Simon Blackburn has made available a review he was commissioned to write of Parfit's On What Matters here. There appears to be some back-story with regard to the review since those who commissioned it (the Financial Times) decided on receipt of it not to publish. One can only speculate as to the reasons why this was.
Blackburn's review distinguishes between the first-order normative ethics presented by Parfit and the second-order meta-ethical rationalism defended in the work and concentrates quite a bit of his fire on the latter. The discussion attempted to date on this blog of Parfit's book has likewise concentrated so far on the latter. This has been necessary due to the opening part of Parfit's work being concerned with these meta-ethical questions. So, in my response here to Blackburn, I'll mention mainly the way he discusses Parfit's meta-ethics.
Blackburn follows Parfit in seeing the divide in meta-ethics as one between a form of objectivist rationalism on the one hand and non-cognitivist emotivist views (the "Humean" notion of motivation) on the other. Unlike Parfit, however, Blackburn adopts a favourable stance towards the Humean tradition. What is left out of the reply Blackburn makes to Parfit is any serious reference to the Kantian view, something that is particularly surprising given Parfit's tendency to conflate the Kantian and Humean positions under the heading of "subjective" theories of reasons for action. I have pointed out, in previous postings, that Parfit's replies to the Humean tradition are themselves problematic in various ways despite having some sympathy with Parfit's attempt to move beyond the Humean view of moral motivation.
Blackburn's review, however, in its defence of the Humean picture contrives to make Parfit's attack on it rather attractive. In describing the distinction Parfit makes between "objective" and "subjective" theories of reasons Blackburn fails to mention that the point of it for Parfit is to present a basis for taking intentional reference to only be possible on an "objective" view of reasons. So Blackburn denies that any philosopher has ever said we respond to "facts about objects" when we make decisions about what to do apparently without taking on board at all Parfit's argument here which is that "values" are such objects, a view that, like Blackburn, I have problems with but which should be at least correctly presented, something that it is not when Blackburn suggests that Parfit is simply attacking a straw man. It surely is a cardinal point of the "Humean" theory to deny that "values" are "intentional objects" in Parfit's sense (the sense that they could be part of an "objective list") and so simply saying that in summoning up passions in Hume's sense we are "responding to objects" is a cheap and very silly shot at Parfit.
Similarly, saying that any theory includes "subject-given" and "object-given" elements in its account is again not to respond to the question whether such "object-given" elements are involved in values so indicates a sustained failure to address Parfit's question. When Blackburn argues that Parfit's alternative "rationalist" view is "not much help" as the evaluative terms fit together in a coherent inter-locking way, this seems very odd. If Parfit does show they do indeed have this inter-locking status and that this can be combined with an "objective" understanding of evaluative terms then he presumably has accomplished something important. It may well be that he has failed to accomplish this but if he did achieve it then it surely would be "some help" to have done so.
The final paragraph of Blackburn's review seems oddly ad hominem in its swipe at All Souls, particularly coming, as it does, from a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is to be hoped that future reviews of On What Matters will not stoop to such odd attacks and will provide more by way of argument against the book as well as perhaps indicate more to appreciate the achievement it surely represents regardless of one's problems with its accounts.
The fourth chapter of On What Matters continues with Parfit's attack on "subjective" theories of reasons for action which are presented in three discreet sections. The first of these is termed the "all or none" argument which is intended to reply to the "subjectivist" contention that our "telic desires" give us reasons to act. In emphasising desires Parfit retains the conception of "subjectivist" views that bases them upon the Humean model of seeing rationality through the guise of desire. As such it is ill-fitted to respond also to Kantian models of reasons, despite Parfit's claim that such models are also "subjectivist".
The argument itself is formulated in relation to two different "cases", firstly "Case 2" and, secondly, "Case 3". Both, like the "agony" argument, concern mental states assessable in hedonic terms. "Case 2" formulates a conception of desiring a future period of agony although it provides no reason why the future period of agony is desired since it is explicitly set up in such a way as to rule out any specific telic desire (such as masochism) being instead chosen "for its own sake" alone. Parfit views this is as indicative of a kind of pure "subjective" model of desire though it is naturally seen by him as giving a picture of desire that is hardly credible.
Since the picture of desire in "Case 2" is so difficult to give credence to why is it that Parfit believes that, even on the "Humean" model, anyone would endorse it? The basis of his conception that it would be endorsed as a credible view of desire on this model appears simply to be that it includes no intentional element and, given that "subjective" theories of reasons can include no such element (on pain of admitting that "objective" factors are decisive in reasons for action) they can have no objection to such a purely subjective picture of their view. If the "subjective" view were correct, states Parfit, it wouldn't be difficult to imagine this case but we do find it difficult precisely because we intuitively include intentional factors in our conception of desire.
The basic rationale of the case turns on the view that "agony" is an objective factor for us and given that it has this status the purely subjective relation to agony in "Case 2" is one we do not find credible. However, there is another way of comprehending this reaction to "Case 2" which is that it does not represent a telic orientation in the simple sense of picturing a hypothetical imperative as the Humean model might be thought intended to do. To capture this it should rather include a reason why a desire has been incorporated into our reasons (to use the language of Henry Allison's "incorporation thesis").
Parfit incorporates a view like this (termed condition "F" by him) and this leads us from "Case 2" to "Case 3" in which, by contrast to "Case 2", I wish to avoid a future period of agony. Now, in this case, Parfit refers to a series of constraints that subjectivists might wish to place upon a desire prior to incorporating reference to it in their reasons for action. The first ("G") is that we have to have a present desire or aim that gives us a reason to have a particular desire or aim. (Note the way "desires" and "aims" are apparently run together here, another indication that it is the "Humean" model that is really pictured here.)
Now, one of the ways condition "G" can be met is if there are events that would produce its effects that we can use to achieve said aim and this reference to events is referred to further as condition "H". However these references are then related to "Case 3" in the sense that they are removed from it. In "Case 3" there is no instrumental reason to avoid future agony and so the reasons to avoid the agony in question are missing. Given this we replicate in "Case 3" the purity of conception of subjective "reasons" we had in "Case 2" with the same result of a presumed reductio of the "subjective" view.
However, just as the problem with "Case 2" could be said to have been precisely the absence of anything really telic in it, so the same objection can be made to "Case 3" as Parfit now presents it. Parfit considers other conditions that might present such telic components and again rules them out arriving at condition "J" in the process which would be were some present fully informed desire or aim is itself taken as a fact that itself justifies the presence of itself. This self-justifying move is taken by Parfit, correctly enough, as a desperate move since, on this conception, whatever was desired, however worthy or unworthy, would, ipso facto, be "justified".
This conception of the "subjectivist" view is arrived at simply by removing all instrumentality from the reason-desire model that is generally pictured as "Humean". It is, indeed, a reductio of such a view. Without necessarily wishing to defend the "Humean" view, however, I find this "victory" over it unconvincing as, in evacuating any reference to instrumentality it precisely prevents the model from giving any telic reasons and then faults it for failing to do what it has been prevented from doing. I fail to see how that provides an argument against it.
The reason why Parfit sees the case otherwise is that it is often true, on his view, that our relationship to hedonic states is regularly one in which there is no present desire or aim that would be fulfilled by the action that is open to us and this is because we want such things for their own sake, rather for some other end. So what Parfit wants to defend is the conception that some things are hedonically desired without reference to instrumental reasons and yet there are "objective" reasons present in such cases that the "subjectivist" cannot capture which is why they are unable to recognise any reasons at all in such cases.
Another way in which the argument to this result goes for Parfit is in terms of the regressive nature of reasons that appears to underly the "Humean" picture. If condition "F" is taken to be a key component of this picture then every desire refers to another apparently in infinitum and Parfit denies the coherence of this claiming, instead, that any such chain of reasons for action has to rest ultimately upon an end that cannot further be taken to be grounded instrumentally (and is therefore, for him, "objective"). This illuminates the difference between an instrumental theory like the "Humean" one and the conception Parfit is championing. It does not tell us, however, how it can simply appear to us when we incorporate a desire as worth adopting into our reasons, how that desire can be accepted when in other circumstances we would reject the same desire. Such a view requires the "objects" of Parfit's claim to be situationally evaluated suggesting that it is not correct, as his argument supposes, that it is purely their "objective" character that is valued.
This situational element of desire could, however, be appealed to as the basis of the chain of reasons by the Humean and, further, something like it simply has to be the basis of their argument. Rather than concede this Parfit instead attributes to them a need to give up condition "F" purely on the basis of the regress it apparently leads to (but which could be stopped by a situational constraint). This leads him directly to say that they have "no reason" to adopt the desires in question which is strictly a false view of the contention offered.
Similarly "Case 2" and "Case 3" are precisely faulty in not recognising the situational constraints under which the desire-reason model works. Parfit presents an easy case in this argument in which we either accept the difference between desires worthy of being incorporated into reasons and those not so worthy turn on "objective" features or in which there is no reason recognised at all. This is a false dichotomy and since the "all or none" argument turns on it, the argument is faulty and unconvincing. Parfit's ultimate conclusion that it is "telic value-based" reasons that give instrumental reasons their normative force can be accepted without having to agree that such reasons are "object-given".
After discussing "objective" theories of reasons in the second chapter of volume 1 of On What Matters Parfit turns next to "subjective" theories of reasons, subjecting these latter to a two-chapter treatment. The account of "subjective" theories is controversial since, in the special issue of Ratio (firewall) devoted to On What Matters Michael Smith has set out a detailed riposte to Parfit's view. In this posting I will focus on part of the dispute between them, looking only at the way that Parfit seeks to articulate and justify his distinction between two types of theory of reasons for action.
The discussion of Parfit's distinction between "subjective" and "objective" theories of reason by Smith in Ratio is of the version entitled Climbing the Mountain which is available for consultation here. As Smith mentions, however, in the course of the article replying to Parfit, the manuscript subsequently underwent some further significant changes producing the form reached at the end of 2008 which is available here. Climbing the Mountain does not formulate a distinction between "objective" and "subjective" theories of reasons but between desire-based and value-based theories of reason though Smith treats this as a distinction without a difference, assuming that desire-based theories are effectively the same as what Parfit later terms "subjective" theories and mutatis mutandis with "objective" theories and value-based ones.
In Climbing the Mountain Parfit introduces the distinction in broader terms than appear in the final published form of On What Matters. In the earlier form Parfit's distinction is first made in the second section of Chapter 1. The desire-based theory is initially presented as concerned with stating that our reasons for acting are grounded on actual present aims and desires though Parfit quickly complicates this by building in references to potential desires in hypothetical situations. The desire-based theory is understood to be a form of "internalism" about reasons, something that Parfit is less explicit about in the final published manuscript though the "subjective" theory discussed there clearly is also internalist.
The "value-based" theory, by contrast to the "desire-based" one, understands reasons for action as provided by the facts that make certain outcomes worth producing or preventing and is hence externalist. Not only do these theories describe reasons for action in different ways but they are often each thought to rule out the types of reason the other theory takes itself to have described. So, if, as Parfit is, one is an externalist about reasons for action, then, frequently (and certainly in Parfit's own case) one will deny that the other types of reason even exist.
The "internalist" theory as Parfit presents it is one that is broadly articulated in contemporary philosophy as dependent upon a "Humean" notion of motivation and I described it this way in a posting back in December. Notably, Smith defended an articulated version of the "Humean" theory sometime ago (in an article in Mind in 1987) so Smith and Parfit are at odds on some fundamental questions. However, the key point here is less with the "Humean" theory of motivation itself than with whether Parfit's distinctions have the force he thinks they do.
In the 2008 version of On What Matters Parfit has reached the formulation of the distinction that remains into the published work, the one between "subjective" and "objective" theories of reasons. The point of the distinction's difference from that used in Climbing the Mountain is to bring out the intentional quality of the claims involved in what the earlier manuscript had simply termed "value-based" views. As is clear from having looked at the chapter on "objective" theories of reasons, Parfit's understanding of these arises from the sense that "reasons are given by facts about the objects" of aims and desires. This reference to the "object" was missing in the formulation of "value-based" theories that Parfit used in Climbing the Mountain. Further, having identified this reference to "objects" in reasons Parfit can add that if we take the view that all reasons for action involve such "objects" then we are "objectivists" about reasons (or take reasons for action all to be intentional in nature). Smith is right in taking this to be equivalent to a "value-based" view as Parfit explicitly says it is but this does not mean that the account has not been filled out by making its intentional nature more apparent.
Now, the subjectivist theories of reasons will not simply deny that there are such "objects" present in reasons for actions. They will present reasons for actions as having a different structure than the objectivist has stated. Rather than taking the "facts" that provide reasons to have this object-oriented or intentional character the subjectivist rather views them as having reference to desires or aims and a subjectivist about reasons takes all reasons for action to be of this sort. Smith, however, cites also a passage from a version of Parfit's work dating from April 2008 (which is not available in the public domain) in which Parfit suggested that there could exist a theory that, whilst closer to objectivism than subjectivism was nonetheless distinct from both. According to the citation Smith provides from this version Parfit referred to "some Kantians" who held that "if we set ourselves any end or aim, we are not fully procedurally rational unless we also value the capacity of all other rational beings to set their ends and we commit ourselves to treating others only in ways to which they could rationally consent". In the passage cited by Smith, Parfit claims that such a Kantian view is "subjectivist" in appealing to what we would want or choose if fully informed. However, his general view is that it would be more appropriate to term holders of this view "systematic Coherentists" who take reasons to require commitment to such systematic coherence in order to be binding. The point Smith makes against Parfit in citing this passage is that such a Kantian view does provide us with "objective" reasons but not through its appeal to the place of "objects" in reasons but rather from the derivative character of such placing on the procedure of universalisation. That Parfit, at least at one point, entertained such a notion and then did not pay sustained attention to it, weakens his subsequent formulations that include Christine Korsgaard and Rawls amongst subjectivists about reasons.
Parfit's general account of "subjectivism", in any case, builds in a sense of reflection required for consideration of relevant facts at every point of declension after the simplest desire-based theory has been described. Since there is this reference to reflection it follows that "subjectivists" about reasons for action do not rest their case only upon reference to states (and thus they do not adopt a state-given reason or at least if one is involved it is combined with a reflective appeal as well). This is clear in the "subjectivist" theories Parfit lists such as the "error-free desire theory", "the telic desire theory", "the informed desire theory" and "the deliberative theory". When formulating the last of these Parfit reaches for another way of distinguishing between "objective" and "subjective" theories of reasons.
The "deliberative theory" is stated by Parfit to involve the claim that we have most reason to do whatever, after fully informed and rational deliberation, we would choose to do. And, put like this, the theory can appear to be an "objectivist" one when it is not. The difference between the "deliberative theory" and an "objectivist" theory is said by Parfit to consist in the kinds of rationality invoked in the two theories. The upholders of the "deliberative theory" appeal only to "procedural rationality" whilst the objectivist, by contrast, makes reference to "substantial" rationality. The difference is instructively stated. The "subjectivist" deliberative view is said to require involving reference to procedural rules and imagining "the important effects of our different possible acts" whilst the objectivist, by contrast, claims that there are telic desires and aims that "we all have strong and often decisive object-given reasons to have".
The difference between the two theories, for Parfit, concerns the way in which the reasons we give for holding something to constitute a reason for action are differently justified for the two sorts of theorists. Essentially, the "deliberative" theory holds that, given procedural constraints, if we would choose something after the process of reasoning, then we have decisive reasons given to act in the way indicated. By contrast, for the objectivist, it is rather the case that there exist decisive reasons to act in a certain way and given these reasons, substantive reasoning would confirm the rightness of acting in the way indicated.
However, after having set the distinction out in this way, Parfit concludes the distinction between the two views in a way that appears very unsatisfactory. Parfit writes:
These Objectivists appeal to normative claims about what, after ideal deliberation, we have reasons to choose, and ought rationally to choose. These Subjectivists appeal to psychological claims about what, after such deliberation, we would in fact choose.
This claim, from p. 63 of the published version of the work, appears wrong. It amounts to a claim that only the objectivist has made a normative claim and the "deliberative" theorist has, rather, much like the "Humean", only referred to some "facts" and taken these "facts" to be irreducible. And that doesn't describe any kind of deliberative view of procedural rationality. It is not the claim made by those who adopt a procedural view of deliberation that it is only a "matter of fact" that some things emerge as rightly chosen after reflection and nor is it their claim that what so emerges does so as a result of a psychologistic kind concerning the structure of reasons. Both kinds of commitment, whilst possibly held by a "Humean", are certainly not held by someone who takes deliberative rationality to involve central procedural constraints.
This is seen most clearly in the "Kantian" view that Parfit referred to in the early 2008 version of his work that Smith saw but which appears not to now be in the public domain. On that view the appeal made to systematic coherence rested upon a prior view about universalisation and universalisation is not itself a peculiarly psychological process and nor do its results only emerge factually without normative status. The point about such a process of universalisation is precisely that it provides, starting from a "thin" commitment, some substantive results. (Smith rightly emphasizes this in his reply to Parfit despite having sceptical doubts himself concerning the Kantian claim.)
To conflate this claim with the "Humean" commitment to psychologism and hence to make the view of Korsgaard and Rawls "subjective" in the sense of involving an implied form of internalism is a serious error in terms of rendition of Kantian accounts of reasons for action. Smith's criticism of Parfit in terms of the latter's failure to see that you could, if committed to a Kantian view, take it to be the case that substantive principles follow from procedural ones, seems to me correct. The point Smith does not make, and that I would, is that it is not at all obvious either that commitment to a Kantian view involves internalism (though some of Korsgaard's statements suggest that she, at least, can be careless in this regard).
Like Smith I also take it to be the case that the distinction between substantive and procedural views is less informative than Parfit thinks though, unlike Smith, I don't think it has no value. It has the value, as Parfit correctly brings out, of indicating the pattern of justifications and this pattern is at least part of what is at issue. But Parfit fails to see that substantive principles can be justified by procedural ones and also does not comprehend that procedural rationality need not involve psychologistic internalism.
The recent postings I have done have been focused on bringing into view a sense of practical reason. One of the consequences of the relatively basic conception advanced to date is that the notion of practical reason, if viewed in terms of the general structure of hypothetical imperatives, is one in which the notion of "ends" plays the key guiding role.
I want to first indicate some provisional points about the structure of the connection between hypothetical imperatives and teleology prior to raising a larger framework for further investigation of the reasons for thinking about practical reason in a teleological way.
Hypothetical imperatives generally fit an instrumental model of rationality in which means and ends are adjusted to each other in order to attain a desired objective. Kant describes hypothetical imperatives in two ways though the nature of them is worthy of much more extended consideration on a future occasion. The two general ways are in terms of "skill" and "prudence".
The conception of hypothetical imperatives in terms of "skill" connects them to the provision of more or less sophisticated technical ways of achieving an end. Any kind of action or activity that requires the varied use of materials in order to produce a result will involve degrees of skill in both the relationship between the materials and the judgments concerning the ways of achieving the outcomes. This broad conception of "skill" indicates that everything here that requires instrumental relations tends to incorporate a form of "skill". This will apply to everything from development of trades or talents to the running of governments or the waging of wars. Hence it takes up a large portion of activity.
Contrast this now with "prudence". In developing talents we need to have an eye for what will be in demand so that we don't waste our time. This is prudential as also is avoiding certain kinds of people or activities, either of which might impair our chances of carrying out other activities already decided upon. So prudential reasoning is the province of a kind of judgment, one that tends to get sharpened by experience. Like the reasoning at work in "skill" it is a form of instrumental relation. I'll return generally on another occasion to questions about these relations but for now it will suffice to indicate an at least provisional relationship between hypothetical imperatives and instrumental relations.
It is clear in addition that the development of activities in accordance with hypothetical imperatives requires a sense of purposiveness. Hence hypothetical imperatives are generically capable of being seen as part of a teleological pattern of life.
Having made this relation between hypothetical imperatives and teleology relatively perspicuous the next step is to relate teleology in a more general sense to practical reason whilst bracketing for now further consideration of hypothetical imperatives. There are two kinds of way in which a general relationship between teleology and practical reason tends to get understood, ways which are on distinct levels from each other. One is through a theory of moral psychology that views practical reasoning as primarily teleological. The other is a meta-ethical stance concerning the types of considerations that are relevant to assessing right acts. The first is what is generically termed the "Humean" notion of moral motivation, the second is the consequentialist view of moral appraisal.
Taking these in turn, the Humean notion of moral motivation is an analysis of the psychological preconditions of being moved to act in certain ways. The basic claim of the Humean theory is generally understood to consist in a non-cognitivist view that an ethical belief is in itself insufficient to motivate action and that an affective state has to also be activated for someone to act in accord with a belief. Due to this general claim the teleological notion at work in motivation for the Humean is one that is taken to cut against a pure notion of practical reason.
By contrast to the Humean picture that thinks of teleological connections as the means of explanation of how we are motivated to act, the consequentialist view concerns the means by which action is justified (not necessarily how it is motivated though it may also claim this). Consequences are the means of assessment of actions and the conception of teleology is thus an instrumental one of how ends are best reached and how the "right" ends can be maximised.
The connection between means and ends in both of these pictures seems to have the pattern of an instrumental relation and in this respect to be of a piece with what we have uncovered concerning hypothetical imperatives. Due to this there is a general view that both the Humean conception of motivation and the consequential notion of ethical justification are inherently non or even anti-Kantian views. Certainly the consequence of the Humean view of motivation is that there can be no pure practical reason and in this important respect it is at variance with the Kantian view. It remains true, however, that there does need to be a Kantian picture of how we can be led to act in accordance with the moral law. Such a picture thus has to provide some kind of response to the Humean notion of motivation.
The consequentialist picture of justification, by contrast, whilst widely taken to be at variance with the Kantian picture of justification, is not universally so regarded. Rawls and his followers take it to be paradigmatically the view of morality that Kantians must reject and to which Kantian theory is a response. However, there has been developed a notion of "Kantian consequentialism" that aims to show there is not only no necessary conflict between Kant's moral theory and consequentialism but that they can even be combined.
The setting out of responses to both the Humean and the consequentialist views is essential to clarifying what the Kantian argument concerning the relationship between teleology and practical reason should be and will be part of what is at issue in many future postings.
