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4 Responses to “Ben Nelson on Consequentialism”  

1. 1 cosim May 2nd, 2006 at 6:51 pm

   I’m required to respectfully disagree on this question of “mere empty pragmatism (whose advice sways with the winds of politics).” This (presumably sad) state of affairs is said to arise when we fail to “compr[o]mise the needs of principles and those of reality” in “compr[o]mis[ing] between two virtues, [and] seek[ing] the mean between two opposed vices.”

   If “the absolutism which characterizes the hard-core deontological thinking is morally deficient”, then why is it the case that “any attempt to abandon fundamental norms…premature, misguided, and will (given enough time) negotiate away virtue and morality.”? Isn’t the trouble with extreme deontological thought that it begins and ends with the fundamental norm - an unbroken circuit? Wouldn’t it be preferable to reason from a metaethical method to norms contextually suitable?

   Ultimately, we don’t act ethically on the prompting motivation of some fundamental norm; at least, not so much as we do with concern for another human being. What exactly are “the needs of principles”, and why should they sometimes trump - as I think is being urged - the needs of real people?

   Pragmatism may indeed sway, and thus cause a “principle” or “fundamental norm” to buckle, but that should hardly be a liability. It oughtn’t be the case, as was recently noted of a certain politician, that he rightly believes tomorrow what he believed yesterday, no matter what happened today. This isn’t a case for immorality, but we should, in deed, be able to revise our principles, just as we can revise our understanding of reality - both facts and values may be revised, with good reason. Otherwise, without a healthy amount of pragmatism, how far is one, really, from a more ‘absolutist’ ethics?

2. 2 Ben Nelson May 3rd, 2006 at 2:30 pm

   Everything after the dashes was essentially a whole new tangeant, an attempt to keep up with the comments made by Hanno. They are issues which are connected to deontology and so on (can scarce not be in such a general domain) but not directly so. They were made in a rush, so it’s not surprising that they seem to provoke the most questions.

   Extreme deontology does have the benefit of providing exquisite moral clarity and guidance, but it offers no comprimises in any of the three practical principles. In an extreme duty-based world, there is only the satisfaction of rules, or the failure to satisfy them. Contrast that with amoralism (essentially the abandonment of fundamental norms), where those practical governing principles are not led by any other moral standard. In which case, they only preach comprimise, and this is hardly moral. An appeal to the former to save us from the latter ignores the problems of both, and ignores the middle ground.

   Indeed, both are deficient, but in different ways. Extreme deontology is unrealistic, and people suffer out of its limited regard; it is, in other words, fatalistically law-obsessed. Its trouble is not that it has a fundamental norm, but rather, that the rigid norms it provides are delineated to a point where substantial moral goods are put on the line when they don’t need to be. Amoralism is deficient in that it is, well, amoral, provides no clear guidance in life, thought, or action, nor the hope of developing any kind of meaningful guidance on such things, and so doesn’t mean the demands of ethics; it is anomic.

   All theories need to reason from meta-ethics to contextually suitable norms, in the sense that systems which have f-norms and those who don’t are both equally obliged to have such a procedure. A system without fundamental norms would presumably still arrive at the contextually appropriate judgments by way of an examination of the conditions in the world and compare them to appropriate mid-level principles; and a system which has f-norms would do the same, except would be more strict in how it directs the application of mid-level principles in a contextually appropriate way. So this can hardly be used as a critique of top-down reasoning.

   You mention motivation, which is important. But the role of the fundamental norm is not, in the first place, to motivate; that is provided by the ambient facts of the world, the meta-ethical concerns which take place within the situation and within the actors. (Though of course any candidate fundamental norm which fails to motivate cannot be convincing.) You can compare the difference between motivation and the f. norm as that between an engine and a rudder. One provides power, the other provides guidance.

   All motivation in this area, presumably, originally arise from the empathic-communicative and egoistic instincts. They, in turn, direct our attention to, and limit the possible candidates for, fundamental norms. When I wrote about the “needs of principles”, I was thinking of them as opposed to the needs of reality. This is not to say that moral worries are unreal (that would be to undermine my own point), but rather, to say that moral principles are largely motivated by, and develop from, the imagination (esp. when directed towards possible worries in reality). Say, when you are late for work, and about to miss the A-train, but see a lost toddler being guided by two squirrely-looking preteens. Let’s say you are a strong believer in utilitarianism. Reality definitely tells you that there are bad consequences for yourself if you fail to catch the train; but the imagination thinks of whether or not those pre-teens might be planning something nefarious with the toddler, regardless of whether or not anything is in fact afoot. The principle of utility doesn’t itself distinguish between the two, and it needs to take both seriously. So in this case the principle doesn’t trump the needs of people, it aims to secure them; but in some sense the definitely real is opposed to what may be real or suspected, which is the work of the imagination.

   I don’t dispute that pragmatism is a good thing, I dispute that it is anything but a stop-gap measure without fundamental norms. But one thing is for sure: an extreme deontology is what buckles pragmatic rules, and not the other way around.

3. 3 cosim May 6th, 2006 at 12:03 pm

   Thanks for your response, which raises for me at least so many questions as it addresses - that’s a good thing, of course.

   To an extent, I dispute your argument that extreme deontology carries with it “the benefit of providing exquisite moral clarity and guidance.” For I’m thinking that instead, extreme deontology only provides the illusion thereof, given that the seeming boon of extreme deontology is based mostly in a priori thought, and frequently disengaged from the facts of the world at that. I think this brings me to the same endpoint as you, that extreme deontology is “unrealistic, and people suffer out of its limited regard.” But perhaps I go somewhat further than you in insisting that extreme deontology carries with it a strongly illusory quality. I rather agree with your expalantion of why amoralism fails.

   Thinking of Kant, how clear is it really that he could solve practice problems with his theoretical machinery? At one level, he’s being very ‘clear’, but on several others, I don’t know that he can really tell us much that’s useful (the argument against onanism) in a ‘clear’ way. Not to say, of course, that he doesn’t say much that’s useful, but those things aren’t ‘clear’. Here, I think I’m associating ‘clear’ with a priori. Thinking of Nozick, isn’t it absurd that for all of his libertarian theory’s ‘clarity’, he manages to evade the epistemological question. (Hilary Putnam has pointed out, quite rightly, that Nozick’s libertarian theory hardly follows from his epistemology). So is Locke to a great extent coping with this same sort of problem, perhaps to the greatest extent of all, given his empiricist nature of belief.

   How are fundamental norms derived? A lot of the action is there, and I suspect that for any moral account, the question must be taken up. I don’t think that all fundamental norms are derived from meta-ethical principles, otherwise everything moral is, at all events, completely revisable. There is, I should like to say, some ground that isn’t meta-ethically derived, but that doesn’t deny the derivability of things from meta-ethics, epistemology, and the rest.

4. 4 Ben Nelson May 6th, 2006 at 6:49 pm

   But the strength of the rules which deontology has, and which extreme deontology thus inherits, cannot be ignored. For a sound maxim is simply more economical in practice than a utilitarian calculus, a disposition to virtue, or a casuistic storybook filled with case-studies. Principles are just easy to communicate. This is an essential virtue if one believes, as many do, that there is a “publicity condition” to morality: that all moral rules must be widely disseminated. Once we realise that maxims are economical, and that economy is of fundamental moral significance, one can’t help seeing the advantages of deontology. Moreover, an extreme deontology can have strong motivational force. They can be phrased easily as commands, which can be pretty cut and dry.

   However an extreme deontology is fairly weak in terms of moral force. It provides guidance (do x), and reason for acting (to avoid punishment), but is unsatisfying about the origins of its moral content. In that sense, they may be, as you say, illusory.

   Kant gives ridiculous interpretations of the categorical imperative in a panoply of particular cases, but that doesn’t mean that all of his formulations are unclear. IE: to always treat people, not just as means, but also as ends in themselves, is pretty clear.

   I’m afraid I can’t make any sense of the phrase “a priori”, despite just having finished a class on Kantian epistemology. It’s a top contender in the history of philosophy for phrases which beg the question by their title alone. The only other runner up I can think of is Rand’s “objectivism”. So I’m not sure I know what you mean by clarity. I’m thinking in terms of whether or not a rule can be applied to ordinary cases with relative ease.

   Fundamental norms are generated out of certain meta-ethical positions. Mill and Bentham did not seem to take this notion seriously — they felt that the principle of utility was an obvious fact of reason — but I think they were being modest. We can rationally reconstruct the presuppositions of utilitarianism that are related to issues of human nature, the world, and moral meaning, and presume that the conclusion implicitly through them.

   The first doctrine of meta-ethics would have to be the definition of ethics itself. I take it to be something to the effect of, “guidance to the good and right a) life, b) action, and c) thoughts concerned with life and action”. Other issues would have to be addressed — ‘What is the right?’ and ‘What is of intrinsic value (What is the good)?’. Two more conditions are explicitly held by utilitarians: ethical consequentialism and welfarism-hedonism. I would add a third doctrine: that of moral interactionism, the doctrine that all moral systems must be either other-regarding or arise out of social interaction to be considered moral (which invariably leads to the publicity condition).

   Other issues which have been mentioned which play a role here. One issue may be to answer the satisficing-optimizing question mentioned earlier (or to scrap the distinction and offer an alternative). Another may be a discussion of the ‘governing rules’ of practical ethics, already mentioned. Another may have to do with development of the correct character and virtues. Probably there are others.

   Some typical meta-ethical questions that deserve answers, but which I take to be of peripheral interest to this discussion, are: cognitivism-noncognitivism, naturalism v. non-naturalism, the structure of an action, the nature of life, the structure of a social system, etc.

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