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June 2, 2008

Who is Doing the Describing?: A Critique of Jackson’s Supervenience Theory for Ethics

Posted by Ian M. Church under Ethics
[3] Comments 

In the fifth chapter of Frank Jackson’s book From Metaphysics to Ethics, he endeavors to offer a (naturalistic) ‘account of how the ethical gets a place in the descriptive picture of what our world is like’ as a response to what he calls ‘the location problem’.[1] Jackson’s theory for how the ethical supervenes on the descriptive, which he takes to be ‘a priori true and necessary’ from the perspective of folk morality, is the crux of his argument.[2] In this paper I cast doubt on the truth of Jackson’s supervenience theory such as to demand further clarity and justification. Assuming Jackson has rightly identified the location problem that he is up against, I argue that Jackson’s proposal lacks a sufficient consistency.

This paper will be structured around the following two sections: The bulk of the work will be in section one which will be devoted to elucidating Jackson’s response to what he takes the location problem to be. In the second section, I raise my concern about the truth of Jackson’s supervenience theory in the form of a dilemma: I highlight two main ways to view Jackson’s theory (which I think he confuses) that are mutually exclusive yet individually inconsistent with the rest of Jackson’s response to the location problem. 

 

Jackson’s Location Problem and His Solution

 

            At the outset, let us be clear about the context that drives Jackson to the location problem. In addition to being a naturalist, Jackson is a cognitivist, which is to say he thinks moral claims are truth-apt – in other words, he thinks moral claims can be assigned a truth value. Hence, the proposition ‘murder is wrong’ can be deemed either true or false, and as such it is not simply an expression of an ethical attitude analogous to ‘boo for murder’. For Jackson, ‘truth-apt sentences…are those that, by virtue of the way they are used by speakers and writers, make a division among the possibilities into those that are in accord with how they represent things as being, and those that are not in accord with how they represent things as being; and the sentences are true just when things are as they represent them as being.’[3] Jackson’s brand of cognitivism is meant to be compatible with ‘extreme subjectivism’ which would say that if S says ‘X is good’ it is true if and only if S’s ‘immediate reaction to X is one of approval’.[4] That said, extreme subjectivism should not be confused with non-cognitivist theories like emotivism; both extreme subjectivism and emotivism agree that propositions like ‘X is good’ express a non-cognitive attitude but according to extreme subjectivism, unlike emotivism, such propositions are none the less considered truth-apt.[5]

            Given cognitivism, one is inclined to ask: What and where are the references of ethical propositions that make them truth-apt? What and where are ethical properties? The specific location problem that Jackson is concerned with, however, is finding a place for the ethical in ‘the descriptive picture of what the world is like’.[6] For Jackson, the location problem is finding out how ‘matters described in one vocabulary are made true by matters described in another’; which is to say, Jackson is concerned with how our ethical vocabulary is made true by the descriptive picture of the world.[7] So, as it were, Jackson is not as interested in the metaphysics of locating ethical properties in the ‘natural or physical sciences’, but instead his primary concern involves locating and clarifying what role ethical properties play within language.[8]

Connecting Ethical Properties with Descriptive Properties: In looking for how the ethical gets a place in the descriptive picture, Jackson first turns to considering what is meant by ‘the ethical’. What is being claimed in ethical statements? The recurring mantra in Jackson’s paper that drives his answer is ‘we are entitled to mean what we like by our words. But if we wish to address the concerns of our fellows when we discuss the matter…we had better mean what they mean.’[9] The folk conception of morality is the base from which he considers ethical claims as he moves toward connecting ethical properties with descriptive properties. For Jackson, the proposition ‘X is good’ means that X has what we, the folk, consider a goodness property to be. ‘It is, thus, folk theory that will be our guide in identifying rightness, goodness, and so on.’[10]

Within folk morality, Jackson considered the notion that ‘the ethical way things are supervenes on the descriptive way things are’ to be the ‘most salient and least controversial part’, and as such he argues that the nature of this supervenience ‘tells us that ethical properties are descriptive properties.’[11] To state this relationship more precisely, Jackson provides us with the following supervenience theory:

 

Ethical/Descriptive Supervenience (SV): ‘For all [worlds] w and w*, if w and w* are exactly alike descriptively then they are exactly alike ethically.’[12]

 

which he considers to be ‘both a priori true and necessary’.

            So, starting with folk morality (as a means to understand what ethical properties are) and accordingly developing SV, Jackson wants to argue that the relationship between ethical properties and descriptive properties is so close that ethical properties (simply) are descriptive properties. But what are descriptive properties and what counts as descriptive vocabulary? Generally, Jackson takes descriptive properties and terms to be those we consider to be on the ‘is’ side of the is-ought distinction, but beyond that, Jackson is not terribly specific nor does he think he needs to be.[13] He will not allow for a large ‘semantic divide’ between the ethical and the descriptive, but it is not terribly important where exactly we draw the line (Jackson is willing to play it safe and take any terms that are arguably not ‘purely descriptive’ off the list of descriptive terms). Regardless of how exactly (within reason) the distinction between the ethical and the descriptive is made, Jackson argues, from SV, that even if we put aside our ethical terminology, purely descriptive terms can establish the same ascriptions as we would have had with the ethical terminology; that is ‘for any ethical predicate there is a purely descriptive one that is necessarily co-extensive with it.’[14]

            To advance this thesis, Jackson argues that once given SV (as it is, apparently, both a priori and necessary), then for any ethical sentence E: 1) it will be composed of both ethical and descriptive terminology (as Jackson simply says, ‘ethical nature without descriptive nature is impossible), 2) in all worlds in which E is true those worlds will have some ethical nature, and 3) if E is true in w but not true in w*, then w and w* differ ethically. [15] As such, Jackson can provide the following co-extension argument:

 

Jackson’s Co-Extension Argument: ‘Now let w1, w2, etc. be the worlds where E is true, and let D1, D2, etc. be purely descriptive sentences true at w1, w2, etc., respectively, which give the full descriptive nature of w1, w2, etc. Then the disjunct of D1, D2, etc. will also be a purely descriptive sentence, call it D. But then E entails and is entailed by D. For every world where E is true is a world where one or other of the Di are true, so E entails D. Moreover every world where one or the other of the Di are true is a world where E is true, as otherwise we would have a violation of [SV]: we would have descriptively exactly alike worlds differing in ethical nature. Therefore, D entails E.’[16]

 

Since the ethical is co-extensive with the descriptive, such that any distinction that is made ethically can also be made with the purely descriptive, Jackson concludes that ‘ethical properties are descriptive properties.’ [17]

Now, co-extension certainly doesn’t necessarily mean equivalence. It is, of course, a logical possibility that the ethical properties could be entirely different properties that just happen to be wholly co-extensive with descriptive properties, but such a view, according to Jackson, seems to be ‘an absurdly anti-Occamist multiplication of properties.’[18] Besides, even if we did multiply properties by requiring the ethical to pick out something distinct from descriptions, how ethically significant would such an additional property be?[19] For Jackson, it seems ridiculous to allow for the possibility that a certain action, A, may cause a large number of people to die slow and painful deaths, but since A lacks a certain additional ethical property it is morally irrelevant whether or not an agent does A.[20] Intuitionally, our ethical assessment relies on the descriptive. Something indeed seems quite wrong if it is possible to construct a gruesome scenario using only purely descriptive terms (lacking any special ethical properties), which is ethically inconsequential.

            For Jackson, ethical terms are analogous to terms like ‘baldness’. The same ascription made by ‘baldness’ could be made with a long disjunction of descriptions of hair distributions; likewise, the same ascription made by ‘goodness’ could be made with a long disjunction (perhaps infinitely long) of the pertinent purely descriptive terms identified by folk morality. [21] The reason we have terms like ‘bald’ and ‘good’ is because we are finite creatures and such terms are easier for us to communicate and cognitively grasp. Additionally, as ‘baldness’ can illustrate, there is asymmetry between the ethical and the descriptive even though they are co-extensive. A thorough mapping of someone’s hair-distribution highly constrains whether or not they can be deemed ‘bald’ or not; conversely, however, to describe someone as bald leaves open many possibilities of how exactly to be bald. Likewise, a thorough account of the descriptive properties of a world will highly constrain the ethical properties of the world; however, a full account of the ethical properties in the world is ‘consistent with indefinitely many different descriptive natures, concerning, say, how certain distant and ethically insignificant electrons are moving.’[22]

Before moving on, let us, for clarity’s sake, catalog Jackson’s argument thus far in terms of premises and conclusion:

 

  1. If we want to mean what ‘our fellows’ mean, then we need to refer to folk morality.
  2. If we are working from within folk morality, then we have SV
  3. Therefore, ethical properties are descriptive properties (from 2; developed using Jackson’s Co-Extension Argument).

 

According to Jackson, this argument works ‘prior to metaphysics.’[23] That is to say, the cognitivist can utilize this argument from supervenience before any metaphysical commitments have been made. Whether there are any indeed any instantiated ethical properties is a side issue; Jackson has not yet committed himself to either Realism or Error theory.

How do we know which ethical properties go with which descriptive properties?: Let us now first briefly look at how Jackson’s theory can be put into practice and see how he proposes we know which ethical properties go with which descriptive properties. Staying in accord with his established precedence of championing folk morality, Jackson’s methodology for matching the ethical with the descriptive is moral functionalism. Moral functionalism is ‘the view that the meaning of the moral terms are given by their place in this network of input, output and internal clauses that make up folk morality’; that is to say, moral terms have their meaning from the context of folk morality: In folk morality we have purely descriptive situations, the input, that we process into ethical descriptions, and how these assorted ethical descriptions and bits of normative language are inter-connected are, when articulated, the internal role clauses.[24] Finally, when we, the folk, move from ‘ethical judgments to facts about motivation and thus behavior’ that is the output of folk morality. [25] Though there seems to be a natural flow from input clauses to internal role clauses to output clauses, Jackson sees these components of folk morality simply as principles that ‘tell us which properties typically go together’ and not as theory of causality.

            To be sure, folk morality, and accordingly how moral functionalism connects the ethical with the descriptive, is in flux, it is ‘currently under negotiation’.[26] Though there is a great deal in morality that seems to be universally agreed upon, i.e. that killing another human for sheer pleasure is wrong, there are still many points of contention and debate. As folk morality changes and evolves, Jackson sees it developing into one or more mature folk moralities. Jackson admits that the ethical may not be objective; as the moral debates continue we, the assorted folk of the world, may not decide on one mature folk morality but multiple ones.[27] Though we arrive at SV from folk morality, and though all worlds that are identical descriptively are suppose to be identical ethically, Jackson is willing to allow for the possibility of multiple mature folk moralities.[28]

 

A Descriptive Dilemma

 

My concern for Jackson’s solution to the location problem stems from the fact that I struggle to see how SV can be true without being inconsistent with the rest of Jackson’s paper, and this concern is exacerbated since the whole of Jackson’s argument rests on SV’s truth.[29] To review, let us look at SV again:

 

Ethical/Descriptive Supervenience (SV): ‘For all [worlds] w and w*, if w and w* are exactly alike descriptively then they are exactly alike ethically.’[30]

 

which, again, Jackson takes as ‘a priori true and necessary’. In this final section, I propose that there are two distinct ways of reading Jackson’s theory for how the ethical supervenes on the descriptive. Since both readings are mutually exclusive, I set up a dilemma by arguing that neither reading is consistent with the rest of Jackson’s solution to the location problem.

            The ambiguity in SV is elucidated by the question, ‘who is doing the describing?’ I propose two main answers:

 

Exhaustive SV: For all [worlds] w and w*, if w and w* are exactly alike in their exhaustive descriptions then they are exactly alike ethically.

 

Folk SV: For all [worlds] w and w*, if w and w* are exactly alike in the way the folk describe them then they are exactly alike ethically.

 

The descriptions of the worlds in Exhaustive SV are meant to be, as you might have guessed, exhaustive; proverbially a God’s-eye view of the world. In contrast, the descriptions in Folk SV are meant to be more limited to the extent folk can describe the world; folk, arguable, will struggle to ever provide an exhaustive description of even the physical aspects of the world, let alone any immaterial or metaphysical aspects. While there are other possible versions of SV that could be provided (i.e. ‘…if w and w* are exactly alike in the way angels, philosophers, goldfish etc. describe them then…’), I believe Exhaustive SV and Folk SV compose all of the pertinent options.  Since there is little reason to think that the folk description of the world is exhaustive, Exhaustive SV and Folk SV are mutually exclusive.

            Why does Jackson think that SV is a priori true and necessary? To quote form Jackson’s ‘Précis of From Metaphysics to Ethics’, he must think SV is a priori insofar as it is ‘knowledge we can have independently of how things actually are’ and necessary insofar as we can know it in all possible worlds.[31] Whether or not SV actually meets this requirement will depend on who is doing the describing. Exhaustive SV indeed seems to be conceptually true no matter ‘how things actually are’. If the description of the world is indeed fully exhaustive it is hard to see how any change in the ethical nature wouldn’t trigger some change in description. For example, even if the ethical reality of w and w* wholly depended on the whim of some deity, the deity couldn’t change its mind about ethics in one world without triggering a change in the exhaustive description of that world (which would include the whims of that deity) even though the folk on these respective worlds, hypothetically, would have no idea that such a change occurred.

            The problem for Exhaustive SV, however, is that it seems to be a priori true and necessary completely divorced from folk morality or language, which is the foundation Jackson intended for it.[32] To be sure, such an exhaustive description of the world may be quite out of the cognitive grasp for the folk, and indeed may subsist without any folk whatsoever; Exhaustive SV seems to be directly contrary to Jackson’s mantra that ‘we are entitled to mean what we like by our words. But if we wish to address the concerns of our fellows when we discuss the matter…we had better mean what they mean.’[33]

            Folk SV, in contrast, does not seem to be a priori true or necessary; the case of the capricious ethics deity who keeps moral amendments to himself should show as much. However, if Jackson intended SV to be born out of folk morality, does this at the outset put some sort of restraint on the ethical possibilities so as to exclude the capricious ethics deity example? I think not. Folk morality consists of the generally agreed upon moral convictions of people around the world, and in itself folk morality does nothing to exclude the metaphysical possibility of a capricious deity.[34] Even if there is a way to de facto exclude such cases, Folk SV risks being false for the same reason Jackson finds the global supervenience thesis for the psychological on the physical ‘non-controversially false’; it reads:

 

Psychological/Physical Supervenience (PPSV): ‘For all w and w*, if w and w* are exactly alike physically, then w and w* are exactly alike psychologically.’ [35]

 

It is arguable that a folk description of the world may not in fact be able to describe anything beyond the physical; furthermore, viewing the ethical as foundationally derivative from the psychological is a perfectly viable option with plenty enough advocates. As such, if the description only concerns the physical and if ethics is found to be based in psychology, then Folk SV can be false for the same reason PPSV is false.

            Within his argument, I do not think Jackson gives SV a consistent reading; sometimes giving it an Exhaustive SV interpretation and other times giving it a Folk SV interpretation. For example, when he elucidates his co-extension argument he seems to give SV an Exhaustive SV reading; in contrast, Jackson’s desire to make folk morality ‘response-dependent’, his focus on language as foundational for our descriptions, and his openness to subjective ethics best lend themselves to a Folk SV reading of SV.[36] Given what I have said, I think two general strategies are open to Jackson: either find a way to collapse Exhaustive SV and Folk SV into one view or find some tertium quid as an additional pertinent reading of SV.

We have looked at Jackson’s solution to what he takes to be the location problem for ethics, and have established a dilemma concerning the truth of his key supervenience thesis based on the ambiguity of a word. My goal, I believe, has been met: to put an onus on Jackson to provide further justification for his theory, SV, for how ethical supervenes on the descriptive. Further justification and clarity is required for SV, if the rest of Jackson’s solution to the location problem is to run successfully.

 

References

Jackson, Frank. From Metaphysics to Ethics. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1999.

Jackson, Frank. ‘Précis of From Metaphysics to Ethics’. Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research. Vol. 62 (2001): 617-624.

Keefe, Rosanna. Review of From Metaphysics to Ethics, by Frank Jackson. Philosophical

Quarterly. Vol 49 (1999): 539-542.

‘Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008. 2

May 2008 <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/#Cog>

Stich, Stephen and Weinberg, Jonathan M. Review of From Metaphysics to Ethics, by Frank


[1] Jackson (1999, p. 113). In this paper my scope will be limited almost exclusively to this chapter of Jackson’s book; I will not be interacting much with Jackson’s broader project concerning conceptual analysis.

[2] Jackson (1999, p. 119).

[3] Jackson (1999, p. 114).

[4] Jackson (1999, p. 114).

[5] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008, section 1.3)

[6] Jackson (1999, p. 113).

[7] Jackson (1999, p. 41).

[8] Jackson (1999, p. 113).

[9] Jackson (1999, p. 118).

[10] Jackson (1999, p. 118).

[11] Jackson (1999, p. 118-119).

[12] Jackson (1999, p. 119).

[13] Jackson (1999, p.  120-121).

[14] Jackson (1999, p. 121, 123); this is contra Jackson’s interpretation of G.E. Moore’s contention that goodness is a non-natural property.

[15] Jackson (1999, p. 122) and Keefe (1999, p. 541).

[16] Jackson (1999, p. 123).

[17]Jackson (1999, p. 123).

[18] Jackson (1999, p. 127).

[19] Jackson (1999, p. 127).

[20] Jackson (1999, p. 127).

[21] Jackson (1999, p. 124).

[22] Jackson (1999, p. 123-124)

[23] Jackson (1999, p. 128).

[24] Jackson (1999, p. 130-131).

[25] Jackson (1999, p. 130-131).

[26] Jackson (1999, p. 132).

[27] Jackson (1999, p. 137).

[28] This allowance of Jackson’s is puzzling in a couple different ways: First of all, if SV comes from folk morality and Jackson allows for multiple mature folk moralities, then there is perhaps an additional explanatory burden on Jackson to explain why SV is a necessary result of all folk moralities. Secondly, if the ethical properties are descriptive properties and if Jackson is open to ethical subjectivism, then doesn’t it seem like the different mature folk moralities would be referencing somewhat different descriptions?

[29] Thankfully, I found that many people share this concern; see Stephen Stich and Jonathan M Weinberg (2001, p. 640-641); also see Rosanna Keefe’s (1999, p. 541-542).

[30] Jackson (1999, p. 119)

[31] Jackson (2001,  p. 619).

[32] Jackson (1999, p. 118-119).

[33] Jackson (1999, p.118).

[34] Jackson (1999, p. 132-135).

[35] Jackson (1999, p. 119).

[36] Jackson (1999, p. 120, 122-123, 132-135).

 

May 28, 2008

A Critique of Roger Crisp’s Hedonistic Theory of Well-Being and a Reformed Response

Posted by Ian M. Church under Ethics, Philosophy of Religion
[3] Comments 

In the philosophy circles I’m acquainted with, it’s primarily Reformed Epistemology that gets the publicity (thanks by in large to folks like Plantinga, Alston, Wolterstorff, et. al.), but as of late I have been thinking more about what a proper Reformed Ethic would look like. One very popular and plausible option is hedonism, which has gained recognition by in large due to the efforts of the Reformed Baptist pastor Dr. John Piper. There are, however, two powerful arguments contrary to hedonism, namely the Philosophy of Swine Objection and Nozick’s Experience Machine Objection that should be dealt with if we are going to advocate hedonism as at least a part of the Reformed/Christian Ethic. In the fourth chapter of Roger Crisp’s Reasons and the Good, he advocates hedonism as a theory of well-being and tries to defend it against the aforementioned objections. What I will do in this post is look at Crisp’s response to these objections, and critique them as mutually incompatible with each other. That is to say, Crisp’s defense of hedonism against the Philosophy of Swine Objection is incompatible with his defense of hedonism against Nozick’s Experience Machine Objection. I will propose a way that Crisp could mend this inconsistency, though the result is less than wholly palatable to common intuitions. Before concluding, however, I will briefly propose that the Reformed may not be able to adopt Crisp’s brand of hedonism as a tenable response to these objections for theological reasons. Though the objections take on a new character in a Reformed worldview, they nonetheless help signify where the Reformed might part ways with Crisp.

This post will be broken down into the following three sections: First, we will briefly elucidate Crisp’s brand of hedonism along with his response to the Philosophy of Swine Objection. In contrast, we will look in Section II at Crisp’s reply to the Experience Machine Objection, and reveal both Crisp’s inconsistency and a possible way for him to avoid it (without taking worldview into account). Finally, I’ll consider how well Crisp’s hedonism and his response to the two objections might fit within the context of a Reformed worldview.

 

Section I: Crisp’s Hedonism and His Reply to the Philosophy of Swine Objection

 

Crisp’s hedonism is ‘a theory of well-being, that is, of what is ultimately good for any individual.’[1] Hedonism, for Crisp, is not an expression of a psychological need for more pleasure than pain, nor is it a method for determining moral rightness (i.e. hedonistic utilitarianism); rather, Crisp is interested in the question ‘What makes a life good for an individual?’[2] Crisp’s answer: Enjoyable experiences.[3] It is the abundance or lack of enjoyable experiences that makes someone’s life better or worse for them, and as such it is the simple property of being enjoyed and that alone which makes any given experience good for a person’s well-being.

To elaborate, Crisp’s hedonistic theory of well-being is monistic and internalist – that is to say, for Crisp, what makes enjoyable experiences enjoyable is the single shared feeling between all such experiences, namely the feeling of enjoyment. Some other internalist monists, perhaps like Hume and Bentham, have tried to argue that all enjoyable experiences share a common (extra) feeling like a tingling, itch, or flutter whenever an enjoyable experience is had; however, as Crisp points out, this seems empirically false. By introspection we can see that there is no common feeling, other than the feeling of enjoyment, that is common between, say, eating a sandwich and exercising.[4] Though enjoyable experiences are quite diverse, they all share the property of feeling enjoyable; in Crisp’s words, enjoyableness is a ‘determinable’ feeling and not a ‘determinate’ feeling.[5] For Crisp, ‘it is enjoyment alone that matters’ for a person’s well-being.[6]

            If all that makes a life good for an individual is enjoyable experience and enjoyable experience alone, then is there anything to make us prefer a life of refinement and reflection over a life of debauchery and base sensuality? What could make us choose the life of Socrates over the life of a pig? The thought that hedonism is unable to qualitatively distinguish between such lives has lead some philosophers to label hedonism the ‘philosophy of swine’. Crisp phrases this sort of objection in the case of ‘Haydn and the Oyster’:

Haydn and the Oyster: You are a soul in heaven waiting to be allocated a life on Earth. It is late Friday afternoon, and you watch anxiously as the supply of available lives dwindles. When your turn comes, the angel in charge offers you a choice between two lives, that of the composer Joseph Haydn and that of an oyster. Besides composing some wonderful music and influencing the evolution of the symphony, Haydn will meet with success and honour in his own lifetime, be cheerful and popular, travel, and gain much enjoyment from field sports. The oyster’s life is far less exciting. Though this is rather a sophisticated oyster, its life will consist only of mild sensual pleasure, rather like that experienced by humans when floating very drunk in a warm bath. When you request the life of Haydn, the angel sighs, ‘I’ll never get rid of this oyster life. It’s been hanging around for ages. Look, I’ll offer you a special deal. Hayden will die at the age of seventy-seven. But I’ll make the oyster life as long as you like’[7]

Given, the experience of composing wonderful music is indeed far more enjoyable than a single instance of floating drunk in a bath; however, if the good-for property in both experiences, namely, that it is enjoyable, is at base the same, what is to keep us from preferring a warm drunken bath that lasted ten-thousand years over the writing of wonderful music, say? It seems like no matter how many enjoyment-points Haydn accumulated over his seventy-seven years, surely a near-eternal oyster would eventually accrue more.

            A natural response to this objection would be to try to partition enjoyable experiences into classes such that no amount of drunken bath-time will ever be worth more than a higher-class enjoyable experience like composing wonderful music. This was the sort of response J.S. Mill provided. The problem with it, however, is that if the only difference between higher and lower enjoyments is the amount they are enjoyed, there does not seem to be a way to qualitatively separate them. If, on the other hand, one tries to separate drunken baths from writing music by establishing a criterion (i.e. nobility) beyond mere enjoyment level, it seems like he/she is breaking with hedonism by permitting non-hedonistic values.[8] That is the dilemma of the Philosophy of Swine Objection: Either ‘embrace the pork’ and agree that the life of a near-eternal pig or oyster would eventually be more valuable than Haydn’s, or part ways with hedonism.

            Though Crisp notes these concerns, he nonetheless thinks Mill was generally ‘on the right track’ in terms of a response to the Philosophy of Swine Objection.[9] To be clear about where Crisp parts ways with Mill, let us first explicate Mill’s position a little further. Mill, along with earlier empiricists, saw pleasure/enjoyment as a sensation with its value being determined by intensity and duration. In addition, Mill wanted to make a quality-quantity distinction, where the difference in quality can be determined by surveying adequately (empirically) informed individuals.[11] For example, people who have experienced both floating drunk in a bath and writing wonderful music will favor the latter more than the former so far as to prefer the latter over any amount of the former, and it is this phenomenon that signifies to Mill an objective difference in quality.[12]

            Crisp, in contrast, points out that talk of intensity and duration of pleasure/enjoyment is either redundant or empirically false.[13] If intensity or duration are meant to refer to the amount of enjoyment gleaned from an experience such that a more intense or a longer lasting sense of enjoyment are directly equivalent to greater enjoyment, then intensity and duration seem to be ‘just another property of the enjoyed experience.’[14] If, on the other hand, enjoyment value is related to the intensity or duration of the experience itself, then it looks like winning a trivial and drawn-out bar-fight should be deemed more enjoyable than, say, realizing that your love for another individual is reciprocal, yet this seems plainly empirically untrue. While duration and intensity may indeed play a role in how enjoyable some experiences are, what ultimately matters is the amount of enjoyment.

The more important dissimilarity, however, between Crisp and Mill is the different ways they view the quality-quantity distinction. Mill is interested in the judgments of adequately informed individuals insofar as they support his inclusion of an additional objective quality determining criterion.[15] As we noted earlier, trying to add such a criterion to determine the class of an enjoyment seems to lead to the acceptance of non-hedonistic values; any hope of creating, within hedonism, an objective catalogue of enjoyable experiences is ‘merely a dream’.[16] Crisp, on the other hand, is interested in the judgments of adequately informed individuals themselves. According to Crisp, all that is needed to surmount the Philosophy of Swine Objection, is the fact that people do (pre-theoretically) judge that no amount of base sensuality, like floating drunk in a bath, would ever make up for the loss of a ‘higher’ enjoyment like writing wonderful music; as Crisp says ‘[in] most cases, the final arbiter on how enjoyable some experience is, and how it compares to some other, is the subject herself ’ (emphasis mine).[17] No objective classification is needed; our judgments themselves are enough to establish what Griffin would call a ‘discontinuity’ between enjoyable experiences.[18]

It seems like Crisp is taking our pre-theoretical judgments as foundational for his theory of a quality-quantity distinction, and accordingly it becomes difficult to discern what exactly his theory is without turning the pre-theoretical into theory; however, my goal for this paper is not to criticize the coherence of Crisp’s solution to the Philosophy of Swine objection itself, but rather to criticize how consistent it is with his solution to the Experience Machine Objection. In any case, it will be helpful to be clear about Crisp’s position (as well as my concern for it), so let us make a rough distinction between first and second order judgments:

First-Order Judgment (FOJ): Judgments that are not recognized by the judger to be part or product of a theory; folk judgments; intuitional judgments.

Second-Order Judgment (SOJ): Theoretical judgments; judgments that are recognized by the judger as being made as a result of applying a theory.

Now, we can re-map Crisp’s position and his response to the Philosophy of Swine Objection. We start with a basic (monistic and internalist) hedonism:

Basic Hedonism Theory (BHT): the only thing that contributes to a person’s well-being is the feeling of enjoyment gleaned from the experiences that person enjoys.

From BHT, with no means to qualitatively distinguish enjoyed experiences, we seem to be able to make the Second-Order Judgment that:

SOJ[O>H]: A near-eternal oyster’s life will eventually be more valuable than the life of Haydn.

However, SOJ[O>H] clashes with the common first-order judgment that:

FOJ[O<H]: No amount of oyster-enjoyment can ever outweigh the kind of enjoyment experienced by Haydn.

It is this clash between SOJ[O>H] and FOJ[O<H] that makes the Philosophy of Swine Objection what it is; that is what gives the objection its strength. As such, philosophers like Mill and Crisp who want to avoid SOJ[O>H] will try to modify BHT such that SOJ[O>H] does not follow. Mill wanted to establish a criterion based first-order judgments to objectively rank enjoyed experiences (the quantity-quality distinction), which was to be added to BHT. As we have already seen, however, it seems like Mill’s criterion is either unhelpful or non-hedonistic. Crisp, like Mill, does not think SOJ[O>H] is an acceptable consequence, but how does he avoid it? Crisp, too, wants to establish a quality-quantity distinction, but, unlike Mill, Crisp is not advocating an objective criterion for classifying enjoyed experiences. Instead, Crisp points to (subjective) first-order judgments like FOJ[O<H] itself as part of his quality-quantity distinction.[19]

            Is this a sufficient response to the Philosophy of Swine Objection? I believe not. To say that we judge that writing wonderful music has a value that no amount of drunken bathing could account for, seems to me to simply be an expression of the intuitional force behind the Philosophy of Swine Objection in the first place. Though it is hard to see how holding first-order judgments on such a pedestal can be coherently translated into a theory that is both compatible with BHT and adequately prevents second-order judgments like SOJ[O>H], the important point to be made is that in so championing first-order judgments, Crisp is blocking his own response to the second major hurtle for any hedonistic theory, namely, Nozick’s Experience Machine.

 

Section II: Nozick’s Experience Machine

 

The Experience Machine: ‘Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank with electrodes attached to your brain…Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?’ (emphasis is Crisp’s)[20] 

In Reasons & the Good Crisp rephrases Nozick’s Experience Machine in terms of two people, P and Q. P and Q have identical experiences of a fulfilled and valuable life, the only difference is that P’s experiences are actual while Q’s experiences are illusory, the product of an experience machine. It seems like according to Crisp’s brand of hedonism, we should have no reason to prefer P over Q; both lives, after all, feel exactly the same ‘from the inside’.[21] In keeping with our terminology, Nozick’s Experience Machine allows us to produce the following second-order judgment from BHT:

SOJ[P=Q]: If lives P and Q have identical experiences with the only difference being that P’s experiences were actual while Q’s were illusory as a result of an experience machine, then we have no reason to prefer life P over life Q.

Unfortunately, however, SOJ[P=Q] goes directly against our first-order judgment that:

FOJ[P>Q]: If lives P and Q have identical experiences with the only difference being that P’s experiences were actual while Q’s were illusory as a result of an experience machine, then we have a reason to prefer life P over life Q.

As was the case with the Philosophy of Swine Objection, it is the clash of judgments that creates and strengthens this objection. But unlike the Philosophy of Swine Objection, it looks like Crisp cannot simply accept our first-order judgments concerning experience machines and account for it with his theory, because first-order judgment like FOJ[P>Q] are directly contrary to Crisp’s hedonism. While Crisp could account for FOJ[O<H] by establishing an appropriate quality-quantity distinction, it seems like he cannot do the same for FOJ[P>Q] without giving up something in BHT.

            So, in order to counter Nozick’s Experience Machine Objection, Crisp focuses almost entirely on belittling and undermining our first-order judgments.[22] He argues that first-order judgments like FOJ[P>Q] are secondary principles that have arisen for evolutionary reasons as a means to the end of primary principles like hedonism.[23] As humans evolved we championed those of us who were the best hunters and the best gatherers due to the (hedonistic) well-being they could provide for the community, that is, we evolved to value real accomplishment as a means to our hedonistic desires. According to Crisp, our first order judgments have developed over time such that we value accomplishment in and of itself; accordingly such first-order judgments are simply misleading when it comes to our evaluation of Nozick’s Experience Machine. In addition, Crisp tries to further undermine judgments like FOJ[P>Q] by pointing out that when we look at our lives from ‘the view from nowhere’, there really doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between real experiences and illusory ones, whether it be real accomplishments or only one’s experienced via an experience machine. In other words, in the grand scheme of the universe, which will apparently either (depending on who you ask) peter-out or implode before a re-Big Bang, Crisp doesn’t think there is much of a difference between the real experiences and illusory ones.[24]

            By degrading first-order judgments like FOJ[P>Q], Crisp has effectively removed the teeth from the bite of Nozick’s Experience Machine. The problem, however, is that this strategy is directly contrary to his response to the Philosophy of Swine Objection. Either we philosophically value these sorts of pre-theoretical judgments or we do not. Either they compose a central characteristic of our theories as we saw in Crisp’s response to the Philosophy of Swine Objection, or they are a wrong-headed distraction from the true ethical theory as Crisp implied in his response to Nozick; there doesn’t seem to be a non-arbitrary way to divide these  first-order judgments so Crisp could have it both ways. Given there may be different classes of first-order judgments, but the two in question certainly seem to be of the same ilk.

Assuming what I have said is correct, how can Crisp get around this predicament? He could try to establish a method for discerning pre-theoretical judgments which would produce the result that FOJ[O<H] is philosophically valuable while FOJ[P>Q] is not, but the prospects of doing this without being ad hoc are dim. Besides, in accord with the thesis of this paper, I think Crisp has a better option; Crisp has a very viable route (viable from his theory’s perspective, but not necessarily form a Reformed perspective) in simply being more consistent in how he views these first-order judgments. As I already noted, it does not look like Crisp can preserve his brand of hedonism and accept FOJ[P>Q] like he does with FOJ[O<H], but why cannot he downplay both of them? FOJ[O<H] could be argued to be just as causally related to evolution as FOJ [P>Q]; it could be argued that as humans evolved they naturally developed a self-preservation intuition that favored human life over any other (indeed, over any amount of oyster-lives). Moreover, Crisp could even argue that intuitional strength behind FOJ[O<H] dissolves like it does for FOF[P>Q] when we look at the world from ‘the view from nowhere’, when we look at it from the big-picture of the universe.

But if Crisp does allow for the conclusion of the Philosophy of Swine Objection, doesn’t that make his theory hopelessly disconnected from our intuitions? I do not think so. There are other intuitions in favor of Crisp’s brand of hedonism, and in real life (where there are not life-divvying angels offering special deals) Crisp’s theory doesn’t seem to yield the horrible results we might expect from a ‘philosophy of swine’. It just so happens that we only have the life we have and as such our well-being will indeed be higher if we spend our time writing wonderful music than if we fill our lives with drunken baths.

            This is not to say that there is no cost to be paid for Crisp to ‘embrace pork’. By allowing for the Philosophy of Swine Objection’s conclusion, he is abandoning any quality-quantity distinction in his theory and as such he would be distinctly parting ways with Mill. That said, though Crisp would have to make some modifications, the end result preserves the core of Crisp’s hedonistic theory of well-being and seems to provide him a more consistent and viable position against the Philosophy of Swine Objection and Nozick’s Experience Machine Objection.

Crisp should, from the perspective of his own theory, ‘embrace the pork’, so to speak, and embrace the conclusion of the Philosophy of Swine Objection, that a supernaturally long-living pig or oyster will eventually accrue more well-being than a normal human life no matter how superb it might be. Though an impractical scenario, the results may go against some of our first-order judgments but that in itself should not be considered a knock-down defeater for Crisp’s hedonism. In this paper, we elucidated Crisp’s inconsistency in relying on first-order judgments in his response to the Philosophy of Swine Objection but totally belittling them in his response to Nozick’s Experience Machine. In order to rectify this, I proposed that Crisp embrace the conclusion of the Philosophy of Swine Objection and respond to it by belittling our first-order judgments to the contrary.

 

Section III: A Brief Christian Response

 

      Thus far, we have been looking at Crisp’s theory in and of itself, divorced from any worldview. What I intend to do now is look briefly at how the two aforementioned objections pan-out when applied to a monistic and internalistic hedonism, like Crisp’s, that is framed in a Reformed worldview. I have two pertinent presumptions concerning what should be a part of any Reformed Ethic:

 1.A human life should be considered more valuable than an oyster’s, no matter how long the oyster lives.

 2. A human life with real experiences is to be preferred over a human life with illusory experience machine experiences.

I will, for present purposes, hold theses assumptions as theological bedrock, such that if there is an inconsistency between a hedonism like Crisp’s and theses assumptions then so much for the hedonism. One might think that since I suggested that the most consistent option for Crisp’s theory is to belittle the first-order judgments that are behind both of these assumptions, that Crisp’s theory is incompatible with Reformed ethics; however, though this may indeed be the case, enjoyment from within a Reformed worldview has a different character and context, and what we will have to consider at the end of this post is whether this context amounts to any non-hedonistic value that would depart from Crisp’s pure hedonism.

            Within a Reformed worldview we have the ideas of heaven and hell, and depending on the circumstance either the Philosophy of Swine Objection doesn’t form or it helps us signify a point of departure from Crisp’s pure hedonism. For the Reformed, there is no such thing as having a life like Haydn’s living for 77 years and then presumably ceasing to exist; people either go to heaven or hell. If Haydn was a Christian, then he lives eternally in heaven and accordingly accruing fantastic enjoyments – no eternal-oyster will ever be able to catch up to him. What if, in contrast, Haydn went to hell? It seems like in that case, as far as brute enjoyment is concerned, a near-eternal oyster will indeed have a more valuable life than Haydn’s. We could try to alter the first assumption so that it excludes the cases where people go to hell, but, like I said, I am taking that first assumption as theological bedrock. I suspect that any Reformed theory of value must give some account of Imago Dei (‘Image of God’), such that sustains the first assumption no matter what someone’s eternal destination happens to be.[25] Insofar as Imago Dei is a non-hedonistic value, then that is a point at which the Reformed must part ways with Crisp; we cannot try to belittle the first-order judgments for at their foundation is the idea that humans are made in the image of God and as such qualitatively different from oysters.

            How might a Christian hedonism similar to Crisp’s respond to Nozick’s Experience Machine Objection and yet sustain the second presumption? Admittedly, this objection touches on theology that I am not currently prepared to respond with or to, so what follows may not be much more than hand-waving and conjecture. At the outset we should note that I take it as a metaphysical impossibility that there be a heaven or hell experience machine; hence, the objection will immediately take on a different character once considered from a Christian worldview. In the case where an individual goes to heaven, a pure hedonism might be sustained if heaven will be in some way better for the individual who lived a real-life than for the individual who lived an illusory life.[26] This might be vindicated if we put some weight on the idea that our enjoyment is linked to God’s glory and that God is more glorified in real accomplishments than in illusory one’s. We will have to consider in another post whether or not this view can consistently be maintained. In the case where an individual goes to hell, the only way to maintain a pure hedonism, with no non-hedonistic values, would be if hell was somehow better for the individual who lived a real life, but I am not sure what theological concepts could be mustered in support of such a position that would nonetheless remain true to Crisp’s brand of hedonism. This too may be a point of departure from Crisp if some sort of hedonism is to be adopted as the Reformed Ethic.

 

References

 

Crisp, Roger. Reasons and the Good. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Griffin, J. Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance. Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press, 1987.

Mill, J.S. Utilitarianism. ed. Roger Crisp. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.

 

[1] Crisp (2006, p. 100)

[2] Crisp (2006, p. 100-101)

[3] Crisp (2006, p. 102)

[4] Crisp (2006, p. 103-104)

[5] Crisp (2006, p. 109)

[6] Crisp (2006,  p. 110)

[7] Crisp (2006, p. 112)

[8] Crisp (2006, p. 113)

[9] Crisp (2006, p. 113)

[10] Crisp (2006, p. 113-114)

[11] Mill (1998, p. 2, 4-5)

[12] Crisp (2006, p. 113-115)

[13] Crisp (2006, p. 114-115)

[14] Crisp (2006, p. 114)

[15] Crisp (2006, p. 114-115)

[16] Crisp (2006, p. 115)

[17] Crisp (2006, p. 115)

[18] Crisp (2006, p. 1150; also see Griffin  (1987, p. 85-9)

[19] Crisp (2006, p. 114-115)

[20] Quoted in Crisp (2006, p. 117)

[21] Crisp (2006, p. 117-119)

[22] Crisp (2006, p. 119)

[23] Crisp (2006, p. 120-121)

[24] Crisp (2006, p. 123-124)

[25] If any theologians out there wants to make suggestions as to how Imago Dei relates to standard doctrines of hell, I would love to hear it.

[26] I am assuming here that the individual living the illusory life can nonetheless make a real Christian commitment.

 

March 17, 2008

Against a General (Second-Order) Prohibition Ethic

Posted by Ian M. Church under Ethics, Philosophy of Religion
[3] Comments 

I once heard it preached, based on 1 Corinthians 8, that though alcohol isn’t inherently sinful to drink, we none-the-less morally should not drink alcohol lest we make those who do see it as inherently wrong ‘stumble’. I call this a Second-Order Prohibition Ethic (where the First-Order Prohibition Ethic is the belief that alcohol is inherently sinful). As it was preached, this principle was far reaching: not only should I not drink alcohol knowingly and directly in front of someone who thinks it is wrong, but I should not drink alcohol at all since someone somewhere might find out about it who thinks it is wrong (thus possibly making them stumble). Since 1 Corinthians 8 does not directly deal with alcohol, I see no reason why this ethical principle couldn’t generalize to:

 

The General Second-Order Prohibition Ethic (hereafter GSOPE): For any action x, if any S anywhere thinks x is wrong (even incorrectly so), then no one should (morally) do x.

 

I would like to briefly propose that this, as it stands, is an impossible ethical principle that, if true, wholly usurps Christianity. The problem is that so generalized, GSOPE makes it unreasonably hard to be moral. According to GSOPE, my working on my computer right now (and your using your computer to read this post) is morally wrong since some people think it is wrong to use electricity. Similar judgments could be made concerning using tobacco, playing dice, drinking caffeine, getting a social security number, voting, getting medical treatment, getting baptized in any way shape or form instead of another, and so on (it doesn’t seem to matter how irrational the ethical assessment seems).  Even worse, a necessary conclusion of GSOPE is that Jesus Christ was not morally blameless since he did any number of things that people thought were morally wrong (i.e. healing people on the Sabbath), and as such the whole framework of the atoning substitutionary death of Christ falls apart and orthodox Christianity with it.

 

While this doesn’t disprove all Christian prohibition ethics, it does disprove any that rely on or could be generalized to GSOPE. As such, it should go without saying that GSOPE is not fitting for Reformed Philosophy.