Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Might All Normativity be Queer?

2009; Routledge; Volume: 88; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00048400802636445

1471-6828

Matthew S. Bedke,

Free Will and Agency

Abstract Here I discuss the conceptual structure and core semantic commitments of reason-involving thought and discourse needed to underwrite the claim that ethical normativity is not uniquely queer. This deflates a primary source of ethical scepticism and it vindicates so-called partner in crime arguments. When it comes to queerness objections, all reason-implicating normative claims—including those concerning Humean reasons to pursue one's ends, and epistemic reasons to form true beliefs—stand or fall together. Notes 1Basic reasons just are reasons not derived from yet further reasons. To illustrate, one basic moral reason might be a reason to help those in need, underived from reasons to pursue my beneficent ends. 2David Schmidtz offers a particularly clear-eyed statement of the view: 'Our goals give us reasons for action. I say this without presuming that the goals themselves are reasonable … . Nevertheless, once we have an end, simply having it gives us reasons for action'[1996: 8]. 3In this piece I refer to the views expressed in Foot's [1972] paper 'Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives'. I do not take issue with her more recent positions. 4By way of recent example, Sinnott-Armstrong [2006] is a Pyrrhonian moral sceptic. He thinks moral propositions cannot be adequately justified against contrast classes that include sceptical views like moral nihilism, so he relies on non-sceptical epistemological grounds to run his moral scepticism. 5It is important to note that this is a meta-normative point. I take no stand on which theory of reasons is correct. In the practical realm we have many options. Under instrumentalism, one only has basic reasons to advance one's ends, and instrumental reasons to take the means to one's ends. See Harman [1975: 9], Mackie [1977: 33] and Dreier [1997]. A variant on this view, given by Schroeder [2007] is that reasons are propositions that help to explain why one's actions promote the objects of one's desires. According to internalism, one's reasons must be suitably anchored to one's idealized subjective motivational set, where one's subjective motivational set is broadly construed to include all desire-type states, and idealization requires that the desires survive full information and sound (roughly Humean) reasoning. See Williams [1981, 1995a, 1995b], Smith [1994, 2004] and Pettit and Smith [2006]. Railton [1986] advocates a view similar to reason internalism with the important addition that one's interests can be reason-providing. Externalism we can define negatively as the denial of internalism. See Scanlon [1998], Parfit [1997], Dancy [2004], Raz [2005] and Bedke [2008]. I also take no stand on which theory of epistemic reasons is correct, where the options are similarly diverse. 6As Mackie noted [1977: 28], one can construct categorical imperatives that are conditional in their logical form. For example, 'If you are in the position to render aid to someone in need with little inconvenience to yourself, then you ought to do so' expresses a categorical imperative that applies under certain conditions identified in the antecedent. The key to distinguishing categorical imperatives from hypothetical ones is not their conditional form, but whether the imperatives apply to agents only in so far as they engage agents' contingent ends. Sometimes one and the same condition can give rise to both hypothetical and categorical imperatives. Contrast the statements 'If you want to dominate others, you should become a prison guard', and 'If you want to dominate others, you should not become a prison guard'. The first statement asserts a hypothetical imperative because one's ends ground the ought claim. The second statement asserts a categorical imperative, where the likelihood of unjust domination grounds this ought claim. Your preference for domination provides evidence that the inmates will suffer unjustly at your hand, and you ought not to do such things, so that is why you ought not to become a prison guard. 7Exactly how reasons compete and combine with one another is a complex matter. Unfortunately, this is not the place to further articulate the structure of the space of reasons, including the differential roles of prima facie reasons, pro tanto reasons, sufficient reasons, conclusive reasons, agent relative reasons, agent neutral reasons, action reasons, outcome reasons, etc. The metaphysical issues will not turn on these subtleties. 8It might be argued that some oughts, requirements or obligations are not built out of reasons, but out of values, such as what outcomes or states of affairs are better than others, and which of these is the best possible. Perhaps so, but an ought of what is best would be no less queer than an ought of what is most favoured by reasons. First, a buck-passing account that reduces values to reasons, discussed below, is extremely attractive, and if it is right there is no sharp distinction between the ought of reasons and the ought of values. Second, even if values cannot be reduced to reasons, at the very least values entail reasons. It makes no sense to say that X is normatively better than Y unless someone has reason to regard X differently from Y, e.g., more reason, or a different kind of reason, to promote X as compared to Y. So even value-based oughts entail reasons that are non-end-given, in our sense, and it is the normative bindingness of non-end-given reasons that really puzzles moral sceptics. Irreducible in-the-world values might generate additional sceptical concerns (see §V(A)), but all normative moral theories at a minimum have to handle the queerness in reasons. 9Foot [1972] distinguishes two ways in which a norm can be categorical. One option is for the norm's content to be categorical, as when the imperative gives instructions that are insensitive to one's contingent ends. Another sense of categoricality applies when that categorical content is normatively binding. I prefer to reserve the term 'categorical' for the first use, and simply call all binding force 'normative force'. 10To show that there is such a requirement we would have to show that those moralists who claim that one has reason, say, not to harm others regardless of whether it serves one's motivational set, are conceptually confused. That is a tall order. Moralists do not appear to be conceptually confused; they know perfectly well what a reason would be, they just disagree that reasons only flow from motivations. Ergo, the motivational requirement is not conceptually grounded. 11Derek Parfit claims that the following fact is normative: that jumping is my only way to save my life gives me a reason to jump [1997: 124, emphasis added]. David McNaughton and Piers Rawling claim that the following is a normative fact: that A would enjoy fell-walking gives A a reason to fell-walk [2003: 31, emphasis added]. From these discussions it is not clear what the 'giving of reasons' amounts to, or why it is irreducible. On my analysis, reasons are explicitly relational. While I am not necessarily committed to their being three-placed, as represented above, I am committed to their relational nature. 12This dispute over what Andy should do makes a point similar to the one Hampton makes with her curmudgeon character [1998: 142–51]. Hampton's curmudgeon only acts on his strongest occurrent motive. Hampton argues that Humean instrumentalists must either appeal to objectively authoritative reasons to criticize the curmudgeon or stick to a purely descriptive and predictive theory of human behaviour. I agree. 13Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this kind of example to me. 14Here I indicate my line of response to reductive theories of reasons. For more on this see Bedke [unpublished ms]. 15Conversely, if all we get are objective value properties with no reason to bring about that which is good, or avoid that which is bad, ethics becomes a hollow shell of what it purported to be, and it is open to sceptical concerns that might not plague other disciplines. 16There is another view according to which the value properties supervene on the natural properties, but the favouring still flows from the naturalized considerations, not the non-natural value considerations [Stratton-Lake and Hooker 2006]. This would also introduce value properties as a second class of potentially queer properties, so the buck-passing view is to be preferred. 17Richard Joyce is admirably clear on this point. He says, 'What seems troubling is not somebody's being unmotivated to pursue what is good, but being unmotivated to pursue what she judges to be good'[2001: 30]. 18Nagel says 'Internalism is the view that the presence of a motivation for acting morally is guaranteed by the truth of ethical propositions themselves'[1970: 7]. Brink says that internalism is the thesis that 'the recognition of moral facts itself either necessarily motivates or necessarily provides reasons for action'[1984: 113]. And Korsgaard says, 'Internalists believe that when a person has a duty, say, or knows that she has, she ipso facto has a motive for doing that duty'[1996: 81]. 19There might be other things that have to be in the background for this reason-providing relation to hold in particular cases, but they would not be a proper part of the favouring relation. In Dancy's terminology, they would be enablers [2004: 38–43]. 20There is a brand of practical reasons we might call perspectival reasons [Shafer-Landau Citation2003: 207–8], according to which what counts as a reason for you essentially depends on your perspective. On this line of thought, it is not necessarily true that individuals have reasons to take the means to their ends. What matters is what your normative-evaluative outlook counts as a reason, so you might even take the frustration of your desires as a reason to choose particular actions. This view does not escape the favouring relation characteristic of all reasons, it merely makes the favouring relation a bit elusive by constructing it out of the attitudes of particular agents. Because it is this favouring relation that is objectively binding, even this view will not evade a queerness objection. 21Juan Comesaña has focused on the support relation itself, understood as a reason relation. He argues that epistemic support relations provide problems for epistemic internalism, and suggests a move to externalism [2005: 60]. As far as I can see, the internal–external debate in epistemology would concern one of the relata of the support relation, viz., Fs, the things that support beliefs. The nature of the support relation, which is our concern, seems to be orthogonal to the internalism–externalism debate. 22Many thanks to Dave Schmidtz, Mark Timmons, Lee Shepski and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on this paper.