analogy between the structures of theoretical and practical reasoning, which I have set out in table 1. In theoretical thought, we know some things because we have reasoned to them —they are conclusions of theoretical inferences. But theoretical knowledge of this sort must rest ultimately on foundations: propositions that we know just in virtue of themselves and not by having reasoned to them from other propositions. Aquinas calls these foundational propositions “first principles”; he claims that we know them just in virtue of themselves (they are known per se); and he argues that, because of the

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Table 1. The Analogy between Theoretical and Practical Reasoning Theoretical Reasoning

Practical Reasoning

Natural (unmediated) apprehension of principles known per se

Understanding (intellectus)

Synderesis

Reasoning from principles to conclusions

Theoretical reasoning (typically, demonstration)

Deliberation

Mediated apprehension of conclusions

Theoretical knowledge (scientia)

Practical judgment

sorts of creatures we are, we have a natural capacity (which he calls “understanding”) for grasping first principles. Theoretical reasoning, therefore, begins from the understanding of first principles and proceeds to conclusions which we can know by virtue of their inferential connection —in this case, typically their deductive or demonstrative connection —with first principles.13 Aquinas insists that practical reason manifests the same sort of foundationalist structure.14 In some cases when we judge that certain things are to be done, our judgment is the conclusion of a process of reasoning, deliberation. But judgments of this sort must rest ultimately on foundations —first practical principles —that we grasp just by virtue of themselves. Aquinas says that, like theoretical first principles, these practical foundations must be known per se, and it must be that we have a natural capacity —practical understanding or synderesis —for apprehending them as such. Like theoretical reason, then, practical reason must begin from first principles grasped by a kind of understanding and proceed to judgments which we can know by virtue of their inferential connection —in this case, typically a nondeductive connection —with first principles.15 With the foundationalist structure of practical reason in place, Aquinas asserts that nondeliberative practical reason —synderesis —must provide the ultimate starting points for practical reasoning. There must therefore be a cognitive act, the natural understanding of first practical principles, antecedent to the first component in our original basic schema (set out in Section II above). Deliberation (a cognitive process) presupposes intention of an end (an appetitive state), as the schema indicates. But synderesis (a nondeliberative cognitive act or state) must ultimately lie behind the intention of an end. In this structure, deliberation does not extend (ultimately) to our ends; synderesis accounts for our grasp of our (ultimate) 13 Aquinas takes the demonstrative syllogism, a particular form of deductive inference, as the paradigm of theoretical reasoning. See my “Theory of Knowledge.” 14 See also ST IIaIIae.47.6. 15 On the nondeductive nature of practical inference, see my “Practical Reasoning and Reasons-Explanations.”

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antecedent ends. Deliberation’s scope is therefore restricted to things that are for the sake of any ultimate antecedent ends that fall within synderesis’s scope. For these reasons, attributing a restricted-scope account of deliberation to Aquinas seems above reproach. B. The case for wide-scope deliberation Aquinas claims that, strictly speaking, deliberation is only about things that are for the sake of an end and cannot be about ends themselves. But that claim can sound more restrictive than Aquinas intends it to be. He allows, for instance, that basic units of practical reasoning of the sort we have identified admit of being linked together in longer chains of practical reasoning.16 In chains of this sort, deliberation will be about things that are for the sake of our antecedent ends, things which, in turn, become our ends, once deliberation has led us to choose them, and can be the starting points for further deliberation. Chains of reasoning of this sort provide a way for deliberation to be about ends, but only about subsequent ends, and then only indirectly, by being directly about things that are for the sake of distinct antecedent ends. Aquinas also allows another, extended sense in which deliberation can be about antecedent ends, that is, about the ends presupposed by the process of deliberation. Some of our ends are abstract, general, or indeterminate in various ways. Practical reasoning that begins from an end of that sort must first specify or make determinate or identify the constituent parts of the end before it can proceed to consider concrete actions that might realize the end.17 Aquinas’s central discussion of the nature of happiness makes this point, too. All human beings desire happiness, the complete good, Aquinas believes. But the fundamental desire for happiness is wholly indeterminate; no one can pursue happiness without first forming a conception of what happiness, the complete good, is, what it consists in, what its essential components are (if it has component parts). Aquinas supposes that forming a determinate conception of happiness can be a process of practical reasoning in the form of deliberation, moving us from an antecedent desire for happiness to a more determinate desire for a life of civic virtue, say, or beatific vision, or a life with an appropriate balance of pleasure and virtue.18 Moreover, it is reasonable to think that when one deliberates about happiness in this way, one is deliberating about happiness, about what happiness is. But since happiness is the antecedent end presupposed by deliberation in this sort of case, it will follow that Aquinas is committed to thinking that we can deliberate about our antecedent ends in these kinds of cases. Practical reasoning that begins 16

Examples A and B in note 11 link together in this way. Example A in note 11 is a case of this sort. 18 See example C in note 11. 17

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from a desire for happiness must, on Aquinas’s view, begin with deliberation about happiness. And so he allows important cases in which deliberation’s consideration of things that are for the sake of an end amounts to or involves consideration of the end itself in a certain respect. In important cases, then, deliberation not only can but must have wide scope.19 The general point here is that deliberation needn’t be solely about external means —causal, productive, or preliminary means —to some end. (I will have a bit more to say about these special cases in Section V below.) Thus, Aquinas ascribes to deliberation sometimes a wide scope and sometimes a narrow scope. Now, these two accounts pretty clearly pull in different directions, but it is worth pointing out that nothing we have seen about them so far shows them to be strictly incompatible. Perhaps, for example, Aquinas intends to maintain that practical reasoning is ultimately foundational in its structure with nondeliberative synderesis explaining our access to first practical principles. But where other ends are concerned —ends that are not ultimate or first principles —deliberation can have a wide scope of the sort we have seen. In that case, deliberation could be about our antecedent ends just so long as it is not the ultimate story about our grasp of ends. IV. Irwin’s Conflict Irwin argues, however, that when we attend to Aquinas’s broader moral theory and the ways in which he employs his understanding of the nature and structure of practical reasoning in developing the theory, conflict emerges. Aquinas’s account of the cardinal virtues —prudence and the three moral virtues, justice, temperance, and courage —is built on the general account of practical reasoning we have been developing. The moral virtues are settled dispositions in the appetitive part of the soul that incline a person to the human good, where the human good consists in action or activity in accordance with right practical reason: 20 [I]t must be said that the end of the moral virtues is the human good, and the good of the human soul is to be in accordance with reason (as is clear from Dionysius, De divinis nominibus IV). (ST IIaIIae.47.6) 19 “We can derive things from the natural law in two ways: in one way as conclusions from its first principles; in a second way as specifications of certain general principles. . . . The second way is like the way that craftsmen in the course of exercising their skill adapt general forms to specific things. For example, a builder needs to adapt the general from of a house to this or that shape of a house.” ST IaIIae.95.2, trans. Richard J. Regan, Aquinas: Treatise on Law (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000). 20 “Right practical reason” refers to practical reason that correctly identifies ways of acting that lead to or constitute genuine human good.

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Aquinas goes on in this passage to explain what he means by “in accordance with reason”: Thus it is necessary that the ends of the moral virtues pre-exist in reason. For just as certain things exist in theoretical reason as naturally known (which understanding has to do with) as well as certain things —conclusions —that come to be known through them (which theoretical knowledge [scientia] has to do with), so certain things preexist in practical reason as naturally known principles. The ends of the moral virtues are of this sort because an end holds the place in the case of things that can be done that a principle holds in theoretical matters, as was held above. Moreover, there are certain things in practical reason that are like conclusions. Things that we get to starting from the ends themselves —things that are for the sake of the end —are of this sort. Prudence, which applies universal principles to particular conclusions where things that can be done are concerned, has to do with these sorts of things. For that reason it does not pertain to prudence to establish the end for the moral virtues. It pertains to prudence only to deal with (disponere) things that are for the sake of the end. (ST IIaIIae.47.6) Prudence, then, is the virtue associated with deliberation, and since deliberation is only about things that are for the sake of the end, so is prudence. The right practical reason required for moral virtue, therefore, requires right deliberation about things that are for the sake of the end, and prudence is the virtue grounding right deliberation. But right practical reason requires more than prudence; it requires in addition that naturally known (correct) first principles be in the soul antecedently, on the basis of which prudence can proceed to a correct judgment about what is to be done. The natural understanding that grasps these practical principles is synderesis, as Aquinas goes on to explain: [I]t must be said that natural reason, which is called “synderesis,” has established the end for the moral virtues . . . , not prudence, for the reason already given. (ST IIaIIae.47.6.ad1) Thus, moral virtue requires synderesis and prudence. Moreover, prudence requires moral virtue, for correct apprehension of first practical principles is not sufficient for right judgment about what is to be done. If the appetites are not oriented by stable dispositions toward their ends, they can distract or deflect deliberation in its movement from right ends to judgments about things that are for the sake of those ends. Moral virtue and prudence, then, are codependent. Consider now the following theses drawn from this brief account of the role of practical reasoning in virtue:

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(P) Prudence (the virtue associated with deliberation) is right practical reason about things that are for the sake of an end, not about ends. (S1 ) Synderesis (natural understanding of first practical principles), rather than prudence, apprehends the right ends (the ends of the moral virtues). (V) Moral virtue requires being directed toward the right end (which distinguishes virtue from vice). As Irwin points out, (P) and (S1 ) together appear to commit Aquinas to a restricted-scope conception of prudence as far as the ends of moral virtue are concerned. Moreover, (S1 ) and (V) entail (1) That a virtuous person is directed toward the right ends (and is thereby distinguished from the vicious person) is explained by the activity of synderesis. As Irwin goes on to argue, however, the details of Aquinas’s understanding of synderesis undercut this result. That is to say, given Aquinas’s conception of it, synderesis cannot play the role that (1) claims for it. This is because Aquinas accepts (S2 ) Synderesis (a) is possessed by everyone and (b) functions by natural necessity.21 If Aquinas accepts (S2 ), then, given his commitment to (S1 ), he is committed also to (2) Everyone necessarily apprehends the right ends distinctive of virtue. But if Aquinas’s understanding of synderesis —expressed in (S1 ) and (S2 ) — commits him to (2), then it is clear that he cannot also endorse (1). Moreover, (2) and Aquinas’s view that the apprehension of the right ends distinguishes the virtuous person from the vicious one together entail (3) No one is vicious, which is a happy conclusion, but not one Aquinas would be happy to endorse. 21 “The natural law directs human beings by certain general principles . . . and so the natural law is one and the same for everyone” (ST IaIIae.91.5.ad3, trans. Regan). “Everybody knows truth to some extent, at least regarding the general principles of the natural law” (ST IaIIae.93.2, trans. Regan). “We should say that the natural law regarding general first principles is the same for all persons both as to their rectitude and as to knowledge of them” (ST IaIIae.94.4, trans. Regan).

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There is one more important difficulty, as Irwin notices, if we introduce into this mix Aquinas’s views about free choice.22 Aquinas holds that a given volition or action is up to us, in our power, only if it is or is subject to what he calls free choice. Moreover, he argues that we have free choice only about things that are subject to deliberation. But these two claims, namely, (FC1 ) Something can be up to us, in our power, only if it is a matter of free choice, and (FC2 ) Something can be a matter of free choice only if it is subject to deliberation, entail that a crucial component of moral virtue —whether or not we are disposed toward the ends of moral virtue —is not something that is up to us or in our power. That is, (4) Our relation to the ends of moral virtue is not something that is up to us, in our power. This is because (by [1]) whether or not we apprehend the right ends (which apprehension is necessary for moral virtue) is determined by synderesis. But because synderesis is nondeliberative natural understanding (by [S2 ]), its products do not result from deliberation. Thus, our apprehension of the right ends is not something that is in our power. Moreover, because synderesis is natural understanding, its functioning and its results are necessitated (by nature). So, again, they will not be in our power. But these results —expressed in (4) —are not acceptable to Aquinas, who holds that it is up to us whether we value the ends of virtue. So there are several conflicts that emerge from Aquinas’s particular use of his account of practical reasoning in his theories of prudence and moral virtue. Irwin finds the root of the difficulties in Aquinas’s two different accounts of deliberation, one of which gives a wide scope to deliberation and the other of which restricts deliberation’s scope. Given those two accounts, it is open to Aquinas to take a wide- or restricted-scope view of prudence, the deliberative virtue. (P) itself is open to either interpretation. But Aquinas opts for a restricted-scope view of prudence (at [S1 ]), assigning to synderesis alone the role of setting the ends of moral virtue, a role that synderesis (as Aquinas understands it at [S2 ]) is unsuited to fill. In fact, Aquinas’s double-mindedness about the scope of deliberation is mirrored in a double-mindedness about synderesis. The conception of synderesis expressed at (S2 ) must understand synderesis’s deliverances to be “thin,” highly general, nonsubstantive. That must be the case if synderesis is possessed by and functions by nature in everyone, virtuous, vicious, and moral 22

These views are developed by Aquinas in ST IaIIae.6–13.

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middlings alike. But the conception of synderesis expressed by (S1 ) requires that its deliverances be “thick” —substantive enough to distinguish the right ends constitutive of moral virtue. So (S1 ) and (S2 ) express, respectively, a thick and a thin conception of synderesis. And here we are, back to the issue of thick versus thin foundations for practical reasoning. In the discussion of prudence and moral virtue we have been tracking with Irwin, Aquinas appeals to thick synderesis to do the work left undone by restricted-scope prudence. Aquinas would have done better, Irwin thinks, to give prudence wide scope and give up the thick conception of synderesis. Abandoning (S1 ) and giving (P) a wide-scope reading would have left Aquinas with a consistent set of fundamental principles and a more attractive theory of practical reasoning. According to Irwin, Aquinas relies so heavily on a wide conception of deliberation in his claims about free choice, happiness, and the specification of the general principles of natural law that he ought also to rely on it to answer the questions about virtue and prudence.23 V. Aquinas Unconflicted What Irwin thinks Aquinas ought to have done, I think Aquinas actually does. That is, I think Aquinas does assign prudence wide scope in setting the ends for moral virtue, and so has no need to —and does not, in fact —appeal to a thick conception of synderesis. Aquinas does not make it as easy to see this as he might have done, and thus he leaves himself open to misunderstanding. Nonetheless, I think that a close look at a crucial text or two will show that we are not forced to read Aquinas as Irwin does. In order to make my case, I will need to say something about (P), (S1 ), and (V), starting with (P). A. Regarding (P) Aquinas clearly asserts (P). But he also clearly holds that (P) is compatible with prudence’s having wide scope. Prudence (and deliberation generally) must have an antecedent end from which to begin. But our reasoning can be about that very antecedent end in certain sorts of cases, namely, when the end is general or indeterminate and we reason about how to specify it, or when the end is formal or abstract and we reason about what it consists in or how it might be concretely instantiated.24 23

Irwin, “The Scope of Deliberation,” 41. As in examples A and C in note 11. Example A is a case in which the end intended is intended under a general description; example C is one in which the end intended is intended under an abstract or formal description. 24

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The idea in these sorts of cases is that there is a sense in which a description of an end in purely formal terms and a description of it in terms of what satisfies or instantiates the formal description are different descriptions or conceptions of one and the same end. Similarly, there is a sense in which the description of an end in general terms and a description of it that specifies it are descriptions of one and the same end. To illustrate, consider a case involving prudence where issues of temperance are in play. Let the intended end be acting in accordance with right reason, and let prudence deliberate about what acting in accordance with right reason consists in, reaching the judgment that right reason requires, in general, eating healthily and, in this particular case, declining the double chocolate cheesecake.25 This case, like the others we have looked at, has the right sort of features to count as a case in which prudence has wide scope. I will put this case to work in just a moment. But the first point to see is that Aquinas’s asserting (P) is neutral with respect to whether he assigns prudence wide or only restricted scope, or commits to a thick or only a thin conception of synderesis. B. Regarding (S1 ) Now consider (S1 ). Aquinas clearly asserts that synderesis apprehends the ends of the moral virtues. But now suppose that prudence has wide scope with respect to the ends of moral virtue, as in the case I have just described of the double chocolate cheesecake.26 Given these assumptions, it seems that synderesis’s apprehension of the ends of moral virtue would be compatible with prudence’s having wide scope with respect to the ends of virtue provided that the ends that synderesis apprehends are formal or general or indeterminate and that prudence reasons about what these ends consist in or how they are to be specified. If, as in the case before us, the end apprehended by synderesis were acting in accordance with right reason, then there would be room for prudence to reason about what course of action in general or in some particular circumstances might be one that is in accordance with reason. Not only might prudence reason in that way, it seems that it must. For without some specification or determination of the end acting in accordance with right reason, one cannot get started pursuing that end. In order to pursue it, one has to do something specific. Supposing that the prudent person in this case reasons as I have suggested and chooses ultimately to decline the cheesecake, then prudence will have found a way of pursuing the end presupposed by 25

intention: to act in accordance with right reason deliberation r judgment: right reason requires eating healthily choice: to eat healthily intention: to eat healthily deliberation r judgment: eating healthily requires declining the cheesecake choice: to decline the cheesecake 26 See previous note.

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the person’s reasoning, the end of acting in accordance with right reason. Prudence will have identified something for the sake of that end but also will have successfully reasoned about the end (in the sense of having settled what the end itself consists in, in general or here and now). This way of characterizing the ends that synderesis apprehends —as sufficiently formal or general —is just to say that wide-scope prudence is compatible with synderesis, provided synderesis is conceived of as appropriately thin. So why think that Aquinas commits to a thick conception of synderesis? Irwin claims to find Aquinas committing himself to both a thick and a thin conception of synderesis in this passage: [I]t must be said that [i] being conformed to right reason is the proper end of each moral virtue. [ii] For temperance aims at this, so that a person does not turn away from reason on account of his concupiscences, and similarly in the case of courage, so that a person does not turn away from the right judgment of reason on account of fear or bravado. [iii] This end has been established for human beings in accordance with natural reason. For natural reason dictates to each person that he should act in accordance with reason. [iv] But how and by means of what things a person attains to the mean of reason in his acting pertains to the arrangement of prudence. For although attaining to the mean is the end of moral virtue, the mean is found through the right arrangement of things that are for the sake of the end. (ST IIaIIae.47.7) 27 Irwin claims to see the thin conception in Aquinas’s claim, at [iii], that “natural reason dictates to each person that he should act in accordance with reason” but the thick conception at [ii]: “temperance aims at this, so that a person does not turn away from reason on account of his concupiscences, and similarly in the case of courage, so that a person does not turn away from the right judgment of reason on account of fear or bravado.” This bit at [ii] points to thick dictates of synderesis because it identifies ends that distinguish the virtues from one another. But I think the passage need not be read in the way Irwin suggests. Natural reason (that is, synderesis) dictates acting in accordance with reason (at [iii]); this is a thin dictate. And Aquinas tells us at the beginning of the passage (at [i]) that this thin dictate articulates the proper end of 27 I have inserted the lowercase roman numerals in order to be able to refer to parts of this passage in the discussion that follows. Irwin translates the passage a bit differently at [ii]: “For temperance aims at this, namely, that a human being should not deviate from reason because of appetites; and similarly, bravery is that a human being should not deviate from the correct judgment of reason because of fear or rashness” (Irwin, “The Scope of Deliberation,” 27–28). Irwin’s “namely” in the first half of [ii] renders Aquinas’s ut. I take it differently, as introducing a result clause, with “so that.” See the discussion that follows in the text.

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each moral virtue. (The demonstrative “this” at the beginning of part [iii] refers us back to part [i], not to what has just been said in part [ii]. The clarifying second sentence in part [iii] makes that clear.) Now, what are we to make of the bit of the passage (part [ii]) that mentions the specific virtues of temperance and courage? I think we need not read it as Irwin does, as identifying two thicker dictates of natural reason, one for temperance (that a person does not turn away from reason on account of his concupiscences) and one for courage (that a person does not turn away from the right judgment of reason on account of fear or bravado). We can read the two parallel “so that” (ut) clauses as result clauses rather than as parts of the intentional objects at which temperance and courage aim. So part [ii] might be read as telling us that temperance aims at acting in accordance with reason where the result of temperance’s aiming in that way will be that the temperate person does not turn away from reason on account of his concupiscences. Read that way, part [ii] of the passage, consistently with the rest of the passage, identifies only a thin dictate of natural reason. Aquinas need not be switching here back and forth and back again, from thin to thick and back to thin conceptions of synderesis and its results. Moreover, Aquinas refers elsewhere and often to versions of this thin dictate.28 That provides more evidence that the consistent thin-dictate reading is correct here. It should also be said that part [iv] of the passage can be taken as confirming the wide-scope prudence hypothesis I have been suggesting. Temperance (and each of the other virtues) aims at the mean of reason. That (namely, the mean of reason), like the expression with which it is meant to be synonymous, acting in accordance with right reason, is purely formal. And what Aquinas says here in part [iv] is that specifying the mean of reason is the work of prudence. So when prudence determines what the mean actually consists in in circumstances where concupiscences are in play (in general terms or in a particular situation), prudence will be determining what the end of the virtue of temperance consists in. Hence, prudence will be exercising its wide-scope powers on a thin end presupposed by prudence and apprehended by synderesis. That is, in fact, the picture I have sketched in the double chocolate cheesecake case we have been considering.29 Thus, (S1 ) requires clarification: 28 “It is the law for human beings, which is allotted by God’s ordination according to their condition, that they act according to reason” (ST IaIIae.91.6, trans. Regan). “The virtue of the irascible and concupiscible powers consists of being duly obedient to reason” (ST IaIIae.92.1, trans. Regan). “Things to which nature inclines human beings belong to the natural law, as I have said before, and one of the things proper to human beings is that their nature inclines them to act in accord with reason” (ST IaIIae.94.4, trans. Regan). “It is correct and true for all persons that they should act in accord with reason” (ST IaIIae.94.4, trans. Regan). 29 See note 25.

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(S *1 ) Synderesis (natural understanding of first practical principles), rather than prudence, apprehends the (thin) right end of the moral virtues, namely, acting in accordance with right reason. C. Regarding (V) If we take Aquinas’s conception of synderesis to be consistently thin, then we need to say a bit by way of explanation with regard to (V). Moral virtue requires being directed toward the right ends, and the right ends distinguish the virtuous person from the vicious person. If we follow out the line I have been pushing, then we might say this: There are two sorts of right ends, call them thin and thick (or thin and thicker) ends. The moral virtues aim at a thin end —the mean of reason, or acting in accordance with reason. But this thin end does not distinguish virtue from vice because, Aquinas supposes, everyone aims at this thin end. Moreover, given (as I have argued) that this thin end is apprehended by synderesis, which all of us have in common, this is the result we would expect. But the moral virtues also aim at thicker ends —specifications and determinations of the mean of reason. These thicker ends will distinguish virtue from vice. The vicious person will, like everyone else, aim at acting in accordance with reason, but will be misguided about what acting in accordance with reason actually consists in, and hence will care about and be directed toward the wrong thick ends. But these thicker ends, insofar as they are specifications or determinations of the thin end of acting in accordance with reason, will be determined or specified by deliberation — prudence in the case of the virtuous person, bad deliberation in the case of the vicious person. It seems to me that part [iv] of the passage we have just looked at supports this way of looking at it.30 Thus, (V) requires clarification: (V*) Moral virtue requires being directed toward the (thick) right end (which distinguishes virtue from vice). Now, when (P), (S1 ), and (V) are understood in the ways I have suggested, they do not conflict; that is, they do not lead to the contradictions Irwin identifies. We should conclude, therefore, that Aquinas himself consistently endorses wide-scope prudence and a correspondingly thin conception of synderesis. 30 See also ST IaIIae.94.3, trans. Regan: “Since the rational soul is the specific form of human beings, everyone has an inclination from one’s nature to act in accordance with reason. And this is to act virtuously. And so in this regard, all virtuous acts belong to the natural law, since one’s own reason by nature dictates that one act virtuously. But if we should be speaking about virtuous acts as such and such, namely, as we consider them in their own species, then not all virtuous acts belong to the natural law. For we do many things virtuously to which nature does not at first incline us, but which human beings by the inquiry of reason have discovered to be useful for living righteously.”

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VI. Conclusion I want to conclude by calling attention to a moral that might be drawn from my reading of Aquinas’s foundationalism about practical reasoning. It is this: If Aquinas consistently maintains that synderesis’s dictates are thin —and, as I have told the story in my brief account, they are exceedingly thin —then the grounds for finding in his foundationalism the basis for a robust kind of intuitionistic moral epistemology are also exceedingly thin. On my reading, the deliverances of the natural understanding that belongs to practical reason are perhaps purely formal but certainly entirely general and, for that reason, practically useless by themselves. The real work of practical reason begins with deliberation, and deliberation, Aquinas tells us, is complex, messy, contingent, and not intuitionistic. In this respect, the foundationalist model and the analogy with theoretical reasoning which he deploys tirelessly can mislead. The practical foundations Aquinas’s account provides are, in fact, quite meager. That is not to say that there are none or that he does not really believe the model or the analogy. It is to say that we should not bring to the model or the analogy robust expectations (perhaps acquired elsewhere) of what moral foundations will be like and what substantive work they will do for us in moral theory. This particular moral, in fact, precisely parallels a moral I have drawn in another, related context.31 Aquinas argues in the treatise on happiness (ST IaIIae.1–5) that some one desire, a desire for a single ultimate end, is presupposed by and provides the foundation for all our end-directed thought and action. That looks like an untenably strong claim about our fundamental desires. Properly understood, however, this claim turns out to be quite thin: he means only that all our end-directed thought and action is directed toward a purely formal ultimate end, living the best life. The real work in pursuing the best life begins with reasoning about what the best life consists in. And that is a question for practical reasoning itself —wide-scope deliberation —not something given to it as part of its ultimate, unquestioned and unquestionable foundations. It seems to me, then, that Aquinas’s understanding of practical reasoning and its scope and limits is consistent throughout his theory of ends and his theory of the virtues. Deliberation has wide scope. Nevertheless, there are some ends that are presupposed even by wide-scope deliberation. Those ends, however, are exceedingly thin. Philosophy, Cornell University

31

See my “Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning.”

REVISIONARY INTUITIONISM* By Michael Huemer I. A Conservative Metaethics? Ethical intuitionism is often associated with a conservative approach to normative ethics, an approach that embraces common-sense morality with at most minor revisions. This association seems to be borne out by W. D. Ross’s blandly conventional characterization of our “prima facie duties,” which, in his view, include such duties as keeping promises, showing gratitude to benefactors, improving oneself, avoiding injury to others, and so on. When these prima facie duties come into conflict, one must simply exercise one’s best judgment, intuitively, to decide which obligation is more pressing in the circumstances. This system of duties, Ross explains, derives from the prephilosophical convictions of “the plain man”: “The main moral convictions of the plain man seem to me to be, not opinions which it is for philosophy to prove or disprove, but knowledge from the start.” 1 H. A. Prichard, the father of twentieth-century intuitionism, took a stance no less conservative. In his view, the characteristic mistake of moral philosophy is that of seeking further justification for our prereflective moral convictions; in reality, the only knowledge moral philosophy can bestow on us is the knowledge of the self-evidence of the principles of obligation comprising common-sense morality.2 This alliance between intuitionism and common-sense morality at first seems natural, perhaps even inevitable. The core epistemological thesis from which intuitionism takes its name is that all moral knowledge derives its justification from certain “intuitive” moral truths. One natural way of understanding the notion of an intuitive moral claim is simply as a claim that seems correct, prior to reasoning. If morality is to be based on such seemingly-correct moral claims, it is only reasonable to take into account what seems true to most people: if I take my own moral intuitions as evidence of moral reality, then presumably I should recognize the moral intuitions of others as equally evidence of moral reality, absent special evidence of cognitive defects on their part or exceptional cognitive abilities on my part. And once one takes this epistemological stance, it seems * I would like to thank the other contributors to this volume, and its editors, for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 1 W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1988), 21–22. 2 H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” in Prichard, Moral Obligation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 16.

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natural, perhaps inevitable, that one will more or less embrace the moral beliefs that seem right to most people —in short, common-sense morality. Pace Prichard, some revisions to common-sense morality may be called for. For it may emerge that some of our prephilosophical moral beliefs are mutually inconsistent or paradoxical. In such a case, one would expect the ethical intuitionist to endorse whatever resolution of the moral paradox is best supported by intuition —which is to say, to recommend the smallest revision to common-sense morality that restores coherence to our moral belief system, taking into account both the number of beliefs that must be revised and the strength of the relevant intuitions. This seems to be the essence of the widely accepted method of “reflective equilibrium.” 3 We would expect that such a method, if it generates any moral system, would lead to a moral system reasonably close to commonsense morality. In short, it seems that the epistemology of intuitionism supports the method of reflective equilibrium, which in turn supports common-sense morality, with at most minor revisions. This, I intend to argue, is a mistake. Intuitionists need not embrace anything close to common-sense morality. Instead, intuitionists may, and probably should, adopt revisionary ethical views, rejecting a wide range of commonly accepted, prephilosophical moral beliefs. Indeed, I believe intuitionists are better positioned than partisans of most alternative conceptions of ethics to motivate a rejection of common-sense morality. This fact derives partly from the staunch realism of ethical intuitionism, and partly from the evidence, often cited by critics of intuitionism, of nonrational biases contaminating common moral judgments. In the following discussion, after briefly describing the doctrine of ethical intuitionism, I shall review some important challenges to the validity of intuition as a source of moral knowledge. According to these challenges, many of our ethical intuitions can be explained as products of emotional and other nonrational biases, and for that reason cannot be taken as pointing us toward any objective moral truths. Traditionally, this sort of challenge is thought to support the conclusion, either that ethics is subjective, or that, if there are objective moral truths, we are not in a position to know those truths. I shall argue that the intuitionist may recognize the seriousness of the challenges to the reliability of intuition, without giving in to subjectivism or skepticism. The proper response for 3 The method of reflective equilibrium, as initially described by John Rawls, calls for one to consider intuitively plausible general theories that come close to systematizing one’s moral judgments about particular situations, and then to adjust both one’s moral judgments about particular situations and one’s moral theories to bring them into harmony with each other. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 48–49. The method is now often understood in a broader sense, to include any process of weighing conflicting beliefs against each other and renouncing the less plausible beliefs in order to restore coherence to one’s belief system. For a defense of the method, see Michael DePaul, “The Problem of the Criterion and Coherence Methods in Ethics,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (1988): 67–86.

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an intuitionist, rather than renouncing the possibility of objective moral knowledge, is to adopt a critical methodology in which the kinds of intuitions that are most subject to bias are discounted, while intuitions that are less prone to bias are given more weight. The end result will most likely be a revisionary ethical theory. II. The Commitments of Ethical Intuitionism A number of doctrines have gone under the name of “ethical intuitionism,” from G. E. Moore’s conception of primitive, “non-natural” ethical properties, to Ross’s theory of multiple basic “prima facie duties,” to Prichard’s doctrine of the self-evidence of obligations.4 Here I shall focus on two claims central to the version of ethical intuitionism I defend.5 The first of these claims is moral realism: the sort of intuitionism in which I am interested takes at least some evaluative claims to be objectively true, that is, true in virtue of facts existing independently of our attitudes toward the objects of evaluation. For instance, “Torturing puppies is wrong” is made true by the fact that torturing puppies is (in normal conditions) wrong, which holds regardless of how we feel or what we believe about the torture of puppies. The thesis is both ontological and semantic: objective moral facts exist, and moral language is about them. Second, my intuitionism embraces an epistemological doctrine to the effect that all justification for evaluative beliefs derives ultimately from intuition. There are at least two ways in which the notion of intuition may be understood. On one account, intuitions are a species of beliefs, distinguished from other beliefs by the special way in which they are justified. Roughly, the idea is that for some propositions, one’s understanding of them can itself be an adequate source of justification for believing them.6 For example, once I understand the proposition “2 is less than 3,” I am justified in believing it. This intuitive belief, then, requires an exercise of intelligence —I must intellectually grasp the proposition “2 is less than 3” —but it does not require inference or reasoning. That is, I do not derive the proposition “2 is less than 3” from any other propositions. On another account, intuitions are a type of cognitive state distinct from belief, a state that one sometimes avows by statements of the form, “It seems to me that p,” or “It appears that p.” 7 More specifically, intuitions are initial intellectual appearances, that is, states of its seeming to one that something is the case upon intellectual consideration (as opposed to 4 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903); Ross, The Right and the Good; Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” 5 See my Ethical Intuitionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 6 See Robert Audi, The Good in the Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 33–36, 48–49. 7 See Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, 99–104; George Bealer, “A Theory of the A Priori,” in James Tomberlin, ed., Philosophical Perspectives 13: Epistemology (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1999), 30–31.

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sensory observation or introspection), but prior to reasoning. When one thinks about a proposition p, one often has the experience of seemingly “seeing” it to be true. This “seeing” is intellectual, rather than perceptual, but, unlike most intellectual cognition, it does not require reasoning from any further premises. Advocates of this account argue that intuitions are distinct from beliefs, since it is possible to have the intuition that p without believing that p, perhaps because one takes one’s intuition to be unreliable or because one takes oneself to have overriding evidence against p. For example, most people who consider the comprehension axiom of naive set theory find it intuitive (it seems right), even those who know the axiom to be false because of the paradoxes it engenders.8 Although I favor the second account of intuition, either account will suffice for my purposes here. The key point for what follows is that intuitions are taken to be cognitive, intellectual states with propositional contents. Intuitions thus contrast with emotions, which are noncognitive; with sensory observations, which are nonintellectual; and with states of liking or dislike, which are noncognitive, nonintellectual, and perhaps nonpropositional. How are these two principles —moral realism and the epistemological doctrine of intuitionism —related to each other? Given moral realism, the correct evaluative judgments are independent of what our intuitions are. Our having the intuition that x is wrong, no matter how many share the intuition, is compatible with x’s actually being permissible. The relationship between our intuitions and the moral facts is, in some important respects, analogous to the relationship between our observations and the physical facts about our environment: physical facts exist independently of our observations, but observations are our way of knowing about the physical facts; the function of observation, which it usually fulfills, is to correspond to the physical facts. Similarly, moral facts exist independently of our intuitions, but intuitions are our way of knowing about the moral facts; the function of ethical intuitions is to correspond to the moral facts. Sometimes our intuitions may deceive us, just as our senses may deceive us. Intuition may, in fact, be less reliable than sensory observation; nevertheless, enough of our intuitions are accurate that we can construct a substantial body of ethical knowledge. The analogy between observation and intuition does not hold in all respects. The experience of seeing an object differs from that of having an intellectual intuition, and, more importantly, the explanation for the reliability of sensory observation presumably differs from the explanation for the reliability (such as it is) of intuition. Observations are reliable indicators of physical facts because of the way our sense organs are causally 8 The comprehension axiom states that for any well-formed predicate, there exists a set containing all and only the things to which that predicate applies. This leads to a contradiction when the well-formed predicate “is not a member of itself” is introduced.

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connected to phenomena in the external world. The explanation for the reliability of intuition is more controversial. Perhaps the best explanation adverts to the notion of our grasping abstract objects; in any case, it presumably is not the same as the explanation for sensory observation.9 This does not, however, defeat the point of the analogy I have drawn. The point I have made is simply that moral realism fits together with an intuitionist moral epistemology just as realism about external objects fits together with a broadly empiricist epistemology of the external world. Importantly, just as we must be on guard against sensory illusions, the intuitionist must be on guard against moral illusions. III. Four Skeptical Challenges In this section, I review four main kinds of challenges that have been posed to the validity of intuition as a source of moral knowledge. My aim here will not be to rebut these challenges, but rather to set out the moral skeptic’s case as clearly as possible, and thus to indicate the seriousness of the problems that intuitionists face. A. The incoherence of our intuitions Some philosophers argue that our moral intuitions about many specific scenarios are influenced by factors that seem morally irrelevant. Thus, Peter Singer suggests that our intuitions about obligations to assist others in need are improperly influenced by the physical proximity of those others, so that we think we have much stronger obligations to people who are in front of us than to people who are thousands of miles away.10 This may explain why most people consider it seriously wrong to refuse to save a child who is drowning in a shallow pond, just to avoid getting one’s clothes wet and missing a lecture, yet few consider it seriously wrong to decline to save starving Third World children just to avoid giving up a few luxuries that one enjoys. On a similar note, Peter Unger argues at length that our intuitions about obligations to assist other people are improperly influenced by the conspicuousness of others’ suffering. He goes on to argue that our intuitions about various cases also reflect such implausible rules as the following: First, when serious loss will result, it’s harder to justify moving a person to, or into, an object than it is to move the object to, or into, 9 Some philosophers argue that one’s understanding of the natures of abstract objects — for example, the nature of knowledge, or of value —must lead one to have generally reliable intuitions about the properties of and relationships among these abstract objects. See Bealer, “A Theory of the A Priori,” and my Ethical Intuitionism, 122–27, for discussion. 10 Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 232.

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the person. Second, when serious loss will result, it’s harder to justify changing the speed of a moving object, or changing its rate of motion, than changing the object’s direction of motion. Third, when there’ll be big loss, it’s harder to justify speeding up an object than slowing down an object. Fourth, it’s a lot harder to justify taking an object at rest and setting it in motion than to justify taking an object in motion and increasing its speed. . . . [Fifth,] it’s harder to justify imposing a substantial force on an object than it is to justify allowing a force already present ( just about) everywhere, like gravitation, to work on the object.11 Unger uses a complex series of hypothetical cases to argue that our intuitive reactions are best explained by the above sorts of rules. He finds these rules silly, and accordingly finds many of our unreflective moral reactions seriously flawed. An intuitionist might observe that both Singer and Unger themselves rely on intuitions, even in their criticisms of other intuitions. Singer counts on the intuition that physical proximity is morally irrelevant, just as Unger counts on the intuition that the factors invoked in the five rules he describes above are morally irrelevant. Thus, their arguments do not impugn the reliability of intuition in general; Singer and Unger simply want to argue for preferring certain intuitions over others.12 However, a moral skeptic might well pose an argument less friendly to normative ethics than those of either Singer or Unger. Many of our moral intuitions clash with one another. For instance, most people share the following intuitions: (a) Refusing to save the child in Singer’s Shallow Pond example is seriously wrong.13 (b) Refusing to donate to famine relief is not seriously wrong. (c) The conspicuousness of someone’s suffering is not morally relevant to the obligation to assist them. These intuitive claims stand in tension once we accept Unger’s argument that conspicuousness explains the difference in our intuitions about the 11 Peter Unger, Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 101–2. Unger does not, however, argue for a general rejection of intuition. Rather, he believes that through philosophical reasoning, we can correct the distorting influences on our intuitions. 12 Although Singer does not describe the moral premises he favors as “ethical intuitions,” I think that is in fact what they are. See the discussion in my essay “Singer’s Unstable Metaethics,” in Jeffrey Schaler, ed., Singer Under Fire (Chicago, IL: Open Court, forthcoming). 13 In this example, you see a child in danger of drowning in a shallow pond. Even though it will mean getting your clothes muddy and missing the lecture you were on your way to give, you clearly have a strong obligation to pull the child out of the pond. Singer thinks this is comparable to your obligation to donate money to save Third World children from malnutrition and disease (Singer, Practical Ethics, 229–46).

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Shallow Pond and about famine relief. Singer and Unger would have us embrace (a) and (c) while rejecting (b). A moral skeptic, however, would have us withhold judgment. The skeptic might argue, to begin with, that Singer and Unger’s position is not obviously the most intuitive resolution of the puzzle. On the Singer-Unger analysis of the cases, it is not just that we ought to donate some money to famine relief; rather, the failure to donate almost all of one’s wealth and income to charity organizations is morally comparable to murder. 14 This view is not obviously much more plausible than either the denial of (a) or the denial of (c). Therefore, we should withhold judgment on what the proper resolution of the paradox is, if there is any proper resolution. Furthermore, the skeptic might argue that conflicts and tensions of this sort among our ethical intuitions are so common that we should infer that ethical intuition is an unreliable source of information, or at least that we are not justified in treating it as reliable. If this is true, then we should withhold judgment on ethical matters, even in cases in which our intuitions do not conflict with one another. B. Cultural indoctrination A second argument for the unreliability of ethical intuition (on the assumption that objective moral truths exist) points to the influence of culture on individuals’ ethical intuitions, together with the wide variability of cultures.15 In contemporary Western society, almost everyone considers such practices as polygamy, infanticide, and slavery to be clearly wrong. Yet each of these has been accepted in many cultures throughout world history.16 Similarly, some other cultures have, without any sense of wrongness, practiced human sacrifice or cannibalism. While these facts about accepted practices do not directly prove anything about what intuitions people have, it seems very likely that members of those cultures practicing polygamy, infanticide, or slavery would have very different intuitions about those practices from ours. Most members of contemporary Western societies have an 14 The reasoning is roughly as follows: Imagine that you have already donated most of your income to charity organizations working to relieve world poverty. Now, while walking past a shallow pond on your way to a philosophy lecture, you see a small child drowning. You could pull the child out, but doing so would get your clothes muddy and make you miss your lecture. Even so, it would be seriously wrong not to pull the child out. But, as Singer and Unger would argue, failure to save the drowning child in this circumstance is morally comparable to failure to save another starving child by sending money to UNICEF. Thus, even when you have already given away most of your money, you are still obligated to give more (Unger, Living High and Letting Die, 60–61, 135–39). Furthermore, since Singer rejects the moral significance of the distinction between killing and letting die, he holds that allowing people in the Third World to die is comparable to murder (Singer, Practical Ethics, 222–29). 15 See John L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin, 1977), 36–38. 16 J. Patrick Gray reports a total of 1,045 societies practicing at least occasional polygamy, compared with 186 exclusively monogamous societies; see Gray, “Ethnographic Atlas Codebook,” World Cultures 10 (1998): 90.

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intuitive, negative evaluation of those practices, and it is hard to believe that the members of other societies would persist in those practices if they too had this intuitive reaction. It seems clear, then, that one’s culture has a strong influence on one’s ethical intuitions. For a cultural relativist or subjectivist, this poses no problem; it just shows that the moral truth varies from one society to another. For a moral realist, however, a serious epistemological problem arises. The variation in moral intuitions across cultures strongly suggests that many or most intuitions —including, of course, one’s own —are explained more by historical accident than by objective ethical truths, even if such truths exist. It seems that one should distrust many of one’s own intuitions, unless one can somehow argue that one’s own culture is special, having somehow developed a rapport with the moral truth that other cultures did not. One need not be a card-carrying multiculturalist to have doubts about the prospects for such an argument. One might argue that modern Western culture has one very important advantage over most other cultures: a long and sophisticated tradition of rational moral philosophy. Modern Western values, it might be said, are largely a product of rational reflection by philosophers over a period of centuries, and therefore represent progress relative to value systems that held sway earlier in our history, as well as the value systems of societies without such a tradition of carefully reasoned moral philosophy. The moral skeptic might respond that the only reason for taking the Western tradition of moral philosophy to give us access to moral truth rests on faith in the efficacy of moral reasoning, but that moral reasoning can do little in the way of securing moral truth if the starting premises of our reasoning —namely, our ethical intuitions —are compromised. Sharon Street articulates the skeptical argument as follows: [W]hat rational reflection about evaluative matters involves, inescapably, is assessing some evaluative judgements in terms of others. . . . Thus, if the fund of evaluative judgements with which human reflection began was thoroughly contaminated with illegitimate influence . . . then the tools of rational reflection were equally contaminated, for the latter are always just a subset of the former. It follows that all our reflection over the ages has really just been a process of assessing evaluative judgements that are mostly off the mark in terms of others that are mostly off the mark. And reflection of this kind isn’t going to get one any closer to evaluative truth, any more than sorting through contaminated materials with contaminated tools is going to get one closer to purity.17 17 Sharon Street makes these remarks regarding the biases supposedly generated by natural selection; see Street, “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Philosophical Studies 127 (2006): 124. Her ultimate conclusion favors some form of subjectivism.

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C. Biological programming A third problem afflicting our moral intuitions is that of biases produced by evolutionary forces. Given the importance of ethical intuitions to human behavior, and presumably to our reproductive fitness, it is reasonable to speculate that natural selection might have favored predispositions toward certain kinds of intuitions over others. When we look at the content of most people’s moral intuitions, many of them indeed look suspiciously like the sorts of intuitions natural selection might produce, and rather unlike products of impartial, intellectual reflection. Most people would probably find each of the following evaluative claims plausible: (a) Individuals have much stronger obligations toward their own kin, especially their children, than toward others. (b) Loyalty and devotion to one’s own society, as above other societies, is a virtue. (In modern times, this virtue takes the form of patriotism.) (c) Human beings are far more important than any other species, and human interests count, morally, for vastly more, if not infinitely more, than animal interests. (d) Incest is inherently wrong, even in cases of mutual, informed consent. (e) Sexual promiscuity is desirable for a male, but highly undesirable for a female. It is difficult to explain why the above evaluations should be true, but it is easy to see why natural selection would have rewarded those who believed them.18 The fact that evolutionary pressures explain our having some cognitive or perceptual faculty does not in general undermine trust in that faculty. Evolution explains why we have eyes and ears, why we have the capacity for reasoning about the physical world, and why we have the capacity to learn languages. In none of these cases does an evolutionary account of the origin of our faculty undermine trust in that faculty: no one argues that our vision, reasoning, or language apprehension is unreliable because it is a product of natural selection. So why should ethics be any different? The answer is that in the case of nonmoral faculties, there is a reason why accuracy should be selected for. Accurate nonevaluative beliefs are usually useful for attaining one’s goals; therefore, if a conscious organism is 18 On (d), see Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998), 145–47. On (e), see Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chap. 9. Jonathan Haidt has studied attitudes toward harmless, consensual incest, as well as other victimless alleged wrongs; see Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review 108 (2001): 814–34.

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generally well-adapted, so that its desires are generally in line with what would promote its own reproductive fitness, then, as a rule, more accurate factual beliefs will increase its fitness. For instance, if one wants to avoid predators, then correct beliefs about where predators are located will benefit one. However, this reasoning cannot be extended to values, even if a realm of objective values exists. If an organism has generally accurate nonevaluative beliefs, it cannot be assumed that, in general, its also having objectively correct values will increase its reproductive fitness. Rather, an organism’s reproductive fitness would seem to be best promoted by its having values skewed in a certain direction: by the organism’s taking its own reproductive success, or things normally correlated with one’s own reproductive success, to be good, whether or not those things are objectively good. The crucial asymmetry is that nonevaluative beliefs typically function to help us select the correct means of achieving our goals, whereas evaluative beliefs typically influence what goals we seek. Natural selection could be expected to favor individuals whose goals are in line with the “goals” of evolution, and who take the correct means of achieving their goals. For this reason, it would seem that if the values toward which natural selection biased us coincided with the objectively correct values, this would be sheer coincidence. Such a coincidence cannot reasonably be expected. We should assume, therefore, that to the extent that biology influences our ethical intuitions, it leads us away from the objective truth, if objective truth exists in this area.19 D. Personal biases Finally, as Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, our moral intuitions may be biased by emotions and personal interests.20 It is easy to see how our interests are affected by what evaluative propositions we and others accept. On the one hand, if I reject the moral significance of the distinction between killing and letting die, I may feel obliged to donate large amounts of money to the poor; if I accept that the interests of animals matter morally, I may feel obliged to give up some of my favorite foods. On the other hand, I stand to benefit from others’ acceptance of the obligation to assist others (particularly if I am poor) and of the obligation to refrain from harming others. These facts may bias me toward certain evaluative conclusions and away from others. Even when our personal interests are not at stake, moral issues can arouse strong emotions. Even those who never expect to be eligible for 19

Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously, 252–54; Street, “A Darwinian Dilemma.” Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Moral Skepticisms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 195–204. 20

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capital punishment, and never expect to know anyone who is, may evince passionate opinions about the justice of capital punishment. Likewise, both pro- and anti-abortion forces evince strong emotions when it comes to the morality of abortion. Though these are extreme cases, emotional reactions to moral issues are common. Emotions are known to impair judgment with respect to (other) factual questions, so, assuming the truth of moral realism, it is prima facie reasonable to assume that emotions impair our moral judgment as well. In a criminal trial, friends or family members of the accused would never be allowed to serve on the jury, nor would the defendant’s enemies. We cannot be sure that their judgments would be compromised by their feelings about the accused, but the danger of this is great enough that it would be foolish to trust their judgments. Similarly, people who, for whatever reason, have strong feelings about the defendant’s alleged crime would not be allowed to serve. Thus, a rape victim would be excused from jury service for a rape trial. Even though, in this case, the would-be juror’s interests would not literally be at stake, her emotions could be expected to compromise her objectivity. Again, we do not know that this would occur, but the danger of it is strong enough to render us unjustified in relying on the judgment that such a person would render. In the same way, the moral skeptic argues, when we are emotional about moral issues or when our own interests are at stake, the danger that our intuitions will be biased is too great for us to be justified in relying on those intuitions, in the absence of independent corroboration. Taken together, the arguments of Sections III.A through III.D suggest that a wide range of ethical intuitions are subject to distorting factors and should not be relied upon. Unless we can somehow separate the contaminated intuitions from the trustworthy ones, we will have no way of constructing a rational moral system, and moral skepticism will prevail. IV. How to Build Castles on Sand: A Reply to the Skeptics One possible reaction to the arguments of Section III is to give up on normative ethics, despairing of ever identifying sufficiently reliable intuitions on which to base an ethical system. Another reaction is to resolve simply to apply the traditional reflective methods of ethics very carefully, in the hope that they will weed out the worst biases and distortions in our ethical judgments. The latter reaction strikes me as overly complacent, while the former is overly defeatist. The arguments of Section III may show that we have a good deal less moral knowledge than is commonly supposed, but I see little plausibility in the suggestion that they show that no one knows whether Ted Bundy’s murders were wrong.21 An inter21 Ted Bundy killed dozens of young women across the United States during the 1970s, becoming one of history’s most notorious serial murderers.

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mediate reaction is called for: the arguments of Section III motivate a shift in the methods of ethics, a shift that leaves us with some moral beliefs, but perhaps with a very different set from those that more traditional methods lead to. Consider again Sharon Street’s objection to the possibility of overcoming ethical biases through rational reflection: [I]f the fund of evaluative judgements with which human reflection began was thoroughly contaminated with illegitimate influence . . . all our reflection over the ages has really just been a process of assessing evaluative judgements that are mostly off the mark in terms of others that are mostly off the mark. And reflection of this kind isn’t going to get one any closer to evaluative truth. . . . This objection has force on a simple model of ethical reflection: Suppose we consider a single ethical intuition whose veracity is in question, and suppose (i) that our only method of evaluating it is to compare it with a single other ethical intuition, and (ii) that each other ethical intuition is equally suspect as the original intuition. In that case, it seems clear that no ethical progress will be made. That simple model, however, is inadequate in at least two important ways. First, it fails to take account of the probative value of coherence, understood, as in the coherence theory of justification, in terms of mutual support relations and explanatory relations among a large set of believed propositions.22 If suspect intuitions can be assessed in terms of a body of other ethical judgments, then —even if most of the other ethical judgments are false —it may be possible to make a reliable assessment. To see how this is possible, consider a simple analogy. Suppose a detective interviews six eyewitnesses to a robbery. All of them claim to have seen the robbers drive away in their getaway car. The detective interviews the witnesses separately, giving them no opportunity to confer with each other. Now suppose that two of the six witnesses agree that the getaway car had license plate number X78 41A, while the other four witnesses report four different license plate numbers. In this case, even though most of the witnesses are wrong, the detective could still conclude that the correct license plate number was probably X78 41A. The reason is, in essence, that it is extremely unlikely that even two witnesses would agree on a specific license plate number, in the absence of collusion, unless that number were 22 According to the coherence theory of justification, a belief is justified, if at all, by virtue of the way it fits together with the rest of one’s belief system. This “fitting together” is usually understood as a matter of supporting and being supported by other beliefs, being explainable in terms of one’s other beliefs, and so on. See Laurence BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 93–101.

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correct.23 In this example, the witnesses are less than 50 percent reliable — two-thirds of the witnesses report incorrect license plate numbers. Nevertheless, by relying on coherence —trusting the two witnesses whose answers agree with each other —one can attain a conclusion that is much more than 50 percent likely to be correct. Analogously, suppose that only a third of our ethical intuitions were accurate, the others being skewed in various directions by various factors. We might nevertheless be able to identify the correct intuitions, since the correct intuitions would tend to cohere with each other, while the other two-thirds of our intuitions would generally fail to cohere either with the correct intuitions or with each other. If we found that the largest coherent subset of our intuitions comprised one-third of our intuitions, while there was no other coherent subset anywhere near as large, then we would be prima facie justified in regarding that largest coherent subset as roughly accurate. The point here is not that such a coherent set of intuitions would be guaranteed to be true or close to the truth. Rather, the point is that, pace Sharon Street, even if our moral intuitions are unreliable taken singly, it does not follow that ethical reflection cannot produce conclusions that are highly likely to be true. Second, and more importantly, it is a mistake to suppose that an ethical intuition can be criticized only by appeal to other ethical intuitions. Intuitionists who accept the is-ought gap (myself included) will grant that a rebutting defeater for an ethical intuition must derive from other ethical intuitions; however, an undercutting defeater for an ethical intuition may derive from nonevaluative premises.24 A rebutting defeater for an ethical intuition is something that provides prima facie justification for denying the content of that intuition; that is, it justifies a contrary evaluative claim. Since intuitionists hold that all justification for evaluative claims derives ultimately from ethical intuition, a rebutting defeater for an ethical intuition must derive from other ethical intuitions. An undercutting defeater for an ethical intuition, however, need not provide justification for any evaluative claim; rather, an undercutting defeater simply constitutes 23 The probability of as many as two of the six witnesses picking the same incorrect license plate number by chance (assuming random selection from six-digit alphanumeric sequences) is about one in 145 million. This kind of argument is advanced by BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, 147–48, and C. I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1946), 346. See Erik Olsson, Against Coherence (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), for an extended discussion of the conditions under which coherence produces confirmation. Note that the argument requires that the witnesses be more reliable than chance, but not that they be more than 50 percent reliable. Note also that I do not hereby embrace a coherence theory of justification, since I do not claim that coherence is either necessary or sufficient for justification; I claim only that coherence can ratchet up the level of justification that intuitions start with. 24 See John Pollock and Joseph Cruz, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 2d ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 195–96, for the distinction between rebutting and undercutting defeaters.

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grounds for doubting the reliability of the intuition in question. For example, suppose I have the intuition that incest is wrong. Suppose I then acquire good evidence that my intuition is a product of cultural or biological programming. This may function as an undercutting defeater, since it gives me a reason not to rely on my intuition that incest is wrong; however, it does not provide a rebutting defeater, since it gives me no evidence that incest is permissible. The arguments of Section III provide prime examples of undercutting defeaters for some ethical beliefs. If the biases discussed there affected all intuitions equally, and produced distortions in random directions, then the biases would be difficult to correct for. But neither of those things is the case. In the case of each of the factors said to distort our ethical intuitions, intuitions would be expected to be skewed in a specific direction. As a corollary, not all intuitions are equally open to the accusation of bias. For instance, biological evolution would be expected to produce a bias toward favorable evaluations of things that promote one’s own inclusive fitness; intuitions that do not imply favorable evaluations of things that promote one’s own inclusive fitness are not candidates for being products of this particular bias. Similarly, cultural conditioning would be expected to produce a bias toward favorable evaluation of the practices of one’s own culture; self-interest would produce a bias in favor of positive evaluations of oneself, one’s own practices, or things that benefit oneself; and emotions would produce biases in favor of positive evaluations of things that give one positive emotions, and negative evaluations of things that give one negative emotions. Ethical intuitions that do not conform to the relevant expectations are not open to the charge of being produced by these biases. When we put together the foregoing considerations, a cautious and critical intuitionist methodology emerges. While our ethical theory must be based on intuitions, we should not accept or reject an ethical principle solely on the basis of an uncritical appeal to a single intuition, nor should we assess an intuition’s probative value solely in terms of its subjective strength. Rather, we should screen intuitions according to the following criteria:

(1) Seek a substantial body of ethical intuitions that fit together well, rather than placing great weight on any single intuition. (2) Eschew intuitions that are not widely shared, that are specific to one’s own culture, or that entail positive evaluations of the practices of one’s own society and negative evaluations of the practices of other societies. (3) Distrust intuitions that favor specific forms of behavior that would tend to promote reproductive fitness, particularly if these intuitions fail to cohere with other intuitions.

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(4) Distrust intuitions that differentially favor oneself, that is, that specially benefit or positively evaluate oneself, as opposed to others. (5) Distrust intuitions that line up with strong emotions one has about the things evaluated. If these precepts are followed in the construction of an ethical system, the resulting system will be exempt from the skeptical challenges of Section III. To some degree, these methodological precepts are already being implemented. A prime example is Peter Singer’s qualified defense of infanticide. After arguing that abortion is permissible because fetuses lack a right to life, Singer confronts the charge that his arguments lead to the permissibility of infanticide, since newborn infants would also lack a right to life on Singer’s criteria. What is of interest here is not whether Singer’s initial arguments regarding fetuses’ alleged right to life succeed, but how he responds to the common intuition that infanticide is obviously unacceptable. Singer mentions three sources of bias with regard to the question of infanticide: First, “there are no doubt very good evolutionary reasons why we should instinctively feel protective” toward human babies. Second, we have emotions “based on the small, helpless, and — sometimes —cute appearance of human infants.” Third, Singer observes that other societies and other moral philosophers —including such refined thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and Seneca —endorsed the killing of deformed infants. The suggestion here seems to be that our current horror at the thought of infanticide is a product of our particular culture.25 For these three reasons, the intuition that infanticide is wrong is an especially strong candidate for being a product of bias. If an otherwise acceptable moral theory conflicts with that intuition, this should not be taken as a strong reason for rejecting the theory. I take it that this is essentially Singer’s point.26 Nevertheless, Singer’s way of reasoning in this passage is not typical of the tradition of Western philosophical ethics. Much more common are relatively uncritical appeals to intuition. When ethical intuitions conflict, alternative resolutions are typically assessed purely in terms of the number and strength of the intuitions each resolution can accommodate. The lessons of the skeptics regarding the unreliability of certain kinds of intuitions are rarely heeded, and were almost never heeded prior to the twentieth century. To this extent, revisionary intuitionism represents a new approach to normative ethics. 25

Singer, Practical Ethics, 170–73. Presumably, Singer would not back this point up, as I would, with a realist conception of ethics, since his sympathies lie more in line with noncognitivism. I discuss the resulting tension between his metaethical views and his ethical methodology in my “Singer’s Unstable Metaethics.” 26

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V. Abstract, Concrete, and Formal Intuitions We have just seen that the intuitionist’s most natural response to the skeptical challenges of Section III is to attempt to distinguish those intuitions that are most likely to be reliable from those that are less likely to be reliable, and to base her ethical theory on intuitions of the former kind. This casts new light on a long-standing dispute among intuitionists concerning which kind of intuitions should be given most weight or should play the greatest role in the forming of our ethical beliefs. Each of the following types of intuitions has had its defenders: 27 (1) Concrete intuitions: These are intuitions about specific situations, such as the intuition that in Singer’s Shallow Pond example, one is obligated to rescue the drowning child, or that in the Trolley Car problem, one should turn the trolley away from the five bystanders toward the one.28 (2) Abstract theoretical intuitions: These are intuitions about very general principles, such as the intuition that the right action is always the action that has the best overall consequences, or that it is wrong to treat individuals as mere means. (3) Mid-level intuitions: These are intuitions about principles of an intermediate degree of generality, such as the principle that, other things being equal, one ought to keep one’s promises; that one ought to show gratitude for favors done to one; or that it is more important to avoid harming others than it is to positively help others. Initially, it is unclear why preference should be given to any of these types of intuitions over the others. What does level of generality have to do with how likely an intuition is to be correct? 29 As I shall argue in this section, level of generality matters because intuitions of different levels of generality differ in their susceptibility to various kinds of error. When we take this into account, the effort to accommodate the challenges of the skeptics naturally leads one, for the most part, to prefer certain kinds of abstract theoretical intuitions over concrete and mid-level intuitions. Concrete and mid-level intuitions are particularly susceptible to the kinds of biases discussed in Section III. One reason for this is that we typically have stronger emotions about concrete cases and mid-level 27 See, respectively, Jonathan Dancy, Moral Reasons (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1981); and Ross, The Right and the Good. 28 In this example, one must choose between allowing a runaway trolley to run over and kill five people, and flipping a switch to send the trolley onto another track, where it will run over and kill one person. See Philippa Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect,” Oxford Review 5 (1967): 5–15. 29 DePaul expresses doubt on this score in “The Problem of the Criterion and Coherence Methods in Ethics.”

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generalizations than about very abstract principles. Compare the emotional impact of the statement “Killing deformed human infants is acceptable” to that of the statement “A being has a right to x only if that being is capable of desiring x.” 30 The latter, abstract principle is much less susceptible to emotionally-based bias. In addition, concrete intuitions are more likely to be influenced by biological programming, because the biases with which evolution is most likely to have endowed us are biases favoring relatively specific forms of behavior that would have promoted our ancestors’ inclusive fitness. Biological evolution is unlikely to have endowed us with biases toward embracing very abstract principles, since our biological ancestors probably engaged in little abstract reasoning. For instance, attitudes toward incest, human offspring, and social hierarchies are more likely to be influenced by biology than are intuitions about principles of additivity in axiology.31 Finally, culturally generated biases are more likely to affect concrete and mid-level judgments than highly general ethical judgments, because our culture has a complex set of relatively specific rules —rules governing who is allowed to marry whom, how one should greet a stranger, how one should interact with one’s boss, and so on. What rules, if any, our society accepts on the most abstract level is extremely unclear. Does our culture endorse the Categorical Imperative? What general criterion of rights does it endorse? The obscurity of the answers to these questions prevents cultural conditioning from directly determining our intuitions about the Categorical Imperative or the general criterion of rights. In contrast, it is perfectly clear how our culture might bias judgments about, for example, the acceptability of polygamy. Abstract theoretical intuitions, in contrast, are prone to the simple but widespread problem of overgeneralization. This is the tendency to judge the truth of a generalization in terms of typical cases, or the sorts of cases that are easy to think of. Confronted with the generalization that all A’s are B, one will have a tendency to judge the generalization true if all typical A’s are B, even if some A’s of a sort that do not readily come to mind are not B.32 For example, the following generalization seems initially plausible: (C) For any events x and y, if x was the cause of y, then if x had not occurred, y would not have occurred. 30 Michael Tooley employs the latter principle in his defense of abortion and infanticide; see Tooley, “Abortion and Infanticide,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1972): 37–65. 31 Axiological additivity principles claim that value can be added along some dimension — for example, that the value of a pair of people’s lives is equal to the value of the first person’s life plus the value of the second person’s life; or that the value of some event is equal to the value of the first half of the event plus the value of the second half of the event. 32 This is a special case of the “availability heuristic,” discussed in Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability,” in Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, eds., Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 163–78.

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But now consider the following case: The Preemption Case: Two mob assassins, Lefty and Righty, have been hired to assassinate FBI informant Stoolie. As it happens, both of them get Stoolie in their sights at about the same time, and both fire their rifles. Either shot would be sufficient to kill Stoolie. Lefty’s bullet, however, reaches Stoolie first; consequently, Lefty’s shot is the one that actually causes Stoolie’s death. However, if Lefty had not fired, Stoolie would still have died, because Righty’s bullet would have killed him. This shows that there can be a case in which x is the cause of y, but if x had not occurred, y would still have occurred.33 Notice that, before we consider the Preemption Case, claim (C) seems plausible; but after we consider the Preemption Case, (C) no longer seems plausible. In fact, the history of analytic philosophy is littered with examples of generalizations that initially seem true, until one is confronted with recherché counterexamples. In these cases, the generalization loses its intuitive appeal as soon as the counterexample is discovered; its appeal depended upon our having only certain typical kinds of cases in mind. Because of this, even when no counterexample has yet been devised, most generalizations rightly occasion a lingering suspicion that a clear counterexample may be just waiting to be discovered. Mid-level generalizations appear to give us the worst of both worlds: they are sufficiently concrete to be susceptible to biases with an emotional, cultural, or biological source, while at the same time they are sufficiently general to be susceptible to overgeneralization. For instance, the belief that adultery is wrong is open to the suspicion of being partly a product of emotional, cultural, and/or biological bias. At the same time, it is a sufficiently general claim that one may evaluate it by thinking of typical cases, perhaps overlooking some atypical cases of adultery. The latter problem, that of possible overgeneralization, may be remedied by adding a qualifier to the principle, resulting in a claim such as “Adultery is prima facie wrong” or “Adultery is wrong in typical cases.” This does, however, have the disadvantage of rendering the principle less useful, since the principle does not tell us in which atypical cases, if any, adultery is not wrong all things considered. All three types of intuitions, then, have their own problems. This does not mean that no intuitions can be relied upon. What it means is that we must consider more than an intuition’s level of generality. As I indicated in Section IV, we must consider an intuition’s content to determine whether it is a plausible candidate for being a product of one of the common types of biases discussed in Section III. In addition to this, however, there is a 33 David Lewis discusses this kind of case in “Causation,” in Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 159–214.

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particular species of abstract ethical intuitions that seems to me to be unusually trustworthy. These are what I call “formal intuitions” —intuitions that impose formal constraints on ethical theories, though they do not themselves positively or negatively evaluate anything. The following are examples of such formal ethical intuitions: (1) If x is better than y and y is better than z, then x is better than z. (2) If x and y are qualitatively identical in nonevaluative respects, then x and y are also morally indistinguishable. (3) If it is permissible to do x, and it is permissible to do y given that one does x, then it is permissible to do both x and y. (4) If it is wrong to do x, and it is wrong to do y, then it is wrong to do both x and y. (5) If two states of affairs, x and y, are so related that y can be produced by adding something valuable to x, without creating anything bad, lowering the value of anything in x, or removing anything of value from x, then y is better than x. (6) The ethical status (whether permissible, wrong, obligatory, etc.) of choosing (x and y) over (x and z) is the same as that of choosing y over z, given the knowledge that x exists/occurs. These kinds of intuitions are particularly plausible candidates for being products of rational reflection. They are not plausibly regarded as products of emotional bias, cultural or biological programming, or selfinterested bias. What of the threat of overgeneralization? It seems to me that these principles are not the result merely of considering some typical kinds of cases and then evaluating just those cases. Rather, we seem to be able to see why each of these things must be true in general; these principles seem to be required by the nature of the “better than” relation, the nature of permissibility, the nature of ethical evaluation, etc. Accordingly, if someone were to describe a proposed counterexample to one of these principles, our reaction would not be (as with the Preemption Case discussed above) to simply give up the principle in question without protest; rather, our reaction would probably be to call the case a “paradox.” For example, consider the following series of cases, derived from an essay by Stuart Rachels: 34 Case 1: You have a year of the most intense ecstasy imaginable. Case 2: You have two years of slightly less intense pleasure. Case 3: You have four years of pleasure slightly less intense than in Case 2. . . . 34 Stuart Rachels, “Counterexamples to the Transitivity of Better Than,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1998): 71–83. Rachels takes his series of cases to provide a counterexample to the transitivity principle. I take it, instead, to illustrate certain biases in our evaluations of the cases.

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If we continue in this way for many more stages, eventually we arrive at: Case N: You have millions and millions of years of barely noticeable pleasure. In each succeeding case, you get a slightly less intense pleasure than the previous case, but it lasts for twice as long. Most people have the intuition that each case in the series is better than the previous one; for example, it is better to have two years of great pleasure, than it is to have only one year of slightly greater pleasure. However, most also have the intuition that the final case, in which one gets millions of years of barely noticeable pleasure, is not better than the first case. This seems paradoxical. In contrast, however, the Preemption Case discussed earlier does not strike anyone as “paradoxical”; rather, we simply accept it straightaway as a counterexample to claim (C), that if x caused y, then if x hadn’t occurred, y wouldn’t have occurred. I think this difference is explained by the fact that, whereas the intuition supporting claim (C) is a result of merely considering some typical cases of causation, the intuition supporting the principle of the transitivity of “better than” is a result of an insight into the nature of the “better than” relation as such. It seems to me, then, that formal ethical intuitions should be given special weight in moral reasoning. These formal intuitions are not sufficient to generate any substantive ethical system. Nevertheless, they rule out some otherwise attractive (combinations of ) ethical views and are for that reason useful in resolving some ethical disputes.35 VI. How Ethical Revision Is Possible The dominant antirealist approaches in contemporary metaethics cannot support a revisionary ethical theory. Moral nihilism, of course, supports a sort of ethical revisionism, but its revisionism is too total: it rejects all first-order ethical theories.36 Cultural relativism, in contrast, requires one to accept the norms of one’s own society. At most a small amount of ethical revision is possible, in the event that some of the social norms are inconsistent, but the goal of ethical theorizing must nevertheless be to find the consistent ethical system that is closest to the prevailing social 35 See my “Non-Egalitarianism,” Philosophical Studies 114 (2003): 147–71, for an argument against welfare egalitarianism based mainly on formal intuitions. See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 419–30, for an argument (though Parfit does not endorse the argument) based mainly on formal intuitions for “the repugnant conclusion” that, for any world of very happy people, some world with a much larger population of people with lives barely worth living would be better. See also Unger, Living High and Letting Die, 88–94, for an argument that our intuitions about sacrificing individuals to produce greater benefit violate the principle of independence of irrelevant alternatives. 36 Mackie, Ethics, 30–35.

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norms.37 Subjectivism and noncognitivism would both have one accept the consistent ethical system that is closest to what one’s own attitudes, desires, and/or feelings would support. While this might lead to an unconventional morality in the case of atypical individuals, it cannot lead to a substantial revision of one’s own moral attitudes, and for most people it will result in an endorsement of something very close to conventional morality. What these antirealist approaches lack is the notion that some of our (or our society’s) ethical attitudes may be biases —illegitimate influences on our ethical thinking that lead us away from the moral truth —since, for antirealists, there is no moral truth independent of our attitudes. It is this notion of bias that allows intuitionists to select out different classes of intuitions for different treatment: the intuitions that are most subject to bias are to be discounted, while those that are most clearly products of intellectual reflection are to be preserved as a basis for ethical theory. Depending on how prevalent ethical biases are, this can lead to a significant revision of common-sense morality. What areas are most ripe for ethical revision? The area of sexual morality is probably the clearest case, since it is an area in which common moral attitudes exhibit multiple signs of unreliability. First, people tend to have strong feelings about such things as homosexuality, bestiality, or polygamy. Second, on many issues of sexual conduct, we tend to have attitudes that conform to parochial cultural mores. For instance, attitudes toward prostitution, homosexuality, and polygamy in contemporary America are much harsher than those prevalent, respectively, in modern Japan, ancient Greece, or Imperial China —suggesting that most Americans’ attitudes toward these practices are determined more by the time and place in which they happened to be born than by any objective ethical truths. Third, many of our attitudes in this area that are not culturally specific are subject to sociobiological explanations. Our feelings about incest and about female sexual promiscuity are cases in point. For these reasons, conventional sexual morality should probably be rejected more or less wholesale, excepting those aspects that are mere applications to sexual behavior of general principles of benevolence and respect for others. Traditional moral proscriptions against activities between consenting adults —including homosexuality, various forms of “unnatural” sexual activity, polygamy, and incest —are probably unjustifiable prejudices. In each case, of course, specific arguments put forward by the advocates of such proscriptions must be examined. The important point here is that one’s initial, intuitive opposition to those arrangements or forms of sexual activity ought not to be treated as serious evidence of their wrongness. 37 See Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 94–95. However, I argue in Ethical Intuitionism (176–79) that even demands for consistency and coherence are problematic for ethical antirealists.

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A more philosophically challenging area is that of the dispute between consequentialist and deontological approaches to ethics. There is little doubt that common-sense morality is deontological. More specifically, there are many cases in which we regard it as wrong to sacrifice an individual for the greater benefit of others. Yet these ethical beliefs may require revision in the light of ethical argument. Consider the following relatively weak deontological principle: (WD) There is a way of harming people, which we may call “deontically constrained harming,” such that it is wrong to harm a person in that way, even to produce a slightly greater benefit for others. For example, suppose that I am driving two people to the hospital. In order to get them there in time to save their lives, I will have to run over and kill a single child who is playing in the street. (There is no time to move the child.) Most people have the intuition that, even though doing so would result in a lesser loss overall, it is impermissible to run over the child. It is this sort of intuition that motivates Weak Deontology. WD is a modest deontological principle, compatible with a wide range of nonconsequentialist views. WD leaves open, for example, that there may be more extreme cases in which running over the child is justified — for instance, perhaps I might run over the child if doing so were necessary to get to a nuclear bomb set to blow up New York City in time to disarm it. In other words, though harming the child in this way to produce a slightly greater benefit (two lives saved) is impermissible, WD allows that harming the child in this way to produce a vastly greater benefit may be permissible. WD also leaves room for different ways of specifying what is the relevant way of harming others. This “way of harming others” may be defined in part by the kind of harm produced, by the circumstances in which it occurs, or even by the intentions of the agent. To see why even this very weak form of deontology may require revision, imagine a situation in which I have two actions available, A1 and A2 , where I can perform either action singly, perform both actions, or perform neither action. Each action will affect just two people, P1 and P2 . Action A1 will have the effect of harming P1 while producing a greater benefit for P2 . Action A2 will harm P2 while producing a greater benefit for P1 . If, however, I perform both actions, the net effect will be a benefit for both P1 and P2 : Action A1 A2 (A1+A2 )

Effect on P1’s Utility −1 +2 +1

Effect on P2’s Utility +2 −1 +1

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It seems that, in addition to what we have stipulated so far, it is possible that the harms produced by each of A1 and A2 might be of the deontically constrained kind. If so, then WD implies that A1 is impermissible and A2 is impermissible. Yet it does not seem that (A1+A2 ) —the “conjunctive action” of performing both A1 and A2 —is impermissible, for (A1+A2 ) benefits both P1 and P2 while harming no one. There are a number of ways a Weak Deontologist might respond to this situation. One might respond by denying the plausible formal constraint that, if it is wrong to do x and it is wrong to do y, then it is wrong to do both x and y. Or one might argue that it is wrong to do both A1 and A2 in the situation described. Or one might try to delineate the class of deontically constrained harms in such a way that the sort of scenario envisioned becomes impossible (for instance, perhaps because A2 ceases to be a deontically constrained harm in a situation in which A1 is also performed). Each of these approaches merits further study, which must await another occasion.38 My purpose here is simply to illustrate in principle how a revision of a major tenet of common-sense morality could be justified within an intuitionist framework. Suppose it turns out that the intuitions motivating Weak Deontology support an account of deontically constrained harms that makes the sort of scenario I have described possible, so that each of A1 and A2 would be judged wrong, independently of whether the other is performed. Suppose also that this intuitively supported account implies that an action such as (A1+A2 ), if we recognize such conjunctive actions, would not impose any deontically constrained harm. Then a consequentialist intuitionist would be in a position to argue that our Weak Deontological intuitions should be rejected, since they lead to a conflict with plausible formal ethical constraints. One plausible formal constraint is that if it is wrong to do x and it is wrong to do y given that one does x, then it must be wrong to do both x and y. Another plausible formal constraint is that the moral acceptability of a form of behavior should not be made to depend on one’s method of individuating actions (for instance, on whether some bit of behavior counts as one action or two). Our concrete and mid-level deontological intuitions conflict with the abstract, theoretical intuitions of many philosophers, which are consequentialist in nature. In addition, it seems likely that consequentialist ethical theories will have desirable formal properties that the main forms of deontology worth considering lack. If so, the best resolution may well be in favor of consequentialism, despite the fact that this entails a rejection of many widespread and salient ethical intuitions. Whether this is, in fact, the best resolution will depend on the results of future ethical investigation —so far, I have merely supposed hypothetically that things turn out in the way I would consider favorable to consequentialism. 38 I discuss the issue in greater detail in my “A Paradox for Moderate Deontology” (unpublished manuscript).

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VII. Conclusion The question of methodology in ethics has hitherto received too little attention. Nonintuitionists have made little effort to draw out the methodological implications of their metaethical theories, while intuitionists have done little more than enjoin us to rely upon our ethical intuition. Though intuitionists have often expressed preferences for one sort of intuition —abstract intuitions, concrete intuitions, or mid-level intuitions — over others, these have appeared as little more than personal preferences. Yet the field of ethics is surely in need of methodological scrutiny. There are few conclusions that can be held up as established results of ethics, and there are few nontrivial arguments in the field that are generally accepted as sound. Skeptics suggest that perhaps there is no ethical knowledge, that our moral beliefs are largely prejudices that cannot be relied upon. Furthermore, even among nonskeptical philosophers, radically different conceptions of the nature of the ethical enterprise abound. It would be surprising if these fundamental differences entailed no significant differences in how one should approach first-order ethical questions. For all these reasons, it seems especially important to attend to the question of how in general one should proceed in ethics. Perhaps the most common approach to normative ethics is a kind of narrow reflective equilibrium: a variety of ethical intuitions or judgments are canvassed; in cases of conflict, they are weighed against one another on the basis of the strength of our initial inclination to accept them; and adjustments are made in an effort to produce a coherent ethical system with the least revision possible. Often, for example, an ethical theory is criticized by appeal to cases in which the theory can be shown to conflict with relatively strong moral intuitions; since our intuitions about the cases are stronger than our initial inclination to accept the moral theory, it is urged that we should reject the theory. This method may be expected to lead to something like W. D. Ross’s pluralistic system of prima facie duties. This method, as I have urged, is oversimplified. The key point in a properly critical intuitionist methodology is that not all intuitions are created equal. Intuitions that are controversial or that may easily be explained as products of bias have relatively little evidential value. Intuitions that are widely shared and are not plausible candidates for being mere prejudices have much greater evidential value. Among this latter class, there are a number of formal ethical intuitions —which do not entail any specific evaluations but which place constraints on systems of evaluations —that are particularly strong candidates for being products of intellectual reflection rather than bias. The preferential treatment I have advocated for certain kinds of intuitions paves the way for a degree of ethical revisionism not otherwise possible. How far such revision should go remains an open question.

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Almost certainly, for example, the correct view of sexual morality is highly revisionary. It is less clear whether the correct views on such matters as justice and individual rights are similarly revisionary. Nevertheless, the critical intuitionism I have advocated probably holds out the best hope for advocates of revisionary ethical theories, such as utilitarianism or ethical egoism. Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder

MORAL OBJECTIVITY By Nicholas Rescher I. Introduction The aim of this essay is to set out an argument for moral objectivity. A brief sketch of the considerations at issue should help make it possible to keep sight of the forest amid the profusion of trees. Overall, then, the line of thought that is being set out here runs as follows: • To validate moral objectivity, it must be shown that an impersonal matter of fact (rather than a personal opinion or feeling) is at issue. • A key step in this direction emerges from the consideration that morality is a functional enterprise whose aim is to channel people’s actions toward realizing the best interests of everyone. • This makes morality into something quite different from mere mores geared toward communal uniformity and predictability. (After all, morality is not a matter of anthropology; it addresses what people should do rather than what they actually do.) • The inherent generality of moral principles means that they operate at a level of universality that transcends the limits of societal variation. • This circumstance militates decisively against moral relativism. • Nevertheless, general moral principles can (and should) lend some degree of support to the characteristic (and potentially idiosyncratic) claims of our own community. • In consequence, morality is rooted in the very nature of rationality and thereby provides the moral enterprise with an objectively cogent rationale. So much for the general line of argument. I will first take up the issue of moral relativism, since it is such a pervasively held position. II. Moral Relativism There are two distinct modes of moral relativism. Both agree that all moral codes are of equal validity —that each code is as good as any other. However, one mode, “indifferentist relativism,” sees all codes as equally valid, and the other, “nihilism,” sees all as equally invalid. The former, DOI: 10.1017/S0265052508080151 © 2008 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA.

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syncretist approach takes the line of an indiscriminate openness and acceptance; the latter, nihilistic approach takes the line of a total rejection. Either way, the prospect of a reasoned endorsement of one moral position over others is excluded. Both doctrines are deeply problematic, however. On the one hand, indifferentist relativism is caught up in the evident implausibility of holding that any moral code, any set of moral rules whatsoever, is as good as any other for us here and now, in the circumstances in which we actually find ourselves in our interactions with others. Moral nihilism, on the other hand, is caught up in the no less striking implausibility of the contention that no moral code whatsoever is valid, that no code can make a warranted claim to effectiveness in safeguarding the interests of people. Both forms of relativism are deeply enmeshed in difficulties, but the former version represents the more common threat of a subjectivist relativism that maintains: “To each his own; such differences as there are between moral codes merely lie in the mind of the exponent.” On such a subjectivist view, morality is a matter of attitudes or tastes: we have ours, and they have theirs, period. In effect, there simply is no fact of the matter about a moral thesis such as “Stealing is wrong.” The subjectivist insists: “That’s just what people happen to think in our set or our society.” On this view, the sole reason why moral judgments ultimately matter for us is one of “keeping in step” with the rest of our group so as to conform our behavior to socially accepted norms. Any code of conduct is as good as any other: it is simply a matter of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” All moralities are created equal. From such a standpoint, there is no place for moral objectivity. Thus, there nowadays prevails a widespread but nevertheless unfortunate tendency to deny the possibility of rational controversy about moral matters, to relegate morality to the never-never land of matters of taste, feeling, or otherwise discursively insupportable opinion. While such a line of thought has been envisioned by philosophers since the ancient skeptics, it is nowadays commonplace.1 To take a single example, Charles L. Stevenson’s “attitudinal expression” theory is an influential representative of the general approach.2 Stevenson holds that a moral evaluation merely characterizes the subject and not the object that is at issue. My contention that “You acted wrongly in stealing that money” is, Stevenson holds, a mere compound of two assertions, one a factual contention (“You stole that money”) and the other a personal avowal (“I 1 The classic exponent of the position is David Hume. See Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (London, 1738), and Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (London, 1752), Appendix 1, sec. 1. Antecedents can be found in the compendia of skeptical views assembled by Sextus Empiricus. 2 See Charles L. Stevenson, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,” in his Facts and Values (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), and also his earlier Ethics and Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944). Two works particularly useful on the “emotive theory” are G. J. Warnock, Contemporary Moral Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1967), and J. O. Urmson, The Emotive Theory of Ethics (London: Hutchinson, 1968).

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disapprove of your doing this and urge you not to do similar things in the future”). The former component makes an objective, descriptive claim; the latter expresses the asserter’s attitude toward it. The point of making moral contentions, Stevenson insists, “is not to indicate facts but to create an influence. Instead of merely describing people’s interests [moral contentions endeavor to] change or intensify them. They recommend an interest in an object, rather than state that the interest already exists.” 3 Moral claims are primarily designed to exhort people to channel their actions into generally beneficial modes. Such an approach denies that actions are ever actually wrong in themselves, but insists that people merely think they are. Moral language is only “used to express feeling about certain objects, but not to make any assertion about them.” 4 Alternatively, moral judgments are only prescriptions —oblique injunctions designed to incite others to action.5 In any event, they do not really express evaluations which, as such, are right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate. Rather, they reflect the circumstance that people only attach or attribute value to human actions, ascriptions which are always made on an entirely subjective basis reflecting the makers’ feelings, wishes, or attitudes —always without any real foundation or warrant in the nature of the object. There is nothing more to moral praise or condemnation than personal feeling. Rightness or wrongness simply lies in the view of the individual (or the group) as a mere expression of personal (or social) disapproval. Notwithstanding its widespread endorsement, such a position is deeply problematic. Let us consider why. III. Morality in Functional Perspective The key to moral objectivity lies in the very nature of the moral enterprise. For the reality of it is that morality is a functional enterprise that exists for the sake of an end and purpose: to foster modes of action and interaction that facilitate the realization of human interests and, in particular, that channel people’s actions in ways that make people’s lives within their communities more beneficial and pleasant. Accordingly, a moral system is instituted within the human community to guide behavior in ways that are beneficial to the best interests of the community collectively and its members distributively, that is, to make people’s lives more satisfactory and fulfilling. The pivotal question, then, is this: Will a purportedly ethical mode of behavior, if systematically adopted, enhance the satisfaction of life and lessen its burdens and negativities? Does it, or would it, make people healthier, happier, more successful in the realization of those things that make life fuller and more 3

Stevenson, Facts and Values, 16. A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, reprint ed. (New York: Dover, 1952), 108. 5 Compare R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952). 4

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satisfying and rewarding? Does it, or would it, facilitate the realization of people’s best interests? The functional nature of morality —its being geared to serving the interests of people —makes for a “moral realism” which maintains that there are indeed moral facts.6 It does not, however, underwrite that mode of “realism” which maintains that moral rightness is a certain sort of property of acts (be it a “nonnatural” property, or a “supervenient” property, or the sort of preternatural property discernible only by some special power of moral intuition).7 Rather, the functional approach indicates that what is at issue with “rightness” is not a “property” in the ordinary sense at all, but a contextual feature of a relational sort which turns on the place of the act in question within a wider framework of relevant circumstances. Being “(morally) right,” like being “average” in size or “inexpensive” in price, is a contextual feature relating to the setting of one item within its embracing environment. While it is not a property of an isolated item, such a feature is nevertheless one whose possession is objectively discernible, albeit only within the setting of that larger context. Thus, the moral status of an act is not the sort of thing that is a property or quality at all, but a relational feature whose determination involves a wide variety of contextual issues: agents, circumstances, motives, alternatives, and the like. Subjectivist relativism stands committed to the idea that morality is simply a matter of local convention. It loses sight of what is really at issue with morality —the proper consideration of people’s real interests. And thereby it makes a travesty of morality by restricting the idea of what people ought to do to what the particular customs of their society require. It confuses morality with mores. Mores are, indeed, simply matters of custom and convention, like table manners and dress codes; but morality involves the adaptation to local conditions of universal principles regarding the safeguarding of people’s interests. A crucial divide thus separates morality from mores; a difference in kind is at issue. After all, moral choice is a matter of opting not for what people may happen to prefer but for what is (morally) preferable —or what can reasonably be claimed to be so with a view to the determinative aim of the whole enterprise, namely, the safeguarding of the real interests of people in general. This normative dimension means that the variability involved in the variation of moral rules from one society to another is a mere surface phenomenon that does not reach down to the level of fundamentals. 6 A comprehensive bibliography of the subject is given in Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, “Moral Realism Bibliography,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 24, Supplement (1986), 143–59. 7 Critics of moral realism often suppose, quite wrongly, that ethical appraisals can reflect matters of fact only if ethical characteristics represent supernatural properties that are somehow discernible by a special faculty of moral intuition —a peculiar “moral sense,” as it were. Only recently has this far-fetched view attracted the criticism it deserves. See Richard Boyd, “How to Be a Moral Realist,” in Essays on Moral Realism, ed. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), as well as some of the other essays of that anthology.

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IV. Uniformity Despite Diversity: Morality Versus Mores A critic might object at this point that moral objectivity is surely counterindicated by the circumstance that one cannot validly criticize the moral code of a society by any “external” criteria. But this is by no means true. Whether a certain operational code is intended within the ambit of its social context to operate as a moral code may well be a proper subject of discussion and controversy. Nonetheless, once it is settled that it is indeed a moral code that is at issue, then in view of that very fact one can certainly bring principles of critical evaluation to bear. For at this point the question becomes paramount whether, and how effectively, this code accomplishes for its society that function for which moral codes are instituted among men —to constrain their interactions in ways that safeguard their best interests. When we are assessing a moral code in this way, we are not simply exercising a cultural imperialism by judging it against our own code; we are not asking how concordant or discordant it is with the prevailing morescorrelative standards of our society. We are judging it, rather, against those universal and absolute standards in terms of which the adequacy of any code, our own included, must be appraised. The evaluation of appropriateness is not one of our code against theirs, but one of judging both ours and theirs by a common, generic standard. What makes an action right or wrong (as the case may be) is just whether doing the sort of thing at issue protects or injures the interests of all the agents concerned. (To reemphasize: morality is by definition geared to the benefit of rational agents, even as refrigeration is by definition geared to cooling.) 8 This is part and parcel of the very meaning of “morally right” and “morally wrong,” and it renders judgment in these matters factual, objective, and rationally disputable. Morality, again, is a particular, well-defined sort of purposive project whose cohesive unity as such resides in its inherent function of molding the behavior of people in line with a care for one another’s interests. Despite the diversity of the substantive moral codes of different societies, the basic overarching principles of morality are uniform and invariant; they are inherent in the very idea of what morality is all about. The long and short of it is that the anthropological reduction of morality to mores just does not work. Some things are wrong in an absolute and universal way: murder (i.e., unjustifiably killing another person); taking improper advantage of people; inflicting pointless harm; lying and deception for selfish advantage; betraying a trust for personal gain; breaking promises out of sheer perversity; and misusing the institutions of one’s society for one’s own purposes. Local custom to the contrary notwith8 Does this way of viewing the matter put subrational animals outside the pale of moral concern? By no means. For it matters deeply to rational agents how other rational agents treat animals, or for that matter, how they treat any other sorts of beings that have interests capable of being injured. We have a substantial interest in how others comport themselves who also belong to the type to which we see ourselves as belonging.

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standing, such things are morally wrong anytime, anywhere, and for anyone. Their prohibitions are moral universals —parts of morality as such. (Thus, these prohibitions hold good not just for us humans but for all rational beings.) To be sure, different societies operate with different moral groundrules at the procedural level. Some societies deem it outrageous for women to expose their faces, their breasts, their knees; others view this as altogether acceptable and perhaps even mandatory. Nonetheless, behind this variation stands a universal principle: “Respect people’s sensibilities about the appropriate and acceptable appearance of fellow humans by conforming to established rules of proper modesty.” This overarching principle is universal and absolute. Its implementation with respect to, say, elbows or belly buttons is, of course, something that varies with custom and the practices of the community. The rule itself is abstract and schematic; it stands in need of implementing criteria as to what proper modesty and due decorum demand. The matter is one of a universal principle with variable implementations subject to locally established standards and criteria that are grounded in the particular customs of the community. Thus, while the concrete strictures of morality — its specific ordinances and procedural rules of thumb —will, of course, differ from age to age and culture to culture, nevertheless the ultimate principles that serve to define the project of “morality” as such are universal. The uniform governing conception of “what morality is” suffices to establish and standardize those ultimate and fixed principles that govern the moral enterprise as such. At the level of fundamentals, the variability of moral codes is underpinned by an absolute uniformity of moral principles and values. At this highest level alone is there absoluteness: the rejection of appropriate moral contentions at this level involves a lapse of rational cogency. But at the lower levels there is almost always some room for variation, and dispute as well. (How concern for the well-being of one’s fellows can be brought to effective expression, for example, will very much depend on the institutions of one’s society, and also, to some extent, on one’s place within it.) To be sure, anthropologists, and even, alas, philosophers, often say things like, “Members of the Wazonga tribe deem it morally proper (or even mandatory) to sacrifice first-born female children to the tribal gods.” But there are big problems here. This way of talking betokens lamentably loose thinking. Compare: (i) The Wazonga habitually (customarily) sacrifice first-born female children. (ii) The Wazonga think it acceptable (or perhaps even meritorious) to sacrifice first-born female children. (iii) The Wazonga think it morally acceptable (or mandatory) to sacrifice first-born female children.

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It must be noted that, however true and incontestable the first two contentions may be, the third is just untenable. For compare (iii) with: (iv) The Wazonga think it mathematically true that dogs have tails. No matter how firmly convinced the Wazonga may be that dogs have tails, thesis (iv) —taken as it stands, with its overt reference to mathematical truth —is firmly and squarely a thesis of ours, and not one of theirs! That “mathematically” is clearly something that we ourselves have interjected into the picture. For this very reason, it is in deep difficulty unless the condition is realized —as in the circumstances seems highly implausible — that the Wazonga have an essentially correct conception of what mathematics is, and, moreover, are convinced that the claim that dogs have tails belongs among the appropriate contentions of this particular realm. Analogously, one cannot appropriately maintain thesis (iii) unless one is prepared to claim both that the Wazonga have an essentially correct conception of what morality is (correct, that is, by the defining standards of morality), and furthermore that they are convinced that the practice in question is acceptable within the framework of this (moral) project as so conceived. The concatenation of these two conditions is not only implausible in the circumstances, but even paradoxical, seeing that the first condition powerfully counterindicates the second. The salient point is that the mere fact of seeing this practice as mandated by custom (as part of “what is expected of us and what we have always done”) does not make it part of the Wazonga’s morality. The anthropological route to moral relativism is, to say the least, eminently problematic. For only a rationale that is conjointly articulated in terms of the definitive telos of the moral enterprise can render a customary practice —however compulsory —into a moral one. There is no difficulty whatever about the idea of different social customs, but the idea of different moralities faces insuperable difficulties. The case is much like that of saying that the tribe whose counting practices are based on the sequence “one, two, many” has a different arithmetic from ourselves. To do anything like justice to the facts, one would have to say that they do not have arithmetic at all, but just a peculiar, and very rudimentary, way of counting.9 The situation of those exotic tribesmen of ours is similar. On the given evidence, they do not have a different morality; rather, their culture just has not developed to a point where they have a morality at all. If they think it is acceptable to engage in practices like the sacrifice of first-born girl children, then their grasp on the conception of morality is, 9 The earliest Mesopotamian counting notation was a matter of context-variable numerical indicators, with one symbol indicating “10” when sheep were at issue, “6” when referring to containers of grain, and “18” when referring to fields or plots of arable land. Whatever these symbols were, they were not numbers, and such combinational manipulations as they admitted of do not constitute arithmetic. But this fact pivots on what we think —namely, on how we understand what is at issue with “arithmetic.”

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on the face of it, somewhere between inadequate and nonexistent. It is ( just barely) conceivable that sense could be made of a locution like “The Wazonga believe that morality requires them to act X-wise [i.e., to engage in child-sacrifice, or in some other practice that we ourselves deem morally outrageous].” But the story needed to make sense of this would have to be complex and (to our ears) extremely implausible. (For example, we might imagine that the Wazonga believe that this practice affords the only way to prevent some evil demon from wreaking havoc on the community.) Of course, the basis of such a story must be a principle which (like saving the community from anguish, agony, and annihilation) envisions a patently moral purpose from our point of view and would thus (in the circumstances) serve as a moral motive for us as well. This example underscores my earlier point that there is a fundamental difference between morality and mores, a difference which relativism simply ignores in its tendency to identify the two. Relativism proclaims: “Other societies have their moral convictions (rules, standards, values) and we have ours. One is every bit as good as the other. To each his own. Nobody is in a position to criticize or condemn the moral views of others.” But to take this line in moral matters would, in fact, be to abandon the very idea of morality. To be sure, mere custom is something else again. Variability does indeed obtain with respect to mere mores: we eat with cutlery, they eat with chopsticks; we sleep on beds, they sleep in hammocks; we speak one language, they speak another —each with equal propriety. However, this indifference does not hold for morals, for matters of moral principle, where universality does and must obtain. It is nonsense to say: “We treat the handicapped humanely; they drown them at sea to spare themselves the inconvenience of special accommodation. It’s all just a matter of local custom.” This sort of thing is just not viable from the moral standpoint! If crass selfishness, pointless maltreatment, wanton deceit, or the infliction of needless pain is wrong for us —as indeed it is —then it is wrong for them too; and conversely. This is the fundamental insight that endows morality with its emphasis on an absolutist universality which has it that, at the level of fundamentals, matters of moral principle are the same universally and for everyone. So here stands the characteristic, and ultimately right-minded, insight of Kantian ethics: that when it is indeed morals rather than mores that are in view, then the issue has to be seen as one that is universal and absolute — that in this domain of morality proper, what is appropriate for one must be so for all. At the level of deeper principles, there is indeed a strict equality before the moral law.

V. The Hierarchy of Principles Philosophers and social scientists who advocate moral relativism often fall prey to the oversimplification of seeing moral norms at all levels as

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being of a piece. They fail to see the distinction between established mores, which indeed are variable and context-dependent, and higher-level values and principles, which, I contend, are fixed, universal, and unchanging. Recognition of the hierarchical stratification of moral norms is essential to a proper understanding of morality. The fact that there are uniform and unchanging principles at the top of the hierarchy —principles that inhere in the very conception of morality itself —is quite compatible with plurality, variation, and even some measure of conventionality in the moral norms of the lower levels. The multilevel structure of moral norms provides the key to reconciling the inherent absolutism of morality with the “cultural relativity” of moral codes by showing how the relativistic variation of such codes is perfectly compatible with the absolutism of moral fundamentals. Plurality and variability in regard to lower-level norms is in no way at odds with an absolutist uniformity of higher-level principles. It is, in the end, the controlling role of higher-level principles inherent in the very idea of what “morality” is all about that saves morality from a destructive fission that extends an open invitation to indifferentism. These higher-level moral principles ground such fixed and absolute moral values as: the value of the human person, grounding (inter alia) his or her rights to safety and security; the dignity and respect of the individual; liberty, individual freedom, and the right to self-determination; and people’s rights to consultation in matters affecting their well-being and interests. We cannot at one and the same time remain within the moral purview and avoid acknowledging these fundamental desiderata as pivotal to the moral enterprise, seeing that they are constitutive of this enterprise as such. To abandon them is not to contemplate “a different morality,” but to abandon the moral domain itself, to change the subject of discussion (e.g., to mores and customs). And when these rights are infringed or abrogated in a certain culture or society, that culture or society proclaims its moral failings in virtue of this very fact. There is simply no room for negotiation here. Different cultures may have different mores, but they do not — cannot —have different morals at the level of basic principles. The uniformity of the higher-level norms determinative of morality means that different families of (appropriate) moral rules —different moral codes —simply represent diverse routes to the same ultimate destination. Moreover, given the functional integrity of morality —as an endeavor geared to safeguarding and promoting the best or real interests of rational agents as such —this is exactly how it should be. The mere fact that a single enterprise —morality —is at issue means that, despite the plurality of moral codes, we have to deal with a single uniform family of fundamentals; it means that the variability of moral rules is underpinned by an absolute uniformity of moral principles, the plurality of valid moral codes notwithstanding. All moral codes have important elements in common simply in view of the fact that morality is at issue. As such, all moral codes are bound to encompass such morally fundamental considerations as the following:

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• What people do matters. Some actions are right, others wrong; some are acceptable and some are not. There is an important difference here. • This is not just a matter of convention, custom, and the way things are done. Violations of moral principles are not just offenses against sensibility but against people’s just claims in matters where people’s actual well-being is at stake. • In violating moral rules, we inflict injury on the lives, welfare, or otherwise legitimate interests of others —either actually or by way of putting them at unjustified risk. Attunement to considerations of this sort is, by definition, essential to any system of morality, and serves to provide the basis for such imperatives as “Do not simply ignore other people’s rights and claims in your own deliberations!”; “Do not inflict needless pain on people!”; “Honor the legitimate interests of others!”; “Do not take what rightfully belongs to others without their appropriately secured consent!”; “Do not wantonly break promises!”; and “Do not cause someone anguish simply for your own amusement!” In the context of morality, principles and rules of this sort are universal and absolute. They are of the very essence of morality; in abandoning them, we would withdraw from a discussion of morality and would, in effect, be changing the subject. What we would say might be interesting, and even true, but it would deal with another topic. From the moral point of view, the empirical search for “cultural invariants,” as pursued by some ethnologists, is thus entirely beside the point.10 When such investigators embark on a cross-cultural quest for “moral universals” or “universal values” amid the variation of social customs, they are engaged in a search which, however interesting and instructive in its own way, has nothing whatever to do with the sort of normative universality at issue with morality as such. Moral universality is not a matter of cross-cultural commonality but of a conceptually constrained uniformity. (It would be just as pointless to investigate whether another culture’s forks have tines.) How can this fixity of the conception of morality and of the fundamental principles that are at issue within it —inherent in the monolithic uniformity of “what morality is” —be reconciled with the plain fact of a diversity of (presumably cogent) answers to the question: “What is it moral to do?” How can such an absolutism of morality’s fundamentals coexist with the patent relativity of moral evaluations across different times and cultures? 10 See, e.g., Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture and Behavior (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1962); Kluckhohn, “Ethical Relativity; Sic et Non,” The Journal of Philosophy 52 (1955): 663–77; R. Redfield, “The Universally Human and the Culturally Variable,” The Journal of General Education 10 (1967): 150–60; Ralph Linton, “Universal Ethical Principles: An Anthropological View,” in R. N. Anshen, ed., Moral Principles in Action (New York: Harper, 1952); and Linton, “The Problem of Universal Values,” in R. F. Spencer, ed., Method and Perspective in Anthropology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954).

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The answer lies in the fact that several intermediate levels or strata inevitably separate the overarching aims and principles of morality from any concrete judgments about what it is moral to do. We have, in fact, to deal with a descending hierarchy of the form indicated in table 1. At the topmost level (level 1), we have the defining aims of morality, the objectives that identify the moral enterprise as such. At this level, we are instructed to act with a view to safeguarding the valid interests of others and to avoid harming them. These defining aims of morality explicate what is at issue when it is with morality (rather than, say, basket-

Table 1. Illustrations from the Implementation Hierarchy of Morality Level 1: Defining Aims of Morality • To support the best interests of people. • To avoid injuring other people. Level 2: Fundamental Principles (Controlling Values) • Do not cause people needless pain (gentleness). • Do not endanger people’s lives or their well-being unnecessarily (care for safety). • Honor your genuine commitments to people; in dealing with people, give them their just due ( probity). • Help others when you reasonably can (generosity). • Do not take improper advantage of others ( fairness). • Treat others with respect. • Do not violate the duly established rights and claims of others. • Do not unjustly deprive others of life, liberty, or the opportunity for self-development. • Do not deliberately aid and abet others in wrongdoing. Level 3: Governing Rules • Do not kill. • Do not lie. • Do not cheat. • Do not steal. Level 4: Operating Directives • Killing in self-defense, in war, or when executing a legal judgment is justifiable. • Be candid when replying to appropriate questions, but lying to save another’s life is permissible. • Do not play with unfair dice or defraud others in trade. • Stealing when one’s family is starving is allowable. Level 5: Concrete Rulings • Jones, return the money you borrowed from Smith. • Mr. CEO, do not pollute this river; dispose of your sewage elsewhere. • Mrs. Smith, do not let these children play with those matches.

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weaving) that we propose to concern ourselves. In spelling out the purpose of morality, what it is all about, these top-level norms provide the ultimate reference points of moral deliberation. Moreover, they are unalterably fixed; they are inherent in the very nature of the subject. These aims also fix the fundamental principles and controlling values (level 2) that delineate the moral virtues (fairness, generosity, probity, and the rest). Such values define the salient norms that link the abstract defining aims of morality to an operational morality of specific governing rules. The norms embodied in level 2 are universal and absolute, serving as parts of what makes morality the thing it is. Accordingly, these level-2 principles also lie fixedly in the very nature of the subject. At the two topmost levels, then, there is simply no room for any disagreement about morality. Here disagreement betokens misunderstanding: if one does not recognize the fundamental aims, principles, and values that characterize the moral enterprise as such, then one is simply talking about something else altogether. In any discussion of morality, these things are simply givens provided by the very terms of reference at issue. However, this situation changes as one moves further down the levels and takes additional steps toward concreteness. At level 3, we encounter the governing rules and regulations that direct the specifically moral transaction of affairs. Here we have generalities of the usual sort: “Do not lie”; “Do not cheat”; “Do not steal”; etc. At this level, we come to the imperatives that guide our deliberations and decisions. Like the Ten Commandments, they set out the controlling rules of the moral practices of a community, providing us with general guidance in moral conduct. Here variability begins to set in, for these rules implement morality’s ruling principles at the concrete level of recommended practices in a way that admits of adjustment to the changeable circumstances of local conditions. A generalized governing rule proceeds on the order of the injunction “Do not steal” (i.e., “Do not take something that properly belongs to another”). This is, in itself, still something abstract and schematic. It still requires the concrete fleshing out of substantive implementing specifications to tell us what sorts of things make for proper ownership. Thus, the next level, level 4, presents us with the ground rules of procedure or operating directives that furnish our working guidelines and criteria for the moral resolution of various types of cases. (For example: “Killing in self-defense, in war, or when executing a legal judgment is justifiable.”) At this level of operating directives, the variability of local practice comes to the fore, so that there is further room for diversification here; we ourselves implement the level-3 rule “Do not lie” by way of the level-4 directive “Be candid when replying to appropriate questions,” but a society of convinced skeptics could not do so. The operating directives of level 4 incorporate the situation-relative standards and criteria though which the more abstract, level-3 rules get their grip on concrete situations. Those general rules themselves are

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too abstract —too loose or vague —to be applicable without further directions to give them a purchase on concrete situations. They must be given concrete implementation with reference to local, and thus variable, arrangements.11 Finally, at the lowest level (level 5), we come to concrete rulings, individual resolutions with respect to the specific issues arising in particular cases. (For example: “It was wicked of Lady Macbeth to incite her husband to kill the king.”) In the implementation hierarchy laid out in table 1, we thus descend from what is abstractly and fixedly universal to what is concrete and variable. The principles of level 2 can be viewed as direct implications of the aims of level 1, but as we move downward past level 3 to the operating directives of level 4, there is, increasingly, a looseness or “slack” that makes room for the specific and variable ways in which different groups implement the particular higher-level objectives at issue. As we have seen, the entire hierarchy begins with the ruling imperative: “Support the best interests of people.” This overarching purpose does not itself stand subordinate to anything else. It is the defining aim of the enterprise that gives unity and determinativeness to the justificatory venture. The process of validating lower-level considerations in terms of higher-level ones must come to a stop somewhere. Overall, then, we have to deal with a chain of subordination-linkages that connect a concrete moral judgment — a particular moral actrecommendation or command (at level 5) —with the ultimate defining aim of the moral enterprise (level 1). We confront a hierarchy of imperatives that place different injunctions at different levels of fundamentality in the moral enterprise, with some (the defining aims and fundamental principles) absolute and others (the concrete rulings) variable and relative to context and circumstance. Concrete moral rulings must derive their validity through being appropriate instantiations of an overarching principle of universal (unrestricted) validity. To be sure, there is a “slack” that leaves room for increasing variability and dissensus, especially at the hierarchy’s two lowest levels. Operating directives and concrete rulings will vary with situations and circumstances. We cannot expect to encounter any universal consensus across cultural and temporal divides: moralists of different eras (like physicians) are bound to differ, and the same is true of different cultures. There is, inevitably, substantial variability among particular groups, each with its own ideas influenced by locally prevailing conditions and circumstances. 11 The analogy of natural law is helpful: “Theft, murder, adultery and all injuries are forbidden by the laws of nature; but which is to be called theft, what murder, what adultery, what injury in a citizen, this is not to be determined by the natural but by the civil law . . .” (Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, chap. IV, sec. 16). St. Thomas Aquinas holds that appropriate human law must be subordinate to the natural law by way of “particular determination” — with different human laws, varying from place to place, nevertheless representing appropriate concretizations of the same underlying principle of natural law. See Summa Theologica, IaIIae, questions 95–96.

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Nonetheless, the impact of lower-level variation is mitigated by the fact that justification at lower levels proceeds throughout with reference to higher levels where uniformity prevails. At the level of aims and fundamental principles, then, morality is absolute; its strictures at this level hold good for everyone, for all rational agents. Lower-level rules, directives, and rulings must —if valid —preserve a “linkage of subordination” to those highest-level abstractions. The validity of concrete rulings is always a matter of their attuning global (and abstract) prescriptions to local (and concrete) conditions. Without that linkage to the fixed, highest-level absolutes (levels 1 and 2), the linkage to morality itself is severed. For a concrete ruling to be a proper moral ruling at all, there must be a suitable moral rationale for the action —a pathway of subordination that connects it in a continuous manner all the way up to the defining aims of the moral enterprise. Varying practices and codes of procedure only possess moral validity insofar as they are implementations of a fixed and determinate set of moral principles. Moral validity must always be rooted in a moral universality that is constrained by a conceptual fixity. VI. The Claims of Our Own Community How does the moral code of any society secure its obligating hold on me? Why is it that I should see myself as duty-bound to follow the established rules of my community rather than some other rules? The answer is straightforward. A certain (potentially variable) rule obtains its binding grip (its deontic hold, as it were) upon me precisely through representing the contextually appropriate way of implementing a fixed moral principle or value in the particular social context in which I find myself. Local morality is a matter of substantially limited implementation of universal principles, and its bearing upon ourselves is rooted in the fact that it is our particular circumstance and situation that is at issue. The salient point is that the moral code of our own community is, through this very fact, the one that is paramount for us. This moral code is the one that defines and specifies the rights and expectations of those others with whom we are (ex hypothesi ) co-situated in a context of mutual interaction. After all, in morality, as elsewhere, the universal is available to us only through mediation of the specific: one can only pursue a generalized desideratum via its particularized (and variable) concretizations. Communication is universal, language is specific; eating is universal, cuisine is local; morality is universal, particular concrete moral codes are variable and diversified. Nonetheless, such variability does not undermine or abrogate validity. The universals of morality not only permit but require adjustment to local conditions, and at the local level we are concerned not with the validation of morality as such, but with the justification of a particular moral code for a particular group in particular

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circumstances. The concrete moral code of our community is the only way in which implementation of the higher-level demands of morality is available to us, given the realities of the particular context in which we live and labor. To be sure, the behavioral practices of a society (ours included) are not above criticism. Anything that people do can be done badly —the shaping of a moral code included. Confronted by any set of purported “moral rules of behavior,” we can and should ask: How well do these rules implement the fundamental principles that articulate the aims of the moral enterprise as we do (and must) understand it? Any system, for example, that authorizes the infliction of pain on people for no better reason than affording amusement to others deserves flat-out condemnation and rejection. It would be a decisive objection to any system of “morality” that it deems acceptable (let alone worthy of approbation) a mode of behavior which is immoral on the conscientious application of our standards —for example, a system that approves pointless lying, or wanton cruelty, or any other practice that undermines the legitimate interests of people. Accordingly, the moral code of one’s own community can be subjected to moral criticism and reevaluation. The question can always be pressed whether the concrete moral practices and rules of one’s own community do indeed implement effectively the definitive values of the moral enterprise and, above all, whether these practices and rules satisfactorily serve the best interests of people in general. The concrete moral code of our community can be found defective or deficient in point of morality. (Think of Nazi Germany, for example.) Socially accepted principles of action are clearly not beyond criticism. However, this criticism can, if appropriate, only be developed from the vantage point of those aims and fundamental principles that characterize the moral project as such. Of course, no belief system, no framework of thought, no system of norms —moral or otherwise —is an absolute, detached from the world and delivered to mankind in unchangeable perfection by the world-spirit from on high. We can do no more than utilize the local, particularized, diversified instruments we humans can manage to develop within the limitations of our place and time. Thus far, what moral relativists say makes sense. But this emphatically does not engender an indifferentist subjectivism, for pluralism does not mean that there are no applicable standards, that with morality one can throw things together any which way. As I have argued, an overarching purpose is operative in the very conception of what morality is all about, and this prevents morality from becoming unraveled as a rational enterprise through the pluralism and variability that relativists mistakenly see as somehow destructive of moral universality. Moreover, the existence of differences over the recognition of the fundamental facts at issue is not relativism but merely a perfectly rational situational contextualism. People must feed themselves and house them-

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selves. Nature dictates no single, unique process for accomplishing such ends: we must make the best use we can of the possibilities that place and time put at our disposal. The same holds true with respect to morality’s requirements of due care for the interests of people. Here, too, one must simply do the best one can, striving within the conditions and circumstances of one’s setting to establish practices and rules that align human interactions in a productive harmony from which everyone can benefit. VII. Conclusion What, then, of moral objectivity? Let us go back to basics. What is it that makes something objective? The objectivity of an issue lies in its being a matter of fact that, in principle, can be determined to be so by anyone, because what is at issue is not a matter of opinion or of custom but rather obtains impersonally, independently of what individual people may think or prefer. Objective matters do no lie in the eyes of the beholder but pivot on the actual facts. This being so, consider the salient question that arises in regard to morality: Would the prevalence of such-and-such a way of behaving among the members of the community at large effectively conduce to people’s best interests in making their lives more secure, more pleasant, and/or more rewarding and satisfying? The matter at issue here is not a matter of what I like or what would please me; it is not my attitude or my reaction or my own personal interests that are at issue —or indeed yours or anybody’s. The question is inherently general, relating to the reaction of people at large, and it relates not to what they want but rather to what makes them better off by way of being conducive to their well-being. The question concerns the condition of people in general, not on the basis of what you or I or some group or other do think about this, but on the basis of what people should, and sensible people would, think. Specifically, it is a question of what makes someone better off in terms of their real or true interest —what conduces to their health and well-being, their security and safety, their opportunities for self-development and self-expression. All these issues, and others like them, are substantially matters of objective fact. Accordingly, what renders morality objective is the fact that moral evaluations can —and should —be validated as cogent through consideration of how the practices being evaluated advance the aims of the enterprise for whose sake morality is instantiated in human affairs. Morality as such consists in the pursuit, through variable and context-relative means, of invariant and objectively implementable ends that are rooted in a commitment to the best interests of people in general. To claim that someone ought (or ought not) to act in a certain way is thereby to commit oneself to the availability of a good reason why one should or should not

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do so —and a reason that is not only good but good in a certain mode, the moral mode, in showing that this sort of action is bound up with due care for the interests of others. Whether an action exhibits due care for the interests of others is something open to general view, something that can be investigated by other people as readily as by the agent himself. Since people’s (real or true) interests are rooted in their needs, the morally crucial circumstance that certain modes of action are conducive (and others harmful) to the best interests of people is something that can be investigated and sensibly assessed by the standards generally prevalent in rational discussion. These matters are not questions of feeling or taste, but represent something objective about which one can deliberate and argue in a sensible way on the basis of reasons whose cogency is, or should be, accessible to anyone. The modes of behavior of people that render life in their communities “nasty, brutish, and short” (or even merely more difficult and less pleasant than need be) generally admit of straightforward and unproblematic discernment. The fact that thievery, vandalism, boorishness, arrogance, and rudeness are ethically inappropriate is not rooted in some individual’s or group’s dislike of such things, but rather in the (perfectly objective) fact that such modes of behavior will, as they become more prevalent, increasingly degrade the quality of life of the community by creating circumstances in which the pursuit by individuals of their life-plans and objectives becomes increasingly difficult. Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh