Parsimony and Burden of Proof

As I reread my thesis in preparation for my oral exam tomorrow, I'm particularly struck by a poorly thought out argument in the second chapter.

In short, the argument was that the burden of proof could be shifted away from the moral realist by noting there is an unavoidable arbitrariness in epistemology. The problem with this argument is that it doesn't really respond to the parsimony requirement, as provide a route for avoiding it. That wasn't the clearest sentence I've written in my life, so let me try again.

The problem for the Moral Realist is that parsimony requires that we don't believe that which we have no good reason to believe. And the response I offer, essentially, says that there are some cases in which parsimony isn't required. There's actually no parsimony requirement for our most basic beliefs.

Here are a couple concerns with this argument:

1) Does this mean that ANYTHING can avoid the parsimony requirement? Why only things like moral realism, treating our moral intuitions as ways of getting at moral facts?

Well, not anything. It's just that some epistemic beliefs/principles are prior to the parsimony requirement. They just happen to avoid it.

2) That's not going to cut it as a response. What if we took the parsimony requirement to be our first, most basic epistemic principle?

Then there's no room for epistemology, and you can't get going. You need to take some things on without having epistemic reason to if you're going to get anything at all.

3) What happens once we have the parsimony requirement? Don't we reflect on our prior principles and conclude that they turn out, in retrospect, to be problematic since we ought not believe them due to parsimony?

This is a pretty tough challenge, I think. One way to respond to it is to tweak the parsimony requirement so that it doesn't kill epistemology, and I actually think that this is pretty reasonable. It's overly simple to say that the parsimony requirement is that we simply never believe anything without having an epistemic reason. A fine way of putting it is that we don't believe extra things, and "extra" is glossed in the following way: non-elemental beliefs that we have no epistemic reason to believe.

Reading Gibbard, Chap 4

Chapter 4--Normative Psychology

"Competing Systems of Control"--He starts by thinking about "weakness of will" cases. In this section Gibbard distinguishes between animal control system and the normative control system. The normative control system is posited to be only a motivating force for humans, and to have a lot to do with language. A norm is a linguistically encoded precept. The normative control system has a lot to do with language, and that "a lot" has to do with coordination problems and planning problems. This is just supposed to be a good start, not the end of the story. But in this section we get conflicts between normative and animal control systems.

"Conflicts with Social Motivations"--In this section we get conflicts with social motivations and the normative control system. Above we didn't have conflicts between norms. This time we have conflicts between norms. But it's not symmetric. It's the difference between two psychological states, that of accepting a norm and that of being in the grip of a norm.

"Biological Adaptation"--Some scientific speculation. He admits that more solid investigation is needed, and he invites it. The biological function of a faculty for accepting and being governed by norms is coordination. The capacity to accept norms and being in their grip are both coordination systems, though the former is distinctly human, and depends on language.

"The Biology of Coordination"--"It is in the role of language in coordinating behavior and expectations, I shall be suggesting, that we can discern what is special about accepting norms."

"Internalizing Norms"--This term refers to what being in the grip of a norm and accepting a norm have in common. Animals are capable of internalizing norms. No decision involved, it's just built into their instincts. e.g. conversational distance. Sophisticated observers can formulate these norms, though usually those who respect the norms aren't able to even notice them. "What then might we mean here by a norm? By the norm itself I suggest, we should mean simply a prescription or imperative that gives the rule a sophisticated observer could formulate." To internalize a norm is to have a motivational tendency to act on that pattern.

"Accepting Norms"--"The state of accepting a norm is identified b its place in a syndrome of tendencies toward action and avowal. This has to do with the language-infused system of coordination peculiar to humans. We accept norms in the context of normative discusion, actual and imaginary. We take positions and thereby expose ourselves to deamnds for consistency.

"Acceptance, Action, Persuasion"
"Normative Discussion and Philosophy" [Skipped these sections.]

Reading, Gibbard, Chap 3

Chapter 3: Analysis Broached

"What is Appraised as Rational or Not"--in this section he argues that beliefs, actions and emotions can all be appraised as rational or not. Some say that only voluntary things can be rationally appraised, but Gibbard thinks that beliefs are a counter-example to this, and actions aren't entirely voluntary anyway (since they have to do with intentions, which aren't entirely voluntary, I think). So there's nothing against emotions being rationally appraised, which is what he really needs for his account. You might say that emotions are rationally appraised to the extent that they're based on beliefs that can be rationally appraised (as Hume argued), but Gibbard argues that these beliefs would have to be subconscious, and only make themselves present to the extent that the person gets angry, so you might as well just say that anger is rationally evaluated.

"Rationality and Morality"--Gibbard makes several distinctions in this section in order to focus in on morality, and to give an analysis of the relationship between morality and rationality. First, he distinguishes subjective from objective morality. Subjective morality is what an agent should do given his beliefs and knowledge, and objective morality is what an agent should do if she had perfect knowledge, or something. Gibbard says that he sees no interest in objective morality, so he's only interested in the subjective stuff. Then he distinguishes between blameworthiness and morality, so that he's only giving an account of morality (which is forward looking, as opposed to blameworthiness, which is retrospective). As an account of blameworthiness he gives "iff it is rational for the agent to feel guilty over the act and for others to resent him for it." Instead, he gives an account for moral wrongness: "an act is wrong if and only if it violates standards for ruling out actions, such that if an agent in a normal frame of mind violated those standards because he was not substantially motivated to conform to them, he would be to blame." So it's an account of morality built out of the retrospective attitude of blame. Blame depends on standards of subjective wrongness and standards for responsibility, so Gibbard defines what a moral wrong is by blocking out one of the factors for blame (the standards for responsibility).

"The Norm-Expressivistic Analysis"--The previous section gave an analysis of morality, and here we get a provisional analysis of rationality. "Put roughly and cryptically, my hypothesis is that to think something rational is to accept norms that permit it." Accepting norms is a state of mind, so naturally basic. "An observer believes an action, belief, or attitude A of mine to be rational if and only if he accepts norms that permit A for my circumstances." We here get the idea that "moral norms are norms for the rationality of guilt and resentment."

"Second Thoughts"--He clarifies what he means by rationality, and I skimmed this section. Same with morality. He's interested not in what the terms mean, but rather with the particular meanings that he's associating with them. He's happy to call these terms something else.

"Structural Problems"--On this account, the question "Is it ever rational not to be moral" makes perfect sense. Likewise, we can understand perfectly well what it means to ask whether the "moral ought implies can." Another question also makes sense: "It morality of value?" The norm-expressivistic analysis gives us an interpretation of this question too: "Is it a good thing for norms for guilt and resentment to play a big role in our lives? Or might other kinds of motivation...bring many of the same benefits without the same costs." (See Nietzsche). All he's doing is showing how powerful and flexible his framework is, and trying to show you that it is a good analysis of what's been going on this whole time. "Familiar problems can be put in new form, as questions about the structure of well-founded sentiments."

Reading Gibbard, I

"The analysis is non-cognitivistic in the narrow sense that, according to it, to call a thing rational is not to state a matter of fact, either truly or falsely. None of this leaves normative language defective or second-rate. The analysis explains why we need normative language, and as it takes shape, it ascribes to rationality many of the features on which theories of normative fact insist. In many ways, normative judgments mimic factual judgments, and indeed factual judgments themselves rest on norms--norms for belief. Normative discussion is much like factual discussion, I shall be claiming, and just as indispensable."

I really need to keep this in mind when thinking about expressivism. Because of the 60s I tend to think of non-cognitivism as looking down on ethics and other normative talk, but it's really not doing that in today's age. What is at stake--the only thing at stake--is whether one can say of normative statements that they're true or false.

TMBG and Russel's Paradox

You've got to be very careful with these sorts of things, or you'll fall into Russel's Paradox.



"There's only one everything...You can put it in one pile." This comes dangerously close to saying that there is a set of everything, which would include all sets. The fact that this is a kid's song only makes things worse--corrupting the youth. They should be teaching ZFC-approved stuff to children.

Revising, rewriting, adding...

I definitely did not think I would still be doing this much work on it so close to the deadline, but here I am. Anyway, almost done; it's due tomorrow at 2 PM.

Reply to Critic, II Ctd.

I did a poor job of responding to this criticism last time, so let me try to handle it again. The reason why the criticism lands is because, in my account, I never explicate what is wrong with a paradoxical or self-defeating reason. Without such an account I leave myself wide open for misinterpretation, and I think that the objection that I considered last time is a kind of misinterpretation. So first I'll do the negative work and explain why that objection fails to land, and that will (hopefully) lead me into a positive account of what's wrong with paradoxical reasons.

Allow me to begin with the case of skepticism about the external world, a case that the objector raised. Here's the case that he raises. Suppose that we have some theory about the external world that implies that we have knowledge of that world. And then suppose that the evidence from our senses shows us that the evidence we have is compatible with us being fundamentally mistaken about our beliefs from the external world, and based on this tension we come to doubt that we have any knowledge of the external world. What's happened in this case is that we started without a belief in skepticism about our knowledge, and we end up with such a skeptical position. In between comes beliefs based on external world evidence; meaning, what got us to reject a belief that we have knowledge of the external world is a tension in our belief about the external world.

There seems to be nothing paradoxical about that. And the reason why there isn't anything paradoxical or self-defeating about that is because there's nothing that requires you to continue to believe something that motivated you to some further belief. To give another example, you might have an entire train of thought, the problems in each link of the chain motivating you to accept the next theoretical step, but that doesn't mean that you have to keep on believing the old theory, even though without it you wouldn't have made the progress that you made!

This is supposed to cause trouble for my argument about self-defeating reasons, since the argument seems to depend on the faulty premise that one must continue to believe something that was a motivating consideration.

This, however, is a bad analogy. In order to have the proper analogy you need to talk not about beliefs or knowledge that is discarded in the reasoning process, but rather reasons and norms. And once you focus on the actual reasons for skepticism that show up in the external world case, things become clarified. What is you reason for doubting that you have any knowledge of the external world in the above case? The reason is not your beliefs, but rather the tension in your beliefs. So you have a belief that you have a reason, something along the lines of "I ought not believe that I have knowledge of an area when my being completely wrong is consistent with the evidence." And there's nothing paradoxical about that at all.

Let's say that we wanted to construct a case that's really analogous--not fake analogous--to my case of rejecting epistemic norms for internal epistemic reasons. Many cases suggest themselves, and they're all pretty wacky. Suppose that the first rule of hockey was "There are no rules in hockey." Isn't this funny? Here's another one: a book that tells you on the first page, "Don't believe a single thing--including this sentence--that you read in this book." Isn't that odd? I've got one more: Suppose that you had a moral code, and one of the maxims in your moral theory is "To be moral is immoral." In all these cases you have the normative theory eating itself, more or less. And these all feel weird, precisely in the way that the external world/perception case does not.

OK, but this fails to ease our concerns, because we still haven't landed on precisely what is wrong with a self-defeating reason. Here's one suggestion of what I'm committed to (thanks to BN for the suggestion): "A thinker must be able to retain the reasons for her belief even after a change in view prompted by accepting that belief." Now, we need to be precise, because we're not interested in what the thinker concludes upon reflection after having made a judgment right now. What we're actually interested in is whether this counts as an epistemic reason to doubt epistemic realism at all. The suggestion is that my argument depends on the view that, in order for something to count as a reason, the thinker must not know that it won't disappear in the future.

If that's what I'm committed to, so be it. That would mean that I'm committed to what Thomas Nagel famously called "timeless reasons", which means that I'm committed to the view that reasons are timeless. This is a formal requirement on reasons, that requires something to be effective at all times in order for it to count as a reason at all. If that's all it takes to get epistemic realism, then fine.

But I'm not sure that I'm even committed to that, or at least nothing quite as strong as that. All I need is that, for a reason to be a reason at all, there's no way that it could be paradoxical in this sense, not that at no time in the future will this reason disappear. Now the challenge facing me is to get precise about what exactly is wrong with such a reason.

I'll start by making a distinction between formal and substantive considerations against a reason. A formal consideration against a reason is a consideration that counts against it counting as a reason at all. For example, in Nagel that a consideration is not consistent with a metaphysical conception of oneself as equally real across time counts against something being a reason at all. If it's not timeless, then it's not even a reason. A substantive consideration is a reason that stands in opposition to some reason, always countering it.

Let me begin by offering a formal account of why a self-defeating reason is not a reason. A reason must give us a clear directive on how to alter our behavior, and something that fails to do this does not count as a reason at all. According to this standard, a self-defeating fails as a reason because it offers no clear directive due to its self-defeating nature. Just as we do not know whether to believe the Cretan when he says that all Cretans are liars, we do not know whether any reason that resembles a Cretan in this way--it only counts in favor of something if it doesn't, it only doesn't count in favor of something if it does--counts as a reason at all.

Here's a substantive account of what's wrong with a self-defeating reason. Suppose that epistemology gave us an epistemic reason to doubt that epistemology gave us reasons at all. I'm assuming that this doesn't fail to count as a reason at all; suppose that it's a consideration against belief in epistemology. Here's something that seems generally true: you only have reason to promote X if all the propositions whose truth it presupposes are true. Now, what does it mean for a reason to presuppose a truth? By that, all I mean that if that proposition were false then there wouldn't be a reason. These are familiar; if it's not true that this property belongs to someone else then it wouldn't count as stealing and there wouldn't be a reason to avoid taking it for yourself. Anyway, what does a reason to doubt epistemic realism depend on? If it's an objective reason, then it depends on the truth of the proposition that there's are objective reasons. And so you have a direct contradiction in your epistemology: on the one hand you have a reason that there are no objective episteimc reasons, but you also think that its true that there are objective epistemic reasons. This explanation is completely general, it applies to any system of norms, and seems to make it impossible to make any progress on the issue.

Now, here's a good objection against this last paragraph: "A contradiction isn't exactly a great situation for epistemology either!" But now we're just running in circles. I AGREE that it's not good for epistemology to have contradicitons of any sort, but I just disagree that this can be construed into any clear epistemic reason. This provides a strong non-epistemic reason, perhaps, to reject epistemic realism. All that I'm saying is that epistemic realism is epistemically optional; it's up to you if you think that there's some non-epistemic reason for rejecting epistemic realism. Just don't pretend that this has anything to do with truth. It doesn't--otherwise it would be an epistemic reason!

In short, the example brought by the objector fails. I might rely on the formal requirement on reasons, argued for by Nagel, that reasons are always timeless. I might say that there's an even more minimal formal requirement. Or I might say that there's a substantive impasse that's necessarily brought by internal anti-realist reasons. I don't really care which one the reader likes, but I have three solid responses to the objection.