Brandomian Choice

Aristotle had a reasonable, noninflationary concept of real choice. Choice is up to us, but it is far from arbitrary. Unfortunately, later treatments have largely oscillated between extremes of voluntarism and determinism, making choice either arbitrary or only an unreal appearance.

One of Brandom’s great contributions to ethics is a new account of choice that is reasonable and noninflationary like Aristotle’s. Aristotle developed a notion of real but nonarbitrary choice by defining it as the result of an open deliberation subject to normative standards of inquiry. Brandom reaches a complementary conclusion following a different path. The core of it is a combination of two theses. First, there is a view he associates with the Enlightenment that makes values binding on us only when we have implicitly or explicitly endorsed them. This secures the practical reality of choice, without any ontological assumptions. Second, there is Brandom’s own view that the meaning of the values we endorse is not up to us, but depends on articulation in the space of reasons. As with Aristotle’s notion of deliberation, this establishes the nonarbitrary nature of choice. (See also Intentionality; Self, Subject; Fragility of the Good; Freedom Without Sovereignty.)

What and Why

I want to say that questions of what and why of the sort asked by Plato and Aristotle are of vital importance for all ethically concerned people. These are questions of interpretation, and of what I have been broadly calling meaning. For the moment, I’m leaving aside obvious questions of what to do, in favor of these broader questions that implicitly inform them.

What something is and why it is the way it is — or should be the way it should be — are deeply intertwined. Aristotle provides many good illustrations of this. Also, at any given moment, our thinking about why depends on many assumptions about what we are concerned with that may call for review. Conversely, our thinking about each what implicitly depends on many more detailed judgments of why.

It is not practical to question everything at once, so we do it serially as the need arises, striving to be deeply honest with ourselves in our assessments of the relative levels of such needs. We seek the appropriate best balance of considerations, as well as a good balance between thoroughness of questioning on the one hand, and practical responsiveness or needed decisiveness on the other. (See also Context.)

The question why is quite open-ended. It asks for reasons or causes — and then potentially for more reasons or causes behind those — sincerely seeking to explain or justify, in the spirit of Hegel’s notion of a faith in reasonableness without presupposed truths. It arises in ethical deliberation, in general dialogue, and in many other practical circumstances, as well as in more broadly philosophical considerations. It always involves a dimension of explicit or implicit judgments of value and importance, and often interrelates with questions of fact or interpretation of fact. We should pursue it in a spirit of mutual recognition and expansive agency. Brandom’s normative pragmatics provides a good outer frame for why questions, and valuable technical tools for addressing them. (See also “Why” by Normative Pragmatics.)

The question what honestly faces the provisional character of our implicit and explicit classifications and identifications of things. As Kant might remind us, the what-it-is that we “immediately” apprehend depends upon complex processes of synthesis. Every what encapsulates many judgments and inferences. That does not mean our apprehensions are necessarily wrong — far from it — but it opens another huge space of questions an ethically concerned person should be aware of as possibly relevant, and should monitor for potential warning flags. As with why, questions of what also interrelate with questions of fact or interpretation of fact. Brandom’s inferential semantics provides a good outer frame and technical apparatus for approaching what questions. (See also “What” by Inferential Semantics.)

Theory and Practice

Unlike Plato, Aristotle did not make theoretical knowledge an ethical criterion, although he played a great role in the development of many fields of inquiry. Nonetheless, he placed intellectual “virtue” alongside friendship or love as an essential component of the highest ethical development.

I previously suggested there is an indirect way in which any inquiry can help make us better deliberators. Knowledge can of course help, but only if it is relevant to the question at hand. But the ethical value of inquiry lies more in a kind of theoretical practice than in the particular knowledge that may result. Intellectual virtue, I want to say, has to do especially with practices of free and well-rounded interpretation.

Aristotelian Virtue

Aristotelian ethics is not just about cultivating virtue as a kind of good character. Although he does emphasize it a lot, ultimately character is just a means and a potentiality for actualization of the real goal of that part of living well that is under our power. The actualization itself comes from good practice (praxis), grounded in sound, well-rounded deliberation and choice. Aristotle also says the very best life is that of the philosopher. Not only is philosophy valuable in itself, but it also helps us deliberate.

The best deliberation and choice is supported by intellectual virtues, a concern for justice, and a spirit of friendship or love, but it would not even get off the ground without progress in the classic “moral” virtues, which are all said to pertain to our emotions or passions, and to how we are affected by pleasure and pain. Aristotle characterizes each of these emotional virtues as a kind of mean, or balanced emotional state.

Thus, courage is presented as a mean between rashness and cowardice. Temperance is a mean between self-indulgence and insensibility. Interestingly, justice and prudence are also included among emotional virtues, and subjected to a similar analysis. Other emotional virtues are presented as following the same pattern. Unlike the Stoics, neither Plato nor Aristotle advocated suppressing the emotions.

Kantian Maxims

Kantian maxims are a kind of subjective rules providing rationale or justification for concrete ethical choices. A proper Kantian maxim should be a function from a list of conditions and a motive or aim to a uniquely determined conclusion that a particular concrete choice is or is not permissible for a moral being. It does not tell us exactly what to do, but it is expected to definitively tell us whether something is okay or not okay. It is a kind of inference rule.

Many maxims will fail to be universalizable. Kant says we should only trust the ones that can pass testing by the categorical imperative.

Where Aristotle had stressed an open-ended rational inquiry and the irreducibility of ethics to an exact science, Kant recommended focusing deliberation more narrowly on a search for deterministic functions satisfying the categorical imperative that will tell us if possible actions are okay or not.

Another important difference is that Kantian deliberation stops at what is permissible, whereas Aristotelian deliberation extends all the way to what to do, so the Aristotelian kind has a strictly broader scope.

The question is whether by thus narrowing the scope of ethical inquiry in conjunction with his other moves, Kant really succeeded in making the narrowed scope fully deterministic.

Kant talked much more about testing maxims than about searching for them or formulating them. If we were searching, presumably we would try to match on the conditions and aim that would be the inputs to the function. There might be questions about the granularity with which the conditions and aim are specified. To adequately address the complexities of real life, we would need a huge array of possible functions.

It is hard to even imagine a procedure for initially formulating the function-body of a maxim that would tell us specifically how to get from the inputs to a deterministic output. All we have is tests whether an already formulated candidate maxim is universalizable or not. Actual formulation of maxims thus seems to be left to trial and error. Kant might say the important thing is the ability to test, but it seems to me that if we cannot deterministically say how maxims are to be formulated, we cannot really claim to have a deterministic solution to the whole problem of ethical decision-making.

It seems as though Kant was successful in establishing that valid ethical conclusions do have necessary conditions that no one before him recognized, but unsuccessful in defining conditions that would be both necessary and sufficient to derive those conclusions, even at the level of just considering what is permissible. Thus, we still need Aristotelian open-ended deliberation and practical judgment, or an ethical analogue of Kant’s own notion of free play in aesthetics. I also still like the Leibnizian principle of wise charity — within reason, doing more and demanding less than what is nominally required of us.

Kantian Obligation

Kantian ethics is explicitly governed by a spirit of universality. Universality is the one principle that drives everything else. Arguably, a concern for universality has been implicit in rational ethics since Plato and Aristotle, but Kant made it explicit and absolutely central; formulated it in a more rigorous way; and suggested several informal tests for it (the different formulations of the categorical imperative) that could be used in deliberation. Because it is possible to test maxims for compliance with the categorical imperative, Kant’s one principle can actually serve as a criterion, unlike Plato’s undefinable Good.

Universality implies no exceptions, so it can underwrite a kind of unconditional moral necessity that had no precedent in rational ethics before Kant. It seems that Kant wanted to contest Aristotle’s conclusion that ethics can never be an exact science. Kant borrowed talk about duty from what Brandom has called the traditional one-sided authority-obedience model of morality, but gave it new, rational, universal content. For Kant, every ethical decision should be approached as an instance and application of universal law. This means that in deliberation, we are not just deciding for ourselves what is right here and now, but what would be right for any rational being in similar circumstances. Kant wants us to act as universal legislators, and to respect the principle of humanity in every person.

There is something compelling about this, even for a convinced Aristotelian such as myself. Kant really did come up with something new. But also, Aristotelian sensitivity to particulars has been to an extent historically abused and hijacked by people with “particularist” agendas that Aristotle did not countenance, so a nudge in the direction of universality and respect for all humans is a welcome corrective.

This is not the end of the story. As I’ve noted numerous times, the absolute necessity of the categorical imperative applies only at an extremely abstract level, quite some distance from real-world application. I think this is at the core of Hegel’s impatience with Kantian “formalism”. Hegel is not quite fair to Kant, but Kant often seemed to want to claim he had reduced the whole of ethics to necessity, while directing our attention away from the parts he actually left open.

Next, I need to take a closer look at Kantian maxims, which are supposed to provide the bridge to real life. (See also Categorical Imperative; Kant’s Groundwork; Necessity in Normativity; Deontic; Binding.)

Freedom Through Deliberation?

All sincere deliberation cumulatively contributes to opening our minds.

Kant did not discuss Aristotle directly, but he clearly wanted to assert a stronger notion of freedom than emerges just from Aristotle’s distinction of willing from unwilling actions. This relative kind of voluntariness was not enough to ground the kind of freedom Kant was after. For Kant, as long as we are under the sway of our own internal impulses, we are not free, so a lack of external compulsion is not sufficient. But that is not the end of the matter.

“Will” for Kant turned out to be a rational, positively developed alternative to impulse, grounded in a concept (i.e., thoughtful interpretation) of law. Aristotle’s version of thoughtful interpretation in this context is deliberation. It makes sense that active deliberation would positively, incrementally contribute to deautomatizing our tendency to act or respond impulsively. So, I think the closest analogue for what Kant would call true freedom in Aristotle is action on the basis of deliberation. Everything Aristotle says about what is in effect acquired emotional intelligence is also relevant to these Kantian considerations. (See also Beauty, Deautomatization.)

Ethical Skill?

In mentioning “ethical skills”, I by no means want to imply that ethics overall could be reduced to something like a technical skill. People can have all sorts of skills and still be profoundly unethical. However, specific kinds of attentiveness and deautomation of impulse do become easier with practice. Aristotle also talks about people who are skilled in deliberation. (See also Beauty, Deautomatization; Freedom Through Deliberation?)

Choice, Deliberation

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics book 3 chapter 2 concerns choice. Choice is something willing, but not everything done willingly is done by choice. Things spontaneously done by children and animals and things done on the spur of the moment are done willingly and so are subject to praise or blame, but they are not done by choice.

Choice is not desire or spiritedness or wishing or opinion. It is involved with reason and thinking things through. It is the outcome of deliberation, the subject of chapter 3. It is the deliberate desire of things that are up to us (Sachs translation, p.43). It comes from desire combined with a rational understanding that is for the sake of something (p.103); it is “either intellect fused with desire, or desire fused with thinking, and such a source is a human being” (p.104). (The phrase “fused with” is actually an interpolation by the translator — the Greek actually just has “intellect and desire”, without specifying how they are related.)

We deliberate about things that are up to us and are matters of action. Deliberation is neither knowledge nor opinion. Inquiry about exact sciences or general truths or ends is not deliberation, but deliberation is a kind of inquiry. Deliberation applies to means for achieving ends, when outcomes can be predicted with some confidence, but are still uncertain. On big issues, we consult others. When there is more than one means to an end, deliberation seeks the one that is easier and more beautiful.

Deliberation may also examine how a thing will come about through a particular means, what other means are required for that means, and so on. Aristotle says that the analysis of dependencies of means and ends in particular works just like a mathematician’s analysis of a geometrical diagram.

Deliberating well overall belongs to people with good practical judgment (p.112). “What is deliberated and what is chosen are the same thing, except that the thing chosen is already determined, since the thing chosen is what is decided out of the deliberation.” (p.43.) Aristotelian choice is therefore anything but arbitrary. It is a normative and rational determination, emerging from an open, fallible, and pluralistic process. (See also Brandomian Choice.)