Friday 6 December 2013

Adopt no point of view and you still have reasons to act.

This is a paper I wrote, (am writing?), for Rob's 2000 level class were you learn the truth about ethics.  Tell me what you think.

One of Sidgwick's tests for the highest certainty of a proposition is that no two people who are of equal intelligence, who also have the same body of evidence, disagree on the truth of the proposition. Sidgwick claims the proposition that, “The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other”, passes this test for highest certainty. This is the the axiom of irrelevance. Sidgwick takes as his epistemic peers the Egoist and the Common Sense Moralist. The axiom as stated must be modified slightly so that the Egoist and the Common Sense Moralist do in fact agree with it. I will argue that a single modification to the axiom, addressing the worries of both the Egoist and the Common Sense Moralist, is preferable to adding two separate modifications, dealing with the worries of each position separately.

According to the Egoist, what she ought to do is that which will bring about the most good, or happiness, in her life.  One way to modify Sidgwick's axiom of irrelevance so that the Egoist agrees with it is to have it be a conditional, having as its antecedent the adoption of the point of view of the universe, or put another way, the point of for which I have no special concern for my self. The axiom would then be: if the point of view for which I have no special concern for myself is adopted, then I ought be indifferent between distributing x to A or x to B unless more good would be produced by one distribution over the other. So the Egoist will accept this axiom because she will not adopt the point of view of the universe, though if she did, her duties would be different. Rather she will take the point of view of her self, according to which, she ought to be partial to A when A is her.

According to the Common Sense Moralist there is a prima facie duty, or reason, to keep ones promises. If I have promised to give you some cheese, but by breaking the promise I could bring my self more happiness than I could bring to you were I to keep the promise, then according to the Common Sense Moralist I ought to keep my promise. This contradicts irrelevance thus far stated, since keeping my promise is a reason to be partial to your happiness over mine. If the Common Sense Moralist is to accept the axiom of irrelevance, then it must be stated so as to give a reason, not the only reason, for distributing goods in a particular manner, allowing for other reasons to trump it in the relevant cases. So the axiom secondly modified becomes: if the point of view for which I have no special concern for myself is adopted, then there is a reason to be indifferent between distributing x to A or x to B unless more good would be produced by one distribution over the other.

If the Egoist does in fact refuse to adopt the point of view according to which she has no special concern for her self, and thereby takes up the view on which she only has concern for herself, then she will have the wrong thing to say in the following case:

Sue is on the last three days of her life, yet it will be her happiest, indeed it could not possibly be any happier. Sue knows this. Sue also knows that she could give her excess money to a person, thereby saving their life.

If the Egoist is right, Sue should not take up the point of view on which she has no special concern for herself.  Given that all she should aim at, according to the Egoist, is already guaranteed to be the case, the Egoist concludes that Sue has no reason to give the money that would save a life. Given that Sue ought to give the money, this is the wrong result.

At least for cases like Sue's, the Egoist could respond by adopting the point of view according to which she has no special concern for herself, given that no self interested reasons would be sacrificed. Sue really does not have any special concern for herself, since her greatest happiness is already determined. But in cases that are not like this, when an individuals own good is not so well secured, the Egoist will think their is reason to depart from distributing goods impartiality.

One way the Egoist could get the desired results, both in cases such as Sue's, as well as the normal cases, would be to argue that whatever point of view one adopts, its adoption is conditional on certain morally relevant features, such as the actual distribution of good. For Sue, she has reason to adopt the point of view of the universe on her last three days because the good in her life, determined to be as great as it could, does not give her any reason to have special concern for her self, and so, no reason to distribute good partially. On this picture, different distributions of good give correspondingly different reasons to adopt alternative points of view, where the adoption of each alternative point of view gives rise to a different reason to act.

Alternatively, the Egoist could insist that that, even if one adopts the point of view according to which I have no special concern for myself, I have a reason to be partial in distributing x to A rather than x to B when x will bring about some good to A and I am identical to A. On this picture, what one has reason to do is not conditional on which point of view is adopted, at least if it is the point of view of the universe.

Both options open to the Egoist will parallel the Common Sense Moralists contention that there is a reason to keep ones promises, as well as a reason to distribute goods impartially. Both the Egoist, and the Common Sense Moralist, will claim that there is more than one reason to act, placing different importance on what those reasons are and how strong each one is.

At this point, insisting that Sidgwick's axiom be conditional on the impersonal point of view is unnecessary. On the first option open to the Egoist, what ever reasons there will be to adopt one point of view over another, thereby leading to a reason to act in specific way, just is a reason to act in that specific way. As for the second option open to the Egoist, given that what reasons one has to act are reasons irrespective of what point of view one adopts, there is no need to specify that there is a reason to be impartial between different distributions of good only when the point of view of the universe is adopted, for one may adopt the point of view of ones self, yet still have this reason.  For the Common Sense Moralist, the prima facie duty to keep promises is a reason to keep ones own promises, not any other persons promise. The point of view of the promiser need not be adopted for me to have this duty. For the Egoist, the prima facie duty to aim at ones own good is a reason for you to aim at your own good, not everyones own good. Again, the point of view for which I have special concern for my self need not be adopted for me to have this duty.

The axiom of irrelevance now becomes: there is a reason to be indifferent between distributing x to A or x to B unless more good would be produced by one distribution over the other. If I am right, the Egoist and the Common Sense Moralist agree with this axiom and it passes one of Sidgwick's tests for highest certainty.


Wednesday 4 December 2013

Handed Essentiality

In my last post, I argued that we have some reasons to think that (P) is true:
(P) Possibly, I am a concrete object that is not a person.

 
I then gave some reasons to think that (P) is not true. The two premises in that argument were:
(5) If I am essentially a person, then it is not possible for me to be a concrete object that is not a person.
(6) I am essentially a person.
 
The main problem with denying (5) is that this claim seems true by definition. We generally think that one of the necessary conditions of having an essential property is that you have it whenever you’re around. But definitions can be wrong, and maybe we were wrong in thinking that having a property whenever you’re around is necessary for that property being essential to you. So it's not impossible to deny (5). But it certainly seems difficult.

There are two big problems with denying (6): 
(i) It's weird to think that personhood is just an accidental property that we have. It really seems to be the case that being a person is central to our identity, or our nature. It is the kind of thing we are. But that is what essential properties are.
(ii) It's plausible to think that, were I to stop being a person, I would stop existing. But if personhood is not an essential property, it is hard to explain how this could be.

Here is what I'm going to try to do: I'm going to try to provide a picture of essentiality that allows the deniers of (5) to make their view less crazy, and the deniers of (6) to have better answers to (i) and (ii). In doing so, I will appeal indirectly to medieval discussions of eternality. The reason I am appealing indirectly is because I am having a really hard time finding source material on this (I think Duns Scotus talked about it, but I’m not sure. If anyone could point me to the right place, it would be much appreciated). 

Roughly, medieval philosophers had a problem with things that exist eternally, which was as follows:
(A) God exists eternally.
(B) Our souls exist eternally.
On the assumption that God and our souls both exist, both (A) and (B) appear to be true. But there is an important difference between God and our souls: our souls came into existence, while God did not. An attempt to explain the difference between the eternality that God has and the eternality that souls have was to distinguish between two types of eternality: left-hand eternality, and right-hand eternality. A particular being is left-hand eternal if it has always existed. A particular being is right-hand eternal if it will always exist. So (A) is true on both disambiguations of eternality, while (B) is only true on the right-hand disambiguation. Our souls, unlike God, are not left-hand eternal. It is important to note that there are several ways to relate the instantiation conditions of being eternal to the conditions of being left-hand eternal and being right-hand eternal. Maybe being eternal requires either being left-hand eternal or being right-hand eternal, in which case both (A) and (B) are true. Maybe being eternal requires both being left-hand eternal and being right-hand eternal, in which case only (A) is true. Either way, it seems like the notions of left- and right-handed eternality are still useful to explain differences between God and our souls.

I propose to import this distinction into discussions of essentiality. The thought is as follows:
Definition of left-hand essentiality: property F is a left-hand essential property of object o iff
(I) o has F.
(II) Were o to acquire F, o would not have previously been concrete.

Definition of right-hand essentiality: F is a right-hand essential property of o iff
(I) o has F.
(II) were o to lose F, o would not subsequently remain concrete.

Just like with the discussion of eternality, maybe being an essential property requires having both left- and right-hand essentiality. Maybe being an essential property requires just one. 

If both are required, then (5) is true: if I am essentially a person, then it is impossible for me to be a concrete object that is not a person. But it might not be so bad to reject the essentiality of personhood here. After all, we can still agree that personhood is right-hand essential, and that can explain many of the phenomena that we wanted essentiality to explain. Here's how:
To respond to (i): while acquiring personhood is may be an accident, maintaining personhood is not. So it is not too terrible to think that it is because of the kind of thing we are (persons), that we must remain persons. That's not the case for other accidental properties, like being a teenager. It is not in the nature of being a teenager that we must remain teenagers. So there is still a principled distinction between being a person and our standard accidental properties.
To respond to (ii): were you to stop being a person, you would stop existing. But this is not because personhood is essential, it is because personhood is right-hand essential

On the other hand, we could claim that essentiality only requires one of left- or right-hand essentiality. In this case, premise (6) is true: I am essentially a person. But we now how the resources to deny premise (5), since we can say that it is perfectly possible for me to be essentially a person even if I am sometimes not a person.

Maybe you have really strong intuitions about essentiality here, so that one move seems more plausible than the other (or maybe both seem equally implausible). I’m inclined to say that essentiality only requires one of left- or right-hand essentiality, and thereby reject (5). If this is right, then my argument constitutes an interesting discovery about the property of being a person: its essentiality is only right-handed.

Some issues/thoughts that I have:
#1: it seems that under my definition, being an author is a right-hand essential property. Once you write a book, you're an author forever. Here, I'm inclined to appeal to Cowling (forthcoming) in saying that only certain properties can be essences, and being an author is just not one of them.
#2: I'm wondering how much this account of essentiality can help people who think that everything necessarily exists. It seems to me that these handed essentiality is not much help to them, but I'm interested in looking at this further.
#3: Suppose you think that it is not possible for me not to have been a person. I think I can run this argument again with fetuses. A fetus is essentially a fetus, but it used to be a non-fetus (an embryo). Unless we think that there are a whole bunch of things going into and out of existence inside a uterus, we should think that some properties are right-hand essential. Thoughts?