1. If epistemology is normative (as it seems to be), and if many of the arguments against moral realism can plausibly be extended to epistemic realism (as Cuneo argues), how can we explain the common sense belief that epistemic realism is more secure than ethical realism? Are we just making a gross error?
2. If epistemic and mathematical entities are indispensable to science (as realists in both camps claim), then how come our access to scientific facts is generally taken to be more evident than our access to epistemic and mathematical facts? Are we just making a gross error?
3. Cuneo claims that "some moral and epistemic facts are mutually implicative" (79). Is this because for any discourse X, X facts and epistemic facts are mutually implicative?
4. Is there any interesting sense in which mathematical and highly theoretical facts are normative? (I should add: probably not.)
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Argument from Queerness and Epistemic Norms
Scanlon, "What We Owe to Each Other", p.59
"Accepting a judgment that X is a reason for doing A seems to involve an element of normative commitment to, or endorsement of, a normative conclusion, an element that may be thought to be missing from the acceptance of a mere judgment of fact...[further:] such an account will construe 'taking something to be a reason' as a belief in a kind of non-natural fact that many regard as metaphysically odd...it may help to diminish this tendency toward skepticism to emphasize that the considerations I have just been discussing apply to reasons of all kinds--to reasons for belief as well as to reasons for action...so what we are concerned with here is not a distinction between facts and values, or between theoretical and practical reason, as these dichotomies are normally understood."
Sayre-McCord, "Moral Theory and Explanatory Impotence": "Once it has been granted that some explanations are better than others, many obstacles to a defense of moral values disappear. In fact, all general objections to the existence of value must be rejected as too strong. Moreover, whatever ontological niche and epistemological credentials we find for explanatory values will presumably serve equally well for moral values. (Of course, this leaves open the possibility that more specific attacks may be leveled at moral values; the point is just that once epistemic values are allowed, no general arguments against the existence of values can work."
Terence Cuneo, "The Normative Web": "Let's suppose for the moment that moral realists really are committed to the claim that moral facts are intrinsically motivating. Do we have any reason to think that epistemic facts are different in this respect?"
"Accepting a judgment that X is a reason for doing A seems to involve an element of normative commitment to, or endorsement of, a normative conclusion, an element that may be thought to be missing from the acceptance of a mere judgment of fact...[further:] such an account will construe 'taking something to be a reason' as a belief in a kind of non-natural fact that many regard as metaphysically odd...it may help to diminish this tendency toward skepticism to emphasize that the considerations I have just been discussing apply to reasons of all kinds--to reasons for belief as well as to reasons for action...so what we are concerned with here is not a distinction between facts and values, or between theoretical and practical reason, as these dichotomies are normally understood."
Sayre-McCord, "Moral Theory and Explanatory Impotence": "Once it has been granted that some explanations are better than others, many obstacles to a defense of moral values disappear. In fact, all general objections to the existence of value must be rejected as too strong. Moreover, whatever ontological niche and epistemological credentials we find for explanatory values will presumably serve equally well for moral values. (Of course, this leaves open the possibility that more specific attacks may be leveled at moral values; the point is just that once epistemic values are allowed, no general arguments against the existence of values can work."
Terence Cuneo, "The Normative Web": "Let's suppose for the moment that moral realists really are committed to the claim that moral facts are intrinsically motivating. Do we have any reason to think that epistemic facts are different in this respect?"
Reading Nagel Part I
"Just as their are rational requirements on thought, there are rational requirements on action, and altruism is one of them."
I suppose that he's referring to epistemology and ethics for this analogy. (I originally wrote something stupid here, but i deleted it!)
"just as the capacity to accept certain theoretical arguments is a condition of rationality" there's the ethics/epistemology comparison again.
"Something beyond justificaiton is needed." I didn't read this carefully enough, but I'm moving slowly and have to go on. But I think he just gave a version of the regress argument against foundationalism in epistemology? Or not?
The way he frames things reminds me of Smith: on the hand desires can't seem to provide the categorical normativity that we're looking for; what we're really looking for is a way to say that one who denies ethics is going against reason. On the other hand, the psychological picture of desires underwriting motivations is a very attractive one.
"I believe that an explanation can be discovered for the basic prinicples of ethics, but not a justification."
"Philosophers who believe that there is no room for rational assessment of the basic springs of motivation will tend to be internalists, but at the cost of abandoning claims to moral objectivity. One way to do this is to build motivatoinal content into the meanign of ethical assertions by turning them into expressions of a special sort of inclination..." Expressivism. "A stronger position one which ties the movitation to the cognitive content of ethical calims requires the postulatoin of motivational influences which one cannot reject once one becomes aware of them."
He claims Moore's intuitionism is a result of recognizing the distance between natural facts and evaluative ones, but failing to produce an internalist position, th erelevent inclinatoin or attitude.
Hume: "Among the conditions for the presence of a reason for action there must always be a deirse or inclination capable ofmotivating one to act accordingly...given Hume's famous restirctions on rational assessment of the passions and of preferences, the possibility of justifying morality is strictly limited. Any justificaiton ends finallywith the rationally gratuitous presence of theemotion of sympathy; if that condition were not met, one would simply have no reason to be moral."
"But still, the motivational basis is prior to and independent of the ethical system which derives from it. A quite different sort of theory would be necessary to alter that relation of priority. Plato and Aristotle constitute examples of such a rebillion against the priority of psychology...Fortunately, we have a far etter example in th eperson of Kant, who is explicitly and consciously driven by the demand for an ethical system whose motivaitonal grip is not dependent on desires which must simply be taken for granted... A hypothetical imperative is the only kind which Hume regards as possible. It states what a given desire provides one with a motivation to do, and it applies only if one is subject to that desire. The desire itself is not comanded by the imperative. Consequently no hypothetical imperative can state an uncondiationl requirement on action."
Just thinking about the thesis again: a really cool result would be to show that realism of all sorts is tied to each other. Scientific realism and ethical realism rise and fall together. This could show that epistemic realism isn't really getting its force from anything but the assumption that our science is true in a real sense. Tie all the realisms together, rather than all the normative stuff together (but really this is the same thing). Another really cool result would be to reveal how exactly the objections go wrong, if they're originally made in the strong way as opposed to the weaker one.
III. The Solution
"The issue of priority between ethics and motivaiton theory is for an internalist of crucial importance. The position which I shall defend resembles that ofKant in two repsects: first ir ptovides an account of ethical motivation which doesn't rely on the assumption that motivatoinal factor is already present among the conditions of any moral requirement...there are reasons for action which are specifically moral; it is because they represent moral requirements that they can motivate, and not vice versa...Certain ethical principles are themselves propositions of motivatoin theory so fundamental tha tthey cannot be derived from or defined in terms of previously understood motivations..thus they define motivational possibilities, rather than presupposing them...The second way in which my position resembles Kant's is that it assigns a central role in the operation of ethical motives to a certain feature of the agent's metaphysical conception of himself. On Kant's view the conception is that of freedom whereas on my view it is the conceptio nof oneself as merely a person among others equally real."
We are not fuly free to be amoral, or insusceptible to moral claims. That is what makes us men.
So according to this way of viewing things, Hume is right about motivations and desires, but there's just a desire that is so inescapable it might as well be objective. It can't be resisted, so neither can morality.
This strikes me as suprising: "This solutoin may appear to involve an ellegitimate conflation of explanatory and normative inquiries. But a close connection between the two is already embodied in the orindary concept of a reason, for we can adduce reasons either to explain or to justify action." Hmm...I wonder if we could escape the muck of trying to explain explanation by providing a reason-based, normative account. For later.
IV. "Interpretation is not a species of justification. A justificaiton must proceed within the context of a system of reasons, by showing that certain conditions are met which provide sufficient reason for hat which is being justified. Since my claims concern the formal character of any system of reasons (explanatory of normative) which can provide the context for particular rational justificaions,there can be nothing more fundamental to appeal to in the way of reasons for adhering to the specific conditions. They lie beyond the range of justification."
This would seem important for epistemology as well, and defending foundationalism against the regress argument.
"Moral and other practical requirements are grounded in a metaphysics of action, and finally in a metaphysics of the person. The more central and unavoidable is the conception of oneself on which the possibility ofmoral motivation can be shown to depend the closer we will have come to demonstrating that the demands of ethics are inescapable."
What I love about Korsgaard is the deep account she gives of action, motivation, reasons, and ethics, and this is what it's like to read Nagel too. And Scanlon. These guys are great.
"I have no confidence that it is a necessary truth that we are constituted as we are, inthe fundamental respects whic hgive rise to our susceptibility to moral considerations. But if we were not so constituted, we should be unrecognizably diffeernt, and tha tmay be enough for the purpose of the argumen."
"There are parallels here to the requiements on theoretical reasoning."
I suppose that he's referring to epistemology and ethics for this analogy. (I originally wrote something stupid here, but i deleted it!)
"just as the capacity to accept certain theoretical arguments is a condition of rationality" there's the ethics/epistemology comparison again.
"Something beyond justificaiton is needed." I didn't read this carefully enough, but I'm moving slowly and have to go on. But I think he just gave a version of the regress argument against foundationalism in epistemology? Or not?
The way he frames things reminds me of Smith: on the hand desires can't seem to provide the categorical normativity that we're looking for; what we're really looking for is a way to say that one who denies ethics is going against reason. On the other hand, the psychological picture of desires underwriting motivations is a very attractive one.
"I believe that an explanation can be discovered for the basic prinicples of ethics, but not a justification."
"Philosophers who believe that there is no room for rational assessment of the basic springs of motivation will tend to be internalists, but at the cost of abandoning claims to moral objectivity. One way to do this is to build motivatoinal content into the meanign of ethical assertions by turning them into expressions of a special sort of inclination..." Expressivism. "A stronger position one which ties the movitation to the cognitive content of ethical calims requires the postulatoin of motivational influences which one cannot reject once one becomes aware of them."
He claims Moore's intuitionism is a result of recognizing the distance between natural facts and evaluative ones, but failing to produce an internalist position, th erelevent inclinatoin or attitude.
Hume: "Among the conditions for the presence of a reason for action there must always be a deirse or inclination capable ofmotivating one to act accordingly...given Hume's famous restirctions on rational assessment of the passions and of preferences, the possibility of justifying morality is strictly limited. Any justificaiton ends finallywith the rationally gratuitous presence of theemotion of sympathy; if that condition were not met, one would simply have no reason to be moral."
"But still, the motivational basis is prior to and independent of the ethical system which derives from it. A quite different sort of theory would be necessary to alter that relation of priority. Plato and Aristotle constitute examples of such a rebillion against the priority of psychology...Fortunately, we have a far etter example in th eperson of Kant, who is explicitly and consciously driven by the demand for an ethical system whose motivaitonal grip is not dependent on desires which must simply be taken for granted... A hypothetical imperative is the only kind which Hume regards as possible. It states what a given desire provides one with a motivation to do, and it applies only if one is subject to that desire. The desire itself is not comanded by the imperative. Consequently no hypothetical imperative can state an uncondiationl requirement on action."
Just thinking about the thesis again: a really cool result would be to show that realism of all sorts is tied to each other. Scientific realism and ethical realism rise and fall together. This could show that epistemic realism isn't really getting its force from anything but the assumption that our science is true in a real sense. Tie all the realisms together, rather than all the normative stuff together (but really this is the same thing). Another really cool result would be to reveal how exactly the objections go wrong, if they're originally made in the strong way as opposed to the weaker one.
III. The Solution
"The issue of priority between ethics and motivaiton theory is for an internalist of crucial importance. The position which I shall defend resembles that ofKant in two repsects: first ir ptovides an account of ethical motivation which doesn't rely on the assumption that motivatoinal factor is already present among the conditions of any moral requirement...there are reasons for action which are specifically moral; it is because they represent moral requirements that they can motivate, and not vice versa...Certain ethical principles are themselves propositions of motivatoin theory so fundamental tha tthey cannot be derived from or defined in terms of previously understood motivations..thus they define motivational possibilities, rather than presupposing them...The second way in which my position resembles Kant's is that it assigns a central role in the operation of ethical motives to a certain feature of the agent's metaphysical conception of himself. On Kant's view the conception is that of freedom whereas on my view it is the conceptio nof oneself as merely a person among others equally real."
We are not fuly free to be amoral, or insusceptible to moral claims. That is what makes us men.
So according to this way of viewing things, Hume is right about motivations and desires, but there's just a desire that is so inescapable it might as well be objective. It can't be resisted, so neither can morality.
This strikes me as suprising: "This solutoin may appear to involve an ellegitimate conflation of explanatory and normative inquiries. But a close connection between the two is already embodied in the orindary concept of a reason, for we can adduce reasons either to explain or to justify action." Hmm...I wonder if we could escape the muck of trying to explain explanation by providing a reason-based, normative account. For later.
IV. "Interpretation is not a species of justification. A justificaiton must proceed within the context of a system of reasons, by showing that certain conditions are met which provide sufficient reason for hat which is being justified. Since my claims concern the formal character of any system of reasons (explanatory of normative) which can provide the context for particular rational justificaions,there can be nothing more fundamental to appeal to in the way of reasons for adhering to the specific conditions. They lie beyond the range of justification."
This would seem important for epistemology as well, and defending foundationalism against the regress argument.
"Moral and other practical requirements are grounded in a metaphysics of action, and finally in a metaphysics of the person. The more central and unavoidable is the conception of oneself on which the possibility ofmoral motivation can be shown to depend the closer we will have come to demonstrating that the demands of ethics are inescapable."
What I love about Korsgaard is the deep account she gives of action, motivation, reasons, and ethics, and this is what it's like to read Nagel too. And Scanlon. These guys are great.
"I have no confidence that it is a necessary truth that we are constituted as we are, inthe fundamental respects whic hgive rise to our susceptibility to moral considerations. But if we were not so constituted, we should be unrecognizably diffeernt, and tha tmay be enough for the purpose of the argumen."
"There are parallels here to the requiements on theoretical reasoning."
Friday, January 22, 2010
Failing to live up to anti-realism
"Moral antirealists such as Timmons, Horgan, and Richard Joyce agree that a moral antirealist position should not be so revisionary as to recommend that we cease to engage in moral discourse. According to these philosophers, such a recommendation would be fruitless, for moral concepts are so deeply entrenched in ordinary discourse that we couldn't jettison them even if we tried." (Cuneo 106)
Hogwash. Right now there are buses and billboards advertising against the once deeply entrenched philosophical position that God exists. If you're an antirealist you can't wuss out at the last step. Belief that some people are evil leads to an untold amount of death every year. How many wars have been fought over the mistaken belief that the enemy was evil? Why, think of all the German lives that could have been saved in World War II if people didn't believe that there was an objective good and evil!
(Or else, isn't morality a companion in guilt to religion?)
Hogwash. Right now there are buses and billboards advertising against the once deeply entrenched philosophical position that God exists. If you're an antirealist you can't wuss out at the last step. Belief that some people are evil leads to an untold amount of death every year. How many wars have been fought over the mistaken belief that the enemy was evil? Why, think of all the German lives that could have been saved in World War II if people didn't believe that there was an objective good and evil!
(Or else, isn't morality a companion in guilt to religion?)
Hypothetical and Categorical Reasons
The distinction seems right to me: there are some reasons--like sports reasons--that provide reasons to act but only if you care about them--only if you care about playing football well. There are other things--such as ethical reasons--that apply to a person even if he doesn't care about them. We would probably agree that someone who doesn't care about the outcome of a sports game doesn't have much of a good reason to follow the rules of football during a certain time, but we wouldn't agree that someone who doesn't care about ethics has no reason not to kill! So the distinction makes sense to me.
But for a while I've been puzzled about how a realist could explain this. Doesn't this seem like an odd feature of the world, that you have all these norms that are hypothetical, and they (we surely agree) are not objective features of the world, but then you have one sort of norm that is objective and an actual feature of the world? Isn't this something that the realist needs to explain? Or am I missing something. If anything pushes me to constructivism, this is it. But does this make any sense? Do I have any readers? If I have any readers, could you explain this to me?
But for a while I've been puzzled about how a realist could explain this. Doesn't this seem like an odd feature of the world, that you have all these norms that are hypothetical, and they (we surely agree) are not objective features of the world, but then you have one sort of norm that is objective and an actual feature of the world? Isn't this something that the realist needs to explain? Or am I missing something. If anything pushes me to constructivism, this is it. But does this make any sense? Do I have any readers? If I have any readers, could you explain this to me?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Something I've learned about the writing process
Strike while the iron is hot, and not necessarily on a blog.
I'm finding as I'm trying to actually write down some of the ideas that developed on the blog a week or two ago, that it's really boring to revisit some of these arguments. Yes, craft is important. But getting a draft can be excruciating, especially when I just feel like I'm rehashing boring ideas that are just waiting to be written again. So in the future if I write a blog post I'll attempt to make it crisper and closer, if I think I have something that will become part of the larger project.
I'm finding as I'm trying to actually write down some of the ideas that developed on the blog a week or two ago, that it's really boring to revisit some of these arguments. Yes, craft is important. But getting a draft can be excruciating, especially when I just feel like I'm rehashing boring ideas that are just waiting to be written again. So in the future if I write a blog post I'll attempt to make it crisper and closer, if I think I have something that will become part of the larger project.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The next 20 pages or so
If all goes well, much of this week will be spent writing 20 pages or so of material, focusing on Cuneo's work. Unless I lose faith in these arguments between now and then, here's a first outline of what I hope to do:
I. Cuneo's Core Argument
A. Limitations of Companions in Guilt style arguments
B. Doubts about explanatory argument
C. Doubts about argument from disagreement
D. Diagnose his successes--normativity of epistemology
II. Cuneo's Backup Argument (The Normative Web)
A. Reconstruct (Chap 2 and Chap 8)
B. Proves too much? Other hybrid statements from science
C. Does epistemology hybridize with many other discourses?
D. Differences between ethics and epistemology
E. I do see what he's saying though, and it is attractive. It does work nicely, so maybe I could patch up these arguments and defend Cuneo's web.
Then, my hope is to have a brilliant insight that allows me to write a third part:
III. My brilliant insight on Ethics, Epistemology, and Everything
A. Hmmm...what could this brilliant insight be?
B. What would it mean if epistemology is normative but unlike ethics in other ways?
C. Like an existence theorem in math, you really wanna be able to construct the object whose existence you've proven. Likewise, this sort of argument shows that there is a flaw in our arguments that poke holes in normative existants, and we have to figure out where that went wrong. Maybe?
D. Maybe there's another way to argue for Cuneo's Normative Web?
I. Cuneo's Core Argument
A. Limitations of Companions in Guilt style arguments
B. Doubts about explanatory argument
C. Doubts about argument from disagreement
D. Diagnose his successes--normativity of epistemology
II. Cuneo's Backup Argument (The Normative Web)
A. Reconstruct (Chap 2 and Chap 8)
B. Proves too much? Other hybrid statements from science
C. Does epistemology hybridize with many other discourses?
D. Differences between ethics and epistemology
E. I do see what he's saying though, and it is attractive. It does work nicely, so maybe I could patch up these arguments and defend Cuneo's web.
Then, my hope is to have a brilliant insight that allows me to write a third part:
III. My brilliant insight on Ethics, Epistemology, and Everything
A. Hmmm...what could this brilliant insight be?
B. What would it mean if epistemology is normative but unlike ethics in other ways?
C. Like an existence theorem in math, you really wanna be able to construct the object whose existence you've proven. Likewise, this sort of argument shows that there is a flaw in our arguments that poke holes in normative existants, and we have to figure out where that went wrong. Maybe?
D. Maybe there's another way to argue for Cuneo's Normative Web?
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