Rawls on Construction and Objectivity

Rawls' third lecture on Kantian constructivism, as printed in The Journal of Philosophy, culminates the series he gave on this topic and addresses methodological contrasts between constructivism and some other views of moral theory. The central conception of Kantian constructivism has turned out to be the establishment of a connection between the first principles of justice and the conception of moral persons as possessed of freedom and equality. The connection is made by means of the procedure of construction by which rationally autonomous agents "subject to reasonable conditions" arrive at public principles. In concluding with a discussion of objectivity Rawls intends to secure the philosophical status of the constructivist procedure. This includes the basis for the view that principles of justice are best thought of as reasonable rather than true.

The first part of the third lecture consists in Rawls' summary of the work of Henry Sidgwick The Methods of Ethics. This work is the one that Rawls thinks of as being an "outstanding achievement" in moral theory. In making this claim Rawls also indicates what he takes "moral theory" to consist in: "the systematic and comparative study of moral conceptions" (554). Moral philosophy, by contrast, is wider since it takes its main question to be one of justification whether this is seen epistemologically or practically. Sidgwick's work is one Rawls thinks of as the "first truly academic work in moral theory" (554) which defines some of the comprehensive comparisons important to it. Sidgwick saw that moral theory was significant for moral philosophy but his work is seen as limited in at least two crucial ways by Rawls. The first key limitation in Sidgwick's approach according to Rawls is that he gives little attention to the conception of the person and the social role of morality. The reason for this is that Sidgwick assumed that a "method" of ethics is specified by first principles that aim at reaching true judgments. So justification is seen as a primarily epistemological problem.

The focus on truth does not only lead Sidgwick in this epistemic direction but it also leads him to restrict attention to first principles rather than to articulating views of the person and the social role of morality. Due to these elements of his view of "methods" of ethics Sidgwick does not articulate constructivism as a method. Sidgwick also failed to see that Kant presents us with a distinctive method of ethics since Sidgwick understood the categorical imperative as equivalent to a principle of equity that requires treating persons similarly in similar situations. Because Kant's view is not regarded as providing us with a "method" of ethics Sidgwick is left counting only egoism, intuitionism and utilitarianism as real methods says Rawls. In making this statement Rawls is wrong since he leaves out Sidgwick's view of common sense morality, something of cardinal significance in The Methods of Ethics. In claiming also simply that Sidgwick "favours" the utilitarian method Rawls also neglects here the large scope Sidgwick subsequently gives to intuitionist elements in his treatment. But Rawls is certainly right to claim that Kant is given no sustained analysis by Sidgwick who spends more time on replying to Kant's view of freedom than he does to any clear account of the central elements of Kant's moral theory.

After opening with this discussion of Sidgwick Rawls moves on to a contrast between Kantian constructivism as conceived in these lectures with rational intuitionism. Rational intuitionism is presented here as grounded on two views. These are, firstly, that the central moral concepts are not analyzable in nonmoral terms and, secondly, that first principles of morals are self-evident. So it follows from these claims that agreement in judgment would be based upon recognition of self-evident truths about good reasons with these reasons fixed by a moral order that is independent of and prior to our conception of the person. In characterising intuitionism in this way Rawls sees it as favouring a priority of the good over the right and capturing this priority in terms of the moral order being prior to the person. The contents of the doctrine that ensue can be varied for intuitionists and now he outlines a sense in which utilitarian views could even be said to follow from them. 

The point of discussing intuitionism is to indicate that heteronomous conceptions of morality need not be naturalistic. And heteronomy is now presented by Rawls as the claim that the basic truths of morality are independent of (or justifiable without reference to) a conception of the person.  A Kantian claim, which includes the notion of synthetic a priori judgments, is, by contrast, one that requires practical reason to include central formulations of the person. So first principles are related to this sense of the person with the idea of it being embedded in the notion of practical reason in some way. By contrast the conception of the person for an intuitionist is much more sparse. 

If the view of the person is one of the means by which intuitionism can be contrasted with Kantian constructivism the other that Rawls considers concerns the limitations of moral deliberations. Constructivists, as viewed by Rawls, do not view the powers of reflection and judgment involved in moral deliberation as fixed in any absolute way. Rather they are reflections of the public culture to which they belong. This is why justice as fairness can be presented through the device of the original position as arriving at public agreements. The conception of justice involved here is one that relates to the framework of deliberation that produces it rather than pre-existing such deliberation. The limitations of such deliberation are reflected also in the narrow arena within which clear agreement is defined as possible, for example, within justice as fairness, the basic structure. Requirements that relate to the subject of justice are also built into the scheme of justice as fairness such as the ability of principles to meet criteria of publicity. In order to meet such requirements principles cannot be above certain levels of complexity. Certain facts are thus rendered irrelevant in consideration of the constraints of the procedure adopted.

In principle also the procedure of constructivism requires as well priority rules of certain sorts such as the priority of justice over efficiency or that of the first principle of justice over the second. The plausibility of these priority rules enables ways of dealing with the complexity of the many prima facie rules that are generally stated. The idea of the basic structure also plays the special role of defining what background justice is understood to be like. Comparisons of what outcomes are better or worse are also enabled by the reference to the notion of primary goods. This latter notion requires some sense of the agents who are to be party to the agreement that can emerge from the original position.

Alongside these constraints of a constructivist procedure is the abandonment of moral truth as the basic pursuit of moral doctrines. No specific principles are assumed to be correct prior to the initiation of the procedure of construction and no moral facts are taken to hold separately from this procedure. The first principles single out what facts would count as reasons of justice. So the procedure of construction of the original position determines what "facts" are to be counted. Constructivism also requires no specific doctrine of truth. 

The main ideals of justice as fairness are found in the "model-conceptions" of the well ordered society and the moral person. The original position enables representation of the Reasonable and the Rational and from its constraints the principles of justice emerge for the citizens of a well ordered society. So the procedure of construction has an intimate link to the way that principles of justice appear to be embedded in conditions of our life by means of reflection on that life. These conditions are what Rawls described as the circumstances of justice and consideration of these circumstances as constrained by the sense of what is Reasonable produces, in relation to our "model conceptions" the sense of the principles of justice.

The Kantian view, as seen by Rawls, addressees the public culture of a democratic society in order to bring to awareness a conception of the person and social cooperation that is implicit within this culture. This does not mean our society is well ordered since the public conception of justice is disputed within it. But the procedure of construction is one that has to be congruent with elements of our existing culture in such a way that it can meet criteria of public justification. First principles that are presented by constructivism are not "true" but reasonable and what is rather "true" are statements about how derivative principles follow from first principles. 

The notion of rational intuition is one that Rawls wishes to argue is an unnecessary one for the attainment of the goal of moral philosophy. Objectivity does not require the standpoint of the universe as Sidgwick suggests. It requires instead a social point of view that is publicly shared or would be in a well ordered society. Such a point of view is what is required within a basic structure and which models the conception of the person within such a structure. The person should be seen not in epistemic but in practical terms, that is, as involved in social cooperation. The means by which this determination of the person operates is through the avenue of potential agreement on public conceptions. Such agreement emerges from a view of the person as possessed of moral powers that articulate a notion of autonomous reflection. It is by these means Rawls hopes to articulate a way past the impasse in contemporary societies about the appropriate way of viewing justice.

Samuel Freeman's Review of Parfit

In the latest issue of The New York Review of Books there is a review of On What Matters by Samuel Freeman. Since I have previously covered reviews of the work by Simon Blackburn and Philip Kitcher it seems only right to provide a general summary and response also to this one by Freeman.


Freeman's review opens with comments aimed at the general reader concerning the philosophical attempt to explain the purposes of common sense moral rules and to resolve moral dilemmas. Freeman refers to Kant almost immediately afterwards mentioning both the unconditional character of moral demands on Kant's conception and the Formula of Humanity. The argument of the first part of the Groundwork is implicitly referred to when Freeman mentions the view that the categorical imperative "justifies" our common sense duties to one another and also provides a "more fine-grained method of reasoning" concerning what we ought to do. Following Parfit's own startling conjunction of names in the "Preface" to On What Matters Freeman moves from Kant to Sidgwick and the latter's argument in The Methods of Ethics that it is the principle of utility that truly "justifies" common sense morality. The move from Kant to Sidgwick also allows Freeman, however, to refer to the Rawlsian challenge to the dominance that the utilitarian tradition had, until recently, in the area of social theory.


The introduction of the account of utilitarianism into Freeman's narrative also allows him to mention that the method of ethical appraisal promoted by this school is really a specific form of the general notion of consequentialism and that many consequentialists today have abandoned a simple commitment to hedonism and do not necessarily view utility as the best way of assessing consequences. After mentioning the shift within moral theory from utilitarianism to consequentialism Freeman fills out his picture of the general state of contemporary moral reflection by mentioning Thomas Scanlon's notion of "contractualism", a much more recent theory than Kantian and consequentialist ones. Scanlon is presented by Freeman as someone who modified the Rawslian view so that it was applied not to the theory of justice but instead to personal duties or duties towards others. Not only is this the basis of contractualism according to Freeman but this view is related by him to the Kantian one in terms of recognising the equal status of persons as integral to moral reasoning and, in making this emphasis so significant, as ensuring that these accounts stand together against consequentialism.


As Freeman mentions in a footnote, the three theories of Kantianism, consequentialism and contractualism are the centre of Parfit's book and are related together by him as the key traditions that have to be brought together, a point that ensures that virtue theory is simply left without consideration by Parfit. Parfit intends overall to articulate what he terms a "Triple Theory" that will combine optimific considerations with Kantian and contractualist ones thus producing what Parfit calls a "Kantian rule consequentialism". This argument for a "Triple Theory" of normative ethics is combined by Parfit with a general account of moral reasons that is aimed at showing their objectivity with the arguments in favour of this claim being the centre of the first and the sixth parts of the book. The latter claim is specifically presented by Parfit in response to subjectivist views of reasons and in riposte to a claimed nihilism with regard to values said to characterise much contemporary theorising about morals.


Parfit's attack on subjectivism is rightly presented by Freeman as mainly consisting in responses to the "Humean" theory of reasons that understands reasons primarily through the prism of desires. In response to such a claim Parfit insists on an account of objective reasons based on a view of intentional objectivity but the nature of the specific theory Parfit here elaborates and the problems with it are not considered by Freeman who simply presents it as laudable that Parfit attacks relativistic subjectivism without discussing whether such an attack is, as stated, either too blunt or unconvincing. This is a peculiar weakness in Freeman's review and is likely connected to a dialectical strategy of refuting the "Triple Theory" but upholding the significance of Parfit's book in terms of the defence of "objectivity" in morals. One of the reasons why Freeman may have taken this tack is due to the prevalence of forms of the "Humean" theory in contemporary economics and the need to challenge such a model as applied there.


Freeman looks at Parfit's treatment of the Formula of Humanity and chides Parfit for considering it in separation from Kant's general moral theory. However there are further significant problems both in terms of how Freeman views Parfit's discussion of the Formula of Humanity and with how Freeman understands the place of the Formula of Humanity in Kant's own theory. With regard to Parfit's treatment Freeman stresses the way that the discussion of the "mere means" requirement appears to be favoured by Parfit above other considerations though this point is here not well made given that Parfit considers another point to flow from the Formula of Humanity than this. Parfit also stresses a notion of "rational consent" that he articulates as the basis of the first part of the Formula and, whilst Freeman may not find this a persuasive reading of the Formula it is remiss of him to simply present Parfit as viewing the Formula only through the "mere means" requirement. It is true that Parfit does not view the Formula in terms of a "respect requirement" but Parfit does provide arguments for not viewing the "respect requirement" as really providing further normative guidance and this requires to be discussed and answered.


Freeman indicates some awareness of the "respect requirement" but moves rather quickly from referring to it to an account of some themes from Kant's philosophy of right including the "innate right to freedom" and the notion of independence from being constrained by another's choice. Since these themes belong not in Kant's general moral theory but to the account of right it is not at all clear why they are referred to by Freeman and it is not remiss of Parfit to have failed to engage with them when formulating his notion of a Kantian consequentialism. It is correct to argue that the Formula of Humanity appears to include a constraint on action in terms of describing something one should not act against but Freeman fails to bring this point out and generic reference to the notion of "individual rights" is insufficient to make clear the specific problem with Parfit's view of the Formula of Humanity.


Parfit is, in any case, as Freeman recognises, more concerned with Kant's discussion of universal law than with the Formula of Humanity. The discussion of universal law is interpreted by Parfit in accord with a principle taken from Thomas Scanlon so that it becomes understood as prescribing the requirement that everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will. This notion of a "Kantian Contractualism" is one that requires viewing the notion of universal law in terms that are not derived from Kant himself but Freeman emphasises more the application of the principles that follow for Parfit. Freeman terms Parfit's application "peculiar" and part of what is thus peculiar is the way the combination of Kant with Scanlon is meant to underpin rule consequentialism. Parfit requires us to see the reference to what makes things go best as grounded on some kind of formal rule process built into an understanding of rational willing. This has the result, as Freeman puts it, that "morality is then a kind of efficiency in promoting universal good". 


Once we have a concentration of this optimific sort ethics clearly becomes axiological and this is part of what Freeman rightly regards as controversial in Parfit's view. Kant and Scanlon are generally taken to have provided moral views that are not consequentialist (although there are other varieties of "Kantian consequentialism" such as the one articulated by David Cummiskey). In making the move of bringing Kant and Scanlon into alliance with consequentialism Parfit follows the method inaugurated by Sidgwick who made a similar move the centre of The Methods of Ethics. Freeman suggests that this move on Parfit's part will have particular effect for Kantians since he claims that: "Parfit's consequentialist interpretation of the categorical imperative will stimulate philosophers for years to come".


Despite making the suggestion that Parfit's reading of Kant is one that is likely to be philosophically significant Freeman rejects quite central aspects of Parfit's methodology. One of the elements of Parfit's work that provoked Simon Blackburn's ire was the insistent use of Trolley problems in the work and Freeman joins with Blackburn in finding recourse to them problematic. One of the reasons Freeman gives for rejecting the use of Trolley problems is that such problems can be varied with resultant differences of appraisal. Freeman also cites Susan Wolf's reply printed in the second volume of On What Matters in which she claims that there is "no single principle" underlying our moral intuitions in Trolley type cases. In citing Wolf (and also Allen Wood) in opposition to the use of these cases, however, Freeman seems simply content to state their objections to Parfit's procedure without considering the extensive replies Parfit includes to interlocutors, something which certainly seems rather odd. Freeman also seems to rest content with claiming that if Trolley problems really are of little use in moral philosophy that this in itself undermines Parfit's 'Triple Theory' thereby implying that there are no substantive arguments given by Parfit with regard to the formulation of the 'Triple Theory' that are separable from the use of Trolley Problems and this contention, as put, seems a rather strong reading of the recourse to Trolley Problems.


Freeman's overall evaluation is strongly negative since he argues that Parfit does not address the questions as to why we should view morality axiologically or provide us with a view of what the ultimate good is that we are to optimise. However, the first point is stronger than Freeman himself ultimately puts it since he recognises a strain in Parfit's work that derives from Sidgwick and is based on the notion of a general impersonality. It may be, as Freeman says, a kind of "refined philosophical sensibility" that prefers this concentration to one on personal affairs of the sort provided by Scanlon but it is the basis of a ground for axiological conceptions of morality. In so being it is, as Freeman rightly stresses, somewhat out of key with Kantian and Scanlonian views of morality and this cuts against the sense that the basis of the three views Parfit treats can easily be reconciled. However in considering why Parfit takes it that there is an ultimate ground of unity between the views Freeman retreats again to the assertion that Parfit's argument substantively depends on an inductive generalisation from the consideration of Trolley problems and this argument is one I think over-states the importance of the Trolley problems Parfit considers.  


It is a separate problem and a better point to argue that Parfit is never specific about the general good that is to be optimised though it seems to me that part of the basis of this general good is to be found in the view of objective reasons that Parfit defends and which Freeman fails to challenge. Freeman concludes his review with a statement to the effect that Sidgwick's syncretic project has been brought to a point by Parfit that ensures it has a greater range than even Sidgwick would have thought possible. Whilst this might be true the grounds of the difficulty with the 'Triple Theory' cannot simply reside within normative ethics alone but must also be grounded on the account of the "objectivity" of ethics that Parfit articulates, an account that Parfit himself presents as importantly in tension with the kind of Rawlsian view that Freeman himself defends and to which therefore Freeman should have taken time to respond in his review.

Rawls and Practical Reason

In my last posting on Rawls I looked at the account of the "thin" theory of the good with which Chapter VII of A Theory of Justice opens. In this posting, by contrast, I'm going to set out to provide a summary of the work in sections 63-5 of Theory where, effectively, Rawls provides a general description of practical reason. By saying this is a general description of practical reason I don't mean to suggest that it is any more, though, than a structure of deliberation that fits something like the overall task of indicating how end-oriented rationality is to be seen. Thus it is far from equivalent to a Kantian picture of pure practical reason, providing something more like a prolegomena of ground that would have been covered if Kant had described in sufficient detail how hypothetical imperatives work.


Rawls opens section 63 by stating that he has, up to this point in the chapter, only discussed the first stages of the definition of good in which no questions were asked as yet about the rationality of the ends taken as given. However we do often inquire into the rationality of ends (equated here with 'desires') and this is necessary if the account of the good is to be fit for the theory of justice. In making these claims Rawls draws explicitly on the American Idealist thinker Josiah Royce and his view of a person. Royce is said by Rawls to treat persons as human lives ordered according to a plan. When the plan is a "good" one then the person's conception of his good is rational. 


Two conditions for this conception of a rational plan of life are next added, to the effect that such a plan has to be consistent with the principles of rational choice applied to the relevant features of the person's situation and their plan has to be chosen with "full deliberative rationality", a notion left vague in section 63 but the subject-matter of section 64. Finally, a person's interests and aims are rational "if and only if" they are to encouraged and provided for by the plan rational to that person. Before discussing the principles of rational choice Rawls first expands upon the conception of a rational plan. Plans vary for individuals in relation to endowments and circumstances, involve provision over time and include a notion of postponement as one of the elements of rational choice. In a general sense a plan is something like a "hierarchy" of sub-plans involving often implicit commitments in terms of prioritisation. A plan incorporates some sense of the primary goods and a sense of scheduling. 


After setting out this generic picture of a "plan" Rawls turns next to principles of rational choice (though, with the notion of postponement, he has already stated one). The first principle is that of "effective means" which holds that we are to adopt the alternative, assuming there are alternatives available for realising a given end, which realises it in the "best" way. Otherwise put, with the "least expenditure of means". The second principle is that one plan is to be preferred to another if its execution would achieve all of the desired aims of the other plan and one or more aims in addition. This is a principle Rawls terms that of "inclusiveness". The third principle is that of the "greater likelihood" which favours a plan that makes it probable that ends will be realised whilst other aims are not less likely to be attained. These first three principles apply most obviously to short-term plans.


Rawls now moves on to long-term plans including the longest term plan of all, what one should do with one's life. The principle of inclusiveness has application also with regard to this as do the others already listed. The discussion of the principle of inclusiveness with regard to long-term plans is, however, more complex than that of the others since future desires and orientations are not evident to us now. This is why Rawls mentions here for the first time the notion of the Aristotelian Principle to which he devotes the whole of section 65 but which here is simply specified as saying that we have a higher-order desire to follow the principle of inclusiveness. A more comprehensive plan involves more complex combination of abilities and the Aristotelian Principle is that "other things being equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realised capacities", an enjoyment that increases the more the capacity is realised. This shows why we enjoy an activity the more proficient we become at it.


The three principles first given are what Rawls terms "counting principles" and alone they are insufficient, he adds, to order plans. This is one reason why there is appeal often made to principles of maximisation as a way of definitely solving such a problem of ordering. In contrast to such an appeal Rawls next follows Henry Sidgwick in developing an idea of deliberative rationality. On this view: "An individual's good is the hypothetical composition of impulsive forces that results from deliberative reflection meeting certain conditions". So a rational plan is one that would be picked out following principles of rational deliberation when the agent reviewed what it would be like to realise these plans. 


The situation in which this conception is laid out is, however, highly idealised since it assumes that the best plan for an individual would be one adopted in the light of full information, something which is never given. So the agent has to make do with the information that is given and is fallible. The process of such deliberation is governed also by the formal rule that specifies its range of operation when Rawls adds that reflection should continue up to the point that benefits from improving the plan come to be out-weighed by the costs of further deliberation. Further Rawls builds in a "realistic" assumption to the effect that different individuals will value the process of deliberation in different degrees.


One of the points involved in such deliberation is consideration of the genesis of wants since this often teaches us which desires are most strongly felt. The principle of postponement also counsels us to leave our options open in cases where this is possible. A further principle that affects deliberation is that of continuity in the sense that the plan is one we take to have a unity over time. Similarly we are to assume the advantages of rising expectations with regard to the plan as time advances. This latter point assumes that a characteristic of a rational plan is that it is not discarded subsequently. This leads Rawls to the view that: "the guiding principle [is] that a rational individual is always to act so that he need never blame himself no matter how his plans finally work out". This is described later as a principle of responsibility to self.The principle of responsibility to self is subsequently described by Rawls as resembling a principle of right. It applies in the original position so that the parties involved in it would not accept a conception of justice that would surely later lead to self-reproach. 


Section 65 concerns the "Aristotelian Principle" but Rawls opens this section with a discussion of what he terms some "general facts". These include the broad features of desires and needs as affected by physiological and other circumstances, such as maturation, growth and social interdependency. Goods include such things as friendship and meaningful work and they involve social interdependency as achieving them often requires contributions from others.


The Aristotelian Principle is added to these points as indicative of a sense of enjoyment that is involved in exercising our faculties and that, of two activities we do equally well, the one that draws on a larger repertoire of activities is preferred. The Aristotelian Principle thus includes a form of the principle of inclusiveness but it is also an important principle of motivation. It also includes recognition of the shift that occurs over time as increasing complexity is favoured in objects of attention. Learning, for example, which is often difficult, is nonetheless accompanied by satisfaction as tasks are met. There is an upper limit of difficulty and an equilibrium state is one where the effort and the satisfaction balance one another.


Rawls describes the Aristotelian Principle as a "natural fact" and concludes from this that it is rational to realise and train mature capacities. It states, however, only a tendency and not an invariable principle of choice but place has to be left in the design of social institutions for its operation. It is indeterminate in terms of the specific activities any one may prefer but shows that people, as they concentrate on an activity tend to become more proficient with regard to it and take pleasure in this increasing proficiency. But it is not the case that all activities are related to in similar ways which is why routine is favoured for simpler activities.


Rawls also terms the Aristotelian Principle a "deep psychological fact" that is part of the background that regulates considered judgments of value. It is also a principle that Rawls assumes connects to the primary good of self-respect.

Parfit and Kant on Respect and Value (II)

Chapter 10 of On What Matters is officially entitled "respect and value", a topic that was previously treated by Parfit in Chapter 6 of Climbing the Mountain which I responded to here. However, in the published form of On What Matters, Parfit has combined this discussion with that of the "greatest good", a topic that was given a separate chapter in Climbing the Mountain and which, when combined with the account of respect and value, makes this chapter a complicated one to evaluate. The previous account of the "greatest good" was given extended treatment in an earlier posting. 


The chapter opens with a description of Kant's contention that there is a respect requirement related to the Formula of Humanity that indicates that this requirement is not action-guiding. In the process of making this statement Parfit rejects Allen Wood's conception that respect is here to be viewed as an "expressive" notion. Whilst Wood's notion is problematic I am not convinced by Parfit's argument against it which appears to consist in the claim that the respect requirement is not sufficient to demarcate wrong-making characteristics. The respect requirement is, I would think, part of a "clue" to the meaning Kant is giving to "humanity" in the Formula of Humanity.


One of the problems here is that Parfit does not attempt to locate a specifically Kantian notion of rational nature as, when he responds to Wood, he takes it that the notion of rational nature has no specific content. The other problem is that he simply follows Wood in rejecting certain of Kant's specific claims in practical ethics as misapplications of Kantian normative principles without saying enough about the ways in which such misapplications can arise. 


Parfit's object here, is, however, different from the one that would be attained by focusing on the questions I have just mentioned. The object is, as the chapter title suggests, to look at the relationship between Kant's notion of "respect" and an account of "value" and when the subject of "value" enters the chapter Parfit becomes more interesting. Kant makes the claim that there is a "dignity" that attaches to humanity that is distinct from "price" and Parfit connects this point to the Rawlsian conception that the right is prior to the good. However, the argument that Parfit then proceeds to develop does not go in the direction it does for Rawls.


Parfit begins his response to the Kantian claim about "dignity" and the associated notion of the priority of the right by introducing distinctions of his own. Many things are, Parfit tells us, "good or bad" in a reason-implying sense. What this means is spelled out as follows: "Such things have certain kinds of properties or features that would, in some situations, give us or others reason to respond to these things in certain ways". Now, some of these things have a "value" that is one that we think should be promoted and this is typically how happiness and the negation of suffering have been approached. In such a situation, however, it is "these things, not their value, that we have reasons to promote".


The promotion in question refers, on Parfit's conception, to "events", meaning acts and states of affairs. Events are good to Parfit both as means and as ends in themselves and this is part of the overall view that he terms "actualism". According to "actualism" as Parfit conceives of it, events are good as ends when the appropriate features are "intrinsic" to them but only as means when the features in question are only brought about by them but not inherent in the acts or states of affairs themselves. On Parfit's view actualism "covers everything whose goodness is directly relevant to any decision about what we should do". Since this is so, all action-guiding requirements are described by it. This does not entail that actualism is a general theory of the good, however, since it applies only to events and other things than events are capable of being good. Since Parfit follows Thomas Scanlon in viewing "teleological" theories as those that identify intrinsic goodness with events it follows that Parfit does not view actualism as a "teleological" theory though, in stating this, Parfit adopts an eccentric usage of the term "teleological".


Having spun so much out of the kind of value that is to be promoted Parfit turns next to the kind of value that is to be respected. When there is something of this sort, on Parfit's view, it is the things in question and not their "value" that we respect (which parallels his claim concerning "promotion"). When something has the kind of value that requires respect then certain kinds of "actions and attitudes" according to Scanlon are called for. But these can vary since not everything that is worthy of respect should, simply by meeting that criterion, get treated as, for example, worthy of being preserved. However acting in ways that indicate the required respect is acting in a way that manifests a "value" that should be promoted on Parfit's view.


After having made these distinctions Parfit returns to Kant's claims about value and begins by discussing three different kinds of end that Kant appears to recognise. These three are: a) ends-to-be-produced; b) existent ends; c) ends-in-themselves. There is one feature of Parfit's listing here that is odd since the second category is assumed by him to be met by rational beings whilst the third is also so it is not clear how he distinguishes between them. The second group is also initially mentioned as something that is to be "respected" rather than "promoted" on the view of many.


Parfit's first aim in discussing Kantian claims about "value" is to suggest that Kant does recognise the conception of ends-to-be-produced. In one sense Kant clearly does since hypothetical imperatives generally concern them. However the "good will" is also related to by Parfit as an end we should, on Kantian grounds, aim for and hence try to produce. Here I think there is a confusion. In a sense it is evidently right to say that it is better to have a good will than not. However, this does not entail that the production of the good will is something that contains distinct recommendations that are separate from following the priority of the right and since that is so then describing them in a structurally teleological way does not appear appropriate. A similar point can also be made concerning Parfit's assimilation of the realm of ends to the category of ends-to-be-produced. The most striking such example of a problem with Parfit's assimilation occurs, however, with regard to the summum bonum which is referred to by Kant in the Groundwork precisely by reference to the categorical imperative and not by assumptions of any further sort (e.g. Ak. 4: 438).


Parfit reiterates his failure to recognise any specifically Kantian conception of rationality subsequently since he assimilates it first to "cleverness" and secondly simply to morality in general and he has clearly never tried to grapple with Kant's extensive discussion of reason in the Critique of Pure Reason. 


When Parfit returns to the question of the relationship between the right and the good it is after he has assimilated the claim Kant makes about the summum bonum with ends-to-be-produced. This enables Parfit to expound a specific "formula" of the "greatest good" so that everyone is enjoined to "strive to promote" a world that meets the ideal of the summum bonum. This assimilation is one that is subsequently amplified when Parfit over-rides Kant's caution with regard to the virtue of others. 


It is now that Parfit's discussion becomes particularly dense as distinctions accumulate at this point as he introduces criteria for how to describe act consequentialism, hedonistic act utilitarianism and value-based act consequentialism. If act consequentialism requires that everyone ought always to aim at whatever would best achieve "one or more common aims", then clearly hedonistic act utilitarianism specifies these aims either positively or negatively. Parfit understands, however, that the problem with these theories is that they are entirely person-neutral and the basic objection to them is that we do have and value many person-relative ends. 


The appeal to value-based act consequentialism appears in the context of Parfit's description of moral theories that are either wholly or partly value-based and value-based act consequentialism specifies that what we ought to do is whatever would make things go best (and is thus optimific). By contrast, some other moral theories assume that the notion of the "good" should be related not to the notion of "value" but instead to that of "ought". Some theories are reductionist in the sense of attempting to assimilate "value" to the "ought" or vice versa but Parfit rejects such a move citing G.E. Moore as someone for whom the "ought" could be reduced to the "good" and then citing Kant as an example of the opposite view. 


Parfit's account of Kant's view here is drawn out carefully and is worth some attention. Parfit argues that Kant uses the term "good" in an "ought-based" rather than a "value-based" sense. After making this claim Parfit returns to assessing the kind of requirement at work in his alleged formula of the greatest good. Surprisingly to most of us Parfit assimilates this view to a form of consequentialism but denies that it is a value-based form of it since it can be stated without reference to optimific language. This weakening of the consequentialist label is furthered when Parfit points out that it is no part of his conception that Kant is an "act" consequentialist, not least because reference to the "formula of the highest good" is not sufficient for Kant given the other formulas of the categorical imperative are the basis of the highest good having any chance of being attained.


Having recognised this point Parfit also indicates that this view of the summum bonum relates not merely to universal virtue but also to the happiness Kant speaks of as "deserved" since it follows from Parfit's reconstruction that it is following often rigorous rules that would best promote happiness. Parfit somewhat surprisingly assimilates this point to Sidgwick's suggestion that happiness is a second-order good. This is surprising since Kant's point about "deserved" happiness seems to be a different kind of claim than Sidgwick's given that Kant is aiming at indicating the reasons why one could assume that one had a "right" to happiness, not the basis of realistic motivations as Sidgwick is after.


Parfit now restrictively defines consequentialism to mean a "value-based" view and, given that he has defined the Kantian conception as instead "ought-based" should at this point openly state that he does not take Kant's view to be consequentialist. Instead he enters into an account of how plausible optimific views are and appears to arrive at a defence of a form of rule consequentialism based on this discussion. After going through this point Parfit returns to Kant's apparently strict view on lying and conceives Kant's claims about lying in reference to "harm". This account of "harm", like Kant's discussion of "happiness" in the summum bonum are related to his general argument about "desert" and rather than concluding the discussion in this chapter with some argument concerning consequentialism, Kant and goodness and value, Parfit instead drops a hint only that he is going to challenge the Kantian view of desert.

Parfit and Kant on the Greatest Good

In my last posting on Parfit I looked at Chapter 6 of Climbing the Mountain, a chapter that still corresponded to part of the second of his 2002 lectures. In this posting I am moving on to Chapter 7 of Climbing the Mountain, a chapter that offers material that is not found in the second of the 2002 lectures. 


Chapter 7 is concerned with the notion of the "greatest good" and enlists Kant in order to discuss it. Following Kant's discussions in the Critique of Practical Reason Parfit pulls out what he terms the "formula of the greatest good" which, in Parfit's formulation, reads: "everyone ought always to strive to promote a world of universal virtue and deserved happiness". The relation between virtue and happiness was explicitly set forth in the dialectic of the Critique of Practical Reason as a way of seeing that "the good" is not homogeneous since it encompasses matters of real normative import and a demand of inclination. In the Critique of Practical Reason this leads to Kant formulating what he terms there an "antinomy" and which is resolved only by means of utilising the practical postulates. 


Parfit's discussion abstracts from the account of practical postulates and the dialectic between the two elements of "the good" in order to present the "formula" as stating a goal we should aim to achieve. However this aim is one that it is necessary that Parfit distinguish from the classic one attributed to hedonistic act utilitarianism (HAU). The view of HAU concerns the maximisation of happiness and is understood by Parfit as "wholly telic" in concentrating entirely on promotion of a common end or aim. Some telic theories are also described by Parfit as "value-based" in the sense that they appeal to claims about the reason-involving goodness of what they tell us to achieve. This reference to an impartial reason-involving sense is built into Parfit's conception of "consequentialism". 


Parfit also discusses the relationship between claims about what is good and what we ought morally to do distinguishing between theories that take "the good" to be fundamental and define what ought to be done in terms of it on the one hand from those that take the conception of moral obligatoriness to be fundamental and derive the sense of the good from it. Parfit affirms, however, a different view according to which neither of these terms is taken to be fundamental and takes them to be independent of each other. In taking such a stance, however, Parfit is departing from Kant as he goes on to acknowledge, since Kant views the notion of the "good" as determined by the moral law as he clearly states in the Critique of Practical Reason. This commitment of Kant to the priority of the right over the good is central to his resistance to consequentialism and is of no small importance.


Rather than addressing this point immediately Parfit prefers instead to look at some of Kant's other claims concerning goodness. So, for example, Kant makes the statement, at the very beginning of the Groundwork, to the effect that good wills have a form of goodness that is higher than all other kinds. Parfit converts this claim, following the logic of the argument of the first part of the Groundwork, into the classic formulation that we ought to try to have wills that are dutiful. 


After presenting these two opening moves Parfit goes on to look at the claim with which he opened the chapter, to wit, that everyone ought to strive to promote the greatest good, a view based on the conception of the summum bonum. The point of reintroducing reference to this claim is to compare it now with the act consequentialist view that everyone ought always to try to produce the greatest amount of good. As Parfit states, it may seem that the act consequentialist view is close to what Kant is after when Kant discusses the greatest good. However since Kant's claim concerning the greatest good is one that can be translated back into the apparently more sober point concerning a world of universal virtue and deserved happiness, then it follows that Kant's conception, unlike that of the act consequentialist, is not a value-based view. Kant's view is ought-based, not value-based, and so has a different foundation to the act consequentialist view despite surface similarities of formulation.


Having distinguished Kant's view from that of the act consequentialists Parfit goes on to look at the relationship between Kant's claims about the greatest good and the formulas of universal law and humanity. It is clear from the pre-eminent status of the appeals to the other formulas that it is by following the moral law, understood as formulated in them, that the promotion of the greatest good will be best followed according to Kant. This seems an unexceptionable claim but Parfit conjoins to it the view that Kant is committed also to the suggestion that following the moral law is sufficient to give the happiness that their virtue would make them deserve and this is a clear error on Parfit's part. Kant makes no such assumption as this but only presents the much weaker claim that following the moral law would make one worthy of happiness, not that it will be sufficient to enable this happiness.


The reason why Parfit makes this mistake is due to the kind of concentration he has on happiness. Parfit is on sounder ground when he reports Sidgwick's remark that happiness is best taken as a second-order rather than a first-order end since taking it as a first-order end will often be self-defeating. This suggestion is mixed up by Parfit with an understanding of Kant's claim concerning worthiness to be happy but Kant is making no suggestion here of taking happiness to be an end in adopting the moral law (even a second-order end). Rather Kant is making the quite different point that it is only in making the moral law our chief guide in action that we become worthy of receipt of happiness, a point quite different to Sidgwick's.


Parfit is much more concerned with Sidgwick's claim than with Kant's quite different one and relates Sidgwick's claim to the need to follow the precepts of common sense morality (at least for the most part). Having made this point concerning the sense in which adopting happiness is not a first end requirement Parfit turns to assessing the claim bound up with this one concerning common sense morality. One way of understanding the connection between common sense morality and the promotion of happiness is by means of what Parfit terms the "marginalist" view. On this view we decide how much good an act would do by determining what difference it would make. So: "the good that some act would do is the amount by which, if this act were done, things would go better than they would have gone if this act had not been done".


This "marginalist" view can, however, imply some very implausible things. So if, for example, the actions of four people coordinated together are sufficient to save a group of others then five people undertaking this action is superfluous and if five people do join it would appear to follow that none of the five saved the lives in question. In order to avoid this consequence, we can appeal to the claim that it is what people do in conjunction that produces the right outcomes, a claim that Parfit terms the "share of the total view" so that "when some group of people together produce some good effect, the good that each person does is this person's share of the total good".


The "share of the total view" avoids the implausible consequence of the "marginalist" view and leads to ignoring the specific effects of particular actions in focusing instead on the way that actions accumulate to produce results. As Parfit mentions Hume shared a similar view, though Hume's conception is even wider in scope. Hume's view is termed by Parfit the "whole scheme view" and asks us to look beyond the specific acts that may, considered alone, have bad effects to the set of acts that are done at different times or by different people in order to assess the best effects. The acts that, considered in this set manner, have such effects are then the ones that we should regard as doing the most good. The appeal of referring to a view such as Hume's for Parfit is that it leads away from act consequentialism towards grounds for accepting general rules in accordance with their overall effects.


After making these claims, claims that require a more general notion of consequentialism than is involved in act consequentialism, Parfit makes a parallel move with regard to Kant. In considering Kant's writings concerning lying Parfit emphasises the point that Kant views lying as undermining humanity in making the source of right "unusable". This point, which would require sustained attention to the role of the discussion of lying (and promising) in Kant's philosophy of right, is used by Parfit to make the more minimal point that it appears that Kant's response to lying is part of a commitment on Kant's part to rejecting things that cause "harm" (a claim that can only be sustained with an unusually broad sense of "harm" being given here). 


Subsequently to producing this reading of Kant's view of lying Parfit goes on to suggest a further way of aligning Kant's view with that of a form of consequentialism when he cites some fragments of Kant's in a rather tendentious way. In a lecture of 1778 Kant speaks of worthiness to be happy as consisting in the practical agreement of our actions with the idea of universal happiness (Ak. 28: 377). This is viewed by Parfit as equivalent to a form of hedonistic act utilitarianism but what is missed by Parfit when he makes this claim is any account of the status of "ideas" in Kant's practical philosophy. Absent this the parallel with utilitarianism is plausible but once it is present it shows that Kant is far from taking as an actual consequence of virtuous action an increase in overall happiness.


Parfit is concentrated on viewing the ideal world that Kant understands through the summum bonum as stating a single ultimate end rather than aligning two distinct forms of good and also being placed in a dialectical situation precisely due to the lack of congruence between these two forms of good. Parfit does, in conclusion, understand that the reference to the summum bonum includes a conception of desert that is distinct from the formulas of the categorical imperative. Parfit's chapter unexpectedly breaks off however, just after he  has stated he will show Kant's view of desert to be mistaken.


This chapter introduces new material and the account of the greatest good in Kant provides Parfit with opportunities to attempt a form of assimilation of Kant's view to consequentialist ones but only due to failing to refer back again to the centrality of the priority of the right over the good that Parfit cited earlier in the chapter. 

Mark Schroeder's Review of Parfit

Another person has managed to already review the whole of On What Matters and, unlike Simon Blackburn, has managed the considerable feat of addressing a number of its intellectual claims and, although disagreeing with the book on important matters, treated it with some considerable respect. This person, whose review is an admirable example of careful prose, is Mark Schroeder. 


Schroeder's review is published in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and shows some considerable acuity in addressing the difficult question as to why Parfit chose to publish such a long and difficult to engage with book as On What Matters. Schroeder presents a compelling engagement with the "convergence thesis" in normative ethics that Parts 2 and 3 of the book are concerned with where Parfit seeks to reconcile Kantian, contractualist and consequentialist views of the terrain. Importantly, Schroeder points out that the convergence theory, whilst worth attention strictly within the limits of normative ethics itself also appears to presuppose views concerning reason that not all the normative theories in question do share and so is perhaps less convincing as a form of convergence than Parfit seems to think.


Schroeder also treats Part 6 of On What Matters to some engaged comment bringing out again why the accounts of normativity involved there are regarded by Parfit as part of the same project whilst also calling into question the commitments involved in assuming them to be part of the same project as the earlier account of normative ethics. Schroeder both expresses scepticism about the all-inclusive view of the terrain Parfit has attempted in the book whilst also showing, by deft connection back to Reasons and Persons how Parfit's view of 'moral progress' is the basis of this all-inclusive view. Schroeder also treats the comparisons that have been made between On What Matters and Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics to some careful attention indicating ways in which Sidgwick's version of a convergence thesis rests, in many respects, on different argumentative ground to Parfit's. 


Unfortunately Schroeder makes little comment on the first part of On What Matters with which I have been engaged thus far in the commentary on this blog though I think implications for its treatment of reasons is pretty clear from things Schroeder does say. This review of Schroeder's is almost a model of  what it means to disagree philosophically whilst indicating respect for the thinker in question. Perhaps Simon Blackburn will read it, one can only hope!

Related articles

• Simon Blackburn's Review of Parfit (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit on Moral Concepts (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Simon Blackburn's Review of Parfit (II) (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit, Smith and the "Dualism of Practical Reason" (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit, Sidgwick and Kant (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Derek Parfit and What Matters (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit on Objective Theories of Reasons (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Goodness and "Subjective" Theories of Reasons (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit's "Incoherence Argument" (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit's "All or None" Argument (kantinternational.blogspot.com)

Parfit, Smith and the "Dualism of Practical Reason"

Parfit has a habit of referring to Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics as a "great, drab book" though the use of the term "drab" applies to some of Parfit's own discussion in Part 1 of On What Matters as Chapter 5 adds very little to the discussion of Chapter 4. Due to this I am turning in this posting to a response to Chapter 6 in which Parfit addresses the theme of the "dualism of practical reason", a topic first raised by Sidgwick.


This topic of the "dualism of practical reason" concerned, for Sidgwick, the contrast between rational claims of impartial reasons for action and rational egoistic claims. It is also stated by Parfit in more directly moral terms as a conflict between duty and self-interest. Sidgwick took the contrast between these two types of reason or moral claim to be a serious problem as he appeared not able to find some neutral third view that allowed for adjudication between their claims. Parfit describes the presence of this problem in Sidgwick as due to Sidgwick believing that there are here two viewpoints. Parfit presents an account of why we should reject the two viewpoints position and this account has, in turn, been critically assessed by Michael Smith.


Parfit's reply to the conception of "two viewpoints" appeals to two main claims. The first is that when we are trying to decide what to do, we should, according to Parfit, ask this question "from our actual point of view" not from an "imagined" impartial point of view. We don't need, says Parfit, to compare the contrast between partial and impartial reasons from a third, neutral point of view as our actual, present point of view is sufficient. What makes it sufficient? After all, according to Sidgwick, such a "present" point of view seems to presuppose the egoistic conception and thus merely beg the question between partiality and impartiality. However, Parfit denies this claim pointing out that we can, and often do, prefer an "impartial" standpoint  in actuality rather than defaulting automatically to an egoistic standpoint. Further, "we have such impartial reasons even when our actual point of view is not impartial". 


Now Chapter 6 does not resolve the "dualism of practical reason" though it is evident that Parfit is aiming to resolve it later. One of the ways it is intended to resolve it is by reference to a notion of "goodness" that Parfit mobilises and which was mentioned already back in Chapter 2. This is "goodness" in the "reason-implying sense" which implies that that there are "certain kinds of facts" about something's nature or properties that would, at least in certain situations, give us strong reasons to respond to it with the appropriate pro-attitude. However, this kind of goodness was contrasted, already in Chapter 2, with the notion of "goodness-for" which indicated something as "good" in relation to our sense of our well-being.


This contrast between two types of "goodness" is related by Michael Smith to a broad characterisation of Parfit as a "consequentialist" where all that Smith means by this is that Parfit thinks that "we can analyse all facts about what we have reason to do in terms of facts about the value of the outcomes of the things that we can do".  This is described by Smith as a "weak" sense of "consequentialism" as it makes no assumptions at all about what is of value including making no assumption to the effect that all values are "impartial". Smith proposes that this "weak" sense of "consequentialism" is the right one by which to characterise Parfit's general view since, in making no such specific assumption about "value" it permits the distinction between two types of "goodness" that Parfit has made in Chapter 2.


However, Smith's challenge now asserts itself, as, in saying that the "weak" sense of "consequentialism", added to the two senses of "goodness", ensures that Parfit's view replicates the "dualism of practical reason". Given the distinction between the two types of goodness it appears that there exists precisely the incommensurability that bothered Sidgwick so that there is not available any means of resolution between the two "viewpoints" they appear to represent.


Now, just on the level of Chapter 6 alone, it is evident that Parfit provides no "resolution" of the "dualism of practical reason". However, there are ways in which he attempts to mitigate it and it is worth reviewing these to see if they help to reduce the difference of "viewpoint" that, on Smith's account, resurfaces in Parfit's characterisation so widely that we have here merely another way of stating the "dualism of practical reason". Well, firstly, as we saw, Parfit takes it that there is no need to search for a "neutral", third, point of view separate from the "standpoints" assumed to exist by Sidgwick. The reason for this is that Parfit argues that our "actual" reasons will be sufficient, something that Smith finds mysterious. Why does Parfit assume that this appeal to "actual" reasons helps at all?


The basic ground for this appeal to "actual" reasons is simply that the situation in which the distinction between partial and impartial reasons manifests itself for us as one in which we have some kind of dilemma is also one in which "reasons" are present in the "facts" in question. This appears then to invoke the "weak" sense of "consequentialism" Smith mentioned as a way of indicating that the "situation" of the judgment is one that speaks to us through the analysis that the "consequentialist" assumption would make. Why does this not, however, simply beg the question against the egoistic view, the one at work in "goodness-for" being assessed as important?


One of the reasons why Parfit seems to think not is due to the next way he attempts to mitigate the conflict which is through introducing "close ties" between ourselves and others, ties that involve us taking the well-being of some others to have special importance. This helps to show that it is not evidently true that the "actual" standpoint has to be one in which egoistic reasons are taken to be supreme but how does that help with the difference between the two types of "goodness"? Perhaps it indicates that what is "good-for" me may include some things that are also "good" in the other, "reason-implying" sense so that these two forms of "goodness" need not be seen, as Smith assumes, as necessarily divergent from each other. This may produce odd results as when we take it to be "good-for" us to promote the interests of someone else above our own interests but isn't this common with, for example, parents in relation to children? This kind of example helps to show that "goodness-for" is not necessarily equivalent to egoistic goodness and so that Parfit's difference between kinds of "goodness" is not as obviously as Smith assumes a replica of the "dualism of practical reason" in other terms.


Parfit's general strategy up to this point in the book has been to try to defend the conception that the "dualism of practical reason" can be defeated by showing that reasons are such that we can, and do, respond to features of "intentional objects" in a way that manifests our concern with their intrinsic properties. I have suggested that most of his arguments to show this have failed as he works with dual assumptions about the divide between "subjective" and "objective" reasons that cut against his arguments. On the one hand he takes Kantian views about reason to be "subjective" and yet, on the other hand, most of his arguments against the "subjective" view of reasons turn on appeals to claims about desire-based reasons (precisely not applicable to Kantian views). As a result Parfit conflates Humean and Kantian views about reasons and thereby does justice to neither. 


However, whilst this general strategy is problematic the desire to locate a view of reason that enables practical reason to be understood in such a way that the move beyond partial reasons to universal ones can be made is commendable and in line with a Kantian impulse. When Parfit comprehends the "two" types of "goodness" in the way he does it is not obvious to me, as it seems to be to Smith, that he thereby simply replicates Sidgwick's dualism. Whether he can resolve the "dualism" turns precisely on how he goes on to comprehend the rational structure of morality and Chapter 6 just starts the turn towards this task. It is from this point on that we should evaluate the success or otherwise of the book.

Parfit, Sidgwick and Kant

The "preface" to On What Matters is a lively affair in which Parfit lays out his indebtedness to other philosophers, focusing particularly upon Henry Sidgwick and Kant. The two thinkers are, however, given strikingly different treatments in the "preface". For, whilst Kant is described as "the greatest moral philosopher since the Greeks", Sidgwick is still given an overwhelming positive response in the "preface" whilst the references to Kant are invariably ones that seek to express disquiet.


The differences in reaction to Kant and Sidgwick on Parfit's part are instructive. Whilst Sidgwick is defended from the charge Parfit takes to be most usual (namely that he is "boring"), Kant is rather indicted for the charge that Parfit assumes most common (that he is "maddening"). Part of the reason for this difference is certainly cultural since Parfit expresses admiration for the distinctive modesty Sidgwick has with regard to his own achievements and disquiet with the tone of Kant, by contrast, who is taken to have the "maddening" characteristic of assuming he has substantive achievements to speak of in philosophy. The reason I take this to be, at least partly, a "cultural" matter is because of the overwhelming preference in UK culture for "modesty" of demeanour and dislike of anyone who takes themselves to people of achievement (and should, therefore, be "taken down a peg or two"). It is, by contrast, rare to find this kind of attitude in US culture (perhaps, though, US academia is, to a certain degree, infected with it). Just as Kant's tone jars with Parfit, so this element of UK general attitudes jars with me when it comes to intellectual matters.


Some of Parfit's citations from Sidgwick, however, also indicate another side to a reason for temperamental liking for him on Parfit's part. It is clearly brought out by some of the passages of Sidgwick that Parfit chooses to give that Sidgwick was a depressed and often troubled man, albeit one that was perennially dissatisfied with his own "answers" in philosophy as a consequence. Again, the drama of this self-doubt has a resonance in contemporary culture of a sort that is, perhaps oddly, related to admiration for "tortured geniuses". Related, in the sense that, the "torture" is what is admired rather than the "genius".


Another element of Partif's liking of Sidgwick that is different from that already focused on is his liking for the "precision" that Sidgwick is concerned with, a view of Sidgwick that clearly resonates with the Rawlsian conception that the Methods of Ethics is essentially the beginning of modern academic moral philosophy. In relation to praising this "precision" it is, however, odd that Parfit does not bother with page numbers when he cites the Methods of Ethics though he may have regarded this as superfluous in a "preface". 


A further element of Parfit's liking for Sidgwick is perhaps the most attractive element of it and this is his citing of Sidgwick's ironical humour as when he cites Sidgwick's quick, and somewhat devastating, criticism of Bradley. This element of Sidgwick's style is nicely emphasised here and is used well to correct the conception of Sidgwick that views him in a simply bad sense as a "Victorian". (For a more extended corrective of this conception of Sidgwick see also Schneewind's book on Sidgwick.)


However, returning to the more important philosophical point that Parfit takes to be gained from reading Sidgwick, the impress of Sidgwick's style is argued to be one that consists primarily in a form of serious and continuous qualification of his own claims. This point leads Parfit to suggest that the first reading of Methods of Ethics is frequently the worst since at this point we rarely see what is exceptional in its arguments, distracted as we are by these qualifications. Parfit, however, even more importantly, takes it that Sidgwick does not make "many" mistakes in moral philosophy and this is the reason why he assumes that the Methods of Ethics is a book "it would be best for everyone interested in ethics to read, remember, and be able to assume that others have read". There is, as we shall see, no similar commendation of either Kant or of any of his works in moral philosophy.


When Parfit turns to Kant it is primarily the Groundwork he has in mind and this may be part of the problem with the image he has of Kant. It is not that the Groundwork is not an important work but to take it to be the key statement of Kant's ethics is somewhat surprising since it is pretty clear that Kant never expected it to be received in this way. The Critique of Practical Reason has, however, received and continues to receive, significantly less attention in Anglo-American contexts and the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant's culminating work in practical philosophy, is only just beginning to be read. Given these facts it is not that surprising that Parfit takes his prime image of Kant from the Groundwork though it is distorting nonetheless.


Just as Parfit claims we are unlikely to gauge the scope of the Methods of Ethics on our first reading, so, by contrast, he argues that our first encounter with the Groundwork is rather likely to be better than later. The reason for this contrast is that the qualifications we have to make to Kant are less obvious to us when we begin reading the Groundwork for the first time and become more evident to us over time. However, this attitude of Parfit's towards the Groundwork is, again, part of a cultural response to Kant that is shared with many important readers of Kant such as Kemp Smith and Onora O'Neill since Parfit assumes he understands what it is to be "clear" in philosophy and, on the basis of this assumption, can attack Kant for "lack" of clarity.


This assumption concerning "clarity" seems to touch most particularly on the view that it consists in using technical terms only in one main sense though which major philosopher can be said to have always done this is something that is at least "unclear" to me. Alongside it is the "maddening" view that when Kant speaks of "autonomy" he doesn't mean I can simply do as I like or accept laws because I feel like it. The failure of a contemporary philosopher of Parfit's stature to gauge the sense of Kantian autonomy is sadly typical.


Parfit's basic suggestion is that he is, however, in temperament more akin to the "extremist" Kant than to the "moderate" Sidgwick and that, due to this, he has worked to find the latter more congenial. This argument is less obvious than Parfit suggests though it is true that many of his arguments in the past have been thought to up-set "common sense" rather more than Sidgwick (or Kant come to that) might have liked. These opening, somewhat conversational points, have two effects. One is to show that Parfit, in explicitly adopting Sidgwick and Kant as his mentors has indeed set out, as Scheffler's "introduction" led us to expect, to relate consequentialism and Kantian thought to each other but they also reveal the "academic" style of Sidgwick to be much more formative of Partif's approach and perhaps this formation is more than stylistic.

Related articles

• Derek Parfit and What Matters (kantinternational.blogspot.com)

Rawls' Two Principles of Justice

The bulk of Chapter 2 of A Theory of Justice is taken up with discussion of Rawls' two principles of justice. The two principles are, however, refined over the course of the discussion that Rawls has of them. So, when they are first introduced in section 11 it is only in a provisional and tentative form, with a revision emerging of the second principle already in section 13 and the final version of the two principles not being given until section 46, which is in Chapter 5! It is also not until section 39, also in Chapter 5, that Rawls gives a fuller defence of the priority of the first principle over the second one. 


With all these provisos in place I intend in this posting to discuss the preliminary account of the two principles in sections 11-13, from the first tentative formulation to the revision of the second principle in the latter section. The first statement of the two principles in section 11 is as follows:


"First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.
Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all."


So the first principle specifies an equality of access to basic liberties and the second, more complicated principle, refers to two limitations on inequality, the first limitation concerning a form of recognition of prudential concerns and the second referring to openness of offices. Rawls immediately indicates, however, that the second principle is ambiguously formulated which is why it becomes necessary to determine the sense of the principle more carefully, leading to its reformulation in section 13.


The principles are principles of social justice and are meant to apply to the "basic structure" of society as indicated in  section 10. The formulation of the principles helps, however, to understand the nature of this "basic structure" somewhat more fully as the two principles show that this structure has distinguishable parts as some elements of it are concerned with liberties and others with inequalities. The basic liberties specified by the first principle are said to be given in a "list" and whilst some parts of this list are standard (freedom of speech and assembly for instance), others are rather more expansive and would take a lot more working out than is just given by listing them (such as freedom from "psychological oppression"). 


The second principle has caused much wider debate and controversy than the first despite the fact, as just indicated, that the first refers to a list of liberties that are far from all standard or clearly formulated. The second principle applies to distribution of income and wealth and to "the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and responsibility". It is this reference to "differences in authority and responsibility" that is the first clue to how part of the second principle will subsequently be labelled the "difference principle".  The second part of the second principle indicating the openness of offices is also indicated by Rawls to be the means of application of the second principle suggesting that the division of the two parts of its formulation is due to the first part defining a general meaning or sense of the principle whilst the second part defines its application, a suggestion we will have to further test.


The principles are also given in a serial order with the suggestion that the first principle is prior to the second and hence that justifying the ordering of the principles will be Rawls' way of responding to intuitionist scepticism. The point of this ordering is to say that violation of the equal provision of liberties cannot be compensated for by means of greater social or economic advantages (a kind of riposte to the Leninist view that increases of equality make up for deprivation of freedoms). However, adding to questions about the understanding of the first principle is Rawls' point that it is possible for the basic liberties to conflict with each other and, due to this point, it turns out that none of the specific basic liberties is absolute. Nothing is said, however, about rules for priority in relation to such clashes of basic liberties. Further, other liberties which are generally recognised are not to be understood on Rawls' construal as "basic" and this includes freedom of contract, at least as understood by "the doctrine of laissez-faire". This restriction on liberties that indicates some are not "basic" requires further argument.


Rawls also suggests that the two principles are a special case of a "more general conception of justice" and this more general conception is specified as follows:


"All social values-liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect-are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage."


This "general" conception is still defined in social terms so is perhaps the general principle of social justice as far as Rawls is concerned and it is, noticeably, defined in egalitarian form. It still also contains the prudential reference that was noted above to be part of the second principle. The notion of injustice also emerges in a suitably general form once we have this formulation as indicative of the presence of inequalities that do not have general benefit. The vagueness of the formulation requires Rawls to begin the refinement of the position up to this point.


The beginning of this refinement is to introduce the notion of "primary goods" that are distributed by the "basic structure" of society and are indicated by Rawls to be "things that every rational man is presumed to want". Note the great generality of this description. However, as warned back in section 9, Rawls proceeds by simplifying assumptions and here the assumption is that there are "chief" primary goods (the primary "primary goods") and they are "rights, liberties, and opportunities, and income and wealth" although a promissory note is indicated that in the third part of the work self-respect will also emerge as having a central place.


The point about the "chief" primary goods is that they are social in character and distinct from such "natural" primary goods as health as the latter are not so directly under the control of the basic structure (although provision of means to ensure good health as an equally available primary good surely does relate to matters over which the "basic structure" has control). 


Having introduced the notion of social primary goods Rawls next asks us to imagine an initial arrangement where all these goods were equally distributed. The question in relation to this situation is whether there are means of ensuring that there are improvements for all that could be made upon it. Given the lexical priority of the two principles this could not involve violations of the first principle being accepted in return for improvements in general equality but there is nothing to prevent acceptance of some forms of inequality if they would render the liberties of the first principle more generally available in practice. 


Interestingly, Amartya Sen, in his recent book The Idea of Justice has objected to the priority given to the first principle on the basis of its alleged extremity but Rawls already indicates in section 11 that he understands that the initial response to the lexical priority of the first principle might take this form and he refers forward again to section 82, part of the very last chapter of the book (Chapter IX) where a reply is allegedly given to this type of objection.


Given that the two principles of justice are meant to apply to the "basic structure" they are institutional principles. So the basic liberties define "public rules" and the reference to "persons" is meant to indicate "representative persons". The description of "persons" in this way has particular importance in relation to the second principle as Rawls takes it to mean that it is possible (and, presumably, desirable) to "assign an expectation of well-being to representative individuals". This notion is one that evidently requires a lot more work, particularly given its general association with utilitarianism. However, the reference to "representative individuals" is also meant to rule out application of the principle to specific cases as might well be required by acts of charity (rather than justice). This is part of the limitation on the scope of intuition which tends to relate much more to individuals in a specifically particular rather than a representative sense.


The understanding of the second principle requires, however, much more deliberate attention and Rawls begins to provide this in section 12 when he addresses different interpretations of the second principle. The ambiguities he recognised in the formulation of the second principle lead him to consider possible interpretations of what could be meant by both the prudential reference of the second principle and by the notion of openness of offices. The notion of openness of offices is understood to be capable of being understood either as requiring that "careers are open to talents" or that there is "equality of fair opportunity". Similarly the prudential reference to "everyone's advantage" could produce either a principle of efficiency or a difference principle.


Rawls tabulates these possibilities so that a combination of the openness to offices principle understood as openness to talents with the principle of efficiency would produce a system of "natural liberty". By contrast, if the principle of careers open to talents was combined with the difference principle we would have a "natural aristocracy". By contrast, the principle of equality of fair opportunity, if combined with the principle of efficiency would give "liberal equality" and, if combined with the difference principle, would give "democratic equality".


The combination that Rawls prefers is that of equality of fair opportunity with the difference principle, this is the formulation of the second principle that he wants us to accept. However, whilst this is the view that he wants us to take, the full argument for this requires reference to the original position and this reference does not happen until Chapter 3. So, once again, the argument here for rejection of the other interpretations of the two parts of the second principle, is not fully given as yet. It is only if the parties to the original position have structural reasons for rejecting the other interpretations of it that Rawls has here given that the conception of democratic equality should be accepted.


All interpretations of the second principle looked at assume acceptance of the first principle and this is taken by Rawls to suggest a basic free market system is adopted in practice (though without decision being required concerning the ownership of the means of production). To assess both the systems of natural liberty and those of liberal equality it is necessary to have a sense of the principle of efficiency and Rawls explains this as Pareto optimality. The problem with this principle, as far as Rawls is concerned, is that there are many efficient arrangements and the problem is how to choose between them. To do so requires going beyond the criteria of efficiency itself. 


In the system of natural liberty the principle of efficiency is constrained by formal equality of opportunity so that all have the same legal access to all positions. But this system does not have any means of ensuring that there is any similarity, let alone equality, between parties and is thus vulnerable to natural and social contingencies as determinative of all outcomes and this is taken by Rawls to mean that outcomes are determined by factors that are morally arbitrary. This argument is part of the source of the "luck egalitarian" interpretation of Rawls. 


The notion of "liberal equality" is one that intends to correct the determination of outcomes by natural and social contingencies that is the  basic mechanism of rewards in the system of natural liberty. This is done by the invocation of the principle of fair equality of opportunity. It basically suggests that for offices to be truly open there must be an effort to ensure that there are equal life chances. Hence we get something like a meritocratic system as the meaning of liberal equality (which was described by Henry Sidgwick as "ideal equality"). However even though the liberal conception is preferable to that of natural liberty in aiming to eliminate social contingencies it does nothing to affect natural contingencies having great weight. One of the reasons why natural contingencies would continue to have weight is also revealing, namely, that the continued existence of the family in the liberal notion ensures the importance of such contingencies. This almost suggests a communist element in Rawls' view and is certainly a further source for the luck egalitarian understanding of A Theory of Justice.


Natural aristocracy is not given much space as a conception by Rawls as it involves only formal equality of opportunity though it is meant to limit the goods available to those best placed in relation to ideals of service. Both liberal equality and natural aristocracy are viewed by Rawls as unstable as they are dependent on natural contingencies which are bound to be problematic morally. 


Given these assessments Rawls' preference for the notion of democratic equality emerges as a default position. However, the account of it has to include a defence of the difference principle, a principle meant to make the principle of efficiency more determinate. This involves the argument concerning incentives that Gerry Cohen has subjected to various objections in a number of publications as here Rawls indicates that the basis of inequality has to include the sense that lesser equality is justified if more equality would make everyone worse off. This conflicts directly with the "luck egalitarian" reading of A Theory of Justice. Interestingly, in defending the difference principle as a corrective to the principle of efficiency, Rawls concedes that the difference principle is intended to be a "maximising principle" and is hence part of his alternative to the principle of utility. The result of the discussion in section 13 is a reformulation of the second principle as follows:


"Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity."


Now the first part of the second principle has been understood as the difference principle and the second part as the principle of fair equality of opportunity. The difference principle's meaning is very carefully explained: "it applies primarily to the basic structure of society via representative individuals whose expectations are to be estimated by an index of primary goods". 

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