That Something Like the Moral Trust Network is Needed to Explain

Although the analysis of approval and disapproval that I have offered is only half baked, its match with our intuitions is auspicious. This intuitive support licences optimism that a true analysis of approval and disapproval, according to which entrusted concern relationships constitute the social-contextual ingredients for these attitudes, is waiting to be discovered. Moreover, it seems that such an analysis would provide the basis for an explanation of the phenomena of moral approval and disapproval that was at least as plausible as the explanation allowed by any rival analysis, if that rival analysis recognized social contexts as necessary for approval and disapproval. For the ‘social context’ that would be necessary for moral approbation must be one that entitles every moralist in the universe to a voice in every other moralist’s decisions. And among those arrangements of social institutions that would provide this social context, the first order

177 of fiduciary non-cognitivism’s moral trust network is one whose existence can be posited with a comparatively high plausibility.

Here are three propositions and an argument.

(1) I can apparently morally disapprove of the actions of a moralist on Approbia, a planet in a distant galaxy that has never been in contact with Earth.

(2) A moralist on Approbia can apparently disapprove of my actions.

(3) Person A can only approve or disapprove of person B’s φ-ing if social practices or customs or trust relationships exist entitling A to a voice in B’s decision to φ or not-φ.

((3) is a disjunction of Foot’s and my proposed necessary conditions for approval and disapproval.) Fiduciary non-cognitivists can account for (1)-(3) because they posit a necessary connection between being a moralist—even an Approbian moralist—and being a party to a network of trust relationships that gives members a voice in the decisions of all other moralists. Cognitivists (and traditional non-cognitivists) can’t account for (1)-(3) unless they posit something similar.

I don’t claim that cognitivists need to make the same postulation (i.e. a universe- spanning fully connected network, and a necessary connection between being a maker of moral judgements and being a member of such a network) in order to explain (1) and (2) given (3). They could, for instance, postulate that there is a universe-spanning social contract, entitling every moralist to a voice in every other moralist’s relevant decisions (or that our approval attributions assume this). Or they could postulate that there are local conventions in every society in the universe conferring similar entitlements (or that our approval-attributions assume this). All I claim is that they have to postulate something like this in order to give a completely satisfactory explanation of (1) and (2), and that none of the cognitivist-friendly alternatives to my proposed network of trust relationships is significantly less costly.

Postulating the network of trust relationships required for the non-cognitivist to give a wholly satisfactory explanation of moral disagreement seemingly does not require postulating anything more extravagant than what everyone in metaethics must postulate to give a wholly satisfactory explanation of moral approbation. Does this mean that the there is no net cost for fiduciary non-cognitivism in postulating the first order of the moral trust network? Probably not. Cognitivists probably won’t want to give a completely satisfactory explanation of moral approbation if it means making such a postulation. They might well do better to simply reject Foot’s intuitive claims, or postulate that ‘approval’ and ‘disapproval’ are used in different senses in moral and

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non-moral contexts, or insist that some sort of counterfactual social contract suffices to make approbation possible. But the plausibility of (1)-(3), and the obligation of all metaethicists to explain (1) and (2) given (3) if they are true, greatly lightens the burden of positing the moral trust network.

Michael Smith thinks that we can satisfactorily explain moral approbation while rejecting (3). Smith presents an account of approval and disapproval that, like mine, was directly inspired by Foot’s account and the striking observations that she adduces in support of it. Like Foot, he sets out to explain what it is that distinguishes approving from attitudes like wanting and liking. Here is his proposal:

to say that I disapprove of your behaviour, as opposed to merely dislike it, signals the fact that, as I see it, your behaviour transgresses the standards in terms of which you and I both acknowledge your behaviour is to be judged. In other words, disapproval presupposes that your behaviour is contrary to my legitimate expectations; my belief about how you will behave. Disliking your behaviour presupposes no such thing.148

One party must have ‘legitimate expectations’ about how another will act if she is to disapprove of his actions. What exactly is a ‘legitimate expectation’? This much is clear: ‘expectation’ is not meant in a normative sense. Smith explicitly rules out a normative interpretation.149 A legitimate expectation regarding your behaviour is, as Smith says in the quote above, just a (suitably grounded) ‘belief about how you will behave’. (Elsewhere he implies that the prediction is about how you will behave ‘at least all things being equal’.150_{) Where do ‘legitimate expectations’ come from? On}

Smith’s view, social conventions can give rise to ‘legitimate expectations’ about how others will behave, but so can the requirements of rationality, ‘[f]or we all expect of each other that we will decide what to do on rational grounds’.151 _{In the non-moral cases}

that Foot drew our attention to, it is social conventions which explain the possibility of disapproval. In moral cases, the requirements of rationality (the ‘expansive’ sort of rationality favoured by moral rationalists) explain the possibility of disapproval. They do so because the moral rationalist’s thesis that moral requirements just are requirements of rationality is correct.152 Thus we can spare ourselves the embarrassment

148 _{Smith actually presents this as an interpretation of Foot, though he evidently endorses it}

himself. The Moral Problem, 89.

149 _{Smith, The Moral Problem, 85-6.} 150 _{Smith, The Moral Problem, 87.} 151 _{Smith, The Moral Problem, 89.} 152 _{Smith, The Moral Problem, 85, 90.}

179 of postulating that moralists are all parties to an agreement of some sort by embracing moral rationalism.153

I am not sure how to interpret Smith’s claim that ‘my’ disapproval of ‘your’ behaviour requires that ‘as I see it, your behaviour transgresses the standards in terms of which you and I both acknowledge your behaviour is to be judged’. I am not sure, for instance, what Smith means by ‘acknowledge’, or whether ‘is to be judged’ means ‘ought to be judged’ or ‘is planned to be judged’, or whom the judge is supposed to be. But the idea of predicted conformity to ‘commonly acknowledged standards’154 must be important to Smith’s explanation. He would fail to explain Foot’s observations if he merely proposed the following:

P. What distinguishes disapproval of S’s φ-ing from simple dislike of S’s φ-ing is merely that disapproval involves (justifiedly) predicting that S will, all things being equal, conform to standards forbidding φ.

Suppose that a young woman is planning to marry, and that one of her parents disapproves on the ground that the man’s poverty would embarrass their family. Intuitively, a benevolent stranger with the family’s best interests at heart cannot disapprove of the woman’s choice on the same ground. Presumably, if the truth of P explains our intuitions that the parent can and the stranger cannot so disapprove, it must be the case that we assume that the parent can, and the stranger cannot, justifiedly predict that the daughter would, all things being equal, follow standards forbidding marrying a man whose poverty would embarrass the family. But there is no reason I can think of why the stranger could not justifiedly make such a prediction, or why we would assume that she couldn’t. So presumably Smith rejects P.

Everything hinges, then, on the nature of the common acknowledgement condition. But Smith’s characterization of it is underspecified in multiple respects. I cannot easily see a way to precisify it that wouldn’t either fail to explain Foot’s observations or create pressure to posit that moral approbation requires a social context. And I don’t think I am obliged to evaluate Smith’s account of approval for every remotely plausible precisification of the common acknowledgement condition.

I can perhaps give an idea of the general difficulty facing attempts to provide analyses of approbation that neither contradict Foot’s observations nor imply that moral

153 _{Smith, The Moral Problem, 90.}

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approbation requires a social context, by evaluating the following much simpler proposal:

Q. What distinguishes disapproval of S’s φ-ing from simple dislike of S’s φ-ing is merely that disapproval involves judging that S ought not to φ.

Q is underspecified, but manageably so. It merely omits to specify the kind of ought judgement that is involved in disapproval.

If Q is to explain why the parent can and the stranger cannot disapprove in the marriage case I described above, it must be the case that the parent can and the stranger cannot judge that the young woman ought not to marry the man (presumably on the grounds that his poverty would embarrass the family), in whatever sense of ‘ought’ is relevant. There is, as far as I can see, no way to explain this difference that does not make the parent’s capacity to make the ought judgement dependent on her relationship with the young woman. So there is an approbation-enabling kind of ought judgement that is relationship-dependent. Now we must ask: if we know that one kind of approbation-enabling ought judgement requires a certain relationship between the judge and the agent whose actions are the object of the judgement, what grounds do we have for thinking that all kinds of approbation-enabling ought judgements do not require such a relationship? The fact that moral ought judgements, for instance, are approbation- enabling and that it would be far-fetched to posit social relationships of the relevant sort linking all pairs of moral judges and morally judged parties is certainly a good ground. But if this is the only ground that can be offered, the explanatory advantage that I have claimed for fiduciary non-cognitivism concerning approbation is secured. There is apparently no way of cashing out Q that allows us to provide a similarly parsimonious and unified explanation of approval (or the judgements that enable it) which does not also posit something like fiduciary non-cognitivism’s moral trust network.