I hope I'm not being obtuse, but why is your measurement of a more general moral intuition a good measure of how well the consequentialists predict it? If you have arguments about moral intuitions, doesn't that indicate that whatever heuristic you're using is also flawed?
SCMT, I think the argument is that most consequentialists have those intuitions too, and need to explain them away. If you say, "Consequentialist, your theory seems to predict that it is sometimes morally obligatory to kill one healthy person so that their organs can be transplanted into five healthy people, and that can't be right," the "that can't be right" is a moral intuition; and most consequentialists share it. That is, most consequentialists will say "Hm yes, that is a problem" and try to explain why their theory (maybe with some tweaks) doesn't really predict that, rather than saying "So I guess sometimes it is OK to harvest people's organs."
But it isn't moral intuitions all the way down, is it? Sooner or later you're going to say something like, "No, it's wrong to hope that the Plame affair results in several prison rapes, despite your intuition that it would be just."
One possible answer for why bringing intuitions into the argument is acceptable is: Reflective Equilibrium.
Now I don't think we need to bring intuitions in at all. The most persuasive grounding of ethics I read when I was reading a bunch of those was David Gauthier's contractarianism. I think that Weiner studied with him at one point, so I'd be interested in hearing what he thinks about it. Also, I vaguely remember hearing that Gautier holds some liberterian political views which I think are incorrect, but that's neither here nor there.
Well, one of these days I need to write a big paper about the role of intuitions not just in ethics but in all of philosophy! It's going to be called "Doin' the Unnecessary Shuffle," or maybe "Unnecessary Shuffles and Incredulous Stares." But first, blogging!
Um, yeah. So the feeling is something like this: We have to judge a theory of morality somehow. Not all these judgments can have reasons given for them, on pain of infinite regress. So the rock bottom ones may be what we call intuition--"That theory can't be right if it makes this prediction."
But this doesn't necessarily mean that we'll rely exclusively on intuitions about particular cases for our moral theories. Most analytic moral philosophers (I think--remember I'm not really one myself) adopt a reflective equilibrium approach, where someone will reject some of their immediate moral judgments if they take them to conflict with the best general principles they can come up with. (And how do they come up with those principles? By reflecting on their moral intuitions. You have to use intuition somewhere, or you'll never make any judgments at all--this is true in every field, not just in morality.) So, for instance, someone who was raised to think that homosexuality is icky but whose other moral intuitions accord with a principle that an act is basically OK if it doesn't hurt anyone might reach the generalization, "An action is bad only if it hurts someone," and then say, "Wait! My judgment that homosexuality was bad doesn't match this principle, and thinking about it, I'm going to judge that homosexuality isn't bad after all." That, I think, isn't an option for the moral intuitionist as you're envisioning it--on that view we just intuitively grasp right and wrong, and it can't be corrected. (Though you could argue that our intuitive grasp isn't indefeasible--then I guess I'd say you have to be a moral intuitionist, because everyone must start by making judgments that can't be justified by other judgments.)
I also think that even a position that generally accepts our gut-level moral judgments can have a metaethic other than moral intuitionism (which, again, I take to mean "We have an intuitive grasp of right and wrong"). Kant thinks morality is derived from reason rather than intuition, and still goes to at least some trouble (I think) to show that his results line up to some extent with our unconsidered moral views. Since he also thinks you shouldn't lie to a murderer who asks you where Fred is, I guess he can't be trying to track intuition too closely--but I'd guess Kantians would try to come closer to our intuitive judgments without relying on an intuitionist metaethic.
But keep in mind that the only reason I'm willing to sound off on this is that I'm not really a moral philosopher.
I think I would say that our moral intuitions are starting points from which we proceed to arrive at our normative conventions. (Where else would you start?) I would not say that a moral intuition by itself has any particular force, unless you're stranded on an island.
Thinking about this a bit, it might help to clarify that "moral intuition" isn't just some inchoate feeling that any individual has at any given time. It sounds like appeals to "moral intuition" are really appeals to what we take to be shared, but hazily articulated norms in a particular society or culture. Putting it that way also lets us account for the fact that our intutions seem to be historically contingent, and gives us another context in which to reflect on them.
OK, to 11, you're right about Gauthier's libertarian views; I think they derive from his philosophy insofar as he winds up saying that (roughly) morality concerns what we can gain by mutual cooperation.--Which means that we don't have moral obligations to anyone that can help us. (I'm probably distorting this, Gauthier definitely says different things about this at different times, and I never did read his whole book.) But this does require the ground-level judgment that what results is something like morality--and that judgment, I think, is an intuition (anyway that's how "intuition" ought to be used in this kind of metaphilosophical debate--I'm bringing in a lot of baggage from some debates in epistemology and metaphysics--see here and here). In fact, the reason I reject some of his conclusions is that I think, "But we do have a duty to the weak, and this theory doesn't take account of that." And that "We do have a duty" is an intuition, or anyway based on intuitions.
SCMT, I think the discussions in moral philosophy here presuppose at least a fair amount of agreement in intuitions. If I say "This theory is wrong because on it, killing innocent babies would often be permissible," and you say "It seems to me that killing innocent babies is often a good thing," then we're not going to be able to come to any agreement about a moral theory. I actually think that (at least the way I and I think FL are using the term) what you're citing is itself a moral intuition--you have an intuition that it is wrong to hope that the Plame affair results in a bunch of GOP jerks getting raped; or maybe you have arguments for that, but those arguments will rest on premises that themselves have to be accepted without argument. And if someone rejects those premises (such as, rape is generally bad), then you can't argue with them.
On preview:
I myself test moral principles by hitting them with my cock.
Hey, you brought it up, and now you want to cut if off?
Also, SB, I think your expression is at least as good insofar as it expresses the main point without all the excess verbiage.
And I think Ogged is definitely getting at something with the shared but hazily articulated norms.
My recollection of Gauthier's libertarianism was rather different. Since he thinks morality just is agreement for mutual advantage, there can't be a moral justification (paternalistic, egalitarian, perfectionist) for interfering with whatever agreements we may mutually make.
Well I wouldn't defend that view, it was just my understanding of it. It should be said, though (see also journalist comment) that I wasn't much of a philosophy student. My CK beefs, beside, run deeper than that! Years of oppression by the Korsgaard-Scanlon axis of practical reasons theory have left me bitter.
In re Gauthier, I meant Which means that we don't have moral obligations to anyone that can't help us. Big difference, sorry. What I remember isn't inconsistent with Saiselgy's 27; though it should be noted that Gauthier thinks it's irrational not to make and stick to agreements for mutual advantage. (As far as 30 goes, I think I've already made an agreement with a bunch of other people that we're going to get you if you try any of that shit. See Hobbes.)
It should also be said that Saiselgy has probably read more Gauthier than I have--the class I took from him was mostly devoted to reading other people.
I find Gauthier is really useful against someone who says to me: I don't have ethical any ethical obligations, why would I, I'm just following social conventions because its easier? This has happened to me more than once, and neither person is actually a sociopath AFAIK.
Yeah, my intuitions are that Gauthier may be getting it right about some moral obligations (though I'm not too comfortable with the idea that you can choose your own conception of rationality) but that he misses some other important ones.
This whole discussion reminds me of the debate in linguistics over the use of introspection as evidence. I'm not sure if it's an exact parallel (I don't know much about philosophy) but the arguments for both sides are eerily similar.
(That argument, by the way, is now more or less over. Introspection lost.)
But that's not really what's going on: the model doesn't get things exactly right, just close (supposing the empirical criticisms are right). 'Close enough' is useful for predictive purposes (just as the rigged c-ist moral view is a reliable indicator of moral truth) but it's an indication that we've got a bad underlying model.
I'm not sure why. If you're interested in an instrument that tells you the time do you want it to be based on a mechanism that intrinsically embodies the passing of time? If so you could, for instance, use a plant and read from the growth and state of the plant the time passed. On the other hand you could use a watch, realizing that nothing in the clockwork itself embodies passing time, and that your reading of the time is a result of a precisely designed interpretation of the underlying mechanism.
Two questions for Matt Y. It seems that you got emerged from Harvard as something like a Quinean empiricist (and, some kind of Humean about moral claims). First question: is that accurate? Second question: so what happened, was Scanlon asleep or something?
Also, mad props to FL for a series of intellectual substantive posts.
teofilo: Doesn't linguistics involve a similar use of intuitions, though? In linguistics sentences get marked with asterisks or not according to whether speakers judge them to be acceptable; moral intuitions are kind of similar--we mark actions wrong or not according to whether we judge them permissible, without necessarily relying on a developed theory (because, as SB says, we have to start from this kind of intuition before we can develop a theory).
You have all left me confused and paralyzed with indecision about the rest of my life. Come the revolution, after we kill all the lawyers, we're definitely going to ass-rape all the philosophers. And it won't be the relatively loving Keller-type rape; it'll be Adebisi-rape.
No, no. I'm sure that's true. But it's a function of not having the background to understand a fair bit (most) of this. I don't know what are "appropriate moves," and I can't tell if finding them appropriate would be a reflection of knowledge of PhD socialization. And, truth be told, I'm never going to know. (And now I'm wondering if I even know what I mean by "know," you fuckers.)
Yes, judgments about grammaticality (which can only be intuitions) are the basis of all syntactic theory. The controversy, though is over which (and whose) intuitions are reliable as a basis for linguistic research. There was a time (in the 70s) when you could publish a paper on English syntax based entirely on sentences you made up and then thought real hard about; these days you really need to, you know, ask someone else. Ideally you should use data that comes about naturally in a discourse rather than asking about the grammaticality of isolated sentences, but in practice this isn't always possible.
Not really sure how this translates to morality, but you can see the similarities.
Yeah, in philosophy there's a bit of a trend (the experimental philosophy types I linked in 19) to demanding that people poll civilians about intuitions instead of just plain citing their own. But this is still very much a minority movement and controversial for what I think are good reasons--we need to work out exactly what we mean by intuitions, and exactly how we need to use them, before we can tell whether we need to be polling the folk to see what their intutions are. I think this may be sometimes necessary, but not always.
re 46/54- You should copy teofilo's approach, and compare whatever the philosophers are talking about to your own field of expertise, putting them on the defensive, and making them feel as though they should understand whatever it is you are talking. If you have no such field, make up some completely random analogy to a field none of them are likely to know anything about, such as algae formation, or the life cycle of the Australian pygmy possum.
Everyone who thinks I should forward this to the disaffected folks in my ethics seminar, who tend to be especially unimpressed with consequentialism (understandable, really), say "aye".
ac, in Pittsburgh we felt like other philosophers were doing that to us all the time. One of my friends described it as "You can't really understand political philosophy unless you've studied plate tectonics."
The short long answer was something like this (with debts to Eugene Gendlin and Heidegger): When you write something (a poem, for example), you might write the first few lines and pause, thinking about the next line. Lots of next lines pop into your head, but eventually you settle on one that seems "right." That line isn't contained in the previous lines, and is in some ways created by you; but it's also not sui generis: it flows from, and is constrained by, and responds to, and also changes the lines that come before it; not to mention it's place in what you're trying to do by writing the poem, etc. The argument, such as it was, was that moral deliberation is analagous to writing the right line in a poem: we aren't exactly following rules, but neither are we acting wantonly, but through a combination of prior beliefs, reflection, and moral sense, we create a path that did not exist until we created it.... (That's why I was interested in what analytics mean by "moral intuitions," because they seem to me to be doing the same work as what continentals would call "situatedness," which, in this case, is the totality of circumstances that that line has to be sensitive to.) But it was just an account of moral deliberation, and not a defense of any particular moral system. The difficulty I couldn't resolve was how we should approach or judge the interplay of our situation (moral intuitions), with our reflective judgments--not only is it hard to say which one should take "priority" but it's hard to say if we can ever even have reflective judgments that aren't just fancy articulations of our intuitions. Eventually, that's the kind of thing I wound up believing: that moral theories aren't (despite what they say they're doing) trying to give us rules or guidelines, so much as trying to articulate, with greater and greater precision, that part of the moral calculus that we call our "moral sense" or "moral intuitions."
Ok, little tipsy, and it's been 10 years since I thought about this stuff. Apologies.
58: Well, that's why I started talking about prison rape.
58 & 61: Isn't this exactly when ogged comes in to talk about his Frenchy philosophy and "discourse" and the various power hierarchies? (And don't you guys, as Anglophiles, hate when he does that?)
The argument, such as it was, was that moral deliberation is analagous to writing the right line in a poem: we aren't exactly following rules, but neither are we acting wantonly, but through a combination of prior beliefs, reflection, and moral sense, we create a path that did not exist until we created it....
There's a guy in my class who was trying to articulate a line somewhat not entirely dissimilar to this. I think he takes himself to be some flavor of Kantian, actually.
And, really, most of the interest would be in the title, which is fairly in-jokey. But isn't it the nature of in-jokes that we want to share them, but cannot? I joke and I do not joke. Perhaps you ask me why. I cannot say; only that I feel it, and am torn.
I think he takes himself to be some flavor of Kantian, actually.
He was probably saying that moral judgment is analogous to Kant's aesthetic judgment, which is a not unpopular thing to say in some circles. It's not really wrong, either, but it doesn't tell you a whole hell of a lot about how to make moral judgements.
Interesting, Matt. The thing about the introspection controversy in linguistics is that it's really tied up with a lot of issues in the history of the discipline. You see (warning: long and possibly boring section to follow; may not be wc)...
Back in the 40s linguistics (in the US) was entirely empirical, the ultimate behavioralist social science, according to B. F. Skinner himself. Linguists went around recording data from various languages and determining their sound systems. It was generally considered either a branch of Anthropology or a field closely related to it. Research into syntax and semantics was stunted by the problems with how to conceptualize those domains within the dominant paradigm, so few bothered; things like that were part of the "black box": the unknowable mind. A common adage was "write down everything a speaker says in his language and nothing he says about it." Intuitions were not part of this kind of science.
Then in 1957 a young professor at MIT named Noam Chomsky published a book called Syntactic Structures that revolutionized the field. He proposed a way to study the inner workings of the mind and draw diagrams of syntactic structure based on simple tests, all of which depended on one innovation in methodology: to trust speakers' intuitions and indeed value them above all other kinds of evidence.
During the sixties this new paradigm took the field by storm and came to triumph. Linguistics was now considered more like Psychology (or Philosophy) than Anthro. Syntax displaced phonology as the primary focus of research.
But all was not well in the new field. Research increasingly became dominated by lazy introspection, from people who had spent so much time examining questionable sentences that they were perhaps no longer reliable judges of grammaticality. People began to question whether it might not be better to go back to some of the techniques that had been used before Chomsky, if only to get a broader base of data to test the new theories. That is now the consensus, and even the most ardent Chomskyists use data from a variety of languages, which they may not even speak, in their papers.
It sounds like philosophy is completely different, though.
(On preview I see that ac has challenged my change of subject. I'm not trying to put anyone on the defensive, and I don't think anyone has been; apologies if I'm wrong. I just don't know much about philosophy and was struck by the similarities.)
Wolfson - perhaps I'm feeling wierdly protective of the Gayatollah's anonymity post-Drezner, but isn't it possible that the more philosophy-types that visit, the more the chance that he will be outed?
76: No, of course he didn't. I loaned my car to a fellow (philosophy student, who incidentally is not a fellow) following breaking my fast around 1030, we had lunch around 1230, I did some "reading" (really, I did do some reading), then had class from 3-615 and a reading group from 7-9-ish, walked home (because, having driven initially, I didn't have my bike with me), and am now eating.
I suppose I could have eaten between 615 and 7, but you know what? I didn't!
I think it's a reasonable assumption that this guy had more to say than "yeah, it's like aesthetic judgment, maaaan"—and in fact even in what little we talked about he did.
"Well, one of these days I need to write a big paper about the role of intuitions not just in ethics but in all of philosophy! It's going to be called "Doin' the Unnecessary Shuffle," or maybe "Unnecessary Shuffles and Incredulous Stares.""
Yeah, this is a paper 'wot is needing to be wrote'.
There is a lack of systematic thinking about the role of intuitions in contemporary philosophy and what we think we are doing when we appeal to them.
There does seem something 'sneaky' about the casual appeal to intuitions post-Quine (on the analytic/synthetic distinction) and post-logical positivism. If we aren't just analysing concepts and discovering analytic facts about the meaning of words, then what the hell ARE we doing when we appeal to intuitions?
There are the experimental philosophy bods, responding in some way to various worries about, for example, the pretty wierd and non-representative nature of philosophers' intuitions, I suppose.
But the worries raised by Stephen Stich, et al. are pretty real worries.
I hope I'm not being obtuse, but why is your measurement of a more general moral intuition a good measure of how well the consequentialists predict it? If you have arguments about moral intuitions, doesn't that indicate that whatever heuristic you're using is also flawed?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:17 PM
I'm pretty obtuse and a non-philosopher, but what does CK stand for? Beyond that, I need to digest this a bit.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:19 PM
CK is just Christine Korsgaard, nothing tricky there. SCMT, I don't quite understand how you're using "measure" and "predict" in one.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:29 PM
CK = "Christine Korsgaard," I'm pretty sure.
SCMT, I think the argument is that most consequentialists have those intuitions too, and need to explain them away. If you say, "Consequentialist, your theory seems to predict that it is sometimes morally obligatory to kill one healthy person so that their organs can be transplanted into five healthy people, and that can't be right," the "that can't be right" is a moral intuition; and most consequentialists share it. That is, most consequentialists will say "Hm yes, that is a problem" and try to explain why their theory (maybe with some tweaks) doesn't really predict that, rather than saying "So I guess sometimes it is OK to harvest people's organs."
Fair enough, FL?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:33 PM
CK is a cocksucker-killing argument. You really need to know the whole system in order to understand any term.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:39 PM
One of you analytic types tell me why it's not fair to say that you're all moral intuitionists.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:40 PM
I think I'm wondering something similar to ogged; why is the baseline your moral intuition (whoever's it might be)?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:47 PM
We have to get an "ought" from somewhere, and not from the world of facts. So why not our intuitions?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:52 PM
I'm not objecting to moral intuitionism (yet); I just want to know if Labs, MW, et al see it the same way.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:54 PM
But it isn't moral intuitions all the way down, is it? Sooner or later you're going to say something like, "No, it's wrong to hope that the Plame affair results in several prison rapes, despite your intuition that it would be just."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 8:59 PM
One possible answer for why bringing intuitions into the argument is acceptable is: Reflective Equilibrium.
Now I don't think we need to bring intuitions in at all. The most persuasive grounding of ethics I read when I was reading a bunch of those was David Gauthier's contractarianism. I think that Weiner studied with him at one point, so I'd be interested in hearing what he thinks about it. Also, I vaguely remember hearing that Gautier holds some liberterian political views which I think are incorrect, but that's neither here nor there.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:09 PM
Well, one of these days I need to write a big paper about the role of intuitions not just in ethics but in all of philosophy! It's going to be called "Doin' the Unnecessary Shuffle," or maybe "Unnecessary Shuffles and Incredulous Stares." But first, blogging!
Um, yeah. So the feeling is something like this: We have to judge a theory of morality somehow. Not all these judgments can have reasons given for them, on pain of infinite regress. So the rock bottom ones may be what we call intuition--"That theory can't be right if it makes this prediction."
But this doesn't necessarily mean that we'll rely exclusively on intuitions about particular cases for our moral theories. Most analytic moral philosophers (I think--remember I'm not really one myself) adopt a reflective equilibrium approach, where someone will reject some of their immediate moral judgments if they take them to conflict with the best general principles they can come up with. (And how do they come up with those principles? By reflecting on their moral intuitions. You have to use intuition somewhere, or you'll never make any judgments at all--this is true in every field, not just in morality.) So, for instance, someone who was raised to think that homosexuality is icky but whose other moral intuitions accord with a principle that an act is basically OK if it doesn't hurt anyone might reach the generalization, "An action is bad only if it hurts someone," and then say, "Wait! My judgment that homosexuality was bad doesn't match this principle, and thinking about it, I'm going to judge that homosexuality isn't bad after all." That, I think, isn't an option for the moral intuitionist as you're envisioning it--on that view we just intuitively grasp right and wrong, and it can't be corrected. (Though you could argue that our intuitive grasp isn't indefeasible--then I guess I'd say you have to be a moral intuitionist, because everyone must start by making judgments that can't be justified by other judgments.)
I also think that even a position that generally accepts our gut-level moral judgments can have a metaethic other than moral intuitionism (which, again, I take to mean "We have an intuitive grasp of right and wrong"). Kant thinks morality is derived from reason rather than intuition, and still goes to at least some trouble (I think) to show that his results line up to some extent with our unconsidered moral views. Since he also thinks you shouldn't lie to a murderer who asks you where Fred is, I guess he can't be trying to track intuition too closely--but I'd guess Kantians would try to come closer to our intuitive judgments without relying on an intuitionist metaethic.
But keep in mind that the only reason I'm willing to sound off on this is that I'm not really a moral philosopher.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:22 PM
I think I would say that our moral intuitions are starting points from which we proceed to arrive at our normative conventions. (Where else would you start?) I would not say that a moral intuition by itself has any particular force, unless you're stranded on an island.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:25 PM
Whoops. Should have clammed up on account of Weiner said everything better.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:27 PM
Thinking about this a bit, it might help to clarify that "moral intuition" isn't just some inchoate feeling that any individual has at any given time. It sounds like appeals to "moral intuition" are really appeals to what we take to be shared, but hazily articulated norms in a particular society or culture. Putting it that way also lets us account for the fact that our intutions seem to be historically contingent, and gives us another context in which to reflect on them.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:33 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:34 PM
Hey, you brought it up, and now you want to cut if off?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:36 PM
Have you tried dowsing, Labs? You may well happen upon vast artesian pools of Right Action.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:39 PM
OK, to 11, you're right about Gauthier's libertarian views; I think they derive from his philosophy insofar as he winds up saying that (roughly) morality concerns what we can gain by mutual cooperation.--Which means that we don't have moral obligations to anyone that can help us. (I'm probably distorting this, Gauthier definitely says different things about this at different times, and I never did read his whole book.) But this does require the ground-level judgment that what results is something like morality--and that judgment, I think, is an intuition (anyway that's how "intuition" ought to be used in this kind of metaphilosophical debate--I'm bringing in a lot of baggage from some debates in epistemology and metaphysics--see here and here). In fact, the reason I reject some of his conclusions is that I think, "But we do have a duty to the weak, and this theory doesn't take account of that." And that "We do have a duty" is an intuition, or anyway based on intuitions.
SCMT, I think the discussions in moral philosophy here presuppose at least a fair amount of agreement in intuitions. If I say "This theory is wrong because on it, killing innocent babies would often be permissible," and you say "It seems to me that killing innocent babies is often a good thing," then we're not going to be able to come to any agreement about a moral theory. I actually think that (at least the way I and I think FL are using the term) what you're citing is itself a moral intuition--you have an intuition that it is wrong to hope that the Plame affair results in a bunch of GOP jerks getting raped; or maybe you have arguments for that, but those arguments will rest on premises that themselves have to be accepted without argument. And if someone rejects those premises (such as, rape is generally bad), then you can't argue with them.
On preview:
I myself test moral principles by hitting them with my cock.
Hey, you brought it up, and now you want to cut if off?
Also, SB, I think your expression is at least as good insofar as it expresses the main point without all the excess verbiage.
And I think Ogged is definitely getting at something with the shared but hazily articulated norms.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:41 PM
I myself test moral principles by hitting them with my cock
I think you should adopt that testing method for your students. After a semester or two, you'll be grading on a curve.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:42 PM
CK is not a wizard cocksucker.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:44 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:44 PM
Right Action is weak American swill. What you need is some Recht und Gesetz.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:46 PM
You mean, "CK is not wizard cocksucker". See here for an explanation.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:46 PM
Someday, Mr Wettham, I will tell you a funny story about her ex-husband.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:46 PM
Did MY just call his professor a lesbian?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:47 PM
My recollection of Gauthier's libertarianism was rather different. Since he thinks morality just is agreement for mutual advantage, there can't be a moral justification (paternalistic, egalitarian, perfectionist) for interfering with whatever agreements we may mutually make.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:48 PM
Though technically, something could be "teh wizard cocksucker."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:49 PM
Apologies for the usage error. I'm new at this and just don't like her. That's all I meant. Funny ex-husband stories would be welcome.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:49 PM
there can't be a moral justification (paternalistic, egalitarian, perfectionist) for interfering with whatever agreements we may mutually make
I'll hold this gun to your head, and you'll let me assrape you. Agreed? Agreed!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:50 PM
Still stinging over the journalist comment, eh?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:51 PM
Apologies for the usage error.
And I'm sorry I lashed you with my wet pedant noodle. I'm feeling a little over-protective of the nascent WC.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:58 PM
Well I wouldn't defend that view, it was just my understanding of it. It should be said, though (see also journalist comment) that I wasn't much of a philosophy student. My CK beefs, beside, run deeper than that! Years of oppression by the Korsgaard-Scanlon axis of practical reasons theory have left me bitter.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 9:58 PM
In re Gauthier, I meant Which means that we don't have moral obligations to anyone that can't help us. Big difference, sorry. What I remember isn't inconsistent with Saiselgy's 27; though it should be noted that Gauthier thinks it's irrational not to make and stick to agreements for mutual advantage. (As far as 30 goes, I think I've already made an agreement with a bunch of other people that we're going to get you if you try any of that shit. See Hobbes.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:00 PM
It should also be said that Saiselgy has probably read more Gauthier than I have--the class I took from him was mostly devoted to reading other people.
The corrected quote was from 19.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:01 PM
My CK beefs, beside, run deeper than that!
Actually, anyone who would make that remark to an undergrad without knowing that it would go over as a big joke must be a pretty unpleasant person.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:03 PM
I find Gauthier is really useful against someone who says to me: I don't have ethical any ethical obligations, why would I, I'm just following social conventions because its easier? This has happened to me more than once, and neither person is actually a sociopath AFAIK.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:03 PM
first "ethical" s/b "actual"
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:04 PM
Yeah, my intuitions are that Gauthier may be getting it right about some moral obligations (though I'm not too comfortable with the idea that you can choose your own conception of rationality) but that he misses some other important ones.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:06 PM
This whole discussion reminds me of the debate in linguistics over the use of introspection as evidence. I'm not sure if it's an exact parallel (I don't know much about philosophy) but the arguments for both sides are eerily similar.
(That argument, by the way, is now more or less over. Introspection lost.)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:09 PM
But that's not really what's going on: the model doesn't get things exactly right, just close (supposing the empirical criticisms are right). 'Close enough' is useful for predictive purposes (just as the rigged c-ist moral view is a reliable indicator of moral truth) but it's an indication that we've got a bad underlying model.
I'm not sure why. If you're interested in an instrument that tells you the time do you want it to be based on a mechanism that intrinsically embodies the passing of time? If so you could, for instance, use a plant and read from the growth and state of the plant the time passed. On the other hand you could use a watch, realizing that nothing in the clockwork itself embodies passing time, and that your reading of the time is a result of a precisely designed interpretation of the underlying mechanism.
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:09 PM
Two questions for Matt Y. It seems that you got emerged from Harvard as something like a Quinean empiricist (and, some kind of Humean about moral claims). First question: is that accurate? Second question: so what happened, was Scanlon asleep or something?
Also, mad props to FL for a series of intellectual substantive posts.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:12 PM
Oh sure, Labs parachutes in once every few days, pastes his marginal notes on the blog, and gets mad props. I tell ya...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:14 PM
baa, I'm just pissy because I emailed Labs today decrying the vapidity of my recent posts.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:15 PM
teofilo: Doesn't linguistics involve a similar use of intuitions, though? In linguistics sentences get marked with asterisks or not according to whether speakers judge them to be acceptable; moral intuitions are kind of similar--we mark actions wrong or not according to whether we judge them permissible, without necessarily relying on a developed theory (because, as SB says, we have to start from this kind of intuition before we can develop a theory).
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:18 PM
You have all left me confused and paralyzed with indecision about the rest of my life. Come the revolution, after we kill all the lawyers, we're definitely going to ass-rape all the philosophers. And it won't be the relatively loving Keller-type rape; it'll be Adebisi-rape.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:18 PM
Timbot, if you provide specifics, I'm sure the gathered mind will be happy to advise...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:20 PM
Hey, can we draw any useful inferences from an analogy relating moral systems to languages, and actions to utterances?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:22 PM
Moral codes, not systems, I think.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:23 PM
I wrote something about that back in grad school, SB, but fuck if I remember any of it. Short answer: yes!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:23 PM
Oh, wait, I do remember some of it. I'll spare you the long answer.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:24 PM
Morality is the language of agency! The end. Where's my degree?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:26 PM
I'm actually interested in the long answer.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:26 PM
No, no. I'm sure that's true. But it's a function of not having the background to understand a fair bit (most) of this. I don't know what are "appropriate moves," and I can't tell if finding them appropriate would be a reflection of knowledge of PhD socialization. And, truth be told, I'm never going to know. (And now I'm wondering if I even know what I mean by "know," you fuckers.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:27 PM
Re 45-
Yes, judgments about grammaticality (which can only be intuitions) are the basis of all syntactic theory. The controversy, though is over which (and whose) intuitions are reliable as a basis for linguistic research. There was a time (in the 70s) when you could publish a paper on English syntax based entirely on sentences you made up and then thought real hard about; these days you really need to, you know, ask someone else. Ideally you should use data that comes about naturally in a discourse rather than asking about the grammaticality of isolated sentences, but in practice this isn't always possible.
Not really sure how this translates to morality, but you can see the similarities.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:29 PM
Err...54 to 47.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:31 PM
Yeah, in philosophy there's a bit of a trend (the experimental philosophy types I linked in 19) to demanding that people poll civilians about intuitions instead of just plain citing their own. But this is still very much a minority movement and controversial for what I think are good reasons--we need to work out exactly what we mean by intuitions, and exactly how we need to use them, before we can tell whether we need to be polling the folk to see what their intutions are. I think this may be sometimes necessary, but not always.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:37 PM
re 46/54- You should copy teofilo's approach, and compare whatever the philosophers are talking about to your own field of expertise, putting them on the defensive, and making them feel as though they should understand whatever it is you are talking. If you have no such field, make up some completely random analogy to a field none of them are likely to know anything about, such as algae formation, or the life cycle of the Australian pygmy possum.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:40 PM
talking about
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:40 PM
Everyone who thinks I should forward this to the disaffected folks in my ethics seminar, who tend to be especially unimpressed with consequentialism (understandable, really), say "aye".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:43 PM
ac, in Pittsburgh we felt like other philosophers were doing that to us all the time. One of my friends described it as "You can't really understand political philosophy unless you've studied plate tectonics."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:45 PM
Or, for that matter, the professor.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:50 PM
The short long answer was something like this (with debts to Eugene Gendlin and Heidegger): When you write something (a poem, for example), you might write the first few lines and pause, thinking about the next line. Lots of next lines pop into your head, but eventually you settle on one that seems "right." That line isn't contained in the previous lines, and is in some ways created by you; but it's also not sui generis: it flows from, and is constrained by, and responds to, and also changes the lines that come before it; not to mention it's place in what you're trying to do by writing the poem, etc. The argument, such as it was, was that moral deliberation is analagous to writing the right line in a poem: we aren't exactly following rules, but neither are we acting wantonly, but through a combination of prior beliefs, reflection, and moral sense, we create a path that did not exist until we created it.... (That's why I was interested in what analytics mean by "moral intuitions," because they seem to me to be doing the same work as what continentals would call "situatedness," which, in this case, is the totality of circumstances that that line has to be sensitive to.) But it was just an account of moral deliberation, and not a defense of any particular moral system. The difficulty I couldn't resolve was how we should approach or judge the interplay of our situation (moral intuitions), with our reflective judgments--not only is it hard to say which one should take "priority" but it's hard to say if we can ever even have reflective judgments that aren't just fancy articulations of our intuitions. Eventually, that's the kind of thing I wound up believing: that moral theories aren't (despite what they say they're doing) trying to give us rules or guidelines, so much as trying to articulate, with greater and greater precision, that part of the moral calculus that we call our "moral sense" or "moral intuitions."
Ok, little tipsy, and it's been 10 years since I thought about this stuff. Apologies.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:51 PM
58: Well, that's why I started talking about prison rape.
58 & 61: Isn't this exactly when ogged comes in to talk about his Frenchy philosophy and "discourse" and the various power hierarchies? (And don't you guys, as Anglophiles, hate when he does that?)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:51 PM
Hey, you brought it up, and now you want to cut if off?
I'm willing to bet that "cutting it off" is the last thing Labs wants to do, especially now that he's finally gotten it up.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:52 PM
Thus my expression of surprise, Ben.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:53 PM
Or, for that matter, the professor.
Wouldn't that, or the prior, be a Wolfson Indiscretion Error?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:55 PM
The argument, such as it was, was that moral deliberation is analagous to writing the right line in a poem: we aren't exactly following rules, but neither are we acting wantonly, but through a combination of prior beliefs, reflection, and moral sense, we create a path that did not exist until we created it....
There's a guy in my class who was trying to articulate a line somewhat not entirely dissimilar to this. I think he takes himself to be some flavor of Kantian, actually.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:55 PM
Wouldn't that, or the prior, be a Wolfson Indiscretion Error?
You're right—I might, in so doing, reveal my real name to them!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:56 PM
And, really, most of the interest would be in the title, which is fairly in-jokey. But isn't it the nature of in-jokes that we want to share them, but cannot? I joke and I do not joke. Perhaps you ask me why. I cannot say; only that I feel it, and am torn.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:58 PM
I think he takes himself to be some flavor of Kantian, actually.
He was probably saying that moral judgment is analogous to Kant's aesthetic judgment, which is a not unpopular thing to say in some circles. It's not really wrong, either, but it doesn't tell you a whole hell of a lot about how to make moral judgements.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:58 PM
Interesting, Matt. The thing about the introspection controversy in linguistics is that it's really tied up with a lot of issues in the history of the discipline. You see (warning: long and possibly boring section to follow; may not be wc)...
Back in the 40s linguistics (in the US) was entirely empirical, the ultimate behavioralist social science, according to B. F. Skinner himself. Linguists went around recording data from various languages and determining their sound systems. It was generally considered either a branch of Anthropology or a field closely related to it. Research into syntax and semantics was stunted by the problems with how to conceptualize those domains within the dominant paradigm, so few bothered; things like that were part of the "black box": the unknowable mind. A common adage was "write down everything a speaker says in his language and nothing he says about it." Intuitions were not part of this kind of science.
Then in 1957 a young professor at MIT named Noam Chomsky published a book called Syntactic Structures that revolutionized the field. He proposed a way to study the inner workings of the mind and draw diagrams of syntactic structure based on simple tests, all of which depended on one innovation in methodology: to trust speakers' intuitions and indeed value them above all other kinds of evidence.
During the sixties this new paradigm took the field by storm and came to triumph. Linguistics was now considered more like Psychology (or Philosophy) than Anthro. Syntax displaced phonology as the primary focus of research.
But all was not well in the new field. Research increasingly became dominated by lazy introspection, from people who had spent so much time examining questionable sentences that they were perhaps no longer reliable judges of grammaticality. People began to question whether it might not be better to go back to some of the techniques that had been used before Chomsky, if only to get a broader base of data to test the new theories. That is now the consensus, and even the most ardent Chomskyists use data from a variety of languages, which they may not even speak, in their papers.
It sounds like philosophy is completely different, though.
(On preview I see that ac has challenged my change of subject. I'm not trying to put anyone on the defensive, and I don't think anyone has been; apologies if I'm wrong. I just don't know much about philosophy and was struck by the similarities.)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:58 PM
So, guess who just got home and is eating food for the first time in ~10 hours, before performing which he or she felt collapse imminent?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:58 PM
I'll spell "judg[e]ment" any way I damn well please.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 10:58 PM
Wolfson - perhaps I'm feeling wierdly protective of the Gayatollah's anonymity post-Drezner, but isn't it possible that the more philosophy-types that visit, the more the chance that he will be outed?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:00 PM
eating food for the first time in ~10 hours
This I cannot comprehend. At least your roommate had a hot dinner ready for you, right?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:00 PM
In fact, when I mentioned such judgments (aesthetic ones) in an attempt to help him win over his recalcitrant interlocuter, he agreed.
It's not really wrong, either, but it doesn't tell you a whole hell of a lot about how to make moral judgements.
Seems to tell you no less than what you posted.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:01 PM
Thanks, ogged. I hadn't thought of the analogy in those terms.
Right now I'm intrigued by the idea of murder as a grave synatctic error, the spewing of heinous nonsense.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:01 PM
(78 to 63)
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:02 PM
Yeah, I assumed you were kidding about forwarding the post, Ben.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:02 PM
What happens at the Mineshaft, stays at the Mineshaft.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:03 PM
76: No, of course he didn't. I loaned my car to a fellow (philosophy student, who incidentally is not a fellow) following breaking my fast around 1030, we had lunch around 1230, I did some "reading" (really, I did do some reading), then had class from 3-615 and a reading group from 7-9-ish, walked home (because, having driven initially, I didn't have my bike with me), and am now eating.
I suppose I could have eaten between 615 and 7, but you know what? I didn't!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:04 PM
Seems to tell you no less than what you posted.
True, but I could have posted more! This is where I went off about Gendlin and focusing. Sounds silly, but is good stuff.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:07 PM
I think it's a reasonable assumption that this guy had more to say than "yeah, it's like aesthetic judgment, maaaan"—and in fact even in what little we talked about he did.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:09 PM
Hey, I have no beef with this guy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:10 PM
You say that, but you have a revealed beef.
Ok, I'm going to go ingest yeast effluvia for a bit now.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-13-05 11:11 PM
73: Ooh, ten hours, that's so long.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 12:02 AM
Weiner wrote:
"Well, one of these days I need to write a big paper about the role of intuitions not just in ethics but in all of philosophy! It's going to be called "Doin' the Unnecessary Shuffle," or maybe "Unnecessary Shuffles and Incredulous Stares.""
Yeah, this is a paper 'wot is needing to be wrote'.
There is a lack of systematic thinking about the role of intuitions in contemporary philosophy and what we think we are doing when we appeal to them.
There does seem something 'sneaky' about the casual appeal to intuitions post-Quine (on the analytic/synthetic distinction) and post-logical positivism. If we aren't just analysing concepts and discovering analytic facts about the meaning of words, then what the hell ARE we doing when we appeal to intuitions?
There are the experimental philosophy bods, responding in some way to various worries about, for example, the pretty wierd and non-representative nature of philosophers' intuitions, I suppose.
But the worries raised by Stephen Stich, et al. are pretty real worries.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 2:27 AM
Instead of drinking beer, I fractured my elbow. Moral: drink alone, at home.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 4:44 AM
Are you serious, Ben? That totally sucks. Dare I ask how?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 7:13 AM
Ouch. Sorry to hear that Ben.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 7:28 AM
Jeebus. I hope you're doing OK, Ben.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 7:30 AM
That sucks, and I now feel bad about 87.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 7:33 AM
Though technically, something could be "teh wizard cocksucker."
teh W12aRd C0KSuXX0rs!!1!!!
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 7:48 AM
Yes, Ben, teh suck.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 7:49 AM
Yeah, that sucks, Ben.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 8:11 AM
Yes, Ben, that blows. Warlocks.
Hope you're okay.
And hope it was the elbow on the arm you don't write with too.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 8:14 AM
Yikes. Would that you mend quickly, Ben.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 8:21 AM
On the subject of philosophers who've been personally rude to me, a new Dan Dennett book just showed up in the mail at my office.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 1:18 PM
100. Your turn, Weiner.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 8:59 PM
I'm really beginning to wonder if there's any point in 101ing anymore, though.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-14-05 11:42 PM
I'd be interested in knowing what Heidegger pieces were involved in the argument sketched in 63.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-10-05 3:02 PM