By Julia Galef
Once upon a time, the little village of Chelm found itself facing a problem: the holiday Shavuot was coming up, and the town was suffering from a critical shortage of sour cream, a customary feature of the Shavuot feasts. The Wise Elders of Chelm convened an emergency meeting to address the problem. They sat around, brows furrowed, pondering, proposing ideas, but to no avail. Finally, the wisest Elder of them all announced: “I’ve got it! From today forward, water shall officially be called 'sour cream,' and sour cream shall officially be called 'water'!” The other Elders agreed that this was a brilliant solution, and were rather chagrined that they had not thought of it themselves. Thence followed much rejoicing from the grateful townsfolk, and although there were some scattered reports of water shortages, the Elders decided they had already solved enough problems for one holiday, and that they would deal with that one another time.
- Adapted from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Stories for Children.
This post was inspired by a discussion on Common Sense Atheism this week, in which Luke Muehlhauser examines a longstanding debate between me and Massimo about morality. There are several aspects of Massimo's position that I disagree with, but as Luke astutely notes, one of the main ones results from what I consider a fundamentally misguided way of using definitions. I've been wanting to highlight this issue for a while, because it keeps coming up in other debates we've had on other topics – so, taking Luke's post as an invitation, I'll do so now.
This post was inspired by a discussion on Common Sense Atheism this week, in which Luke Muehlhauser examines a longstanding debate between me and Massimo about morality. There are several aspects of Massimo's position that I disagree with, but as Luke astutely notes, one of the main ones results from what I consider a fundamentally misguided way of using definitions. I've been wanting to highlight this issue for a while, because it keeps coming up in other debates we've had on other topics – so, taking Luke's post as an invitation, I'll do so now.
First, the basics: A definition is simply the act of setting some symbol equal to some concept, so that you have an easy way of referring to that concept. A definition itself can't be correct or incorrect, because the symbol has no inherent meaning of its own.
But you have to be careful when you establish that definition, the SYMBOL = CONCEPT relationship, that you're not implicitly thinking of the symbol as having another, hidden concept inside it already. Because if you are, then what you're doing is actually equating one concept with another, different concept. That's not a definition, that's a claim, and it can be incorrect.
Here's a case study that may ring a bell. Some people are fond of saying that they define “God” to be the unknown, or to be a symbol of perfection, or to be whatever caused our universe to exist. At first glance, this seems puzzlingly pointless. Why assign the word “God” to something like the unknown? We already have a word for the unknown — it’s “the unknown.”
But clearly, this doesn’t feel pointless to them. There is some reason they want to be able to say “God exists” instead of “The unknown exists,” even though those two statements should theoretically mean the exact same thing according to their own definition. And that’s because the symbol “God” still has concepts hidden inside it. They haven’t scrubbed the word entirely clean of its original meaning before redefining it. With both meanings of “God” conflated into one word, they feel like the fact that the word is now pointing to something that exists allows them to believe in the existence of what the word used to be pointing to.
And if you think it’s hard to scrub the word “God” clean of its connotations thoroughly enough to be able to genuinely redefine it, try the word “moral.” It’s a common phenomenon for people to assert that they are defining the word “moral” to refer to some particular kinds of actions, and then to act as if they have thereby shown that people should follow those actions. Indeed, this was Massimo’s approach when he and I debated meta-ethics earlier this year. He argued, “I define as moral an action that increases human welfare and/or flourishing... Julia of course may reject the idea of behaving herself so as to increase human flourishing, but then she is by definition acting immorally (or at least amorally).”
But if you really, truly are just defining the word “moral,” then all you are doing is assigning a symbol (“moral”) to a concept (increasing human flourishing). You have not proven anything about that concept; you’ve just given it a new name. One has to wonder what the point is. After all, just as in the “God” example above, we already have a name for the concept of increasing human flourishing – we call it “increasing human flourishing.”
And if it feels like you’re doing more than just re-naming something, that’s probably because you haven’t sufficiently scrubbed the symbol “moral” clean of its other associations before you defined it. Typically, the word is used to refer to how people ought to behave, and you haven't scrubbed away that implicit definition before adding a new one. So instead of setting a symbol equal to a concept (“moral” = increasing human flourishing), you have the sense that you have equated a concept with another concept (how people ought to behave = increasing human flourishing). That's not a definition, it's a claim, and it needs support.
So, the reason I get frustrated in general when people argue over how to define words, like “art,” is that it suggests that they think the way they define a word can prove some point. It can’t, not if you’re doing it right. Of course, I suspect that the reason people care about how art is defined is because they’re not doing it right. They have another hidden meaning in mind already embedded in the symbol “art” — something along the lines of “worth taking seriously; meriting critical evaluation.” So they have the sense that by defining the word “art” they are not just equating a symbol with a concept ("art" = this particular set of things), but that they are equating a concept with a concept (worth taking seriously = this particular set of things).
That’s what I think Massimo was doing in these two posts in which he argued that the Marina Abramovic performance art piece at the MoMA was “not art.” While I agreed with Massimo in finding the piece silly and uninteresting, it is nevertheless true that there are plenty of common definitions of “art” that would include it – for example, “something designed for the primary purpose of evoking an aesthetic or emotional experience.” And whether or not the piece meets those common definitions is a completely separate question from whether it is worthy of serious consideration and critical evaluation.
To quote Gary Drescher's Good and Real, “Whenever something substantive seems to depend on a choice of definition... we should suspect that a tacit definition is being smuggled in, and a sleight of hand substitution of the tacit definition for the explicit one is occurring.” The fact that Massimo believes something substantive depends on whether we define “art” to include the Abramovic piece or not indicates that he is conflating the explicit and implicit definitions of art (which is what I suspect one commenter meant when he accused Massimo of trying to “double-dip the concept of art in both descriptive and normative territory”).
You can't use definitions to prove a point, only to make clear what you mean by your words. You can’t use them to prove that something doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. You can’t use them to prove that people should behave in a certain way. You can’t use them to conjure a God into existence. And you definitely can’t serve them on top of your blintzes on Shavuot.
Excellent! Meaning saying what God wants you to say. (jk) This is really illuminating and precise at the same time. Bravo!
ReplyDeleteI especially like the story, a great little illustration of your point.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of many discussions about religion as seen by Robert Wright and Karen Armstrong, but it crops up elsewhere. Just this week, Jerry Coyne instigated a big fight about "Free Will" as many commenters said that free will as commonly understood was ridiculous so they then re-defined it to be more appropriate, apparently so they could say that free will does exist and is a reasonable belief. Oy, confusing!
Another form of this 'argument via redefinition' that I've seen is to try to explicitly scrub other meanings. For instance, person A says "I don't think faith is a virtue because I think that it's more virtuous to have evidence and reason for beliefs." Person B responds "That's naive, the Bible clearly says that faith is 'trust' and so our faith is not believing things without evidence." That's as maybe, but because "faith" has this other meaning doesn't mean that Christians don't also have faith as-in 'blind faith'. (It of course doesn't mean that they do, but just that B's defence is a non-sequitur, choosing a different definition in order to avoid the first.)
I agree completely with you about words not being scrubbed completely of their meaning before receiving new definitions, but I don't think it applies to the argument about morals.
ReplyDeleteYou say that "Typically, the word (moral) is used to refer to how people ought to behave." And that's fine, some people may think that they and others ought to behave morally. Others may think otherwise. What does this have to do with the definition of being moral?
Yes, if you don't act to increase human flourishing you're acting amorally, and if you act to decrease it, you're likely acting immorally. You absolutely have the right to not care whether or not you're acting morally, without having any sort of conflict with the definition of the word.
Also, you say "we already have a name for the concept of increasing human flourishing – we call it “increasing human flourishing.”"
But that's the whole point of defining words, so that we may express an idea with one word instead of three, as you'd have to do with "increasing human flourishing" if the word "moral" didn't exist.
FANTASTIC post. This whole "god is the energy of the universe" argument is a pet-peeve of mine, and you've just put my thoughts on the matter into a clear, concise framework. My wife is fond of saying things like "God is Love," and it sometimes it kills me to not retort, "No! LOVE is Love!" Words have meanings, and they are important.
ReplyDeleteOn another point, it would be interesting to explore why the meanings of some words to change over time, where in other instances new words are developed to replace them.
Context is the key, whatever that means.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I especially like the metaphors. Scrubbing concepts clean and then double dipping them in chocolate sauce!
ReplyDeleteI love this post and totally agree. The reason three words ("increasing human flourishing) are better than one ("moral") is that the three words are easily interpreted and practically unambiguous to all listeners whereas the one word "moral" is so loaded with ambiguity and competing definitions that using it creates, rather than diminishes confusion. To eradicate the confusion you'll have to define the word and then you're up to FOUR words!
ReplyDelete"human flourishing" is a tricky, fuzzy thing. As little as $5 can save a person from starving to death in Africa, so does that mean spending $300 on an iPad is harming human flourishing? I get the feeling that it is yet how many people would say that buying techy toys is immoral?
ReplyDeleteI'm not proud of it, but I think the majority of people care far more about the well-being of their family, then their friends, then their acquaintances and only when they're safe and secure will they worry about larger groups. "Human flourishing" is a lofty term which probably rarely enters into the minds of any individual.
"Human flourishing" may be a great principle in government policy or social justice, not morality as we mere individuals practice it. Maybe this precludes me from entering philosophy but I think that if we discuss morals, we should take the time to see if our definition matches what we observe in the real world. In this case, no, I don't think it comes close.
So instead of setting a symbol equal to a concept (“moral” = increasing human flourishing), you have the sense that you have equated a concept with another concept (how people ought to behave = increasing human flourishing). That's not a definition, it's a claim, and it needs support.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough, and given enough time and the proper setting, a persuasive argument of support might just be forthcoming.
But isn't the real problem here that we so often lack such a luxury? After all, most of us are not academic philosophers. Yet surely even an academic philosopher can appreciate what life is like outside of the Ivory Tower, where "moral" is the convenient and conventional way (in English, at least) to describe behaviors that we approve of - whether we arrived at that approval through reason or indoctrination.
Regardless of where anyone stands on the issues of that particular piece of "art" or moral philosophy, this is certainly one of the most excellent posts I have read here. It is a constant bane of discussions everywhere that people use different definitions, either without noticing or, worse, intentionally for obfuscation purposes. Your addition of the conflation / carrying over unmentioned connotations problem rounds the situation out nicely.
ReplyDeleteThere are really tons of examples. In addition to those you mentioned, there come to mind science as empiricism-based inference to the best explanation vs. science as hypothesis testing only; supernatural; capitalism as defined by a Marxist vs. capitalism as a modern free-market democracy only; capitalist as the owner of means of production vs. capitalist as a supporter of capitalism; religion as a set of beliefs about the world vs. religion as fluffy spirituality vs. religion as a theologian's sophisticated moral philosophy; freedom, positive vs. negative, also known as the libertarian "rejoice!, you are 'free' to buy or not buy food from those who have monopolized food production" argument; soul as an immaterial record of our memories and personality or soul as a vague life-force. And so on.
A definition itself can't be correct or incorrect, because the symbol has no inherent meaning of its own.
That is an interesting point. Maybe it could be argued that there can be criteria that we could define (ha! same problem, pushed one step back), for example, that those definitions should be preferred that most people agree on: "science/morality/god is what the overwhelming majority of people would recognize as such", or that those which an authority on the issue has proposed are better: "but that is the definition in my philosophy textbook".
Anyway, as always, realizing that we have a problem is the first step. When arguing in circles, always ask yourself whether both of you are actually talking about the same concept.
Great post. Regarding the definition "something designed for the primary purpose of evoking an aesthetic or emotional experience,” I think it's a pretty good one combined with the even broader "art is whatever the artist says is art." Now of course there are objective standards that get at whether something is good art or bad art. But anything designed for the primary purpose of evoking an aesthetic or emotional experience is still art by any other name. So an artist may build a folding chair and call that art. And so that is art, though probably very bad art.
ReplyDeleteI've had this discussion recently in relation to movies. "Citizen Kane" is art. And "Dude, Where's My Car?" is also art. Now the former is almost certainly objectively superior art than the latter even though some may prefer to watch the latter or may not even particularly like the former at all. But both are every bit as deserving of the term "art."
You're quite right, Julia. Fallacies of equivocation--and other errors over the meanings of words--seem to be the most common and troublesome of fallacies. Definition is a tricky business. Meanings are complex, and we can be quite competent at using a word without being able to say what we mean by it.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "First, the basics: A definition is simply the act of setting some symbol equal to some concept, so that you have an easy way of referring to that concept. A definition itself can't be correct or incorrect, because the symbol has no inherent meaning of its own."
I would define a definition more broadly, as an attempt to instruct a listener about the meaning of a term. And a definition can be correct or incorrect if it claims to be reporting a pre-existing meaning. This is known as a "reportive" or "lexical" definition. The other sort of definition is "stipulative": it stipulates how a term is to be used in the future.
When complaints are made about their defintion of a word, people often respond: "I can define a word to mean whatever I like." I call this the Humpty Dumpty response:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty#In_Through_the_Looking-Glass
In principle one can stipulate any meaning for one's own words. But, if a word has a well-established meaning for the given context, it's difficult to avoid conflating the stipulated meaning with the established one. This is what happens when people define "moral" in the way Massimo and many others do. They've given a quite new meaning to the word, a meaning which lacks the normative (e.g. prescriptive) element which is central to moral claims. If they really used the word in accordance with their own definition, the claim "X is immoral" would no longer have any normative force. It would become merely a descriptive, factual (non-value) statement. But because the normativity is so strongly associated with the word, they continue to feel it even after they've redefined the word. They are conflating their own descriptive meaning with the established normative meaning.
Great article.
ReplyDeleteThere are some debaters who will endlessly redefine words (such as god) without any fidelity to any consistent meaning. I dunno if any other term exists but I call it "word worship".
Tyro,
ReplyDeleteBut the concept of human flourishing can be applied to those narrower circles of concern. For example, what are my obligations as a father? It is to act to promote the human flourishing of my son, and avoid actions that undermine this flourishing. As a citizen of a country and a human being, I have the secondary obligations to promote human flourishing of a much broader scope, but my primary obligations are narrower.
Fantastic post. I noticed this tendency a few years back when I'd get into debates with friends who were Lit majors (or my aunt who's an English professor) and at some point I'd realize we actually agreed in terms of the concept, but were just defining words under different criteria. After I pointed this out, I expected the debates to be over, but they'd keep arguing with me because they genuinely thought the definition was the important part worth debating!
ReplyDeleteA bit of an aside, but I have kind of a loathing of English departments that started with this realization: A huge amount of the debates in English scholarship are primarily about how to define words, and they pass this tendency on to their students. I think it actually inhibits their ability to think critically or rationally about issues, because they're taught to think about the wrong thing.
Baron P said... "Context is the key, whatever that means."
ReplyDeleteAha! Well said. Context is part of the convention. That is, if you know what I mean that you mean.
And historical context in particular, I'd say. You can use the word faith to signify whatever you want but unless you're familiar with the past uses of it you'll just be creating your personal solipsistic language. Faith can only mean disregard for evidence-trust in god- and whether this is a good or a bad thing is, in Julia term, a "claim" rather than part of the definition. Historically, disregard for evidence, or skepticism about frail human faculties, was a good thing, a virtue, at least for consistent fideists. Because nowadays open unashamed disregard for evidence is not fashionable, people try to do all kinds of contortions to redefine faith so that it may either become compatible with evidence or disprovable by it.
Excellent post, by the way.
Sheldon,
ReplyDeleteThat's not how I understood "human flourishing" and by allowing us to focus on individual happiness at the expense of the lives of other individuals seems to defeat the intent of this moral code. But okay.
"Human" also seems problematic. Is it obvious to everyone that our only moral obligations are to other humans?
Julia’s post is related to a central issue in topical philosophical debates. It is the tendency on the part of some intellectuals to uphold certain disputable philosophical positions by showing that they are true “in a sense”. I call this activity philosophical rescue.
ReplyDeletePhilosophical Rescue
Many significant concepts seem threatened by the development of science and analytic philosophy. Among them are the concepts of God, free will, and objective morality. The questions of how these concepts are most rationally viewed has brought forth both academic and public discourses. Some of these debates are largely settled among very smart intellectuals, such as the question of whether or not God is real. Others, such as the question of whether objective moral truth exists, are not.
When trying to defend a contestable philosophical idea, many employ faulty arguments that fit into what I call the “’in a sense’ fallacy”. This fallacy is the fallacy of trying to rescue a contestable concept by showing that it is correct in a sense that does not live up to the concept’s overall purpose, structure, and meaning. We’ve all seen instances of the “in a sense” fallacy, because just about any statement is true in a certain sense. Here are four notable uses of the fallacy, the latter two of which have been discussed across multiple threads at this blog:
- God exists in the sense that the universe had a beginning which we may never be able to understand.
- Free will exists in the sense that organisms can anticipate the consequences of their actions and make choices. (Daniel Dennett, I’m looking at you.)
- Moral truth exists in the sense that some actions increase or decrease overall human flourishing.
- Some art is objectively better than other art in the sense that some pieces of art evidence greater skill, vision, and understanding on the parts of their creators than do other pieces.
A couple of parodies might be explanatory:
ReplyDelete- God exists in the sense that Eric Clapton is still alive.
- Grizzly bears are dragons in the sense that they’re large, scary creatures.
Further illustration would probably be superfluous; I think I’ve communicated the idea clearly enough. The philosophical rescuer doesn’t want a particular valued concept to die or be refuted, so instead he downgrades it, never admitting that the original, full-fledged position is totally false and that the downgraded version is nothing but a shadow of the original position.
I think that all four of the notions mentioned above—God, free will, moral truth, and objective artistic merit—are confused. The latter three I consider to be not only contingently false but logically incoherent, accepted, supported, and discussed only because of their emotional and social significance. In the service of truth, I believe that they should all be allowed to die, and that intellectuals should give up their philosophical rescue attempts.
Massimo, I am sure, understands by now the tactics that I am discussing and the ways in which Julia, myself, and (possibly) others consider his views on morality and artistic merit to be flawed. He most likely has a solid grasp of how definitional ambiguities can be used to make deceptive arguments and muddle up discourse. Instead, I suspect that Massimo will assert that, while many arguments do employ faulty definitions and/or fit my outline of philosophical rescue, his own assertions about moral and artistic value escape the charges of definitional manipulation or abuse. In both cases, however, I do not think that he will be able to build an adequate case. In the past, his responses to me and Julia on the issues of morality and art have hardly justified his approaches to these contentious matters.
Usage, Coherence, and Definitions
ReplyDeletePersons sometimes make statements in the form of a proposition that really seem to simply express their state of mind. An example of such a statement is “Miles Davis is cool”. The statement has the syntactic form of a truth claim: the speaker might seem to be saying that Miles Davis possesses the quality of coolness. We know, however, that the speaker is really just expressing his state of mind in the form of a proposition. The notion that our own tastes correspond to some sort of broader objective reality is probably, in my view, rooted in the fundamental egocentrism of human perception and belief-formation: we struggle to imagine failing to feel that Miles Davis is cool, and so we state his coolness as though it were some sort of general fact about the world. Even people who state their sensations of coolness in this form rarely believe that coolness exists objectively; they are simply using that phrasing.
Suppose the devil’s advocate shows up and says that he is actually a coolness realist: he believes that things (including people) can objectively possess the trait of coolness, that some things are objectively more cool than others, and that while we can’t always know, as a matter of practice, how cool something is, we can always say that it has, in principle, a definite degree of objective coolness. We probe the coolness realist, “when you say that coolness is an objectively existing trait, what is it that you mean by coolness?” The coolness realist replies that he defines “coolness” as “the composite trait of having played in top-selling jazz records, dressing well, and having personal charisma”.
At this point, we are apt to accuse the coolness realist of deceiving us by using a definition of “coolness” that does not closely mirror the term’s actual usage in normal English language conversation. And we’d be right about that—it’s simply not true that people who say “Miles Davis is cool” literally mean “Miles Davis sold many top-selling jazz albums, looks good, and has personal charisma”. Not even close. But suppose the devil’s advocate’s assistant showed up and said “now now, my boss has merely tried to use the best straightforward definition of ‘coolness’ that he can think of. If you objective to his definition, might you at least name some other straightforward definition that he can run by?” The devils’ advocate’s assistant is asking for some sort of alternate definition that the devil’s advocate can use so as to keep the project of coolness realism afloat.
The problem here is that no straightforward definition of “coolness” that allows objective verification of a thing’s coolness will mirror the use of the word “cool” in normal English language conversation. It will not suffice to define “coolness” as simply “charisma” or as “physical beauty” or as “artistic success” or as a composite of similar such things. The reason for this is that, when someone says that Miles Davis is cool, he or she is expressing a fluffy, emotional sensation with a phrasing that might seem to attribute some sort of essence-of-that-sensation to the focus of that sensation. Hence, a person who says that Miles Davis is cool is aesthetically experiencing coolness and, instead of saying “I experience Miles Davis as cool”, is using a phrase that attributes a mysterious “coolness” trait to Miles Davis. The phrasing itself might seem to imply that the perceiver feels that he or she is merely responding to an essence-of-coolness present in Miles Davis. Most people who say “[x | x is something] is cool” do not literally believe that there is such a thing as an essence-of-coolness, because they are simply using the commonplace form of expression that I have described; I am merely pointing out what the phrasing itself might seem to imply. They use that phrasing, but most people don’t literally believe in the essence-of-coolness concept.
ReplyDeleteSince coolness is really an aesthetic and emotional response to someone or something, rather than a set of objectively existing traits within those persons or things, no objectively coherent definition of coolness (one that allows objective investigation of a thing’s coolness) does justice to the use of the word “cool” in normal English language conversation. This is an absolutely critical point, and it should be generalized and restated: there are nouns, verbs, and adjectives for which no straightforward and rationally evaluable definition will suffice precisely because the nouns, verbs, and adjectives in question do not represent coherent, rational human conceptualizations. They instead represent fuzzy, vague, emotional or aesthetic vibes people have running through their cerebrums.
An example of such a fuzzy vibe is the notion of free will as it is invoked by uninformed, unphilosophical laymen and strong religious believers. If the concept of free will as it is described by most people (not by incredibly smart philosophers like Daniel Dennett) made sense, they wouldn’t have so much trouble describing it clearly when pressed by a skilled interlocutor. When faced with the materialist computational theory of mind, free willies will say things like “if that’s true then there’s really no way I can affect what I do or change it” or “I guess I really can’t change my destiny”. The difficulty free willies have with expressing their conception of free will corresponds to the fact that free will is not even a coherently formed idea within their own mind. Free will, as a concept, arises from the sensation of choice, the feeling of control, and the sense that our actions are neither determined nor random. While these feelings are common among all sentient human beings, the notion of free will that they give rise to is not rationally statable or describable because it is malformed within our very minds. Have you ever replied to somebody who says “…if you know what I’m saying” with the phrase “I don’t even think you know what you’re saying”? Well, in the case of free will, ordinary people who invoke it really don’t have much of an idea of what they’re saying. There is a lot of emotional and aesthetic gobbledigook that comes together to produce the sensation of free will, but one notion that is central to free will is the totally nonsensical idea that an event can be neither determined nor a result of luck nor a mere combination of the two. If a thing is determined it follows necessarily from some other state of affairs in reality, and if it is not then there is merely a probability that the given thing will attain. There is no “free will” between determinedness and randomness to explore, and so the fuzzy, emotional, irrational feeling of “free will” is pointless fluff.
ReplyDeleteBecause of the irrationality of the normal human conception of free will, attempts to give a rational, objectively useful definition of “free will” don’t do justice to the irrationality of the notion of free will. A definition of a word or phrase must do close justice to its usage. In the large majority of circumstances, the phrase “free will” denotes nothing more than a gigantic brainfart. For this reason, objectively useful definitions of “free will” actually tell a false story about the concept of free will. If such a faulty definition were accepted, we might find it more difficult to actually talk about the irrational concept of free will, because we had given a deceptively rational definition of the phrase “free will”.
We should be sensitive to the possibility that the notions of goodness and badness, both in morality and in art, are so irrational that, if their denoting terms are given objectively useful definitions, they have actually been done an injustice through misrepresentation. What if our perceptions of goodness and badness in morality are fluffy, emotional, aesthetic responses to actions, responses that we have somehow confused for coherent ideas about the world around us? What if the idea of goodness is really like the idea of free will, an incoherent, fluffy idea? In that case, we would not do justice to the word “goodness” to give it a definition like “increases net happiness among conscious creatures”. We would do much better to describe the fluffy, emotional, aesthetic vibe running through people’s cognitive circuitry that causes them to deem things “good” or “bad” in the first place, while admitting that these sensations and judgments do not strongly correspond to actually existing traits of actions or pieces of art in the world around us.
Morality
ReplyDeleteMoral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, discussing the differences between liberal and conservative/religious moral thinking, defined a “moral system” in this way:
Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.
In doing so, Haidt pointed out a critical fact about moral psychology: moral concepts and thinking exist for the regulation of human behavior. Moral beliefs have always served as a force for or against certain behaviors, encouraging disdain, praise, enforcement, training, taboo, and other social pressures. This is a descriptive, rather than normative claim.
Because of this, moral beliefs held by individuals are significant at every level of social interaction within a society, from the individual all the way up to the national. People who believe that masturbation is evil are less likely to masturbate themselves and more likely to disdain masturbation among those around themselves; they may try to stop their spouses or children from masturbating or even support legislation against masturbation. Such are the consequences of moral beliefs. A man who believes that theft is wrong is less likely to commit theft himself and more apt to disdain thieves, try to stop thievery, and support laws against thievery.
Since moral beliefs exist for the regulation of human behavior, it might make sense that they would not peg up cleanly with literally existing facts about the external world. After all, the ultimate role of moral beliefs in a society is the modification of behavior—the creation of social norms, balances, and structures. Yet, as I pointed out in a reply to a recent post by Massimo, rationality is a property of beliefs or processes of inquiry; it is not a property of desires (like a desire for love) or of behaviors (like jumping). Since behaviors and desires cannot be rational or irrational in and of themselves, might beliefs meant (from an evolutionary standpoint) to bring about certain behaviors themselves be largely irrational? The idea seems hardly far-fetched.
In an earlier thread about art, Julia raised the issue of pseudo-debates between people with differing coherent definitions of artistic value:
ReplyDelete…then we get into these pseudo-debates in which you say, “This piece is bad because X, Y, Z" and someone else says, "No, it's good because of A, B, C" and the only reason you appear to disagree is that you're using different definitions of good and bad. That's why I call it a pseudo-debate.”
Similar pseudo-debates might emerge between people with different coherent definitions of moral terms. If Sam Harris defined morality as “the maximization of flourishing among conscious beings” and I defined morality as “the respecting of fundamental of rights G, H, and F”, Harris might say that “x behavior is wrong” while I might say “x behavior is right”, and we would not really be contradicting each other because we both used different definitions of morality. In fact, acceptance of both of our propositions together could be perfectly rational.
When people with very different moral standards meet, however, it does not seem that they are having a pseudo-debate; it seems that they most certainly are contradicting each other. The reason for this is critical: moral terms have connotations. Our moral terminology, because of our evolutionary background, is weighted. We feel emotional and social tugs when phrases like “theft is wrong” and “we must help the poor” are stated. This is no coincidence; the reason moral beliefs have any relevance in society is precisely the fact that people have certain emotional responses to them.
Connotations cannot by shunned at will. Suppose that I define “vulva” as meaning the same thing as what everyone means by the word “cat” and asked you to read this statement:
My vulva, Fluffins, had a huge rash on his back, so I put him in the vulva carrier and took him to the closest vet, Vulvas Exclusive.
You probably had exactly the same reaction to this sentence as you would have if I had simply used the word “cat” all the way, through. No problem, right?
Wrong. We cannot shed the connotations we attach to words. Because of this, any definition of a strongly connoted word is going to carry its connotations with it to its new definition, just as the word “vulva” did in its previous example. Words can have all sorts of connotations: warm, beautiful, childish. But words with moral connotations have behavioral force. The statement “you ought to visit your aunt” derives its force of meaning—the emotional reaction it causes—from the morally connoted term “ought”.
Because we cannot shed the moral connotations of morally loaded terms like “ought”, “should”, “good”, “morality”, “justice”, and so forth, any objectively coherent definition of moral terms implicitly binds certain real-world actions to the nagging feeling of oughtness that accompanies moral terminology. It is ostensibly clear and straightforward to say that “one ought to do x” means “x increases overall happiness”. Yet in doing so, the definer binds the concept of happiness to that God-awful feeling that, you know, you just should donate money to Oxfam. Rational definitions of moral terms are really forced marriages of fact and behavior.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly why moral realists like Massimo and Sam Harris try to get away with defining moral terms like “ought”, “should”, “good”, and “evil” in terms of happiness and suffering. They know they can’t argue that certain actions possess some essence-of-goodness quality, so instead they attempt a cognitive coup by saying “hey, I’m just defining my terms man, that’s all, just describing things”. But when Harris defines “morality” as “the maximization of happiness” (or something like that), he is really trying to gain the cognitive oomph that moral terms have because of their connotations. For Massimo and Harris, the right to implicitly boss people around is just a definition away.
Val claims innocence. Replying to Julia, he has this to say about Massimo’s take on morality:
Also, you say "we already have a name for the concept of increasing human flourishing – we call it “increasing human flourishing.”"
But that's the whole point of defining words, so that we may express an idea with one word instead of three, as you'd have to do with "increasing human flourishing" if the word "moral" didn't exist.
A seemingly reasonable reply; if “Master of Ceremonies” has become “MC” (the original phrase almost forgotten), why wouldn’t “increases human flourishing” become something shorter too?
The problem is that the selection of moral terms to abbreviate concepts in positive psychology is incredibly conspicuous. If the point of defining “morality” and related terms in terms of happiness were not an attempt to conquer connotative territory, just what would it be? If Massimo, Val, and other morality-is-happiness folks were simply out to give their tongues a break from burdensome phrases like “increasing net flourishing”, they might have done one of many things: they might have invented new terms, created abbreviations, or (most likely) borrowed much less heavily connoted terms. Why not borrow the term “fitness” from evolutionary biology and say that actions which increase flourishing increase fitness? Why not borrow terms from economics and say that actions which increase human flourishing “raise capital”? If brevity is all Val and Massimo wish for, it’s very weird indeed that they would appropriate words from the lexicon of normativity, words which just happen to have some of the strongest connotations, this way or that, in the entire English (and broader human) vocabulary. Generally speaking, one wants technical terms to have as little connotation as possible this way or that so that readers and listeners can see more clearly to the heart of the phenomena being discussed.
One might ask “are moral beliefs incoherent in the same sense that the previously discussed beliefs, like the belief in free will or coolness, are incoherent?” My answer is yes. Behind the academic, philosophical mug’s game of giving objectively rational definitions for moral terms is the fact that people have a much more intuitive and essentialistic way of thinking and feeling about morality than many philosophers quite want to admit. People tend to treat notions of good or evil in much the way they treat concepts like free will: they just sort of have this fuzzy feeling in their head that, goddamnit, you know, some things are just evil! Even Alan Dershowitz once said, in essence, “moral truth just has to exist because otherwise the Holocaust wouldn’t even be wrong”. That’s not Dershowitz’s astronomical IQ speaking; it’s his heart doing the talking. Moral beliefs, when not dressed up with deceptively objective definitions are vague, fluffy propositions, which is exactly what you’d expect of beliefs whose purpose is to regulate behavior. Since actions, in and of themselves, are not rational or irrational, why would we even expect beliefs whose purpose is to regulate behavior to make sense?
ReplyDeleteAt the back of the academic, philosophical moral realist is still that nagging, irrational feeling that, goddamnit, some things are just, you know, they’re just, they’re just wrong! You know!? They’re just wrong! And all the talk about “utility” and “happiness” is just an attempt to make that cerebral homonculus’s nonsense make sense.
Art
ReplyDeleteLet’s return to the actual issue that was under debate when Julia brought up the idea of a false debate. Massimo replied “it's a pseudo-debate only if you assume that no matter what reasons one brings forth they are as worthy, sound, coherent, etc. as anyone else's reasons. I simply don't think that is the case. If you do, then you are a relativist in these matters.” But just what “reasons” is Massimo talking about? The fact of the matter is this: if person A defines “good” as “having qualities x, y, z” and person B defines “good” as “having qualities d, f, g”, and person A and person B start firing it off over whether or not Dali’s Oeufs Sur le Plat is good, they are absolutely having a pseudo-debate, end of story. When Massimo accuses Galef of relativism on the value of reasons, he is missing the point completely. If two people are arguing over whether a painting is “good” and they define that term in the same way, then some reasons will be better than others when arguing for this-or-that stance on the painting’s merits. If Julia denied this, Massimo could reasonably accuse her of relativism. This is the way it is in other debates; we need not give equal weight to reasons given for or against the proposition that the moon landings were faked. But in the case of different definitions of the term “good” (or some other term central to a debate), relativism has nothing to do with it. In such a case nothing is really being debated.
Connotations and the underlying essentialism that makes them matter are the real issue here. Most people just intuitively believe in pure goodness. But Massimo, rather than admitting that his preference for Wagner over Stevie Ray Vaughan is just a preference, gives an objective definition of artistic quality that equates complexity and nuance with quality. Once again, it’s an attempt to steal connotations: Massimo wants to feel justified saying that certain artists are better than others, objectively, because “better” has so much oomph to it.
Am I being too cynical? No, because there just is no reason to define your terms this way unless you’re fishing for connotations. In the case of art the tactic is particularly clever, because, as Steven Pinker notes in the magnicent book The Blank Slate, our circuitry for morality is cross-wired with our circuitry for status, which is why “noble” has the dual meanings of ‘good” and “high status” (ie “nobility”).
Connotations are the heart of this debate. Philosophers should want justified true belief. Massimo, in these cases, wants something akin to justified true gravitas.
Ritchie, I'm impressed by your writing flow, but you might need to start a blog of your own about this!
ReplyDeleteVal Schuman said, "You say that 'Typically, the word (moral) is used to refer to how people ought to behave.' And that's fine, some people may think that they and others ought to behave morally. Others may think otherwise. What does this have to do with the definition of being moral? Yes, if you don't act to increase human flourishing you're acting amorally, and if you act to decrease it, you're likely acting immorally. You absolutely have the right to not care whether or not you're acting morally, without having any sort of conflict with the definition of the word."
ReplyDeleteVal, you're conceiving of "moral behavior" descriptively (e.g., increasing human flourishing) and then saying many people feel like they ought to act morally. But what I'm saying is that people can't have it both ways -- either they can define "moral behavior" descriptively, but then they have to give some argument for why people "ought" to act in that way, or they can define "moral behavior" to refer to how people ought to act, but then they have to give some argument if they want to make claims about what kinds of actions that entails. What they CAN'T do is define it to mean both things simultaneously (how people ought to behave AND some set of actions, like increasing flourishing) and then act as if they've proven the one to entail the other.
Massimo--
ReplyDeleteI know that I got carried away, but we have had this debate before, and making comments similar in detail and clarity to my previous comments would have been of no use. While you will recognize much of what I have said, I think I have stated things with much greater detail and clarity. I want this discussion to go somewhere. Sorry if I posted too much material, but I hope you let it stay for this particular discussion.
As for my own blog: I am not yet a strong enough philosopher to justify it.
Mel said, "How do you know 'they' feel this? What data have you gathered?... It seems in these passages you are making assumptions about the motives and intents of those you wish to dismiss, and that does not make for good argument.
ReplyDeleteMel, you're right that I can't get inside their heads. But the fact that they would rather say "God exists" than "The unknown exists" indicates that there is something that "God" represents for them that goes beyond just "The unknown", despite the fact that they claim the two to be identically defined. It's that extra connotation of "God" -- whatever it is for them -- that I'm pointing to as the implicit meaning that got smuggled in.
RichardW, well put!
ReplyDeleteAlso, you said, "I would define a definition more broadly, as an attempt to instruct a listener about the meaning of a term. And a definition can be correct or incorrect if it claims to be reporting a pre-existing meaning. This is known as a 'reportive' or 'lexical' definition. The other sort of definition is 'stipulative': it stipulates how a term is to be used in the future."
You're right, this is a good distinction to make. But in theory, this shouldn't have to be confusing; people could just be clear about whether they are saying, "When most people use word X, they mean..." or whether they are saying "When I use word X, I mean..."
Julia,
ReplyDeleteI am not questioning the assertion that "god" means something beyond "unknown" to those who say that god is the unknown. The rest of my post makes that clear. What I question is your inference that they make such statements and define "god" as they do in order to retain their belief in "god". I question your empirical basis in making that inference. Again, I would suspect that most people who believe in god, however they define it, don't much care what atheists think of god. In any case, whether or not they do, and the reasons as to why they describe god in the way they do is an empirical question that you simply ignored to the detriment of your argument. I think that Massimo gets to some of what I mean in his post - your assume that everyone who is doing work of defining or describing is doing what you define definition to be, but you haven't done the work of checking if that is so. As such, you don't know if your conclusions are justified, but you give little sense of the appropriate level of tentativeness such would call for.
TheBanterist said, "...at some point I'd realize we actually agreed in terms of the concept, but were just defining words under different criteria. After I pointed this out, I expected the debates to be over, but they'd keep arguing with me because they genuinely thought the definition was the important part worth debating!"
ReplyDeleteI know, I've had that exact same experience, and it used to utterly confound me! Now I've come to anticipate it, but frustratingly, I still don't have much luck resolving those debates. If only it weren't so hard to articulate to people what's wrong with that kind of logic.
If only it weren't so hard to articulate to people what's wrong with that kind of logic.
ReplyDeleteI had a couple odd discussions like this, where a person defined "God" to be the creator/designer of the Universe. It was very explicit, where he argued that there was a cause for the BB and he actually said "let's call this cause 'God'". When I agreed, he immediately jumped to quoting the Bible. "Wait a sec," I said, "that 'God' is a completely different thing than what we were talking about before!" This sparked a long discussion where he argued that Christians have always believed that God created the universe and he didn't see any problem with what was going on.
And that's nothing compared to the frustration of someone saying "you've been in love and the bible says God is Love, so of course the Christian God exists."
It's doing exactly what Julia said - using a strange, new definition to establish God exists (for some definition of God) and then acting like this weird God is the same one as in the Bible and that they worship in church. Happens all the time.
My turn to speculate: maybe this sort of argument is presented to them in church or apologetics books? I've seen it in formal debates so it's not unexpected that people might parrot these same flawed arguments.
Ritchie the Bear, you've mapped out this tangle of problems with admirable clarity. There's too much good stuff in your posts to respond to all of it, so let me just focus on the one thing I think is most important: "Persons sometimes make statements in the form of a proposition that really seem to simply express their state of mind."
ReplyDeleteExactly. There are many statements which might appear to be claiming something about the world, but which are really (if you examine how the statement is actually used) doing something else: applauding, admiring, condemning, etc.
Admiring something is a fundamentally different act than making a claim about that thing. But it doesn't feel that way to us, from the inside! We feel like our admiration is a property of the thing itself. So when we are challenged to explain what we mean when we admire something, we end up just pointing to the properties of that thing which gave rise to our admiration.
We will always end up mired in confusion if we keep trying to talk about people's reactions to things as being true or false.
I'm with Julia and Ritchie.
ReplyDeleteMoral, good, right, flourishing, eudaimonia, utility, etc. all have the same problem of composite incoherence and inconsistency.
In order to compare my utility to your utility we would need in each case to break out all the constituents--all the individual kinds of "goods" and the relative weights we placed on each.
Even if we each listed many of the same "goods", such as happiness, freedom, justice, security, health, longevity, etc., we can still be talking about apples and oranges.
For example, there are many kinds of freedom and many kinds of security. Some kinds of freedom are in tension with some kinds of security but not with others. And we may each give to each kind of freedom or security a different weight.
I agree that most debates about morality, art, etc. are psuedo-debates because the implicit assumptions, associations, biases, etc. are not laid out and compared on a coherent, one-to-one basis.
I agree with Ritchie that morals are about controlling behavior. Evolution has laid in some instinctive "moral phenotypes"; but society is also composed of many different "interest" groups with a variety of agendas and different criteria for their own moral behavior and that of others. When we argue about morality, we implicitly argue about power. Is it any wonder that two people (much less two groups) will seldom agree about who should be the most powerful?
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010
who was it that said you can't double dip?
ReplyDeleteSomethings are simply "unquantifiable" which in contrast to "unknowable", are two totally different things. It is unknown why "matter" has "mass", but apparently science seems to move on despite this great unknown. Maybe the concept of "god", even if unknown, wouldn't preclude the fact that the "effects" of such concepts are very much quantifiable.
"love" in most cases has nothing to do with reason or logic, but the effects of "love" can be quantified in many ways by measuring the amount of chemicals being released in the brain. Therefore, god may not exist, but the existence of the effects of such beliefs are quite measurable.
From my perspective it is the atheist that is advocating the "myth" that somehow "consciousness" is supposed to be monolithic, when clearly it is not observed to be so. Besides science proves that the human brain has evolved to communicate and perceive abstract thoughts without the use of language.... perhaps the existence of "god" for many people is simply moot.
Romney said... Somethings are simply "unquantifiable"
ReplyDeleteSuch as? Do you mean unquantifiable in principle or just as a practical matter?
Romney said... Maybe the concept of "god", even if unknown, wouldn't preclude the fact that the "effects" of such concepts are very much quantifiable.
I don't see how the concept of god precludes anything other than maybe its own negative. I also don't see your point.
Romney said... "love" in most cases has nothing to do with reason or logic
Logic goes to the sub-neural level, so there is no question it is involved in love. Reason presumably starts at some inter-neural level with a critical mass of neurons organized in some particular way, and there may be unconscious reasoning as well as conscious reasoning, so how do you know it isn't involved in love, too?
Romney said... Therefore, god may not exist, but the existence of the effects of such beliefs are quite measurable.
I agree, but don't see your point. The measurable effects of beliefs in god are good grounds to classify such beliefs as pathological.
Romney said... From my perspective it is the atheist that is advocating the "myth" that somehow "consciousness" is supposed to be monolithic, when clearly it is not observed to be so.
I never heard an atheist make the argument that "consciousness is monolithic", but I have heard some say that Ayn Rand was a good philosopher. On that basis I would say that some atheists are idiots.
What does any of that have to do with god?
Romney said... Besides science proves that the human brain has evolved to communicate and perceive abstract thoughts without the use of language....
I question such science or your telling of it. The term "language" is pretty broad and includes such things as "machine language" (binary code) and "body language". There had to be one or more of neural "languages" in use in the brain prior to the evolution of spoken language and such are presumably still in use at various levels of brain operation.
What of it?
Romney said... perhaps the existence of "god" for many people is simply moot
Good thinking.
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010
I've just read this great post. I'm wondering if this argument has been made elsewhere. A blog is unfortunately difficult to cite.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if we could refine or generalize this logical fallacy.
To take art as an example, I don't think that anyone would define it as something that has to be taken seriously. Other things can be taken seriously, like science, or war. What's hidden in the word art is that something being art is a sufficient condition for it to be taken seriously. Or:
x is art => x has to be taken seriously.
My understanding of a definition is that it implies an equivalence <=>
And if you say for example "techno music is art" then you are probably not claiming that it is the only form of art. You would probably mean:
x is techno music => x is art
Which again, is not a definition. It defines neither hard rock nor art. So there is no definition involved anywhere here, but I still feel that we're in a very similar situation.
Also, a different comment is that the mere fact of defining a word may be used to make a point, no matter what the definition is.
For example, if you say "I define morality as X", then you could be making the implicit statement that morality is something worth discussing in philosophy. This would involve, among other things, arguing over definitions.
If in contrast someone argues that there is no point defining the word morality (because, e.g., it is an ambiguous term for which all interesting meanings can be captured by another term), then it seems that there is not much left to discuss.
Similarly, giving a name to a concept may be used to make the implicit point that the concept is worth studying. This is the opposite of defining a term, where we're giving a concept to a name. This is often used to legitimate fields of study in science.
I didn't read all comments so sorry if I'm being redundant.