James Ladyman, on AHRC funding cuts, here.

"The distinction between the ethical and the meta-ethical is no longer found so convincing or important. There are several reasons for this, but the most relevant here is that it is now obvious (once again obvious) that what one thinks about the subject matter of ethical thought, what one supposes it to be about, must itself affect what tests for acceptability or coherence are appropriate to it; and the use of those tests must affect any substantive ethical results. Conversely, the use of certain tests and patterns of argument can imply one rather than another view of what ethical thought is."
(Bernard Williams, Ethics and The Limits of Philosophy, p73)

I'm hellishly busy over the next two weeks, so posting may be light.

The Buck-passing account of value:
"For X to be valuable is for X to have other properties that give us reasons to respond to X positively."

This definition is a little imprecise, but I think sufficiently precise to ask my question.

"Positively", at the end, is needed to distinguish valuable from disvaluable objects. For example, object X might, in some cases, have properties that give me reason to respond to it, but these reasons might make X disvaluable. My headache gives me reason to take aspirin. The reasons the properties of headaches provide make headaches disvaluable, not valuable. So buck-passers need to distinguish correct "positive" responses, which make an object valuable, from correct "negative" responses, which make an object disvaluable.

But then what do we mean by "positively"? This term seems normative. Yet I do not see how it can be reduced to talk of reasons.

If that is true, then buck-passers can't get by only on reasons: they need reasons and positivity. At best then, it seems that their account is not so parsimonious as they might hope. But at worst: How much does positivity differ from value? If it does not differ, then is the buck-passing account of value a failure?

At Philosophy etc., this was brought up a while ago.

Having woken up at 6:30 this morning, I thought as I might as well be productive, and take an hour or two to see how easily drupal would be able to handle such a project.

The result is here. Feel free to comment either here or there.

In comments here, Pablo quotes the following from Sidgwick:
"[T]he very indefiniteness of all hedonistic calculations, which was sufficiently shown in Book ii., renders it by no means unlikely that there may be no cognisable difference between the quantities of happiness involved in two sets of consequences respectively; the more rough our estimates necessarily are, the less likely we shall be to come to any clear decision between two apparently balanced alternatives. In all such cases, therefore, it becomes practically important to ask whether any mode of distributing a given quantum of happiness is better than any other. Now the Utilitarian formula seems to supply no answer to this question: at least we have to supplement the principle of seeking the greatest happiness on the whole by some principle of Just or Right distribution of this happiness. The principle which most Utilitarians have either tacitly or expressly adopted is that of pure equality--as given in Bentham's formula, "everybody to count for one, and nobody for more than one." And this principle seems the only one which does not need a special justification; for, as we saw, it must be reasonable to treat any one man in the same way as any other, if there be no reason apparent for treating him differently." (The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed., London, 1907, pp. 416-417)

And then Pablo said of it:
"It seems to me that, contrary to Rawls's interpretation, Sidgwick is not claiming here that utilitarianism requires one to choose the more equal distribution of good when the total aggregate of good is maximal, but instead that, as a matter of contingent fact, those philosophers who have been utilitarians have also embraced a distributive principle which assigns (subordinate) moral significance to equality."

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I had understood the Sidgwick quote somewhat differently. I'd be interested to know what others think.

I presume that his "as we saw" comment refers back to his argument on p380 (7th Ed.), where he says:
"the self-evident principle strictly stated must take some such negative form as this; 'it cannot be right for A to treat B in a manner in which it would be wrong for B to treat A, merely on the ground that they are two different individuals, and without there being any difference between the natures or circumstances of the two which can be stated as a reasonable ground for difference of treatment.' [the principle's effect is] merely to throw a definite onus pro-bandi on the man who applies to another a treatment of which he would complain if applied to himself; but Common Sense has amply recognised the practical importance of the maxim: and its truth, so far as it goes, appears to me self-evident. [...] the principle just discussed [is] more or less clearly implied in the common notion of 'fairness' or 'equity'"

So I take his overall argument on equality to be something like this:
If one treats two people differently, one must have some justification in mind (this follows from his argument on p381 about parts and wholes, and how they sum). Now imagine that one has a choice of three actions:
1) Person A gets huge benefit, person B gets very little.
2) Person B gets huge benefit, person A gets very little.
3) Persons A and B get equally middling sized benefits.
Further imagine that the total value realised in each is equal. Sidgwick's claim is that choosing (1) or (2) would require some further justification as to why A and B should be treated differently. So by elimination we should choose (3).

(For much of the book he tries his best to describe the theories in an impartial manner, and so often adopts the tone of a disinterested onlooker. I take this to explain why, in the passage Pablo quotes, he states his claim as "most utilitarians have..." and not "the most plausible claim is...".)

I heard this mentioned the other day, and had to check it out.

The putative counter-example:
It's election time, 1980. According to the polls, Republican Reagan is in the far lead. Democrat Carter is second, and Republican Anderson is third by some margin. Assess the following argument:

(1) If a Republican wins, then if it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson
(2) A Republican will win
(3) Therefore, if it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson.

The premises are true, and by classic logic they entail the conclusion, but, we ought to reject (3). So it seems to some.

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On seeing this, it took me a while to even see why someone might reject (3). It seemed to me obviously true given the premises. Here is why I failed to feel the pull of the example.

The argument is invalid iff (1) and (2) can be true when (3) is false. And (3) is false iff both Reagan and Anderson lose. So the argument is invalid iff:
(a) If a Republican wins, then if it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson.
(b) A Republican wins.
(c) Reagan loses.
(d) Anderson loses.

These conditions cannot all be true. By hypothesis, Reagan and Anderson cannot both lose but the Republicans win. The argument is valid.

The confusion arises because an argument with necessarily false premises establishes anything whatsoever. "If 2+2=5, then I am the pope" is a valid argument. The premise can't be true and the conclusion false: nevermind that the premise is never true.

The counter-example is just another argument of this kind. The premises can't be true and the conclusion false: nevermind that there is no world in which premise (2) holds and the antecedent of (3) is true.

As we know, necessarily false claims entail anything whatsoever. McGee's counter-example is just one instance of this.

(I understand McGee's aims were not to undermine the logicians sense of modus ponens, but the claim that modus ponens was the conditional used in natural language. This is fine, although if I am right, then this is just a local instance of the known truth that material conditionals allow for irrelevant entailment.)

I previously changed the "About" block, and made some comments about anonymity. After some thought, I've reversed that decision. My name now appears in the "About" block.

My reasons for this are threefold: One, given that google turns up this site, my chances of staying anonymous are slim anyway. I realised that my real choice is whether or not to delete the site. Second, this first point was made forceful when a fellow graduate student stumbled across this place and worked out it was me. Third, after a short discussion with my supervisor, I'm somewhat inclined to think that I needn't worry, so long as I don't say anything too outrageous.

So while I'm doing that, I may as well disclose a little about myself.

My name is Alex Gregory, I'm studying for my PhD at the University of Reading under Jonathan Dancy.

Reading is an odd university, in that it is good but not brilliant for most subjects (#25 in the UK), but the philosophy department here punches above weight generally (=#9 in the UK), and much more so for meta-ethics and normative ethics (Group 4 internationally for both, so roughly =#11 internationally, and below only Oxford in the UK).

The title with which I applied for my PhD was "Can we justify moral beliefs by appeal to the general nature of reasons?". This is one in sense vague, but does sucessfully convey my more general interest of connecting some of the abstract claims we make about reasons (and in meta-ethics more generally) with some determinate normative conclusions.

Here's something I've been thinking about recently, and I'm very keen to have thoughts on. I can't decide whether this is a good (original) argument, or whether there's something deeply wrong with it.

For now I'll just try to get the gist across: if it's deeply wrong, it will be visible from here. In the future I may well come to discuss particular premises.

1) There is some distinction between prudential reasons and moral reasons (e.g. reasons to do things for oneself, and reasons to do things for others).
2) Prudential reasons are all reasons to increase one's level of well-being.
3) Premise 2 needs an explanation.
4) The only (plausible, non ad-hoc) explanation of Premise 2 is that all practical reasons are reasons to increase levels of well-being.
5) All practical reasons are reasons to increase levels of well-being.

So:
6) Moral reasons are all reasons to increase the general level of well-being.

Here's the brief English version:

All the things that you should do for yourself, and the only things you should for yourself are things that increase your level of well-being. But there's something a bit mysterious about this fact: it needs explaining. One obvious explanation - if not the only explanation - is that all "should" claims (at least all those about action) are made true by facts about increased levels of well-being. But if that's true, then it follows pretty trivially that the moral should is also one of increasing well-being.

That is, some form of welfarist consequentialism is true.

(1) It can never be right to make the world worse than it could be (and it must always be right to make the world as good as it can be).
(2) Consequentialism says that the only reasons people have, and all the reasons people have, are reasons to maximise the good (==bring about the best state of affairs possible).

Therefore:
(3) Consequentialism is true.

I tend to think that the driving force behind consequentialism is something along the lines of (1). How can one be obliged to bring about worse, rather than better, states of affairs?

(2) is just pure definition; this is what people tend to mean by consequentialism.

Yet it's interesting to note that the conclusion (3) really doesn't follow from these two premises. Why not? It doesn't follow because (1) only says that one's strongest reason is always to maximise the good. It's perfectly compatible with the claim that one sometimes has other (weaker) reasons to do other things. But the definition of (2) explicitly rules out this possibility, and so (1) can't imply (3).

That is, the following position seems coherent, is compatible with the truth of (1), and is not consequentialism. I don't endorse it, but it is interesting.

Quasi-consequentialism: One has reasons to do many things: keep promises, not to kill people, to respect rights, to give people their just deserts, and so on, and of course, to maximise the good. But the strength of the last of these is always so great as to obviously outweigh any reason that one has to do anything else.

But this doesn't make such reasons redundant! When one is unsure which action maximises the good (or is sure that there is a tie between more than one action), then these reasons come into play. If, for example, you are faced with the choice of whether or not to keep a promise, and you have no idea which choice maximises the good, you should keep it, because you have unconditional reason to keep promises.

(Objection: "In those cases where one is unsure what to do, these non-consequentialist reasons do not correlate with what is right. Whether one keeps the promise for its own sake or not, one's action will be right or wrong for reasons independent of this. Therefore the reason to keep the promise is irrelevant to moral decision making." It is true that such non-consequentialist reasons will not correlate with what is actually right. But we are interested not only in acting rightly, but also in acting least wrongly (and most rightly). That means that such reasons are relevant to what one ought to do from a subjective point of view.)