It’s helpful for me when you make clear the views of yours I disagree with!
My strategy is to take the subjectivist view, that any actual desire creates reasons, at least agent-relative ones, and that’s all the reasons that there are.
However, I then note that the boundaries of agents aren’t clear - the desires of a person are in some sense constituted by their (often somewhat conflicting) sub-personal desires; the desires of a group are in some sense constituted by their (often somewhat conflicting) individual desires, etc. I then take morality to be about hypothetical normativity relative to the desires of the biggest group, of which we are all a part.
Everyone’s desires get counted as part of this, even the person who desires to torture children. But the children’s desires count too, and will surely overwhelm those of the would-be torturer.
If I am itchy, does that give me a reason to scratch? Is this post using “reason” as a term of art that I am misapplying? Why would wanting something not be a reason to do it? Or is it just “motive” which is different from a reason somehow?
Cool article. I reject hypothetical imperatives because I think they retain too many of the elements that I find unacceptable with categorical imperatives, including the failure to eliminate normative reasons. In that respect, one might say I’m some sort of normative nihilist. However, my concern with this term is that it suggests that nonreductive conceptions of normative reasons are the only viable conceptions, and that if one rejects them, one rejects normativity outright. I’m not sure that I or other people others may think of as “normative nihilists” should grant this. If we conceive of normative reasons in reductive terms, where they are understood as descriptive facts about the relation between means and ends, we can conceive of normativity as a type of descriptivity without thereby eliminating it. Reduction need not be nihilism.
I’m also unsure what to make of remarks like this: “A view on which there are only hypothetical imperatives is thus a form of normative nihilism—no more productive than an irrigation system without any liquid to flow through it.”
An irrigation system without liquid would be useless. However, identifying the relation between means and ends doesn’t strike me as being unproductive. Knowing what my ends are doesn’t entail knowing what means would be most conducive to achieving that end. If I’m motivated to act in accordance with my goals, all I need to get the water flowing is to settle on which means would be conducive to those ends. Maybe I’m not understanding what you mean here.
All argument is hypothetical; if the premises are true, and the axioms of logic are true, and the argument includes no logical errors, then the conclusion is true. So the categorical argument is also hypothetical, it just begins with different assumptions. I guess the difference is, one is allowed to deny the premises of a hypothetical at will, but supposedly the premises of a categorical argument are undeniable, or at least independent of the opinions of agents.
This presupposes that we can identify a perfectly impartial point of view from which to evaluate things, and that we should/must do so. Maybe we can let in a bit of wiggle room, and say we only are obligated to do the best we can to identify this view from nowhere. But why would we want to adopt it? Do we need some meta-argument to make that conclusion? And meta-norms that give the reasons?
Stipulate that such a view from nowhere exists, and we are motivated to find and apply it. How would the choices we face differ from those of persons who disbelieve all that, but are committed to interacting socially and cooperatively for mostly selfish reasons (including within “selfishness” a regard for at least some others)?
Whatever standard gets adopted, someone will violate it. Arguments about what label to apply to that (wrong, bad, mistaken, evil) seem to go only half-way to the bottom line, which is “what happens as a consequence of the violation?”
It’s helpful for me when you make clear the views of yours I disagree with!
My strategy is to take the subjectivist view, that any actual desire creates reasons, at least agent-relative ones, and that’s all the reasons that there are.
However, I then note that the boundaries of agents aren’t clear - the desires of a person are in some sense constituted by their (often somewhat conflicting) sub-personal desires; the desires of a group are in some sense constituted by their (often somewhat conflicting) individual desires, etc. I then take morality to be about hypothetical normativity relative to the desires of the biggest group, of which we are all a part.
Everyone’s desires get counted as part of this, even the person who desires to torture children. But the children’s desires count too, and will surely overwhelm those of the would-be torturer.
If I am itchy, does that give me a reason to scratch? Is this post using “reason” as a term of art that I am misapplying? Why would wanting something not be a reason to do it? Or is it just “motive” which is different from a reason somehow?
Those that think their desires are moral just because they can use the word 'should' are only shoulding themselves in the foot.
Cool article. I reject hypothetical imperatives because I think they retain too many of the elements that I find unacceptable with categorical imperatives, including the failure to eliminate normative reasons. In that respect, one might say I’m some sort of normative nihilist. However, my concern with this term is that it suggests that nonreductive conceptions of normative reasons are the only viable conceptions, and that if one rejects them, one rejects normativity outright. I’m not sure that I or other people others may think of as “normative nihilists” should grant this. If we conceive of normative reasons in reductive terms, where they are understood as descriptive facts about the relation between means and ends, we can conceive of normativity as a type of descriptivity without thereby eliminating it. Reduction need not be nihilism.
I’m also unsure what to make of remarks like this: “A view on which there are only hypothetical imperatives is thus a form of normative nihilism—no more productive than an irrigation system without any liquid to flow through it.”
An irrigation system without liquid would be useless. However, identifying the relation between means and ends doesn’t strike me as being unproductive. Knowing what my ends are doesn’t entail knowing what means would be most conducive to achieving that end. If I’m motivated to act in accordance with my goals, all I need to get the water flowing is to settle on which means would be conducive to those ends. Maybe I’m not understanding what you mean here.
All argument is hypothetical; if the premises are true, and the axioms of logic are true, and the argument includes no logical errors, then the conclusion is true. So the categorical argument is also hypothetical, it just begins with different assumptions. I guess the difference is, one is allowed to deny the premises of a hypothetical at will, but supposedly the premises of a categorical argument are undeniable, or at least independent of the opinions of agents.
This presupposes that we can identify a perfectly impartial point of view from which to evaluate things, and that we should/must do so. Maybe we can let in a bit of wiggle room, and say we only are obligated to do the best we can to identify this view from nowhere. But why would we want to adopt it? Do we need some meta-argument to make that conclusion? And meta-norms that give the reasons?
Stipulate that such a view from nowhere exists, and we are motivated to find and apply it. How would the choices we face differ from those of persons who disbelieve all that, but are committed to interacting socially and cooperatively for mostly selfish reasons (including within “selfishness” a regard for at least some others)?
Whatever standard gets adopted, someone will violate it. Arguments about what label to apply to that (wrong, bad, mistaken, evil) seem to go only half-way to the bottom line, which is “what happens as a consequence of the violation?”