Why idealize?

Ethics

Volumn 115, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 759-787

  Enoch, David ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 24944442568     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/430490     Document Type: Review

References (116)

1. Roderick Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317-45.
2. Peter Railton, "Facts and Values," Philosophical Topics 14 (1986): 5-31, 16.
3. But see n. 17 below.
4. Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 101-13.
5. Bernard Williams, "Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame," in his Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 35-45. Though Williams only argues for the claim that his condition is necessary for something being a reason, he expresses confidence that it is also sufficient.
6. See Bernard Williams, "Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame," in his Making Sense of Humanity, (1995), ibid., 35-36.
7. David Lewis, "Dispositional Theories of Value," in his Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 68-94,
8. originally published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 63, suppl. (1989): 113-37.
9. Notice that this group of views is wider than what is usually thought of as ideal observer theories. The example of Williams's theory of reasons should suffice to show that.
10. It is perhaps worth mentioning already at this early stage that nothing in what follows will depend on whether the relevant idealizing analysis is considered to be a priori or a posteriori.
11. I take this term from Michael Johnston, "Dispositional Theories of Value," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 63, suppl. (1989): 139-74.
12. See, e.g., Hubin's discussion of dispositions and deviant causal chains (Donald Hubin, "Hypothetical Motivation," Noûs 30 [1996]: 31-54, 36-39), though Hubin thinks the more serious problem with such views is one not of extensional adequacy but rather of adequacy as a philosophical analysis.
13. Lewis, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 77 (footnote omitted and italics added).
14. See also Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," 326.
15. For similar criticisms of Lewis, see Robert Noggle, "Integrity, the Self, and Desire-Based Accounts of the Good," Philosophical Studies 96 (1999): 303-31, 309;
16. and Andrei Marmor, Positive Law and Objective Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 180.
17. And see also a similar point made by Sosa as a criticism of Wiggins (David Sosa, "Pathetic Ethics," in Objectivity in Law and Morals, ed. Brian Leiter, 287-329 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 306).
18. For the general point (that idealization of the type discussed cannot be grounded in epistemological considerations), see also Arthur Ripstein, "Preference," in Value, Welfare and Morality, ed. Richard Frey and Christopher Morris, 93-111 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 104-5;
19. Hubin, "Hypothetical Motivation," 38;
20. and Hallvard Lillehammer, "Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason,"Journal of Ethics 4 (2000): 173-190, 177.
21. See, e.g., Johnston, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 172-73.
22. Which is not to say that there aren't any problems in understanding or giving a fully explicit philosophical account of this intuitive idea, and indeed of the philosophical problems surrounding the Euthyphro Contrast. See Crispin Wright, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 139.
23. See David Sobel, "Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action," Social Philosophy and Policy 18 (2001): 218-35, 233,
24. and "Subjective Accounts of Reasons for Action," Ethics 111 (2001): 461-92, 473.
25. For a related discussion, see Connie Rosati, "Agency and the Open Question Argument," Ethics 113 (2003): 490-527, 525-26.
26. Perhaps Plato's view of the relation between the good and our motivations can serve as an example of tracking internalism.
27. At one point, Railton suggests that the truth-maker of the relevant normative claim is not the idealized response, but rather its nonnormative reduction base. See Peter Railton, "Moral Realism," in Moral Discourse and Practice, ed. Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, 137-63 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 143,
28. originally published in Philosophical Review 95 (1986): 163-207. And so it may seem as if Railton can after all give the natural answer to the why-idealize question - for it is possible that advisors in less-than-ideal conditions fail to reliably track this reduction base. But this cannot be, I think, Railton's view. If the dispositional fact is not to drop out of the story as an insignificant intermediate stage between normative facts and their physicalist reduction base, then it must still be Railton's view that these dispositions are not thought of as reliably tracking the dispositions- independent normative facts, but rather as grounding the relevant normative facts. Railton's view must be, I think, that the fact that certain reduction-base-facts are the ones favored by an ideal advisor is what explains why it is this (rather than any other) reduction base that does the ultimate work here.
29. And this is enough to make the natural answer unavailable to Railton. For a different reading of Railton, see David Zimmerman, "Why Richard Brandt Does Not Need Cognitive Psychotherapy, and Other Glad News about Idealized Preference Theories in Meta-ethics," Journal of Value Inquiry 37 (2003): 373-94, 375. I thank a referee for Ethics for drawing my attention to the complication discussed in this note.
30. Because the discussion has been put in terms of dependence and priority, socalled no-priority views such as McDowell's and Wiggins's escape the reasoning of this section. See John McDowell, "Projection and Truth in Ethics," in Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, Moral Discourse and Practice, 215-25;
31. and David Wiggins, "A Sensible Subjectivism?" in his Needs, Values, Truth, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 185-214,
32. reprinted in Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, Moral Discourse and Practice, 227-44. Nevertheless, I think that the challenge in the text can be modified so as to pose a threat for them as well. But so modifying it will take me too far afield, and - given my general suspicions regarding such views - I am happy to restrict my argument here so that it does not directly apply to them. I thank Hagit Benbaji for many relevant discussions.
33. This line of thought is implicit, I think, in Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," 102-3,
34. and "Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame," 36;
35. Railton, "Facts and Values," 12;
36. and Lewis, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 77.
37. I thank Mark Schroeder for emphasizing this point to me (in the form of an objection).
38. Williams, "Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame," 102. It has been noticed in the literature that idealization opens up a gap between one's reasons (or values, one's good, or whatever) and one's motivations (or other responses), thus threatening to be inconsistent with stricter versions of internalism.
39. See, e.g., Noggle, "Integrity, the Self, and Desire-Based Accounts of the Good,"
40. and Sobel, "Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action." Noticing such a gap, Rosati has suggested a two-tier internalism, one in which the relevant idealization is itself determined by what conditions the agent thinks of or cares about as ideal.
41. (A similar point, I think, is implicit in Williams ["Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action." ibid., 37], where he says that what justifies eliminating factual errors but not normative ones in the idealization process is that we all already care about factual accuracy.) Rosati's interesting suggestion faces its own difficulties, which I hope to discuss elsewhere. For my purposes here it is sufficient to note that her suggestion starts from acknowledging the tension between strong internalist intuitions (according to which, roughly, what matters to me is what matters to me) and any idealization.
42. See Connie Rosati, "Internalism and the Good for a Person," Ethics 106 (1996): 297-326.
43. Interestingly, putting forward her two-tier internalism as the theory that best captures internalist intuitions but acknowledging its possible extensional inadequacy, Rosati considers the possibility that her reasoning entails the refutation of internalism (Connie Rosati, "Internalism and the Good for a Person," Ethics 106 (1996) ibid., 309). This is where her argument is closest to mine.
44. Railton, "Facts and Values," 9.
45. This is even more clearly true of historicized versions of ideal response-dependence views, such as the one recently suggested by Zimmerman. For surely, and despite Zimmerman's claim to the contrary ("Why Richard Brandt Does Not Need Cognitive Psychotherapy," 392), it is a huge stretch of internalist intuitions to say that they are satisfied by a connection between my reasons or what is good for me and the motives I would have had if I had a different history. David Copp suggested a further underlying motivation for response-dependence theories: that of accommodating the intuition that our actual responses are at least rough indicators of the relevant normative truths. But going response-dependence and idealizing is not a very good way of accommodating this intuition, because then our actual responses are good indicators of the normative truths only to the extent that they resemble our idealized responses, and there is no guarantee that they resemble them to a satisfactory degree. Here, too, then, the idealization severs the perhaps initially plausible tie between our actual responses and the normative truths. (And, of course, there may be other ways of accommodating the mentioned intuition.)
46. These features comprise the very minimal sense of normativity which Williams (e.g., "Internal and External Reasons," 104) argues his theory can capture. I think that this is much too minimal a sense, but this is a point I cannot develop here.
47. I found it made most explicitly in Lewis ("Dispositional Theories of Value," 87), though there it is presented as an argument not so much for the truth of his idealizing view as an argument for its status as analytic.
48. think that similar lines of thought are implicit also in Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," 332;
49. Stephen Darwall, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), chap. 8;
50. Railton, "Facts and Values," 15;
51. Johnston, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 163;
52. Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, "Toward Fin de Siecle Ethics: Some Trends," Philosophical Review 101 (1992): 115-89,
53. reprinted in Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, Moral Discourse and Practice, 3-47, 29;
54. Ripstein, "Preference";
55. Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 31-32,
56. and "In Defense of The Moral Problem: A Reply to Brink, Copp, and Sayre-McCord," Ethics 108 (1997): 84-119, 91 and 103-4;
57. Valerie Tiberius, "Full Information and Ideal Deliberation, "Journal of Value Inquiry 31 (1997): 329-38;
58. Noggle, "Integrity, the Self, and Desire-Based Accounts of the Good," 306;
59. and Rosati, "Agency and the Open Question Argument," 520.
60. It may even be a way of motivating the specific idealization the relevant idealizer puts forward (an option that both Ripstein and Lillehammer fail to take into account when arguing that idealizers lack the resources to privilege one set of hypothetical circumstances over any other). For a related point, see also Rosati, "Agency and the Open Question Argument," 519.
61. What he wants to save are statements about what is (really, as it were) religiously required, not merely statements about what participants in the relevant religious practice consider religiously required. He wants to argue that some actions (say) really are religiously required.
62. Having read Firth ("Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," 326) and being concerned to avoid vicious circularity, he is careful not to include in this psychological account a belief that the relevant type of action is religiously required, or anything close enough to such a belief.
63. This is so even if some participants endorse Ideal Prophet Theory. The question relevant here is not what (if any) explicit metareligious beliefs participants have (or think they have), but rather what metareligious commitments are embedded (though perhaps implicitly) in their practice.
64. Or that these ideal conditions are indicative of being in such epistemic conditions.
65. Perhaps participants are erroneous because they believe in God and that their methods of inquiry track his commands. But perhaps their methods of inquiry are still-as a matter of fact-good at tracking facts about what is religiously required, because such facts are reducible to facts about the responses of ideal prophets, and the methods of inquiry successfully track these. This may be so, and if it is, this may be a good reason to favor a revisionary account. I return to this option in Sec. VI. Am I assuming here any controversial theses about the nature of epistemic justification? As just noted, the participants' method of inquiry may in fact be reliable even though for reasons different from the ones they have in mind. So am I assuming - when saying that the Ideal Prophet Theorist is committed to denying the claim that the participants' method is a good one - the denial of reliabilism about epistemic justification? Not really. Even reliabilists about justification typically concede - as they ought to - that reliability only gives an account of prima facie justification. They agree that this prima facie justification may be outweighed by other facts (say, a belief, itself justified, that the relevant belief-forming mechanism is unreliable). The case in the text is a case where such outweighing is clearly in place: the participants employ epistemic methods which are in fact reliable, believing that what makes them justified is that they track an independent order of facts about God's commands. This belief is false, and this defeats - or perhaps undermines - the justificatory status their methods and (other) beliefs may have had otherwise.
66. And here too what is relevant is not the explicit metanormative beliefs - much less the explicit metanormative statements - of participants in normative discourse. What is relevant, rather, are the deep metanormative commitments embedded (perhaps implicitly) in normative discourse and practice themselves. The fact that many sophomores (and not only them) express some subjectivist or relativist metanormative intuitions thus has very little weight in assessing the commitments of normative discourse. Indeed the attempt to motivate idealization by referring to our practice is, it seems, an attempt to motivate the idealization by reference to the standards implicit in our normative practice, not to whatever explicit metanormative beliefs participants may or may not have. In drawing lessons not from the explicit metadiscourse beliefs of (some) participants but from the commitments more deeply embedded in the relevant discourse and practice, I am here following, of course, a philosophical tradition exceeding the interests of metanormative theory. I thank Bruce Brower for pressing me on this and related points.
67. See, e.g., Lewis, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 92.
68. But if you find the metaphysical and epistemological commitments of a more robust realism utterly unacceptable, aren't you at least then justified in accepting an idealizing response-dependence view, learning to live with whatever theoretical shortcomings it may have? No, because the metanormative field is not exhausted by these alternatives. Perhaps you should endorse a noncognitivist view of sorts; perhaps a naturalist view that reduces normative properties to some objective, response-independent natural properties; or perhaps you should go for a metanormative error theory. In this article, remember, I do not argue for a robust version of realism, only against idealizing views. I briefly return to the possibility of motivating the idealization by considerations of overall plausibility in the next section.
69. I have tried to do just that in my dissertation, mostly in chaps. 3 ("Deliberation") and 4 ("Rejecting Alternatives"). See David Enoch, "An Argument for Robust Metanormative Realism" (PhD diss., New York University, May 2003), available online at http://law.mscc.huji.ac.il/ lawl/newsite/segel/enoch/index.html.
70. For such a point made in the context of an introductory text, see Stephen Darwall, Philosophical Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998), 54.
71. This familiar point is emphasized by Jeremy Koons, "Why Response-Dependence Theories of Morality Are False," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (2003): 275-94.
72. Some idealizers - such as Williams, Brandt, and Railton - acknowledge this fact and celebrate it. See Williams, "Internal and External Reasons";
73. Richard Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right (New York: Prometheus, 1979);
74. Railton, "Facts and Values."
75. Others acknowledge it and concede that it draws an intuitive price from their view (see Johnston on the Euthyphro Contrast ["Dispositional Theories of Value," 70-73]
76. and Lewis on the contingency of value ["Dispositional Theories of Value," starting on 82]). Yet others are optimistic about the prospects of accommodating the relevant objective purport, perhaps by guaranteeing the convergence of all ideal observers or advisors, consistently with their response-dependence view.
77. See Roderick Firth, "Reply to Professor Brandt," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15 (1955): 414-21, 415;
78. Smith, "In Defense of the Moral Problem," 89;
79. Bruce Brower, "Dispositional Ethical Realism," Ethics 103 (1993): 221-49, 223 and n. 28 on 233.
80. think that this last strategy is hopeless: the only way to guarantee convergence of all (possible) ideal agents is, I think, to incorporate into one's idealization a "whatever-it-takes clause" (see Johnston, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 145), or some other similar normative condition. Given the naturalist motivations of such views, this would be unacceptable.
81. For a similar point made in the context of criticizing Smith, see Donald Hubin, "Converging on Values," Analysis 59 (1999): 355-61;
82. see also the exchange between Brandt and Firth: Richard Brandt, "The Definition of an 'Ideal Observer' Theory in Ethics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15 (1955): 407-13;
83. and Firth, "Reply to Professor Brandt." But this matter merits a more detailed discussion than I can supply here.
84. Perhaps Lewis's mistake - discussed in Sec. II above - strengthens this point, for it shows that even such a prominent idealizer is tempted by our practice to say things that sound more robustly realist.
85. McDowell is thus out of the picture twice over: for not only does he offer a no-priority view, but he also includes an ineliminable normative element in his response-dependence account. See, e.g., McDowell, "Projection and Truth in Ethics," 221,
86. and "Values and Secondary Qualities," in Morality and Objectivity, ed. Ted Honderich, 110-29 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985),
87. reprinted in Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, Moral Discourse and Practice, 201-13, 207.
88. I briefly return to intranormative idealizing views in n. 47.
89. I thank David Copp for pressing me on this point, to which I return also in Sec. V.
90. An anonymous referee suggested a related motivation for idealization: achieving extensional adequacy in a way that is acceptable on reflection. This suggestion too fails, it seems to me. First, it seems largely to comprise a combination of the second and third replies discussed above: achieving extensional adequacy, and doing so in a way that respects the standards of justification entrenched in our relevant practices. And second, it is not clear what "acceptable on reflection" exactly means here. It seems to me that to avoid just being an instance of the third strategy, this restriction must incorporate something like a requirement that extensional adequacy be achieved consistently with the philosophical motivations underlying the relevant idealizing view (it will clearly not do, for instance, if a way of achieving extensional adequacy is acceptable on reflection simply because our reflection is [implicitly] guided by hidden robustly realist commitments). But then this is the requirement I have been emphasizing all along, and assuming without further argument that it can be met would be begging the question against me.
91. The point is sometimes made that idealizing views with reductive, naturalist aspirations have no nonarbitrary way of choosing among all possible ways of idealizing (see Johnston, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 155;
92. Ripstein, "Preference";
93. Lillehammer, "Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason"). I think that this critique is not without power (though see n. 25 above), and it may be related to my criticism of idealizing views. But I want to note that it is nevertheless distinct from it. Johnston, Ripstein, and Lillehammer argue that the idealizer has no way of motivating one idealization rather than another. I argue that she has no way of motivating any idealization at all. In fact, my argument can be seen as a reply (at least to Lillehammer): there are very good reasons, if I am right, to privilege one set of circumstances in the context of typical idealizing views - namely, the actual circumstances.
94. I thank Dalia Drai and David Copp for this and related suggestions.
95. I am not a naturalist. But even if you are, still you should not dismiss the point in the text. Remember - idealizing views are not the only naturalist game in the meta-normative town.
96. David Lewis and Stephanie Lewis, "Holes," in David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 3-9, 8-9.
97. And perhaps anywhere (else) where an epistemic understanding of (the relevant) truth is suggested. Indeed, an epistemic theory of truth itself can be thought of as a response-dependence view, one to which my challenge prima facie applies.
98. What about theories that make use of hypothetical choices or preferences on the way to presenting an intranormative reduction, that is, a reduction of some normative concepts or properties to other, still normative, ones? Consider, for example, the Rawlsian project of giving an account of political justice in terms of a hypothetical choice in fair conditions. It seems to me the challenge of coming up with a rationale for idealization applies here too but is easily met. The rationale for the idealization - for taking choice in the original position rather than in actual circumstances to constitute the principles of justice - is precisely that the original position is (relevantly) fair and actual circumstances are not. But this way of addressing the why-idealize challenge crucially depends on the occurrence of a normative concept or property in the analysans (namely, that of fairness). It is not available to meta-normative idealizing views, views that, perhaps somewhat roughly, attempt a reduction of the normative to the nonnormative. Relatedly, Lillehammer ("Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason," 177-79) argues that response-dependence theories of color (e.g.) - unlike such theories of reasons - can privilege the relevant set of circumstances, because so privileging them is a matter of normative commitment, and so in the normative case but not the color case a vicious circularity will result.
99. It is perhaps worth mentioning that even some response-dependence theories that explicitly reject idealization - such as Hubin's (in "Hypothetical Motivation") and Noggle's - and whose critiques of idealization are not completely unrelated to mine (at times, Noggle ["Integrity, the Self, and Desire-Based Accounts of the Good," 322] seems to flirt with something like my objection to idealization), are nevertheless vulnerable to a criticism analogous to the one developed in this article. For neither theory settles for just our actual desires as the foundations of normativity. Hubin privileges intrinsic motivations and what is actually conducive to their satisfaction over all other motivations, and Noggle privileges desires with which I more strongly identify. Now, these restrictions do not, of course, constitute idealization, but like idealization they demand some philosophical rationale. Why, we can ask Hubin and Noggle, do some desires but not all count? And given the fact that both theories are supposed to stem from the thought that desires are somehow unique in that all (normative) reasons are somehow grounded in desires, it is not clear how Hubin and Noggle can respond to the challenge. The natural answer is, of course, not available to them, because they don't think of the privileged desires as tracking an independent order of normative facts. And relying merely on considerations of extensional adequacy would be here - as in the case of idealizing views - objectionably ad hoc. Perhaps Hubin or Noggle (or both) can after all adequately motivate their restriction to privileged desires. But what should be clear is that - despite their views not being exactly idealizing views - they are prima facie subject to a challenge exactly analogous to the one idealizers face.
100. Firth, Williams, Railton, and Lewis are all clear - and explicit - about their naturalism. Johnston and Smith are harder cases.
101. For instance, Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," 329;
102. Lewis, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 85.
103. Johnston, "Dispositional Theories of Value," 147.
104. For a powerful criticism of the internalism of Lewis - an idealizer - by Johnston - another idealizer - see ibid., 160.
105. See also ibid., 161, for a critique of internalism and a discussion of what he takes to be the kernel of truth in it.
106. See Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right,
107. Railton, "Moral Realism," 157;
108. and Michael Johnston, "Objectivity Refigured: Pragmatism without Verificationism," in Reality, Representation and Projection, ed. John Haldane and Crispin Wright, 85-130 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 108.
109. Lewis ("Dispositional Theories of Value," 93) expresses non-chalance regarding the classification of his view as a reduction or a revisionary account.
110. Lillehammer can be understood as arguing that no revisionary account of (normative) reasons along naturalist response-dependence lines can be coherent.
111. See Johnston, "Objectivity Refigured: Pragmatism without Verificationism," 108-9.
112. As Bruce Brower noted, there may be some reason to think that the revisionist idealizer is here in a tougher spot than the descriptive one, because the former doesn't even have to achieve extensional adequacy (she is a revisionist, after all) and so is not entitled to rely on the need to achieve extensional adequacy in motivating her idealization. But seeing that revisionists still want their account to be close enough to the relevant discourse and practice, they cannot afford too much extensional inadequacy, and it is therefore not surprising to find them too idealizing in order to achieve (close enough) extensional adequacy.
113. Lillehammer ("Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason," 176) seems to suggest that the revisionist cannot appeal to standards implicit in our practice, because - being a revisionist - she is willing to discard our practice. But Lillehammer ignores the fact that to be acceptable a revisionist account too must be at least close enough to a description of the relevant discourse and practice.
114. For one of these, see Enoch, "An Argument for Robust Metanormative Realism," sec. 4.2.
115. Sobel ("Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action," 226) seems to acknowledge a challenge close to (an instance of) the one I put forward to the idealizer and expresses confidence that it can be successfully met by his favorite idealizer (which he calls "subjectivist"). But he does not show how this can be done.
116. As Zimmerman, an idealizer of sorts, puts it: "No sensible neo-Humean wishes to ground practical reasons for a person exclusively in the person's actual motives" ("Why Richard Brandt Does Not Need Cognitive Psychotherapy," 390).