Parfit on Contractualist Consequentialism

In my previous posting I objected to the account Parfit gives of the "veil of ignorance" and in the posting prior to this I advanced an account of deliberative rationality that challenged the view articulated by Parfit. Both of these postings were responses to part of the argument presented in the third of Parfit's 2002 Tanner Lectures. However the arguments discussed in the previous two postings were essentially negative in import for Parfit, ways of clearing the way for the view of contractualism that he wishes to present within this third lecture. The argument that is presented here is for something that has not previously been identified as a possible contender in the area of moral theory, a notion of contractualism that is consequentialist. In this posting I aim to do two things: both present the considerations that enable Parfit to arrive at the understanding that it is possible to reconcile consequentialism with contractualism and also to show why the combined view that thereby arises is unsustainable. So my purpose here is both reconstructive of Parfit's argument and critical of its import. This ensures that this posting will be more than usually involved.


After replying to Rawls in the first two parts of this third lecture Parfit returns to his original account of the basic notion of contractualism in his view, the notion of 'rational agreement', a notion that requires unanimity. In doing so he contrasts the idea of such agreement as understood on the minimal view of David Gauthier with what he terms "Kant's Contractualist Formula", the derivation of which I treated previously. Now, in contrasting these two views at this point, Parfit points a methodological contrast between them based on the fact that the Gauthier type formula requires adoption of principles that everyone would choose whilst, on Parfit's construal "Kant's Contractualist Formula" (or KCF) only requires adopting principles that each reasoner could see as required themselves. (Notice that the contrast between them is thus structurally similar to that between the two versions of the veil of ignorance treated in my previous posting.) So rather than conducting one thought-experiment in which we try to find principles for all of us there are many thought-experiments, basically one each in which we use reference to an understanding of moral belief in order to reach the principles that everyone would accept if rational.


Now in justifying KCF over the Gauthier type formula Parfit appeals to certain safeguards that contractualists are concerned should be in place. One of these is to eliminate inequalities of bargaining power (something Gautheir's formula does not do for reasons that Rawls provides). There is no requirement for each of us to choose principles just on the grounds that others will choose them as we first ask if they are reasonable to us. A second concern that is meant to be met is that we should avoid the outcome where some are viewed as capable of bearing burdens for the sake of others (as often arises from utilitarian conceptions). This second concern is what Parfit terms the contractualists' "protective aim". Again Parfit argues that a Gauthier type view cannot achieve this as the aim of reaching unanimous agreement gives those who possess unequal power an advantage (though, notably, only if we accept the "equal chances" view of the veil of ignorance). Parfit again misunderstands Rawls' view here since he takes Rawls to adopt a self-interest conception of rationality although he had previously indicated he knew this to be false.


KCF neither requires unanimous agreement nor has a veil of ignorance and these characteristics of it are meant to show that it achieves the "protective aim" of contractualism better than previous alternatives considered. Further, its failure to guarantee unanimity means that should it achieve it then this would be all the more impressive. However KCF does imply a particular view of reasons which Parfit elaborates as a "wide value-based" conception as opposed to desire-based theories. The value-based conception is, however, one in which "we have strong reasons to care about our own well-being, and in a temporally neutral way". However, least one voice the view that this implies an egoistic conception, Parfit is quick to point out that it is part of KCF to assume that we can rationally care as much about some other things as well as this, including here the well-being of others and "justice" (although he takes no time here to define this latter notion). So when we adopt KCF we take with it this view of reasons. I'll return subsequently to the point that if we see KCF as involving this view of reasons then we will have grasped KCF in such a way that it precisely is not, despite Parfit's arguments to the contrary, really a contractualist conception at all.


However before we move on to the reasons why I take this to the case it is important to next follow the claims that Parfit makes that enables him to arrive at the conclusion that KCF is both contractualist and consequentialist. The first point to be introduced is the criteria that Parfit gives for KCF succeeding in meeting the problem that contractualism aims to address. This is that it must meet a 'uniqueness condition', such that, there is some relevant principle, and only one principle, that everyone could rationally choose. In illustrating a way that a principle could meet such a condition Parfit gives an example in which there exists a quantity of unowned goods that no one has a special claim on and the distribution of which would have the same total sum of benefits however it was done. In such a case, says Parfit, we can all see that a basic principle of equal shares applies. It is notable that the example of application is a distributive one of some set of resources and not, for example, of a criteria that would define rights or liberties. Such an example already implies a definite conception of what type of thing we should be concerned with when aiming for a notion of unanimity.


A wrinkle that is worth observation in terms of how Parfit justifies the appeal to equal shares is that there is a difference, on his view, between consenting to acts and choosing principles. So we might consent to an unequal share, taking less for ourselves in order to aid others. However this is quite different to adopting a principle that some (whether ourselves or others) should as a matter of course have unequal shares since that principle is not one we could rationally accept. (On the basis of the wide value-based conception of reasons.) This argument is used also to show that the type of principle we should end up with is not act utilitarianism since act utilitarianism could state that it is permissible to give some no benefits at all since the net effects would not thereby be affected.


Having reached this point in his argument Parfit turns next to a further connection between moral beliefs and beliefs about reasons suggesting that our moral beliefs may partly depend on our beliefs about reasons. There are two ways that this connection is perceived by him to go. On the one hand we might hold a view, such as contractualism, which determines the understanding of the rightness of acts by reference to the relationship of such acts to principles that everyone could rationally accept. On the other hand, we might find that moral beliefs depend in some way on our non-moral beliefs about the kinds of things that are good or bad. Now the second sort of relationship between moral and non-moral beliefs turns out to be the one that Parfit exploits and he does so at the expense of the first sort of relation. An example of this second sort of relation concerns our general understanding of hedonic states. The point that Parfit makes about these states is that our reaction to them involves us in accepting that there are certain actions that are good or bad to perform and that this understanding reflects what he terms a "reason-involving" sense of goodness and badness. 


In claiming that we have a "reason-involving" response to hedonic states Parfit takes himself to be in disagreement with Kant given that Kant does not take inclinations to be themselves reason-giving. Parfit views this as a claim to the effect that whilst hedonic states may not be the ground of a moral claim they still could be the ground of a reason-giving claim and that Kant ignores the latter. This, however, is an odd reading of Kant since Kant claims not that there may not be reasons to relate to hedonic states in certain ways but that these reasons are part of the formulation of maxims and it is the endorsement of the maxims that provides the reasons in question, not simple experience of the hedonic states alone. Putting this in Parfit's terms it is not that the hedonic states are themselves "reason-involving" in the sense that the mere experience of them produces a reason to respond in a given way. It is rather that we take the states, in conjunction with maxims in which they feature, to provide grounds for appropriate actions. And this is quite different from the way Parfit puts the case as the way he puts it suggests that it is the experience of the states simpliciter that is reason-involving and that is what Kant denies.


Parfit takes hedonic states to be "reason-involving" as he assumes that there are person-relative reasons always to avoid painful states. I have denied this claim even though it seems true intuitively. The reason I deny it is simply that the painful state is not itself motivationally sufficient for action as it has to be related to other considerations that are prevailing at the time it is experienced. Parfit's claim could be reformulated as saying that pain is something we avoid cateris paribus but the conditions involved remain important and indicate that the response to pain is not one we normally assume to be simply permissive of actions following a certain pattern (say, of avoidance). Further Parfit moves swiftly from the claim that the response to hedonic states has this person-relative sense to the more general claim that painful states are impersonally bad. It is important to note that there are counter-intuitive aspects to Parfit's claim here just as I have indicated there are to the way I denied his claim concerning person-relative reasons. The counter-intuitive sense of his claim becomes apparent in the following sentence: "If more people suffer, that would be worse, even though it may not be worse for any of these people". 


In a claim like the one just cited it becomes apparent that Parfit conceives of hedonic states in an aggregative fashion so that the more they point one way or another en masse the worse or better the general situation is. This is to view hedonic states, however, in complete abstraction from the experience had of them as Parfit confesses when he agrees that the "worse" outcome on his view may not be worse for anyone. This indicates that the "non-moral" sense of badness that he has is radically impersonal since its assessment of badness is not one that refers to criteria of what is bad for persons. This "non-moral" claim is, however, one that it is not obvious should be accepted as a serious criteria of goodness and badness by persons. Parfit sloughs over this point passing from the acceptance that the "non-moral" sense of goodness and badness he is advocating is impersonal to the quite different claim that it is agent-neutral. It is not at all evident that a seriously agent-neutral claim is one that has to be impersonal. After all if we think of the "mere means" criteria of the Formula of Humanity we refer to an agent-neutral claim as it specifies a way of relating to persons generally regardless of who they are but it is not thereby "impersonal".


Parfit's conception of agent-neutrality is of a form of reason that is a "reason for everyone" and this applies to the application of the Formula of Humanity but it does not apply to his kind of "non-moral" form of goodness since the latter is in fact a reason for no one which is precisely implied by the notion of its impersonality. Each of us has, Parfit implies, reasons to prevent or relieve pain, whether of oneself or others. But this is untrue not merely because it is not always possible to do so but also because the pain experienced may not be, in the given case, a "worse" state for the person in question. This is directly admitted by Parfit and since it is so it follows that the response to pain does not have the over-riding "non-moral" value Parfit claims it has. Not only is this so but if we adopted a different standard, from the "mere means" criteria of the Formula of Humanity, for example, we would have an agent-neutral way of responding to others that was not impersonal and which would be a general guide to conduct.


Now if the first point of difficulty with Parfit's view concerns the way in which he slides from 'agent-neutral' reasons to "impersonal" ones the second problem arises from the conception of how to weight the reasons that his "impersonal" view has led us to consider. Parfit states that this should be in terms of outcomes so that the best "impartial" reason for preferring something is if the features it has give everyone "the strongest impartial outcome-given reasons to prefer this outcome". At this point it appears we have simply specified a consequentialist view and so one may wonder what happened to the apparent contractualist procedure. Parfit is sensitive to this point and agrees that the impartial outcome-given reasons should not be assumed to be the only impartial reasons. Further Parfit also accepts that some other types of impartial reasons might outweigh on given occasions impartial outcome-given reasons. However whilst Parfit refers here to rights as other sources of impartial reasons he gives no general account of rights and nor does he provide any lexical procedure for describing the relationship between rights and impartial outcome-given reasons. 


The view thus far is described by Parfit as "semi-consequentialist" since it gives some weight to impartial outcome-given reasons but not necessarily over-riding weight as yet. Consequentialism generally does give over-riding weight to such reasons as Parfit agrees in specifying act-consequentialism as the view that acts are right just in case they make things go best in terms of impartial outcome-given reasons. Parfit is clearly no more willing to endorse this view than he was act utilitarianism but this leaves him open to the attractions of rule consequentialism in which acts will be right if they are permitted by one of the principles whose acceptance would make things go best in an impartial reason-giving sense. Since this conception is related to the "wide value-based" view of reasons it is a form of consequentialism that Parfit feels able to term a reason-consequentialism. 


At this point the basic problem emerges with some clarity. Contractualism involves the conception that we aim to develop a view that understands that as right which we can all rationally accept. However Parfit understands this claim by means of the consequentialist idea that was already expressed in his value-based conception of reasons to the effect that we have strong reasons to care about considerations of well-being and subsequently moves from this to the understanding of impartial reasons in terms of impersonal outcomes that no one in particular ever has some reason to want. This ensures that his conception is one that presents as a reason we should all rationally accept a consideration that no one of us has any reason to endorse. And that hardly meets the contractualist criteria.


Parfit's claim that contractualists and consequentialists are "climbing the same mountain on different sides" is essentially built on the claim that the consequentialist appeal to impartial outcome-based reasons will coincide with contractualist appeals to what everyone has a rational basis for choosing but in doing so it overlooks that the former presents for the latter reasons that no one has any particular reason to endorse. Not only is this so but there is a further problem involved in the relationship between these theories. This problem was expressed by Rawls in section 5 of A Theory of Justice where Rawls contrasted two methods of moral reasoning. On one of them "the good is defined independently from the right, and then the right is defined as that which maximises the good". This is the means by which consequentialism works. It has an independent conception of the good, as Parfit claims here when he speaks of hedonic criteria as providing a "non-moral" standard of goodness. This methodology contrasts with the other one that Rawls speaks of and which he follows Kant in preferring. This is outlined by Kant as indicating that it is only by means of and through the moral law that we arrive at a view of the good. So the good is not then independently defined but viewed rather through the prism of the right.


This second type of relationship is implied in contractualism which views the good not as an independent variable but as something that is arrived at by means of right reasoning. On the contractualist conception the right is that which we would all rationally want and the good emerges as that which is constrained by appeal to this notion of the right and thus becomes manifest to us by means of it. This methodology is quite distinct from that of consequentialism and is directly opposed to it. Not only is this so but correctly seeing the right as prior to the good in the way that Rawls and Kant direct us to implies that there is always a basis of lexical priority between the "moral" and the "non-moral" goods since the nature of what can be permissibly classed under the latter is defined by the former. 


Parfit cites Rawls' account of the way that consequentialist theories involve giving the good priority over the right and appears to agree with Rawls that this indicates a problem with such theories. However the reason Parfit gives for rejecting the claimed priority of the good is not Rawls' reason and it is also not a good reason. Parfit states that if consequentialism requires us to take the good as prior to the right then this implies that the right is trivially defined so that we end up with tautological claims. This is not the way Rawls understands the point. Instead Rawls' point is that taking the good to be prior to the right ensures that the independently defined good is one that is given over-riding priority in considerations that inevitably require abstraction from the nature of reference to persons. This is precisely what we have seen follows also from Parfit's view. Parfit attempts to avoid this by stating that whether the right or the good is made prior you end up with trivial claims but this is simply false. On the one hand you produce a claim that there is an impartial reason-involving good which is grasped in an outcome-based way (as in his view) whilst on the other hand you arrive at a conception of law and right that defines and describes what can be taken to be good (as on Rawls and Kant's view). And the difference between these two is anything but trivial.


The development of Parfit's own view is one that he sets up as involving a criteria that he thinks does mitigate its general consequentialist thrust when he introduces criteria of distribution of benefits and burdens that is meant to favour an egalitarian conception. So the goodness of outcomes is then taken not in a bluntly aggregative sense but in a way that relates this aggregation to the way the benefits and burdens are distributed. Rawls considered such a view in section 5 of Theory and determined that it would no longer be "teleological" in a classical sense as it would now take distribution to be an independent variable. Taking it to be so implies a notion of right (through distribution) that is meant to apply to the impartial outcome-based reasons and to provide a way of assessing different outcomes. Notably it does not affect the understanding of agent-neutral goods as impersonal goods however so it remains in its basic orientation a theory that is still based on the priority of the good over the right. Simply accepting that not all distribution is equal so that there is some form of distribution that is morally preferable to others and thus endorsing an egalitarian principle is not in itself sufficient to dilute the general consequentialist thrust of the theory. The nature of what is good and the form of right in relation to this good remain broadly consequentialist with only the balancing of distribution taken to be one that has a basis for preference that is not blunt. But the rationale for the preference for equality is not evident and the goods distributed are still essentially understood in a way that abstracts from consideration of the good of persons.


In the next posting I am going to conclude assessment of the third of Parfit's 2002 lectures by coming back to how the conclusion of his argument relies on his assessment of KCF and what this tells us about the kind of reading of Kant that Parfit has undertaken in his work. 

Rawls on Autonomy and Social Union

The final chapter of A Theory of Justice is concerned with the congruence of the right and the good in a well-ordered society. Another way of expressing the same point is to say that Rawls here attempts to show the relationship between the notion of goodness as rationality and justice as fairness. The overall point is thus to arrive at the view that an effective sense of justice as recognised within the governing of institutions is part of the good that would be rationally endorsed by each one of us.


The first two sections of Chapter IX are concerned with autonomy on the one hand and the idea of social union on the other. In starting with an account of autonomy Rawls wishes to begin by responding to suspicion of the psychological roots of the sense of justice. The basic suspicion he considers is motivated by a kind of psychological reductionism which views the origin of the sense of justice in the morality of authority by which young children are directed as casting suspicion upon the subsequent development of a morality of principles. In response Rawls points out that in the well-ordered society the basic rudiments of education have been governed by application of the principles of justice to the situation of the child. So none of the ideals upheld in the educational process are based on exploiting particular weaknesses or on devaluing the specific potentials of the child in question. 


The Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness requires that action on the principles of justice be understood as autonomous action which means that the principles in question express conditions that are defined by the nature of free and rational beings. So the basic guideline for educational practices has to be training for autonomy. Rawls wishes as well to show that autonomy is compatible with objectivity and does this by recourse to the device of the original position. Autonomous principles are chosen there as such principles involve recognition of the contracting parties as free and equal rational beings. The "objectivity" of the principles is stated in the generality of their application which include a sense of them that means they are stated without partiality. So the principles that are chosen in the original position are objective in not including deference to any given persons or treating any particular principle as based only on alleged special considerations.


Part of the point of such an objective mode of appraisal of principles is precisely to remove the barriers to agreement that are attached to specific positions in ordinary non-ideal intercourse. Acceptance of the principles of right and justice enables relations to others to be defined in terms that are civic rather than merely personal. So the idea of the original position is meant to give sense to both the ideas of autonomy and objectivity. This is a specific kind of view of these values and one that has to defended against other views. So autonomy is not to be understood, as it is often is, simply as respect for the particular conscience of any given individual. Rawls' earlier treatment of civil disobedience already demonstrated this feature of his view, a feature that prevents simple dependence on "subjective" views of principles. A conscience can be well or poorly guided and it is poorly guided if it fails to manifest respect for the principles of justice which is why justified civil disobedience was justified precisely by its reference to such principles and not simply by appeal to conscience alone. It is not conscience that is thus respected in the valuation of autonomy, it is rather the personality of the person, their attribute, that is, of being a person that is respected. 


So the earlier account of civil disobedience spelled out in Chapter VI of Theory is to be evaluated as specifying in terms of partial compliance theory the ideal conception of autonomy that Rawls is laying out at the beginning of Chapter IX. This is important as it indicates that autonomy is not to be viewed, in terms of justice as fairness, as a mere reference to either conscience or, with this, to reliance upon the virtue of integrity. Appeal to integrity has, as Rawls puts it here, great appeal in times of moral uncertainty where it appears to define a bed-rock value. Whilst Rawls indicates that such virtues are part of the excellence of free persons they are far from socially sufficient precisely due to the way they define virtues without reference to a contentful sense of life. It is only by reference to a kind of conception of what life one should live that the virtues of integrity define anything but it is then the case that this conception gives the value rather than the integrity of commitment taken alone.


Rawls arrives next at the point that the two principles of justice define what he terms "an Archimedean point" for appraising institutions as well as the desires and aspirations that institutions generate. Because we can refer to these principles we do not need to define an ideal of society by reference to principles of organic unity or by some sense of a pre-lapsarian past. However the objections to the general theory that Rawls presents have tended to insist on a sense of communitarian value that it is argued the allegedly "individualistic" bias of his theory does not allow recognition of. In response, in section 79, Rawls turns to elaborating a conception of social union that is meant to show that the congruence of the right and the good can define a well-ordered society in such a way that this society would recognise the achievement of the good of community.


In setting out a conception of social union that is meant to capture this sense of the good of community Rawls begins by reminding us of the conditions of the original position. A central aspect of the original position was that the parties know that they are subject to the circumstances of justice. Amongst such circumstances are the plurality of conceptions of the good amongst participants in the original position. This ensures that there is a potential conflict amongst participants as well as a unity of interest. Having reminded us of this plurality of conceptions as part of the circumstances of justice Rawls goes on to discuss how the relation between this fact and the conflicting one of the unity of interest of members of the agreement can be recognised in distinct ways by different positions. In making this point Rawls thus intends to draw an important contrast between the conception of justice as fairness and a key competing position.


The central idea that governs the way the original position is viewed by justice as fairness is that we begin from "the weakest possible" assumptions. The conditions are defined in ways that are "simple and reasonable" but the collision between interests is assumed to be great initially with the result that the way to resolve the conflict requires a comprehensive theory. Having specified the conditions of the original position in this way Rawls now contrasts the conception of it that is embodied in justice as fairness with a key rival view. The rival view is one that takes the basic structure of society as defined by the conditions that are fed only in to the original position by justice as fairness. On this conception we arrive at a notion that Rawls terms that of a "private society". Key to such a notion of society is that the entities that comprise it (whether individual persons or social groups) are assumed to have ends that are either competing or independent but not, in any event, complementary. A second element of the notion of "private society" is that institutions are taken to have no special value in themselves so that engaging with institutions is really a burden only undertaken for the realisation of private ends. The good of others is never taken as a prime datum for any actor.


On the conception of "private society" it follows that division of advantages is simply a function of power and strategic positioning. It is not impossible that a fair outcome might arise within such a set-up though it would be fortunate if it does so. Public goods will be valued largely instrumentally and relations judged in terms of the prices put upon them as in a market mechanism. The stability of such a society will rest primarily on effective use of sanctions. Once the idea of such a society is specified it becomes apparent that the alleged "individualism" of justice as fairness is not of the sort that endorses private social arrangements. And this is shown in the commitment of justice as fairness to the conception of goodness as rationality. 


On the view of goodness as rationality it follows that there are shared final ends that are possessed by persons and that common institutions express these ends. One of the reasons why this view flows from the idea of goodness as rationality is that individual potentialities are always greater than can be expressed so that each of us has, of necessity, to limit themselves in terms of what talents we choose to exercise. It is only through social union that we can participate in the total sum of the realised natural assets of others. This occurs both over time and within each generation. There are many forms of social union from families and friendships up to organisations that prosecute particular aims of scientific and artistic relations. However Rawls uses the example of a game to draw out the basic characteristics of social unions. With a game there are four sorts of ends: there is the end of the aim of the game as defined by its rules; the end of the motives of the particular participants including desire for exercise, etc. motives which can vary in weight and intensity for each participant; the social purposes of the game which may be little attended to by participants but evident to a third-party observer; and the shared end of all involved that this should be a "good" game. The last point is one that can only be reached by general compliance with the rules (the aim of the game) and by the players all playing their best. So the game is, in the broad sense, a collective achievement.


The notion of the shared end with which Rawls concludes his analysis of a game does not imply that in social unions all wish for the same thing (any more than they do in a game since most games are competitive!). It is rather meant to define an agreed scheme of conduct so that each can relate to the others  by means of it. Games are a simple illustration of a general point about social unions and a well-ordered society is not merely one social union amongst others but is rather the type of the social union of social unions. This is because it includes two characteristic features that are central to it. On the one hand it is a shared final end of all members of society and on the other its institutional forms are taken to have intrinsic value. So it defines the two central forms of goodness: it is both finally good and intrinsically good.


The well-ordered society is finally good in defining a shared end of mutual cooperation which arises from every member of the society having an effective sense of justice. This sense of justice defines a regulative condition for all and thus defines finality in a moral sense. The intrinsic good of the institutions involved is a more complicated matter. Firstly, the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness requires us to say that upholding just institutions is a good for each member of the society. But, further, the Aristotelian Principle holds also for institutional forms and shows that a just constitutional order provides a framework for all smaller and more closely defined social unions. Each person understands the first principles that govern the whole scheme and the plan of each is given a wider vista than it would otherwise possess. The regulative public intention is that the constitutional order should realise the principles of justice. The collective activity thus engaged in defines a form of Aristotelian Principle.


The next point is that the moral virtues, excellences of persons, would be displayed in the public life of a well-ordered society. This shows, as Rawls puts it, that "the collective activity of justice is the preeminent form of human flourishing". So the public realisation of justice would define the value of community, the point that, at the beginning of section 79, Rawls wished to show. This does not mean, as Rawls concludes the section by demonstrating, that the ideal social union would abolish the division of labour. One of the reasons why it would not is that the ideal social order would express our dependence on others not try to overcome this. Similarly it is not going to be possible that any individual become an exemplar of all virtues or talents. It is rather the collective activity of society that is to become the overall good of each of its members. So the just social union of social unions would define not an abolition of separation of labour but rather a way in which the activities of each can come to manifest themselves in ways that enrich all.

Rawls and the Good for Persons

In my last posting on Rawls I addressed the first half of Chapter VII of A Theory of Justice which focused on the kind of view of practical reason that emerged from it. In this posting, by contrast, I want to look at the second half of Chapter VII where, essentially, Rawls addresses topics concerned with the good for persons, a topic that emerges out of the previous discussion of practical reason.


In section 66, Rawls directly discusses the definition of the good for persons, prior to going on to focus on some excellencies and deficiencies of valuation later and concludes the chapter with some summary differences about the role of the notion of the "good" compared to that of the right. So the unity of the second half of the chapter is clearly focused on filling in the "thin" theory of the good and arriving at a "full" theory of it. At the beginning of section 66 Rawls summarises what has been achieved by the previous half of the chapter as indicating that a person's good involves the successful execution of a rational plan of life. Having arrived at this notion it is now possible to introduce, as Rawls puts it, "further definitions".


The primary goods that have been referred to throughout Theory are now described as goods that it would be rational to want whatever else is wanted and to be presupposed within the original position. They are explained essentially by the "thin" theory of the good and include liberty, opportunity, income, wealth, and self-respect, the latter of which has a special place here. The general theory of goodness as rationality is taken to account for these primary goods as arising from the account of practical reason previously given. However, Rawls now points out that the conception of reason that has guided his account is one that is regarded with some suspicion by some philosophers, particularly on the grounds that it provides only an instrumental conception of value and thus does not suffice to account for the notion of "moral worth", the very notion that Kant is particularly concerned with in Groundwork I.


Rawls' view is that if we apply the thin theory directly to the account of moral worth then we will indeed arrive at only an instrumental conception of goodness but that the thin theory is only meant to provide "part" of the description of the original position. We have, that is, to develop our account of the good in order to arrive at an account of moral worth, moving from the "thin" theory to the "full" theory. The first way of making this move that Rawls identifies is concentration on basic roles and positions, taking the example of the notion of the "citizen". If we identity key elements of what is involved in the notion of the citizen this would be one route to a view of the good person since the good person would be someone who particularly exemplified the role in question. This could be seen by thinking of the reasons other citizens would have to see the good person in this way. Having begun on this track the second logical move is to see the "good person" as representing a general or average assessment so that the idea of a good person can be extended beyond the specific starting point. Finally, there can be seen to be properties that a person occupying particular social roles would be desired to possess generally and then to assess these broad properties as ones that it would be rational to endorseas dispositively to be encouraged.


These three different accounts of how we could arrive at a conception of the good person are considered by Rawls and the third, which Rawls indicates he derived to an extent from Thomas Scanlon, is specifically taken to be valuable. But Rawls confesses that there would be difficulties in filling in this idea of a "good person", so considered. Firstly the point of view from which the properties in question are selected has to be identified. It surely includes, Rawls thinks, a sense of the virtues as classically considered. Representative people in a society will want a fair demonstration of virtuous action as underpinning the right institutions in the right way. However there are also, as Kant would say, "talents" that it is a good idea to encourage the development of although such talents still need to be regulated by a sense of justice in those who possess them. 'Talents' broadly considered are natural assets and have to be distinguished from virtues properly so called.


The "good person" then has moral worth due to possessing, in a higher degree than is normal, features of moral character that it would be rational for all to want to be manifested in action. This provides us with a generic sense of moral worth to be placed alongside the theory of justice and the thin theory of the good. However getting this sense of moral worth is not equivalent to a full theory of the good. Rather such a full theory requires as well a clearer sense of what the good generically consists in and its sub-parts. So Rawls defines "good action" in the general sense as an act "performed for the sake of the other person's good". This account of goodness thus presupposes the general sense of the good as being benevolence perhaps because such guided action is thought of as the most natural way that we leave behind the specific sphere of pursuing our own rational ends and relating to others. Such a conception also has the attraction of making clearer than many others in what supererogation consists, namely, an act "which a person does for the sake of another's good even though the proviso that nullifies the natural duty is satisfied". In other words, a kind of good act that is undertaken at potential cost to our own interests.


A complete sense of "rightness as fairness", the notion that is implicitly supposed here, would require, as Rawls confesses, some view of "reasonable self-interest" as defined from the original position and work outwards from there but this is not here provided. What does arise from the brief generic view of the good that has been given is a set of distinctions that provide a rudimentary theory of vice. So Rawls distinguishes between unjust, bad and evil persons taking the first two to relate themselves to aims that are in themselves legitimate but to use them in an excessive way. Hence the "unjust" person, on this conception, seeks dominion for the sake of wealth and security when wealth and security are, in themselves,  legitimate ends. Similarly, the "bad" person is one who wishes for arbitrary power as they have an excessive desire for ends that again are fine in themselves such as the esteem of others and a sense of self-command. So the "unjust" and "bad" persons on this picture are seen in an essentially Aristotelian way as over-stepping the mean in relation to ends. By contrast, the "evil" person delights in the humiliation of others for its own sake, an end that could never be legitimate thus leaving behind real intercourse with others.


Having given this generic account of virtue and vice in section 66 Rawls turns, in section 67, to an analysis of some specific elements of the full theory of the good. The first concentration here is on the primary good of self-respect, a good already referred to as having a specific status that is higher than other primary goods. The conception of goodness as rationality is intended to show why self-respect has such a high status. Two reasons are essentially picked out for this status existing. On the one hand, self-respect underpins any sense of a rational plan of life as worth pursuing. On the other hand, it implies confidence in the ability to carry out such a plan. Hence if rational plans of life are to be nourished at all the primary good of self-respect has to be encouraged and taken, within the original position, as a central value that the basic structure should underpin.


The first of the two parts of self-respect, the sense of plans worth pursuing, is developed by means of ensuring that such plans relate to the Aristotelian Principle and that our person and deeds are confirmed by others and that association with others is grounded in shared esteem. One of the ways the relation of such shared esteem is emphasised in practice is through the development of talents that require intricate appreciation. Anyone who can display talents that do this is more likely thereby to appreciate the achievements of others. As Rawls puts this point: 

the conditions for persons respecting themselves and one another would seem to require that their common plans be both rational and complementary: they call upon their educated endowments and arouse in each a sense of mastery, and they fit together into one scheme of activity that all can appreciate and enjoy.

The general problem that could be raised with this would be that such development cannot be one realised across the society. However Rawls understands the condition given here to be met if there are associations within which such appreciations can be developed and which therefore will be supportive of separate types of talents.

There is no general principle of perfection that is taken to be endorsed within the basic structure. Rather such a principle has earlier been rejected as unfitting for such a role and hence the diversity of talents is, by contrast, essential to the way that the plurality of goods is assumed within the society. Having laid out the general sense of self-respect and how it is to be understood Rawls next turns to the relationship between it and both "excellencies" and shame.

Shame is introduced at this point as it is understood by Rawls as the feeling of injury to self-respect. It implies, on this view, a particularly intimate connection to our person and to those who are especially close to us. However this definition of shame is not where Rawls leaves its discussion as he turns to giving an account of the reasons why shame is so understood. In order to do so Rawls develops his account of "excellencies" as shame will subsequently be related to this. Rawls thus distinguishes between goods that are primarily good for the one possessing them on the one hand and goods that are good for others as well as the one possessing them on the other. Exclusive goods that are owned only by certain persons are mainly understood to be belong in the former class whilst "natural assets and abilities" including such things as beauty and intelligence are in the latter class. People join together in appreciation of the latter class of goods and they are what Rawls terms the "excellencies". For the one possessing them they enable a sense of mastery in relation to activities to develop but they are also appreciated and valued by others and are thus, as Rawls puts it, "a condition of human flourishing".

Having outlined this account of the "excellencies" Rawls now returns to his account of shame and describes "natural" shame as arising from failure to exercise or display the excellencies. On these grounds one type of shame is manifested with regard to appearing to others to be lacking in grace or slow in understanding. Even should these qualities not be voluntary they affect self-respect and this is the basis for them producing shame. Rawls thus describes what he calls "natural" shame as based on perceived "blemishes" in the person experiencing it. Such shame relates either to generally valued qualities which we seem deficient in or, more especially, to failures with regard to our adopted rational plans.

However, interesting as Rawls' view of "natural" shame is, it is but a prolegomenon to his description of "moral" shame. This arises from combining the previous account of the "good person" with the account of "natural" shame. Someone is liable to "moral" shame inasmuch as the excellencies they particularly value are moral ones. So actions that betray the absence of the moral attributes so valued produce moral shame and a sense of a diminished self. There are a couple of grounds for this. The first is that the Kantian interpretation of the original position leads us to the view that the desire to do what is right and just is the main way for persons to express their nature and, similarly, from the Aristotelian Principle, it follows that this expression of their nature is a fundamental part of their sense of the good. 

Rawls subsequently spends some time distinguishing between shame and guilt but the essential difference for him is that guilt is appropriately felt when someone acts contrary to their sense of right whilst shame indicates a failure of self-command. It is the inability to carry out aims that seem to us worthwhile that is productive of moral shame. 

In the final section of Chapter VII Rawls turns to a series of contrasts between the right and the good, contrasts that illuminate the distinct places of these notions within his conception. The first difference is that the principles of the right are what would be chosen in the original position whilst the principles of deliberative rationality that are central to pursuit of the good would not be chosen. There is no necessity for an agreement on the principles of rational choice as each person is free to plan their life as they please assuming that their plans are consistent with the principles of justice. The general desire for the primary goods is assumed and that of self-respect taken to be essential to all but there is no need to assume agreement  on all the standards of choice with regard to the good. Secondly, pluralism with regard to the good is taken to be a good thing whilst this is not a good thing with regard to the right. There is no need for a publicly accepted judgment of the good of individuals in the way that there is such a need with regard to the right. Thirdly, applications of the principles of justice are restricted by the veil of ignorance whilst evaluations of the good require full reference to facts. The latter is so as the good relates to talents and talents are developed by individuals in distinct ways that cannot be specified in advance.

Tom Sorell and Kant on the Good Will

It's a little while since I last blogged about the role of the "good will" in the first part of Kant's Groundwork, the subject of which has provoked quite different responses from Richard Henson and Barbara Herman. However, Tom Sorell in a piece published in this collection, has offered a reply to both their pieces that articulates an interestingly different view of the good will and in this posting I'm going to summarise and partially amplify his general argument.


As with the other pieces reflecting on the use Kant makes of the notion of the "good will", so also in Sorell's case the principal question concerning it is to do with the view of "moral worth" Kant is canvassing in Groundwork I. Is it Kant's claim that moral worth owes nothing to benevolent feelings or, as we more colloquially might put it, to our "good nature"? This appears to be Kant's claim and it is, I venture to suggest, a quite radical view in some respects though, and this is the interest of Sorell's piece, it might nonetheless be a view that is founded on moral intuition (or "common sense" claims about morality). If the latter can be justified then it might turn out that the implications of ordinary morality are not entirely equivalent to how we often represent them to ourselves.


The first reason that Kant (and Sorell) provide for the claim that there is a lack of equivalence between the notion of the "good will" and the general idea of "good dispositions" is to the effect that there is only an "accidental" correlation between these notions. This claim appears to run up against the intuitive suggestion that someone who acts, for example, in a spontaneously kindly way, is more morally attractive than someone who rather has to deliberate to arrive at the right act to perform. It was due to the apparent conflict between the Kantian view and the alleged intuitive appeal of the spontaneous character that Henson and Herman presented rival accounts of the "good will". Henson distinguished the account given in the Groundwork (which he termed a "battle citation" model) from that given in the Metaphysics of Morals (which was a "fitness model") suggesting that whilst the former presents rightness in terms of conflicts of motives that the latter, rather, instead simply takes duty to be one motive amongst others so long as it could have brought about the right action on its own. Herman, by contrast, doubted that there really were two models of right action in Kant.


Whilst Sorell intends to reply to the dispute between Henson and Herman he also indicates his view of what is going on with the "good will" in Kant will turn out to provide us with a "simpler" view of how "good will" is to be understood. Henson raised the question of whether a right act can be backed by both moral and non-moral motives, a question that can also be framed as one concerned with the "overdetermination" of right action. However, neither Henson nor Herman take Kant to have himself offered a view on overdetermination and Sorell disagrees with them both on this point. It is clearly stated in the general introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals that juridical legislation "admits another motive than the idea of duty itself" and, indeed, the motive that therefore leads me not to commit an act that is contrary to duty may itself have no moral worth (in Kant's claimed equivalence of moral worth with actions that follow from possession of a "good will"). Kant also has a very complicated picture of promising which is presented as implying a juridical duty even though often it is not susceptible to external coercive enforcement. The latter point is used by Sorell to show that Kant does consider the case of overdetermination.


The reason to take promise keeping as so overdetermined is that the thought of duty alone is sufficient, on Kant's account, to lead one to act so as to fulfil this command even though it is also often a command that can be enforced coercively (which latter gives us an incentive to act rightly). When something is represented as a duty subjectively then it is also taken to be something we should, of necessity, do. As Kant puts this point, there are different "modes" of obligation involved here. However, inasmuch as what we are interested in is merely ethics alone, there is no ground for even considering any mode of obligation other than that commanded by duty so, whilst Kant appears to indicate that overdetermination is capable of being at work, he also suggests that such overdetermination is of no interest to someone with a "good will" since this person will simply act in accord with the thought of duty alone.


This argument - drawn from the introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals - is supplemented by Sorell by considerations drawn from the Groundwork. These latter involve the claim, made at Ak. 4: 400, that action done from duty excludes the influence of inclination. Henson raised the question of whether the presence of a co-operating inclination is something that is thereby ethically excluded on the grounds that it would appear that intuition permits this. Now, addressing this exact point, Herman argued that this would open up dutiful actions to the problem of including something that would only align in a fortuitous way with the demand of duty. This point does appear to be emphasised by Kant both at Ak. 4: 390 and at Ak. 4: 398. How Herman sees this point is, however, different from the argument Sorell wishes to present as Kant's. Herman takes it that a disposition to help, for example, might lead to helping someone who is in the process of performing an act that is not morally commendable. So the difficultly with reliance on inclination on Herman's view appears to be that inclinations are "indiscriminate" in their orientation. But this is not the way Sorell suggests we should view Kant's argument. Rather, on Sorell's interpretation, the point is instead that inclinations violate what he terms Kant's "no accident" principle.


To see the difference between Sorell and Herman here it is useful to understand what follows from the claim that it should be "no accident" that the right act is performed. Well, for Herman, it is sufficient that a right act not only meet the requirement that it not depend on "accidental circumstances" but also that "failure in different circumstances does not require denial of moral worth". So there are two different senses of "accidental circumstance" for Herman. Sorell, by contrast, denies that Kant could have accepted the second of Herman's senses of "accidental circumstance". A will viewed in this way is one that is open to conditional rightness and this appears to contravene Kant's requirement that the good will be a will that is good in an unconditional sense. However, when this difference between Herman's and Sorell's reading comes out this way it appears that Sorell's reading reinforces the suggestion, to which Henson's original argument was meant to reply, that there is something about Kant's requirements that is seriously in conflict with moral intuition. Now it appears that the conflict concerns the point that Kant appears to want it not to be accidental ever that the right act is performed whereas "common sense" would appear to be satisfied, like Herman, with the lesser requirement that what is actually willed is right even though, given appropriate variational difference, it could have turned out to be wrong.


Now that we have arrived at this difference between Herman's and Sorell's accounts it becomes clearer that the "no accident" principle in the latter's sense would appear to be the source of the alleged conflict between the unconditionality of duty and the presumed attractiveness of spontaneous good character. In order to see the connection between the "no accident" principle and this claimed conflict it is useful to follow Sorell in looking again at the "natural dialectic" with which Kant concludes Groundwork I. In this "natural dialectic" Kant discusses the contrary pulls of duty and inclination summarising the latter as providing a basis for scepticism concerning the purity and strictness of morals (what Henson termed Kant's "battle citation" model). The point Kant has in view in evoking this "natural dialectic" is to present the commands of moral requirements as inescapable or unconditional. Now the point about responding to the view that alleges spontaneous good character is more attractive in the manner of Henson's alleged later "fitness" model is that it is meant to show that inclination need not be seen as a barrier to this unconditional nature of duty. However the "no accident" principle shows that this unconditional character of duty is not restricted and this appears to cut against any argument that allows "moral worth" to even partially reside in the presence of good inclinations.


Now it is obviously part of Kant's general case that we can detach ourselves from that which we are inclined towards. This is part of the way Kant resists "naturalism" in the sense of arguing that there is nothing about our sensuousness as such that can be morally determinative when it comes to the pure command of duty. This is underscored by Kant's claim at Ak. 4: 410-11 that reason influence us more powerfully than the inclinations. However, as Sorell points out, this brings Kant into apparent conflict with a picture like the one many derive from Aristotle in which the cultivation of the virtues through habitual learning will co-ordinate perception and appetite in such a way as to make right action the general outcome. The "Aristotelian" picture is not without problems of its own though since, as follows from recognition of even Herman's restricted notion of the "no accident" principle, some tend to have less spontaneous direction towards the right than others and would, on this account, therefore tend less towards the right outcome. This would open morality up to the accusation that it sets forth requirements that are in fact ones that some are, due to various types of good fortune, better able to meet than others. Thus circumstantial bad luck would put the good life beyond reach which would seem a poor ground for being responded to with moral opprobrium.


Now, in response to this worry, a worry that Kant can use against the "attractiveness" of the "spontaneous" good character, Kant can and does adopt the view that the type of commendation the "good character" deserves is less moral than aesthetic. The person of "good character" on Kant's view is one who acts in a way that we can term "beautiful" whereas the person who possesses a good will is, rather, one we view as "sublime" in their character. The person with the "good character" of spontaneous type is one who charms us but does not, merely due to this, present us with a check on our view of ourselves. Rather the person of this sort can reinforce a "naturalistic" view of ourselves that leads us to think that if we just leave things alone we will, over time, get the "good character" in question just from habitual observances. By contrast, the "discipline" of reason is based on the sublime authority of the law, an authority that we find we only reluctantly give way to (which is why the person with the "good will" inspires us with respect).


Another way of putting the general point that Sorell has derived from the aesthetic contrast that Kant makes is that the "spontaneous" good character, to be really attractive, is one that we have to think of as one that the one who exhibits it, is responsible for. If the person of "spontaneous" good character really is "naturalistically" good it would follow they were not really a character worthy of commendation for their goodness as this goodness would be purely a lucky possession. Hence, moral intuition agrees with Kant that there have to be internal constraints on good character for it really to be good. Should the character be just an outflow of a "good nature" it would not be one that was really worth commending for its morality since it would not be expressive of a moral character. So we need a "good will behind a good nature" in order to show moral respect. So if there are good inclinations in the person of good will they cannot be what is generically causally the basis of their good acts as otherwise there is nothing there that is worthy of our moral commendation. From which it follows that Kant's thesis is perhaps not, after all, out of accord with common sense morality and thus that the latter might not, despite appearances to the contrary, favour "spontaneous" good character.

Christine Korsgaard Lecture at UCL

Thanks to the folks over at the Political Theory blog for bringing this lecture to our attention. The lecture will be addressing the topic of "Having A Good". See this posting for more details and a link to a recent paper Professor Korsgaard has written on a similar theme, that of the "relational nature" of the good.

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. 

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.