Rationalistic answers to Douglas Portmore's questions over moral theories

I'm not necessarily advocating for the following answers, just curious as to what they would be under rationalistic metaethics:

 

Source: https://sites.google.com/site/dwportmore/kantsequentialism-a-morality-of-ends. Portmore's words are in red.

 

(Q1) Which acts are wrong? Actions that depend on false beliefs are wrong.

 

(Q2) Which feature of actions is the fundamental wrong-maker? The falsity of the false belief that grounds the action is the wrong-maker.

 

(Q3) What accounts for this being the fundamental wrong-maker? To be wrong about something is to be mistaken, and to be mistaken is to hold a false belief (or other doxastic attitude similar to belief; henceforth 'belief'). Wrong actions, to be wrong, must depend upon a mistake, and thus a false belief. ('Mistake' can also refer to an action that fails to further a goal or leads to a goal not being met.)

 

(Q4) What should be the ultimate moral concern of each agent? If 'should' as in "You should do x" means "Failing to do x is a mistake", then we can analyze 'should' statements in terms of mistakes. 

 

Mistakes, in turn, can be analyzed in terms of goals: "Failing to do x fails to further goal y."

 

So the notion of 'should' depends on 'mistake' and 'mistake' depends on 'goal' or 'end'.

 

So you can't ask what goal a person should have, because 'shoulds' don't exist until a goal is already in place.

 

The exception is if the goal you are talking about is a subgoal, the failing to meet of which fails to further a more ultimate goal.  

 

So if 'ultimate moral concern' means 'ultimate moral goal', then it's impossible for there to be a true or false 'should' statement about that, as 'shoulds' only come after a goal is already in place. The truth or falsity of 'should' statements just is the truth or falsity about what furthers a goal.

 

What you can ask is "What is the ultimate desire or moral concern or value concern of each person?" Alternatively: "What are the moral urgencies or exigencies of each person?"

 

The answer will differ from person to person, but generally I think the ultimate urgency is first and foremost to avoid unbearable suffering (in fact, I suspect that it is necessarily the case that the greatest moral urgency is to be free from unbearable suffering). After that, the ultimate urgency is to flourish, which roughly means: 

 

A human is flourishing when: 

1) Their basic needs are met, such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.
 
2) Their more advanced psychological needs are met, including independence, acceptance into a community, feeling useful to others, and feeling a sense of belonging in the world.

 
3) They experience happiness on a regular basis.
 
4) They do not experience pain on a regular basis.
 
5) The pains they do experience are instrumentally good, such as the natural pains that accompany self-improvement and the establishing and maintaining of a eudaimonic system (guilt, forgiveness, effort, etc.). The instrumental goodness of these pains outweighs their intrinsic badness.

 

In other words, pains are always lesser evils that lead to greater goods. Flourishing especially precludes unbearable pain, which is pain so great that it makes life not worth living for the person suffering it.

6) The happiness experienced is instrumentally good, meaning that it leads to greater goods (greater in terms of quantity and/or quality) for the self and/or others (unless those greater goods lead to even greater evils). 

The happiness experienced is not instrumentally bad, meaning that it does not lead to greater evils (greater in terms of quantity and/or quality) for the self and/or others (unless those greater evils lead to even greater happiness).

Conversely, a human is suffering when:

1*) Their basic needs are NOT met, such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.
 
2*) Their more advanced psychological needs are NOT met, including independence, acceptance into a community, feeling useful to others, and feeling a sense of belonging in the world.

 
3*) They DO NOT experience happiness on a regular basis.
 
4*) They DO experience pain on a regular basis.
 
5*) The pains they do experience are NOT instrumentally good, such as the natural pains that accompany self-improvement and the establishing and maintaining of a eudaimonic system (guilt, forgiveness, effort, etc.). WHATEVER instrumental goodness of these pains, IF ANY, IS OUTWEIGHED BY their intrinsic badness.

 

In other words, pains are NEVER lesser evils that lead to greater goods. PAINS MAY INCLUDE unbearable pain, which is pain so great that it makes life not worth living for the person suffering it.

6*) The happiness experienced is NOT instrumentally good, meaning that it does NOT lead to greater goods (greater in terms of quantity and/or quality) for the self and/or others (unless those greater goods lead to even greater evils). 

The happiness experienced IS instrumentally bad, meaning that it DOES lead to greater evils (greater in terms of quantity and/or quality) for the self and/or others (unless those greater evils lead to even greater happiness).

Two notes on item 6: First: This relates to what JL Mackie referred to as lower and higher order goods and evils in his famous 1955 paper "Evil and Omnipotence". A lower order evil, or evil(1), is something basic that doesn't depend on some lower evil or happiness. So, pains of various kinds make up evils(1). Then there are goods that cannot exist without pains, such as the goods of various virtues (sympathy, bravery, strength, etc.). These are goods(2). Mackie saw vices (the failure to be sympathetic, brave, strong, etc.) as being examples of evils(2). Mackie also suggested that free will is, or is meant to be, a good(3) because it depends on evils(2). (He says free will is incoherent, but sets that aside for the sake of argument. Always nice to find a fellow skeptic of free will.)

 

I will make a distinction between higher order goods and higher goods. Higher order goods are just those goods that depend on more basic goods or evils for their existence. For example, the intrinsic good of feeling a sense of accomplishment often depends on the pain of effort and perseverance.

 

Higher goods are goods that are better than lower goods in their quality. For example, the intrinsic good of feeling a sense of accomplishment is greater in its quality compared to the intrinsic good of eating a snack, and the feeling of being loved may be even greater than the feeling of accomplishment. So higher and lower goods are always intrinsic, as extrinsic and depriving goods have no intrinsic quality. For clarity, I will refer to higher goods as 'greater intrinsic goods' and lower goods as 'lesser intrinsic goods'. 'Greater goods' refers to goods that are greater in their intrinsic, extrinsic, or saving qualities, or some combination thereof. 'Lesser goods' refers to goods that are lesser in their intrinsic, extrinsic, or saving qualities, or some combination thereof. A greater good can be equal or even lesser in its intrinsic goodness compared to a lesser good, but so great in its quantity that the aggregate intrinsic goodness is greater.

 

Higher order goods can be greater goods, but need not be. For example, that my friend feels a great sense of accomplishment makes me happy, a happiness that depends on that good (well, depends on my belief in that good, and if that belief itself depends on the reality of my friend's sense of accomplishment, then my happiness depends on that good), and so my happiness is of a higher order than my friend's sense of accomplishment, but my friend's sense of accomplishment is more vivid than my second-hand happiness.

 

A common misunderstanding of hedonism is that it is a crude theory of value, because it places too much emphasis on lesser intrinsic goods and not enough on greater intrinsic goods, or because it treats lesser and greater intrinsic goods as equal. But this is false. The central claim of hedonism is that it does not make sense to speak of something's being good unless you are speaking of its intrinsic goodness or its ability to give rise to intrinsic goods (or prevent intrinsic evils). So the idea of a "higher good" that is not itself a form of happiness or something that leads to happiness is incoherent. When people talk about greater goods they often list things like: knowledge, autonomy, love, relationships, and virtue. On hedonism, these things can only be good insofar as they constitute forms of happiness, or alleviate pains, or prevent things that prevent happiness, and so on. These goods are goods because they are 1) Intrinsic, 2) Instrumental, or 3) Saving. The confusion, says the hedonist, is that we recognize that some forms of happiness are less valuable than others, and are even damaging in the long run (i.e. the instrumental badness of some joys outweighs their intrinsic goodness). We recognize that the quality of some kinds of happiness is much richer than other kinds. Playing video games gives a dopamine rush. Achieving a great achievement gives so much more than just dopamine, but a deep-seated satisfaction in oneself, self-admiration, a feeling of completeness, a satisfaction over one's life, and so on. These forms of happiness are far richer and deeper than mere dopamine. So we recognize that playing video games is a waste of time compared to doing greater work.

 

So Item 6 (and Item 5) is pointing out that pains and joys that lead to greater happiness are better than pains and joys that fail to lead to greater happiness or even lead to greater pains. Higher order goods can justify lower order evils, just as higher order pains can render lower order goods unjustified. So hedonism does not, in the slightest, entail some kind of crude preference of goods(1). Just the opposite is the case: Because the quality of happiness is what makes goods good, of course deeper forms of happiness, which are greater in their quality, are preferable over more shallow forms of happiness. 

 

Alternative theories of value need to explain in virtue of what is knowledge, autonomy, love, relationships, and virtue good. If they can't, then their theory lacks explanatory power compared to hedonism.

 

Second:  

 

Flourishing and suffering can come in degrees, with more or fewer of the above criteria being met. For example, the intrinsic badness of someone's pain might not outweigh the instrumental goods of that pain, but merely counterbalance. Someone could in theory exist in a vague average between flourishing and suffering, which is probably where most people are most of the time.

 

Continuing with the ultimate moral concern, what humans want at the end of the day is to be happy. As Ecclesiastes 3:12 says (NIV): "I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live."

 

Why is this? For any question of desire ("Why do you want...") we can ask the further question of "Why do you want that?" But eventually explanation will bottom out in an essence fact. Why do you want happiness? Because happiness has the essence it does. There are no further possible why questions. (There are no further possible why questions of desire, that is, internal why questions. We can ask the external question of why, scientifically, it would be the case that happiness has the quality that it does, and we can give an evolutionary explanation for that: pro-survival behavior is selected, and so, assuming that mental causation is real, a phenomenal attraction-generating quality that causes a disposition to engage in pro-survival behaviors is selected.)

 

It makes sense that desires would map onto goals. Indeed, don't goals just follow from desires? So: Why have the goal of being happy? Because I desire to be happy. Why desire happiness? Because happiness has the essence it does.

 

What complicates things is the fact that there are different kinds of happiness and pain, with some forms of happiness leading to greater pains and some forms of pain leading to greater happiness. Some people find some kinds of happiness essential while others don't, and some people find some kinds of pain unbearable while others find them manageable. There is no fact of what kind of happiness you "should" strive for, because 'should' maps onto a goal, in this case the goal of being happy. So you should strive for the greatest kind of happiness, whatever that happens to be for you. That will depend both on 1) What it is that would make you happiest; and 2) What it is that could make you happiest. Maybe having one's child be raised from the dead would make a grieving parent happiest, but that is not what could make the parent happiest because it's an impossible event. After identifying what would make us happiest, we have to then prioritize these things in terms of possibility.

 

(I believe this gets at Graham Oppy's argument against pro-theism and anti-atheism. Roughly, on Oppy's view it's impossible for God to exist, and impossibilities fail to be objects of desire, so both pro-theism and anti-theism are irrational attitudes. My own gloss on this—which may or may not differ substantially from Oppy's exact argument—is that desires for impossible things map onto impossible goals. When you have an impossible goal, there is no true 'should' statement with respect to that goal. 'Should' statements reduce to descriptive facts about which action from a list of possible actions best furthers that goal, so for an impossible goal there is no best possible action that furthers that goal. So if someone desires God, then they necessarily have a goal to be with God. And if someone desires for God to not exist, they necessarily have a goal to avoid the existence of God. But when one realizes that there is no possible action for them to take to further a goal, the goal naturally disappears, and along with it the goal's corresponding desire. An example of this: Say Bob wants world peace. So Bob's goal is to achieve world peace. But Bob discovers that world peace is impossible, so Bob loses the goal and loses the desire that entails such a goal, perhaps replacing it with something possible, such as avoiding conflict in his personal life. But do desires necessitate goals in this way? I think there are ways to defend pro-theism despite this argument, but that's for another time.) 

 

Flourishing then is the ideal balance of pain and happiness under ideal conditions. Because such conditions are impossible to achieve or maintain for any length of time, true flourishing, eudaimonia, can only be an aspirational goal. So only a pseudo-eudaimonia (pseudaimonia?) can be hoped to be achieved; your ultimate moral goal has to make room for messiness. In cases where pseudo-eudaimonia cannot prevent unbearable pain, and if preventing unbearable pain is of the utmost moral priority, then pseudo-eudaimonia is not the ultimate moral goal. However, I suspect that when people in general strive to alleviate their worst pains and pursue their greatest joys, they will incidentally create pseudo-eudaimonia when these pursuits are sufficiently successful. 

 

Before addressing Portmore's other questions, here is a list of questions of my own:

 

Consider the following statement: (NTB) You should not torture babies for fun.

 

M: Concerning the meaning of NTB, and other similar 'should' or 'ought' sentences, what is your reaction? 

 

(M1) I won't speak for anyone else, but NTB is certainly meaningful (i.e. expresses a proposition or propositions) when I utter it, and I can explain what that meaning is.

 

(M2) Speaking for myself and for everyone else, NTB is certainly meaningful (i.e. expresses a proposition or propositions) when anyone utters it and we can at least in principle discover what that meaning is or very likely is.  

 

(M3) When I or anyone else utters NTB, NTB always fails to express a proposition. Instead, to utter NTB is to issue a command unto oneself or others or to express an emotion or desire one feels.

 

T: Concerning the truth of NTB, and other similar 'should' or 'ought' sentences, what is your reaction?

 

(T1) I won't speak for anyone else, but NTB is certainly true when I utter it, and I can explain what it means for NTB to be true.

 

(T2) Speaking for myself and for everyone else, NTB is certainly true when anyone utters it and we can at least in principle discover what it means for NTB to be true.

 

(T3) Whether I utter NTB or anyone else does, NTB is always failing to express a truth or falsehood because only propositions and expressions of propositions can take on a truth value, and NTB fails to express a proposition, instead expressing a command, an emotion, or a desire.

 

(T4) Whether I utter NTB or anyone else does, NTB is always expressing a falsehood, because NTB entails that there is a moral fact that makes it true, but there are no moral facts.

 

J: If NTB is true or false, what is the status of the objectivity of its truth / falsity?

 

(J1) NTB is true independent of judgment (aka, independent of stance). That is, if a person believes NTB is false, then they are mistaken. If a person does not believe NTB, then that is one less true belief in their inventory of true beliefs.

 

(J2) NTB is false independent of judgment. That is, if a person believes NTB is false, then they are mistaken. If a person does not believe that NTB is false, then that is one less true belief in their inventory of true beliefs.

 

(J3) NTB is true relative to the judgment of an individual or culture. 

 

I'll leave questions 5–8 for another time. I think you could rewrite a similar list to Portmore's but with a specific sentence in mind like NTB, giving us something concrete to react to. Rationalism I believe would take M1, T1, and J1. J1 because whether an action furthers a goal is a matter of description, so there are objectively right and wrong answers as to which actions further a goal. But you might say that goals themselves are person-relative. So you might want to fill in a gap by asking a question as to what counts as good or bad and what is the good-maker and bad-maker of good and bad things.