Deontology defended

Empirical research into moral decision-making is often taken to have normative implications. For instance, in his recent book, Greene (2013) relies on empirical findings to establish utilitarianism as a superior normative ethical theory. Kantian ethics, and deontological ethics more generally, is a rival view that Greene attacks. At the heart of Greene’s argument against deontology is the claim that deontological moral judgments are the product of certain emotions and not of reason. Deontological ethics is a mere rationalization of these emotions. Accordingly Greene maintains that deontology should be abandoned. This paper is a defense of deontological ethical theory. It argues that Greene’s argument against deontology needs further support. Greene’s empirical evidence is open to alternative interpretations. In particular, it is not clear that Greene’s characterization of alarm-like emotions that are relative to culture and personal experience is empirically tenable. Moreover, it is implausible that such emotions produce specifically deontological judgments. A rival sentimentalist view, according to which all moral judgments are determined by emotion, is at least as plausible given the empirical evidence and independently supported by philosophical theory. I therefore call for an improvement of Greene’s argument.     

On Defending Deontology

This paper comprises three sections. First, we offer a traditional defence of deontology, in the manner of, for example, W.D. Ross (1965). The leading idea of such a defence is that the right is independent of the good. Second, we modify the now standard account of the distinction, in terms of the agent-relative/agent-neutral divide, between deontology and consequentialism. (This modification is necessary if indirect consequentialism is to count as a form of consequentialism.) Third, we challenge a value-based defence of deontology proposed by Quinn (1993), Kamm (1989, 1992), and Nagel (1995).     

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.     

The Paradox of Deontology and Agent-Centered Restrictions

Philosophia - The paradox of deontology, as the name suggests, is generally thought to pose a problem for deontological theory, particularly for agent-centered restrictions. I argue that it is...     

Negative Actions

Some philosophers have argued that refraining from performing an action consists in actively keeping oneself from performing that action or preventing one’s performing it. Since activities must be held to be positive actions, this implies that negative actions are a species of positive actions which is to say that all actions are positive actions. I defend the following claims:

Worthy Actions

Concrete worthy actions have not been aterminus of discernment for moral theory in theway that they often are for the deliberatingmoral agent. Some ordinary hallmarks of worthyactions challenge the unworldly and impersonalways of envisioning life that dominatephilosophical ethics. I discuss six: a worthyaction (1) improves the world in moralperspective, (2) discloses the agent's power,(3) is personally rewarding, (4) unites virtue,justice, and happiness, (5) is a prime objectof moral choice, and (6) belongs to a practicalgenre (such as work or love). Appreciatingworthy actions leads to a less abstract andconformist view of ethical standards and moreattention to individual portfolio-buildingaccording to diverse practical opportunities.     

Intentions and Causes, Actions and Right Actions

I argue in this essay that belief/desire explanations are not logically true and not causal, and further that the antecedent of a true belief/desire conditional cannot be strengthened in such a way as to transform it into a true causal statement. I also argue that belief/desire explanations are not dispensable: they are presupposed in our justifications of scientific claims. The proposal is not that psychological determinism is false, but that some at least of our activities are not describable in causal terms. These arguments prepare the ground for a puzzle. If all human intentional behaviour is caused, then all actual linkages between psychological states and behaviour should be expressed in causal statements. But neither the action of asserting a causal statement nor the action of justifying the assertion can be described as the result of a cause. Therefore if one accepts that scientific claims can be justified, not all linkages between psychological states and subsequent action are expressible in causal statements. I do not offer a solution to this puzzle.     

Coordinating Actions

The motor system composes complex actions by combining simpler submovements. This presumably involves sharing information about the progress of one submovement with the centres controlling another submovement, to ensure that the second happens in an appropriate relation to the first. This process is called coordination. In this paper Idiscuss evidence that coordinating actions indeed involves an active process of sharing information about the current state of movements. Coordination appears to be qualitatively different from the process of reacting to external stimuli. This may reflect the importance of predictive representations in coordination. Finally, the processes underlying coordination appear to be organized in a response-specific fashion, as a number of relatively independent circuits. The development and tuning of these circuits may, in part, be what makes an action "skilled".     

Actions and accidents

In acting intentionally, it is no accident that one is doing what one intends to do. In this paper, I ask how to account for this non-accidentality requirement on intentional action. I argue that, for systematic reasons, the currently prevailing view of intentional action – the Causal Theory of Action – is ill-equipped to account for it. I end by proposing an alternative account, according to which an intention is a special kind of cause, one to which it is essential that it represents its effect.     

Actions speak louder

Case material is presented from three analyses in which dramatic, unexpected movements by patients on the couch dominated the analytic hours for long periods of time. The psychoanalytic literature pertinent to this area of acting in is reviewed, and some formulations regarding the shift from verbalization to motor behavior are presented. These center on the proposition that the patients had identified with aggressor parents who regarded actions, not words, as the ultimate conveyers of reality. The analyst's use of countertransference responses as clues to the understanding of the actions is discussed.     

Actions as Events

We present a theory of actions based on a theory of events in branching time, in which “particular” or “token” actions are taken to be sets of transitions from their initial states to the outcomes. We also present a simple theory of composition of events by which composite events can be formed out of other events. Various kinds of actions, including instantaneous group actions and sequential group actions, are introduced by way of composition, and an extended stit theory of agency is proposed, in which the stit operators are combined or equipped with reified group actions.     

The Individuation of Actions

I argue against a view of the individuation of actions endorsed most notably by Hornsby and Davidson. This is the view that in, for example, Anscombe's case of the pumping man, we have a single action which can be described, variously, as a pumping, a poisoning and so on. I argue that, even in the area of the standard arguments against this view, such as that based on the logic of 'by' and the argument from temporal dimensions, the case against the Davidson-Hornsby view has not been made as strong as it ought to have been. I show how those standard arguments can be strengthened; and I argue that the principal considerations adduced in support of the view do not in fact lend it the support that they have been widely thought to lend it. I conclude that the view should be rejected.     

Endogenizing Epistemic Actions

Studia Logica - Through a series of examples, we illustrate some important drawbacks that the action model logic framework suffers from in its ability to represent the dynamics of information...     

Teleology,Deontology, and the Priority of the Right: On Some Unappreciated Distinctions

The paper analyses Rawls’s teleology/deontology distinction, and his concept of priority of the right. The first part of the paper aims both 1) to clarify what is distinctive about Rawls’s deontology/teleology distinction (thus sorting out some existing confusion in the literature, especially regarding the conflation of such distinction with that between consequentialism and nonconsequentialism); and 2) to cash out the rich taxonomy of moral theories that such a distinction helpfully allows us to develop. The second part of the paper examines the concept of priority of the right. It argues that such a concept should not be identified with that of deontology—indeed, deontological theories do not necessarily assign priority to the right over the good. However, it contends that the concept of priority of the right is essential to explaining what specific kind of deontological theory “justice as fairness” is. Justice as fairness is a deontological theory which assigns priority to the right as a consequence of its commitment to a neutral position with respect to different accounts of what is ultimately valuable and good.