Alonzo Fyfe

My interest in PB's theory started with the fact that the vast majority of subjectivists use terms inconsistently. They eventually reach a contradiction when they want to say, at the same time, that the wrongness of taking the money out of my desk drawer (for example) depends on the agent's subjective states and, at the same time, a moral theory must say that it is clearly wrong to take the money.


Please, calm down. My arguments about the efficacy of pursuing this particular practical matter is, itself, a practical matter. It's nothing to get upset over. I offered what, to me, shounded like practical advice. If you have no problem with people discussing practical options, then why get upset about my making such a suggestion?

I have found, in many of my disputes with others, that if we can adopt a translation scheme between his use of terms and mine, that we often discover that we much of our dispute is purely semantic. We both believe the same thing, we simply differ in the language we use to express it.

Alternatively, we more quickly discover a substantive difference that we can focus on.


Not entirely. My points are also relevant if the people who do the things that I described are your opponents. It argues for the futility of pursuing a particular course of action because of the types of reactions you are likely to encounter.


Well, if you want to cast me as a proponent of confusion, that's a bit a straw man. Rather, I distinguish between two sorts of criticism based on language.

I tend to think of a true "abuse of language" as something that introduces an error into a theory (either an internal contradiction or an assumption that is contrary to fact) because of the way words are used.

Three examples often used in debates about value are:

(1) One fallacy tends to argue that the way moral terms are used in common language must be taken as sound such that, if a theory contradicts common moral practices, than the theory must be discarded. This is an invalid inference. In fact, the problem may well rest in the assumptions contained within those practices, and it is language, not the theory, that must yield. (Note: This particular view is called an "error theory", and I have drawn on the book ETHICS, INVENTING RIGHT AND WRONG by J.L. Mackie for many of my arguments.)

(2) Another common fallacy equivocates on the meaning of the word 'objective' (in the context of debate on value) -- where an individual shifts between "capable of being proved true or false" and "a value property intrinsic to that which is being evaluated." In fact, in almost every debate on objective vs. subjective ethics that I enounter the objectivist criticism of subjectivism is that it can yield no value claims that are true for all people independent of their own personal beliefs and desires -- as if the inability to make such value claims proves that values are intrinsic properties.

(3) A third problem rises when a person says "I am going to use the term X when I refer to these things," where X is a common term. However, in making this maneuver, the arguer sneaks in some traits which are a part of the common use of the term X but which are not true of the things he is referring to.

As I said, these are what I think of as a true "abuse of language".

At the same time, language is a human invention and, like all human inventions, flawed and in need of improvement over time. It is a fallacy to argue that all proposals for improving a human invention such as language should be rejected because it is different than what we have today. Such an argument presupposes the infallibility of what we have invented to date.


Our 'sense of justice' and 'sense of right and wrong' both require such a faculty. Practices that rely on these senses (the practice of searching our feelings to discover whether something is morally good or bad) also are invalid without such an assumption.

Most importantly, our common moral practice contains two elements that I think are incompatible. (1) That moral statements must necessarily be linked to the motivation of the agent such that everybody must necessarily have a reason to do what they ought, and (2) the harms inflicted on others are always relevant.

Our common moral practices presuppose a magical link between (1) and (2) -- that taking the money out of my desk drawer has some sort of capacity to prevent a person from taking it if they just saw the entity or property clearly enough.

But the link does not exist. Thus, our common moral practices are not valid in the real world -- not entirely, at least.


The task of the moral philosopher, in part, is to determine what ought to be tossed into the rubbish heap. It is not the job of the moral philosopher to save things from the rubbish heap that belong there.

What is valid in moral reasoning are arguments that require that both (1) and (2) above are true.

If you keep (1) and reject (2), you end up with PBs account of morality. If, on the other hand, you reject (1) and accept (2) you end up with moral externalism of the type that I have been defending.

It is not the job of the philosopher to invent a magical link between (1) and (2) so that they can both be true.


So does mine.

Well, not entirely -- it is accompanied by an argument that if we do not change how various moral terms are used -- if we keep our traditional practices, those practices are grounded on a false assumption and, consquently, moral reasoning can never be sound.


Not meaningless, false. The assumption that (1) and (2) above can both be true at the same time is not a meaningless assumption, it is a false assumption.

You talk about abuse of language -- you say that you are concerned that terms are not misused to generate confusion. Your use of the word "nonsense" here is near to such an abuse. Again, common moral claims are not nonsense. They contain a significant error.


As I already mentioned, start with J.L. Mackie, and then search the Philosophical Index and other resources for what is known as an "error theory."

I also call your attention to a similar debate in the philosophy of psychology, where our practice of explaining human action in terms of beliefs and desires is under fire. Error theorists suggest that these concepts are flawed and in need of serious revision -- some suggesting that we should toss these concepts in the trash heap and start over.

I have never heard any philosopher suggest -- in writing or in discussion -- that error theories can be dismissed out of hand because they are inherently unphilosophical. And I don't think that such a suggestion, if made within a philosophy department, would get very far.

(Besides, no theory should be evaluated on the basis of a popularity poll -- even among serious philosophers, but on the soundness of the objections that can be raised against it. Your argument here commits the 'band wagon' fallacy -- argumentum ad populum.)

And again, the proper word is not "nonsense". This is an "error theory," not a "nonsense theory."


I believe a better analogy would be that of reading animal entrails to predict the outcome of a battle. The ancients presuppose some sort of connection, that does not exist, between the way the entrails lay out and the future battle.

In the case of moral reasoning, rather than reading entrails, people attempt to read their own "sense" of justice, or of right and wrong. But this "sense" in fact, only measures their own preferences and desires. I can understand why they like this particular measure. With this instrument, they see right and wrong where they want to see it. And yet they insist (falsely) that their conclusions are far more significant than a simple preference. Of course, who does not want their likes and dislikes to carry the weight of moral law?

(The situation is actually a bit more complex. In most cases, we allow for the possibility that our senses can deceive us, so we look for verification that others sense the same thing we do. If the ten people I am with see the same pink elephant that I see, this better allows me to claim that there really is a pink elephant out there. And so, we look not only to our own sentiments in judging right and wrong, but we look to have our sentiments confirmed by evidence of the like sentiments of others.)

More generally, people make moral judgements based on what they, themselves, feel motivated to do, and what they discover that they want to force others to do (or to refrain from). The instrument, in fact, is not measuring an objective moral property "out there" like they think it is, it is measuring only their own likes and dislikes.

Now, let's go back to your statement about the purpose of philosophy. It is not the purpose of philosophy to find legitimacy in the practice of using entrails to predict the future if it is not, in fact, a legitimate practice. It is not the job of the philosopher to presume that you can predict the future from animal entrails and spend his time rationalizing this presumed legitimacy.


Do not expect a couple snippets of sample dialogue of two priests debating which type of sacrifice to make to the volcano god to convince me that these conversations are not based on a mistake.

Okay, that puts the case a bit too strongly. In both of your examples, the question remains "how do we determine which points are relevant and in what way?" If these points are based on a 'sense of right and wrong" then this assumes the mistake that I have discussed above. The fact that the agents do not perceive the mistake does not argue that no such mistake exists.

[ April 22, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

Alonzo Fyfe

I have often said that if you do not like my use of terms -- if you find them confusing -- then offer me some terms that you do like and I will translate them into your language. This is all consistent with my suggestion earlier that debates about the proper use of words are fruitless distraction -- so I am willing to surrender those debates at the first sign of resistance and yield to my opponent's use of terms.

So, if you want to insist that the word "moral" apply only to traditional practices, then I will answer that those practices should be discarded because they are built on a false assumption. It presupposes the existence of intrinsic moral properties and a faculty to sense them. Within those practices, people traditionally assert that "because what I sense is an intrinsic moral property. That this special moral property is such that anybody who perceives it and unstands it property will be motivated to react as I do -- anybody who is not moved as I am are sick, or perverse, or evil, or -- generally speaking -- defective in some way. And that, because of this defect, their interests may be dismissed." Or, more altruistically, "everybody has an interest in perceiving the true, intrinsic value of things -- or at least in being forced not to wallow in their degradation -- so I am doing them a favor by forcing them to pursue the same values that I sense are out there."

These practices should be abandoned because the assumption that there are intrinsic values and that we have a faculty to perceive them is false.

I have a proposal that I think captures most of the traditional practice freed from the mistake of assuming that values are intrinsic properties. It captures enough of the original practice free of the mistaken assumption of intrinsic value that I am comfortable using the word 'moral.' It DOES NOT include the practice of assuming that anybody who perceives these properties and understands them will be moved to react in a particular way, but it does refer to something real, objective, and that takes seriously the interests of all people involved.

If this is good enough for you to call these things 'moral", then that's fine. If you insist on this magical link to motivation, I am not going to threaten to hold my breath and turn blue unless you and agree to my use of these terms. I will simply answer, "Fine. Morality is a myth and has no relevance in the real world. Now, let's move on and talk about an option that is relevant in the real world that captures most of what we used to talk about under the concept of morality, and let's call this -- I don't know, pick a term. I do not find value in spending huge quantities of time debating about what things should be called.

As for the "Bill Gates" objection, I admit that, technically, nothing dictates that words be used one way or the other. However, I do believe that there are some points that recommend the suggestion that moral terms be used in referencing an "all things considered" value as opposed to a "some things considered" value. That all "some things considered" values mean that those holding the values not considered are being treated as mere things -- as tools valued only insofar as they are useful to those people whose values are considered.

Can I thereby insist that the term must be used only in this all-things-considered sense? No. The argument does not support that type of conclusion. It only supports a recommendation.

Is it a fatal flaw that my account cannot support a conclusion that we must use words a particular way? Again, the answer is no -- because nothing dictates how any word may be used. When it comes to inventing a language, we never encounter a natural law of language that dictates its usage. We only encounter practical suggestions that recommend one usage over another. And I am not concerned that I cannot provide an argument that no theory of any time in any field of study is ever going to be able to provide.

And, yet, I am concerned when I read an objection to a theory because its advocate cannot do what nobody in any field of knowledge can ever do, provide a conclusive argument that a term must be used in one particular way and no other.

[ April 22, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

99Percent

Alonzo Fyfe: These practices should be abandoned because the assumption that there are intrinsic values and that we have a faculty to perceive them is false.

But there is an intrisic value that all living organisms have and can be perceived: life itself.

A moral agent because it is alive, perceives the intrisic value of life and therefore pursues life for itself. If he didn't it will very quickly die.

Alonzo Fyfe

There is no more of a reason to believe this then there is to believe that a person who does not perceive the intrinsic value of money would very quickly be penniless, or the person who does not perceive the intrinsic value in work will very quickly be unemployed, or the person who does not believe in the intrinsic value of kitchen utensils will quickly find himself without forks and spoons.

It seems particularly strange to explain plant longevity in terms of perceiving some sort of intrinsic value in life itself. Rather, it is easier to explain it in terms of a persistant set of chemical reactions.

Animals, I would wager, see no value in life itself. They drink because they are thirsty, eat because they are hungry, have sex because their mind is wired in such a way that, in perceiving a fertile mate, this triggers behavior which happens to result in pregnancy. In this, procreation and living are alike -- both are unintended side effects of other likes and dislikes, not an end in itself.

For example, we prefer the foods that were best suited for keeping our ancestors alive, not the foods that would keep us alive. We eat too much fat and not enough fruits and vegetables, and die younger than we should, because we are descendant from beings that craved fat and, thereby, happened to obtain the calories they needed to survive. We inherited their love of fatty foods, not their faculty for perceiving intrinsic value in life.

Evolution creates even more significant problems for an intrinsic value theorist. One must postulate a huge coincidence between intrinsic value and what is in the evolutionary interests of humans. It is logically possible that intrinsic values could have been found in something other than life -- for example, in eating one's own children. Those with the faculty for perceiving intrinsic value, then, would quickly die off, and we would be descendants of those perverse individuals who shunned that which had intrinsic value.

Evolution selects our faculties, and it does not select them on the basis of being true to some external intrinsic value. It selects them on the basis of successful procreation.

Now, life does have a significant amount of instrumental value. We value certain types of experiences, but must be alive to experience those things. So life itself is a useful tool. Yet, when we can expect more bad experiences than good experiences (experiences of severe pain and immobility yields an inability to experience places and events we once enjoyed), the instrumental value of life diminishes, and we are better off without it.

The most important problem in the "intrinsic value of life" thesis comes from explaining how it works. What are the causal mechanisms between this intrinsic value of life and our behavior? We can explain how we sense photons, sound waves, temperature, chemical compounds (though taste and smell). How do we perceive intrinsic values?

In short, the thesis that life has intrinsic value has no explanatory or predictive power, and is difficult to square with other things we know -- particularly evolution. I find as little reason for believing in intrinsic values as I do for believing in ghosts, angels, and God itself.

[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

99Percent

Alonzo Fyfe: I think what you are failing to see is that the intrisic value of life comes from life itself by what life is. Life needs more life in order to be life or else it will quickly die off. It is the characteristic of life itself.

There is no more of a reason to believe this then there is to believe that a person who does not perceive the intrinsic value of money would very quickly be penniless, or the person who does not perceive the intrinsic value in work will very quickly be unemployed, or the person who does not believe in the intrinsic value of kitchen utensils will quickly find himself without forks and spoons.

The difference lies in that the valuer needs life in order to value. That is why life has intrisic value and is perceived by the valuer. You don't need money to value money, you don't need to have work to value work, you don't need spoons to value spoons, but you do need life to value life.

Evolution creates even more significant problems for an intrinsic value theorist. One must postulate a huge coincidence between intrinsic value and what is in the evolutionary interests of humans.

I don't think so if you take into consideration that life pursues more life and tries to adapt as much as possible (though mutation and survival of the fittest) in different environments. Life in its rawest form will try to multiply as much as possible.

Evolution selects our faculties, and it does not select them on the basis of being true to some external intrinsic value. It selects them on the basis of successful procreation.

Yes, in effect the intrisic value is life itself.

Now, life does have a significant amount of instrumental value. We value certain types of experiences, but must be alive to experience those things. So life itself is a useful tool.

Life is not a tool, it is fundamental to everything else, that is why it is intrinsically valuable!

Yet, when we can expect more bad experiences than good experiences (experiences of severe pain and immobility yields an inability to experience places and events we once enjoyed), the instrumental value of life diminishes, and we are better off without it.

But to even consider if you are better off without it you have to be alive to begin with.

In short, the thesis that life has intrinsic value has no explanatory or predictive power, and is difficult to square with other things we know -- particularly evolution.

I think it has a great predictive power: life pursues more life or else it ceases to exist, and particularly explains evolution, since in order for life to perpetuate it needs a mechanism that allows it to adapt to the environment.

Alonzo Fyfe

This is the classic formulation of a statement of instrumental value.

The distinction between the value that something has as an end in itself or for its own sake, and the value that something has as a means to something else or as an instrument (tool) rests precisely on whether that statement of value makes reference to something else.

Where a value statement makes reference to something else (A has value in order to B), this is instrumental value.

What you are saying above is that life has (instrumental) value in order to value. At which point, the question becomes "what is the value of valuing?" The value of life is dependent on the value of valuing.

This is called the anthropomorphic fallacy -- attributing human characteristics to that which is not human. Specifically, attributing beliefs, desires, and decision-making capability to that which has no such capability.

Within evolutionary theory, statements of the form that life is "pursuing" or "trying" things are considered literally false. They may be useful as metaphores or figures of speach, but they are not to be taken as literally true.

Rather, evolution tends towards these effects, but these tendancies are without intention and without caring one way or the other about the end result -- the same way that the wind in the mid-norther lattitudes tends to blow to the east, but does so without intention and without caring about where it blows.


Which returns us to the question: What is the value of valuing?

(If I must have A (life) in order to B (consider if I am better off), then the value of A depends on the value of B.

And there is no reason to believe that "considering if I am better off" itself has any value whatsoever. Under certain circumstances, "considering if I am better off" might have negative value. If I was in severe pain, the capacity to consider the fact that I am in great pain may have a significant amount of negative value.

bd-from-kg

Alonzo Fyfe:

1. On your comments about PB’s moral theory

First off, the objection to using terms inconsistently is the same as the objection to using them in ways that differ radically from standard usage: in both cases it impedes communication. Besides, if moral language is essentially meaningless because it is based on a false assumption (like talking about whether sacrificing a virgin to the volcano god is likely to appease him), there is no more point in worrying about whether the various meaningless utterances of this kind that someone makes are logically consistent than there is in worrying about whether someone who believes himself to be Napoleon claims on Monday that he won the Battle of Waterloo while saying on Tuesday that he lost it.

Second, as I pointed out earlier, your post on the Moral Subjectivism: One View thread says nothing about consistency or contradictions, whether actual or potential. The very first statement is “I do not know why you use the use the term 'moral' in this”, and the rest of the post is devoted to a complaint that PB’s conception of morality is concerned only with what people do want rather than with what they “ought” to want. Thus:

Now obviously this whole objection is circular. By definition morality is concerned with what people “ought” to desire. And by definition a “properly” motivated person is one with “good” desires; the whole question is what desires are to count as “good”. PB gives perfectly coherent answers to these questions; your complaint, in essence, is that they differ from your answers. Which (according to you) means nothing more than that PB has arbitrarily chosen to apply the term “ought” to one class of actions while you have arbitrarily chosen to apply it to a different one.

Those of us who have been following such debates for a while quickly recognize this type of objection as one that almost invariably comes from moral objectivists. So the natural inference that one draws from reading this is that you are a moral objectivist. This impression could only be strengthened by reading your statement that you "hold an objective morality". But as it turns out your moral philosophy (if you subscribe to Mackie’s ideas as you now suggest) is moral nihilism, which is about as far from moral objectivism as it is possible to get. If you are concerned about using language to communicate efficiently, you might start being a little concerned that your way of talking about morality is repeatedly leading those who read your posts to get the completely false impression that you are an objectivist. If your actual position is that moral language (as it is ordinarily used) is meaningless (or what amounts to the same thing IMHO, that it “has nothing to do with the real world”), you could contribute far more to the discussion by saying so up front.

2. On “abuse of language”

Well, I think of an “abuse of language” as a usage (or worse yet, a proposal to change standard usage) in ways that seriously impede communication – in particular, a usage that will predictably mislead or confuse listeners, or make it unduly difficult to say things worth saying. It seems reasonable to me to call something an “abuse of language” that interferes with language’s ability to serve its main purpose. But if your only objection to my calling PB’s terminology an “abuse of language” is that you mean something different by this term than I do there is really no point in discussing it further.

As for your list of fallacies, once again I find this out of place. If someone actually commits something you consider a fallacy, that’s the time to bring it up. Thus, for example, it’s inappropriate to talk about the ad hominem fallacy unless someone has made an ad hominem argument.

True. Let me know when you think someone has committed this fallacy in this debate.

3. On Mackie and moral nihilism

This wasn’t intended as an argument at all. This idea was that if a position is not taken by any serious philosopher in the field, the reason is probably that it is intellectually untenable. However, I was not aware that Mackie advocated moral nihilism. So I stand corrected and withdraw this point.

4. On your “moral theory”

It seems that you e misunderstood my objection here completely. My point was that you call yourself (in effect) a moral objectivist, whereas in fact (if you subscribe to Mackie’s ideas) you are a moral nihilist.

I’m not sure who you think made any such suggestion, but if you’re proposing to change standard usage it would be nice if you could provide some argument to the effect that it would be useful to do so. I don’t see how you can even begin to do this
without explaining what you think is (or should be) the function and purpose of moral language.

It has no relation to the function and purpose of moral statements, and so has no business even being called a “moral theory”.

[Note: this and some related comments should be read in light of the discussion in Part 5 below.]

No, it does not capture “most” of what is normally talked about under the concept of morality. It misses something essential: the element of being aimed at changing feelings, attitudes, and behavior.

Whereas if we replace traditional practice by your proposed usage, moral reasoning is completely pointless. You just arbitrarily define a property and call an action with that property “right”. I can define some other property (e.g., that it results in the production of more purple ink than any of the alternatives) and call an action with that property “just”. So what? Why should anyone care whether an action has the property you call “rightness” any more than they care whether it has the property I call “justice”? It’s true that the property you call “rightness” has an obvious connection with traditional moral language, but once people understand that this language is based on false assumptions about the existence of imaginary entities – that it is best compared to discussions about whether sacrificing a virgin will appease the volcano God, or with reading animal entrails or consulting an astrologer to decide what to do - why would they regard this fact as being of any significance?

I think that the word “moral” should be reserved for language with a particular function and purpose. But my point here has to do with the term “objective morality”. This has a reasonably clear meaning in moral philosophy, and your theory doesn’t qualify. In fact, not only is it not objective, it isn’t even a moral theory.

5. On the function of moral philosophy

Well, yes, it seems fair to say that statements based on false beliefs about imaginary magical entities “contain a significant error”. In fact, if this were the only reasonable way to construe moral statements, I’d say that they were meaningless and nonsensical. But apparently you define “nonsense” in such a way that saying that a Gemini should not marry a Taurus is not “nonsense”, but a meaningful statement which happens to be based on false assumptions, so I suppose you would say that moral claims are not “nonsensical” or “meaningless”. This appears to be just another difference in terminology. But I think we can agree that if your analysis of what moral statements mean is correct, they have no useful function.

The function of moral statements is to encourage or induce people, directly or indirectly, to act differently than they otherwise would. [This is not to say that all statements that have this function are moral statements, but only that all moral statements have this function.] And moral reasons almost always refer explicitly or implicitly to harm that one or more of the alternatives would cause directly or indirectly to others. But it doesn’t follow that the logic of moral reasoning “presupposes” a “magical” link between the two. It might be that the point of moral statements is to create such a link. Or it might be that they are based on the fact that there [/i] is[/i] such a link. (I think both of these statements capture part of the true relationship between moral statements and actions.)

Very true. If you begin with no understanding of what morality is about, you are likely to wind up with absurd “moral theories” like PB’s and yours.

All of these statements seem to be based on a (rather stubborn) misunderstanding of what I’m saying. Again, this can perhaps be illustrated by one of my examples. Imagine someone who directly perceived the rotation of the earth, and thus was incapable of experiencing the illusion that the sun goes around the earth – that it “rises”, “sets”, and so forth. He might well conclude that all the talk about sunrises and sunsets was completely nonsensical – that it was based on some ancient myth, perhaps. Eventually, as he came to understand how other people perceived things, he might come to realize that such language referred to how things appeared to them as a result of the earth’s rotation. At that point he would realize that the language was not nonsensical at all, but referred to something real and important.

What I’m saying is that moral language is like that. If someone’s understanding of moral statements is distorted by false beliefs, we should not dismiss them out of hand, but consider whether, if these misconceptions were corrected, he would then say “Oh, I’ve been talking complete nonsense”, or would instead say “Oh, what I really meant can be expressed more accurately as such-and-such”. I think that the latter is clearly what he would say in almost all cases. And the proof of this is that, when someone’s beliefs change, he rarely abandons moral language, but reinterprets it. Thus it might appear to a theist that by “stealing is wrong” he means that God has commanded us not to steal. Yet if he comes to disbelieve in God, he rarely concludes that the concepts of “right” and “wrong” are meaningless, but rather comes to interpret them differently. And in all likelihood he will still say that stealing is wrong.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that people mean something by moral language, but (in most cases at least) aren’t clear about just what it is that they mean. Thus the task of the moral philosopher is to find a way to construe moral language that is as faithful as possible to the intent of those who use it and can serve the same purpose or function that such language serves now, but is not based on any false assumptions.

5. Are moral statements meaningful after all?

A few of your comments suggest that you think it is:

Relevant to what? Relevant to which course of action has that imaginary “magical link” to motivation?

It seems to me that your answer is simply that points are relevant just in case they have to do with whether the proposed action meets your arbitrary criterion of “rightness”. But I could just as well reply that they are relevant just in case they have to do with whether it meets my arbitrary criterion of “justice” – i.e., whether it produces lots of purple ink. The real question is whether there is a non-arbitrary way to determine which points are relevant, and if so, what it is. As we shall, see, you have not proposed any such way so far.

Remarkable. You’re applying Kantian concepts which were designed to elucidate his theory of objective morality. Once the idea of an objective morality has been abandoned, they become meaningless.

What’s wrong with treating other people as “means”? How else could they be treated? Kant spoke of treating people as “ends in themselves”. What does that mean to you? Can you suggest any reason for treating other people as “ends in themselves”? If not, in what sense do your “points “recommend” the suggestion that moral terms be used to reference “all things considered” values? It appears to me that your points are, at best, merely neutral observations that do not “recommend” or even “suggest” any particular course of action at all.

How does it “support” this recommendation?

The point is that you seem to be arguing for a particular course of action (adopting your terminology) based on what appears on its face to be a moral argument. But if moral arguments were no more meaningful than arguments about whether to sacrifice a virgin to the volcano god or the correct interpretation of chicken entrails, this would be absurd. So perhaps after all you think that moral arguments can be interpreted so as to be meaningful? And not just as neutral factual observations to the effect that certain actions satisfy certain criteria, but as providing rational reasons for doing one thing rather than another? If so, don’t you think it’s time to enlighten us as to what interpretation you have in mind here, and why it makes moral statements into valid reasons for doing things?

Of course, it might be that you mean only that adopting your terminology would be “right” according to your terminology. But if so, this is a singularly uninteresting observation.

Alonzo Fyfe

Okay, let's start here.

However, I was not aware that Mackie advocated moral nihilism.

Nihilism sounds like an emotionally loaded term. It is a proposal to reform -- a notation that contemporary moral practices contain a mistake, and if we are interested in avoiding this mistake we must make some revisions to our moral practices.

David Hume's moral theory contained the same elements.

First, there is the "error theory" -- the argument that moral practices contain a significant mistake. The error that Hume identified was the tendancy to derive "ought" from "is." This, he said, was unwarranted.

Second, he offered an alternative -- evaluations based on four criteria: (1) Pleasing to self, (2) Useful to self, (3) Pleasing to others, (4) Useful to others. I am saying substantially the same thing when I state that evaluations should be based on an all-things-considered judgment. A relevantly similar set of four elements would make up an all-things considered measurement: (1) directly fulfills a desire of the agent, (2) indirectly fufills a desire of the agent, (3) directly fulfills the different a desire of others, (4) indirectly fulfills the desires of others.

So, we have here an example of a philospher proposing an error theory accompanied by a recommended error-free improvement in our use of moral terms.

I do not often hear Hume described as a "moral nihilist". But, if one insists that only those practices that inappropriately attempt to derive "ought" from "is" are deserving of the term "moral", then moral nihilism is the way to go.


The objection to using terms inconsistently is the same as the objection to using them in ways that differ radically from &gt; standard usage.

No, I do not think it is. The best example -- what if "standard usage" is to use a term inconsistently. Language is an invention. Like laws, we sometimes make mistakes when we create things. Those mistakes could easily include inconsistencies.


Besides, if moral language is essentially meaningless because it is based on a false assumption . . .

There's that word "meaningless" again. It does not fit. Moral claims are meaningful, but false. "Snow is green" is not a meaningless statement, but it is false. "Action A contains an intrinsic property of ought-to-be-doneness that would cause anybody who properly understood Action A to do Action A" is not meaningless, it is false.

(As a side note, you mentioned this in a section devoted to discussing PB's theory. It seems like you were confusing my objections to common moral practice with my potential objections to PB's theory -- in that you questioned why I would be worried about PB's potential contradictions if all moral claims are false. But, I never said that PB's theories are based on a false assumption. Indeed, I do not think they are. Which makes your objection a bit of an equivocation.)


Now obviously this whole objection is circular. By definition morality is concerned with what people "ought" to desire.

I don't think so. An important class of moral theory is concerned with what people ought to do. In fact, I would say that action-based theories have dominated moral philosophy for the last few centuries, from act-utilitarianism to deontology to contract theory to theories of natural rights and duties, they focus first and foremost about what a person should do in a particular situation, not on what a person should want.


And by definition a "properly" motivated person is one with "good" desires; the whole question is what desires are to count as &gt; "good".

Yes that is the question. My earlier essay (from which this thread eventually sprang) gave my definition of "good" and an account of how to define a good desire. Namely, the only value claims that are real are those that describe relationships between states of affairs and desires. Desires themselves can be evaluated in terms of their relationship to other desires just as any other state of affairs.

One may object that this is circular, but logicians recognize this as a virtuous circle. It is the same type of circularity found in coherence theories in epistemology and hermaneutic circles in the philosophy of language -- where words are understood through their relationship with other words which, in turn, obtain their meaning in part by reference back to the original term. Another version of ethics employs virtuous circles such as this under the name "reflective equilibrium" (John Rawls, A THEORY OF JUSTICE).


So the natural inference that one draws from reading this is that you are a moral objectivist.

As I have stated before, it depends on your definition of objectivism. The term is sometimes uses to identify somebody who believes in intrinsic value properties -- inherent in things and perceived through the senses. If this is your definition of an objectivist, I do not qualify. Values do not exist in things as independent properties -- true value claims only describe relationships between states of affairs and desires. Without desire, there is no value. (Desire itself does not have any value, except insofar as somebody out there desires to desire something.)

Because I hold that desire is necessary for value, there is a reasonable sense of the term "subjectivist" under which I qualify.

Now, there is another definition of "objectivist" -- one who holds that moral terms are objectively true or false, and this truth or falsity is independent of the beliefs of the person who holds them. Again, one must make an important distinction between the various theories of morality.

With respect to our common moral practices, I am an objectivist. I believe that all moral claims within these practices are false. To say that X is wrong is to say that X has an intrinsic property of ought-not-to-be-doneness, and all such claims are false.

With respect to the revised moral theory that I have proposed (one that avoids the mistake of intrinsic value), I am also an objectivist. There is an objective right answer as to whether something is good or bad "all things considered" (that is to say, relative to all desires), and its goodness or badness is quite independent of whether any particular agent believes it to be good or bad "all things considered."


If your actual position is that moral language (as it is ordinarily used) is meaningless (or what amounts to the same thing IMHO, that it "has nothing to do with the real world"), you could contribute far more to the discussion by saying so up front.

I thought I did say that -- several times in fact. (Again, with the caveat that it is not meaningless, its propositions are false.)

And yet, a revised moral language that eliminates this mistake, and looks at the "all things considered" value of things, would yield propositions capable of being true. If you don't want to call this a moral theory, that's fine with me. Whatever you want to call these "all-things-considered" evaluations, they are a part of the real world, and this makes them a bit more important than any fictitious entity.


The function of moral statements is to encourage or induce people, directly or indirectly, to act differently than they
otherwise would.

I think a little more is needed. They are meant to encourage people to act as they should. And, in this, we come to the crux of the matter -- how do we discover how a person should act? What types of evidence do we look for in determining whether some action X counts as "should be done" or "should not be done?"


Very true. If you begin with no understanding of what morality is about, you are likely to wind up with absurd "moral theories" like PB’s and yours.

I would not, exactly, say it is somehow less absurd to prefer a theory based on fictitious properties to one based on real-world entities.


All of these statements seem to be based on a (rather stubborn) misunderstanding of what I’m saying.

No, actually it is based on a refusal to accept a question-begging assumption built into your argument. You begin with a legitimate practice, and argue (accurately) that if a practice is legitimate than a small error in the way it is perceived would not threaten the practice.

Another example (similar to yours) that I have seen used concerns mathematical realism. The question concerns whether numbers refer to real entitities. One person may hold that numbers do refer to real entities; another may hold that numbers are conceptual ideals. And, yet, for both theorists, 2 + 2 = 4, even though one may have a mistaken belief over what, exactly, "2" means.

I believe that this argument came from the philosopher Simon Blackburn. But Blackburn also noted that this type of claim only holds water if, in practice, the activity (in this case, mathematics) is the same for both the realist and anti-realist.

The relevant difference with respect to moral realism is that the actual practice (how conclusions are reached and which conclusions are justified as being true or false) hinges on the question of whether these properties exist. A person who looks at an agent's desires (whether their actual desires or those they would have under conditions of perfect understanding) is going to get a different conclusion than a person who makes an "all things considered" judgment based on all desires that exist regardless of who has them.

So, the dispute is not like that between a mathematical realist and an antirealist who both hold that "2 + 2 = 4". It is like a debate between a mathematical realist who holds that "1 + 2 = 4" and an anti-realist who holds that "2 + 2 = 4"

Because, in practice, the realist is concerned only with the desires of the agent (the reasons that the agent has or would have for or against performing some action), while the anti-realist is concerned with all desires, even those that the agent does not have and would never care about even with perfect understanding.

Moral realists, because of their mistake, end up defending "some things considered" moral judgments that treat some interests (and, to a proportional degree, the people who hold those interests) as morally irrelevant. "All thing considered" anti-realists get different answers to moral questions.


Remarkable. You're applying Kantian concepts which were designed to elucidate his theory of objective morality. Once the idea of an objective morality has been abandoned, they become meaningless.

Not so remarkable. Kant falsely believed that his formulations only made sense in the context of categorical imperatives (intrinsic values). It turns out, it also makes sense in the context of all-things-considered hypothetical imperatives.

There are very few (if any) philosophies where we must either accept their entire view or none of it. And, so, the fact one rejects a certain portion of a philosopher's view is not reason to claim that we must reject other parts as well. I reject Kant's categorical imperatives, but what is left still provides a useful defense of all-things-considered moral judgments.


Can you suggest any reason for treating other people as "ends in themselves"?

The only relevant "reasons" that exist in the real world for doing something are desires. There is no reason that exists for doing anything other than that it directly or indirectly leads to the fulfillment of a desire.

I hold that there is a relevant distinction between the reasons that A has for or against doing something, and the reasons that exist for or against A doing something. The reasons that A has for or against doing something are grounded on A's desires, the reasons that exist for or against A doing something are grounded on all of the desires that exist. Of course, just as a subset of numbers when summed may yield a different answer than the sum of the entire set, a recommendation (in terms of practical-ought) for or against A performing the action based on the reasons that A has may be different than a recommendation (in terms of moral ought) based on all of the reasons that exist

So, do any reasons exist for treating other people as "ends in themselves"? Yes, those reasons that are based on the desires that those others may have. A may not have a reason to treat others as ends in themselves, but those reasons still exist, even if A does not have them.

[ April 25, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

Alonzo Fyfe

bd-from-kg:

The function of moral statements is to encourage or induce people, directly or indirectly, to act differently than they otherwise would.

Your morality fails this test. Or, to the degree that it succeeds, it does so through error -- in the same way that you would be encouraged or induced to act differently if you "understood" that H2O is a deadly poison.

(Your view, as I understand it, is if the person who took the money out of my desk drawer at work understood the wrongness of her actions, she would not have taken the money.)

You may assert that the very meaning of the word "understood" presupposes truth -- that a person cannot "understand" that water is a deadly poison unless water is, in fact, a deadly poison.

In other words "H2O is a deadly poison" must be proved true prior to any discussion of an agent understanding that water is a deadly poison.

That's fine. But, if understanding presupposes truth, then understanding that the taking of money out of my desk drawer at work contains a property that would motivate an agent not to take it presupposes that such a property exists.

That presupposition is false.

Thus, the conclusion, your system of morality influences behavior not at all (properties that do not exist cause no changes in behavior), or only through error (a belief that a nonexisting property exists may influence behavior, but it does not cause the property to come into existence).

[ April 25, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

bd-from-kg

Alonzo Fyfe:

Earlier I said:

You claim that my moral philosophy fails this test. It isn’t clear how you came to this conclusion since I haven’t described my moral philosophy here. But it seems likely that it’s based on your later statement:

And of course you claim that such a property does not exist.

The first problem here, which I’ve been concentrating on for several posts, is the assumption that the only reasonable construction to put on moral statements such as “Y is wrong” is that it is a proposition to the effect that Y “contains the property” of “wrongness”. It’s true that Mackie argued that this is the only reasonable way to construe such statements, but very few philosophers other than objectivists (who generally believe that there is such a property) agree with him. (By the way, Hume clearly did not agree).

This, by the way, is why Mackie is often called a moral nihilist (and Hume is not). The claim that this is the only reasonable interpretation of such statements, together with his claim that there is not (and cannot in principle be) any such property, logically entail that there is no way to construe moral statements which is both reasonable (i.e., reasonably faithful to the logic of moral discourse) and meaningful (i.e., which does not presume the truth of something that cannot possibly, in principle, be true).

I know that you object to calling such statements meaningless, preferring to say that they are false, but this seems to me to be itself a rather meaningless distinction. To illustrate, suppose that Frank and Gene are under the impression that Klingons (as depicted on Star Trek) really exist. Now let’s assume that the Star Trek writers and fans have never had occasion to discuss the duties which, by Klingon custom, are owed to an uncle by marriage. Frank and Gene know this, but nevertheless wonder what these duties are. This is a meaningless question. Moreover, if the two start to argue about whether (according to Klingon custom) one owes such-and-such a duty to such an uncle, Frank giving reasons why he thinks they do and Gene offering reasons why he thinks they don’t, the entire conversation will be nonsensical.

In the same way, if Mackie is right, one might reasonably call statements like “Y is right” or “A should do Y” false rather than meaningless (on the understanding that they are false in the same sense that “This is a square circle” is false). But the minute one offers reasons for thinking an action to be right or wrong, one is clearly (on his view) spouting meaningless nonsense.

Finally, you don’t seem to have grasped the fact that Mackie would reject your “moral theory” on the same grounds that I do: it’s not a moral theory at all. Or in other words, you’ve simply appropriated some moral terms and assigned them non-moral meanings.

The second problem with your argument is that the concept of a “property” is very slippery. In particular, it’s not clear what’s meant by saying that something “contains” a property. For example, the book “Pickwick Papers” was written by Charles Dickens. But does it “contain the property” of having been written by Dickens? It gets even muddier if we ask whether it “contains the property” of having been enjoyed by millions of readers.

Similarly, suppose that putting poison into Miss Grundy’s tea will result in Miss Grundy’s death. Does this act “contain the property” that it will kill her? Or supposing that I consider Miss Grundy’s death desirable, does this act “contain the property” that it will have results that I consider desirable? Going one step further, if I believe that this act will have results that I consider desirable, does the act “contain the property” that I consider the results that I believe it will have desirable? If you use the term “property” in such a way that it makes sense to say that it does “contain this property”, it makes sense to ask whether ”taking of money out of my desk drawer at work contains a property that would motivate an agent not to take it”, but if not, I have no idea what you could mean.

Personally, I find this way of speaking rather weird, and I think most other people (including most of those who use moral language in the “normal” way) do too. So I find the claim that moral language involves a presupposition that acts “contain properties” of this sort highly implausible. Thus it is simply a mistake to suppose that what most people mean by saying that an act is “wrong” is that it “contains a property” that might be reasonably expected to motivate an agent not to do it. And since (as I think you will agree) most people think that knowing that Y is wrong can reasonably be expected to motivate an agent not to do Y, it cannot be that by “Y is wrong” they mean that Y “contains a property”. (Of course, they may be under the impression that they mean this, but I think they can be led to see that it isn’t what they mean by a process similar to the one by which Socrates led the slave boy to see that the Pythagorean Theorem is true.)

Now as to my theory, as you note, I believe that if a fully rational person understands what it means to say that an act is “wrong” and knows that a given act is wrong, he won’t do it. It can be argued that this is not an essential feature of any “reasonable” moral system, but it’s a feature of mine.

My theory is spelled out in some detail in the thread <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=14&t=000458" target="_blank">How can Morality be Objective?</a>, particularly the OP and my posts of June 10 (3:55 PM) and June 21 (12:28 PM). In a nutshell, the key points of the theory are:

(1) We want (in a very real sense) to do what we would choose to do if we had enough knowledge and understanding (K&U).

In fact, I would go a bit further and say that it is irrational not to do something if we know that we would choose to do it if we had enough K&U.

This is not a rigorous statement of the principle. For example, there are situations in which knowing the results of a proposed action would affect the reasons for doing it. (E.g., if we knew that watching a certain football game would make us very upset, we would know that our team had lost, and this knowledge would make watching it a lot less enjoyable.) This is dealt with in the thread cited above. But for most purposes the approximate statement of the principle given above is good enough.

(2) What we would do if we had enough K&U would be to act altruistically – i.e., to take everyone’s interests into account equally.

This is not to say that everyone would choose to do the same thing in all cases. Even when everyone’s interests are treated equally there is often room for disagreement about which course of action is “best”. But in a lot of cases there isn’t. In particular it often happens that the results of a particular action are so clearly suboptimal that any rational agent with enough K&U would not choose to do it. (Again, this has to be refined somewhat; see the thread cited earlier.) This leads to the following definitions:

(3) An act is right if any fully rational agent with enough K&U would do it, and wrong if no such agent would do it.

At this point it should be clear why I say that if a fully rational person understands what it means to say that an act is “wrong” and knows that a given act is wrong, he won’t do it. To know that it is “wrong” is to know that he wouldn’t do it if he had enough K&U. And if a fully rational person knows that he wouldn’t do something if he had enough K&U (even if he doesn’t fully understand why), he won’t do it.

Now obviously (2) is the sticking point for most people (although PB disputes (1) as well). Extensive arguments for this claim are given in the June 10 post on the thread cited above. The main argument has to do with empathy, understood not as an emotion but simply as intimate understanding of another person. My contention is that even the very limited amount of empathy that people are actually capable of has very dramatic effects on their behavior in terms of taking the other person’s interests into account. Now a full understanding of the effects of an action on another person would involve a full understanding of the thoughts, attitudes, and feelings that they would have as a result, which means that one would essentially be thinking their thoughts, feeling what they feel, and (so to speak) “seeing things through their eyes”. My contention is that such a full understanding would inevitably cause one to take these (possible) effects into account in deciding what to do. And I think that actual human experience overwhelmingly supports this claim.

[Note: To keep this to a reasonable length I’ve skipped over the long discussion of the “Principle of Equality” in the earlier thread.]

At this point it’s easy to remember only Premise 2 and to be left with the impression that I claim only that one would “do the right thing” if one actually had a very high level of empathetic understanding of everyone affected by one’s actions. But this ignores Premise 1: a rational person will “do the right thing” if he understands that he would do it if he had enough empathy – i.e., enough intimate understanding of the effects of his actions on others.

Thus my interpretation of a statement like “You shouldn’t do Y; it would be morally wrong” is “You wouldn’t do Y if you had a sufficient, empathetic understanding of the effects it would have on other people (and on yourself, for that matter), and therefore it would be irrational to do it. And a large part of the meaning of moral rules like “Stealing is wrong” is “You would almost never steal if you had enough K&U of the consequences, and therefore...”.

So my moral philosophy does not “fail this test” as you claim; it passes with flying colors.

But I would prefer that this thread not turn into a debate about my moral philosophy. My point was that both your moral system and PB’s show a lack of understanding of the true purpose and function of morality. And I think that there are tenable interpretations of moral statements that do. Mine is an example, but it is hardly the only example.

Note: I’ll be away the rest of the day and normally don’t have much time to post on weekends. I do plan to respond to your previous post but didn’t have time today.