The Basis of Morality, Part 2: Obligation

April 23, 2014 in Uncategorized | Tags: atheism, God, moral realism, morality, personhood | by jbthibodeau

In this post I am going to offer an account of the basis of moral obligation. When we ask about the basis of moral obligations, I take us to be asking for an explanation for why objective moral obligations exist? What is their source? What we are looking for is not an account of what our obligations are, but rather some thing (or things) that serves as the source of obligations, that explain why moral obligations exist at all. I believe that the answer to this question is fairly straightforward.

I will begin my answer be drawing our attention to a kind of experience that is very common; namely, the experience of being wronged or hurt. Think of an experience that you have had in which you felt wronged by someone else. It need not be a particularly egregious example; it might be a time in which people you care about made fun at your expense or laughed at some misfortune of yours. Or it could be something even more mundane like being cut off by another driver. Now the key feature of such experiences is the feeling of being wronged. This feeling reveals something very significant about what we think about ourselves.

When a driver cuts me off in traffic, especially if it is on the freeway and my kids are in the car, I feel something that can best be described as righteous anger. In the case of egregiously dangerous examples, the driver has carelessly placed my life and the lives of my passengers in jeopardy. What a jerk! He shouldn’t do that to me. Why? Because I matter and my passengers matter. When a driver intentionally cuts me off, there is a value judgment behind that action, namely that his desire to quickly get where he is going trumps both my desire to get where I am going quickly and, more importantly, my need to be safe. As the cut-off driver, I have to react quickly to ensure that I will not collide with the other vehicle and I have to do so in a manner that protects me and my passengers and all of the other people on the road with us. That is asking quite a lot. Even though all of us deal with this kind of thing fairly regularly, that does not change the fact that it places us in serious jeopardy, and plenty of drivers fail to react effectively. What makes us so angry when we are cut off is that we recognize how close we have come to a potentially catastrophic collision. But even in cases that don’t necessarily involve danger of serious bodily injury, there is still an offense caused since the driver, by his actions, asserts that his desires trump mine.

Aggressive drivers who consistently practice unsafe habits see other drivers as mere obstacles. What matters to them is that they get where they are going as fast as possible and everyone else on the road is merely an obstacle to that end. So, we rightly feel wronged when we are on the receiving end. I feel wronged because I know that I am not a mere obstacle. I know that I matter, dammit! And when a person does something that involves ignoring this fact, I feel wronged.

So, what I want to say is that this feeling of being wronged is based in a veridical experience of our own importance. When I am wronged I am viscerally in touch with the objective fact that I matter morally. This fact, that I matter and its corollary, namely that it is wrong for people to act as if I don’t matter, is the starting point of a genuine understanding of the basis of ethics. The more important step, however, is to make what is simultaneously the most obvious and the most easily overlooked of inferences. That is, I need to recognize that, while it is true that I matter, there is nothing special about me. In other words, if I matter, then every other person matters just the same. There is no reason to think that I matter but nobody else does, or that I matter more or in a special kind of way. So, I matter, but I do not uniquely matter. And it seems to me that once I make this inference, which as I say is obvious, then I have to recognize that I have obligations. To acknowledge that other people matter is to acknowledge that I should not treat them however I want; that I cannot legitimately treat them merely as means to an end or merely as obstacles in the way of my getting what I want.

Now I said that this inference is both obvious and easily overlooked. We are social creatures and thus it is obvious to us that we live in a world of fellow persons. But we are also self-centered by nature and so we easily ignore and discount the interests of others in favor of our own interests. This is what the rude driver does when he cuts off one of his fellow drivers; he discounts their interests (in safely arriving at their destination in a timely manner) in favor of his own desire to get where he is going as fast as he can. So, our own self-interest constantly interferes with our ability to make the inference I mentioned, which is something we are called on to do every time we interact with another person.

So, what is the basis of morality? Why do objective moral obligations exist? The short answer is that moral obligations exist because persons exist. A person is a being that matters. The existence of beings that matter logically entails the existence of objective moral obligations.

I want to slow down a bit and explain my argument a bit more carefully. I think that, on the basis of what I’ve said so far, we can establish two important theses:

(1) I matter morally.

That is, every person is directly aware of the fact that he/she matters. I know that I matter in a very direct way. This is particularly salient when another person wrongs me. What I am aware of when I have such an experience is the fact that I am a being whose interests and agency must be acknowledged and respected (more on this below).

(2) There are other beings that are relevantly like me.

I know that I am not the only person in the world. Each of us finds ourselves in a world that is populated by others who are relevantly like ourselves. In particular, I know that other people have interests and agency. These factors, interests and agency, are what make me matter morally and thus I know that there are other people who are relevantly like me.

Now, from these two claims, I think that a third follows rather naturally:

(3) Every person matters morally just as much as I matter.

Obviously it is important that I am speaking of moral mattering. In a different sense of “matter” one person might matter more than another. For example, an ace pitcher may be more important to a baseball team than a reserve catcher. But this would not entail that the pitcher matters more as a person than the catcher. So, from a moral perspective, every person matters just as much as every other person. More specifically, the interests of any one person matter just as much as the like interests of any other person. This claim is thus an assertion of impartiality. It is this third claim that forces us to admit the existence of objective moral obligations.

Now, even though I think that the impartiality claim is fairly self-evident, I think that we can do better than rely on its self-evidence. Suppose that I doubt that everyone else matters just as much as me. Have I made an error? To prove that objective moral obligations exist and arise from the existence of persons, I need to argue that the answer is yes.

Before I argue for this conclusion, I want to say more about what it means to recognize that there exist other beings that are like me. In doing so we will also think more carefully about why I matter morally (i.e., what makes it the case that I matter) and why, more generally, persons matter morally. Obviously I am a unique individual and there are things that are true of me that are not true of any other person. Such things include facts about my history, about my current location, about my appearance, etc. But I know that such differences between me and other people are relatively insignificant when it comes to the morally relevant property of personhood (or the fact that I matter morally). That is, if I think about what makes it the case that I matter morally, I soon realize that the facts about my history, about my appearance, and certainly about my spatial location (indeed any specific fact about me as an individual) are irrelevant to the fact that I matter. I know this because if any of these things were otherwise (if, for example, my appearance were to change, which indeed is happening all the time) I would not cease to matter. What makes it the case that I matter is that I have desires and needs; that I desire happiness and want to avoid unhappiness and suffering; and, perhaps above all, that I can make choices, that I can pursue my interests, in short, that I am an agent. I know that agency matters because I know directly that one of the greatest harms that can be perpetrated against me is the denial of my own agency. When I am forced to do something against my will or when I am forcibly not permitted to pursue my interests, I feel this as a great harm. Of course there are other harms too; causing me pain, even if it does not involve any threat to my agency, is a harm; denying me access to things that I need is also a tremendous harm. So, when I recognize that there are other beings like me, what I recognize is of course not that there are others who are exactly like me, but that there are others who have the features that I recognize as features that make it the case that I matter. I recognize that there are other conscious agents in the world.

Very importantly, it is not the case that I matter because I have my perspective. Everyone has a unique perspective and I certainly have my own. But what makes me matter is not that I inhabit my perspective. Rather it is the case that I matter because I am a conscious agent. We’ll return to this issue later, but it seems clear that this gives us very good grounds for rejecting egoism. An egoist is someone who believes that every person matters uniquely to him or herself. In other words, if I am an egoist, I will assert either that only I matter or that I should pursue my interests above all else. But surely this involves a mistake. What makes my desires, my needs, and my agency matter is not the fact that they are my desires, needs, and agency but rather the fact that they are somebody’s desires, needs, and agency. How do I know this? Well, it seems to me that it is part of knowing directly that I matter. When I am wronged what makes it wrong is not that I am wronged but that a person is wronged. It just so happens that this person is me, but that, so to speak, is merely accidental. I experience the harm as a wrong that happens to a person, who just so happens to be me. That it happens to me allows me to experience it directly as a wrong, but that it happens to me in no way makes it the case that it is wrong. I can see this even more clearly when I imagine being someone else who is wronged. In that case, I can see that it is just as possible to wrong someone else as it is to wrong me. As I said, we will return to this issue below.

Now, it is hard to imagine that either statement (1) or (2) could be false. But, as I said, they compel us to accept (3). To show this I will show that (3) is the only reasonable inference from (1) and (2); that is, other inferences involve some kind of error. As far as I see it, there are basically four possible conclusions to draw from (1) and (2):

(3a) Only I matter.

(3b) I matter more than any other conscious agent.

(3c) I matter to me, but other people don’t matter to me (at least not as much as I matter to me).

(3d) Every conscious agent matters just as much as I do.

Now to this list we might think that we need to add some claims that only specific groups of people matter. That is to say, (3a)-(3c) all involve claims that a specific individual matters in some unique way that other people don’t, but strictly speaking I could infer rather that some group of individuals matter while everyone else doesn’t. So we might think we should add claims like (3a’) (Only me and my family matter). But obviously the main difference between (3a, b and c) and (3d) is that the first three all involve claims of exclusivity while (3d) is a universal claim. And that is the real issue: Is it the case that everyone matters in the way that I matter, or am I justified in thinking that only I (or some select group of people) matter? So, I don’t think that we need to worry about exclusive claims involving groups. Once we’ve shown that the exclusivity claims about me (an individual) are unreasonable, we have thereby dismissed exclusivity claims generally.

I maintain that (3d) is the only reasonable thing to infer from (1) and (2). (3a) and (3b) can be dismissed relatively easily since both imply that there is something fundamentally different about me compared to every other conscious agent in the world. First, let’s note what an odd state of affairs such a situation would represent. Out of all the people in the world, I and I alone matter morally (or I matter more than everyone else). There is no evidence whatsoever for such a claim. In order to justify the conclusion that I am special (i.e., that I matter in way that nobody else does), I need to identify some relevant difference between myself and everyone else that could explain why I matter but nobody else does. But there is no such difference. Similarly, to justify (3b) I would need to identify some relevant difference that could explain why I matter more. But there is no difference that could plausibly account for this discrepancy. Thus, it is unreasonable to believe either (3a) or (3b). If I know that I matter and I know that there are other conscious agents who, as I indicated above, are like me in the relevant way (that is, have the features in virtue of which I matter), then there is no justification for believing either that only I matter morally or that I matter more.

The problem with (3c) is twofold: first, it presumes that something can matter morally to one person and not another. But it is difficult to see how we could establish this. Second, and much more importantly, it fails to acknowledge a very crucial aspect of the fact that I matter. Remember that I said that when someone harms me, I feel wronged. The reason I am so upset at the driver who cuts me off is that I know that he should not do it. That is, I matter and he is wrong not to recognize this. Indeed, this is the problem with so many people in the world: they don’t realize how much I matter! What I am saying here is connected to the error that I attributed to egoism earlier. Let’s revisit that point.

If I believe that only I matter to me and other people don’t matter to me; then it is illogical to presume that I ought to matter to other people. Thus, when another person harms me, it should not confront me as a wrongdoing. After all, the driver who cuts me off is acting on the basis of the fact that he matters to him and I don’t matter to him. But this cannot account for that fact that I feel wronged. Remember, I am maintaining that the experience of being wronged involves a direct and veridical experience of the fact that I matter. But then if I am wronged it can only be because the wrongdoer acted in a way that ignored my legitimate needs or interests (i.e., acted as if I don’t matter). So, it seems to me that my experience of being wronged brings me directly into contact with the fact that I matter, not just to me, but that I matter, period.

Thus, the most reasonable inference is (3d): Every person matters the same way that I do. (3a, b, c) all involve some kind of error or unreasonable presumption. On analysis, it seems clear that what makes me matter is that I am a conscious agent. If I believe this, then I have to believe that other conscious agents matter and that they matter just as much as I do.

Now, the existence of other conscious agents that matter in the same way that I do entails the existence of moral obligations. The fact that you matter morally means that I cannot treat you however I might want; I cannot use you as a means to my ends nor can I treat you as a mere obstacle to the achievement of my ends. Thus, behaving morally mean treating other people with the respect that they are owed in virtue of being persons.

The source of moral obligations is persons. The fact that persons exists entails that objective moral obligations exist. Notice that this satisfies the requirement that I laid out in my previous post in this series. I said there that we need to find a source of moral obligations that is external to any particular person. That is precisely what we have: The existence of persons does not depend on the beliefs, desires, attitudes, etc. of any particular person. Thus, we have found the source of objective moral obligations.

Before I close, I want to do two things very briefly. First, I will make some brief comments about the role that God might play in the foundation of moral obligations. Second, I want to raise some questions about my position as I have described it here that I will try to address in future posts.

In my last post I reported that though many thoughtful and intelligent people claim that only theism can account for objective morality, I find such comments completely without foundation. I hope that this current post begins to explain why. What could God have to do with it? A person is a being with interests and agency. Persons matter morally. Every person matters. Thus we have obligations toward persons. How could God establish this or change it. Even if God does not exist, persons still exist and thus objective moral obligations still exist. So God is completely unnecessary for the foundation of moral obligations.

Finally, here is a list of questions/objections that one might have about the position that I’ve described and argued for here. In a series of future posts, I intend to address each of these questions. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments.

Questions/Objections

(1) Do my obligations arise from the fact that I wouldn’t want people to discount my interests? Are we to understand that morality is grounded in reciprocal altruism?

(2) Why should I care about other people?

(3) What is the source of the fact that I matter? Why do I matter?

(4) Isn’t God the reason that persons matter morally? You say that God does is not necessary for moral obligations, but isn’t he necessary for the fact that persons matter morally? Some theists will agree that every person matters but will insist that only God can make it the case that we matter.

(5) What about non-persons? Do non-human sentient creatures matter?

(6) Where does this moral ought come from? Moral properties are queer things and you have not shown how such queer things are possible.

(7) It cannot be true that everyone matters the same or that like interests deserve like consideration. Obviously I am going to give the interests of my loved ones (my children, for example) more consideration than the interests of complete strangers. And there is nothing morally wrong with doing so.

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April 24, 2014 at 8:25 pm

Staircaseghost

“So, what I want to say is that this feeling of being wronged is based in a veridical experience of our own importance.”

I see you saying this, but I don’t see where you’ve made any argument attempting to justify it beyond an appeal to our intuitions that such experiences are veridical. After all, we routinely have veridical-feeling-yet-false experiences (mistakes, illusions etc.) about ordinary physical objects.

Why shouldn’t I expect to have at least some veridical-feeling-yet-false experiences about metaphysical realities — especially when these experiences are about the universe telling me how special and important and precious of a little snowflake I am?

By what method do we test such experiences to separate the true from the false?

“When I am wronged I am viscerally in touch with the objective fact that I matter morally.”

In addition to my reactions above, I have to protest that here you’ve just elided another critical argument you need to make your case: even assuming that my experience justifies my true belief that I matter (simpliciter), what justifies the additional conclusion that I objectively matter?

Once again, how do you propose the world would look differently if I mattered objectively instead of subjectively?

“That is, I need to recognize that, while it is true that I matter, there is nothing special about me. In other words, if I matter, then every other person matters just the same.”

This strikes me as exceedingly nonobvious and in need of justification. My desires matter most to me, because they’re mine, and I’m me!

Moreover, even committed utilitarians like Singer acknowledge that our actual feelings of empathy diffuse the farther we get from our immediate circles. I don’t think I matter more than some poor wretch in a Syrian refugee camp, and I support policies I hope will make their lot in life better, but on a day to day basis in my lived experience I consume more psychic energy on my own personal stubbed toes and tasty meals and curating my Netflix queue than I do on far-flung atrocities.

“There is no reason to think that I matter but nobody else does, or that I matter more or in a special kind of way. So, I matter, but I do not uniquely matter. And it seems to me that once I make this inference, which as I say is obvious, then I have to recognize that I have obligations. To acknowledge that other people matter is to acknowledge that I should not treat them however I want; that I cannot legitimately treat them merely as means to an end or merely as obstacles in the way of my getting what I want.”

To follow my above line of thought: if the strength of my emotive reaction to being wronged counts as evidence that this is the right reaction for me to have, then why doesn’t the comparative weakness of my emotive reaction to others being wronged count as evidence that they don’t matter as much? What should I conclude from my occasional strong positive emotive reactions to wronging others?

And we’re still left with the problem of deriving some sort of objective “grounding” out of these emotional outbursts. Most likely, my phenomenology of these experiences is identical to your own. But whence the warrant for the leap from the phenomenology to the metaphysics?

“This is what the rude driver does when he cuts off one of his fellow drivers; he discounts their interests (in safely arriving at their destination in a timely manner) in favor of his own desire to get where he is going as fast as he can.”

What’s interesting is that my outrage when someone discounts some other person’s moral dignity is quite often of exactly the same character and intensity. It’s why good movies and novels and plays and comic books are good, why we feel sad when the hero suffers a loss, why we cheer when the villain gets what’s coming to him, why we clutch the armrest when some blonde tart (who is not in any real danger because she’s a Hollywood actress, not a real coed in a real cabin in real woods) goes in the shower where we know the killer is hiding.

This strongly suggests to me that the right philosophers’ story we should be telling about the moral life will be an aesthetic one, not one modeled after science or logic.

“A person is a being that matters. The existence of beings that matter logically entails the existence of objective moral obligations.”

By now it should be clear why I regard this as a non-sequitur. It does not follow from something mattering that something objectively matters. Further still, since you (correctly) define personhood in normative terms, you leave it within my epistemic rights to deny that there are any persons besides myself. But not within my moral rights…

“I know that I matter in a very direct way.”

Repeating myself, but “know” is a “success term”, used when only “believe” is has been demonstrated.

We believe we matter. We hope we matter. But both individual experiences and especially the modern scientific picture of the world can utterly devastate these convictions.

MacBeth is not wrong, on learning of the death of his wife, to exclaim “life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour on the stage and is heard from no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Nor is Sagan wrong to describe our world as merely “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” nor Dawkins to look at life and see nothing but “blind, pitiless indifference”.

Speaking of nightmarish trivialities, I literally have to go spend some of my finite time alotted on this earth taking my socks out of the dryer and folding them. Maybe over the weekend I’ll be able to get to the stuff in your post that isn’t me just mostly saying “nuh-uh!”, but has more positive things to say. The “nuh-uh” stuff is just always easier to type, and gets dashed off first, so, sample bias and all that, you understand.

April 25, 2014 at 3:50 pm

jbthibodeau

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I want to combine your first and second concern. Your first concern is that I have not shown that the experience that I matter is veridical. Your second concern is that even if I can show that I matter, it is another step (one that, again, I have not justified) to claim that I matter objectively.

I am going to combine these claims because I think that, as far as the phenomenology is concerned, the experience I am referring to is an experience of objective mattering. That is, when I feel wronged, what I experience is the fact that someone was unresponsive to the fact that I matter. Well, that can only make sense if that person should be responsive to the fact. But then, since if this person (perhaps a complete stranger) should respond to my mattering, this can only be because I objectively matter. As I pointed out in the original post, if I don’t think that I matter to other people (e.g., the stranger who cuts me off), then it should not confront me as a wrongdoing when they harm me. Thus the fact that it does confront me as a wrongdoing implies that my experience is one of my objective mattering.

Okay, so I am claiming that this experience of being wronged (which is fairly universal) is, phenomenologically, an experience that I objectively matter. Now, your concern then (your first concern) is that I have not shown that this experience is veridical. Mightn’t it be illusory? So, you ask, “By what method do we test such experiences to separate the true from the false?”

That is a very good question and it has given me a good deal of pause. Here is a response that strikes me as reasonable: It seems to me that we can learn something relevant from the parallel with sense perception. Obviously we can ask whether it is possible that my sense experience of seeing a computer in front of me (and words appearing on the screen as I tap on the keyboard) is veridical. How do we answer this question? By what method do we test such experiences to separate the veridical from the non-veridical?

The answer in the case of sense experience is that there is no such method; there cannot be. Descartes’ skeptical arguments show us that. But that doesn’t mean that the skeptic wins. There are other ways of undermining external world skepticism than describing a method for determining whether a sense experience is veridical. We can talk about this if you’d like, but here is my point: If we don’t accept Cartesian skepticism when it comes to sense perception, then we shouldn’t be compelled to accept skepticism when it comes to experiences of value.

Of course, even if we are not external world skeptics, we nonetheless recognize that there are occasions when it is appropriate to be skeptical about some sense experience or other. And we understand that there are considerations that speak in favor of and also against concluding that some experience was hallucinatory. So, similarly, we should acknowledge that there are times when we ought to be skeptical about experiences of value. But that doesn’t mean we have to be radical skeptics about experiences of value.

So, I claim that this experience of being wronged is, phenomenologically, an experience of objectively mattering. Next, I claim that this experience is exceedingly common so much so that it is most likely universal (that is, everyone has this experience at least once). Given its universality and given the absence of compelling reasons to think it is illusory, I think we should regard it as veridical.

Alright, so please let me know where I’ve gone wrong thus far. As for nightmarish trivialities, the obvious answer is to ignore them when possible. Yes, socks must be removed from the dyer, but I can’t see any compelling reason that they must be folded. All of this is just to give you an excuse to post your positive comments, which I am also eager to hear.

April 25, 2014 at 4:44 pm

Brad Lencioni

I think you are heading in the wrong direction here, Jason, which shocks me. Namely, I am shocked because your defense here of the existence of objective moral obligations appears identical to me to that of Plantinga’s defense of the existence of God, with his appeal to a “sensus divinitatus.” I am rather sure you are a critic of Plantinga, yet you appear to be arguing for something like a “sensus morales” to make your case. But the counter-arguments to Plantinga’s “sensus divinitatus” could equally be applied to your moral sense.

The fundamental mistake here, I think, is confusing the ontological and epistemological senses of the word ‘objective’–a distinction made by an old professor of yours, John Searle. Morality is not objective because there exists some ontologically objective metaphysical realm which we perceive with some intuitive sense-perception. Morality is ontologically abstract and subjective, existing in the psycho-physical causal relation between persons and their mutually dependent states of well-being.

What is objective about this is our knowledge of well-being and its correlated cause and effects.

April 25, 2014 at 6:15 pm

jbthibodeau

Thanks, these are wonderful comments. I am flattered that it shocks you that I might be wrong.

I relish the opportunity to talk both about Plantinga and Searle. Let me take each one separately. I am not at all surprised that you mention Plantinga in this connection since his view occurred to me as I wrote this response to Staircaseghost. However, I am not as worried by the parallel you see. I agree with you that moral perception is not perception of a special metaphysical realm but I don’t think that I am committed to that.

Now, a good objection to Plantinga’s claim that humans have a sensus divinitatus (SD) is that I’ve never had any experience of God and others report that they also haven’t had any such experience; not just a few people, but many. Why is this an objection to the claim that humans have an SD? Well, because if God existed and if the best way to become aware of his existence is through an SD, then all humans should have some kind of experience of the divine. Since many people report that they have no such experience, most likely, there is no SD. Now, notice that such an objection is not available for my claim that we have veridical experiences of the fact that we matter (i.e., that we have a sensus moralitas). Of course it is possible that some people have no such experience similar to those I have described (of being wronged, e.g.), though I strongly suspect that it is fairly universal. But even if there are such people, this is not a reason to suspect that my experience (and your experience) is not veridical. Recall that the reason that we rejected the SD is that God, if he existed, would guarantee that we all have an SD. But we have no such reason to suspect that every human beings will have a sensus moralitas. Similarly we have no reason to suspect that every human being has functioning sense organs (and indeed some don’t); so we have no reason to suspect that everyone has a functional capacity to recognize moral value.

So, that is my first response to the Plantinga parallel. I am sympathetic if you don’t find that reply completely convincing. I agree that there is something odd about the idea of a sensus moralitas if it is taken to suggest special access to a special metaphysical realm. So, I need to say a bit more about what moral experience is experience of. As I said, I don’t think that moral value (moral mattering, as I call it) is some special metaphysical feature that we need a special epistemic capacity to access. I agree with you that the analogy to sense perception can be misleading if it suggests this. I am not quite sure precisely what I want to say about this, but I will try to provide some insight into my current thinking.

Coming to know moral truths is not a matter of perceiving special properties in the world, rather it is a matter of coming to understand the significance of things. Seeing the significance (or importance) of things cannot be assimilated to seeing colors or feeling temperatures. Recognizing significance is bound up with sense perception but is not a matter of sense perception. When I feel pain, part of what I experience is the fact that it is bad. But this is not an extra feature of the experience (a property of badness) but is rather just a matter of recognizing the significance of the experience.

So, I want to emphasize that moral experience is analogous to sense perception in certain ways. In connection to Staircase’s comments, I want to agree that we can have non-veridical experiences of importances just as we can have non-veridical sense experiences. But, just as radical skepticism about sense experience can be overcome, so too radical skepticism about moral experience can be overcome. However, the analogy must be de-emphasized if it suggests that there are special moral features in the world that we need a special capacity to have access to. Rather, moral experience is a matter of experiencing the significance of things (actions, objects, states of affairs).

Now, as for your comments about Searle. I don’t think that morality is ontologically subjective. Now, some ontologically subjective states (e.g., some conscious states) have moral significance. But for the same reason that I am skeptical of the talk of moral properties if these are taken to be analogous to visual properties like color, I am skeptical that moral significance is a kind of property. Furthermore, people are not ontologically subjective, they are ontologically objective and I am claiming that people matter objectively. So, it would be odd for me to say that morality is ontologically subjective.

You’ve really pushed me here, so I want to thank you. In formulating my thoughts I’ve made some important discoveries about what I really think. So, your comments are invaluable. I hope that what I’ve said makes some sense at the very least.

April 27, 2014 at 11:29 am

Staircaseghost

Well, now I’ve learned that tabbed browsing in Safari for iOS will gobble up unposted replies in WordPress when you switch back and forth.

I wanted to clarify that I’m not talking about grand Cartesian skepticism when I’m asking for a method to sort out veridical metaphysical intuitions. I’m just asking for something like the everyday humdrum methods we use to sort true inferences about sensations of empirical objects from false ones. If I have the (totally non-hallucinatory) sensation of seeing a thermometer on the stove reading 400 degrees, the method for checking the veracity of my belief that the stove is in fact hot will involve things like looking at the eye to see if it’s glowing, looking at the water to see if it’s boiling, holding my hand near it etc., and if enough of these cross-checks turn out a certain way I will abandon my belief in the accuracy of the thermometer.

By contrast, I’m not sure how one could finish the sentence “the phenomenology of my experience seems to be of objective mattering, but let me check that out by _____.”

We should be skeptical of everyday empirical claims that flatter our sense of our own importance and righteousness, because no one is immune to motivated reasoning and confirmation bias (“People who listen to my favorite band are statistically more likely to be highly intelligent and successful? Yeah, that sounds about right to me!”) when we can check them. A fortiori, we should be even more skeptical of claims telling us we are objectively the most important kind of thing in the universe when we can’t check them.

Here is another reason to be skeptical of putting all our epistemic eggs in the basket of phenomenology when it comes to metaphysical conclusions: Ex-Phi, if it has shown anything, has shown that people’s reports of their metaphysical intuitions (e.g. about whether minds are separate from bodies, whether someone’s caused decision was nonetheless praiseworthy or blameworthy) are highly sensitive to slight changes in the wording of the scenarios, or the phrasing of the questions, or to various priming effects.

And there is the additional problem of the theory-laden-ness of observation terms. If you come in with a metatheory derived from reading Husserl, or listening to a lecture from a Zen monk, and are invited to look inside yourself for the things they’re talking about, then lo and behold you find yourself reporting on your phenomenology using just that very vocabulary!

Conclusions derived entirely from a process with no error-correction mechanisms in place are exactly where we should exercise the most doubt.

April 25, 2014 at 1:43 pm

Brad Lencioni

Thanks, Jason. I wonder if we could formally summarize your view as follows:

The nature of moral obligations is the “matters-to” Relation (R) on the Set (S) of existing persons. To be a person is to be a member of the set S, where S = { x | x is a conscious & living agent}. And the relation R on S takes S as its domain and codomain, and it expresses a binary relation between each person in the domain of R with a potential to influence the lively well-being of a person in the codomain of R —and so “matters-to” that person. The range of R is the set of all ordered subsets of persons whom matter to each other such that one may possibly influence the personal properties of a person (i.e. may influence a person’s lively well-being). The relation R on S is defined by the following three properties (which hold barring extraordinary circumstances).

1. It is reflexive: hence, for every x in S, “R(x,x)” is true (i.e. for every x in S, it is true that x matters-to x), and so (x, x) is in the range of R.

2. The relation R on S is also symmetric: hence, for every x and y in S, R(x, y) = R(y, x) = true. So if (x, y) is in R, then so is (y, x). (I.e. if it is true that x matter-to y, in that x may possibly influence the lively well-being of y, then the inverse of this is also true.)

3. The relation R on S is also transitive: hence, for every x, y, and z in S, if R(x, y) and R(y, z), then R(x, z).

Incidentally, any relation that is reflexive, symmetric, and reflexive is an equivalence relation. So our “matters-to” relation R may be better expressed as the “matters-to-and- fundamentally-just-the-same-as” relation R’. So to belong to the set R is to belong to the set R’ and is to be a person who may possibly influence a person’s lively well-being: which is to be a person who matters in life, which is to matter just the same as (i.e. equivalently as) all others who matter.

So the nature of moral obligation exists as a relation of potential causal-influence between persons with a conscious, lively well-being. The product of this relation (namely, its range) is a set of socially related persons–a social network of people who all matter, because they matter to each-others personal well-being.

What do you make of this? I tried to capture what I took as all the highlights of your thinking (which I think is very similar to my own), and reduce it down to a formal expression—which I hope also clarified your thinking’s strong points and weaknesses. Does it make sense and is it of any use? Thanks.

(Note: Please read my comment with charity, as I tried to summarize and deliver a meta-theory of “moral obligation” in just a few paragraphs. So I am aware that it is simplistic and doesn’t fully define all terms or express all implications.)

April 25, 2014 at 1:51 pm

Brad Lencioni

*Edit: Any relation which is reflexive, symmetric, and [transitive] is an equivalence relation.

April 25, 2014 at 9:00 pm

jbthibodeau

This looks good with one caveat that might be trivial but could turn out to be significant. I have some qualms about the phrase “with a potential to influence the lively well-being of a person.” What does this amount to? Does a person living in a Mumbai slum have the potential to influence a person living in a penthouse in New York city? Perhaps. But we could certainly stretch the potential causal connections to the breaking point with science fiction scenarios. Suppose that there are conscious agents living in the Andromeda galaxy. Should we say that they have the potential to influence my well-being? If not, then do we really want to say that they don’t matter morally to me?

Objective mattering is not merely a matter of mattering-to. Conscious aliens objectively matter even if they have no potential to affect me.

So, I’m not sure what to say here. I’m hopeful that what I’ve said will be enough to prompt you to clarify relation R.

April 26, 2014 at 1:10 am

Brad Lencioni

Thanks, Jason! You raise a good critique which is along the same lines of some that I have been entertaining throughout the day. You pose the following science fiction objection that:

“…there are conscious agents living in the Andromeda galaxy. Should we say that they have the potential to influence my well-being? If not, then do we really want to say that they don’t matter morally to me?”

The answer, I think, to this is “Yes.” If two social networks of people are casually independent and disconnected, then a person in one network indeed does not morally matter to a person in another network. Of course, they might matter to each other in some other sense, though I can’t think of what that might be off the top of my head. For it would seem that for persons in the Andromeda galaxy to be of any interest to us on Earth, we would first have to know they exist–which would entail a causal connection and a potential to influence us.

But this leads me to a second variant of this example which might seem even more problematic. Suppose it is the year 3000 here on Earth. We are now a post-human civilization with intergalactic space traveling capabilities. And we discover this civilization of persons in the Andromeda galaxy who are in the stone age of their civilizations development. What does relation R imply here?

The obvious problem is that R is defined as a symmetrical relation, but the scenario above appears asymmetrical: the post-humans on Earth could possibly deliver those people in Andromeda the technology of modern medicine, or they could incinerate their planet; however, the people on Andromeda could not even know Earth existed let alone contact its people. So do the people of Andromeda not morally matter to those on Earth? Does the model of moral obligation based on the given relation R (or R’) entail an indifference in the post-humans decision to either provide the Andromeda people with modern medicine or incinerate them?

Briefly, I see two possible solutions. First, I think the asymmetry in the example is illusory. I think for any one person to be able to possibly influence another instantiates a symmetrical causal relationship between each others well-being; because, in sticking with our example, for one to commit genocide against a people would indeed affect ones own self and the kind of person he would be seen as by his peers as well as by himself.

Secondly, I think there is something special about the reflexive relation of R (though I haven’t quite thought of how to express this). There is something special about ones valuing of his own well-being–which you, Jason, seem to agree with in your arguing that it is self-evident to one that he matters. And in accepting the morality of committing genocide against the Andromeda people, one would have to accept, rationally, the morality of the converse where the situation is reversed; but this would entail violating the reflexive nature of R and one’s valuing of his own well-being–which is absurd.

Or this relation R is all a bunch of nonsense… 🙂

Peace and thanks for the stimulating discussion!

April 27, 2014 at 4:10 pm

Staircaseghost

“Suppose that I doubt that everyone else matters just as much as me. Have I made an error? To prove that objective moral obligations exist and arise from the existence of persons, I need to argue that the answer is yes.”
I agree with it is an error to think of one’s fellow human beings this way. I am neither an error theorist nor a relativist. Where I part ways with the realist is over exactly what kind of mistake this person is making.
Making a mistake about some natural, empirical fact reduces to expecting some possible future experience and then having that experience fail to obtain.
Making a mistake of practical rationality reduces to either some error about the empirical consequences of my actions, or to having inconsistent goals.
What is the consequence of being mistaken about some moral fact? It can’t be some feeling of moral guilt, since people routinely act on false moral beliefs and fail to feel guilty. Is it simply that living out a false moral belief will tend to make society less conducive to accomplishing your goals? Then morality reduces to self-interest, and you are once again left with the problem of egoism — and we already agreed that was a no-go.
My view is that moral errors cannot be redescribed in terms of anything else except other moral vocabulary. You are wrong to vote against gay marriage, because that makes you a total asshole. You are wrong to selectively ban commenters on your blog, because that makes you a hypocritical oaf. The upshot of this is that morality is irreducible to any other set of facts, which in turn entails that it is irreducible to any set of natural facts.
The Knight’s Move goes like this: semantically, I take moral beliefs to be expressive, nonrepresentational (I’d say “non-cognitive”, but that term has baggage, so I’d qualify it), emotive states of mind. Metaphysically, this entails that there is nothing going on when you and I have the same experience of “perceiving” that we matter — really, really matter — that involves describing some supernatural realm of ethereal facts unavailable to naturalists, since moral claims are not descriptive or representational in the first place.
“So, when I recognize that there are other beings like me, what I recognize is of course not that there are others who are exactly like me, but that there are others who have the features that I recognize as features that make it the case that I matter.”
(I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and guess that you and I broadly agree about the philosophical case for abortion rights; if I’m wrong, just say so and I’ll drop it and pick a different example.)
Anti-abortionists who say “you agree that fetuses are [biologically] human persons, therefore you must agree that fetuses are [morally] human persons [i.e. persons who matter]” are laughably wrong, because they clearly equivocate between the empirical and normative concepts of “human person”. Now, sometimes they also make purely empirical mistakes about what biological proprioceptive processes are going on when, but their personhood-right-at-the-moment-of-conception claim is not one about whether embryos have subjective experience. My expressivist analysis tells me that what they’re doing, over and above any natural or supernatural factual mistakes they’re making, is giving voice to their emotive sympathy for beings at any stage of development, affirming their commitment to protecting them, demanding that everyone else share their outlook, signaling their willingness to make others conform their values and behaviors to a particular pattern etc.
So we say that beings have or don’t have [moral] personhood when we adopt this intrinsically normative, nondescriptive conception of them.
Maybe you’ve guessed how the end of this story relates to your original argument, and how on the one hand I can say I agree with you that we all matter equally, but on the other hand disagree in the strongest terms about your claim to have shown that anyone or anything objectively matters. I take the phenomenology we both share, of attributing ultimate and irrevocable importance to human dignity and autonomy, and say that this is exactly the kind of psychological state I would expect to see when my vision of how I want the world to be takes on a certain intensity and a certain character. My emotions pour out of me in animal behaviors, like nodding my head to some dope West Coast beats, or screaming when I’m in pain, or trembling when I’m in awe.
I don’t derive any more metaphysical significance from the idea that other [moral] persons (who matter) exist than from the tautology that a necessarily existing being exists. Mattering is built into the former concept in the way existing is built into the latter. But in neither case should we take the concepts themselves as evidence that they can be meaningfully or usefully deployed in the real world.
When I talked about space-ark type examples before, ones that push on our intuitions that everyone really is of equal moral worth, I wasn’t suggesting any kind of observations that would “prove” personhood is not automatic with some set of natural facts. (Another one just came to me: remember the sequence in Nolan’s [i]The Dark Knight[/i] where there’s two bombs, one on the passenger ferry and one on the prison boat? We’re supposed to think the murderers and rapists and thieves have exactly the same claim to moral dignity… except really, you kinda hafta admit when you see it you don’t really believe that. This uncomfortable cognitive dissonance is mercifully resolved for us through a deus ex machina when Tiny Lister (who also played Zeus in [i]No Holds Barred[/i]) steps in and shows us that hardened convicts are nice people just like us!) Likewise with the view of the world given to us in a Shakespearean tragedy, or especially the one given to us by modern science as interpreted by Sagan or Dawkins, what I’m trying to get across is the contrast between the anti-human horror of a universe indifferent to human concerns — MacBeth’s storm and fury, or Metaphysical Naturalism’s crushing clanging gears grinding all matter towards the inevitable Heat Death as science assures us — and our aesthetic reactions to these realities.
I’ll close by referencing the exchange from Secular Outpost a few weeks back. It was the one that made me hit the Follow button. So very many people, theists and naturalists alike, unquestioningly accept that moral objectivity is simply “baked in” to the notion of theism, since it involves belief in a being who is all good. I was impressed when you rejected this bit of definitional legerdemain, and by extension refused to cede the framing of the metaethical debate as a default win for the Christian. Too often in debates, I’ve seen the atheist either make ludicrous scientistic claims to “ground morality” in neuroscience or game theory (Harris, Carrier); or concede nihilism, a rhetorical catastrophe. It takes a rare combination of critical acumen and conceptual creativity to say that if Jesus himself appeared tomorrow, Christianity would be true but the subjectivity of morality would remain an open question. Hopefully I’ve sketched a semi-coherent picture of my “projectivist plus expressionist” approach to show just why I feel entitled to say both 1) even the existence of “the greatest possible being” is compatible with a non-realist, non-objective morality and 2) atheists should give up trying to demonstrate how there can be an “objective foundation for morality without a God” and still say 3) all autonomous persons qua persons are equally morally valuable, and entitled to our respect. The world would be a better place if we could all just admit I’m right already. Come on. It’s obvious. It’s just obvious.

April 27, 2014 at 4:13 pm

Staircaseghost

…and of course composing offline in a text editor didn’t preserve the paragraph breaks, and there’s no preview or edit function…

A comment told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, indeed.

April 30, 2014 at 10:31 am

What is wrong with the divine command theory? | not not a philosopher

[…] commands in fact have nothing to do with what makes an action morally wrong. In my most recent blog post, I attempted a detailed account of the basis of moral obligation. The simple answer is that actions […]

May 10, 2014 at 5:55 am

Jonathan MS Pearce

Hey Jason

Perhaps you did so in the last post, but how would you describe what an obligation is?

I ask this, because as a nominalist, I would deny, if they are abstract ideas, that they CAN possibly exist objectively.

Thus, do they simply become psychological desires based on rational deduction based on axioms set out in a moral philosophy?

I can see how we can set out a moral philosophy, conceptually, but wonder how that translates to an obligation, unless the obligation is simply a fulfilment of a conditional sentence, with an apodosis and protasis. If I want X to happen then I ought to do Y. The obligation is borne out of the desire to acct morally.

May 10, 2014 at 11:19 am

jbthibodeau

Hi Jonathan,

It’s a good question. I think that I want to explore the question a bit before I decide on an answer. Let me try to explain why:

I am not convinced that we ought to be nominalists. That doesn’t mean that I am a realist about abstract objects, just that I am not quite sure how to resolve worries about abstract objects. So, I am quite ambivalent about this issue. In any event, let’s suppose for now that nominalism is correct.

It seems to me that nominalists should have just as much difficulty with theoretical reasons as with practical reasons. There are oughts of theoretical reason just as much as there are oughts of practical reason.

So, if I am rational, then I ought to believe that the product of 435 and 72 is 31,320. I ought to believe that the Earth orbits the sun. Etc., etc. And, clearly, I ought to believe these things regardless of my desires, ends, or interests. What is the metaphysical status of these obligations of theoretical reason? Or am I guilty of unjustified reification here? Are there obligations of theoretical reason?

My thought here is that our resolution of your question as it applies to theoretical reason can be a guide to how we resolve the issue of practical obligations (and moral obligations specifically). So, I am going to punt here and let you address the issue a bit more.

Thanks for the question and thanks for reading.

May 10, 2014 at 3:31 pm

Jonathan MS Pearce

I don’t deny oughts, but I suppose I was unpicking an obligation, just sort of establishing that an obligation is entirely dependent on a conditional statement. It’s something I set out in a video a few years back, that you cannot have intrinsic oughts, ie obligations, if that is how you define an obligation.

How would you define obligation?

Cheers, good stuff.

May 13, 2014 at 12:08 pm

jbthibodeau

My semester is now over, so I’ve finally got time to watch your video and make a few comments.

First, I think I now understand your question, but let me make sure. Your point seems to be that all moral obligations are, to use Kant’s terminology, Hypothetical Imperatives. That is, they are imperatives that depend upon the presence of some condition such an end, goal, or desire, that generates it. “I ought to change the oil” is a hypothetical imperative since it applies only on the condition that I want my car to run well (and also that the oil needs changing, and that I don’t have other goals the attainment of which would be frustrated by my changing the oil). As you know, Kant famously claims that morality is not a system of hypothetical imperatives but rather of imperatives that are categorical. The Categorical Imperative applies to all rational agents regardless of their ends, goals, desires, interests, etc.

So, if I understand correctly, you want to know whether I believe that obligations are hypothetical or categorical. My answer is that I agree with Kant at least to this extent: I think that genuine moral obligations are categorical. So, on my view, an obligation that is merely hypothetical would not be a moral obligation. This is because if there are moral obligations, then they are overriding.

Go back to the oil example. I ought to change the oil if I want my car to run well. But suppose that I do have other goals and interests the satisfaction of which would be frustrated be my changing the oil. Suppose I want my car to run well, but I am down to my last $30 and I also want to buy a birthday present for my wife. If I change the oil, my goal of getting my wife a birthday present will be frustrated. So, I need to make a choice about which interest is more important: having a car in proper working order or having a happy wife. Nothing forces any particular decision upon me; I get to decide based on what is most important to me.

I don’t think that moral obligations are like this. I ought not steal money from my neighbor so that I can buy my wife a present. If this is a moral obligation, then regardless of whether it conflicts with any other goals I might have (i.e., even if the fulfillment of the duty will frustrate my achieving some other goal), I still ought to not steal the money. Even if I have no money to buy a present and the only way to buy the present is to steal from my neighbor, I ought not do it (again, assuming that it really is a moral obligation). Moral obligations override merely practical concerns. So, despite the fact that in this case we have a similar conflict of goals as we had in the oil-change example (that is, I can’t satisfy both the goal to get my wife a present and the goal of not stealing), I don’t get decide in this case. I ought not steal the money.

Now, maybe no imperatives are like this. Maybe everything is hypothetical. But then there would be no genuine moral obligations.

I have a few other things to say, particularly about some of the things you say about consequentialism, but I leave it here for know since I am curious what you make of the above points.

May 11, 2014 at 12:05 pm

Staircaseghost

Nominalism seems neither here nor there on this issue. The abstract idea of “the cure for cancer” may or may not have independent ontology, but this has nothing to do with whether there is, in fact, a cure for cancer.

May 11, 2014 at 12:34 pm

Jonathan MS Pearce

I think it potentially has an awful lot to do with what an obligation is. Until Jason defines it closely, a moral obligation appears to be an abstract idea. Calling the ontology of such things into question really is relevant.

May 26, 2014 at 12:32 pm

RonH

Hi, Jason. I’m finally getting a chance to think about and reply to your arguments, although I think Staircaseghost already deployed what my primary objections are.

The statement “I matter morally” is ambiguous. “Matter” to whom? “To matter” means “to have importance, significance, value”. But importance/significance/value is always from some subject’s perspective. “I matter morally to myself” is intuitively true to me, and I’ll even grant that such a statement is true from everyone else’s perspective. In other words, everyone asserts he matters morally to himself. (This might not actually be true for every single individual, but for the sake of argument I’ll grant that it is effectively “objectively” true.) However, just because I matter to me and I suspect that you matter to you, it doesn’t at all follow that I matter to anyone else (or you either, for that… er… matter). Objectively, I clearly matter to some people and not others. Furthermore, “matter” isn’t a binary thing… While I value my nieces and nephews, I have to admit I don’t value them as much as I value my own children. You get angry when the other driver cuts you off in traffic precisely because you value yourself more than he values you. Your intuition may be that he ought to value you more, but that’s just your intuition and not an objective fact. Just to further complicate the traffic example: The other driver might insist that in cutting you off he isn’t necessarily valuing you any less than himself. After all, he’s a skilled driver, aware of the situation, and executing a maneuver that he determines will bring you no actual harm while improving his own traffic position. It’s a win-win in his eyes. That you don’t see it that way isn’t something he could either help nor even perhaps foresee from his perspective.

I don’t see how, given your premises, individuals can have any objective value. You may value individuals subjectively, but I don’t understand how you can go further than that. Or, as Stephen Crane put it:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

May 26, 2014 at 2:54 pm

jbthibodeau

Hi Ron,

Good to hear from you.

Don’t you think that the universe is just an asshole in the Crane quote? Surely the fact that the man exists does generate obligations and anyone who fails to see that is morally impaired.

As for your claim that some people don’t value you and that you value some people more than others, I have a couple of things to say: First, it is certainly true that some people don’t care about you, but that is a relatively unimportant aspect of their personal psychology; is not the same thing as your not mattering to them (in my sense of ‘mattering’). If people matter objectively, then you matter to everyone whether any particular person cares or not. Second, I think that you might be confusing the subjective sense of emotional attachment with mattering morally. It is a fact of human nature that every person is emotionally attached to some people and not to others. Being emotionally attached to another entails, among other things, that the other’s happiness is an important aspect of our own. But that we are attached to some and emotionally distanced from others does not have anything to do with whether everyone matters morally. Even strangers to me matter, that seems fairly clear. I don’t see that we can use our emotional commitments to justify the robust moral metaphysics (according to which mattering morally is subjective) that you are defending.

You insist that mattering is a subjective quality. What evidence can you point to for support? You are asking me to prove that persons have objective value. I am going to turn the tables and ask you to prove that they don’t.

Thanks for the comment.

May 26, 2014 at 6:30 pm

RonH

You ask me to prove the negative? Um… No, you’re making the positive assertion (“all persons have objective value”), so the burden of proof is on you. 😉

“Mattering” obviously has subjective quality… Things don’t just “matter”, they matter to someone. Nothing can matter unless there is someone for it to matter to. Value isn’t some objective property inherent in a thing; if it were, it could be independently detected and quantified. Subjects confer value on objects. To say a person has value, one must first answer the question “To whom?” Now, for a person to have objective value means the person has value independently of anyone’s perspective. But… value is entirely a function of perspective! I don’t understand how value can exist independent of perspective. You say that if people have objective value, then they matter to everyone. But you can’t establish that anyone matters to everyone. If someone really did matter to everyone, then you could say that person had objective value. But there is no person for whom this is the case. In fact, most people don’t matter to most people. You might argue that they should, but they don’t… and the “should” is what you are trying to demonstrate in the first place.

Oh, and the Crane bit was poetry. In reality, it would be as nonsensical for me to think of the universe as being an asshole as it is to think of the universe replying to the man, who was irrational for addressing an unconscious universe in the first place. That said… Even if the universe were conscious and replied per Crane, it would merely be stating an observation (i.e. it lacks a sense of obligation). I might subjectively consider it an asshole, but I would have no basis for asserting such as an objective truth…

May 26, 2014 at 7:49 pm

jbthibodeau

Thanks. I think that I am going to play Socrates for a bit because I can’t think of any better way of making my points, though of course you are under no obligation to humor me.

You say that for a person to matter is for that person to matter to someone. I want to consider this relation of ‘mattering-to.’ What makes it the case that a person matters-to another? In other words, why do some people matter-to you while others don’t? What do the people who matter-to you have that the people who don’t matter-to you don’t have?

Is it clear what I am asking?

May 26, 2014 at 10:40 pm

RonH

Well, obviously people with whom I share relationships matter just on the basis of those relationships. That value is entirely subjective, clearly. However, as a Christian, I also believe that all people matter to God. That value is objective, since God has the Divine omni-perspective (given my metaphysical assumptions).

May 27, 2014 at 9:56 am

jbthibodeau

But why do you value the relationships? If the relationship is not valuable, then the person with whom you have the relationship is not valued. Conversely, if you don’t value a person, then you won’t value your relationship with her. So it seems that the value of a relationship is derivative of the value of the person with whom you have a relationship. So, why do you value the people whom you value?

As for God, in virtue of what do all persons matter to God? Why does God value all of us?

May 27, 2014 at 11:40 am

RonH

I don’t value the relationships; I value the people. The stronger the relationship, the more the person matters to me. Relationships develop in a variety of ways. Obviously, biology is a very strong component of my relationship with my parents… perhaps foundational enough that I don’t have a lot of say in the strength of that relationship. My relationship with my wife, on the other hand, was quite a bit more intentional in its formation. Relationships with co-workers start out much more incidental, but can deepen into something more significant. Regardless, these values are entirely subjective to me. On my own, I don’t have reason to value people with whom I have no relationship. Technically, it’s worse than that — I’m in competition with all other organisms for limited resources. By evolutionary default, I do matter (to me) more than anyone else does. Strong relationships override that competition. I make significant sacrifices for my children. I get more advantage from a cooperative relationship with my neighbor than an adversarial one. But the thinner the relationship gets, the less subjective reason I have to weight your value against my own interests.

As for God… In Christian theology, God values himself just as all self-conscious beings value themselves. God values us because we are his creations. We are the reflection of himself into the physical world. We are his children. If I value God, and God values you, then I ought to value you as well.

May 28, 2014 at 10:53 am

jbthibodeau

the thinner the relationship gets, the less subjective reason I have to weight your value against my own interests.

This is a substantive moral claim for which you need to provide support. In virtue of what do your interests trump mine?

I think that you haven’t quite answered my question. You value your wife and your children and your relationships with them. But why? If you are in competition with every other organism on the planet, then why would you value any person to the point where you would sacrifice satisfying your own needs for theirs. Saying that you care more about your wife and kids and so are more willing to sacrifice for them does not answer the question. Why are they important?

Consider what you said: “On my own, I don’t have reason to value people with whom I have no relationship.” If that is true, then before you met your wife, you could not have valued her. So, why did she go from being someone whom you did not value to be someone whom you did value? It cannot be that you had a relationship with her because, obviously, we are talking about a time prior to the relationship. I want to know what makes someone significant enough to begin to form a relationship with.

Many years ago I believed that what made anything valuable is the fact that I want it. Value, in my view, was entirely subjective. Things don’t have value in themselves, they have value because we value them. But this really doesn’t make any sense, does it? If this were true, then we would not be able to explain why we value anything. If things have value because I value them, then why do I value them? This makes it seem like I could make anything valuable just by choosing to value it. But that isn’t right. Isn’t it rather that I value things that have value? In other words, as I now believe, it makes more sense to say that I desire good things rather than that things are good because I desire them.

May 28, 2014 at 12:38 pm

RonH

This is a substantive moral claim for which you need to provide support.

Well, technically, no I don’t, since I was making a subjective claim. I simply observe that the thinner my relationship is with someone else, the less I value their interests. I would take a bullet to save my children. But I don’t head off to the gang-war-ravaged parts of town to take a bullet for someone else’s kid (who, unlike mine, is in real danger of being hit by one). Not least because doing so would leave my children fatherless… and there I go again.

I suppose there are several ways one can account for this state of affairs. But evolution works rather nicely: We evolved to care more for those closest to us, because that adds more survival value. Organisms that care equally for all members of their species die out because competition is necessary when resources are scarce, and there must always be winners and losers.

In virtue of what do your interests trump mine?

Because I actually experience my interests, and do not experience yours. Look, “selfishness” is the natural, evolutionary default. Our biological instincts are to value ourselves and our interests over others. Even research into altruistic behavior focuses on demonstrating how some altruistic behaviors benefit us and can therefore be produced by evolution. If you want to make the case that there is an objective reason for overriding this default behavior, I’m still waiting to hear it. 😉

If you are in competition with every other organism on the planet, then why would you value any person to the point where you would sacrifice satisfying your own needs for theirs.

Evolution 101, dude. The prime directive is reproduction. The secondary directive is survival, so that you can reproduce successfully. Valuing my wife, children, and even my immediate community are all conducive to increasing my chances of producing viable offspring. I can justify all that solely on naturalistic assumptions.

Now, as a Christian, I obviously don’t consider evolution to be the whole story. People do have an objective value from a Divine omniperspective. But that is not an assumption available to you, so you need to try something different. I’m still trying to figure out how you get objective value without objective perspective…

If that is true, then before you met your wife, you could not have valued her. So, why did she go from being someone whom you did not value to be someone whom you did value?

Well, before I met her she still had value to God, and therefore still did have indirect value to me. But the direct value came about through the obvious means. Initially, there was basic, biological, sexual attraction. She was cute and available. Acquaintance deepened into friendship. Friendship became love. Love became permanent commitment. Now there are offspring… Birds do it, bees do it.

Things don’t have value in themselves, they have value because we value them. But this really doesn’t make any sense, does it?

Actually, yeah it does. What is the value of a bottle of water in the desert with nobody around for miles? It’s a nonsensical question. Now put a thirsty man next to the bottle of water. Suddenly, the water has great value. Now put the bottle of water next to a climber stranded on a glacier. The bottle has some value, but not much… the climber is, after all, surrounded by water.

Saying something “has value” just means that it “is desired”. But only mindful things have desires. Nothing can have value without a mind to value it. Nothing can have objective value without an objective mind.

If things have value because I value them, then why do I value them?

That depends on the thing. I would value a slice of pizza right now because it’s lunchtime. I value the red-headed five-year-old running around my room with his star wars fighter in his hand because I simply can’t imagine not. These things have objective attributes in themselves (such as the caloric content of the pizza slice). But in the absence of a mind, those attributes don’t result in value. And in the presence of a different mind, those same attributes will have different value (i.e. the vegetarian doesn’t value pizza slice because of all the sausage).

This makes it seem like I could make anything valuable just by choosing to value it. But that isn’t right.

Actually, it kind of is. On my shelf is a signed first edition hardcover of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Twenty years ago I paid $180 for it. Right now it lists on abebooks at around $400. I choose to value it more highly, as evidenced by my choosing to not sell it even at more than twice what I paid for it. The reason is that I value it still more (as one of the greatest works of science fiction EVAR), even when it was only valued by a seller at $180. Perhaps this book means nothing to you. It certainly means nothing to a Kalahari bushman, beyond its value as fire kindling (which, I suppose under the right circumstances might make it more valuable to him… but the analogy doth stretch too much…). The difference in valuations is entirely contingent upon the mind doing the valuing.

Now, there’s something to be said for memesis (a la Rene Girard), in which part of the value of something to us is precisely because it is valued by someone else. This is why a child may suddenly take an intense interest in a toy previously ignored simply because another child began to take interest in it. But again, this can be accounted for by evolutionary anthropology. And it still requires a mind to do the valuing. No mind, no value. No objective mind, no objective value.

May 29, 2014 at 8:28 am

jbthibodeau

Because I actually experience my interests, and do not experience yours. Look, “selfishness” is the natural, evolutionary default.

That you do not experience my interests obviously does not show that they do not exist. Further, it is not a reason to discount them (to allow yours to trump mine). If your interests are legitimate, which is something that you know to be true given your first-person access to them, then mine must be as well. After all, my interests are just as much interests as your interests (they are just as much the interests of a sentient agent). And you have no reason to think that it is not as obvious to me that my interests are legitimate. That is, if you reason this through, you cannot escape the conclusion that my interests are just as significant as yours. That you don’t feel mine is no more reason to discount them than is the fact that your don’t see neutrons a reason to think that they are not real or significant.

Your appeal to evolutionary psychology to justify selfishness is illegitimate; at least it cannot be the whole argument. Evolutionary psychology is a descriptive science. It can tell us on what basis people act; it cannot tell us how people morally ought to act. That people evolved to act on self-directed motives does not and cannot show that acting on self-directed motives is morally right. My question (why do your interests trump mine?) is a moral question and thus requires something more than an appeal to merely descriptive science.

This makes it seem like I could make anything valuable just by choosing to value it. But that isn’t right.

Actually, it kind of is. On my shelf is a signed first edition hardcover of Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

You example proves my point. In what does the value of the novel consist? You value Hyperion because it is a good novel. It is not that you just decided to like it and that made the novel good, right? That is to say, you recognize quality in the novel and that is why you value it. You value the value that is in the novel.

Further, that you would spend $180 on a signed first edition shows that you are responding to the value that the item (the book, not the novel) has independently of your desires and interests. In this case the value consists in the fact that the object is a collector’s item and that there are many people out there willing to spend a good deal of money on it. So the signed first edition has that value independently of your interests. Now, as you say $400 is not enough to get you to sell it. But that is because the book has sentimental value that is independent of its monetary value (both of which are separate from the value it has in virtue of being a copy of a good novel). So, the sentimental value may be subjective, but neither the monetary value nor the literary value are.

The point is that your interest and desires cannot change something that has zero value (or negative value) and change it into something that has great value. You cannot make a pile of dogshit valuable just by wanting it. Indeed, it is psychologically impossible to want something that has such negative value (and if, for some reason someone does value it, this must be because there is something in the dogshit that is valuable).

Your discussion about why you started a relationship with your wife also proved my point. You wanted to pursue a relationship because she was available and attractive. But these are things that have value independent of you and your desires were responding to them rather than the other way around. That is, your desires responded to the importance of this person; your desires did not make it the case that she had value.

We get confused because we recognize that not everyone will want the same things that we do. Many people don’t want my wife or your wife as their own wife, many people don’t want the signed first edition of Simmons, many people don’t want my job or my house. But what we forget is that the people who don’t want these things don’t want them not because they are not valuable but because their desires for the kind of value inherent in these things are either fulfilled by other things that have similar value or because the people have stronger desires for other things.

Your comment about the red-headed five your old is quite apt. Parents are in a unique position to recognize the value of their own children. That requires that we ignore or overlook the problems and frustrations that children involve. But for a parent that is easy to do; it is just unimaginable to us that we could not love our children. But again, we are responding to the value inherent in them that other people are not in a position to see because other people see the dirty diapers and the frustrations and the money and the back-talk and the teenage years. Parents look past these things. But can any parent actually consistently suppose that their child doesn’t have intrinsic value?

May 29, 2014 at 2:58 pm

RonH

That is, if you reason this through, you cannot escape the conclusion that my interests are just as significant as yours.

Anytime you’d like to lay that reasoning out, I’m game to consider it. I readily agree that your interests exist, and that they are legitimate (for you, at the very least). However, as with your proposition that “I matter”, your statement here is grammatically incomplete. Your interests are just as significant to whom? Significance is just another word for value in this case. Your statement begs the overall question. An “interest” doesn’t have objective significance (at least, you haven’t demonstrated that), because “significance” is a subjective judgment. You’re free to believe that my interests are every bit as significant to you as your own interests are, and that is most certainly advantageous to me. However, that’s your subjective opinion. Just because you feel that way doesn’t mean it is an objective truth — i.e. that it is necessarily true that your interests are therefore as significant to me as my own are. Nor does it follow that they ought to be.

I was not appealing to evolution to justify selfishness. I was pointing out that evolution selects for selfishness, and thus we are inherently selfish by default. You are correct that it cannot tell us how people morally ought to act. You are correct that moral behavior requires something more than an appeal to science. So: to what are you appealing? On what basis that we both find authoritative (a requirement for objectivity, no?) can you ground your proposition that you ought to matter to me? So far, what I’m hearing is that you ought to matter to me because you think you ought to. But if I feel you don’t matter to me, I don’t care what you think. Your opinion is an insufficient basis. I’ll grant that because I matter to me, you probably matter to you. It doesn’t follow that you matter to me also. At least, I haven’t seen where you demonstrate that it follows.

That you don’t feel mine is no more reason to discount them than is the fact that your don’t see neutrons a reason to think that they are not real or significant.

This is a significant category error. A neutron is a physical thing, knowledge of which is equally accessible to all parties observing it. Your interests are necessarily something that I cannot possibly have as much knowledge or experience of as you have. And while I don’t doubt that you have interests, I can never be sure of what they really are. I only have second-hand information about them. Perhaps you are lying. Perhaps you don’t understand your own interests yourself (i.e. you’re five). Perhaps we’re simply not communicating on the same wavelength. You’re married, right? I rest my case. 😉

You value Hyperion because it is a good novel… That is to say, you recognize quality in the novel and that is why you value it.

Again, you’re claiming to make an objective statement by just shoving the subjectivity deeper into it. “Good” is a subjective judgment, and thus my valuing something which is good is necessarily subjective as well. “Recognizing quality” is also entirely a subjective act. The book has physical properties to be sure, and these are discernible to anyone: the words on the page, the printer conventions that indicate that the volume is a first edition, the ballpoint ink on the title page in the shape of the author’s name. But the objective properties do not result in objective value, otherwise I could claim that the book has an objective value and you ought to value it also on that basis. I suspect you would find my claim that you ought to value Hyperion to be uncompelling.

Now, it is true that there is a market in which various subjective valuations of the book can result in a “price”. But a few things to note here:
1) There isn’t really a Platonic “price” for a Platonic “book”. There are specific selling prices for specific volumes, and while these prices cluster in a general area, ultimately the only price that matters is the one that a particular buyer is willing to give a particular seller for a particular physical volume.
2) The price is only “objective” in the sense that it is an intersubjective aggregate agreement between buyers and sellers. It is effectively a poll of the subjective valuations of participants in the market. But there is no reason one ought to participate in the market, nor is there a reason one ought to respect the price.
3) The “objective” price changes constantly… which means it is relative, and thus not objective. I could, for example, significantly increase the value of my volume were I to arrange for Dan Simmons to die tragically of a “heart attack”, thereby creating permanent scarcity of signed volumes. Note that the death of Dan Simmons does nothing to the actual volumes. And, in fact, nothing would happen to the price of the volumes until other minds became aware that Simmons had died. Once again supporting the notion that value originates in the mind of the valuer, not the thing valued.
4) A market for volumes of Hyperion only exists because there are many instances of “volume of Hyperion“. This is not in any way analogous to the value of a person, since a person is unique. It is impossible to establish a market price for a particular person.

You wanted to pursue a relationship because she was available and attractive. But these are things that have value independent of you and your desires were responding to them rather than the other way around.

Wrong again. “Available” was in fact an attribute independent of me. But “attractive” is once more a subjective valuation on my part. I’m sure not all men would agree with me that my wife is attractive. In fact, there were other men in our circle of acquaintances at the time who were not the least bit interested in her.

Clearly, objects have objective properties that affect how they are valued by minds. But valuation itself is an activity of a mind. No mind, no value. Different minds, different values. All observers of the mass of an object perceive the same mass, so we say it is an objective property. Observers of the value of an object perceive different values. Given this, claiming that objective value — value that exists independent of any mind — is nonsensical.

May 29, 2014 at 3:14 pm

RonH

BTW, this comment: That is to say, you recognize quality in the novel and that is why you value it. reminded me of Robert Pirsig’s “metaphysics of quality”. Perhaps that’s what you’re driving at? However, if it is, then the whole “subjective/objective” question is inappropriate in the first place.

The Basis of Morality, Part 2: Obligation

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