Why emotivists love inconsistency

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 104, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 81-108

  Bjornsson G ^a  

^a STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

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EID: 52549089428     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010378517850     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. For arguments to that effect, see for example Peter Geach's "Assertion", The Philosophical Review 74, 1965: 449-65; John Searle's Speech Acts, London: Cambridge U. P. 1969; David Brink's Moral Realism and The Foundations of Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 1989; Michael Smith's "Ethics and The A Priori: A Modern Parable", Philosophical Studies 92, 1998, pp. 149-174; Bob Hale's "Can There Be a Logic of Attitudes" and "Postscript", pp. 337-363 and 385-388, respectively, in Reality, Representation and Projection, eds. John Haldane and Crispin Wright, Oxford: Oxford U. P.; G. F. Schueler's "Modus Ponens and Moral Realism" in Ethics vol. 98 April 1988, pp. 492-500; and Mark van Roojen's "Expressivism and Irrationality" in The Philosophical Review 105:3, 1996, pp. 311-335. For an early defense, see Richard Hare's "Meaning and Speech Acts" in The Philosophical Review 79, 1970, pp. 3-24.
2. Our primary focus will be on moral opinions rather than moral language. For Stevenson, the focus was on moral terms, and he proposed that their workings in language could be understood once we saw that they had certain powers to influence the attitudes of an audience when put in the right sentential and conversational context, powers due to dispositions of speakers to issue such terms under certain circumstances and dispositions of hearers to be affected by them under certain circumstances. Especially, he proposed that this provided understanding of some puzzling features of moral disagreement. See "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms", Mind vol. 46, 1937, pp. 14-31, but especially chapter 2 of Ethics and Language, New Haven: Yale U. P. 1944.
3. For thorough definitions of some kinds of evolutionary function, see Ruth Garrett Millikan's Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, A Bradford Book 1984), chapters 1 & 2.
4. Some would say that it is what we believe rather than our beliefs that are capable of truth and falsity and relations of consistency and inconsistency. If the reader shares this habit, then let me postulate that a person's belief that p is true iff she believes that p and it is true that p.
5. See p. 231 of M. H. Brighouse's "Blackburn's Projectivism - An Objection", Philosophical Studies 59, 1990, pp. 225-233.
6. David Copp argues for cognitivism from such a consideration of generality. See chapter 5 of his Morality, Normativity, and Society, New York: Oxford U. P. 1995.
7. In "Gibbard's Theory of Norms", Philosophy and Public Affairs 22:1 1993, pp. 67-78, Paul Horwich argues that once it is recognized that expressions such as "rational" (or "wrong", I suppose) are logical predicates (logically functions as predicates), there is no mystery to explain. I disagree: the question is why we should expect a term expressing an optation to be a logical predicate. And the problem with Gibbard's account is that although it provides an interesting formal model of the logical relations in which moral opinions are involved, it fails to provide an explicit explanation of why those relations seem to obtain.
8. When Frege discusses complex opinions - "Gedankengefiige" - he insists that the satiation of an incomplete thought (such as the conjunction or the negation) is not a process in time. (See the first footnote of Logische Undersuchungen, dritter Teil: Gedankengefüige, first published in Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 1, 1923-1926, pp. 36-51.) Our interest in complex opinions is very different from Frege's, however. From the point of view of psychological explanation, negation causally and quite literally operates on the negated opinion.
9. This is a simplification: conditional opinions presumably also have the function of making us reject the antecedent when rejecting the consequent. However, this will make little difference to the following discussion. Simon Blackburn describes conditional opinions as commitments to either accept the consequent or reject the antecedent. (See chapters 5 and 6 of Spreading the Word, Oxford: Oxford U. P. 1984 and p. 503 of "Attitudes and Contents" in Ethics 98, 1988, pp. 501-517.) This, too, must be a simplification: we can accept a conditional but neither accept the consequent nor reject the antecedent, as when withholding judgment. Moreover, talk about commitments has caused some confusion. Mark van Roojen objects that accepting the conditional and finding reason to reject the consequent, one is not committed to reject the antecedent: rather, one might give up the conditional opinion. (See "Expressivism and Irrationality", The Philosophical Review 105:3 1996, pp. 311-335.) But if conditional opinions are commitments, they are obviously commitments that can be given up: that is exactly what we do when we cease accepting the conditional. At least, that is what should be said if one wish to talk about conditional opinions as commitments. In any case, talk about commitments introduces the worry that we are using normative notions in accounting for normative reasoning, and there is no need for such talk in the explanations given here: our primary goal is to explain the appearance of normativity, not to justify inferential behavior.
10. To make inferences we must bring together the premises employed: our opinions are not all involved in inference all the time. (Saying that we believe every logical consequence of what we believe seems obviously false and methodologically unhelpful if considered as a characterization of belief - at least when trying to understand the workings of our mind.)
11. (A*) is an opinion to the effect that if lying makes one nervous then telling one's little brother to lie makes one nervous; (B*) is an opinion to the effect that lying makes one nervous, etcetera. See further section 9 for some remarks about the connection between sentences and corresponding opinions. 12 In "Outline of an Argument for Moral Realism", Grazer Philosophische Studien 12/13 1981, pp. 215-225, Lars Bergström argues that the only explanation that would render our interest in consistency justified would make reference to the idea that inconsistent opinions cannot all be true, and Torbjörn Tännsjö advances the same view on pp. 8-9 in Moral Realism, Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 1990. In the context of explanation and psychological analysis, however, that is just beside the point.
12. See p. 500 of "Modus Ponens and Moral Realism", Ethics vol. 98 April 1988, pp. 492-500.
13. For previous works on the idea that non-cognitivist logic can be built on a notion of practical inconsistency, see especially Simon Blackburn's Spreading the Word, chapters 6 and 7 and "Attitudes and Contents", but also Allan Gibbard's Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, Oxford: Oxford U. P. 1990, pp. 74-75,
14. 284-291 and Folke Tersman's "Non-Cognitivism and Inconsistency" in Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 33, 1995, pp. 361-371. In his The Logic of Commands, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1966, Nicholas Rescher argues that the logic of commands should be approached by means of ordinary assertoric logic and the notion of command termination, i.e. the realization of the action commanded. Insofar as optations are "inner commands", this would give us a "logic of optations".
15. See pp. 301-302 of "Some Problems for Gibbard's Norm-Expressivism", Philosophical Studies vol. 69, pp. 297-313.
16. Sinott-Armstrong is not alone in thinking that the gap between what is pragmatically bad and what is logically mistaken needs explanation only under non-cognitivist accounts. In his papers "Ethical Consistency" and "Consistency and Realism" (both in Problems of the Self, Eondon: Cambridge U. P. 1973), Bernard Williams argues that cognitivism gives moral inconsistency an "ultimate kind of significance" whereas non-cognitivism would give it limited pragmatic significance. I suggest that Williams' talk about "ultimate significance" expresses a philosopher's penchant for truth rather than any insight into the matters at hand.
17. For interesting work on the role of guilt and indignation in social coordination, see chapter 7 of Allan Gibbard's Wise Choices, Apt Feelings.
18. Judgment is of course more complex than pictured here. In particular, the states rejected in judgment can linger in spite as when you cross the index and middle fingers of one of your hands and draw them up and down along the bridge of your nose, one fingertip at each side and focus on what your fingers tell you: it will feel as if you have two noses, but that is not what you believe. Or focus on the fact that some act of yours has seriously upset someone whose approval means much to you: even though you think that you did the right thing, it is likely that you will feel guilt. Also, judgment is not entirely stable but changes with mood, which makes undated talk about a person's opinions somewhat imprecise.
19. Simon Blackburn's answer to Shueler is similar, but with fewer explanatory bells and whistles. See pp. 509-510 of his "Attitudes and Contents".
20. The importance of not having moral optations unless certain conditions hold, or when certain other conditions hold, also accounts for the phenomenon, pointed out by Nicholas Sturgeon, that confidence in our moral opinions is undermined if we find out that they are caused or sustained by the wrong kind of reasons. See p. 410 of his Critical notice of Gibbard's Wise Choices, Apt Feelings in Noûs vol. 29, No. 3 1995, pp. 402-424.
21. See pp. 204-207 of Simon Blackburn's "Just Causes" in his Essays in QuasiRealism for an earlier emotivist account of explanations in term of moral causes.
22. The degree of expected egalitarianism seems to vary across social species, as well as across different human societies. Anger/indignation is evoked when expectations are foiled. See Frans de Waal's Good Natured, Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P. 1996, chapter 4.
23. Some evidence for the pragmatic bias of our capacity for deductive reasoning can be found in John, H. Holland, Keith J. Holyoak, Richard E. Nisbett and Paul R. Thagard's "Deductive Reasoning" in Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science, ed. Alvin I. Goldman, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press/A Bradford Book 1993.
24. For a complex theory of communication as an evolved phenomenon, see Ruth Garrett Millikan's Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories.
25. According to interesting psychological research, understanding a sentence normally involves accepting it: only cognitive effort (negation) keeps the two apart. See Wegner, D. M.; Coulton, G.; Wenzlaff, R. "The transparency of denial: Briefing in the debriefing paradigm", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49:2, 1985, pp. 338-346.
26. See his "Expressivism and Irrationality".
27. In "Gibbard's Theory of Norms", Paul Horwich argues that Allan Gibbard's non-cognitivist theory collapses into cognitivism. There has also been extensive debate about the connection between "minimalist" accounts of truth and representation and expressivist or non-cognitivist theories. See for example Crispin Wright's Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P. 1992, especially chapters 1 and 2; Michael Smith's "Why Expressivists about Value should Love Minimalism about Truth"; Paul Horwich's "The Essence of Expressivism", both in Analysis 54:1 1994,pp. 1-12and 19-20 respectively; and Ralph Wedgewood's "Non-Cognitivism, Truth and Logic" in Philosophical Studies 86:11997, pp. 73-91.
28. An early version of this paper was discussed by the Higher Seminar in Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University. I found comments by Lars Bergström, Hans Mathlein and Håkan Salwén especially valuable. I have also received many useful comments on later versions from Jun Olivier, Ruth Millikan and an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies. The final preparation of this paper was made while on a grant from STINT, The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education.