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Lecture01 Value and Fitting attitudes

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Lecture01 Value and Fitting attitudes

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  1. Value and Fitting AttitudesWlodek RabinowiczObjective: To examine the ’fitting-attitudes’ analysis of value.- Advantages of this analysis format- Some of its problems- Application to the taxonomy of value relations Rabinowicz & Rönnow-Rasmussen, Ethics 2004, Phil. Quart. 2006Rabinowicz, Theoria 2008, Polish J. Phil. 2009

  2. VALUE AND FITTING ATTITUDESFA-analysis: x is valuable = it is fitting to favour x‘fitting’, ‘appropriate’, ‘correct’, ‘ought’, ‘required’, ‘reason’, etc. - the deontic component.”Favour” – a place-holder for a pro-attitude(or, more generally, a pro-response)Final vs. instrumental value:x has final/instrumental value = it’s fitting to favour x for its own sake/for something else’s sakeDisvalue: in terms of fitting disfavour (a place holder for a con-attitude)

  3. Two variants of the FA-analysis:(i) Value monismThe same kind of attitude for all values (say, desire, or preference)(ii) Value pluralismDifferent pro-attitudes (or different combinations of pro-attitudes) fit different objects Plurality of values:admirable, desirable, pleasurable, lovely, awesome, … Often not just one kind of attitude is fitting, but rather a complex of responses, both attitudinal (conative, emotional) and behavioral (caring, promoting, protecting)Pluralism concerning value bearers: states of affairs, persons, things, etc.

  4. Characteristic features of FA-analysis - connection to attitudes (the attitudinal component), or more generally, responses - normativity (the deontic component)Value is analysed in terms of attitudes that ought to be held towards the value bearer.Advantages of FA-analysis(i) de-mystifying The deontic component accounts for the prescriptive force of value (cf. Mackie!)(ii) meta-ethically neutral Compatible both with ethical cognitivism and non- cognitivism

  5. The deontic component  non-naturalistic analysis(at least prima facie, unless the deontic component itself is given a natuarlistic account)To compare with dispositional theories about value.Dispositionalism: x is valuable = we are disposed to favour x under normal circumstance / under optimal (appropriately idealized) circumstances.Note: The optimality version is close to FA-analysis!Some dispositionalists: M. Johnston, ”Dispositional Theories of Value”, 1989M. Smith, The Moral Problem, 1994Common to both dispositionalism and FA-analysis:Response dependence

  6. HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDFranz Brentano:“We call a thing good when the love relating to it is correct. In the broadest sense of the term, the good is that which is worthy of love, that which can be loved with a love that is correct.” (The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, p.18)About “better”:“[…] the better is that which it is correct to love more; it is that in which one correctly takes more pleasure. But the ‘more’ has nothing to do with comparative intensity. It refers to the peculiar phenomenon to be found within the sphere of emotions – namely, to the phenomenon of preferring. […] When we call one good ‘better’ than another, we mean that the one good is preferable to the other. In other words, it is correct to prefer the one good, for its own sake, to the other.” (p. 26)

  7. A.C. Ewing: “good” = “fitting object of a pro-attitude” (The Definition of Good, 1947) Bouwsma on Wittgenstein on Ewing:”Towards the end of our discussion which had lasted several hours, W. spoke of A. C. Ewing’s definition – in a Moral Science [Club] lecture, ’Good is what it is right to admire.’ Then he shook his head over it. The definition throws no light. There are three concepts, all of them vague. Imagine three solid pieces of stone. You pick them up, fit them together and you get now a ball. What you’ve now got tells you something about the three shapes. Now consider you have three balls of or lumps of soft mud or putty – formless. Now you put the three together and mould out of them a ball. Ewing makes a soft ball out of three pieces of mud.”Not a very good argument.It is informative to learn that the “three pieces of mud” need to be mutually adjusted so as to make up a ball together.

  8. W. D. Ross’ critique of the FA-analysis:The goodness of an object cannot consist in, say, its being worthy of admiration since (i) goodness is what the object should be admired for, (ii) admiration already involves a judgment that the object is good. (Foundations of Ethics, 1939)Ewing’s response:- Is goodness really what the object is to be admired for? No. Admiration is primarily a response to the object’s ”good-making properties”, not to its goodness. - Consequently, admiration need not involve a judgment that the object is good.

  9. But what about the deontic component in FA?Isn’t some circularity lurking there? Ewing:”Fitting”, ”appropriate”, etc. should not themselves be interpreted as evaluative terms, if circularity in the analysis is to be avoided! (”x är valuable = it is valuable to favour x”)Ewing avoids this circle: Value is reduced to Ought.Pace Moore.

  10. Ewing: The relevant ought is “the ought of fittingness”, rather than the moral ought. Later Ewing (Second Thoughts in Moral Philosophy, 1959) is more cautious: Moral ought for some meanings of ’good’, ”ought of fittingness” for other meanings. ”Fittingness” interpreted as ”reasonableness”.Other FA-proponents: Broad, Brandt, Rawls, Chisholm, Wiggins, Gibbard, Lemos, Nagel, and, most notably, Thomas Scanlon (What we Owe to Each Other, 1998)

  11. The Buck-Passing AccountScanlon:“[Pace Moore,] being good, or valuable is not a property that itself provides a reason to respond to a thing in certain ways. Rather, to be good or valuable is to have other properties that constitute such reasons. Since the claim that some property constitutes a reason is a normative claim, this account also [i.e., like Moore’s] takes goodness and value to be non-natural properties, namely the purely formal, higher-order properties of having some lower-order properties that provide reasons of the relevant kind. … it is not goodness or value itself that provides reasons but rather other properties that do so. For this reason I call it a buck-passing account.”

  12. Some of the problems with FA-analysis- Potential circularity A circle threatens if pro-attitudes essentially involve evaluative thoughts (Ross), or if the normative component is at bottom an evaluative concept.But cf. Wiggins (1987): Due to its “detour through sentiments”, FA-analysis can still be instructive even if it is circular. (Wiggins accepted Rossian circularity.)- Problem of the common denominator Given value pluralism, what do different pro-attitudes have in common? What makes them pro? How do they differ from con-attitudes and from ‘neutral’ attitudes towards objects?

  13. - The ’Wrong Kind of Reasons’ ProblemThere can be reasons for a pro-attitude towards an object even if that object lacks value.Roger Crisp’s example:”Imagine that an evil demon will inflict a severe pain on me unless I prefer this saucer of mud; that makes the saucer well worth preferring. But it would not be plausible to claim that the saucer’s of mud’s existence is, in itself, valuable”(2000)But doesn’t the object has at least an instrumental value in this case? Consider this: The demon’s demand might be that we desire the saucer of mud for its own sake. FA-analysis would then imply that the saucer has a final value.

  14. A piece of recent historyd’Arms & Jacobson, “Sentiment and Value”, Ethics 2000:The Conflation ProblemThe connection between value and appropriate attitudes is not a simple equivalence:(1) There can be reasons for pro-attitudes towards objects that lack value (‘false positives’)(2) There can be reasons against pro-attitudes towards objects that have value (‘false negatives’)Example of (2): A funny racist joke.They see it as a danger of conflation: of mistaken ascriptions of value (1) or mistaken denials of value (2).But even if the danger of conflation can be avoided, the analytical problem remains. Especially serious in case (1).

  15. The general structure of the objection: (i) An object x lacks final value (ii) Still, there is a reason to favour x for its own sake, because this pro-attitude itself is valuable, in virtue of its beneficial effects. (iii) So, FA-analysis is wrong.Paradox of hedonism (Joseph Butler): To desire nothing for its own sake apart from pleasure is self-defeating.  Sophisticated hedonism: We ought to desire other things as well for their own sake (knowledge, friendship, etc), even though it is pleasure alone that has final value.(Similar paradox for the preference satisfaction view.)

  16. In previous examples (saucer of mud, sophisticated hedonism), the value of the pro-attitude towards a valueless object was instrumental.But the objection also applies when the attitude instead has a final value.Example: Mental-state axiology (à la G. E. Moore):(i) Only mental states are finally valuable.(ii) Among these, some are pro-attitudes towards non-mental objects (for example, admiration of nature or works of art, intellectual enjoyment of philosophical problems, etc).The objection also applies when the reason for a pro-attitude/pro-response is deontological rather than value-related.Example: Love your neighbours.

  17. A general strategy for a solution:Show that the reasons in the counter-examples are of the WRONG KIND from the point of view of FA-analysis.(Note: Reasons of the wrong kind might still be perfectly good reasons.)So, what’s needed is a way to draw a distinction between reasons of the right kind and reasons of the wrong kind.This is the WKR Problem.(Rabinowicz & Rönnow-Rasmussen 2004.)

  18. Solution 1: Attitude-given reasonsIn our counter-examples, reasons for pro-attitudes have all been attitude-given rather than object-given.(Parfit 2001 contrasts reasons for mental states that are ‘object-given’ with those that are ‘state-given’.) It’s this that makes them reasons of the wrong kind.Attitude-given reasons:Saucer of mud: Desiring the saucer would shield us from the demon’s punishment.Sophisticated hedonism: Pro-attitudes towards knowledge, friendship, etc, are pleasure-conducive.Mental-state axiology:Reasons for a pro-attitude towards a non-mental object are provided by that attitude’s intrinsic features.

  19. So: Are reasons of the right kind iff they are object-given? When exactly is a reason object-given?Parfit: When it is a fact about the object (i.e. a feature of the object). But: To every reason-providing property of an attitude corresponds a reason-providing property of its object.If favouring x has a property P that is a reason for this attitude, then there is a property of object x that is a reason for this attitude: namely, xbeing such that its favouring would have a property P.But isn’t this a property of the object in a very attenuated sense?Yes, quite often, but not always.Example: The demon threatens to punish us unless we admire him.The demon’s threat is a robust feature of the demon.

  20. Solution 1’: Attitude-involving reasons (Olson 2004)Our examples of object features that are reasons of the wrong kind have all been properties involving some reference to attitudes.(ex: xbeing such that favouring it shields one from punishment)So, perhaps. reasons of the right kind should not only be object-given. They should also not be attitude-involving. But: Some reasons of the right kind are attitude-involving.Examples: A person can be admirable in part because she doesn’t care whether or not she is admired.A person can be lovable in part because she responds with love to love.

  21. Solution 2: All reasons for attitudes are of the right kind.(Gibbard 1990, Parfit 2009, Skorupski 2009)Attitude-given reasons are not reasons for those attitudes; instead, they are reasons for wanting to have them or for trying to acquire them. (Reasons for second-order responses.) But isn’t this implausible? Analogy: Beneficial effects of an action provide reasons for this action (and not just for wanting the action or for trying to perform it). So why should attitudes be different?Parfit: Genuine reasons for attitudes influence attitudes directly, without mediation of the will. [Involuntarism]Analogy with epistemic reasons. But this only moves the problem up one step: How to distinguish between reasons for 1-order and reasons for 2-order attitudes?

  22. Solution 3: Right reasons are considerations that bear on the relevant question (Pamela Hieronymi, J. Phil 2005) This works well for the epistemic case.Right reasons for a belief that p are considerations that bear on the question: Is p true?But what is the relevant question with respect to favouring x?The natural answer seems to be: Is x worthy of favour?I.e., is x valuable? This solution is of no use when the analysis of the concept of value is at issue.

  23. Solution 3: The dual role of the right kind of reasons (Rabinowicz & Rönnow-Rasmussen 2004)Reasons of the right kind play a dual role:(i) They justify a pro-attitude, i.e., provide reasons for it, and (ii) they feature in the intentional content of that pro-attitude – as the properties on account of which the object is favoured.Example: S is admirable in virtue of her courage. S’s courage justifies admiration for S, and is a feature on account of which she should be admired:We should admire her for being courageous.

  24. Contrast this with the evil demon case: Unless we favour x (a saucer of mud) for its own sake, the evil demon will punish us.The relevant feature of x, that we will be punished if we don’t favour it for its own sake, has only one role: It justifies favouring x for its own sake. But it is not a feature on account of which we can favour x for its own sake. Sophisticated hedonism: That loving knowledge for its own sake is pleasure-conducive justifies love of knowledge, but it is not a feature for which we can love knowledge for its ownsake. Mental-state axiology:The intrinsic features of our pro-attitude towards a non-mental object x that provide reasons for that attitude, do not appear in its intentional content as the features for which we favour x.

  25. The Demon Strikes Back (Folke Tersman’s objection) The demon now is determined to punish us unless we admire him, for his own sake, precisely for his determination to punish us unless we admire him in that way.The dual-role requirement is satisfied: The demon’s determination to punish us unless … justifies our admiration and it is the feature on account of which he is to be admired.But the reason that feature provides still is of the wrong kind. It doesn’t makes the demon better.

  26. Solution 5: A sui generis deontic conceptBack to Ewing’s concept of fittingness,but now interpreted as a deontic concept sui generis, distinct from the ordinary ’ought’.It is unfitting to admire the demon, even though he ought to be admired, given the circumstances.Problem: A circularity threatens. That a pro-attitude is fitting maybe just means that this attitude is adequate to the object’s value?(Similar problem with the proposal by Danielsson & Olson, in Mind 2007, which relies on Brentano’s notion of correctness.)

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