Really enjoyed this post ā especially the clarity around criteria of rightness vs decision procedures. Iām curious how you think about cases where decision procedures stop being merely advice and instead become embedded in institutions (laws, bureaucracies, algorithms) that shape future choice. Do you think the criteria/procedure distinction still applies cleanly once procedures become institutionalized?
Yes, "institutionalized procedures" (e.g. laws) are an especially important example, where the distinction can play out in a couple of way. Firstly, we shouldn't expect the best laws to perfectly match the objectively-best set of actions: the law is a blunt instrument, and it's OK that it has to oversimplify sometimes. So the mere fact that a law has one unfortunate instance or implication doesn't suffice to show that it's overall a bad law, for example. The distinction also applies to the question of when/whether to obey the law. It might be that there are some objectively ideal exceptions, but if fallible people aren't very reliable at identifying the exceptions correctly than it may be most advisable for them to just follow the law regardless. (Depends on the details, of course.)
125% agree but I think a part of the blame here comes from philosophical education itself. These shouldn't be mistakes you make coming out of any ethics class at university but there are.
And I think there are some pressures which cause this. People who become philosophers tend to be very reluctant to call anything any philosopher ever said clearly wrong. And I understand why, but I feel that the way many philosophers teach ethics is a bit like trying to teach logic in a philosophy classroom where every time someone says "ok so contradiction (bot) is always false" you go "Well some philosophers like Graham Priest have argued there are true contradictions."
This bad way of talking about and understanding ethics is a clear attractor so if you don't clearly stamp it out students won't really understand. They can learn about all the buts and caveats later.
For instance, every time I've (as TA or student) sat in a class and that whole initial confusion where some students are like: but what is wrong in my culture might not be wrong in yours inevitably the instructor prevaricates a bit about how there have been some views about cultural relativism that ... before moving on. Same with plenty of arguments that are on their face bad the way you say. The instructor is often pretty reluctant to say in many contexts, that objection fails because it conflates what is good and what it is good to advocate.
But then again the reason I became a mathematican is probably exactly because I'd start the students off with semi-formal reasoning about what is good rather than the more humanities holistic approach.
What do you think of the response that says: one question addressed by ethical theory is what ethical dispositions I (objectively) ought to cultivate (or which rules I ought to attempt to internalise)? If this is indeed part of ethical theory, then what you call "fake virtue ethics" or "fake rule consequentialism" do not seem so misguided after all, in that we just have to switch from talk of recommendations to talk of what we objectively ought to do (in the realm of moral self-development) and we are indeed doing bona fide ethical theory.
Sure, I think that's compatible with everything I said. I agree that claims about advisable dispositions can be true and important, and ethical theory may help to inform such claims. The advice I describe as "Fake virtue ethics" may be *good advice*, for example, and correspond to *true claims* about what dispositions we ought to inculcate. But these claims could follow from any number of ethical theories, including act consequentialism. So it's extremely misleading when people call it "virtue ethics" (as if it were a rival theory), or assume that the claims are incompatible with other act consequentialist verdicts.
The main lessons I'm hoping to impart are that:
(1) Many people misinterpret the core claims of ethical theories, confusing theoretical claims and practical advice (alternatively: confusing theoretical verdicts about dispositions with theoretical verdicts about other actions).
(2) As a result, many common objections to act consequentialism are confused and irrelevant.
āIt falsely assumes that we should always want people to be disposed to perform any objectively right action.ā
This undermines the study of morality. Ought implies can, and the entire purpose of discovering moral oughts is to provide practical ethical guidance for real agents that may otherwise be confused.
Otherwise, morality turns into meaningless theory rather than meaningful insight.
Yes, to analogize,itās like drawing blueprints for inventions that can never work and calling that worthwhile as a fun intellectual exercise, without regard to producing real innovation. It reduces moral theorizing to a hobby, ultimately a waste of time.
If youāre going to draw blueprints for an invention, the goal is to build something that works.
You're not engaging with anything I wrote. (Consider the fundamental physics - practical technology analogy.) It's both untrue that theory "can never work" in helping us in practice, AND untrue that only practical things matter.
If a blueprint doesnāt work then itās not a āfundamental truthā.
The same with moral theory. If it fails the test of real world application it needs to be reworked until it does. Otherwise, there is no truth discovered.
It may be helpful as a discovery as one of the 1000 āwrongā ways to make a lightbulb. But proof of an ethical theoryās truth is only in application.
Think about the difference between scientific theories and blueprints. The former aim at systematic understanding. The latter aim at practical guidance (of a very localized sort). The whole point of my post is that ethical theory is a form of THEORY, not advice-giving or blueprint-making.
Some people aren't interested in theory, and you may be one of them. That's fine! One can imagine engineers turning up their noses at theoretical physicists in a similar way. But they at least understand that the physicists aren't trying to do engineering.
Compare: if you criticize an artist's painting for being a bad blueprint, that doesn't make much sense as a criticism because what they made *was never intended to be a blueprint*. You've misunderstood what they're doing.
In general, you need to understand what people are trying to do before criticizing it. Otherwise, what you're really doing is criticizing them for *failing to do something else*. "This isn't applied ethics" is a complaint that applies to everything that isn't applied ethics. It isn't an interesting criticism of ethical theory in particular.
Blueprints are grounded in correct scientific theories. Otherwise they could not work. You cannot disconnect systemic understanding from practical guidance when the former grounds the latter.
Letās work with the artist analogy, then. An artist relies on certain theories of optics, perception, color, and light. If their understanding of these concepts is confused, their art will be as well. If they understand them clearly, they can produce better art.
Iām interested in theory because it fosters meaningful understanding that is meant to be usefully applied to the world. Not mental masturbation.
Youāre right that I canāt criticize you fairly until I know what youāre trying to do. If this article is seeking validation of your preconceptions, then my criticisms are misplaced, and would be better directed toward someone actually trying to do philosophy. But if youāre seeking philosophical truth, my criticisms are warranted.
Really enjoyed this post ā especially the clarity around criteria of rightness vs decision procedures. Iām curious how you think about cases where decision procedures stop being merely advice and instead become embedded in institutions (laws, bureaucracies, algorithms) that shape future choice. Do you think the criteria/procedure distinction still applies cleanly once procedures become institutionalized?
Yes, "institutionalized procedures" (e.g. laws) are an especially important example, where the distinction can play out in a couple of way. Firstly, we shouldn't expect the best laws to perfectly match the objectively-best set of actions: the law is a blunt instrument, and it's OK that it has to oversimplify sometimes. So the mere fact that a law has one unfortunate instance or implication doesn't suffice to show that it's overall a bad law, for example. The distinction also applies to the question of when/whether to obey the law. It might be that there are some objectively ideal exceptions, but if fallible people aren't very reliable at identifying the exceptions correctly than it may be most advisable for them to just follow the law regardless. (Depends on the details, of course.)
125% agree but I think a part of the blame here comes from philosophical education itself. These shouldn't be mistakes you make coming out of any ethics class at university but there are.
And I think there are some pressures which cause this. People who become philosophers tend to be very reluctant to call anything any philosopher ever said clearly wrong. And I understand why, but I feel that the way many philosophers teach ethics is a bit like trying to teach logic in a philosophy classroom where every time someone says "ok so contradiction (bot) is always false" you go "Well some philosophers like Graham Priest have argued there are true contradictions."
This bad way of talking about and understanding ethics is a clear attractor so if you don't clearly stamp it out students won't really understand. They can learn about all the buts and caveats later.
For instance, every time I've (as TA or student) sat in a class and that whole initial confusion where some students are like: but what is wrong in my culture might not be wrong in yours inevitably the instructor prevaricates a bit about how there have been some views about cultural relativism that ... before moving on. Same with plenty of arguments that are on their face bad the way you say. The instructor is often pretty reluctant to say in many contexts, that objection fails because it conflates what is good and what it is good to advocate.
But then again the reason I became a mathematican is probably exactly because I'd start the students off with semi-formal reasoning about what is good rather than the more humanities holistic approach.
What do you think of the response that says: one question addressed by ethical theory is what ethical dispositions I (objectively) ought to cultivate (or which rules I ought to attempt to internalise)? If this is indeed part of ethical theory, then what you call "fake virtue ethics" or "fake rule consequentialism" do not seem so misguided after all, in that we just have to switch from talk of recommendations to talk of what we objectively ought to do (in the realm of moral self-development) and we are indeed doing bona fide ethical theory.
Sure, I think that's compatible with everything I said. I agree that claims about advisable dispositions can be true and important, and ethical theory may help to inform such claims. The advice I describe as "Fake virtue ethics" may be *good advice*, for example, and correspond to *true claims* about what dispositions we ought to inculcate. But these claims could follow from any number of ethical theories, including act consequentialism. So it's extremely misleading when people call it "virtue ethics" (as if it were a rival theory), or assume that the claims are incompatible with other act consequentialist verdicts.
The main lessons I'm hoping to impart are that:
(1) Many people misinterpret the core claims of ethical theories, confusing theoretical claims and practical advice (alternatively: confusing theoretical verdicts about dispositions with theoretical verdicts about other actions).
(2) As a result, many common objections to act consequentialism are confused and irrelevant.
āIt falsely assumes that we should always want people to be disposed to perform any objectively right action.ā
This undermines the study of morality. Ought implies can, and the entire purpose of discovering moral oughts is to provide practical ethical guidance for real agents that may otherwise be confused.
Otherwise, morality turns into meaningless theory rather than meaningful insight.
See the "So why care about moral theory?" section of my post.
Yes, to analogize,itās like drawing blueprints for inventions that can never work and calling that worthwhile as a fun intellectual exercise, without regard to producing real innovation. It reduces moral theorizing to a hobby, ultimately a waste of time.
If youāre going to draw blueprints for an invention, the goal is to build something that works.
You're not engaging with anything I wrote. (Consider the fundamental physics - practical technology analogy.) It's both untrue that theory "can never work" in helping us in practice, AND untrue that only practical things matter.
If a blueprint doesnāt work then itās not a āfundamental truthā.
The same with moral theory. If it fails the test of real world application it needs to be reworked until it does. Otherwise, there is no truth discovered.
It may be helpful as a discovery as one of the 1000 āwrongā ways to make a lightbulb. But proof of an ethical theoryās truth is only in application.
Think about the difference between scientific theories and blueprints. The former aim at systematic understanding. The latter aim at practical guidance (of a very localized sort). The whole point of my post is that ethical theory is a form of THEORY, not advice-giving or blueprint-making.
Some people aren't interested in theory, and you may be one of them. That's fine! One can imagine engineers turning up their noses at theoretical physicists in a similar way. But they at least understand that the physicists aren't trying to do engineering.
Compare: if you criticize an artist's painting for being a bad blueprint, that doesn't make much sense as a criticism because what they made *was never intended to be a blueprint*. You've misunderstood what they're doing.
In general, you need to understand what people are trying to do before criticizing it. Otherwise, what you're really doing is criticizing them for *failing to do something else*. "This isn't applied ethics" is a complaint that applies to everything that isn't applied ethics. It isn't an interesting criticism of ethical theory in particular.
Blueprints are grounded in correct scientific theories. Otherwise they could not work. You cannot disconnect systemic understanding from practical guidance when the former grounds the latter.
Letās work with the artist analogy, then. An artist relies on certain theories of optics, perception, color, and light. If their understanding of these concepts is confused, their art will be as well. If they understand them clearly, they can produce better art.
Iām interested in theory because it fosters meaningful understanding that is meant to be usefully applied to the world. Not mental masturbation.
Youāre right that I canāt criticize you fairly until I know what youāre trying to do. If this article is seeking validation of your preconceptions, then my criticisms are misplaced, and would be better directed toward someone actually trying to do philosophy. But if youāre seeking philosophical truth, my criticisms are warranted.
The modal realism approach to ethical theory clarifies why contingent objections miss the mark. Brilliant framing of the decoupling issue.