My main claim is that properties 1 and 2 need not be correlated, whereas you seem to have the intuition that they are, and I’m pushing on that.
I do think they are correlated, because according to my intuitions both are true of moral reasons. However I wouldn’t want to argue that (2) is true because (1) is true. I’m not sure why (2) is true of moral reasons. I just have a strong intuition that it is and haven’t come across any defeaters for that intuition.
A secondary claim is that if it does not satisfy property 3, then you can never infer it and so you might as well ignore it, but “irreducibly normative” sounds to me like it does not satisfy property 3.
This seems false to me. It’s typically thought that an omniscient being (by definition) could know these non-natural irreducibly normative facts. All we’d need is some mechanism that connects humans with them. One mechanism as I discuss in my post is that God puts them in the brains of humans. We might wonder how God could know the non-natural facts, one explanation might be that God is the truthmaker for them, if he is then it seems plausible he would know them.
On your three options (a) seems closest to what I believe. Note my preferred definitions would be:
‘What I have most prudential reason to do is what benefits me most (benefits in an objective rather than subjective sense).’
‘What I have most moral reason to do is what there is most reason to do impartially considered (i.e. from the point of view of the universe).’
To be clear it’s very plausible to me that what ‘benefits you most’ is not necessarily what you desire most as seen by Parfit’s discussion of future Tuesday indifference mentioned above. That’s why I use the objective caveat.
Okay, cool, I think I at least understand your position now. Not sure how to make progress though. I guess I’ll just try to clarify how I respond to imagining that I held the position you do.
From my perspective, the phrase “moral reason” has both the connotation that it is external to humans and that it trumps all other reasons, and that’s why the intuition is so strong. But if it is decomposed into those two properties, it no longer seems (to me) that they must go together. So from my perspective, when I imagine how I would justify the position you take, it seems to be a consequence of how we use language.
What I have most moral reason to do is what there is most reason to do impartially considered (i.e. from the point of view of the universe)
My intuitive response is that that is an incomplete definition and we would also need to say what impartial reasons are, otherwise I don’t know how to identify the impartial reasons.
I’ve found the conversation productive, thanks for taking the time to discuss.
My intuitive response is that that is an incomplete definition and we would also need to say what impartial reasons are, otherwise I don’t know how to identify the impartial reasons.
Impartial reasons would be reasons that would ‘count’ even if we were some sort of floating consciousness observing the universe without any specific personal interests.
I probably don’t have any more intuitive explanations of impartial reasons than that, so sorry if it doesn’t convey my meaning!
My math-intuition says “that’s still not well-defined, such reasons may not exist”.
To which you might say “Well, there’s some probability they exist, and if they do exist, they trump everything else, so we should act as though they exist.”
My intuition says “But the rule of letting things that could exist be the dominant consideration seems really bad! I could invent all sorts of categories of things that could exist, that would trump everything I’ve considered so far. They’d all have some small probability of existing, and I could direct my actions any which way in this manner!” (This is what I was getting at with the “meta-oughtness” rule I was talking about earlier.)
To which you might say “But moral reasons aren’t some hypothesis I pulled out of the sky, they are commonly discussed and have been around in human discourse for millennia. I agree that we shouldn’t just invent new categories and put stock into them, but moral reasons hardly seem like a new category.”
And my response would be “I think moral reasons of the type you are talking about mostly came from the human tendency to anthropomorphize, combined with the fact that we needed some way to get humans to coordinate. Humans weren’t likely to just listen to rules that some other human made up, so the rules had to come from some external source. And in order to get good coordination, the rules needed to be followed, and so they had to have the property that they trumped any prudential reasons. This led us to develop the concept of rules that come from some external source and trump everything else, giving us our concept of moral reasons today. Given that our concept of “moral reasons” probably arose from this sort of process, I don’t think that “moral reasons” is a particularly likely thing to actually exist, and it seems wrong to base your actions primarily on moral reason. Also, as a corollary, even if there do exist reasons that trump all other reasons, I’m more likely to reject the intuition that it must come from some external source independent of humans, since I think that intuition was created by this non-truth-seeking process I just described.”
I do think they are correlated, because according to my intuitions both are true of moral reasons. However I wouldn’t want to argue that (2) is true because (1) is true. I’m not sure why (2) is true of moral reasons. I just have a strong intuition that it is and haven’t come across any defeaters for that intuition.
This seems false to me. It’s typically thought that an omniscient being (by definition) could know these non-natural irreducibly normative facts. All we’d need is some mechanism that connects humans with them. One mechanism as I discuss in my post is that God puts them in the brains of humans. We might wonder how God could know the non-natural facts, one explanation might be that God is the truthmaker for them, if he is then it seems plausible he would know them.
On your three options (a) seems closest to what I believe. Note my preferred definitions would be:
‘What I have most prudential reason to do is what benefits me most (benefits in an objective rather than subjective sense).’
‘What I have most moral reason to do is what there is most reason to do impartially considered (i.e. from the point of view of the universe).’
To be clear it’s very plausible to me that what ‘benefits you most’ is not necessarily what you desire most as seen by Parfit’s discussion of future Tuesday indifference mentioned above. That’s why I use the objective caveat.
Okay, cool, I think I at least understand your position now. Not sure how to make progress though. I guess I’ll just try to clarify how I respond to imagining that I held the position you do.
From my perspective, the phrase “moral reason” has both the connotation that it is external to humans and that it trumps all other reasons, and that’s why the intuition is so strong. But if it is decomposed into those two properties, it no longer seems (to me) that they must go together. So from my perspective, when I imagine how I would justify the position you take, it seems to be a consequence of how we use language.
My intuitive response is that that is an incomplete definition and we would also need to say what impartial reasons are, otherwise I don’t know how to identify the impartial reasons.
I’ve found the conversation productive, thanks for taking the time to discuss.
Impartial reasons would be reasons that would ‘count’ even if we were some sort of floating consciousness observing the universe without any specific personal interests.
I probably don’t have any more intuitive explanations of impartial reasons than that, so sorry if it doesn’t convey my meaning!
My math-intuition says “that’s still not well-defined, such reasons may not exist”.
To which you might say “Well, there’s some probability they exist, and if they do exist, they trump everything else, so we should act as though they exist.”
My intuition says “But the rule of letting things that could exist be the dominant consideration seems really bad! I could invent all sorts of categories of things that could exist, that would trump everything I’ve considered so far. They’d all have some small probability of existing, and I could direct my actions any which way in this manner!” (This is what I was getting at with the “meta-oughtness” rule I was talking about earlier.)
To which you might say “But moral reasons aren’t some hypothesis I pulled out of the sky, they are commonly discussed and have been around in human discourse for millennia. I agree that we shouldn’t just invent new categories and put stock into them, but moral reasons hardly seem like a new category.”
And my response would be “I think moral reasons of the type you are talking about mostly came from the human tendency to anthropomorphize, combined with the fact that we needed some way to get humans to coordinate. Humans weren’t likely to just listen to rules that some other human made up, so the rules had to come from some external source. And in order to get good coordination, the rules needed to be followed, and so they had to have the property that they trumped any prudential reasons. This led us to develop the concept of rules that come from some external source and trump everything else, giving us our concept of moral reasons today. Given that our concept of “moral reasons” probably arose from this sort of process, I don’t think that “moral reasons” is a particularly likely thing to actually exist, and it seems wrong to base your actions primarily on moral reason. Also, as a corollary, even if there do exist reasons that trump all other reasons, I’m more likely to reject the intuition that it must come from some external source independent of humans, since I think that intuition was created by this non-truth-seeking process I just described.”