METAETHICS ANTTI KAUPPINEN
SPRING 2012
10. Morals and Motivation
Moral Judgment
’Moral judgment’ is a generic term for the kind of psychological state we’re in when we take
something to be morally right, wrong, or obligatory
Many of the arguments in metaethical discussions could be naturally extended to other types of
normative judgment, such as (arguably) normative statements about what expressions mean
Note that sometimes in the literature people use
the term for the corresponding speech act, such
as the utterance of ”Cheating on your partner is
morally wrong”
Moral Judgment and Utterance
Moral judgment in our psychological sense can also be
characterized as the mental state that utterances of moral sentences express
Expression is not a causal notion here, unlike in the case of, say, wincing and pain – utterances can express
judgments that the speaker doesn’t hold
In this sense, when I say ”The parliament is on fire”, I am expressing the belief that the parliament is on fire, even if I in fact think that the parliament is perfectly fine
A simple way to cash this out is to say that a sentence expresses its sincerity conditions
My utterance of ”The parliament is on fire” is sincere if I really do believe that the parliament is on fire; my
utterance of ”I promise to bring the book back tomorrow”
is sincere if, inter alia, I intend to return the book
So, when is a moral utterance sincere?
Investigating Moral Judgment
There are various empirical questions that can be asked about moral judgments
What biological and sociological factors influence the moral principles people hold?
What is the role of affective reactions in leading to particular verdicts?
Philosophical views, by contrast, make few empirical assumptions
What are characteristically moral ways of arriving at decisions like?
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for someone having made a genuine moral judgment? In other words, when are psychological attributions like
”John thinks we have an obligation to intervene in Darfur” true?
The Nature of Moral Judgment
The standard manner of discovering how things must be for a psychological state to count as moral judgment is by way of locating patterns in our intuitive reactions to particular cases (”the Method of Cases”)
That is, we consider actual and hypothetical scenarios involving agents, utterances, actions, and attitudes, and try to formulate an analysis in other terms that makes sense of our reactions to them
Hypothetical scenarios are essential, since we are trying to find out what is necessary for moral judgment, not
merely an accident of how things happen to be in the actual world
Compare with the process of analysing the concept of knowledge
Moral Judgment and Motivation
Pre-philosophically, it appears that genuine
moral convictions make a difference to people’s lives
For example, people who are convinced that we have a moral obligation to provide health care to everyone
support politicians who advocate it and are content to pay the necessary taxes
This raises the question of whether
corresponding motivation is essential to
thinking that something is a moral obligation
The main reason why metaethicists are
interested in this connection is that it seems to support a conception of moral judgments as
conative (non-cognitive) states
Hume’s Argument
1. Morality ”is supposed to influence our passions and actions ...
And this is confirmed by common experience, which informs us that men are often governed by their duties, and are deterred from some actions by the opinion of injustice, and impelled to others by that of obligation”
2. ”Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood ... It can never in the least concern us to know that such objects are causes, and such others effects, if both the causes and effects be indifferent to us ... As reason is nothing but the discovery of this connection, it cannot be by its means that the objects are able to affect us”
3. So, ”It follows that morals cannot be deriv’d from reason”
4. Instead, ”When you pronounce any action or character to be
vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the
contemplation of it ... To have the sense of virtue is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character. The very feeling constitutes our praise or
admiration”
The Humean Argument for Non- Cognitivism
1.
Moral judgments are essentially motivating (moral
judgment internalism)2.
All psychological states have either a mind-to-world or world-to-mind direction of fit
3.
Only psychological states with a world-to-mind direction of fit are essentially motivating. (The
Humean Theory of Motivation)4.
Therefore, moral judgments have a world-to-mind
direction of fit; that is, they are non-cognitive states
Direction of Fit
Compare the following scenarios:
Enda is in a supermarket. He has a piece of paper with the following text on it: ”Milk, butter, cheese, beer.” Glancing at the paper, he puts milk, butter, cheese, and beer in his
basket.
A reporter is following Enda in a supermarket. As Enda puts milk, butter, cheese, and beer in his basket, the reporter
writes down on a piece of paper the following text: ”Milk, butter, cheese, beer.”
In the first case, the text has what we might call a ”basket- to-list” direction of fit: its functional role is fulfilled when the basket fits the list
In the second case, the text has a ”list-to-basket” direction of fit: its functional role is fulfilled when the list fits the
basket
Classifying Mental States
Anscombe and Searle have proposed to divide mental states according to their direction of fit
World-to-mind: desire, intention, wish
Mind-to-world: belief, supposition
Cashing out the metaphor has proven difficult
Michael Smith: A mental state S(p) has a mind-to-
world direction of fit if it tends to go out of existence when the agent has evidence that not-p, and a world- to-mind fit otherwise
But what is the direction of fit of emotions like anger,
for example?
Direction of Fit, Again
Smith’s counterfactual dependence test
If ψ (p) goes out of existence in the presence of a
perception with the content that not p, it has a mind-to- world direction of fit (i.e. it is a belief). If perception that not-p leads to an effort to make it the case that p, it has a world-to-mind direction of fit (i.e. it is a desire or intention)
Sobel and Copp:
Circularity problem: perception with the content that not-p does not tend to make a belief go out of existence, unless the subject believes that p – but you can’t appeal to belief when trying to analyze what makes something a belief
But: consider perceptual illusions – even if you know the lines in Muller-Lyer illusion are the same length, you’re still inclined to believe that the length is different
Vanishing desires problem: fairweather fans
The Humean Theory of Motivation
States with different directions of fit play different roles
Only states with the mind-to-world direction of fit can be true if the world matches their content -
Only states with the world-to-mind direction of fit can lead to action, bringing about the fit by changing the world
Thus, beliefs alone are motivationally inert
I may believe that there is ice cream in the fridge, but
unless I want some ice cream, I have no motivation to
go to the bridge and get some
Moral Judgment Internalism
Moral judgment internalism (MJI), at its simplest, is the view that an agent who judges that she morally ought to φ will
necessarily have (some) motivation to φ
Internalism is thus a modal thesis, not just a claim about the actual world
Internalism comes in many varieties, as we will soon see
Note that as I have formulated it, internalism is a thesis in the first instance about first-personal, present-tense ought- judgments
Other moral judgments may imply ought-judgments, but there may be some slack – if I think it is morally wrong to smoke, I may be committed to thinking that I morally ought not to
smoke, but fail to draw the conclusion
Other moral judgments have a looser connection to ought- judgments (and thus motivation even on the internalist account)
”Marcus Aurelius was a virtuous ruler”
Moral Judgment Externalism
Moral judgment externalism is simply the denial of internalism
(EXT) If an agent judges that she morally ought to , she will have some degree of motivation to only if there is some further contingent fact about her that forms a link between judgment and motivation.
For example, the simplest externalist view is that moral judgments are motivationally as inert as other beliefs, and thus require the further contingent fact that the agent wants to do what is morally right to lead to any action
So, just like if I believe ‘The Artist’ is playing in the movie theatre but don’t want to see it, I won’t go to the movies, if I believe that serving my country is my duty but don’t have the desire to do what is my duty, I won’t have any motivation to serve my country
Humean Argument Recap
Some version of the HTM is the received view in the philosophy of action, though it has
become increasingly unpopular
Since HTM is independently plausible and the conjunction of HTM and internalism leads to non-cognitivism, the view that moral
judgments do not purport to represent how
things are, the internalist claim has received
much scrutiny in metaethics
Digression: What Hume Actually Said
Note that Hume doesn’t actually talk about motivational inertia of belief, but of reason
For Hume, reasoning is either demonstrative or causal; it tells us how ideas are related or what events make other events likely
But beliefs about pleasure and pain do (indirectly) motivate:
“’Tis obvious, that when we have the prospect of pain or pleasure from any object, we feel a consequent emotion of aversion or propensity, and are carry’d to avoid or embrace what will give us this uneasiness or satisfaction.”
Moral beliefs concern “what pleases us after a certain manner”, when we adopt a “common point of view”
So, while Hume is a sentimentalist (he holds that moral facts and knowledge derive from our emotional responses rather than reason), he is not a non-cognitivist (he doesn’t hold that there are no moral beliefs)
