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.

Libraries: A Case of Practical Incommensurability

In debates in ethics (among new and old natural law theorists for instance) one problem that comes up is the incommensurability of certain types of goods. What this means is that it doesn't seem that in general we can even weigh certain goods against others (for example, say, aesthetic experience and friendship). An apparent problem for utilitarians and consequentialists of various stripes, among others.

I'm not sure how much this has to do with that, but it struck me now as I'm working in my personal library of books how much incommensurability considerations affect me on a concrete, everyday level.

I was sitting here looking over a syllabus, and I realized I will have a week-long break or so in a couple weeks, and I'm going to probably pick a book or two to read over that break. Thinking about that, I realized that at a practical level, I have so many books to choose from that I probably will not read all of them straight through any time soon (if I'm honest with myself, maybe even ever). So it'll be a tough decision. I'm probably going to spend at least half an hour going through my long series of unread books and deciding which category of philosophy to even read from (if I can get myself to the point of deciding to read philosophy instead of something else). Then, supposing I've chosen a category (say, ethics), I'm going to have to decide which of several monographs within that category to choose.

One might think that when I'm choosing which book of ethics to read there must be something which marks one of the books off as more worth reading than the others. But I don't think so; I'm probably just going to have to pick one among equally reasonable options. Assuming the authors I'm considering are all equal on obviously measurable standards such as clarity in writing, intelligence, standards of rigor, etc., what other criteria of goodness would there be here? Quality of subject matter? How can I weigh that? If not that, what else? And even if I were to grant that I do a straightforward weighing along a single or several variables, this suggestion seems much less plausible when I'm making the higher-order choice of which philosophical area to read in (or the choice whether to read philosophy at all!).

You might then think that instead of saying my choice was among incommensurables I had multiple choices with an equal degree of goodness along all the variables of goodness, and my choice was arbitrary. In other words, the choices are commensurable, but they just happen to all be equal on the scale of goodness. But as I mentioned above, the subject matter of the books for instance does seem to play into my decision (at least in my case; I don't know about everyone else), and yet this doesn't seem like something I can literally weigh against the alternatives. Probably other incommensurable considerations play into my decision too.

(Note: Making a choice based on considerations and choosing one among alternatives doesn't by itself imply that the alternatives are commensurable. In fact, even if one choice is more rational than another, that doesn't imply the goods chosen are commensurable with those forgone qua goods. There might be some other considerations, for instance purely about what's constitutive of rationality, that bears on what is to be done.)

Maybe this is a case of incommensurability even within a particular category of basic good (viz. knowledge). I wonder how a utilitarian picture of everyday deliberation of this sort would go. And thinking about my own experience, I wonder whether a utilitarian could give a plausible model of such experience.

Okay, that's enough of that. Back to work.

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.

New Natural Law and Deriving an 'Ought' from an 'Is'

Many people have said that we cannot derive an 'ought' statement from an 'is' statement. In one sense this is trivially true, in another it is straightforwardly a mistake in logic. I'll discuss this in relation to new natural law theory and the grounding of morality in metaphysics.

First the sense in which it is true. Obviously if the premises of your argument contain no 'ought' statements then you can't logically derive an 'ought' from them. At best you can conclude from the premises that some ought statement is plausible. However, I think most people who want to say we can derive an ought from an is would all agree with this rather trivial observation.

Now some discussion of natural law: On new natural law theory we immediately perceive certain states of affairs as to be pursued, and from this we determine what we ought to do; the states of affairs to be pursued are instances of the 'basic goods', which are immediately recognizable aspects of human flourishing. Now, new natural law theorists say we cannot derive an ought from an is. However, they also say that new natural law theory does not carry any commitments one way or the other as to what, metaphysically speaking, human flourishing consists in or is grounded in. After all, everyone can know the natural law in their hearts, and you do not need to be a metaphysician to gain insight into what's right and wrong. But by the same token on new natural law theory, it should be consistent with the theory to say the human flourishing is grounded or consists in something like, say, the perfection of the human form. New natural law should not rule this out.

What follows from this? Well, if this type of theory is possible on new natural law, then supposing it is true, every aspect of human flourishing will at the very least coincide with some aspect of the perfection of the human form. The details of this perfection aren't that important, since the main point of this post is supposed to be logical. So just take some arbitrary aspect of human flourishing A and some arbitrary aspect of the perfection of the human form P. A and P coincide just means that if one exists then so does the other. Now we can launch an argument:

(1) If P and A coincide then P is an aspect of the perfection of the human form if and only if A is an aspect of human flourishing. [by def.]
(2) P and A coincide [prem]
It follows logically that
(3) P is an aspect of the perfection of the human form if and only if A is an aspect of human flourishing. [from 1 and 2]
From this we can infer by the rules of logic that
(4) If P is an aspect of the perfection of the human form, then A is an aspect of human flourishing. [from 3]
(5) P is an aspect of the perfection of the human form. [prem]
Again by the rules of logic:
(6) Therefore, A is an aspect of human flourishing. [from 4 and 5]
(7) If A is an aspect of human flourishing, then instances of A are states of affairs that ought to be pursued. [by NNL]
(8) Therefore, instances of A are states of affairs that ought to be pursued. [by 6 and 7]

(1) just follows from the definition of 'coincide'. (7) is just what new natural law says. Given the premises the rest follows by the incontestable rules of logic. Now, one might question premise (2) and (5). However, it is at least possible for them to be true given new natural law theory. And if they are true then this argument shows one can derive an ought from an is.

Basically, to say we can derive some statement Q from some set S of premises {P1, P2, ... , Pn} just means that there is a proof of Q from S. This is Logic 101 stuff. Given all the premises and definition in our argument we can derive an ought, namely (8). Our premises, (2) and (5) are paradigm 'is' statements. This is why it is false to say we cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is' statement.

Here's the upshot for natural law theory: If NNL is true, then it is possible for (2) and (5) to be true. If (2) and (5) are true there's a perfectly good sense in which we can derive an 'ought' statement from a set of 'is' statements. Hence, even if NNL is true, it is possible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is' in the precise logical sense of 'derive' above. The only other possibility is to either say aspects of human flourishing can't coincide with anything, which basically means NNL is inconsistent with certain metaphysical theories of flourishing (viz. all of them), or else we are using some other sense of 'derived' in saying an 'ought' can never be derived from an 'is'. As a person sympathetic to NNL myself I think we should go with the latter (or possibly drop the use of the phrase altogether).

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.

Aristotelian Relativism

On the Aristotelian account of ethics, what is "good" for an agent depends on that agent's essence/nature/form as well as that form's characteristic natural ends. For example, it is good for a dog to reproduce, eat and drink, and have fully working senses, the reason being that reproduction, internal equilibrium, and various types of perception are some of the natural ends (in Greek, 'teloi') of a dog. When it comes to us humans the general outline remains the same, though we will have some differences insofar as humans are essentially different from dogs, and hence characterized by different natural ends.

Now, it seems plausible to think that there are necessary ethical truths. For instance, it is always wrong for people to torture little children just for the sake of it. But could the above Aristotelian account contradict this? It seems that, given human evolution, the conditions whereby natural selection brought about the existence of humans might have brought about evil counterparts, call them "anti-humans." All of their natural ends would be inverse to ours. For instance, while it is good and fulfilling of our ends to protect others, for the anti-humans it might be good and fulfilling of their ends to commit murder. Similarly, it might be good for them to rape, torture children, commit genocide, etc. Hence, what is good or bad is simply relative to whether you are a human or anti-human. Call this idea "Aristotelian Relativism."

There are a couple of ways an Aristotelian could get out of this relativism. First off, there is the theistic route. Given God's existence and the idea that goodness is grounded in his nature, this would provide an objective basis for the good which holds across all possible worlds. This prevents the instantiation of any species whose ends include raping and murdering their young, or something of that sort, thus making the anti-human scenario strictly speaking impossible.

There are also a couple of ways for a non-theist Aristotelian to respond. The first is to bite the bullet and say that such things which appear horrendous to us (and indeed are horrendous for us) would not be horrendous for some other kind of thing. It's not a reply we might like, but that's exactly what we should expect given that it is contrary to our nature to do these sorts of actions. When we see rape, cannibalism, and slaughter in the lower animals, though we are likely to be disturbed, we nevertheless admit that it is natural to those animals to bring about and flourish from these types of suffering.

A second and maybe more satisfying way to respond is to say that such a scenario is not metaphysically possible for a species of rational animals. Remember, though they may disturb us, we already acknowledge that cannibalism, slaughter, and forced sex can be fulfilling for some lower animals, as there are examples of this found in the natural world. But with rational animals it is different. Aristotle understood the essence of man not to consist in our purely biological properties, but rather in our rationality; hence, "rational animals". It is from this that he derived the virtues and goods that we already acknowledge. But that means that for anything which can be classified as a rational animal, it will be wrong for it to do the things such as murder, rape, and torture. Hence, the idea of an "anti-human" turns out to be contradictory. If anti-humans are rational animals, and Aristotle's derivation of the natural ends of rational animals is correct, then it's metaphysically impossible for murder, rape, and torture to be good for such creatures. Anti-humans, then, are metaphysically impossible, and the things we understand to be good for persons are necessarily good after all.