Clearing conceptual space for cognitivist motivational internalism

Cognitivist motivational internalism is the thesis that, if one believes that 'It is right to ϕ', then one will be motivated to ϕ. This thesis—which captures the practical nature of morality—is in tension with a Humean constraint on belief: belief cannot motivate action without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. When defending cognitivist motivational internalism it is tempting to either argue that the Humean constraint only applies to non-moral beliefs or that moral beliefs only motivate ceteris paribus. But succumbing to the first temptation places one under a burden to justify what is motivationally exceptional about moral beliefs and succumbing to the second temptation saddles one with a thesis that fails to do justice to the practicality intuition that cognitivist motivational internalism is suppose to capture. In this paper, I offer a way of defending cognitivist motivational internalism, which does not require accepting that there is anything motivationally unusual about moral beliefs. I argue that no belief satisfies the Humean constraint: all beliefs are capable of motivating without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire.     

Agent causation and the alleged impossibility of rational free action

Galen Strawson has claimed that “the impossibility of free will and ultimate moral responsibility can be proved with complete certainty.” Strawson, I take it, thinks that this conclusion can be established by one argument which he has developed. In this argument, he claims that rational free actions would require an infinite regress of rational choices, which is, of course, impossible for human beings. In my paper, I argue that agent causation theorists need not be worried by Strawson’s argument. For agent causation theorists are able to deny a key principle which drives the regress. Oversimplifying things a bit, the principle states that if one is responsible for her rational actions, then she was antecedently responsible for the reasons on which she acted.     

Evil and the many universes response

I formulate and defend a version of the many universes (or multiverse) reply to the atheistic argument from evil. Specifically, I argue that (i) if we know that any argument from evil (be it a logical or evidential argument) is sound, then we know that God would be (or at least probably would be) unjustified in actualizing our universe. I then argue that (ii) there might be a multiverse and (iii) if so, then we do not know that God would be (or at least probably would be) unjustified in actualizing our universe. It follows that we cannot know that the atheistic argument from evil is sound, in which case we cannot be certain that the argument succeeds, and so it is rational to refuse to reject theism because of such arguments.     

Can We Infer Naturalism from Scepticism?

Hume, like a number of more recent writers, claims that epistemological scepticism gives us reason to think that our beliefs are non-epistemically determined. Because some body of propositions that we believe are all unjustifiable, the argument goes, our beliefs in those propositions must be determined by non-truth-conducive considerations. I argue initially that scepticism does not by itself entail Humean naturalism. I then then develop an argument from scepticism to naturalism which has considerable promise. This more complex argument is built around two considerations: (i) if a subject accepts a local sceptical argument against one of his beliefs and still does not give it up, then we have very good, if not conclusive, reason to think that his belief is non-epistemically determined; (ii) it seems initially plausible that global scepticism can have no affect on the beliefs it targets, even if we were to accept it. Unfortunately, however, even this argument ultimately fails to establish any connection between scepticism and Humean naturalism.     

Antiskeptical Conditionals

Empirical knowledge exists in the form of antiskeptical conditionals , which are propositions like [if I am not undetectably deceived, then I am holding a pen]. Such conditionals, despite their trivial appearance, have the same essential content as the categorical propositions that we usually discuss, and can serve the same functions in science and practical reasoning. This paper sketches out two versions of a general response to skepticism that employs these conditionals. The first says that our ordinary knowledge attributions can safely be replaced by statements using antiskeptical conditionals, which provides a way around the standard sort of skeptical argument while accepting its soundness with respect to the usual targets. The second analyzes the objects of our ordinary knowledge attributions as antiskeptical conditionals, which allows us to refute, not just evade, the skeptic's argument. Both versions compare favorably to the best-known current approaches to skepticism, including semantic contextualism.     

Fool-proof proofs of God?

Summary Two claims have been explored, the first, that fool-proof proofs of the sort that there could be if there were a God like the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not to be expected, on good religious grounds (a claim I found wanting); and second, that there cannot be philosophical proofs of God which work beyond reasonable doubt.The argument that there cannot be philosophical proofs beyond a reasonable doubt is supported by an examination of some of the fundamental issues in the traditional discussions of proofs for God's existence, and by claims about the relativity of methodological rules to world-views which, I maintain, the traditional discussions indicate. I do not claim to have proved that relativity, only to have illustrated the claim that it is there.It is my further opinion, but I do not claim really to have proved it, that the failure of religious excuses for the lack of public demon strations constitutes a good reason for concluding that there is no God of the sort described as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; hence that if there is a God, it must be the God of the philosophers. However I admit that there might be sufficient hidden reasons which would offer persuasive excuses for the God of the ordinary believer.Lastly, I have made some comments about what I think is the more valuable way to view the proofs for God. Such an interpretation does justice to the otherwise baffling and continual philosophical disagreements better than rival theories. It is time we take these disagreements with utmost seriousness, and one can hardly do that while treating basic metaphysical arguments as fool-proof proofs.Readers of the literature on proofs will recognize many of the historical and current discussions on which comment is being made. To provide sources for all the comments would be not only cumbersome but impossible because they are found in so many different places and are not the property of any one in particular.     

The Pareto Argument and Inequality

The Pareto argument for inequality holds that any change from a position of equality to one of inequality is justified so long as everyone benefits from the change. G.A. Cohen criticizes this argument (which he attributes to Rawls) on the ground that changes can normally be found which preserve both equality and Pareto-efficiency. However, this does not resolve the basic conflict between the two desiderata . Strong egalitarians hold that Pareto changes are not for the better if they increase inequality too greatly. Thus if the Pareto argument holds, then strong egalitarianism is unsustainable. I argue that egalitarians need not be troubled by the Pareto argument for inequality. The Pareto criterion would not be widely accepted unless it takes account of moral harms; but if it does take account of moral harms then there is no reason to doubt that egalitarian concerns can be incorporated into the Pareto argument.
email : p.shaw@philosophy.arts.gla.ac.uk     

Is there a Rawlsian Argument for Animal Rights?

Mark Rowlands defends a Rawlsian argument for animal rights, according to which animals have rights because we would assign them rights when deciding on the principles of morality from behind a veil of ignorance. Rowlands’s argument depends on a non-standard interpretation of the veil of ignorance, according to which we cannot know whether we are human or non-human on the other side of the veil. Rowlands claims that his interpretation of the veil is more consistent with a core commitment of Rawlsian justice—the intuitive equality principle—than either Rawls or his critics realize. Here I argue that Rawls is not committed to the intuitive equality principle, as Rowlands articulates it, and hence Rowlands’s argument is in fact only superficially Rawlsian. Furthermore, Rowlands’s intuitive equality principle is dubious on its own terms, and thus a poor principle on which to base a case for animal rights.     

An Epistemic Argument for Conservatism

‘Epistemic’ arguments for conservatism typically claim that given the limits of human reason, we are better off accepting some particular social practice or institution rather than trying to consciously improve it. I critically examine and defend here one such argument, claiming that there are some domains of social life in which, given the limits of our knowledge and the complexity of the social world, we ought to defer to those institutions that have robustly endured in a wide variety of circumstances in the past while not being correlated with intolerable outcomes. These are domains of social life in which our ignorance of optimal institutions is radical, and there is uncertainty (rather than quantifiable risk) about the costs of error. This is an argument for the preservation of particular institutions, not particular policies or outcomes, and it specifically identifies these with the institutions that John Rawls called ‘the basic structure of society.’ The argument further implies that to the extent that there is any reason to change these institutions, changes should be calculated as far as possible to increase their ‘epistemic power.’     

Basic Income, Self-Respect and Reciprocity

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Deontology and doxastic control

Matthias Steup has developed a compatibilist account of doxastic control, according to which one’s beliefs are under one’s control if and only if they have a “good” causal history. Paradigmatically good causal histories include being caused to believe what one’s evidence indicates, whereas bad ones include those that indicate that the believer is blatantly irrational or mentally ill. I argue that if this is the only kind of control that we have over our beliefs, then our beliefs are not properly subject to epistemic evaluation in deontological terms. I take as premises the claims (1) that acts which violate a deontic standard must be under the control of the agent that performs them, and (2) that deontic standards are deontic standards only if there is both something that it is to comply with them, and something that it is to violate them. The argument proceeds by showing that any belief which one might take to violate a deontic standard of a distinctively epistemic kind has a “bad” causal history, and so is, according to the compatibilist account, not under our control. Since these beliefs are not under our control, it follows from premise (1) that they do not violate any deontic standards of a distinctively epistemic kind. It then follows, from premise (2), that there are no deontic standards, of a distinctively epistemic kind, that govern belief. So if we have only compatibilist control over our beliefs, our beliefs are not properly subject to epistemic evaluation in deontological terms.     

Epistemicism,Distribution, and the Argument from Vagueness

This paper consists of two parts. The first concerns the logic of vagueness. The second concerns a prominent debate in metaphysics. One of the most widely accepted principles governing the ‘definitely’ operator is the principle of Distribution: if ‘p’ and ‘if p then q’ are both definite, then so is ‘q’. I argue however, that epistemicists about vagueness (at least those who take a broadly Williamsonian line) should reject this principle. The discussion also helps to shed light on the elusive question of what, on this framework, it takes for a sentence to be borderline or definite. In the second part of the paper, I apply this result to a prominent debate in metaphysics. One of the most influential arguments in favour of Universalism about composition is the Lewis‐Sider argument from vagueness. An interesting question, however, is whether epistemicists have any particular reasons to resist the argument. I show that there is no obvious reason why epistemicists should resist the argument but there is a non‐obvious one: the rejection of Distribution argued for in the first part of the paper provides epistemicists with a unique way of resisting the argument from vagueness.     

Aristotle on the Homonymy of Being

A number of philosophers endorse, without argument, the view that there's something it's like consciously to think that p , which is distinct from what it's like consciously to think that q . This thesis, if true, would have important consequences for philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In this paper I offer two arguments for it.
The first argument claims it would be impossible introspectively to distinguish conscious thoughts with respect to their content if there weren't something it's like to think them. This argument is defended against several objections.
The second argument uses what I call "minimal pair" experiences—sentences read without and with understanding—to induce in the reader an experience of the kind I claim exists. Further objections are considered and rebutted.     

Procedural Justice and Affirmative Action

There is widespread agreement among both supporters and opponents that affirmative action either must not violate any principle of equal opportunity or procedural justice, or if it does, it may do so only given current extenuating circumstances. Many believe that affirmative action is morally problematic, only justified to the extent that it brings us closer to the time when we will no longer need it. In other words, those that support affirmative action believe it is acceptable in nonideal theory, but not ideal theory. This paper argues that affirmative action is entirely compatible with equal opportunity and procedural justice and would be even in an ideal world. I defend a new analysis of Rawlsian procedural justice according to which it is permissible to interfere in the outcomes of procedures, and thus I show that affirmative action is not morally problematic in the way that many have supposed.     

Prospects for an Inclusive Theory of Justice: The Case of Non‐Human Animals

In this article, I argue that there are three widely accepted views within contemporary theorising about justice that present barriers to accepting that non‐human animals possess direct entitlements of justice. These views are (1) that the basis of entitlements of justice is either contribution to a cooperative scheme for mutual advantage or the capacity to so contribute; (2) political liberalism, that is, the view that requirements for coercive state action can be justified only by appeal to the ideal of citizens as free and equal and the principles of justice that are entailed by that ideal; and (3) that the principles of justice apply directly to the institutions of what John Rawls calls the ‘basic structure of society’, and not to the conduct of individuals. I then consider several attempts to ground direct entitlements of justice for animals via modest revisions to one or more of these widely accepted views, and argue that they fail, and that, more generally, any such attempt must fail. I claim that any theory that can include direct entitlements for animals must reject (1) and at least one of (2) and (3), and that there are reasons to think that those who are inclined to endorse direct entitlements for animals are unlikely to be satisfied with any view that does not reject all three of the widely accepted views. I conclude by briefly noting some of the important implications of rejecting all of these views.     

Legal punishment of immorality: once more into the breach

Gerald Dworkin’s overlooked defense of legal moralism attempts to undermine the traditional liberal case for a principled distinction between behavior that is immoral and criminal and behavior that is immoral but not criminal. According to Dworkin, his argument for legal moralism “depends upon a plausible idea of what making moral judgments involves.” The idea Dworkin has in mind here is a metaethical principle that many have connected to morality/reasons internalism. I agree with Dworkin that this is a plausible principle, but I argue that some of the best reasons for accepting it actually work against his enforcement thesis. I propose a principled distinction between the immoral-and-criminal and the immoral-but-not-criminal, and argue that a principle at least very much like it must be correct if the metaethical principle Dworkin avows is correct.     

CAN I KILL MY YOUNGER SELF? TIME TRAVEL AND THE RETROSUICIDE PARADOX

If (backward) time travel is possible, presumably so is my shooting my younger self (YS); then apparently I can kill him – I can commit retrosuicide. But if I were to kill him I would not exist to shoot him, so how can I kill him? The standard solution to this paradox understands ability as compossibility with the relevant facts and points to an equivocation about which facts are relevant: my killing YS is compossible with his proximity but not with his survival, so I can kill him if facts like his survival are irrelevant but I cannot if they are relevant. I identify a lacuna in this solution, namely its reliance without argument on the hidden assumption that my killing YS is possible: if it is impossible, it is not compossible with anything. I argue that this lacuna is important, and I sketch a different solution to the paradox.     

The best of all possibleworlds

The Argument from Inferiority holds that our world cannot be the creation of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being; for if it were, it would be the best of all possible worlds, which evidently it is not. We argue that this argument rests on an implausible principle concerning which worlds it is permissible for an omnipotent being to create: roughly, the principle that such a being ought not to create a non-best world. More specifically, we argue that this principle is plausible only if we assume that there is a best element in the set of all possible worlds. However, as we show, there are conceivable scenarios in which that assumption does not hold.