The right can be derived from the good

There is a way to connect the right and wrong with the good and bad:

1. An action is right (respectively, wrong) if and only if it is noninstrumentally good (respectively, bad) to do it.

This is compatible with there being cases where it is bad for one to do the right thing. Thus, refraining from stealing the money that one would need to sign up for a class on virtue is right and noninstrumentally good, but if the class is really effective then stealing the money might be instrumentally good for one, though noninstrumentally ba.

I think (1) is something that everyone should accept. Even consequentialists can and should accept (1) (though utilitarian consequentialists have too shallow an axiology to make (1) true). But natural law theorists might add a further claim to (1): the left-hand-side is true because the right-hand-side is true.

The title of this post contradicts the title of another recent post, but the contents do not.

Instrumental bads

Suppose that a process Q has a chance r of producing some non-instrumentally bad result B, and nothing else of relevance. That fact gives us reason not to actualize Q. But suppose Q is actualized. Is it bad?

Well, if it’s bad, it seems it’s only instrumentally bad. It is no worse to be killed by a well-aimed arrow than by a well-aimed bullet, even though in the case of the well-aimed arrow the process of a deadly projectile’s flight lasts longer. Yet if a process producing a bad result were non-instrumentally bad, it would be worse if it lasted longer.

So we now have four options:

1. Q is always instrumentally bad (whether or not B eventuates)

2. Q is never instrumentally bad

3. Q is instrumentally bad if and only if B eventuates

4. Q is instrumentally bad if and only if B does not eventuate.

Option (4) is crazy. Option (2) destroys the very idea of an instrumental bad. So that leaves options (1) and (3).

If we opt for option (1), then we can have a world that contains instrumental bads without any non-instrumental bads—just imagine that Q obtains, B does not eventuate, and nothing else that’s bad ever happens. This seems a little counterintuitive: instrumental bads are derivatively bad, but how can something be derivatively bad without anything that is non-derivatively bad?

That suggests we should go for option (3): a process that has a chance of leading to a non-instrumental bad is bad only when the non-instrumental bad eventuates.

But now imagine Molinism is true. Suppose that God knows that Q, if actualized, would not lead to B, even though it has a non-zero chance r of doing so. In that case, the fact that Q has a chance r > 0 of leading to B is no reason for God not to actualize Q. But that something is bad is always a reason not to actualize it. If instrumental bads are an exception for this, then instrumental bads aren’t bads.

Now, I think Molinism is false. But whether (3) is true should not, it seems, depend on whether Molinism is true. So if (3) is false on Molinism, it is simply false.

So we seem to be stuck!

Maybe the right move is this. Fake money isn’t money and merely instrumental bads aren’t bad. This allows us an escape from the Molinism argument. For if merely instrumental bads aren’t bad, there is no problem about the fact that the Molinist God has no reason not to produce them.

Another move might be to say that (3) is true, but disproves Molinism. This doesn’t strike me as right, but maybe it’s defensible.

Until this is resolved, one really shouldn’t be running any arguments that depend on instrumental bads being actually bad.

Self-regarding moral reasons

Many contemporary ethicists believe that:

1. Moral reasons are always other-regarding.

Add this very plausible premise:

2. No action that is on balance supported by moral reasons is bad.

Suppose Alice is out of food on a desert island. She will die of starvation in a week. A malfunctioning robot shows up and offers her a deal (Alice verifies the robot’s buggy software to ensure it would follow-through on the deal). In exchange for her agreeing to be tortured horribly for the week of life that she has left, the robot will fly to the other side of the world, and tell a joke to a random stranger who will have a minute of enjoyment from the joke.

Clearly, Alice has a moral reason to go for the deal: it will brighten up a stranger’s day. By (1), accepting the deal is on balance supported by moral reasons, for the only relevant moral reason against the deal is the harm to Alice. Thus, the action is not bad by (2). But it is clearly a bad action.

I suppose one could reject (2), but it seems to me much better to reject (1), and to hold that prudence is a moral virtue, and if Alice takes the deal, she is morally failing by imprudence.

Another variant of the knowledge argument

Let P be the pain center of the brain.

Suppose you knew all of physical reality and nothing else. Then you would know that stimulating P would cause squirming, shrieking and avoidance. But it seems you wouldn’t know that it’s bad for one to have P stimulated. Then, upon having one’s P stimulated, one would learn that it’s bad for one to have P stimulated. So, there are facts that go beyond physical reality.

Reducing the right to the good

Here is a simple reductive account of right and wrong that now seems to me to be obviously correct:

1. An action is right if and only if it is non-instrumentally wholly good; it is wrong if and only if it is non-instrumentally at least partly bad.

Think, after all, how easily we move between saying that someone acted badly and that someone acted wrongly.

If (1) is a correct reduction, then we can reduce facts about right and wrong to facts about the value of particular kinds of things, namely actions.

By the way, if we accept (1), then consequentialism is equivalent to the following thesis:

2. An action is non-instrumentally good if and only if it is on balance (instrumentally and non-instrumentally) best.

But it is quite strange to think that there be an entity that is non-instrumentally good if and only if it is on balance best.

Physical and psychological pain

In English, we have a category “pain” which we subdivide into the “physical” and the “psychological”. But this taxonomy is misleading.

Consider the experiences of eating some intensely distasteful food—once as a kid I added chocolate chips to my tomato soup and it was awful—or of smelling a really nasty odor. These sensations are not pains. But, phenomenologically, the difference between these unpleasantness experiences and the physical pains does not seem greater than the difference between some of the psychological pains and the physical pains.

Reflection on the phenomenology does not, I think, reveal any good reason to classify physical pains and psychological pains in one natural category and the experiences of nasty taste or smell in another.

Nor does there seem to be any good reason to classify this way when one thinks of what the representational content of the experiences is. Physical pains seem to represent our body as damaged. Psychological pains seem to represent complex external states of affairs as bad, particularly in relation to ourselves. And bad taste seems to represent a food as bad for us. There is a common core in all these cases, and there does not seem to be a tighter common core to the physical and psychological pains taken as a unit.

Thus it seems to me that having a category of pain that includes physical and psychological pains but excludes the other unpleasant experiences I mentioned is like having a biological category of bovinoequines that comprises cows and horses but excludes donkeys. It’s just not a natural taxonomy, and unnatural taxonomies can mislead one in reflection.

I propose that the natural category here is the unpleasant, under which fall most physical pains, most psychological pains and a large host of other experiences. But there seem to be such things as pleasant or at least not unpleasant pains.)

One can have suffering without pain—I suffered when I had the soup with cholocate chips, but it didn’t hurt (except my pride in my culinary ideas). One can have pain without suffering. So the tie between pain and suffering is not very tight. But perhaps there is a tighter connection between suffering and the unpleasant. I now have two options that are worth exploring, both quite simple:

• suffering is unpleasantness

• suffering is significant unpleasantness.

We can talk of physical pains and psychological pains, but we need to be careful not to be misled by the repetition of the word “pain” into thinking there is a natural category that includes just these two subcategories of pains but excludes the others.

How do we divide up the unpleasant? One way is to base things on the representational content. Maybe all of the unpleasant represents a state of affairs as bad, but we can subdivide the bads. Here are some potentially natural subdivisions of bads:

• to self vs. not to self (more precisely: qua to self vs. not qua to self)

• non-instrumental vs. instrumental

• intrinsic vs. relational

• actual vs. potential

• past vs. present vs. future

• bodily vs. mental.

We get something a little bit like the English category of “pain” if we consider unpleasantness that represents non-instrumental intrinsic actual present bad to self. But not quite: many psychological pains are backward looking, and some are complex experiences that include components of representing bads to others.

Emotional perception

On Friday I was feeling somewhat poorly and in the interests of public health (not that I minded!) I opted out of participation in the PhD graduation dinner and Saturday's commencement. Sunday I felt somewhat worse, and today rather worse (nothing serious, just the usual "flu-like" symptoms, and both of our big kids had such in the preceding two weeks). But there is one piece of relief: It is good to have been right about the fact that I was getting sick.

It is not particularly bad to have suffered physically and similarly it is not particularly good to have enjoyed physical pleasure. But it is bad (or at least it feels bad--which is evidence for its being bad!) to have been wrong and similarly it is good to have been right. The value here isn't the value of being recognized by others as having been right or wrong. Nor is it the value of oneself presently recognizing oneself as right or wrong. For one hopes (though perhaps not simpliciter, if the prospect is particularly nasty) that one be right and that one not be wrong, not just that one recognize oneself or be recognized as right or wrong. The recognition is just the icing or mould on the top of a good or bad cake.

Eternalists have a difficulty with the fact that it doesn't seem bad to have suffered physically (bracketing any present suffering from painful memories, of course), even though past suffering is just as real as present suffering. Presentists have a difficulty with the fact that it seems to be bad to have been wrong and to be good to have been right.

I think eternalists can make a better go of it, though. Feelings like the pleasure of having been right or the pain of having been wrong are a kind of perception of normative features of the world. But not all truth is equally perceived. I am now visually aware that I have two hands, and properly so. But were I now visually aware that you have a head, my visual system would be malfunctioning. For although, dear reader, you do have a head, your head is not presently within my field of view. It is thus a part of the correct functioning of my visual apparatus that I be presently aware of my hands but not your head, even though all three parts (my two hands and your one head) are equally real.

Likewise, then, some goods and bads are appropriately within my emotional field of view--e.g., my having been right about getting sick--and some goods and bads are not appropriately within my emotional field of view--e.g., the unpleasantness of the last time I had a cavity filled. These goods and bads may be equally real (assuming that pain itself really is bad--there is room for discussion here, but it is at least extrinsically bad), but it could be (I am not sure about the first one, actually) that my having been right is appropriately within my emotional field of view while my having suffered (not at all severely--he really is an excellent dentist) at a past dental visit is not.

But we sometimes mistake absence of perception for perception of absence, like an infant who cries that the parent has left the room or the adult who sees no objection to an action and all too hastily concludes the action is permissible. Not emotionally seeing the past pain as bad--i.e., a not being pained by the past pain--is mistaken by us for seeing the past pain as not being bad.

The eternalist should thus say that the past physical pains and pleasures are bad or good, in the same way that present ones are, but we do not see their badness or goodness. Thus, the eternalist attributes to the agent a misinterpretation of absence of perception. The presentist, however, should say that having been right or wrong is not presently good or bad (though maybe it was good or bad), but we misperceive it as such. The eternalist thus attributes more correctness to our emotional perception, while attributing a well-known generalized cognitive error in explaining what went wrong. The presentist has to say our emotional perception is just wrong. I prefer the eternalist explanation.

A similar issue comes up for Christ's suffering on the cross. With a number of theologians, I take the center of our Savior's suffering not to be the horrific suffering of nails ripping through his flesh, but his deep emotional awareness of the horribleness of the totality of our sins (perhaps with the help of the hypostatic union or beatific vision bringing the particularities of all of humankind's sins to him). But this leads to a query: Why did Christ only have this awareness on the cross? We do not see him constantly and equally weighed down by this suffering earlier in life? Was he failing to have a correct emotional awareness? But now we can say: Not at all. It is the salient goods or bads that are within the field of view of correct emotional perception. And it is on the cross, at the high point of the sacrifice for our salvation from these sins (the high point: for all his life was such a sacrifice), that this became fully salient, in such a way that this perfect man--who is also true God--emotionally bore the full weight of our sin.

Note, too, that this is a story about Christ's sufferings that is difficult for the presentist to give. For it is difficult for the presentist to explain why earlier and later, and hence then-unreal, sins were bad at the time of Christ's crucifixion. Perhaps the presentist has to say that Christ's suffering came from an erroneous emotional perception of past and future sins as then-bad?