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There's been an interesting exchange between Henry Farrell and Megan McArdle on revealed preference arguments. McArdle says that if people wanted higher taxes, higher levels of foreign aid and better public services, they would donate money freely. Henry replied that this kind of revealed preference argument assumes that choices are independent, which they are not. People might want to give more money to the government only if other people give more money too. If that's true, then there might be the kind of collective action problem that revealed preference arguments ignore.
(Two further installments of the debate: McArdle here, Farrell here)

I think Henry is clearly right here, but also that he doesn't pick the strongest argument against revealed preference arguments like this.

Preferences can be faulty. A desire to commit rape isn't a desire we should aim to fulfil at all. Of course, it's controversial as to which preferences are irrational (so for my two cents, marketing is the art of making preferences faulty, but I suspect people like McArdle would deny this). But one way in which it's uncontroversial that they can be faulty is when they're based on false information. If I desire to buy that car because it's reliable, when in fact it will break down next week, then my desire is faulty. Revealed preference arguments, on the other hand, imply that many people want to buy second hand cars of bad quality. "Why else would they buy them?"

This is obviously relevant here. If I desire to keep hold of my money because charities would only waste it, and it's false that charities waste money, then my preference is faulty and potentially ignorable. That means that we first need to establish how effective governments and charities are before we can decide whether or not revealed preference arguments work. That, of course, would make the revealed preference arguments redundant anyway.

On the same topic, Will Wilkinson suggests that there's an inconsistency in those who agree with Henry here, but reject the idea that there are collective action problems for things like carbon emissions and meat consumption. In the latter case many people assert that you ought to do what you can even if others don't.

This is partly why I think Henry picks the wrong counter-argument, since it leaves him open to this problem. I think we should accept that we have obligations to freely send money where it's needed - perhaps to charity - if doing so is effective, even if others don't do so as well.

But I also think that Wilkinson here assumes that both goods are equally "lumpy" (i.e. linear in benefit to an equal degree). But this might be false. Whilst buying one less chicken this week has a reasonable chance of actually lowering the number of chickens killed next week/month/year, it's not obviously true that sending £10 to a charity has a reasonable chance of increasing the benefit they do by £10 worth. Perhaps charities need larger sums to begin and continue projects.

You might think that this is false (I suspect it is), and that £10 at Oxfam will indeed buy one more packet of AIDS-retrovirals. But if people only incorrectly imagine that charity expenditure is lumpy - and I think it is plausible that many people do believe this - then Wilkinson is locating the problem in the wrong place. Such people are not inconsistent, but just misinformed on the lumpiness of charity expenditure.

There's a unexpected post on this over at Philosophy Etc.

I say "unexpected" because I take the answer to be a very obvious "yes", but Richard appears to support the alternative view. I suspect I'm misreading, because I can't imagine Richard rejects what I write below. Indeed, in a sense Richard says what I do here. But then the worry is that he also makes remarks to the reverse, and so I'm lost as to what the overall claim is.

"I'm not convinced that any one of them is vital for ordinary people living ordinary lives. Why would it be "necessary" for average Joe to know the location of Iraq? He's not the one making decisions over there.

As Brandon says, we are all ignorant of a great many things. [...] there are so many things to be learnt, we cannot hope to pursue every one of them. Further, some opportunities for learning will excite us more than others. So, given limited time and resources, it doesn't seem so inappropriate for one to simply disregard some fields as not one's concern."

A lot hangs on "vital" and "necessary" in the first paragraph, but I take it to be true that knowledge has value even when it isn't instrumental. As I see it, it's good to be informed period, not just because of whatever further effects that knowledge might have. Half of the merit of philosophy is the way in which it satisfies mere curiosity. It seems to me that curiousity is the appropriate attitude to interesting but pragmatically unimportant questions.

It is also obviouly true that we are all ignorant of many things. But some are less ignorant than others, and it's better to be less ignorant than more ignorant. So I don't see an objection there to the idea that ignorance is bad.

Finally, of course, one can disregard some fields to some extent due to limited time ("an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less"). But it's also obviously true that (a) most fields relate, so that a lack of knowledge in one has a negative impact on your understanding everywhere else, (b) that lack of knowledge about, say whether the universe is geocentric or not, or where Iraq is, is bound to have a negative impact on your understanding of related issues. Your worldview is going to be vastly affected if you still think that the universe revolves around the earth. Galileo was not a mere scientist; he was a revolutionary!

As I say, Richard hints as these points in the post. But then what is it that's supposed to be ok about ignorance?

(Of course, blame for ignorance isn't always appropriate. People who have had a poor education are victims and not wrongdoers. It's also obviously true that intellectual arrogance is both common and misplaced. But the arrogance of people with an education is not a reason to be ignorant, it's a reason not to be arrogant.)

Some exams are harder than others.

"There was also a concern in sociology that too much credit could be given for common sense responses. The report said: "In the case of psychology and biology, the question papers made use of complex concepts. Candidates could neither infer nor guess answers."

It continued: "This was not clearly the case in sociology."

[...]

A fourth study comparing English literature, history and media studies A-levels found [...] little difference between the subjects at grade A at AS.

At grade E, however, media studies candidates were considered to be less impressive than those doing English, with history candidates falling somewhere in between."

The grade inflation debate is often interesting (one particuarly interesting piece on it is here). I tend to think that the suggestions above capture something pretty close to the truth.

Stereotypically "softer" subjects - sociology, philosophy, psychology, geography, media studes, and to a lesser degree the other humanities - probably really are easier to achieve the lower grades on. It's much harder to write an essay that offers absolutely nothing intelligible on, say, the existence of God[1], than it is to write an exam paper that gets the numbers universally wrong. But standards at the upper end are just as high, precisely because distinguishing your essay from the crowd is difficult when mere common-sense and the ability to write a coherent sentence is already half the marks.

At my previous university there were moves to change the grading system. But it wasn't - as you might imagine from the general tone of news stories - a change to make the humanitites system more similar to the sciences, but the reverse. The sciences traditionally had far more fails and 3rds, but also far more 1sts[2]. Humanitites students, in contrast, almost universally get 2:2's and 2:1's. The university was introducing new examination system for the sciences, where an easier paper could only you get up to a 2:2 or so, and a much harder advanced paper was responsible for how far you went upwards from there. I wonder if we'll see outcry when that change has its impact, and science failures drop drastically. But of course, I also wonder if such outcries will ignore any corresponding drops in the top grades?

[1] "I haven't seen him", with a bit of padding, probably secures a few marks.

[2] One reason for this was that marks were capped at 80% for humanitites (and I never saw anyone get much more than 74%). No such cap existed in the sciences. This meant that 100% in one exam (by no means impossible) could really make up for a second bad exam in a way that you couldn't in the humanities.

One answer to this question suggests that actions are: Actions are right and wrong, and if we want to assess, say, agents or states of affairs, we do so by considering the actions that they perform or contain.

A second answer suggests that character traits, or people, are: Agents are good or bad, and if we want to assess, say, actions or states of affairs, we do so by considering the character traits that generated them or that are contained in them.

A third answer suggests that states of affairs are: States of affairs are better or worse, and if we want to assess, say, actions or character traits, we do so by considering the states of affairs that they do or tend to generate.

That is, we might be deontologists, virtue-ethicists, or consequentialists, broadly speaking.

But we we missed any options out? If there are other entities that might plausible be the fundamental bearers of moral properties, then there are additional families of views that we have yet to consider.

So what else is there?

One suggestion might be that lives can be good or bad. A good action is one in a good life; a good character trait is one often found in good lives, and a good state of affairs is one in which there are many good lives. Is this plausible? Are there other possibilities?

Moral objectivism is relatively popular these days. Many of the standard arguments against it are now considered to be rather weak.

But what about other areas where we might not want to be objectivists? There's a slippery slope here, through art, humour, and then food. The idea that some art is objectively better than others is controversial. The idea that some humour is superior to others is a little barmy. And the claim that there is a correct view on the niceness of bananas seems outright absurd. But how do we decide where to draw the line? The arguments you might want to advance against the idea of objectivity in these domains are the very same arguments that seem weak in the moral case.

So, for the moral objectivists out there, what's your view on the objectivity of standards for art, humour or food? Are there objective standards for these too? If not, what marks the difference with these from morality?

People standardly distinguish practical from theoretical reasoning. The former concerns actions, the latter beliefs. As an example, my reasoning about what I should do is different from your reasoning about what I am likely to do. The former is practical, the latter theoretical.

But adopting a belief is an action. If that's true, then theoretical reasoning is merely one kind of practical reasoning; it's the kind of practical reasoning that involves actions of the unique kind adopting beliefs.

Stronger still, it's one kind of practical reasoning no more special than left-arm reasoning, which is reasoning about action kinds to do with one's left arm. That's a unique category of actions too.

Perhaps something has gone wrong? There is no distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning. There is reasoning to actions; and some actions are adoptions of beliefs. That is all.

(Somewhat speculative and over-assertive post)

Sometimes people talk as though morality "tells us what to do". Obviously, this is not literal (truth doesn't speak), but I wonder if even the metaphor is misleading. Obviously, according to some theistic conceptions of morality, it really is a case of being told what to do. But, for those of us who think that there are moral truths but not religious ones, it's not clear that we should see things this way.

Rather, I tend to think that moral truths enlighten us as to what we can see for ourselves really ought to be pursued. They reveal certain actions as more worthwhile than others; they show the value in the world. To think that they are somehow this external commanding force is just to slip into old religious habits.

Imagine I go into a restaurant, and order something I've never had before, and decide that I really like it. The proposition "I ought to eat that dish" is true both before and after I eat. I ought to eat that dish whether I knew it or not. So what has changed when I eat? It is not that I realise this proposition and what it tells me to do. I don't quaver under the command of this truth. Rather, when I eat the dish, I come to understand that this dish is indeed delicious. I see for myself that it's the dish I ought to eat.

The same applies for moral claims. Obviously, these are somewhat more serious (the value of a life is somewhat more than the value of a curry). But I suspect that the basic truth remains the same. When you come to see that it's true that happiness has value and ought to be increased, you aren't quaking in your boots at this terrible propositions and its commands. You're coming to see that happiness, for anyone, is something valuable and pursuable.

It might be objected that this is all a little too metaphorical. Still, so was the original metaphor of "being told what to do". So my claim is at least no worse than that, and hopefully a little better.

Comments from the Leiter Reports, here.

Note, in particular, Mike Otsuka's comment here. An excerpt:
"there is no mention of any parallel cuts to their bloated and increasingly unnecessary bureaucracy" (so my experience is perhaps more limited than I'd realised)

Crooked Timber discusses it here. Those interested should keep an eye on the comments thread, which sometimes are quite fruitful.

Simon Blackburn, at the THES here.