Tag: Ethics

Varieties of Ethics

Particularly in the analytic tradition, writers on ethics since the early 20th century have debated about the right high-level view of the subject. Aristotle is identified with what is now called “virtue ethics”. Kant is said to embody a conflicting approach based on deontology, or rules and duty. Others have advocated an alternative based on axiology, or a general theory of values that could also include aesthetics. These are sometimes presented as the three main competing views. Still other writers have stressed the importance of situations, which might be taken as a fourth alternative.

Worthwhile things have been said from all these perspectives, but I don’t like this sort of division and narrowing of discourses. What is actually most essential in ethics — and could be taken as a sort of common denominator to charitable readings of all four of the approaches mentioned above — is the role of reasonable interpretation and processes of judgment. (See also Choice, Deliberation; Reasonableness.)

Aristotle’s emphasis on what modern people might call emotional intelligence, acquired over time, as a basis for ethical skills (see also Ethos; Ethos, Hexis) always made a lot of sense to me, but I take those skills to be embodied in practical doings revolving around interpretive judgment and follow-through, and want to emphasize the details of the doing, rather some achieved state. For Aristotle, a person’s virtue can only be assessed in terms of a complete life. Virtue is certainly a goal, but applying it as a criterion requires conversion to a subjunctive form, as in what particular doings would be consistent with virtuous life. People after Aristotle have too often found it too easy to substitute a double presumption that whatever is done by people we presume to be virtuous is right. Aristotle himself avoids this, and does not use the subjunctive form, either. Instead, he suggests we should deliberate directly about what is the right thing to do.

The rules-and-duty approach, or deontology, I find generally unappealing because rules and duty are often taken in a dogmatic or traditionalist sense that seems to deny the need for interpretive work, and tacitly or overtly to substitute for it one-sided appeals to authority. But this need not be the case. Notably, Kant and Brandom emphasize higher-order rules that require interpretive judgment in the application of very abstract principles to concrete situations, and Kant sublimated duty for duty’s sake into a meta-commitment to unity of apperception.

Talk about values goes back to Plato and Aristotle. In the analytic tradition, this is associated with what is called axiology. Modern presentations of this have often had a subjectivist slant, reducing values to valuations, but there is nothing essential in this. Importantly, it seems to me that everything Brandom says about the objective but not pre-given status of norms can be easily applied to values. In discussing Brandom’s contributions, I sometimes prefer to substitute “values” for “norms”, because it seems to me the term “norms” often carries an unwanted connotation that we are talking about norms that empirically exist or that are in fact accepted, which is not what Brandom means. It also seems to me that higher-order rules function more like values than like first-order rules, so I think it is not inappropriate to translate Kant and Brandom’s talk about rules into talk about values. Serious engagement with values again involves a commitment to interpretive work.

Talk about the interpretation of situations also goes back to Aristotle. Some modern presentations have stressed a sort of common-sense or immediate assessment of situations that downplays the role of interpretation, but again there is nothing essential about this.

In any case, an open-ended work of reasonable interpretation and judgment (along with follow-through) seems to me like the most fundamental thing in ethics.

Ethics vs Metaphysics

On my reading, the original “metaphysics” (Aristotle’s) was developed mainly as a kind of dialectical semantics. It is fundamentally about higher-order interpretation of contents we have already encountered, not about exotic existence claims. In the later tradition, however, this became greatly confused, and “metaphysics” acquired a completely different meaning.

Although Aristotle regarded ethics as of pivotal importance and recognized that all reasoning has a normative aspect, he seems to have valued theoretical reason even more than practical reason. It is to Kant that we owe the refinement of a clearly expressed thought of the primacy of practical reason. This perspective was taken up by Hegel, and later by Brandom. Things like Hegelian Spirit are mainly ethical concepts.

In the spirit of both of these, I have been developing a philosophical account of subjectivity grounded in ethics, rather than metaphysics in the usual modern sense. From this perspective, metaphysics as dialectical semantics is subsumed under ethics and meta-ethics. (See also Ethos; Aristotelian Dialectic; Aristotelian Semantics; Material Inference; Metaphysical, Nonmetaphysical.)

Desire, Coherence

We experience all sorts of passing and possibly conflicting impulses or wishes upon which we don’t necessarily act, and to which we never commit ourselves. It would not be appropriate to call these things that we “really” want.

Really wanting something implies what Aristotle would call a choice. This does involve a kind of ethical commitment. As Aristotle and Brandom might jointly remind us, to choose something is also inherently to choose whatever the realization of that thing requires; to choose what follows from the realization of that thing; and not to choose anything else that is incompatible with any of these. That is why Aristotle associates choice with deliberation. Just as emotion and reason interpenetrate in feeling, really wanting something implicitly has a rational and normative component as well as a desiring component.

Of course the possibility remains open that in particular cases, we may be unclear on what we want. In this case, we are back in the territory of wish and impulse. There is still some responsibility even here, but it is shared with others, and generally also matter for forgiveness. But as talking animals, if we explicitly say to someone that we want something, we are in the realm of choice and commitment, and we are responsible to be able to explain ourselves. Our participation in the universal community of ethical reason lifts organic desire into a defeasible rational desire. (See also Unity of Apperception; Dialogue; Scorekeeping.)

Monism, Pluralism, Dualism?

I’d like to return to the question of keeping space open for the harmonious coexistence of a kind of monism, a kind of pluralism, and a kind of dualism at different levels of interpretation in the development pursued here.

At the level of the whole field of potential attributions of agency and responsibility, I’d like to foster the normative monism or monism of expression that I have attributed to Brandom. This seems to have the resources to translate any given empirical, factual content into the expressive terms of a transcendental normative evaluation. Here, everything that is expressible in any way whatsoever becomes expressible in ethical terms. The meaning of the monism in question has to do mainly with a kind of completeness of coverage in overcoming the subject-object dichotomy, not a lack of differentiation. Also, the complete field will include many overlapping attributions, so we should not expect it to have a univocal interpretation. So, in these ways, this monism is not incompatible with a pluralism after all.

At the level of detailed actual processes of evaluation of what is right and true, “monism” — or, more properly, unity of apperception — is only a guiding end that must be applied to a constantly moving target, so a unity that is momentarily achieved may partially unravel again. (See Error.) Also, there may be more than one sound interpretation of the “same” content under evaluation, and multiple explanations may yield complementary insight. The aimed-at “monism” here has to do mainly with a kind of coherence subject to all these caveats, so it is even more pluralistic.

At the level of an adequate account of the many aspects of subjectivity and experience, I want to be careful to preserve a broadly Kantian distinction between empirical and transcendental elements, while modeling their relation on the broadly Aristotelian relation of “first nature” to second nature. In Kant’s own presentation, the empirical/transcendental distinction has a dualistic appearance, but the first-nature/second-nature distinction I want to map it to involves a kind of emergence of second nature from first nature, rather than a dualism.

Previously, I resorted to programming language metaphors of compilation and “lifting” — and a distinction between operational and expressive equivalence — to help describe the relations between first and second nature in a way that would resolve the tension between my monistic claim and the distinction I want to maintain. (See Bookkeeping; Layers.) I’m still pondering the implications of such a metaphorical application of concepts from a formal domain to things that are after all not formal. While I still find that interesting, I think the above sketch might be sufficient to assuage concerns of overall consistency without it.

Assumptions

No one gets through life without making countless assumptions about things we cannot properly know. In routine cases, this is usually harmless. That does not remove our obligation to give someone a fair hearing if they initiate dialogue asking about our reasons for feeling committed to the assumption. Except in immediate emergencies, we should always be open to such questions, and on our own initiative we should raise such questions to ourselves in ambiguous situations. This means we also need to learn to be good at recognizing ambiguous situations, which involves lifelong care and active practice at doing it. (See also Epistemic Conscientiousness.)

Ego

Literally since childhood, I’ve been concerned about ethical issues involving ego or egoism in a plain ordinary dictionary sense. This involves a number of related aspects. At the grossest level, there is selfishness and arrogance. Beyond that, there are many kinds and degrees of self-centeredness. At the subtle end of the spectrum, there are various kinds of self-involvement that impair our attention to the concerns of others. What these all have in common is that with varying degrees of seriousness, they result in failures of reciprocity in social relationships, failures to apply the golden rule. As a young person, this led me to investigate various spiritual teachings about ego and self and what to do with them. This still stands as a backdrop to my philosophical interest in questions related to subjectivity, and in related questions of historical interpretation.

Philosophically, ego in the ordinary sense is not at all the same thing as a Subject, but the two are commonly confounded. Both are problematic, and require careful handling. Modern common-sense views of such things most often implicitly reflect a very specific historical “mentalist” philosophical view shared by Descartes and Locke, which tends to simply identify the two. In my view, this identification of ego-self-subject-mind as one simple thing is utterly wrong, and makes it impossible to adequately address the serious issues with each separate concept.

Historically, the rise of Cartesian-Lockean mentalism was closely tied to the rise of possessive individualism, of which Locke, along with Hobbes, was one of the main theorists (see Rights). This gave egoism in the ordinary sense a new kind of respectability that it did not have in premodern society. On this theory, people could claim ethical justification for egoistic behavior, and claim additional support from theories like Adam Smith’s invisible hand. This created a further slippery slope, leading to all manner of extensions and abuses of these principles that Locke or Smith would not have condoned. (See also Desire of the Master; Freedom Without Sovereignty.)

In sound ethics, reciprocity comes before self. This does not imply any extreme self-denial, just appropriate consideration of others, who should give the same consideration to us. (See also The Ambiguity of “Self”; Individuation; What Is “I”?)

Dialogue

The ethical importance of dialogue can hardly be overstated. The key to ethical dialogue is mutual acceptance of sincere questioning about reasons. To ask a question is not to make a counter-assertion, and no one should ever take offense at a sincere question.

To qualify as based on good judgment or sound reasoning, a commitment or one’s reasons for holding it must be explainable in a shareable way. Sharing of the kind of meaning-based material inference used in everyday reasoning and judgment (as well as most philosophy) is a social process of open-ended dialogue.

The world’s oldest preserved examples of such rational dialogue (or any kind of rational development) are contained in the works of Plato. Earlier figures just wrote down what they saw as the truth. Plato provided many examples of a method of free inquiry. (Aristotle says the atomist Democritus was another initiator of rational inquiry, but the works of Democritus do not survive.) This is yet another reason why Hegel called Plato and Aristotle the greatest teachers of the human race.

Plato bequeathed to us many idealized examples of reasoning by dialogue. He raised them into an art form, creating a new literary genre in the process. His dialogues vary in the degree to which they approximate free open-ended discussion; most often, one character leads the discussion through question and answer, and sometimes even the question and answer is limited. However, since Plato’s dialogues are like plays portraying self-contained conversations, they are very accessible.

The style of question and answer often practiced by Platonic characters like Socrates — commonly known as Socratic method — provides a model for how anyone can contribute to such a development. The questioner tries to reason only from things to which the answerer agrees, but often has to keep questioning to draw out the needed background.

In a fully free and open dialogue characterized by mutual recognition, any party may make contributions of this sort. As Sellars and Brandom would remind us, to assert anything at all is implicitly to take responsibility for that assertion, which is to invite questioning about our reasons.

Ethical Reason

Ethical reason involves a harmonious combination or open-ended synthesis of all our sources of possible insight, with an aim to determining what is right in an unprejudiced way. Determining what is right involves careful attention to particulars as well as a concern for principles. Our ability to appropriately attend to particulars is deeply intertwined with our ability to appropriately apply principles.

Determining what is right involves putting everything together in a certain way. Ethics in the small — concerned with concrete choices to do this or avoid that in this or that circumstance — implicitly depends on a lot of much bigger questions and developments. Actually doing right in the small requires us to be deeply and broadly thoughtful. “Right” behavior done by rote rule-following is certainly better than wrong behavior, but it is not yet ethical. Ethics is equal parts caring, thinking, and doing. (See also Truth, Beauty; Practical Judgment; Free Play; Practical Reason; Choice, Deliberation; Mutual Recognition Revisited; Feeling; Honesty, Kindness; Intellectual Virtue, Love; Rational Ethics.)

Why Brandom’s Hegel?

Brandom offers us an ethically oriented Hegel, read as anticipating many 20th and 21st century concerns. He provides an ethical path to overcoming the separation of subject and object.

Importantly, Brandom’s Hegel even turns out to have anticipated the main concerns of the 1960s French anti-Hegelians, while standing untouched by their criticism. He turns out to be the original critic of mastery and totalization; never uses subjectivity as an unexplained explainer; and claims no forward-moving historical teleology.

While Brandom’s approach to Hegel involves more original philosophical development than historical scholarship, I nonetheless believe based on my own independent reading that with a few caveats on nonessential points, it is historiographically sound. (That is far from saying it is the only valid or interesting interpretation; historiographical soundness just means that a reasonable case can be made.) At any rate, I find it both sound and tremendously inspiring.