Acting without knowledge of rightness

Some philosophers think that for your right action to be morally worthy you have to know that the action is right.

On the contrary, there are cases where an action is even more morally worthy when you don’t know it’s right.

1. Alice is tasked with a dangerous mission to rescue hikers stranded on a mountain. She knows it’s right, and she fulfills the mission.

2. Bob is tasked with a dangerous mission to rescue hikers stranded on a mountain. He knows it’s right, but then just before he heads out, a clever philosopher gives him a powerful argument that there is no right or wrong. He is not fully convinced, but he has no time to figure out whether the argument works before the mission starts. Instead, he reasons quickly: “Well, there is a 50% chance that the argument is sound and there is no such thing as right and wrong, in which case at least I’m not doing anything wrong by rescuing. But there is a 50% chance that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and if anything is right, it’s rescuing these hikers.” And he fulfills the mission.

Bob’s action is, I think, even more worthy and praiseworthy than Alice’s. For while Alice risks her life for a certainty of doing the right thing, Bob is willing to risk his life in the face of uncertainty. Some people would take the uncertainty as an excuse, but Bob does not.

A praise-blame asymmetry

There is a certain kind of symmetry between praise and blame. We praise someone who incurs a cost to themselves by going above and beyond obligation and thereby benefitting another. We blame someone who benefits themselves by failing to fulfill an obligation and thereby harming another.

But here is a fun asymmetry to note. We praise the benefactor in proportion to the cost to the benefactor. But we do not blame the malefactor in proportion to the benefit to the malefactor. On the contrary, when the benefit to the malefactor is really small, we think the malefactor is more to be blamed.

Moral conversion and Hume on freedom

According to Hume, for one to be responsible for an action, the action must flow from one’s character. But the actions that we praise people for the most include cases where someone breaks free from a corrupt character and changes for the good. These cases are not merely cases of slight responsibility, but are central cases of responsibility.

A Humean can, of course, say that there was some hidden determining cause in the convert’s character that triggered the action—perhaps some inconsistency in the corruption. But given determinism, why should we think that this hidden determining cause was indeed in the agent’s character, rather than being some cause outside of the character—some glitch in the brain, say? That the hidden determining cause was in the character is an empirical thesis for which we have very little evidence. So on the Humean view, we ought to be quite skeptical that the person who radically changes from bad to good is praiseworthy. We definitely should not take such cases to be among paradigm cases of praiseworthiness.

Defining supererogation

Sometimes supererogation is defined by a conjunction of a positive evaluation of performing the action and a denial of a negative evaluation of non-performance. For instance:

1. The action is good to do but not bad not to do.

2. The action is good to do but not wrong not to do.

3. The action is praiseworthy but omitting it is not blameworthy.

It seems to me that all such definitions fail in cases where there are two or more actions each of which satisfies one’s obligations.

Suppose a grenade has been thrown at a group of people that includes me. There is a heavy blanket nearby. Throwing the blanket on the grenade is unlikely to save lives but has some chance of doing so, while jumping on the grenade is much more likely to save multiple lives. I am obligated to do one of the two things (there is no time to do both, of course).

I throw the blanket on the grenade. In doing so, I do something good and praiseworthy. And omission of throwing the blanket is neither bad, nor wrong, nor blameworthy, since it is compatible with my jumping on the grenade. But clearly throwing the blanket on the grenade is not supererogatory!

One might object that we should be comparing the throwing of the blanket to not doing anything at all. And if we do that, then the action of throwing the blanket does not satisfy the definitions of supererogation: for it is good to throw the blanket, but bad not to do anything at all. However, if that’s how we read (1)–(3), then jumping on the grenade isn’t supererogatory either. For while it is good to jump on the grenade, to do nothing at all is bad, wrong and blameworthy.

It is clear what goes wrong here. In a case where two or more actions satisfy one’s obligations, it can’t be that all the actions are supererogatory. The supererogatory action must go above the call of duty. It seems we need a comparative element, such as:

4. Action A is better or more praiseworthy than some alternative that satisfies one’s obligations.

I think (4) is not good enough. For it misses the altruistic aspect of the supererogatory. Consider a case where I can choose to make some sacrifice for you to bestow some good on you, and I am morally required to make some minimal sacrifice s₀. However, there is a non-linear relationship between the degree of sacrifice and the good bestowed, such that the good bestowed increases asymptotically, approaching some value v, while the degree of sacrifice can increase without bound. Once the amount of sacrifice is increased too much, the action becomes bad: it becomes imprudent and contrary to one’s obligations to oneself. But as the amount of sacrifice is increased, presumably what eventually starts happening is that before the action becomes actually bad, it simply ceases to be praiseworthy.

Let s₁ indicate such a disproportionate degree of sacrifice: s₁ is not praiseworthy but neither is it blameworthy or contrary to one’s obligations. Then, s₀—the minimal amount of sacrifice—becomes supererogatory by (4). For s₀ is praiseworthy, since it is praiseworthy to make a morally required sacrifice, and hence it is more praiseworthy than s₁, since s₁ is not praiseworthy. But s₁ satisfies one’s obligations. So, the minimal degree of permissible sacrifice, s₀, satisfies the definition of the supererogatory. But that’s surely not right.

I don’t know how to fix (4).

More on the side-effect harm/help asymmetry

Wright and Bengson note an apparent intuitive asymmetry in our side-effect judgments. We blame people for not avoiding bad effects, even when these bad effects are not intended, but we do not praise people for not avoiding good effects when these good effects are not intended.

I wonder if the explanation for this asymmetry isn’t this:

1. Typical good people strive to avoid bad side-effects to others

2. Typical bad people don’t strive to avoid good side-effects to others.

The reason for (2) is that typical bad people are selfish rather than malevolent: their badness consists in the fact that they put themselves before others, not in their going out of their way to deprive others of goods as such. But typical good people are positively benevolent, so we have (1).

Now, given (1), if you fail to avoid a bad side-effect, that makes you be worse than a typical good person. And that calls for significant castigation. But given (2), if you fail to avoid a good side-effect, that doesn’t make you better than a typical bad person. Granted, you could still be praised for being better than a very bad person, but that would be damning with faint praise. So, (1) and (2) neatly predicts the asymmetry in our practices of praise and blame.

But now imagine that we lived in a more polarized society, where typical bad people were actually malevolent rather than selfish. Against that background, it would make sense to praise someone for not avoiding a good effect to another. This is similar to the way that we would not praise a 21st-century upper-class man for refraining from duelling, but we would praise a 19th-century one for the same thing. For the vice of duelling is no longer rampant like it was, and to say that someone never engages in duels is damning with faint praise. Praise is comparative, and comparisons depend on reference class.

Sometimes that reference class is the person’s past and present. And that provides cases where we would praise someone for not striving to avoid good side-effects. If out of hatred someone previously strove to avoid good effects to a particular other, and then stopped such striving, then praise would be in order.

We thus need to be careful in drawing conclusions from praise and blame practices, because these practices depend on statistical facts. If the above is right, the side-effect asymmetry may simply be due to reference class issues rather than any deeper facts about intentions, side-effects and value.

But I think there is probably a further asymmetry between praise and blame. While, as noted, we do not praise people for doing going things most people in the reference class do, we do in fact blame people for doing bad things that most people in the reference class do. While we do not praise our 21st century contemporaries for refraining from dueling, we would have been right to castigate our 19th century contemporaries for that vice. That “everybody is doing it” often makes praise feel nearly completely inappropriate, but it only somewhat decreases the degree of blame rather than eliminating it.

Does supererogation always deserve praise?

Suppose that Bob spent a month making a birthday cake for Alice that was only slightly better than what was available in the store, and Bob did not enjoy the process at all. One can fill out the case in such a way that what Bob did was permissible. Moreover, it is was more burdensome to him than buying the slightly less good cake would have been, and it was better for Alice, so it looks like the action was supererogatory. Nonetheless, we wouldn’t praise this action: We would say that the action was insufficiently prudent. So, it seems that not every supererogatory action is praiseworthy.

Perhaps the problem is with my understanding of supererogation. If we add the necessary condition for supererogation that the action is on balance better than the relevant alternative, then we can avoid saying that Bob’s action is supererogatory, because it is not better on balance than the alternative. But I would rather avoid adding that a supererogatory action is on balance better than the alternative. For then it becomes mysterious how it can be permissible to do the alternative.

I am inclined to just bite the bullet and deny the supererogation always deserves praise.

A responsibility asymmetry

Discussion of my previous post has made me realize that, it seems, we’re more apt to be skeptical about the culpability of someone whose evil actions arose from a poor upbringing than of the praiseworthiness of someone whose good actions arose from a good upbringing.

This probably isn’t due to any general erring in favor of positive judgments. We’re not that nice (e.g., think of the research that shows that people are going to say that the CEO who doesn’t care about the environment but institutes profitable policies that happen to pollute is intentionally polluting, while the CEO who doesn’t care about the environment but institutes profitable policies that happen to be good for the environment is not intentionally helping the environment).

Here are two complementary stories that would make the apparent asymmetry reasonable:

• Virtue makes one free while vice enslaves.

• The person raised badly may be non-blameworthily ignorant of what is right. The person raised well knows what is right, though may deserve no credit for the knowledge. But non-blameworthy ignorance takes away responsibility, while knowledge gained without credit is good enough for responsibility for the actions flowing from that knowledge.

The noise from this asymmetry suggests that we may want to be careful when discussing free will and determinism to include both positive and negative actions evenhandedly in our examples.

White lies

Suppose Bob is known by Alice to be an act utilitarian. Then Bob won’t believe when Alice asserts p in cases where Bob knows that by Alice’s lights, if p is false, nonetheless the utility of getting Bob to believe p exceeds the utility of Bob knowing that p is false. For in such cases an act utilitarian is apt to lie, and her testimony to p is of little worth.

Such cases are not uncommon in daily life. Alice feels bad about a presentation she just made. Bob praises it. Alice dismisses the praise on the grounds that even if her presentation was bad, getting her to feel better outweighs the utility of her having a correct estimate of the presentation, at least by Bob’s lights.

Praise from an act utilitarian is of little value: instead of being direct evidence for the proposition that one did well, it is direct evidence for the proposition that it would be good for one to believe that one did well. Now, that it would good for one to believe that one did well is some evidence that one did well, but it is fairly weak evidence given facts about human psychology.

And so in cases where praise is deserved, the known act utilitarian is not going to promote utility for friends as effectively as a known deontologist, since the deontologist’s praise is going to get a lot more credence. Such cases are not rare: it is quite common for human performances to deserve praise and for the agent to be such that they would benefit from being uplifted by praise. While, on the other hand, in cases where praise is undeserved, the known act utilitarian’s praise does little to uplift the spirit.

These kinds of ordinary interactions are such a large part of our lives that I think a case can be made that just on the basis of these, by the lights of act utilitarianism, an act utilitarian should either hide their act utilitarianism from others or else should convert to some other normative ethical view (say, by self-brainwashing). Since the relevant interactions are often with friends, and it is unlikely one can hide one’s character from one’s friends over a significant period of time, and since doing so is likely to be damaging to one’s character in ways that even the act utilitarian will object to, this seems to be yet another of the cases where act utilitarianism pushes one not to be an act utilitarian.

Such arguments have been made before in other contexts (e.g., worries that the demandingness of act utilitarianism would sap our energies). They are not definitive refutations of act utilitarianism. As Parfit has convincingly argued, it is logically consistent to hold that an ethical theory is true but that one morally should not believe it. But still we get the conclusion that everybody morally should be something other than an act utilitarian. For if act utilitarianism is false, you surely shouldn’t be an act utilitarian. And if it’s true, you shouldn’t, either.

The above, I think, is more generally relevant to any view on which everyday white lies are acceptable. For the only justifications available for white lies are consequentialist ones. But hiding from one’s friends that one is the sort of person who engages in white lies is costly and difficult, whereas letting it be known undercuts the benefits of the white lies, while at the same removing the benefits of parallel white truths. Thus, we should all reject white lies in our lives, and make it clear that we do so.

Here, I use “white lie” in a sense in which it is a lie. I do not think “Fine” is a lie, white or otherwise, when answering “How are you?” even when you are not fine, because this is not a case of assertion but of a standardized greeting. (There is no inconsistency in an atheist saying “Good-bye”, even though it’s a contraction of “God be with you.”) One way to see this isn't a lie is to note that it is generally considered rude (but sometimes required) to suggest that one's interlocutor lied, there is nothing rude about saying to someone who answered “Fine”: “Are you sure? You look really tired.” At that point, we do move into assertion category. The friend who persists in the “Fine” answer but isn't fine now is lying.

Two senses of "decide"

Suppose:

1. Alice sacrifices her life to protect her innocent comrades.

2. Bob decides that if he ever has the opportunity to sacrifice his life to protect his innocent comrades, he’ll do it.

We praise Alice. But as for Bob, while we commend his moral judgment, we think that he is not yet in the crucible of character. Bob’s resolve has not yet been tested. And it’s not just that it hasn’t been tested. Alice’s decision not only reveals but also constitutes her as a courageous individual. Bob’s decision falls short both in the revealing but also in the constituting department (it’s not his fault, of course, that the opportunity hasn’t come up).

Now compare Alice and Bob to Carl:

3. Carl knows that tomorrow he’ll have the opportunity to sacrifice his life to protect his innocent comrades, and he decides he will make the sacrifice.

Carl is more like Bob than like Alice. It’s true that Carl’s decision is unconditional while Bob’s is conditional. But even though Carl’s decision is unconditional, it’s not final. Carl knows (at least on the most obvious way of spelling out the story) that he will have another opportunity to decide come tomorrow, just as Bob will still have to make a final decision once the opportunity comes up.

I am not sure how much Bob and Carl actually count as deciding. They are figuring out what would or will (respectively) be the thing to do. They are making a prediction (hypothetical or future-oriented) about their action. They may even be trying by an act of will to form their character so as to determine that they would or will make the sacrifice. But if they know how human beings function, they know that their attempt is very unlikely to be successful: they would or will still have a real choice to make. And in the end it probably wouldn’t surprise us too much if, put to the test, Bob and Carl failed to make the sacrifice.

Alice did something decisive. Bob and Carl have yet to do so. There is an important sense in which only Alice decided to sacrifice her life.

The above were cases of laudable action. But what about the negative side? We could suppose that David steals from his employer; Erin decides that she will steal if she has the opportunity; and Frank knows he’ll have the opportunity to steal and decides he’ll take it.

I think we’ll blame Erin and Frank much more than we’ll praise Bob and Carl (this is an empirical prediction—feel free to test it). But I think that’s wrong. Erin and Frank haven’t yet gone into the relevant crucible of character, just as Bob and Carl haven’t. Bob and Carl may be praiseworthy for their present state; Erin and Frank may be blameworthy for theirs. But the praise and the blame shouldn’t go quite as far as in the case of Alice and David, respectively. (Of course, any one of the six people might for some other reason, say ignorance, fail to be blameworthy or praiseworthy.)

This is closely to connected to my previous post.

Stupidity, triteness and immorality

I suspect that many philosophers would rather have their work be criticized as being morally perverse than as being stupid or merely tritely repeating unoriginal claims from the literature. At least, I find myself with feelings like that. Does this preference expose a deep vice in me?

I am not sure. It may simply be that I trust other philosophers' judgment as to what is stupid or in the literature more than I trust their moral judgment. At least, if the moral perversity criticism came from one of the philosophers whose moral judgment I really trusted, the judgment would worry me a lot more. But I am not sure it would still worry me as much as a judgment of stupidity or unoriginality from someone of comparable epistemic authority.

Praise and relativism

Hartry Field agrees with Putnam that values are non-factual. Of course, there is a fact of the matter about whether x values F, but there is no fact of the matter about whether x's valuing F is correct. This includes epistemic values. Field thinks this is not a problem. One simply relativizes epistemology to an "evidential system". Then, making use of a non-relativistic concept of truth, one defines the reliability of an evidential system. Finally:

if there is any "highest epistemological praise" it will be something like "is justified relative to some highly reliable evidential system" (or "is justified relative to all highly reliable evidential systems", or some such thing). This isn't really an adequate formulation of what "the highest epistemological praise" (if there is such a thing) would be, for (among other things) reliability is not the only feature we want our evidential systems to have; but it gives the general flavor. (Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982), p. 564)

Field is cautious about whether there is any such thing as the "highest epistemological praise". His caution could have two sources: he could be cautious about whether there is such a thing as "high epistemological praise" or about whether there is such a thing as the "highest epistemological praise". I shall take the latter to be his worry. Thus, on my reading, Field thinks there is such a thing as high epistemological praise, and to give it is to say something of "the general flavor" of the claim that a belief is "justified relative to some highly reliable evidential system (jrtshres)".

But now let me raise this question. What makes saying that a belief is jrtshres be a case of praise, while saying that it is justified relative to some evidential system (jrtses—note that every belief has this property) or that it was acquired during a full moon (adafm) are, presumably, not praise?

To answer this question we need to figure out the sense of the word "phrase". I see two prima facie plausible answers. On the first, to praise something is to attribute to it a property that is valued (individually or socially)—this is the relativistic notion of praise. On the second, to praise something is to attribute to it a property that is in fact valuable—this is the objective notion of praise.

Let's start with the second. This clearly has difficulties. Thus, it is easy to imagine (and I remember a claim that there is a code of honor among Russian thieves according to which this is so) a criminal subculture where to say that something was earned through honest work got is not praise, even though it is the attribution of a property that is in actual fact valuable. Similarly, it seems to be genuine praise if I say, misunderstanding the aim of checkers: "Great! You've just managed to get yourself into a position where you have no valid move." Nonetheless, there may be a sense of "objectively correct praise" on which to praise something is to attribute to it a property that one believes to be objectively valuable. But then by engaging in epistemic praise, we are presupposing something incompatible with Field's relativism about epistemic values—we're taking a belief's being jrshrtes to be objectively valuable.

On the other hand, here is a difficulty for the relativistic notion of "praise" as a reading of what Field is claiming. It seems that on a relativistic notion of praise, what is going to be the highest epistemological praise is not that a belief is jrtshres, but that it is justified according to one's own evidential system (on the individual relativist reading—the social case needs a modification in the argument). The evidential systems in Field's paper embody different individuals' evidential values, and so if one praises by attributing properties that one values, then one will be praising compliance with one's own evidential system.

I suppose Field could object that it is possible to see one thing as valuable for one's own beliefs and another as valuable for another's. Perhaps one sees epistemic caution as good in one's own case but values incaution in others, being glad that others explore crazy hypotheses, as that gives one a richer fund of ideas to work with. This example, by itself, is no good, though. Instrumentally valuing something that others do, on account of its benefits to oneself, is not really praise (unless one has an overinflated ego and one equates oneself with God or the universe or something like that). It is not, for instance, praise for the conman to say, once the con is done: "You have made me rich", though the conman values being rich. It would, on the other hand, be more like praise for the conman to say to someone: "You have made yourself rich." As long as we see others as being relevantly like ourselves, it does not seem that we can coherently praise in another what we do not value in ourselves.

Moreover, let's simplify and assume that what it is to value something is to have a certain kind of preference for it. A more sophisticated theory of subjective value will need a more sophisticated version of this argument, but I suspect the basic point will still be possible to make. Then on the relativistic reading, the force of the praise comes down to something basically like one's preference for jrtshes beliefs. But the following statement seems to me to be performatively inconsistent: "I praise you for F, because I prefer F." The relativism in the second clause undercuts the praise in the first. Epistemic praise, however, can be made both of oneself and of another. If made of another, one can hold back on the "because I happen to prefer jrtshes beliefs" clause. But if we praise ourselves in a clear-headed way, then we cannot hold back on it, and we indeed are being performatively inconsistent.

Of course, if to value something is to believe that it is objecitively valuable, the performative inconsistency disappears. But Field cannot take this route.

If all this is correct, we get a more general result: If relativism about values is correct, praise is insincere, manipulative or in some way inconsistent.