Geach on Good and Evil: Some Counterexamples?

In Peter Geach’s paper “Good and Evil” Geach draws a distinction between attributive adjectives and predicative adjectives. An adjective A, as in the phrase “is an A B,” is predicative just in case the phrase can be broken down into “is a B” and “is A.” Otherwise A is attributive. For instance, “This is a sweet pastry” can be broken down into “This is a pastry” and “This is sweet.” So “sweet” is a predicative adjective. On the other hand “This is a small elephant” cannot be broken down into “This is an elephant” and “This is small,” so “small” is an attributive adjective.

Geach wants to argue for the thesis that “’good’ and ‘bad’ are always attributive, not predicative, adjectives.” I would like to bring up three intelligible, legitimate uses of the word “good” that are not obviously attributive, and suggest that they may provide counter-examples to Geach’s thesis. The first is what I will call “comparative goodness.” The second is what I will call “relative goodness.” The third is what I will call “global goodness.”

In the first case, consider the claim that it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Or consider the claim that God is the greatest conceivable being and its apparent implication that it is even better than being a dissatisfied Socrates to be God. Both of these claims seem, on the face of it, intelligible. They may be open to dispute, but if they are open to dispute then that presupposes they are intelligible.

Now, ‘better’ and ‘greater’ are not, by themselves, the same word as ‘good’. But these claims presuppose that there is some scale of being according to which a satisfied pig is somewhere below dissatisfied Socrates, dissatisfied Socrates is presumably below satisfied Socrates, and satisfied Socrates is somewhere below God. Now, if we suppose, just for argument’s sake, that the satisfied pig is at the very bottom of the spectrum, and that God is at the very top, it seems intelligible to say that being satisfied Socrates – this being somewhere in the middle – is good. This is what I have called the “comparative sense” of goodness. But in this sentence, “Being satisfied Socrates is good,” there is not even another adjective for “good” to modify. Hence, this appears to be a case where “good” is used in a predicative sense.

The second case, which I have called “relative goodness,” is the type of goodness we have when something is good for something else. It is what we express by saying “X is good for Y.” For example, “This spaghetti is good for me,” or “my dog Paco is good for me.” It is interesting to note that both of these sentences might be true even if this spaghetti is neither good food nor good spaghetti and even if Paco is not a good dog. This spaghetti might be terribly undercooked. It might be incredibly cheap. But the relief it gives me may be enough to make it good for me. And Paco may be a crooked, maimed, and disobedient beast – hardly a good dog – but the licking he gives me at the end of the day makes him good for me still.

So things that are good in this sense can’t be likened to cases where I eat spaghetti and say “Oh, this is good!” In that case the adjective that “good” is supposed to modify is implicit (e.g., “Oh, this is good [spaghetti]!”). Whereas here it is not clear at all what the implicitly modified adjective would be; nor would it be clear what the meaning of such a construction might be (what does it mean to say “This spaghetti is good [spaghetti] for me”?); and as we’ve just shown, it is false that, in general, the F that is good for me is a good F (the spaghetti that is good for me need not be good spaghetti). So it doesn’t seem that “good” modifies any adjective in this case; so relative goodness seems predicative.

The third case is what I call “global goodness.” This is the type of goodness we attribute to whole facts or propositions. For instance: “It is good that God created the universe,” or “It is bad that animals suffer needlessly in factory farms.” Of course, these constructions could be turned into subject-predicate form too (that-p is good), in which case it will be clear that global goodness is prima facie predicative. Note that these are not just roundabout ways of saying “It is morally bad;” for even if nobody were responsible for the suffering of beasts – say, if they were harmed by some natural disaster – it would still be bad that they suffered (an objective tragedy, if you will).

But in these cases, it is not clear what the implicit adjective would be that “good” is supposed to modify. Should we say that-p is a bad proposition? This doesn’t seem to make much sense. Or that it is a bad state of affairs? This doesn’t seem to make much sense either: It’s not clear what counts as a good state of affairs or a bad one. States of affairs just are what they are. (If a state of affairs consists of an object having a property, as some philosophers say, then is a good state of affairs one where the object really has the property? Or maybe it must have the property well?). Besides, even if one did not believe there were states of affairs at all (an open question in metaphysics), one could still affirm that it is bad that animals needlessly suffer. This isn’t the case with genuinely attributive uses of “good,” since one cannot consistently believe “he is a good robber” and at the same time believe there are no robbers. Hence, this cannot be an attributive use of goodness. So this sense of “goodness,” global goodness, seems to be predicative: We can say, in a seemingly intelligible manner, “It is good that-p” or “that-p is good,” good simpliciter.

Defending the New Natural Law's Incommensurability Thesis

New Natural Law (NNL) usually gets a bad rap from certain Thomists due to its embracing the "incommensurability thesis." I'll first explain the basic outline of NNL. I'll then explain the incommensurability thesis, and present an argument for it that I find quite convincing. Finally, I'll defend incommensurability from a common objection, and actually show how the objection favors incommensurability. Hopefully my defense will help illustrate the intuitiveness of the thesis.

First, a little explanation of NNL. NNL derives specific moral/practical norms by positing two things:

• (1) A set of basic goods--things that are intrinsically good/valuable/worthwhile for humans to pursue. So, they are always "worthy of pursuit." In other words, they are always "to-be-pursued." Also, the basic goods can make immediately intelligible one's action, and are thus reasons for action. This is very important: The basic goods are the fundamental reasons for action; the fundamental "building blocks" of practical rationality. Examples include knowledge, life, friendship, aesthetic experience, and excellence in play.
  
  Let's consider an example. For instance, suppose you ask me, "Why are you running?" and I say, "To help my heart get stronger," to which you reply, "Why do you want to make your heart stronger?" If my answer is, "For the sake of my health, that I might live and live to the full," then this is a "question-stopper;" you can immediately see why I might want to do this, and thus health is a reason for acting that makes my action immediately intelligible; it immediately "make sense." This is because acting for the sake of someone's health is intrinsically valuable and worth doing.
  
  This is the first part of NNL: There is a set of basic goods, as defined above.
• (2) A set of principles of practical reasonableness--these are principles or rules that tell us how it is reasonable to respond to instances of the basic goods. Examples include the golden rule, the prohibition against directly intending to harm a basic good for the sake of something else, rules against arbitrarily discriminating against the goods of certain people, the rule of being reasonably efficient in how one pursues one's plans, etc.

So, we start out with a list of things that are intrinsically good for us to pursue, and then there are rules that tell us how it is reasonable for us to go about pursuing them. The list of goods, in conjunction with the rules for practical reasonableness, ultimately tell us what actions are permissible as well as what actions are obligatory. They tell us what we may permissibly do, as well as what we ought to do. These rules are taken to be constitutive of practical reasonableness; they are supposed to follow from the very nature of practical rationality.

Much more needs to be said here obviously. Many books have been written. However, I don't need to get too much into the details of this for the sake of my post here. That's just the basic idea.

Now, one of the ideas about the basic goods that motivates some of the principles of practical reasonableness is the incommensurability thesis. Here is the thesis of incommensurability:

• (INC) For each basic good x, it is not the case that x offers all the goodness ("to-be-pursuedness") of some other basic good and more.

See, for instance, Christopher Tollefsen's helpful paper. NNL theorists use the incommensurability thesis to present what I think is one of the strongest arguments against consequentialism of any sort.

Now, the motivation for the incommensurability thesis, as I've stated it, is that it seems that each good is beneficial to humans in a way which none of the other goods is. It has a unique type of goodness. Health is good for us in a way that knowledge is not, which is good for us in a way that friendship is not, and so on. If on the other hand we supposed the contrary of incommensurability, then some basic good x would offer all the goodness and more of some other basic good, say y. But then it's hard to see how y could make one's action immediately intelligible (which is part of the definition of a basic good). After all, if someone says, "I did this action for the sake of y," then in some circumstances you can reasonably say, "Well, you should have acted for the sake of x instead, since it offers all the goodness and more of y. So why didn't you?" In which case y would not be a basic good, since acting for the sake of y should make one's action immediately intelligible, and in this case it doesn't. But that's a contradiction, since we assumed y is a basic good. So the incommensurability thesis is true.

Now, one objection is that it seems we should be able to prioritize the goods. Religion is more important than life, life is more important than knowledge, knowledge is more important than fun, and so on. This seems plausible to some. But, if NNL is right, none of these can be "weighed" against the others, since none of them offers all the goodness of any of the others and more. So, the objection goes, if incommensurability holds, then we can't prioritize the goods.

External Reasons: A Natural Law Response to Williams

In my last post I criticized Bernard Williams' rather Humean argument in "Internal and External Reasons" for arguing that external reasons can't explain action. As a follow up, I wanted to post my paper I wrote for the meta-ethics class I'm taking where I criticize further Williams' argument against externalism, and at the same time build up a natural law account of reasons and practical rationality in opposition to Williams. Here it is!

                      In “Internal and External Reasons,” Bernard Williams presents an argument for thinking that external reasons do not exist, and thus all external reasons statements are false.[1] In this paper I will do three things. First, I will explain what Williams understands internal reasons and external reasons to be. I will then explain Williams’ argument against external reasons. Finally, I will attempt to give some defense of external reasons by critiquing Williams’ argument.

                      The general form of a reasons statement is “A has reason to do F in circumstances C.” Williams aims to show that statements of this form are only ever true on an internal interpretation. While Williams does not seem to give a definition of internal reasons statements, he does lay out what seems to be a necessary condition on internal reasons statements. He says that any internal interpretation of a reasons statement must “display a relativity of the reason statement to the agent’s subjective motivational set,” which we shall call “S.”[2] Roughly then, internal reasons for an agent are dependent on what is in the agent’s subjective motivational set.[3]

                      Williams also lays down as a necessary condition on internal reasons that they can be discovered by deliberative/practical reasoning.[4] While Williams does not explicitly define what deliberative or practical reasoning is, he specifies his conception of deliberative/practical reasoning via example. In particular, he says that practical reasoning includes means/end reasoning about the most preferable way of satisfying a desire, temporal ordering of when to satisfy which desires, determining which desires one is most interested in satisfying, and determining what would constitute satisfaction of one’s desires. So, this condition amounts to saying if A has an internal reason to F, A must be able to motivate herself to F by a process of reasoning of this sort (from S).[5]

                      It is clear then that Williams is working with an idea of internal reasons that ties them closely to an agent’s current subjective motivational set. It is also clear that he is working with a “thin” notion of practical rationality. Since Williams doesn’t explicitly define what he takes rational deliberation to be, it is difficult to precisely state what this “thin-ness” amounts to. However, roughly speaking, Williams’ account of rationality is “thin” insofar as, on his view, a decision will count as rational to the extent that it could be concluded to by a process of deliberation starting from one’s desires and satisfying certain (relatively weak) formal constraints.

Bernard Williams on Internal Reasons (Contra Natural Law)

Here is a short precis I wrote for my meta-ethics class about Bernard Williams' argument for internalism about reasons. Internalism about reasons is, roughly, the Humean-ish idea that an agent has a reason to act a certain way only if it is somehow grounded in the desires of the agent. This is directly contrary to the natural law view, according to which what is reasonable to do or not to do is independent of the desires of the agent, and thus reasons are independent of an agent's desires:

In “Internal and External Reasons,” Bernard Williams presents an argument for thinking there is a problem with external reasons statements.[1]

1.    If something R can be a reason for action, then R can be a reason for someone A’s acting on a particular occasion O. [Premise]

2.    If R can be a reason for A’s acting on a particular occasion O, then R can figure in an explanation of A’s acting in O. [Premise]

3.    So, if R can be a reason for action, then R can figure in an explanation of A’s acting in O. [1,2 HS]

4.    If R can figure in an explanation of A’s acting in O, then R cannot be an external reason. [Premise]

5.    So, if R can be reason for action, then R cannot be an external reason. [3,4 HS]

6.    If R cannot be an external reason, then R is an internal reason. [Premise]

7.    So, if R can be a reason for action, then R is an internal reason. [5,6 HS][2]

Hence, the argument establishes that the only coherent notion of a reason for action is an internal reason for action, i.e., one which is relative to an agent’s subjective motivational set S. For now, let us grant premises 1 and 6. I’d like to think about premises 2 and 4 a bit. My point will be that, depending the sense of ‘explanation’ here, either one or the other premise will be implausible.

                      First, let us consider the interpretation of explanation where an explanation of an action is something that (directly) motivates someone to do that action. In this sense, maybe we should accept 4. For maybe it is only one’s desires, or at least something closely bound up with one’s desires, that could explain an action in the sense of being able to directly motivate it.[3]

                      However, in this case, I think that premise 2 is implausible; for I don’t think that a reason for acting in an occasion has to be able to motivate you. Rather, a reason for performing P in circumstance C is some state of affairs or consideration that could make performing P in C practically intelligible.[4] And something can do this without being able to motivate. Let me explain.

                      If you found me in a chair stabbing myself in the leg you would ask me why I’m doing what I’m doing. If I said to you, “I just desire to,” this wouldn’t really answer your question. There is still a clear sense in which what I’m doing is unintelligible, and wouldn’t make sense even if I obeyed some bizarre psychological laws which led me to “just desire” to stab myself in the leg. If however I said, “I am scared there is a tiny alien in my leg, and I need to get it out so it doesn’t kill me,” I will at least have described some state of affairs where, when my action is seen in light of this, my action does at least become intelligible (even if, in all likelihood, it is still utterly ridiculous and unreasonable). Such a state of affairs is a reason for acting a certain way.

                      But if this is a correct account of what reasons for action are, then 2 seems false. For it might be that a state of affairs S could make doing P intelligible, and thus counts as a reason for doing P, but my subjective motivational set makes me completely unable to even take S into consideration, and thus makes S unable to motivate me. This happens all the time. For instance, suppose I have no desire or motivation to quit smoking. However, the fact that smoking greatly increases my chances of dying certainly could make the action of quitting intelligible (i.e., if someone appealed to this fact when justifying their choosing to quit). So the fact that smoking greatly increases my chances of dying is a reason to quit. Yet, again, it might be that it couldn’t motivate me on any occasion.

                      All of this is to say that, on the interpretation of ‘explain’ where it is roughly equivalent to ‘motivate’, premise 2 seems implausible. On the other hand, if ‘explain’ means ‘make intelligible’, then premise 2 seems true, but premise 4 seems false, at least if reasons for action are, as I’ve explained, states of affairs which make acting certain ways practically intelligible.

---

[1] The “problem” is either that they are false, incoherent, or are misleading (and presumably should instead be rephrased as internal reasons statements). See the last paragraph of p. 297.

[2] This is my interpretation of Williams’ argument at the bottom left paragraph of p. 295. I may be misinterpreting Williams, but this seemed to me the best way to make his argument valid.

[3] I am assuming the sense of ‘can’ here means something along the lines of ‘is physically possible’.

[4] This account is largely adapted from G.E.M. Anscombe’s book ‘Intention’, sec. 37.

Quote: Foot Making Fun of Expressivists

In her book 'Natural Goodness' Philippa Foot criticizes (lightly mocks) expressivist accounts of moral evaluation because they seem to make evaluation of human action completely disconnected from our evaluation of other biological aspects of human well-being, as well as the evaluation of the goodness of other kinds of animals and plants.

"For it is obvious that no expressivist account will do in those other domains: we cannot think that the use of the word 'good' is to express a 'pro-attitude' in what we say about the roots of nettles or the fangs of ferocious beasts. Nowadays such evaluations are apt to be marginalized as if they were fanciful extensions of the 'proper' evaluations that express our attitudes, practical decisions, or desires. But when I was told by a certain philosopher who wanted to explain 'good' in terms of choices, that the good roots of trees were roots of the kind 'we should choose if we were trees', this finally confirmed my suspicion of the kind of moral philosophy that was his."

Consequentialist 'Bajillion People' Objections and the Divine

If you are a believer, this argument might appeal to you:

(1) It's absolutely wrong to blaspheme against God, as in swearing at God.  Even if a thousand/million/bajillion people were going to die if you didn't.
(2) So there are some moral absolutes.

If you don't think this works then think of some worse offense against God, maybe killing him, like they did to Our Lord. Then stipulate once more that a thousand/million/bajillion people will die if you don't.

When the divine comes in this seems to some extent to release us from the intuitive pull which consequentialist 'what if a bajillion people'-type objections have.

If you think the first example works, then acting contrary to other moral absolutes can be viewed as violations of God's law, and thus equally worse or bad offenses against God; after all, if saying certain words to God is absolutely wrong, then surely violating his commands about even more important things, like killing innocent humans, is also absolutely wrong.

Is Promise-Breaking Lying?

Eric brought this question up to me. I tend to think promise-breaking is lying. Here's the form a promise to someone takes: "I promise that I will do x." In effect, this is a guarantee that you will do x. And since 'I will do x' is equivalent to 'it is true I will do x', it follows 'I promise that I will do x' is equivalent to 'I promise that it is true I will do x'. To intentionally break a promise then is a form of lying; for you are guaranteeing something is true when you know it is not. In fact it may be an even worse form of lying, since you are not only saying intentionally what is false, but by promising it to the other person you are guaranteeing to someone that it is true. This is probably why people are even more disappointed when someone breaks a promise than when they tell a lie without a guarantee of its truth.

Of course, unintentionally, something may hinder you from fulfilling your promise. But then you are not morally culpable for failing to fulfill the promise. This is just a more specific case of telling someone something you believe to be true but, through no fault of your own, you don't know the details and it actually turns out to be false. When you promise something to someone you don't know that, while you are on your way to fulfill your promise, a large set of goons determined to stop people from fulfilling promises will pop up out of the corner. So it's not your fault for not being able to fulfill the promise.

These sorts of cases show that lying should be construed more subtly as intentionally telling a false-hood. And promise-breaking should be construed as intentionally failing to fulfill a promise. With this in mind it is plausible to think of promise-breaking as a more specific form of lying.

Is Copyright Infringement Okay?

I argue that it isn't.

Is Nihilism Self-Refuting?

Woo, been a while since a post. Okay. Consider the following argument, contra moral nihilism, i.e. the view that nothing is moral or immoral:

(1) If a belief is true, then we ought to believe it.
(2) Nihilism is a belief.
So, (3) If nihilism is true, then we ought to believe it.
(4) It is not the case that we ought to believe nihilism.
Therefore, (5) Nihilism is not true.

Is there something to 1 such that, if a nihilist were to deny it, he would be leading himself to irrationality? It would seem so. The denial of 1 is, after all, "It is not the case that if a belief is true, we ought to believe it." This seems to almost undercut the entire idea of rational argument. Denying 1 would also mean that it's not the case that, if nihilism were true, then we ought to believe it. Maybe they're fine with that, but I'm sure as heck not becoming a moral nihilist if I don't have any obligation to.

The nihilist seems to be committed to 4, since any "oughts" related to things like intellectual virtue or intellectual honesty are false on nihilism; these are, after all, ethical ideas (honesty is a virtue).

Maybe the nihilist could find some way of understanding "ought" which is entirely unrelated to ethics, making it possible to affirm that if a belief is true, then we ought to believe it, along with an obligation to believe nihilism. All of this without committing to the truth of any moral theses. This already seems implausible as such. Questions of epistemic justification, intellectual responsibility, and warrant are probably inseparable from ethics in some way. Nevertheless, suppose the nihilists pull it off. This leads to there being at least some normativity and responsibility, and the possibility of normativity and obligation in one sphere makes it harder to see why the nihilist would deny normativity and obligation in the sphere of ethics.

The situation looks grim for the nihilist then. They can (A) deny 1, implying that we're free to believe whatever we please (including the falsity of nihilism), as well as making the whole project of rational argumentation dubitable, or (B) deny 4 and accept that there is some normativity and obligation, putting them at odds with their claims about ethics. Or maybe they'll come to terms and accept all our premises. :-)

That's all a little sloppy I think, but I hope it makes sense. If not, please tell me.
P.S., birthday in two days! Would be a nice birthday present if I could figure out the soundness of this argument.