tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post7962877009410658959..comments2023-10-10T08:02:18.073-04:00Comments on Rationally Speaking: Ethical Pluralism: the ugly theory that couldUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-53047056125831995032012-12-13T03:29:15.660-05:002012-12-13T03:29:15.660-05:00None of these counterexamples raise the faintest t...None of these counterexamples raise the faintest twinge of intuitive force in me that consequentialism isn't the only thing that matters to me - I DO want to live in a world where scapegoating achieves better results, and I question how reasonable a person is who denies this - as far as I'm concerned, they are simply allowing irrelevant, intruding emotions to cloud their judgments. I simply don't care about making decisions that have no impact on anyone's conscious states, and I have no idea why this strikes anyone else as compelling on reflection.<br /><br />If all deontology and virtue ethics amount to are withered stumps of jargon that we extract useful labels from for the heuristics we adopt, then I hardly see it worth the effort to argue for a "pluralist" account of ethics. And yet that's all that it seems to me we'd likely to get out of your proposal. We might simply be better off adopting new terminology entirely, terminology that acknowledges the underlying, implicit consequentialist rationale for our concepts and practices and doesn't trip people by retaining the the potentially confusing philosophical residuum of adapting virtue and deontic terms to consequentialist use.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13341742291748792599noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-17522541484242804422011-11-09T11:38:22.371-05:002011-11-09T11:38:22.371-05:00Ian: Glad to see you're still sympathetic to t...Ian: <i>Glad to see you're still sympathetic to the view you named!</i><br /><br />Yes, but I admit that it's only a default position, given my understanding of how moral reasoning actually works in the real world, which the normative theories each only partly describe (as your examples help to illustrate).<br /><br />On a slight tangent, I read and enjoyed that <a href="http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html" rel="nofollow">Non-Libertarian FAQ</a> that you recommended here a while back, although I might quibble a bit with the morality section, in which he adopts a utilitarian/consequentialist position, defined in terms of "the set of principles which, when followed, will create on average the best world..." where people are "happy instead of unhappy" and there is "as little pain and suffering as possible..." I'm good with that...until I run into a counter-example (similar to one of yours) in which these criteria conflict with other criteria (e.g. virtue or justice) that (for whatever reason or non-reason) "win out."mufihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01818949854678769391noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-42442797642431873842011-11-08T23:22:12.674-05:002011-11-08T23:22:12.674-05:00This is good stuff. I’ll comment on the counterexa...This is good stuff. I’ll comment on the counterexamples.<br /> <br />#1: The evaluation omits the effects that a person’s character has on future behavior and society’s legitimate interest in evaluating the same. A supposition that we can measure utility so precisely as to even out the differences is not reasonable or supported by any evidence. Therefore, social utility is a broader concern than the statement frames it to be. This illustrates the interplay between values and consequences.<br /> <br />#2: The analysis seems to assume that honoring the worth and dignity of all persons is not a virtue. I maintain that it is best seen as a virtue. In a situation where many participants are prone to display an absence of virtue, in this case by harming innocent people, the sheriff may have to make a judgment about what is the best, i.e., the most life-affirming response. We can categorize that all day long but that categorization may say more about our inclination to want to categorize things than about anything else.<br /> <br />#3: This statement of facts ignores the long-term effects of virtue. Sally may rightfully counter that her issue is being ignored and that by focusing on it, she may bring about good in the long run. I do not believe that her point of view can be assumed away by positing that her evaluation is contrary to the facts: we may never know. Many great things have happened, which “everyone” said were impossible but which advanced the human condition by light years. I am not convinced that a hypothetical case could be constructed that would allow us to evaluate the matter through reason and empiricism.<br /> <br />#4: We might respond with other questions. Of what value is judging the life of one who has died? On what basis do we assume that there is any value whatsoever in making a wholesale judgment about a man who died 175 years ago, or yesterday for that matter? Why isn’t the self-indulgence implicit in such judgments a vice? In other words, why should we accept the assumptions of the hypothetical inquiry?<br /> <br />#5: How does this make it “justice versus utility?” That assumes a definition of justice that I do not share.<br /> <br />#6: As in #4, I don’t see the point of judging the parties wholesale. Fred may have built some internal strength overcoming his impulses but Penelope may be less likely to engage in torture or similar behaviors. Each may be more advanced in the dimension of their respective strengths. That’s more important than a wholesale judgment of either of them. If they were competing candidates for particular jobs or offices, I would want to know what jobs/offices those were, so I could evaluate which person was best suited to the position and whether either of them should be disqualified from it.<br /> <br />In each case, I suggest that the philosophical argument does not look deeply enough into the question. To be useful, philosophy must relate to the world as it is. These counterexamples are challenging but only up to the point where you can see past their implicit assumptions. So the first assumption I question is how valuable these categories are; the second is how they are framed and what assumptions underlie them.Paul LaClairhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02670835499103468017noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-88416264782312139132011-11-08T12:56:29.764-05:002011-11-08T12:56:29.764-05:00Wonderful post-
I've been thinking along broad...Wonderful post-<br />I've been thinking along broadly similar lines, but I think there may be a way to present this kind of view in a less 'aesthetically messy'. <br /><br />It seems to me that there is a simple unifying concept beneath the big three moral systems, deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics (and almost certainly purtiy concerns and the rest). Each of these systems is trying to argue for a system of values, and seems to fail to the extent that it tries to universalize a single value (duty, utility, character.. although the last is more complicated). <br /><br />So ethical pluralism could be reframed as a system that acknowledges the multiplicity of important values in our moral lives. One advantage of this reframing besides its simplicity is that it gets close to makes a moral system *useful* in practice. When faced with a hard choice about what to do, or how to be, stopping to think about the things that you really value is very useful, in a way that calculating universal utility can never be. Ethics, as a philosophical endeavor, can then focus on balancing and interrelating our values, and in persuading others to share themEvanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04937543346665681106noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-4461674560416881762011-11-08T12:55:41.783-05:002011-11-08T12:55:41.783-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Paul Paolinihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04580285404702244031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-39237439640587012412011-11-08T10:34:53.981-05:002011-11-08T10:34:53.981-05:00I was sorry to disagree with most of the specific ...I was sorry to disagree with most of the specific examples, but once the post shifted to its constructive portion you came out with an opinion I'm happy was very similar to a view I have even though I'm either a pure utilitarian or very close to it.<br /><br />So just for one of the examples, take the crush video one. I think it's ill-posed since you mix whether other people should object to someone who views and enjoys the crush videos with whether the viewers themselves can view the videos and produce net positive utility. Those two questions are different since they concern different action sets. The least-convenient viewer would be one who not only receives utility from viewing the vid, but also has perfect self-discipline so as not to pose any future risk of buying such videos on the black market or prompting (perhaps indirectly) others to make such videos to anticipate his demand. (Ordinarily, it'd be an endogenous preference so the viewer should just incur the cost of changing his tastes to avoid those harms-in-expectation.) (That said, I'm skeptical any real human can experience enough utility given the torture at stake, but the hypothetical objection basically goes back to Nozick's "utility monster" objection.) But it's b/c such a viewer is so unlikely that utilitarian observers would still condemn that viewer since s/he would be observationally indistinct from other, much more likely, viewers who are not so “inconvenient” to utilitarianism (at least observers in real-life situations). Really what I htink you want is to posit two unrealistic people - the viewer of inhuman self-discipline, and the perfectly-informed observer. <br /><br />The post's positive part though is something I agree with, which is the idea that some people, over the run of situations they face, really will do better by not looking at consequences but thinking about “virtues” or whatever. Some people are excruciatingly bad at associating expected consequences with actions, so they’d (ironically) be better consequentialists by thinking about ethics in terms of, say, virtue. Where we part ways is where you seem to believe such an approach should be uniform across people.Timothyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04338789669131796827noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-62400456846038787662011-11-08T02:23:58.327-05:002011-11-08T02:23:58.327-05:00"While the idea of letting ethical theories m..."While the idea of letting ethical theories merely *prohibit* is an interesting one, I guess I don't see it as too fruitful, because I'm MOSTLY trying to use ethics as a decision theory to figure out, e.g., what to do with my life and how to use my time, rather than whether or not such-and-such is permissible."<br /><br />But sometimes knowing what *not* to do is not only useful in decision making, but the best we can hope for in a given situation. It seems to me that knowledge of error precedes knowledge of how to correct for error. Sure this is oversimplistic, and runs into problems in the sense of if you use the argument by elimination of what not to do in decisions of how to live your life, you can never be sure you've entertained all the possible prescriptive options. <br /><br />"Certainly you can make such a move to save virtue ethics, but it seems rather strained, doesn't it? I mean, when it comes right down to it, making (explicit or implicit) expected utility calculations is not a trait like courage or generosity, it's an activity."<br /><br />I'm not sure Ian. Courage and generosity are labels we give to human character traits that are only possible through the observation of action. Are you saying that courage and generosity have real ontological status? Whether it's in courage or generosity or consideration for consequences, there's something more fundamental going on at root, right? Something about the motivations, dispositions, and beliefs of the epistemic agent that leads them to behave in certain ways. We've created labels to describe and differentiate different sorts of character traits that lead to different sorts of behaviors, and the ones we want to promote we've labeled "virues", so while it mean seam a bit ad hoc, I don't really see a problem in adding, deleting, or changing our lists of virtues whenever we find it prudent to do so. Embracing some sort of fallibilism and developmental process in our moral knowledge is a good thing I would say. <br /><br />So if you want to say there is a character trait that leads to courageous or generous behavior, I would say there is also a character trait that leads an agent to engage in expected utility calculations. If you're not comfortable with that, then it seems to me we should be discussing what is at root of all those disparate behaviors, and drop talk of virtues all together.Greg Nirshberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00857237630029774354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-8224409916719486122011-11-07T22:05:28.863-05:002011-11-07T22:05:28.863-05:00@mufi: I hadn't realized you & jcm were on...@mufi: I hadn't realized you & jcm were one & the same. Glad to see you're still sympathetic to the view you named!<br /><br />@Sean: I tend to agree that consequentialism still needs to be the "meta" view when we are considering which principles to adopt. As you very rightly put it, moralized disgust is not going to have a place in an ethical theory unless it can carry its weight by doing some actual good.<br /><br />@Greg Nirshberg: Certainly you can make such a move to save virtue ethics, but it seems rather strained, doesn't it? I mean, when it comes right down to it, making (explicit or implicit) expected utility calculations is not a trait like courage or generosity, it's an activity.<br /><br />And it just seems kind of trivial that you can take any good aspect X of a moral theory that is *not* virtue ethics (say, promise-keeping from deontology) and then say "and it is a virtue to do X." The bottom line, I think, is that VE looks at ethics from a completely different perspective than the other two, and rather than trying to awkwardly cram them together maybe we should just accept that they are different viewpoints useful at different times?<br /><br />@Tony Lloyd: "whilst an ethical statement could not be justified by a factual statement it could be rebutted by one." Nice quote!<br /><br />While the idea of letting ethical theories merely *prohibit* is an interesting one, I guess I don't see it as too fruitful, because I'm MOSTLY trying to use ethics as a decision theory to figure out, e.g., what to do with my life and how to use my time, rather than whether or not such-and-such is permissible.<br /><br />But as I was hinting to Sean, I do tend to see consequentialism as having "veto power." :)ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-73876569733833846522011-11-07T18:27:14.688-05:002011-11-07T18:27:14.688-05:00The post reminded me of getting all irritated with...The post reminded me of getting all irritated with Sam Harris, as I thought consequentialism obviously inadequate, and then reading Bartley's <i>Retreat to Commitment</i>. <br /><br />One of the inadequacies of Harris' view, I thought, was his dismissal of Hume's Guillotine. Bartley (page 199 in the 2nd edition), however, pointed out that whilst an ethical statement could not be <i>justified</i> by a factual statement it could be <i>rebutted</i> by one. <br /><br />I don't <i>think</i> you have to be a lunatic Popperian to agree that he had a point.<br /><br />Reading the post made me think that may not be necessary if ethics were thoroughly liberal: that no act had to be justified but acts could be forbidden. <br /><br />There are swathes of behaviour that are not forbidden by one or two of the three theories. Here one is forced only by the one that stipluates a behaviour and only if it does so. Which particular one, of course, changes with the situation which makes it look as if you are moving allegence between the theories. In fact, though, you are following them all at the same time, they only impinge though where they forbid a behaviour.<br /><br />Of course, there is a problem where they say things that conflict. There one does have to choose. This would make your Consequentialism less of awarding more weight to Consequentialism in a decision and more that you resort to Consequentialism when there is a conflict. Sort of the difference between having more votes against having a veto.Tony Lloydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03740295390214409286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-40134176002167835732011-11-07T17:24:49.589-05:002011-11-07T17:24:49.589-05:00re: counterexample #3
Can't we branch out fro...re: counterexample #3<br /><br />Can't we branch out from Aristotle's list of virtues and state that "consideration for the consequences of your actions" is itself a virtue? The important difference, in my mind, between utilitarianism and virtue ethics isn't so much focused on different views about consequences, but rather that utilitarianism judges the act, while virtue ethics judges the agent and their reasons for a particular act.Greg Nirshberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00857237630029774354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-67122740855275899182011-11-07T16:36:34.595-05:002011-11-07T16:36:34.595-05:00I have a similar view, but I'm usually a bit k...I have a similar view, but I'm usually a bit kinder to consequentialism. You can appeal to consequentialism as an arbiter between moral systems without it being as difficult as deriving psychology from physics. As a simple example, you can ask whether moralized disgust (or strict dedication to retributive justice, or a traditional belief in honor) does more harm than good. This may be an effective way of deciding between alternative virtues, duties, or principles.<br /><br />Maybe tolerance, fairness, and a nonjudgmental attitude are more important than purity, because in the end moralization of purity produces little good. Maybe our duty to maintain an orderly society is more important than our drive for retributive justice, because unrestrained righteous indignation leads to cycles of vengeance and bloodshed. Maybe developing the faculties of critical thinking and abstract reasoning is more important than adhering to the form of loyalty known as "faith". I think that these are judgments that we are forced to make on some level, and that are often made unconsciously when we decide which kinds of culture we would rather live in.<br /><br />I think that we'd be better off using consequentialism as an explicit arbiter (which at least encourages us to look at the facts of which values produce which actions) rather than using less exacting types of dialogue. This is even the case when faced with dangerous forms of consequentialism itself; if someone is already willing to use barbarous means to justify a glorious end, if they believe in an ideology that declares that duty and virtue lie in the courage to do what must be done, it may be that the only counterargument left is that the end that will be attained is not so glorious after all.Sean (quantheory)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00094694851707164734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-58024526040257101282011-11-07T15:45:39.933-05:002011-11-07T15:45:39.933-05:00Woops.
Same response, but to Ian.Woops.<br /><br />Same response, but to Ian.mufihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01818949854678769391noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-29494662346243635312011-11-07T14:20:04.750-05:002011-11-07T14:20:04.750-05:00mufi,
except that the post is by Ian Pollock, not...mufi,<br /><br />except that the post is by Ian Pollock, not me... ;-)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-37681496431682061602011-11-07T14:04:15.985-05:002011-11-07T14:04:15.985-05:00Great post, Massimo!
But, then (as the commentato...Great post, Massimo!<br /><br />But, then (as the commentator whose Google account formerly identified me as "jcm"), I'm quite biased towards your position here (and honored by your mention - thanks).mufihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01818949854678769391noreply@blogger.com