I’m late in the game noting how awesome wordle is. If you are reading this on the main page (as opposed to on some type of reader), you’ll notice that the header is a wordle image. This is the wordle image for this blog. I also created one for a few papers. Below is from my long (8,000 word+) ‘Correctly Responding to Reasons and Internalism about Rationality.’

Update: this is quite the distraction. I’ve created some images from some books I have in pdf. First, Parfit’s On What Matters:

Next, Mark Schroeder’s Slaves of the Passions:

Finally, Schroeder’s Being For:

It is often said that ‘ought’ is ambiguous in the following kind of way. When one utters ‘A ought to ,’ one might mean that A morally ought to , or that A prudentially ought to , or A ‘chessly’ ought to etc. Judy Thomson has a quick and persuasive argument that this cannot be right (she gives it in ‘Normativity’ in this book; see also this taped talk of that paper). Imagine that Philip is playing chess with Michel. Michel utters ‘You ought to move your rook.’ Their sociopathic friend Pascal is watching their game, and he tells Philip that if he moves his rook he (Pascal) will torture and kill a small child. Michel, upon hearing this, utters ‘You ought not to move your rook.’ Philip is a little slow, and so he asks Michel what he really ought to do. If ‘ought’ was ambiguous in the way that it has often been claimed, Philip’s question wouldn’t make any sense. The most Michel could say is ‘Well, you chessly ought to move your rook, but morally you ought to not move your rook.’

The intuition that Thomson has is that this cannot be right. I share this intuition, and nearly everyone feels the need to try to account for the case. One popular way of trying to account for the case is by arguing for an all-things-considered ‘ought’. This ‘ought’, as the name suggests, takes into account all of the considerations bearing on whether someone should do some thing. What’s not clear is whether those who propose the all-things-considered ‘ought’ think that this is just another type of ‘ought,’ and thus when some says ‘A ought to ‘ one disambiguation is ‘A ought to all-things-considered ‘.

For reasons that won’t be gone into here, Thomson doesn’t buy this, and thus argues that the moral ‘ought’ is the only ‘ought’. Thus, in normal cases one ought to move his rook iff one is morally required to move her rook. I don’t think that this can be right either.

In fact, I think that there is only one kind of deontic ‘ought’. Moreover, it is analyzed in terms of reasons. Thus, A ought to iff there are decisive reasons for A to . Contextual factors can limit what reasons are relevant. So, when we are in a normal context of playing chess, the reasons that matter are the reasons that one has when one plays chess. When moral factors are contextually important, moral reasons are the reasons that matter. But, in many contexts (if not most), what we want to know is what we ought to do considering all of the reasons. And in these contexts, moral reasons are generally much weightier than chess reasons. But this is not to say that there is an ought and an ought and an ought and an ought. It’s the same concept across all the contexts, it’s just that context determines which reasons are important.

Although at points the terminology used in the contextualism/relativism literature has been very confusing, recent work by MacFarlane and Weatherson seems to be focusing the terminology a bit. MacFarlane’s paper ‘Non-Indexical Contextualism’ does a really nice job mapping logical space (here, pdf). I’m going to follow Weatherson because it’s going to be easier for my purposes (the details of this are here (pdf), but I’m quoting from here). Weatherson distinguishes between two different ways a view can neglect assessor-sensitivity. That is, they can either accept (T) or (U):

(U) The content of what is said by an utterance is the same relative to any assessor

(T) The truth value of something that is the content of an utterance is the same relative to any assessors

Obviously, there is a view that holds (U) but rejects (T) about some domain . On this view, the content of -propositions is the same relative to any assessor, but the extension of those propositions is relative to assessors. Weatherson labels this view non-indexical relativism.

MacFarlane and Mark Richard have defended non-indexical relativism (see here and here (both pdfs) for MacFarlane and here for Richard). MacFarlane has defended non-indexical relativism about epistemic modals (see the first paper linked in the first sentence above). Non-indexical relativism, he thinks, allows him to solve the problem of disagreement that plagues the indexical contextualist (which is a popular view on the matter). The indexical contextualist accepts both (T) and (U). The problem of disagreement can be seen by considering Ned and Fred (an example similar to this is given by Kratzer somewhere; I cannot remember where). Ned, let’s say, is 15 feet away from a street corner. Fred is 50 feet from the same street corner. A person is approaching the corner. Fred has poor eyesight, and thus cannot see the corner all that well. He utters (1)

(1) That might be Zed.

Since Ned is closer and has better eyesight, he knows that it isn’t Zed. So, he utters (2),

(2) That cannot be Zed.

The indexicalist holds that the content of (1) and (2) is a function of what Ned knows and what Fred knows (obviously I’m assuming some stuff about epistemic modals; hopefully mostly everyone follows what I’m skipping in the interests of time). But since Ned and Fred know differing amounts of information, the indexicalist has it that Ned and Fred aren’t disagreeing. That is, Ned isn’t denying a proposition that Fred is affirming. But, intuitively, he is, and thus they are disagreeing. Nevertheless, it seems as if both Ned and Fred are saying something true. The indexical contextualist gets this result only if she saddles herself with the problem with disagreement.

The non-indexical relativist, however, can solve this problem. Since she’s a non-indexicalist, she can say that Ned and Fred are disagreeing about the same proposition. However, since she is a relativist (i.e. since she denies (T)), she can hold that (1) is true from Fred’s point of assessment and (2) is true from Ned’s point of assessment.

So far, I’ve just sketched some background for what I’m worried about. Kai von Fintel and Thony Gillies have attacked relativism (see here, pdf). They focus on epistemic modals, and they explicitly say that MacFarlane’s view is one they are attacking. They offer up a proposal about the logical form of sentences like (1). So, they hold that the logical form of (1) is (3),

(3) might (B) ()

where is the prejacent (or the proposition being quantified over) and B restricts the quantification. They then give an interpretation of B for the contextualist (i.e. someone who accepts (U)). That interpretation is (4):

(4) [[B]]c ,i = {v : v is compatible with the c-relevant information at i}

where c is the context and i is an world-time index. From (4), we can formalize what it takes for a proposition like (1) to be true,

(5) [[might(B)()]]c ,i =1 if and only if ∃w ∈ [[B]]c ,i: [[]]c ,w,ti =1

So far, so good. They then try to give similar formalizations for the relativist. (6) is how they assign the denotation for B,

(6) [[B]]c ,i,a ={v : v is compatible with what ja knows at ta in wa}

where ja is some judge (or assessor) and ta is the time of assessment and wa is the world where the assessing takes place. They they give (7) as an analogue of (5)

(7) [[might(B)()]]c ,i,a =1 if and only if ∃w ∈ [[B]]c ,i,a : [[]]c ,w,ti ,a = 1

However, thisdoesn’t seem like the correct formalization for non-indexical relativism. Instead, this seems like a formalization of indexical relativism. That’s because (3) and (6) result in points of assessment getting into how content is fixed. Thus, it’s not at all clear that indexical relativism can solve the problem concerning disagreement. Thus, when von Fintel and Gillies attack views that accept (6), they are not attacking MacFarlane. This is a problem considering they think they are attacking MacFarlane.

An interesting question arises, however. How should we formalize non-indexical relativism? As far as I know, Andy Egan’s centered world approach is the only explicit attempt at fixing what the content is supposed to be (I think Tamina Stephenson’s view is like Egan’s, but I’m not entirely sure). Any help with how to do this is greatly appreciated.

By the way, aside from being interested in epistemic modals, I’m also interested in how this all relates to the semantics of ‘ought’. I want to defend non-indexical relativism about ‘ought.’ I’m writing a paper on this right now, and I initially used the von Fintel and Gillies formalizations. But after trying to convert their formalizations about ‘might’ and ‘must’ to ‘ought,’ I realized that they didn’t give correct formalizations for non-indexical relativism.

Update July 7th: Tamina’s view is equivalent to Egan’s. Also, as Nate has pointed out in the comments, Kai and Thony’s relativist is equivalent to Tamina and Egan’s. Finally, and also because of Nate, I should point out that Kai and Thony’s relativist proposal does preserve content across points of assessment. Unfortunately, I’m still puzzled about the dialectic. See my comment below.

According to a popular position we will call The Reasons Program, what it is to be normative is to be analyzable in terms of reasons. This is a popular position and ‘trendy’ position in ethics. Two theorists who are often cited as card-carrying members of The Reasons Program are Tim Scanlon and Derek Parfit. And although they do explicitly say that they believe The Reasons Program’s main tenet, I don’t see how they can do this without contradicting themselves.

The problem has to do with (1) what rationality consists in and (2) the normative status of rationality. Both Parfit and Scanlon think that rationality just has to do with coherence in a broad sense of coherence. In chapter four of Climbing the Mountain, Parfit holds that one is rational (in most cases–the exceptions won’t help him with my problem) just in case one correctly responds to one’s beliefs. More specifically, one is rational just in case she does things that she would have decisive reasons to do if her beliefs were true. The contents of one’s beliefs are what Parfit calls apparent reasons. Under the right conditions, one’s apparent reasons are real normative reasons. However, Parfit contends, in some cases one’s apparent reasons aren’t real reasons at all. Thus, he writes,

(1) Our desires and acts are rational when they causally depend
on beliefs whose truth would give us sufficient reasons to have
these desires, and to act in these ways.
(2) With a few exceptions, it is irrelevant whether these beliefs are
true, or rational.

Thus, rationality doesn’t have any tight connection with reasons. However, Parfit maintains that rationality is normative (I just did a quick scan of ch. 4 to find him explicitly mention this. He writes on p. 88 that ‘the rationality of our desires and acts normatively depends…’ (my emphasis)).

Scanlon holds a similar position (to simplify, I’m only going to talk about his view in What We Owe to Each Other; note, though, that his view is more sophisticated than this now. See ‘Structural Irrationality’ in this book). In What We Owe to Each Other, Scanlon defines irrationality in the ‘narrow sense.’ Thus, according to the view there, one is irrational just in case one believes that she has decisive reason to but doesn’t . Obviously, though, one can believe that one has decisive reason to even if one doesn’t have any reason to . Scanlon explicitly acknowledges this. He also explicitly says that the requirements of structural rationality are normative.

I think that there is an obvious contradiction between the following three claims, all of which Scanlon and Parfit seem committed to:

(1) The requirements of rationality are normative.

(2) The requirements of rationality are not analyzed in terms of actual reasons.

(3) In order for some concept C to be normative, C must be analyzed in terms of reasons.

So, what’s the deal? Parfit, I think, is in a better position to amend his view so he can deny (2). He can say that apparent reasons aren’t always objective normative reasons, but that they are always subjective normative reasons. This is, in effect, Mark Schroeder’s view (see here, pdf). However, I highly doubt he wants to say that what he calls apparent reasons are always normative. I am partial to this view; so, I think he should. But I doubt that he is sympathetic to it.

Scanlon, on the other hand, seems to flat out reject (3) in this paper. He there distinguishes between normative claims that are structural–i.e. about structural rationality– and substantive–i.e. claims made about reasons. I think that people should stop citing him as an adherent to The Reasons Program.

Of course, one could deny (1). Niko Kolodny, at least the Niko Kolodny of ‘Why Be Rational?,’ seems to want to deny (1). Although in more recent papers (see here) he has cited Schroeder’s view as a view compatible with the type of criticisms he is making against coherence views (I will be posting about that issue eventually).

I would like to vindicate (1) and (3). And so I deny (2). In fact, I deny (2) in two interesting senses. First, I deny that all requirements of rationality are coherence requirements. Thus, some requirements are requirements to respond to objective normative reasons. Second, I deny that coherence requirements aren’t analyzed in terms of reasons. They are analyzed in terms of subjective reasons.

I’ve written up a short note on the Dancy stuff I was talking about the other day. You can find it here. As always, comments are encouraged.

Update July 2nd: I’ve uploaded a new draft located in the same place. It’s not too much different. I just clarified the problem and fixed some typos.

I’m currently writing a paper arguing that access externalism supports E=K. Access Externalism is this:

access externalism: Necessarily, justification supervenes on what one is in a position to know.

In the first part of the paper I motivate Access Externalism (although I do that a lot more in other work. Also see this post). The aim of the second half of the paper is to show that Access Externalism naturally leads to E=K. I thought this was going to be very straightforward, but quickly found out that some assumptions were needed.

First and foremost, I need to show that Access Externalism endorses Doxastic:

doxastic: Necessarily, if A believes q and is justified in believing q because of the members of S, then A knows all of the members of S.

We need to make two assumptions in order to get from Access Externalism to Doxastic. The first is a benign assumption about the basing requirement:

belief: Necessarily, if A bases her belief in q on p, then A believes p.

Belief combined with Access Externalism means that in order for A’s belief in q to be justified by the members of S, A must (1) be in a position to know the members of S and (2) believe the members of S. But that still doesn’t get us all the way to Doxastic, because it’s possible for (1) and (2) to obtain without A knowing the members of S. This happens when A doesn’t believe the members of S responsibly. So, in order to get to Doxastic we need to assume Responsible as well.

responsible: Necessarily, if A believes q and is justified in believing q by the members of S, then A responsibly believes each member of S.

Access Externalism combined with Belief and Responsible entail that in order for A to be justified in believing q because of the members of S, A must (1) be in a position to know the members of S, (2) believe the members of S and (3) responsibly believe the members of S. In other words, they must know the members of S. In other words, Doxastic is true.

I think that both Belief and Responsible are independently plausible. Anyone see any problems with either of them?

Also, feedback here is still encouraged.

Yesterday I posted about Dancy’s argument against the view that normative reasons are constituted by propositions. The specific view he is arguing against there is the view that motivating reasons are constituted by psychological states and normative reasons are constituted by the content of those states. The first step in his strategy to argue against this view is to show that normative reasons cannot be propositions. From this he concludes that in order for this view to get the result that one can act for the right reason it has to hold that the contents of belief are not propositions. He writes,

It follows from this [that propositions cannot be normative reasons] that the content-based strategy will need to produce a new account of the contents of our beliefs–the things that we believe. This account, if it is to serve the purposes of the content-based approach, must offer as contents things capable of being good reasons. To do this, it must somehow understand contents as states of affairs, or as at least capable of being states of affairs. But this will require significant revisions in current views within the philosophy of mind… (117)

So, the strategy is to show that the content-based strategy is committed to revising widely held views in the philosophy of mind. This is supposed to be a bad thing about the view. And I think that it certainly is! Keep in mind that this is the only objection he raises against this particular view.

In chapter 6 he introduces his preferred view. The main thing that he tries to show in chapter 6 is that when explaining why someone did p, ‘that p‘ is (almost always) just as good or a better explanation than ‘that she believed that p.’ After showing this, he writes,

It seems, then, that the explanation of action, at least that of intentional action, can always be achieved by laying out the considerations in the light of which the agent saw the action as desirable, sensible, or required. If things were as the agent supposed, there is no bar against the agent’s reasons being among the reasons in favor of doing what he actually did.

The reason why this is true is because the things that moved the agent to act were the contents of her beliefs in the form of ‘that p‘ (hmm… I wonder what those are usually called). Since Dancy (assumes at this point) holds that those are the same types of things that normative reasons are, it follows that normative reasons can easily be motivating reasons.

The incredibly weird thing about the argument at this stage is that (1) Dancy is already solidly committed to saying that normative reasons are not propositions and (2) that it is a bad feature of a theory to have as a consequence the rejection of propositional views about the contents of belief. So, what gives?

Well, in chapter 6 is addresses the following questions:

What are these ‘things believed’ that are supposed to be what explain intentional actions? Are they propositions? Are they states of affairs? Are they facts?

He quickly states that they cannot be propositions because of his argument (or, more accurately, his report of intuition) in chapter 5. He then offers up another gem of an argument against why they aren’t propositions,

We we believe may be the case of fail to be the case; it may obtain or fail to obtain. Propositions are true or false; they cannot obtain or be the case (147).

So, since propositions cannot obtain and the things we believe obtain, propositions are not the content of beliefs. Here is an analogous argument for why states of affairs aren’t the contents of beliefs. States of affairs aren’t true or false. Beliefs can be true or false. Therefore, states of affairs aren’t the contents of beliefs. I think Dancy would reject that beliefs can be true or false. That means that we cannot have true beliefs! JTB is really fucked now! Plus, the issue is finally settled about whether truth is the norm of belief. No belief can be true, so truth cannot be the norm of belief.

What is incredibly, incredibly weird about all of this is that he doesn’t even hint that his view is committed to redoing a lot of philosophy of mind (and epistemology, for that matter) in the same way he charged the content-based strategy of being committed to.

Of course, if we just hold that both motivating and normative reasons are constituted by propositions, we can hold nearly the same view as Dancy and not have to redo a bunch of philosophy of mind and epistemology. Just a thought.

I’m currently writing a paper defending E=K:

e=k: Necessarily, all and only the propositions that A knows comprise A’s evidence.

Let S be the set of reasons (which are just propositions that count as evidence) that justify a belief in the proposition q. Clearly E=K is committed to Doxastic:

doxastic: Necessarily, if A believes q and is justified in believing q because of the members of S, then A knows all of the members of S.

Now I am wondering what view of propositional justification E=K should be committed to. A natural version is Propositional:

propositional: Necessarily, if a belief in q could be justified in A’s epistemic situation by some set S, then A knows all of the members of S.

For other reasons, I don’t really want Propositional to be true. Instead, I am more moved by Propositional*:

propositional*: Necessarily, if a belief in q could be justified in A’s epistemic situation by some set S, then A is in a position to know all of the members of S.

I cannot decide whether Propositional or Propositional* is a more attractive for the run of the mill E=K-er. I would prefer Propositional*, but would like to figure out whether it is attractive for any person who holds E=K.

Thoughts?

As I mentioned in my bleg post and an earlier post here, I like the view that all reasons are constituted by propositions. Dancy briefly considers whether normative reasons are constituted by propositions (the view he is attacking is the view that motivating reasons are constituted by psychological states and normative reasons are constituted by the propositions that are the content of the states). Dancy starts his argument by saying ‘my first and simplest point is that intuitively it seems to be not so much propositions as states of affairs that are our good reasons’ (114). He then says that perhaps this isn’t entirely convincing. So, he briefly elucidates some of the common views about what propositions are (functions from possible worlds to truth values, structured entities etc.) and then he asks if reasons could be these things. He then writes ‘It seems just obvious that they are not’ (115). Then he stomps his foot for a few sentences, and that is about all.

I don’t know how to respond to this argument. There isn’t much to it. He says right up front that it’s intuitive to him that propositions cannot be normative reasons. Fair enough. But then he says that this isn’t terribly convincing. So then he does some set up and then pronounces again that it’s not intuitive to him that reasons can be propositions!  The only thing that I can do is try to resist this intuition of his. I admit that at first the propositional view is a bit counterintuitive. But I think that Dancy’s states of affairs view is also counterintuitive. It’s a bit puzzling to me to think that the state of affairs in which my son is in trouble is the very thing that constitutes my reason to help him. On that view, I can literally see my reasons. In any case, I think that both views are intuitive in some ways and counterintuitive in others. I don’t think that relying on intuitions is enough (and again, Dancy seems to agree).

So we must appeal to theoretical concerns to weigh the merits of the options. One serious consideration in favor of the propositional view is that it can solve the problem that Dancy is claiming is unsolvable in chapter 5 of Practical Reality (to see how, see the post linked to above).  Moreover, I think that the propositional account can explain everything that Dancy’s own view can. If that’s true, then we should prefer the propositional account.

There is a certain view of motivating and normative reasons that Dancy takes great pains arguing against in chapter 5 of Practical Reality. This is the same view that Wiland argues against here (for my previous discussion of such things, see here). The view holds that motivating reasons are of a different ontological kind as normative reasons. Dancy and Wiland’s preferred version has it that motivating reasons are constituted by psychological states and normative reasons are constituted by states of affairs. My bleg is whether anyone knows anyone who actually holds this view?

Dancy doesn’t cite anyone, and Wiland cites Parfit (here) and Smith’s The Moral Problem. Parfit’s view is unclear in the 1997 article. In fact, Wiland admits in a footnote that Parfit seems to vacillate between two different views. I think that Parfit clearly doesn’t hold this view in Climbing the Mountain. Smith is a harder case. I suppose at the beginning of chapter 5 it is pretty clear that he holds a view like this. But by the end he is saying things like normative reasons are the objects of belief–meaning, I take it, that they are propositions. As it turns out, this is a considerably better view that can meet many, if not all, of Wiland and Dancy’s objections. Moreover, it is strange that neither Dancy nor Wiland mention that the problem that they are most concerned with is the problem that Smith tries to solve in chapter 5. Nonetheless, the point is that I don’t think that Smith clearly holds this view either.

So does anyone clearly hold this view or is it just a strawman?