Parfit presents a number of different arguments against what he terms "subjectivist" views of reasons in Chapters 3 and 4 of On What Matters but the first argument, termed by Parfit the "agony argument", is given special stress by him and in this posting I will look at the argument prior to reviewing Michael Smith's critical response to it.
Parfit presents the "agony argument" in response to what he terms "Case One" and in "Case One" he assumes that some future event will cause a period of agony but, even after ideal deliberation, I find I have no desire to avoid it and adds, somewhat implausibly, that there is no other desire or aim whose fulfilment would be prevented either by the agony in question or by my having no desire to avoid it. Once the case is fully set out it is clear that Parfit has here rather stacked the cards since it is hard to conceive of a period of agony that would not prevent some desires or aims having fulfilment.
The result of the way of describing it that Parfit has given is that in the case in point "subjective" theories of reasons would give no reason to avoid the agony in question. The reason why Parfit takes it that the case has plausibility at all is because he refers to the way in which we relate to present and future agony in terms of having what he elsewhere terms a "bias towards the near". This kind of bias is fairly commonly exhibited since, to take a case that does not usually involve "agony" exactly it is not uncommon to drink to excess despite awareness that later there will be suffering to endure as a consequence. Since the suffering is in the future and the enjoyment is taking place now, the suggestion goes, we rationalise a way of going through the later experience of suffering.
It is not as obvious as these remarks might suggest that the reason why we behave in the way indicated in my example is due to a "bias towards the near" and nor does the example, in any event, show that "future agony" will be accepted in quite the same way as the consequence of heavy drinking often appears to be. In any case the argument Parfit is making is that a "subjective" view of reasons provides no reason in the example of "Case One" to avoid the future agony.
An obvious retort that is considered by Parfit is that when the future occasion of agony becomes present I will at that point have clear desires to avoid the agony in question and that this is sufficient to give me a desire in the present to avoid this future agony. However Parfit suggests that "subjective" theorists of reasons cannot come to this conclusion as one committed to such a view cannot say that "facts about our future desires give us reasons". The ground of this claim is clearly indicated to be that commitment to such a "subjective" theory of reasons ensures that such "facts" cannot be taken into account as taking them into account involves treating the "facts" as "objects" and hence adopting an objective theory of reasons.
This claim concerning the difference between the subjective and objective theories has a peculiar structure like much that Parfit writes about this distinction. It appears to arrogate only to the objectivist a concern with the "facts" since only the objectivist can admit that "facts" are "objects" of self-sufficient standing. However the point about agony is simply that it is something of a phenomenological description and that its phenomenological description points sufficiently of itself to its undesirable nature without having to invoke "objective" qualities at all here.
Parfit attempts to resist this kind of move by suggesting that to make it already involves a "mixed" conception in implying an objective theory of reasons has been coupled with a subjective view of well-being. However I see no need for the "subjectivist" to admit to such a "mixed" conception here at all since the agony in question is a "fact" of a phenomenological kind and not of a different sort. This phenomenological kind of "fact" would be sufficient of itself to make the reason for its avoidance also subjective and not objective and Parfit has provided no reason as yet to think otherwise.
The structure of the "subjective" theory that Parfit supposes becomes clearer when he mentions the notion of temporal neutrality as contrastive with the theory being considered. If you were committed to temporal neutrality you would take the period at which agony was suffered to be indifferent since any such point would be regarded in the same way but Parfit takes the subjective theory under consideration to be constituted by its temporal bias towards the near. At this point, however, it becomes unclear why the argument is being advanced since it touches only upon a specially selected type of subjective theory of reasons and within the body of subjective theories as Parfit has described them it can be seen as an especially eccentric type but nothing in the argument as given touches on subjective theories of reasons as such.
The furtherance of the claim that this argument nonetheless tells against "subjective" theories of reasons in a general way occurs by Parfit citing something from Rawls where Rawls stated that we have no means of telling in advance what ends rational people will pursue and Parfit uses this to argue that it is not possible to claim, on subjectivist grounds alone, that anyone who is fully rational would want to avoid future agony. However, as mentioned before, the simple experience of the agony is reason enough and this can be cited by any type of subjectivist and most definitely by Rawls as agony would be the opposite of a "primary good".
Smith, in replying to Parfit's "agony argument" also refers to the Kantian reply that can be made to it mentioning how universalisation can apply to the very ability to make autonomous choices and that periods of agony are periods in which such choices cannot be made. Since this is so, says Smith, there is a plausible simple universalisation argument that can prohibit future agony.
Parfit's argument was intended to show that there are no plausible reasons on a subjective theory of reasons to avoid future agony but his example required us to accept that subjective theories of reasons manifest an untenable bias towards the near which bias, however, is far from being obviously one that all "subjective" theories of reasons have to manifest. Further, Parfit in presenting this argument neglected the point that agony is subjectively undesirable and hence could be ruled out on these grounds on one type of subjective theory that did not manifest bias towards the near. Finally, as has been noted throughout consideration of Parfit's treatment of "subjective" theories of reasons, he has failed to take the measure of Kantian universalisation (or of Rawls' commitment to the notion of 'primary goods').
Showing posts with label Michael Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Smith. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Goodness and "Subjective" Theories of Reasons
In the last posting I looked at the debate between Parfit and Smith concerning "subjective" theories of reasons and concluded that whilst Parfit's account of them was more sophisticated in certain respects than Smith appeared to allow, that, nonetheless, Parfit's distinction between "subjective" and "objective" theories of reasons appeared not to capture the place of Kantian theories of normativity. In this one I want to continue to respond to the debate between Parfit and Smith by looking next at the account of types of "goodness" that Parfit allows for and how, on Smith's view, this undercuts Parfit's argument for thinking that Parfit has provided a theory that is intrinsically different from the "desire-based" or "subjective" theories of reasons that Parfit wishes to oppose.
Parfit allows, in Chapter 1 of On What Matters, for a distinction between different kinds of way in which things can be termed "good" though, as Smith points out, it is unclear whether these are three types of thing that share the common property of "goodness" or, rather, whether "goodness" is itself something that can be determined as existing in three distinct ways. This topic, whilst of some importance in relation to Parfit's response to Sidgwick, is not one that I will attempt to adjudicate on in this posting.
However, the types of goodness that Parfit considers are all related in being forms of goodness that are termed by him "reason-implying". Something that is "good" in a reason-implying sense, is something that has "certain kinds of fact" about it that, in at least certain situations, give us strong reasons to choose it (or use it or produce it etc). This is what Parfit terms "the most important use" of goodness. Since the types of reason-implying goodness refer, in some way, to "facts", the next question concerns what might be meant here by a "fact" and what ways the "facts" in question could give us reasons.
Since we are concerned, when Parfit refers to "reason-implying" senses of goodness, with reasons in the sense of reasons for action, it would be expected that the types of goodness that Parfit is concerned with would be good in the sense of providing us with a strong reason to act in certain ways. There are three such types of goodness discussed by Parfit. The first is that something is "good for us", in the sense that it contributes, in some way, to our well-being. However, Parfit does not intend well-being to be considered here in a purely instrumental way, as when something contributes to my "well-being" by improving my finances. Rather, Parfit is focusing on "well-being" in an intrinsic sense that involves "one of the features of our lives in which our well-being consists" or what he elsewhere (in Reasons and Persons) describes as something that enables our life to go best. Now this seems to involve reference to what Rawls termed "primary goods" and can include states of certain sorts but broadly speaking these types of goods are things we have self-interest in relation to without being selfish.
This first type of goodness, goodness-for, is understood by Smith plausibly to involve phenomenological considerations and does at least partially get captured by hedonic theories of goodness. By contrast to such goodness-for there is also person-relative forms of goodness in which we have reasons to be partial towards people who we are related to in certain ways. This person-relative goodness is something that has raised considerable questions in contemporary moral philosophy since some take it to require departures from formal universal procedures (as Bernard Williams famously argued in his "one thought too many" discussion).
The third type of goodness is goodness in an impartial sense though this kind of goodness is determined in two different ways by Parfit. On the one hand, there is impartial goodness in terms of reasons to care about the well-being of anyone and, on the other, there are the reasons we would have if we had an impartial point of view. The first type of impartial reason is claimed by Parfit to involve substantive beliefs about well-being whilst the point of view of impartiality need not give us such beliefs automatically since we might have to over-rule as well other types of preferences (such as aesthetic ones though, oddly, Parfit views these as not involving "reasons" at all but perhaps he only means reasons that should normatively matter). When something is impartially good it is impersonal since we don't prefer it because it would be good-for someone even though such benefits are what, in the outcome, would be termed "good".
Parfit's consideration of "objective" theories of value suggests that such theories have their reasons provided to them by "facts about the objects" that are involved in reasons and aims. These contrast with facts that are, apparently, merely facts about "us" with the latter being stated to be the concern of "subjective" theories of value. So an "objective" theory concerns itself not merely with aims and desires but with the worthwhile character of them in relation to their "objects". Given that the theory that Parfit is elaborating and terming "objective" is nonetheless concerned with desires and aims and with the way in which such desires and aims are formed in a sense that is worthwhile Smith claims that Parfit's "objective" theory is only a form of desire-based theory. This is because, as was demonstrated in the last posting, there is no problem with a "subjective" theory adopting the view that there is required reflection on desires and principles needed for their formation. Since Parfit also takes Kantian theories of normativity to be "subjective" in these ways it is clear that Smith is right about this.
So, just as in the last posting it emerged that Parfit's distinction between subjective and objective theories of reasons had no valid place for Kantian theories of normativity so, in this posting, we can see that Parfit's classifications of types of goodness does not meaningfully allow him to distinguish his account of reason-implication from a Kantian one. In neither of these ways can Parfit sustain his distinction between "objective" and "subjective" theories of reasons or his apparent insistence that his own theory of reasons is one that is intrinsically different from and opposed to Kantian theories of reasons.
Smith's general claim is that Parfit's own theory is a desire-based one that depends on the principle that "if someone believes that p and that p produces q, then they believe that q is something intrinsically desirable". If Parfit's account does involve commitment to any principle of this sort (and the three forms of goodness can all be converted to reference this) then it is the case that he has failed to meaningfully define his theory as "objective" and hence distinct from the "subjective" theories he is opposed to.
Parfit allows, in Chapter 1 of On What Matters, for a distinction between different kinds of way in which things can be termed "good" though, as Smith points out, it is unclear whether these are three types of thing that share the common property of "goodness" or, rather, whether "goodness" is itself something that can be determined as existing in three distinct ways. This topic, whilst of some importance in relation to Parfit's response to Sidgwick, is not one that I will attempt to adjudicate on in this posting.
However, the types of goodness that Parfit considers are all related in being forms of goodness that are termed by him "reason-implying". Something that is "good" in a reason-implying sense, is something that has "certain kinds of fact" about it that, in at least certain situations, give us strong reasons to choose it (or use it or produce it etc). This is what Parfit terms "the most important use" of goodness. Since the types of reason-implying goodness refer, in some way, to "facts", the next question concerns what might be meant here by a "fact" and what ways the "facts" in question could give us reasons.
Since we are concerned, when Parfit refers to "reason-implying" senses of goodness, with reasons in the sense of reasons for action, it would be expected that the types of goodness that Parfit is concerned with would be good in the sense of providing us with a strong reason to act in certain ways. There are three such types of goodness discussed by Parfit. The first is that something is "good for us", in the sense that it contributes, in some way, to our well-being. However, Parfit does not intend well-being to be considered here in a purely instrumental way, as when something contributes to my "well-being" by improving my finances. Rather, Parfit is focusing on "well-being" in an intrinsic sense that involves "one of the features of our lives in which our well-being consists" or what he elsewhere (in Reasons and Persons) describes as something that enables our life to go best. Now this seems to involve reference to what Rawls termed "primary goods" and can include states of certain sorts but broadly speaking these types of goods are things we have self-interest in relation to without being selfish.
This first type of goodness, goodness-for, is understood by Smith plausibly to involve phenomenological considerations and does at least partially get captured by hedonic theories of goodness. By contrast to such goodness-for there is also person-relative forms of goodness in which we have reasons to be partial towards people who we are related to in certain ways. This person-relative goodness is something that has raised considerable questions in contemporary moral philosophy since some take it to require departures from formal universal procedures (as Bernard Williams famously argued in his "one thought too many" discussion).
The third type of goodness is goodness in an impartial sense though this kind of goodness is determined in two different ways by Parfit. On the one hand, there is impartial goodness in terms of reasons to care about the well-being of anyone and, on the other, there are the reasons we would have if we had an impartial point of view. The first type of impartial reason is claimed by Parfit to involve substantive beliefs about well-being whilst the point of view of impartiality need not give us such beliefs automatically since we might have to over-rule as well other types of preferences (such as aesthetic ones though, oddly, Parfit views these as not involving "reasons" at all but perhaps he only means reasons that should normatively matter). When something is impartially good it is impersonal since we don't prefer it because it would be good-for someone even though such benefits are what, in the outcome, would be termed "good".
Parfit's consideration of "objective" theories of value suggests that such theories have their reasons provided to them by "facts about the objects" that are involved in reasons and aims. These contrast with facts that are, apparently, merely facts about "us" with the latter being stated to be the concern of "subjective" theories of value. So an "objective" theory concerns itself not merely with aims and desires but with the worthwhile character of them in relation to their "objects". Given that the theory that Parfit is elaborating and terming "objective" is nonetheless concerned with desires and aims and with the way in which such desires and aims are formed in a sense that is worthwhile Smith claims that Parfit's "objective" theory is only a form of desire-based theory. This is because, as was demonstrated in the last posting, there is no problem with a "subjective" theory adopting the view that there is required reflection on desires and principles needed for their formation. Since Parfit also takes Kantian theories of normativity to be "subjective" in these ways it is clear that Smith is right about this.
So, just as in the last posting it emerged that Parfit's distinction between subjective and objective theories of reasons had no valid place for Kantian theories of normativity so, in this posting, we can see that Parfit's classifications of types of goodness does not meaningfully allow him to distinguish his account of reason-implication from a Kantian one. In neither of these ways can Parfit sustain his distinction between "objective" and "subjective" theories of reasons or his apparent insistence that his own theory of reasons is one that is intrinsically different from and opposed to Kantian theories of reasons.
Smith's general claim is that Parfit's own theory is a desire-based one that depends on the principle that "if someone believes that p and that p produces q, then they believe that q is something intrinsically desirable". If Parfit's account does involve commitment to any principle of this sort (and the three forms of goodness can all be converted to reference this) then it is the case that he has failed to meaningfully define his theory as "objective" and hence distinct from the "subjective" theories he is opposed to.
Friday, 17 June 2011
Parfit, Smith and "Subjective" Theories of Reasons
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:
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 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.
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