Twittering versus Blogging

I am very busy at the moment, so have little time to blog. However that does not stop me reading. So I have started tweeting in my faithlessgod twitter account the best, in my opinion, articles and blog posts I come across. Prior to this I was only using this account to tweet my blog posts. I have also added these tweets in a right hand column.on this blog. Happy reading!

Letter to Thomas Reid III: On Desirism

This is a response to Thomas Reid's third letter (well it was his third post on this topic, note he named it letter 2), that was in turn responding to my second letter.

There are three points that Reid is not yet getting in understanding desirism.

1. Desire fulfilment is not a utility that can be maximised, desirism rejects the concept of a maximisable utility. It accepts and ...ahem.. utilises Mackie's Argument from the Indeterminacy of Utility.
2. The evaluation focus is on desires not acts. Acts are understood in relation to desires. Desires are persistent, triggered over a variety of circumstances. To evaluate a desire one looks at the range of circumstances where it can occur, any specific act and distribution of desires being only one particular circumstance. The simplest and most effective means to do this is to look at desire qua desire with respect to its effect on other desires, regardless and independent of the particular distribution of desires in any specific situation.
3. One can usually evaluate desires qua desires without needing to know the content of the desires, all one needs to know what the effect its conditions of fulfilment will have on other desires (the agent's as well as everyone else's). This frees one from bias, prejudgement and subjectivity going in to the analysis in order to lead to a posteriori judgements of the desires under question.
   

Now addressing his three challenges.

1. The theory is internally contradictory; it is possible for a desire to be both good and bad
A)Reid complains that I think that his mutually thwarting desire scenario is always solved by trade but I have never said that!! I gave a trade example in my first response, explicitly noting thatv this did not always apply, and, when challenged on this, provided a non-trade sporting example in my second response. Reid has failed to acknowledge this and quite misrepresented my position as a result.

B)Reid complains that I did not respond to his burning house down example which did not make any sense when he mentioned it in his second letter. He has now, barely, expanded it to "I provided the example of two people burning each other's house down (ceteris paribus), acts which seem to very clearly carry a moral component." No example was actually provided all he said previously was "like burning each other's house down (ceteris paribus!)." in his second letter and nothing in his first. So now Reid is misrepresenting his own position as he has not actually provided an example of burning houses down as an instance of the desire interaction scenario Reid is using in this challenge

Not actually knowing what is his example is I note the following issues.

This does not seem relevant to the desire interaction scenario that Reid was using to criticise desirism in this challenge. It appears that Reid has performed a (typical) retreat to extremes to try keep this objection alive. There are two big problems with this.

By doing so Reid has introduced a specific desire that needs to be evaluated in its own right. Is the desire to burn a house down as a resolution to an (some unstated) issue, the desire that a good person would have? No. So if both Albert and Barry are both considering burning each other's house down they are both planning to act immorally. In that sense this is a question of morality but this is not due to the desire interaction scenario that Reid was using as a basis of this objection.

Second, in this extension of Reid's it is, of course, quite possible that both houses are burnt down which is a quite different desire scenario from the one originally presented where the outcomes were mutually exclusive. This is why it did not make sense and did not warrant a response in my previous letter.

So Reid has failed to make a sound and valid case for this first objection and I hope that Reid does not persist to misrepresent his and my position on this matter.

2. The theory cannot be used to condemn those who do not abide by the theory.

Reid claims that I 'cannot reason towards an obligation to do what desirism labels "good". Indeed, faithlessgod has not attempted to do this. Rather, he states that desirism employs social forces to create an obligation.' I have given ample reason to show how to rationally evaluate desires, clearly Reid knows this otherwise we would have nothing to debate. What he is trying to say is that such evaluations of good and bad do not obligate anyone. Of course they do not, since at this point such an analysis is purely descriptive. We need to turn to the prescriptive representation to see how people can respond to these evaluations as commendatory and condemnatory, as action-guiding. Desirism provides such analysis in the parts that Reid failed to quote from my previous letter.

Reid follows with " If the desirist claims that only social forces are what obligate us to do anything, then it must follow that we are obligated to develop those bad, ie thwarting, desires. " I do not make this claim and it does not follow. I describe how the social forces mould our desires and show what emprical grounds there can be to justify any moral claims, and showed this can be used as a critique of (and to identify) flawed institutions of morality.

In particular I have specifically addressed the objection here, as to how people who do not subscribe or are unaware of this theory can still behave according to it. A far as I can see, Reid has not made any argument against that point, so this objection remains unsubstantiated.

3. Given the inputs to decision-making, it is possible for DU to define any act as "good".

Here Reid persists in criticising a desire fulfilment act utilitarianism (DFAU) as if it is desirism, when it is not.

1. Good desires are those that overall tend to fulfill more than thwart all other desires.
2. The desire to exterminate the Jews overall tends to fulfill more than thwart all other desires.
3. The desire to exterminate the Jews is a good desire.

If this is a syllogism then 1 is the major premiss and 2 is the minor premiss and 3 is the conclusion. 2 is an unsound premiss and so the conclusion does not follow.

The desire to exterminate the Jews overall (dramatically so) tends to thwart more desire than it fulfils - noting my points 1,2 and 3 in the introduction. Only by smuggling in what is rejected by desirism (that is ignoring my aforementioned three points), through applying some sort of aggregative, additive or majoritarian principle, which can only work if there is some utility to aggregate and that there is some specific distribution of desires cover which such an aggregation be performed, can this conclusion (not a premiss now) be derived from 1. But this already noted is not desirism but DFAU. It makes no sense to present a criticism of DFAU, with which desirism agrees, as an argument against desirism.

Until and unless Reid addresses a desirist analysis of this scenario and produced a criticism of that, there is nothing further that needs to be said, suffice Reid's conclusion in this objection fails again.

Letter to Thomas Reid II: On Desirism

Thomas Reid wrote a critique of Desirism, to which I responded. Thomas Reid has now written a second post responding to my rebuttals. This seems to be evolving, informally, in the fashion of Luke's various letters, hence my title to this post.

Now I am happy to engage with anyone on the topic of desirism, with the two constraints of my available time (which is highly limited at the moment) and that they are willing to engage in honest and constructive debate. Desirism is the name I have given to what I regard is the best available theory of moral realism, discovered by Alonzo Fyfe. It is an empirical approach, so is provisional and defeasible, and I am always interested in criticism and challenges to this. This approach, like any other in any area, is open to review, revision, replacement or rejection and I am open to all these possibilities and will engage with anyone providing those respondents indicates the same over their positions. Now nothing was formally agreed between myself and Reid over this, so I cannot impose this rule on this series of letters, with the proviso that I am assuming, as noted above, a willingness "to engage in honest and constructive debate".

Reid's synopsis of Desirism

First, faithlessgod says he has "quibbles" with my understanding of the theory, but is satisfied to leave my synopsis as is.  I appreciate his review for any errors on my part.  Hearing no specific problems I'll assume I've got a workable understanding of DU and proceed from there.

The main quibble came up my response to Reid's first post and in the following comments. For clairifcation I will bring it back to the synopsis itself.

The key is to consider whether a malleable desire promotes the fulfilment of other desires, or thwarts them.  If it promotes their fulfilment, then it is "good" in the moral sense, and "bad" in the moral sense if it thwarts them.[my emphasis and typo corrections]

 As I said in the comments:

The descriptive view is a desire is labelled good to the extent that it tends to fulfil and not thwart other desires. The prescriptive view is a desire is labelled good to the extent the people generally have reason to promote and not inhibit that desire. Both are views of the same facts but with different emphasis, the descriptive focused on the desires, the prescriptive focused on the people.

So we could rewrite Reid's statement as:"The key is to consider whether a malleable desire tends to fulfil other desires, or tends thwarts them.  If it overall tends fulfil them , then it is "good" in the moral sense, and "bad" in the moral sense if it overall tends thwarts them."  Note that Reid uses "promote" as some sort of synonym for "tend to", when they are not, in the rest of his synopsis, which, given what I have said here and for brevity, does not warrant further attention.

Lets continue

All intentional action is motivated by desires and beliefs.  Presumably, by "intentional action", Fyfe means something like "all acts that are free", or "all acts that are worthy of moral evaluation".  Unconscious breathing surely is excluded from the scope of intentional acts.

A clarification, intentional action is voluntary action, that is the concept of  "free" that is used here.

So the typical conscientious Desire Utilitarian would evaluate act X based on whether or not someone with good desires would do act X.  Since good desires are those which promote the fulfilment of other desires, in practice we should be asking ourselves: "what kind of desires should I have?"  That is the root of morality for the Desire Utilitarian.

Now on re-reading Reid's synopsis,  this is a worse issue than my previous one over "promoting". Morality is a social institution which employs the social forces of commendation and condemnation, credit and blame. The question over the "root" of morality would be how to determine what is praiseworthy and blameworthy, that is what to commend, what to condemn and so on. Desirism gives the best empirically grounded referents for these concepts that I have seen to date.  What is praiseworthy is what any person with good desires - that is desires that overall tend to fulfil more than thwart all other desires - would have and act upon and what is blameworthy is what any person with good desires would not have and not act upon - desires that overall tend to thwart more than fulfil other desires. There are other points one could make one the above, but this better answers Reid's apparent intention in that paragraph to show what the desirist roots of morality are.

Now to respond to Reid's challenges in his latest post.

The theory is internally contradictory; it is possible for a desire to be both good and bad

Nothing in Reid's response makes it clear that he accepts that he is not talking about morality at all here. His model applies not only to trade, but any form of transaction. It also applies to sports and games. If A's "desire for X" is that A win against B, and B's "desire for Y" is that B win against A, then everything trivially follows.  There does not seem to be anything else to say on the matter except that Reid has failed to show a desire can be both good and bad morally - that is where people generally are concerned.

The theory cannot be used to condemn those who do not abide by the theory.

It has already been explained that human nature is the set of dispositions and capacities to believe, desire and act and, as Reid knowledges, that morality can only be focused on those that are malleable, that is sensitive to the environment these occur in, what else are the means to effect this "human nature" than is via the social forces as  a key part of this environment? There seems to be nothing else that needs to be done.

It appears that Reid misses such points that the social forces of commendation and condemnation, credit and blame are already employed and used to mould each others' desires, this is already is  the basis of moral and many other obligations. Reid also fails to recognise that most people, whether they are aware of this theory or not, do not consciously, most of the time, explicitly apply it, rather most have, as the result of coherently and consistently grounded applications of the social forces, the relevant good desires and lack the relevant bad desires.

Further desirism can serve as a critique of the various instantiations of this social institution, in terms of how coherently (praising what is praiseworthy, blaming what is blameworthy), consistently (praising those who deserve praise, blaming those who deserve blame) and ratio-empirically grounded (determining what is praiseworthy and what is blameworthy) those versions are. They work by evoking emotional responses that lead to modifications of our malleable desires. This is especially important since one cannot use reason to change desires, only beleifs.

Now the whole of Reid's arguments in this section seems to fail to understand most of the above and he raises points that are meant to look like objections but are almost invariably already explicitly  incorporated in the problem space that desirism addresses and proposes answers for. Further he invents "precepts" that make no sense and are anyway nothing to do with desirism.

All in all I am not sure how to better analyse Reid's issues, in the time I have available. If Reid can respond with clear criticism of desirism - by understanding the above points - we could the revisit his purported conclusion. Until then, his conclusion does not follow.

Given the inputs to decision-making, it is possible for DU to define any act as "good".

It can beg the question of those other desires, and a moral evaluation of them is to be expected.  But that evaluation is a red herring. The objection is grounded in the definition of a desire as either good or bad once those other desires change (maybe they no longer exist, or are altered).

Now Reid seems to be responding to another theory not desirism - where does this mysterious change come from? This is a straw man, nowhere is the the goodness of a desire described, within desirism, the way Reid has portrayed it here and so evaluating the moral value of other desires is not a red herring. The rest of Reid's response is addressing a form of act utilitarianism. So none of his conclusion follows or is relevant to desirism.

Quote of the Day: Tannsjo on Evolutionary Ethics

There is a debate going on at Alonzo Fyfe's blog on the evolutionary basis of morality. I came across this paper by Professor Torbjörn Tännsjö of Stockholm University (based on which he will be giving a talk next Monday at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar entitled ‘In Defence of Moral Realism.’ if you are interested and live nearby) Whilst there is much I disagree with in it (he is a hedonistic utilitarian) there is also much I do agree with. Here is one quote highly relevant to the debate at Alonzo's blog

In general, if we can find an evolutionary explanation of most our moral beliefs, this means that we should become agnostic with respect to their truth. This means less of a trouble than if Mackie is right in his insistence that normative notions are queer. If he is right, then all our moral beliefs are false. It is also less serious, than if expressivists of Stevenson's and Gibbard's variety would succeed in showing that all our moral expressions are used, not to express propositions with truth-values, but our emotions or something of the kind. If they were right, then our moral beliefs would lack cognitive content altogether. And yet, an evolutionary explanation would be a 'debunking' one indeed. It would show that we should be less confident in our moral beliefs. We would realise that we are not justified in holding them (even if they make sense and even if they may be true). Moreover, if we could find such an evolutionary explanation it should not only make us agnostic with respect to the truth of our deeply cherished opinions. We should also, as is stressed by Richard Joyce, become agnostic with respect to the moral notions (concepts) we employ.[page 8,my emphasis]

This captures possibly the most basic issue over evolutionary explanations of morality, that, if true, it does not explain it at all but rather explains it away.