Moral Odysseus Cases and McDowell's Theory of Virtue

Homer’s Odyssey relates the story of Odysseus and the sirens, three Naiads whose beautiful singing would draw sailors towards their island, causing the sailors to shipwreck on the surrounding rocks. Odysseus famously instructs his men to bind him to the mass of the ship so that he cannot go to the sirens when he hears their song. While Odysseus’s actions seem purely prudential, there seems to be moral cases that are analogous (in ways to be spelt out below) to the Odysseus scenario. For example, consider a recovering alcoholic, Mr. Smith, who is invited out for a drink by his co-workers, Mr. Jones. Mr. Smith has a justified belief that if he were to accept Mr. Jones’ invitation to have a drink, he would not be able to resist the temptation to have another drink and then another, and so on. In fact, past experience suggests that even entering the pub would be sufficient to start him down a self-destructive path of alcoholism. Aware of his lack of self-control, Mr. Smith sees that he should turn down his co-worker’s offer in order to avoid what he justifiably believes would be a potentially irresistible temptation.

I will refer to cases like Mr. Smith’s as Moral Odysseus Cases. Formulaically, Moral Odysseus Cases are ones in which an agent has the justified belief that a certain temptation is so irresistible that the only way he could avoid succumbing to it would be by imposing some environmental constraint (i.e., adopting measures to avoid the temptation altogether) on himself. (In this regard, I see Mr. Smith’s decision to turn down his co-workers invitation, as roughly analogous to Odysseus binding himself to the mass of his ship.)

Let us add the following addendum to the Mr. Smith example: Suppose that Mr. Jones recently earned a promotion and that Mr. Smith promised Mr. Jones that he would celebrate with him. However, at the time Mr. Smith made the promise, he believed that Mr. Jones would be celebrating at a restaurant rather than at a pub. Normally, Mr. Smith is the type of person who would honour his promises. However, now that he has learned that Mr. Jones will be celebrating at a pub, Mr. Smith sees that (given his alcoholism) the right thing to do would be to go against his earlier promise by not going to the pub.

As I have described the case, Mr. Smith seems confronted with two potential oughts:

{OUGHT1}: Go to the pub and thereby fulfil your promise!

{OUGHT2}: Do not go to the pub and risk falling prey to alcoholism!

As I have described the case, Mr. Smith sees {OUGHT2} as silencing {OUGHT1} along with any other competing reasons. Insofar as this describes an actual possibility (and I believe it does) this implies that Mr. Smith has an unclouded perception of {OUGHT2}. Moreover, by saying that Mr. Smith "sees" that he ought not go to the pub I mean to suggest that Mr. Smith is employing the very perceptual sensitivity McDowell attributes to the virtuous agent.

However, by McDowell’s lights, Mr. Smith would fail to constitute a virtuous agent. This is because Mr. Smith perceptual sensitivity is, ex hypothesi, unreliable. If Mr. Smith were to find himself in a pub, his alcoholism would so cloud his moral perception that he would be unable to resist the temptation to over-drink. But according to McDowell, the virtuous agent is one who manifests a reliable perceptual sensitivity. This means that the virtuous agent, if she were in Mr. Smith’s shoes, would not be burdened by alcoholism and would therefore have no reason to break her promise to Mr. Jones. Thus, the virtuous agent is likely to see {OUGHT1} rather than {OUGHT2} as silencing all other competing reasons. The upshot of this is that, with regards to Moral Odysseus Cases, the oughts that are applicable to a non-virtuous agent may differ from the oughts that apply to a virtuous agent.

The significance of the above conclusion should not be underestimated. Recall my previous objection that McDowell’s distinction between the virtuous and continent agent seems to implicate a multivocal account of moral aspirations. I argued that the objection failed on the grounds that it viewed the methodology employed by the non-virtuous agent as prescriptive when by McDowell’s lights it is actually descriptive. However, in the present case we are no longer dealing with differing methodologies but rather with differing oughts. Since oughts are, by definition, prescriptive, a reply that exploits a prescriptive/descriptive distinction is no longer available and the charge of multivocalism goes through.

The upshot of McDowell’s multivocalism is that the difference between the virtuous and non-virtuous agent is not limited to the fact that the latter suffers from a clouded moral perception. In Moral Odysseus Cases, virtuous and non-virtuous agents may actually perceive different moral facts (each relative to the different moral status of the perceiver). This suggests that McDowell’s attempt to differentiate between the virtuous and continent agent simply in terms of clouded perception is insufficient. Put differently, Moral Odysseus Cases show that there are instances in which the moral facts (i.e., what one ought to do) may themselves change depending on whether or not one is virtuous or non-virtuous.

On Transcendental Arguments

Following Kant, Stroud conceives of transcendental arguments as attempting to refute the sceptic about “the existence of things outside us.”(Stroud [1968], p. 242.) Stroud sees TAs as directed at global scepticism. The global sceptic simultaneously calls into question all our beliefs about the external world by pointing out that all the evidence we have available is compatible with the world being radically different from the way we take it to be. The global sceptic does not only question some particular empirical claim (i.e., that cup is larger than my hand) which we can verify as true or false by a simple observation. Rather, the global sceptic insists that the very methods (i.e., the empirical criteria) we use to verify our empirical claims are no good since they are compatible with there being no cup at all. The global sceptic’s argument may be summarised as follows:

(GS1): Any justification for one’s EW beliefs must be derived from the fulfilment of some empirical criteria.

(GS2): The very best empirical criteria one has available are compatible with the falsity of one’s EW beliefs.

(GS3): If one’s empirical criteria are compatible with the falsity of one’s external world beliefs, then empirical criteria is not adequate to justify one’s EW beliefs.

(GS4): Therefore, one’s EW beliefs are not justified

Carnap points out that traditionally, anti-sceptical arguments have tried to avoid (GS4) by rejecting (GS2). That is to say, they involve raising the standard of the empirical criteria under consideration (e.g., by demanding certainty etc.) so as to rule out the possibility of the standard being met simultaneous with the falsity of one’s EW beliefs. However, he notes that attempting to refute the global sceptic by this means is moribund since it involves trying to establish that one’s empirical criteria is adequate by appeal to evidence that has its status as evidence based on the very empirical criteria that is being called into question. This anti-sceptical strategy involves responding to a challenge from the “outside” from “within”, like arguing that the Bible is the word of God by citing biblical passages. While effective when directed at one who already believes, it is ineffective with the sceptic.

What is supposed to be distinctive about TAs is that they attempt to avoid (GS4), not by rejecting (GS2) but by rejecting (GS1). In this regard, TAs represent a departure from the type of approach Carnap impugns. For Kant, rejecting (GS1) involved the employment of synthetic apriori truths as an alternative to collecting direct empirical evidence. Put negatively, TAs are committed to denying that the only source of justification for our EW beliefs is experience. Put positively, TAs claim that the possibility of experience itself presuppose certain thoughts or concepts which could only be had if there is an external world. It is believed that by appealing to the necessary conditions of experience, rather than to experience itself, we may gain justification for some of our beliefs about the world.

TAs typically take some fact, M, about our mental life (typically one that the sceptic herself would accept), adds that some extra-mental fact, P, as a necessary precondition for the possibility of M, and concludes (on that basis) that the extra-mental fact holds. Thus, we arrive at the following general structure for an anti-sceptical TA:

(T1): M is possible
(T2): P is a necessary precondition for the possibility of M
(T3): Therefore, P

The locus classicus of the TA strategy is Kant’s argument in “The Refutation of Idealism” where he seeks to establish that “the mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.” (B275) Kant argues that one’s consciousness of oneself as determined in time depends on the application of the concept of alteration to one’s own mental states. But one could only acquire the concept of alteration from having objective alteration exhibited in one’s sensory experiences. Moreover, the objective alteration exhibited in one’s experience cannot be based on regularities in the experience itself since being able to recognise any such regularity requires organising one’s experience in time. Thus, the possibility of organising one’s experiences in time requires relating changes in those experiences to objective alteration. Since we do make judgements about the temporal order of own mental states, then we must have experience objective alteration.

We may reformulate Kant’s argument to fit the (T1)-(T3) format outlined above as follows:

(K1): Judgements about the temporal order of one’s own mental states are possible
(K2): Judgements about the temporal order of one’s own mental states are possible only if one has experienced independent, enduring substances undergoing alteration.
(K3): Therefore, independent enduring substances exist

Thus, Kant seeks to establish the truth of a fact about the EW, by an argument that relies on the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, rather than a direct appeal to experience itself. Moreover, Kant attempts to establish his conclusion by appeal to a starting premise (concerning our mental life) that the sceptic (i.e., the idealist) herself presupposes in formulating her objection. Thus, Kant insists that “the game that idealism plays has with greater justice been turned against it.”[B276]


Reference:

Stroud, B. [1968], “Transcendental Arguments”, The Journal of Philosophy 65, 9: 241-256.

Grice On Meaning

Grice’s paper, “Meaning”, represents a significant shift from approaches to the meaning of utterances that look to the meaning of the words used to one which looks, instead, to the content of the mental or psychological states of speakers. Grice begins by drawing a distinction between two senses of ‘mean’ as it occurs in sentences of the form:

(*) x means that p.

Where x ranges over objects which have meaning and p over declarative sentences. Grice illustrates the two senses of ‘mean’, which he calls “natural” (N) and non-natural (NN), with the following two examples:

(N): Those spots mean measles

(NN): Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full.

Grice maintains that sentences like (N) are factive, while sentences like (NN) are not. For example, Grice notes that it would be contradictory to say:

(N*): Those spots mean measles, but he hasn’t got measles

This is because in the case of natural meaning, sentences which have the form ‘x means that p’ entail ‘p’. It should be noted that strictly speaking the schema ‘x means that p’ entails ‘p’ does not apply to (N*) since the left conjunct does not contain an appropriate substitution instance for ‘that p’. Thus, (N*) should be rewritten as follows:

(N**): Those spots mean that he has measles, but he doesn’t have measles

The same holds true for (N). This minor incongruity in his example aside, I take Grice’s general point regarding the factivity of natural meaning to be well placed.

By contrast, the non-natural sense of ‘mean’ is non-factive, so that the schema ‘x means that p’ does not entail ‘p’. This is easily seen when one considers that from the fact that the conductor rings the bell three times it does not follow that the bus is full. At best, it only follows that the conductor thinks that the bus is full. Generalising from the examples given above, the difference between natural meaning (henceforth ‘meaningN’) and non-natural meaning (henceforth ‘meaningNN’) is this: it is not consistent with something’s having a meaningN that what it meansN is false; but it is consistent with something’s having a meaningNN that what it meansNN is false. (Grice discusses additional differences between the two cases, but I take this to be the main one).

Grice distinguishes between natural and non-natural meaning in order to avoid confusion. However, it is the latter that he is primarily concerned with since examples of meaning that involve language (Grice’s main focus) are typically cases of meaningNN. Grice attempts to show that ultimate source of an utterance’s meaningNN is the mental content of the speaker. He attempts to do this in two steps:

(Step 1) Occasion meaning: give a definition of single utterances couched entirely in terms of the speakers’ intention to produce certain effects in their audience.

(Step 2) Timeless meaning: give a definition of expression meaning couched entirely in terms of the definition of idiolect meaning given in (Step 1).

If Grice’s overall project is successful, then we could eliminate the semantic notion of timeless expression meaningNN in favour of the psychological notion, thereby showing that it is the mental states of speakers, rather than the meaningNN of expressions, that are the ultimate source of an utterance’s meaningNN. After consider two alternative definitions, which he rejects as insufficient, Grice settles on the following definition of idiolect meaningNN:

(IM): A specific utterance φ meansNN that p, if and only if, in performing it, the utterer intends:
(a) that an audience will come to believe that p, and
(b) that this audience will recognise intention (a), and
(c) that the recognition in (b) will cause belief in (a)

The timeless meaningNN of an expression, in turn, is defined as follows:

(TM): An expression θ meansNN that p within a certain linguistic community if and only if most utterances of θ by members of that community meanNN that p.

One difficulty with the above definitions, (IM) and (TM), is that they say nothing about word meaningNN. Even if we grant that Grice is right to claim that a sentence means what it does because of regularity in the meaning of utterances using it, it is not clear that the meaning of words can also be defined in terms of such regularities. After all, we often do use words in novel combinations, and the meaning of each individual word may change slightly given where it appears in the sentence and the other words around it. Moreover, it is not clear how, give Grice’s claim that the meaning of a sentence has to do with how it is regularly used, it is not clear how I can utter a completely novel sentence, “She was erratic like a lunatic chimpanzee on a merry-go-round!”, and it still be meaningful. Of course, if we did have a theory of word meaning, we would simply need to show how the meaning of the novel sentence arises from the meaning of each of the words. However, the above objection may not be as serious as it first appears. While not explicitly a theory of word-meaning, word-meaning can be seamlessly integrated into Grice’s account of timeless meanings. On this picture, word-meaning is simply a function of how words, as opposed to sentences, are commonly used by a particular linguistic community.

Burge on Perceptual Systems and Veridicality (Part 2)

In my previous post, I attributed to Burge the thesis that that the perceptual system, though a product of evolution by natural selection, has a representational function that is apriori connected to normative notion of veridicality. However, this prima facie seems like a problematic claim since natural selection is not itself concerned with normative notions, such as veridicality, and so one may wonder how our perceputal systems come to acquire such a normative concern. In this post, I will attempt to articulate one way this objection may be further unpacked.

According to Darwinian assumption, we have the particular perceptual systems that we do because they promoted the biological fitness of our ancestors. However, this seems to present a problem for Burge’s account. If we accept his insistence that a system which is unreliable may still promote biological fitness, then we seem faced with the following question: what reason do we have to think that our perceptual systems are reliable? In other words, there appears to be a mismatch between the practical mechanism (i.e., natural selection) that produced the perceptual system and the normative role the system is supposed to play. This seems to open up a lacuna between what the perceptual system has been “designed” for—namely, to promote biological fitness—and its representational function—namely, to arrive at true beliefs.

The above objection may be seen as a challenge to Burge’s claim that there is an apriori connection between the representational function of the perceptual system and verdicality. Given that these representational systems were produced by natural selection, it is plausible that they should be apriori connected to biological fitness. However, since natural selection is not apriori concerned with normative concerns, such as veridicality, it remains unclear why we should think that something natural selection has produced would be so concerned. The claim that the perceptual system may be apriori connected to veridicality presupposes that a bodily system may be apriori connected to a goal or function for which it was not “designed”. But why should we accept such an assumption?

Given Burge’s teleological framework, it would seem at least plausible that there is an apriori connection between the cardiac system and pumping blood or the respiratory system and respiration. After all, in both cases, the goals of the systems coincide perfectly with what the systems were designed for by natural selection. But since our perceptual systems were not designed by natural selection to represent veridically (given CIT), then why should we think that there is an apriori connection between the perceptual system and veridicality. Burge’s teleological framework does not seem to offer us a clear answer.

In response to the objection limned above, it may be argued that it is simply part of our concept of what it means for something to be a representational system that it aim at veridicality. But that simply pushes the present line of questioning one step back. The question now becomes, what reason do we have to think that the perceptual system is a representational system in the above (strong) sense? As we noted earlier, natural selection did not design it to be such a system. So what grounds do we have for taking it as such? Whereas before it was suggested that there is a lacuna between a system being a representational system and it aiming to represent veridically, the lacuna is now located between a system being a perceptual system and it being a representational system, in the robust sense just described.

Burge may respond by pointing out that (1) we regularly presuppose that our perceptual system is a representational system and (2) that psychologist often make this very assumption in the course of their theorising. However, it is not immediately clear why (1) or (2) should make any difference. Since we (including psychologists) did not design our own perceptual systems or those of other creatures, we hardly seem entitled to decide what type of system the perceptual system is by definitional fiat. To do so, without supporting argumentation, would be like simply stipulating that in addition to its circulatory function, the cardiovascular system fulfils some other function for which it was not designed. Such a stipulation would hardly seem warranted, even if it would allow us to fulfil particular philosophical desiderata. At the very least, the point would require substantive argumentation. But stipulation is a far cry from argumentation and it is not clear that Burge has offered any cogent argument in defence of the aforementioned proposal.

Burge on Perceptual Systems and Veridicality

Often when a philosopher says that something is obviously true or true apriori, it is a good idea to pause and pay careful attention. Frequently, such claims conceal many weighty assumptions; assumptions one would do well to make explicit. In his essay “Perceptual Entitlement”, Tyler Burge takes as one of his fundamental tenets the claim that there is an apriori connection between the representational function of an organism’s perceptual system and verdicality:

I take it as obvious that it is known apriori that the central representational function of a perceptual system is to perceive. This function is apriori associated with a representational function (to represent veridically).

This, of course, does not amount to the implausible claim that an organism’s perceptual system is always successful in carrying out its representational function—i.e., that perceptual experiences are always veridical. Rather, Burge is making the highly plausible claim that it is a conceptual truth that an organism’s representational system aims at veridicality. However, as plausible as this claim is, I believe more needs to be said in its defence. In this post I will summarise Burge's views and in my next post on this topic I will present one objection to Burge's account.

The claim that representational systems aim at veridicality is central to Burge’s account, which is unapologetically teleological:

I assume that there are certain functions, ends, and commitments, which bring with them goods for animals and their subsystems….Many ends, goals, and functions can be established as such on biological grounds. I take it that survival, at least long enough to have offspring or to fulfil some other biologically basic functions, is an end for all animals—an end that can be established biologically.

I will refer to the practical and/or biological functions of a particular system, such as promoting survival and the ability to pass on one’s genes, as biological fitness. It is widely agreed that animals and their subsystems were all “designed” by natural selection. I will refer to this claim as the Darwinian assumption.

Burge points out that biological fitness is not the only type of end an organism or subsystem may have. Specifically, when it comes to the perceptual subsystems of higher animals, Burge distinguishes between the practical function of the system and its epistemic function. The former has to do with the perceptual system’s contribution to the overall goal of the organism—namely, biological fitness. However, the latter has to do with the perceptual system’s representational function—namely, to represent veridically—and the role this function plays in achieving the supreme epistemic end of forming true beliefs.

Burge impugns attempts to reduce the epistemic and representational function of the perceptual system to the practical or biological: There are those who ignore or attempt to explain away the representational functions of perceptual and belief forming systems. They see biological or practical functions as the only relevant ones. The good of belief is judged purely relative to such functions. I think such views are clearly mistaken. Burge acknowledges that there may be a “non-accidental” connection between a system’s practical and representational functions.” Typically, a system that represents the world veridically (i.e., the epistemic function) also promotes biological fitness (i.e., the practical function). However, Burge points out that “being true is not in general being useful.” Moreover, it is at least conceivable that a system that regularly gave rise to false beliefs may nevertheless promote biological fitness. Burge cites the example of rabbits, whose representation of “danger” he describes as highly unreliable “because of a dominance of false positives.” In the rabbit case, it prima facie seems as though natural selection has favoured representational systems that are unreliable.

If Burge’s assessment of the representation of danger in rabbits is correct, then we have good empirical evidence to suggest that a creature with an unreliable perceptual system may nevertheless be biologically fit. While I agree with the empirical claim, about which I will have more to say later, for the time being I wish to make a weaker claim. I wish to suggest that it is at least possible that a system may promote biological fitness even though it is not reliable (in the sense of representing veridically). In other words, even if it were to turn out that no creatures on earth were biologically fit despite being unreliable, there is certainly some possible world in which this is the case. Thus, at the very least we should be able to endorse the claim that there is no necessary connection between a system promoting biological fitness and aiming after veridicality. I will refer to this claim as the conceptual independence thesis (or CIT). Since all actualities are necessarily possibilities, but not all possibilities are necessarily actualities, CIT is significantly weaker than the position Burge himself seems to defend, the latter relying as it does on actual real-life examples. Consequently, CIT is a fortiori a claim Burge would endorse.

In my next post, I will attempt to show that CIT, when combined other claims Burge makes, presents a challenge to Burge's claim that there is an apriori connection between the representational function of an organism's perceptual system and veridicality.

A Priori Self-Knowledge: A Real Pain...In the Head?

Here is a question that has recently been giving me a headache, and I'd really appreciate getting your feedback on it. One major criticism of content externalism is that it undermines a priori self-knowledge. When such critics say that self-knowledge is a priori I take them to mean that self-knowledge is independent of experience (i.e., not based on empirical observation). However, it is not clear to me that self-knowledge is essentially a priori. (This is a point that I believe has been made by Crispin Wright.) Suppose, for example, that I were suffering from a migraine. Presumably, my knowledge that I am currently suffering from a migraine is a type of self-knowledge. However, is my knowledge that I am currently suffering a migraine independent of experience? The answer seems to be ‘no’. I can only know that I am currently suffering from a migraine if I am currently experiencing the migraine. Thus, my knowledge that I am suffering from a migraine is a posteriori.

Am I missing something here? Could there be an alternative definition of a priori according to which my knowledge that I am suffering a migraine counts as a priori? Or am I mistaken in claiming that my knowledge that I am currently suffering from a migraine is a type of self-knowledge? Or perhaps I am missing the point of the critics of content externalism altogether? I should add that the issue of a priori self-knowledge is separate from the issue of infallible self-knowledge and authoritative self-knowledge, so that even if I am right, this does not mean that the content externalist is out of the woods just yet. But presently, I am only concerned with whether a priori self-knowledge is a type of self-knowledge with which the content externalist needs to be concerned.

Tips for Comps

Hi folks! Hope you're all having great summers.

I took the liberty of writing up my strategy for the comps. Hopefully that (along with the guides I've been compiling) will help make them less painful for some. Please let me know if you have additional tips (or, especially, if you think I'm wrong about something)!