What did you Quine today?

”Does it contain any experimental reasoning, concerning matter of fact and existence?” – David Hume

In last weeks installment of the notorious radio show that I’ve haunted recently, I spoke to the lovely lady on my left on the picture below about the use of empirical methods in moral philosophy. The ”use of empirical methods” of which I speak so fondly is, on my part, constricted to reading what other people has written, complaining about the experiments that haven’t been done yet, and then to speculate on the result I believe those experiments (not yet designed) would yield.

Anyway: I have a general interest in experimental philosophy, but I haven’t signed anything yet, you know what I mean? That is: I don’t think (what the host of the radio show wanted me to say) that ”pure” armchair philosophy is uninteresting. Indeed, I believe that any self-respecting empirical scientist ought to spend at least some time in the metaphorical armchair, or nothing good, not even data, can come out of the process.

When coming across a philosophically interesting subject matter (and, let’s face it, they’re all philosophically interesting, if you just stare at them long enough. Much of our discipline is like saying the word ”spoon” over and over again until it seems to loose its meaning, only to regain it through strenuous  conceptual work) I often find it relevant to ask ”what happens in the brain”? What are we doing with the concept? It is obviously not all that matters, but it seems to matter a little. Especially when we disagree about how to analyze a concept, there might be something we agree on. Notoriously, with regard to morality, we can disagree as much as we like about the analysis of moral concepts, but agree on what to do, and on what to expect from someone who employs a moral concept, no matter what here meta-ethical stance. Then, surely, we agree on something and armchair reasoning just isn’t the method to coax it out.

I try to be careful to emphasize that empirical science is relevant to value-theory, according to my view, given a certain meta-ethical outlook. Given a particular way to treat concepts. If we treat value as a scientific problem, what can be explained. Since there is no consensus on value, we might as well try this method. Whether we should or not is not something we can assess in advance, before we have seen what explanatory powers the theory comes up with.

Treating ”value” as something to find out about, employing all knowledge we can gather about the processes surrounding evaluation etc. is, in effect, to ”Quine” it. It seems people don’t Quine things anymore, or rather: that people don’t acknowledge that this is what they’re doing. To Quine something is not the same as to operationalize it, i.e. to stipulate a function for the concept under investigation, and to say that from now on, I’m studying this. To Quine it is to take into consideration what functions are being performed, which have some claim to be relevant to the role played by the concept, and to ask what would be lost, or gained, if we were to accept one of these functions as capturing the ”essence” of it. It is to ask a lot of round about questions about how the concept is used, what processes influence that use and so on, and to use this as data to be accounted for by an acceptable theory of it.

A Lamp, David Brax (yours truly) and Birgitta Forsman (I cannot speak for her, but I’m sure she likes you to). The lamp did not volunteer any opinions on the subject matter, but has offered to participate in a show on a certain development in 1800-century philosophy. Foto: Thomas Lunderqvist

when does it get interesting?

We just returned home with our newborn child, who shall remain nameless (but not for long). And, in a very Carrie-like trope indeed: it got me thinking. (Carrie of New York single life fame, not the gym-hall massacre one. Or the one hilariously falling over in the opening credits of ”little house on the praire”): At what age does a human being get interesting? Every now and then I come across opinions, and decided preferences (and you know those interest me no end), in this matter. Most frequently the (faux)controversial opinion is that kids are tedious and uninteresting at least up until the point they develop thoroughly thought through political views and a natural distaste for their parents. Also, they should be able to help you with your computer.

Others require less. Capacity for speech, for instance, and some creative thinking/acting to boot. This preference is guided by wanting a human being to be treatable as an equal, and the relevant equality is one of thought, rather than of bowel movement or need for constant attention. Four-year olds will do for these people. There is a trend in moral psychology to make a big deal out of the stage where kids start to distinguish conventional from non-conventional wrongs, which is usually a bit earlier still and that certainly is an interesting age.

Infants, on the other hand, are often perceived as poop/sleep/crying machines that have the mild added value of smelling quite nice. (Young, single intellectuals – the group I’ve spent the larger portion my life belonging to, and thus have some inside knowledge of – have a hard time realising how they could possibly enjoy the company of, and thus care for, people of this miniscule sort.) They may be cute, and they may evoke some positive emotions, but interesting? Not as such.

I beg to differ (from the people I just kind of made up). Infants exhibit complex behaviors, and while it might seem random beyond the bare essentials, learning does takes place. The study of infants needs to take into account what they actually control. One particular interesting study used the baby’s ability to change the speed with which it sucked on a pacifier to reveal its preferences. We don’t need  to assume fullblown intentions in order to identify interesting behaviors and the beginning of individual differences. To me, at least, the Little One has been interesting from the start.

Now, about this response-dependency thing

I am a fan of keeping options left open, and of not leaving open options left undeveloped.  When we find ourselves with conflicting intuitions in situations where intuitiois our only ground for theoretical decisions, it is basically an act of charity to develop a theoretical option anyway, in case someone will find it in their heart to – as we so endearingly say in philosophy – entertain the proposition. (My attitude here, you might have noticed, is a bit counter to my lament about a certain trope in the post below.)

Store that in some cognitive pocket (memory, David, it’s called ‘memory’ ) for the duration of this post.

Response-dependency. Some concepts, and some properties, are response-dependent. That means that the analysis of the concept, and the nature of the property, is at least partly made up by some response. To be scary, for instance, is to have a tendency to cause a fear-response. There is nothing else that scary things have in common. Things are different with the concept of danger: Dangerous things are usually scary too, but that is not their essence. Their essence consist in the threat they pose to something we care about,  or should care about. Fear is usually a reasonable response to danger; fear is usually how we detect it. Danger might still be response-dependent, but then fear is not the crucial response.

Response-dependency accounts have been developed for many things. Quite sensibly for notions such as being disgusting. Famously by Hume for aesthetic value. And arguably first and foremost under the name ”secondary qualities” by Locke, and unceasingly since by other philosophers, for colours.  Morality, too, has been judged response-dependent , and a great many things have been written about whether this amounts to relativism or not, and whether that would be a point against it.

Response-dependency accounts of value and of moral properties has a lot going for it. Famously, beliefs about moral properties are supposed to involve some essential engagement of our motivational capacities. And if the relevant property is one our knowledge of which is dependent on some motivational response, say an emotion, this we’re all set. Further, if these concepts/properties are response dependent, it would account for many instances of moral disagreements – we disagree on moral issues when our moral responses differ, and when the difference is not accountable by a difference in other factual beliefs and perceptions. If we accept that responses are all there is to moral issues, we might have to learn to live with the existence of some fundamental disagreements between conflicting responses, and moral views. Relativism follows if there is nothing that moral respones (for the most part, the moral response involved is some kind of emotion) track. What the account gives us is a common source of evaluative meaning in located in the fact that we all share the same basic type of responses. We just disagree in what causes those responses, and about what objects merit the response.

If we insist on locating the value (moral or otherwise) in the object/cause of the response (note that the object and the cause might be different things – we might project an emotion of something that did not cause it. This happens all the time), the response-dependency account results in a form of moral relativism. If one finds relativism objectionable, and there is no way to provide firm moral properties in the cause/object structure of typical moral responses, one might therefore  want to reject response-dependency wholesale. I think this is mistake. If we agree that there is such a thing as a moral/evaluative response, and this response is something that all conceptually competent evaluators have in common, we have our common ground right there, in the response. It is not the kind of relativism where we find that seemingly disagreeing parties are actually speaking about different things altogether. In fact, there is a common core evaluative meaning, and that meaning is provided by the relevant response.

So, to the suggestion then, our theoretical option left open for development: that moral/whatever value is in the response, not in the object of the response. This seems to be the obvious solution once we’ve established that the value is metaphysically dependent on the response, and there is no commonality to what causes the response. If the responses themselves can is something that seemvaluable, and emotions usually do, we should develop that option, and disregard the fact that we tend to project value to the object of mental states. (If we keep on, as I do, and argue that the evaluative component of any emotion consists in it valence, and valence is cashed out in terms of pleasantness – unpleasantness, we have a kind of hedonism at our hands, but this option is open for any response you like).

Nothing is metaphysically more response-dependent than the responses themselves, and yet, this move avoids any objectionable form of relativism, while explaining the appearance of relativism. And, given that the response is motivationally potent, we have an inside track to the motivational power of moral/evaluative properties/beliefs. This, I’d say, makes it a theoretical option worth pursuing.

Duelling Processes

On Thursday, I’m supposed to summarize and criticize a draft for a paper called ”the Methods of Ethics” (yet contains no reference to Sidgwick) with the subtle subtitle ”conflicts built to last”.

The paper (intersting and very nicely written) reflects on the philosophical importance of the ”dual process” model for moral judgments and points out that having two processes influencing our moral judgments is useful since each process can correct the mistake that the other leads to on its own. In vague and possibly misleading terms, the ”emotional” process is in place to make sure that the ”cognitive” process does not run away with us (getting us stuck in prisoners dilemmas and repugnant conclusions. Also, one presumes, to keep us from making biased calculations), the cognitive process is there to make sure we don’t get stuck in emotionally reinforced prejudices.

One important role for the emotional process is to tilt the actual and perceived utilities of an option so that, for instance, a seemingly rational breach of promise becomes less tempting, due to expected guilt. (It’s a choice-archictural device, to speak with the nudge people.) The two processes are commonly held to be representative of two different moral theories. The cognitive process is broadly ”utilitarian”, and the emotional is broadly ”deontological”, spurring some philosophers to say that the dual process model is a perfect diagnosis of the history of moral philosophy. The relation between the two processes, then, is essentially a conflictual one.

It’s an interesting speculation, but there are complications.

First: there might be several decision procedures at play; the ”dualism” is merely a handy simplification with a long history, reaching us from Plato via Hume, and Jane Austen, for crying out loud.

Second: there is no reason to think that the cognitive process as such is utilitarian – there are other reasoned ways to reach a moral decision.(The empirical work on these issues is just getting started). Nor is there any reason to believe that our emotions are essentially deontological, especially seeing how our emotional systems are among the most complicated, interconnected and plastic in the brain. One can easily imagine an agent whose emotions are always targeting the utilitarian option, who is an intellectually convinced deontologist, for instance.

Third: even if our deliberation can occasionally go against our emotional reactions, what that deliberation is about, what consequences to take into account, has to be established somehow, and emotions certainly play a central role in that process.

I believe it is a mistake to see these processes as being essentially in conflict, rather than in cooperation. We are probably best of when we get the same verdict from both processes (which, admittedly, might require some negotiation) and we usually get into trouble when they don’t.

The paper proposes that the take home lesson from these findings is that we should not be that concerned with reaching the moral truth, but with reasoning correctly, i.e. using both processes. But if we have no moral truth to strive towards, or to use as a corrective tool, how do we know when we have reasoned correctly? Especially seeing how the outcome of each process depends on a number of contingent circumstances. There are infinite possibilities when it comes to what sort of a balance is struck between the two processes, so are they all equally valid?

It’s noteworthy that when considering the Prisoners Dilemma case, the way the author determine that emotional processess help us reach the right decision is by showing that it leads to the best overall consequences. It is good that we have two processes, but that goodness must somehow be assessed, and that calls for one criterion of rightness, not several.