Facts & Values, Truth & Objectivity—An Introduction (Part III)

This is the third and final installment in our series. Part I is here, and Part II is here.

‘Recently Iris Murdoch has put forward the view that the whole “fact/value” dichotomy stems from a faulty moral psychology: from the metaphysical picture of “the neutral facts” (apprehended by a totally uncaring faculty of reason) and the will which, having learned the neutral facts, must “choose values” either arbitrarily (the existentialist picture) or on the basis of “instinct.” I think she is right; but setting this moral psychology right will involve deep philosophical work involving the notions of “reason” and “fact” (as she, of course, recognizes).’—Hilary Putnam

‘The concept factual judgment or judgment with a truth-value and the concept of ethical judgment will be different concepts—such a distinction is there to be made, just as the concept mouse and the concept mammal are different concepts—but the distinctness does not preclude a judgment’s being both a factual and an ethical judgment. Compare the way in which the distinct concepts mouse and mammal will each collect any particular mouse you please, Timmy Willy or Johnny Town or whichever, within their extensions. Ethical judgments could be a subset of factual judgments even if they were an utterly special and essentially contestable subset. In this way, we can have a clear difference between the ethical-as-such and the factual-as-such without any dichotomy between their property provinces. The hope of making good a claim of this sort is the characteristic hope of ethical objectivism or moral cognitivism.’—David Wiggins

‘A predicate stands for a natural property if it is indispensable to the exposition or development of some natural science (or to some similarly strictly empirical-cum-explanatory mode of investigation). A non-natural property is simply one that is not like that. It is a myth and the opposite of the truth that our grasp of properties that are natural in this sense is better than our grasp of the non-natural.’—David Wiggins

‘Consider the ethical predicate “considerate.” That which marks out or delimits or decries or discriminates the property of considerateness in acts or attitudes or human characters is an essentially ethical interest, in pursuit of which we can deploy any mode of investigation or and associated concept that suits the case. The presence of such properties, that is, of value properties, is ascertained by all the multifarious means that are called for by the exercise of our grasp of this or that ethical concept. Such properties are to be conceived in light of what it takes to exercise that grasp—not vice versa. A particular ethical property, we might say, is to be identified or singled out as the property which the reasonable exercise of the grasp of such and such a concept, as regulated by criticism, hunts down.’—David Wiggins

‘Objectivity calls for putting one’s idiosyncratic predilections and parochial preferences aside in forming one’s beliefs, evaluations and choices. It is a matter of proceeding in line not with one’s inclinations but with the dictates of impartial reason. The universality of reason must be recognized: What is rational for one person to do, to believe, or to value will thereby also of necessity be equally rational for all the rest of us who might find ourselves in the same circumstances. For rationality is inherently “objective:” it does not reconfigure itself to meet the idiosyncratic predilections of particular individuals. To be sure, objectivity will have to take context into account, seeing that different individuals and groups confront very different objective situations. Rationality is universal, but it is circumstantially universal—and objectivity with it. It is a matter of what “any of us” would do in one’s place. [….] The contextuality of good reasons can be reconciled with the universality of rationality itself by taking a hierarchical view of the process through which the absolutistic (and uniform) conception of ideal rationality is thought to bear context differently, on the resolution of concrete cases and particular situations.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘The content of an assertion is intrinsically related to a conceptual scheme. [….] In effect, propositions, true or false, are implicitly indexed to some conceptual scheme or schemes. [….] Facts are internal to conceptual schemes, or ways of dividing the world into objects, among which there can be equally acceptable alternatives. [….] [S]uch metaphysical pluralism is consistent with realism about truth.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[I]n taking concepts to be flexible and fluid like, the pluralist is not saying that we are confused about our concepts. Rather, the point is that concepts are not absolutely determinate or closed; they do not have a fixed use in every possible situation. This does not imply, however, that no concepts have determinate uses in all actual situations. Some concepts may be perfectly determinate in actual situations, but not in all possible situations. [….] For the pluralist, concepts are…flexible; they are subject to possible extension in the fact of unforeseen circumstances. Hence, there can be irresolvable disagreements over how to apply any concept. In a sense, concepts are therefore always possibly vague in a nonpejorative sense; they have what Waismann called “open texture.”’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Minimally speaking, a proposition is true in the realist sense when things are as that proposition says they are. Some aspect of objective reality must simply be a certain way. If it is, then the proposition is true; if not, the proposition is false. The truth of the proposition hinges on the world alone, not on our thought about the world. In short, realism about truth minimally implies two commitments: (a) truth is an authentic property that some propositions have and others lack, and (b) the concept of truth is, in Putnam’s words, “radically non-epistemic;” that is, whether a proposition is true (in most cases) does not depend on what I or anyone else believes or knows. [….] According to correspondence accounts of truth, there are three metaphysical aspects to any true proposition: the proposition itself (the truth bearer), its correspondence (the truth relation), and the reality to which it corresponds (the truth marker). [….] In other words, propositions are true when they correspond to the facts.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[T]here is no logical incoherence in supposing that facts and propositions are relative to conceptual schemes and that truth is the correspondence of (relative) propositions with (relative) facts.’—Michael P. Lynch

Truth is objective; it is good to believe what is true; truth is a goal worthy of human inquiry; and truth is worth caring about for its own sake.

‘Thinking about why we should care about truth tells us two things about it: first, that truth is, in part, a deeply normative property—it is a value. And second, this is a fact that any adequate theory of truth must account for. In light of this fact, I suggest that truth, like other values, should be understood as depending on, but not reducible to, lower-level properties. Yet which properties truth depends on or supervenes on may change with the type of belief in question. This opens the door to a type of pluralism: truth in ethics may be realized differently than in physics.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Truth is a property that is good for beliefs to have. Since propositions are the content of beliefs, and it is the content of a belief and not the act of believing that is true, we can also say that truth is the property that makes a proposition good to believe.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘All truths are relative, yes, but our concept of truth needn’t be a relative concept.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[T]he conditions under which a proposition is true are partly determined by the conceptual scheme in which the proposition is expressed. But what makes a proposition true is not its relation to a scheme but whether or not the conditions in question obtain. For a claim to be true (or false), the conditions must be relative to a scheme. Yet the reason that the claim is true is not because it is relative to a scheme (as the truth relativist must hold); it is true because it is the case.[….] A fact, in the human sense, is simply what is the case.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Deflationists are right to be skeptical of the thought that any one traditional theory of truth can tell us what all and only true beliefs have in common. At a suitable level of abstraction, understanding what true beliefs are simply involves simply understanding what they do—their role in our cognitive economy. To play this role is to satisfy certain truisms, truisms that display truth’s connection to other concepts. It is this truth-role that gives truth its unity; the features that are constitutive of this role are what true propositions have in common, and simply having those features is what we ordinarily mean by saying that a proposition is true. But not all facts are exhausted by the truisms. One such facts is that there is more than one property that make beliefs true. Truth…is immanent in those other properties of beliefs. In some domains, what makes a belief true is that it corresponds to reality; in others, beliefs are made true by a form of coherence. [….] [Traditional theories of truth] are not best conceived of as theories of truth itself. They are better seen as theories of the properties that make beliefs true—or manifest truth.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Truth is immanent in distinct properties of beliefs; our ordinary concept of truth is univocal.’—Michael P. Lynch

Core Folk Truisms (there may be other truisms): 1. Objectivity: ‘The belief that p is true if, and only if with respect to the belief that p, things are as they are believed to be…is a central truism about truth.’ 2. Norm of Belief: It is prima facie correct to believe that p if and only if the proposition that p is true.’ 3. Warrant of Independence: ‘Some beliefs can be true but not warranted and some can be warranted without being true.’ 4. End of Inquiry: Other things being equal, true beliefs are a worthy goal of inquiry.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘A theory of truth should make sense of the following metaphysical principle: Truth is One: There is a single property named by “truth” that all and only true propositions share.’ The theory should also be ‘able to make sense of the intuition that drives pluralism about truth, namely, Truth is Many: there is more than one way to be true.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[T]ruth is a single higher-level property whose instantiations across kinds of propositions are determined by a class of other, numerically distinct properties. [….] Truth is many because different properties may manifest truth in distinct domains of inquiry. In those domains they have the truish features [we find in those folk-truisms enumerated above]. Truth is one because there is a single property so manifested, and “truth” rigidly names that property.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Truth is an immanent functional property that is variably manifested.’—Michael P. Lynch

An atomic proposition of some domain is true, if and only if, it has the particular property that manifests true for propositions in that domain. The truth-value of compounds supervenes on the truth-value of atomic propositions.

‘In the denial that artwork can or should make truth claims I see formalism joining hands with romanticism, to yield an aestheticism that renders art autonomous, to be sure, and perhaps even pleasantly anarchic, but also cut off from the rest of life, deracinated, robbed of its claim upon conscience or consciousness, and so transformed into little more than the toy of decadence.’—Lenn E. Goodman

‘I think artworks do make truth claims, even if not always propositionally. But no truth claim is self-validating, and artistic claims are not made true by virtue of their medium. Perhaps the most suspect of pretensions in behalf of artistic truth is the idea that art’s higher truth is somehow exempt from the demands of human understanding, critical thought, or moral judgment. That makes artists into hit-and-run oracles. Surely, even a higher truth, if it really is truth, is worthy and capable of scrutiny. That means that works of artistic fancy can and should he held accountable for their veracity, on whatever level they can make good their claims.’—Lenn E. Goodman

‘[A] uniformitarian absolutism at the high-generality level of “what rationality is” is perfectly consonant with a pluralism and relativism at the lower level of concrete resolutions regarding “what is rational” within the contextual setting of particular cases. The ruling principles of rationality never uniquely constrain their more specific circumstantial implementations. At each step along the way we repeat the same basic situation: delimitation, yes; determination, no. The sought-for reconciliation between the universalistic absoluteness of rationality and the variability and relativity of its particular rulings is thus provided for by the consideration that the absolutism of principles operates at the highest level of the hierarchy of rational development, while there is ever “slack” and variability as one moves towards the lowest level of concrete determinations. The variability and relativity of good reasons at the level of our actual operations can indeed be reconciled with the absolutism of rationality itself by taking a hierarchical view of the process through which the absolutistic conception of ideal rationality is brought to bear on the resolution of concrete circumstances and particular situations.’—Nicholas Rescher
‘In characterizing a belief as objectively rational we are certainly not claiming that there is a universal consensus about it. No matter how sensible a contention on any significant issue may be, there is an ever-present prospect that some people—perhaps even many—will nevertheless quite defensibly and appropriately dissent from it. The validity of our judgments is emphatically not destroyed by finding that there are people who reject them.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘We have to come to terms with epistemic realities, which include: 1) the diversity in people’s experiences and cognitive situations; 2) the variation of “available data;” 3) the underdetermination of facts by data (all too frequently insufficient); 4) the variability of people’s cognitive values (evidential security, simplicity, etc.); 5) the variation of cognitive methodology and the epistemic “state of the art.” Such factors—and others like them—make for an unavoidable difference in the beliefs, judgments, and evaluations even of otherwise “perfectly rational” people.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘If we are going to be rational we must take—and have no responsible choice but to take—the stance that our own standards (of truth, value, and choice) are the appropriate ones. Be it in employing or in evaluating them, we ourselves must see our own standards as authoritative because this, exactly, is what it is for them to be our own standards—their being our standards consists in our seeing them in this light. We have to see our standards in an absolutistic light—as the uniquely right appropriately valid ones—because this is what is at issue in their being our standards of authentic truth, value, or whatever. To insist that we should view them with indifference is to deny us all prospects of having any standards at all. Commitment at this level is simply unavoidable. Our cognitive or evaluative perspective would not be our perspective did we not deem it rationally superior to others.’—Nicholas Rescher
‘What people think to be true is clearly something that is person-variable and thus relative. We can take the line that “What is true?” is a question that different people can quite appropriately answer differently because of the interpersonal variability of available information. But what truth is all about is something that is…altogether definite and fixed. The evidentiation at issue in the epistemic sector is doubtless interpersonally and intercommunally variable. But variability on the side of information does not make for variation on the side of concepts.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘[W]e can (quite appropriately) disagree about what it is that is true and what good reasons are at hand, while yet maintaining an (appropriately) absolutistic view of what truth and good reasons are. The ideal nature of actual truth and of actual good reasons that inhere in our (defining) conceptions of inquiry establishes a clear limit to the implications of cognitive relativism. To re-emphasize: a pluralistic contextualism of potential basis-diversity is altogether compatible with an absolutistic commitment to our own basis. One can accept the prospect of alternatives as available to the community at large without seeing more than one of them appropriate for oneself. One can combine a pluralism of possible alternatives with an absolutistic position regarding ideal rationality and a firm and reasoned commitment to the standards intrinsic to one’s own position. We ourselves are bound to see our own (rationally adopted) standards as superior to the available alternatives—and are, presumably, rationally entitled to do so in light of the cognitive values we in actual fact endorse. The crux of the pluralism issue lies in the question of just what it is that one is being pluralistic about.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘The immense success of quantitative techniques in the mathematicizing-sciences has misled people into thinking that quantification is the only viable road to objectively cogent information. But think—is it really so? Where is it written that numbers alone yield genuine understanding—that judgment based on structural analysis or qualitative harmonization is unhelpful and uninformative, so that where numbers cannot enter, intelligibility flies away? (Modern mathematics itself is not all that quantitative, since it is deeply concerned with issues such as those of topology and group theory that deal with structures in a way that puts quantitative issues aside.) [….] To be sure, to acknowledge the limits of measurability is not to downgrade the whole process, let alone to propose its total abandonment. It is precisely because we are well advised to push the cause of measurement as far as we legitimately can that we need to be mindful of the line between meaningful measurement and meaningless quantifications. That we cannot draw this line better than seems to be the case at present is—or should be—a proper cause for justified chagrin. But for present purposes the salient point is that quantification does not carry measurability in its wake nor necessarily indicate objectivity. Polls quantify public opinion, but need they indicate anything objective? The sales price of entries in an art auction are perfectly good quantities, but they reflect no more than the elusive fashion and passion of the moment. There is nothing about quantities as such to indicate that they measure anything objective. Three lessons emerge:

a) While measurement requires quantification, quantification is not sufficient for measurement. b) Quantification is neither necessary to nor sufficient for objectivity. c) Actual measurement, while indeed sufficient for objectivity, is not necessary for it. The long and short of it is that the linkage between objectivity and quantification is more distant and more complex than is commonly envisioned.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘Any adequate worldview must recognize that the ongoing process of scientific inquiry is a process of conceptual innovation that always leaves various facts about the things of this world wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any particular period.’ —Nicholas Rescher

‘There is no more evidence that science converges to one final worldview than there is that literature or morality converge to one final worldview.’—Hilary Putnam

‘…[The] “scientific” is not coextensive with “rational.” There are many perfectly rational beliefs that cannot be tested ‘scientifically.’ But more than that, …there are whole domains of fact with respect to which present-day science tells us nothing at all, not even that the facts in question exist. These domains are not new or strange. Three of them are (1) the domain of objective values; (2) the domain of freedom; (3) the domain of rationality itself.’—Hilary Putnam

‘[F]ailures of objectivity—wishful thinking, self-deception, bias-indulgence, and similar departures from the path of reason—may be convenient and even, in some degree, psychologically comforting. But they are ultimately indefensible. For if it is a viable defense of a position that we want, it is bound to be a rational one. In the final analysis, “Why be rational?” must be answered with the only rationally appropriate response: “Because rationality itself obliges us to be so.” In providing a rational justification of objectivity—and what other kind would we want?—the best we can do is to follow the essentially circular (but nonviciously circular!) line of establishing that reason herself endorses taking this course. The only validation of rationality’s recommendations that can reasonably be asked for—and the only one worth having—must lie in the consideration of the systemic self-sufficiency of reason. Reason’s self-recommendation is an important and necessary aspect of the legitimation of the rational enterprise. And in those matters where rationality counts, objectivity is the best policy by virtue of this very fact itself.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘Heeding the strictures of morality is part and parcel of a rational being’s cultivation of the good. For us rational creatures morality (the due care for the interests of rational beings) is an integral component of reason’s commitment to the enhancement of value. Reason’s commitment to the value of rationality accordingly carries in its wake a commitment to morality. The obligatoriness of morality ultimately roots in an ontological imperative to value realization with respect to self and world that is incumbent on free agents as such. On this ontological perspective, the ultimate basis of moral duty roots in the obligation we have as rational agents (toward ourselves and the world at large) to make the most and best of our opportunities for self-development. Moral obligation ultimately inheres in this ontological obligation to the realization of values in one’s own life.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘[T]he crucial question for rationality is not that of what we prefer but of what is in our best interests; not simply what we happen to desire but what is good for us in the sense of contributing to the realization of our true interests. The pursuit of what we want is rational only insofar as we have objectively sound reasons for deeming this to be want-deserving. The question of whether what we prefer is preferable, in the sense of deserving this preference, is always relevant. Ends can and (in the context of rationality) must be evaluated. It is not just beliefs that can be stupid, ill-advised, and inappropriate—that is to say, irrational—but ends as well. [….] What separates evaluations from mere preferences is that the former involves standards. In evaluating we bring criteria to bear on whose basis the ideas in question are rated as good or bad, superior or inferior, just or unjust, etc. Evaluations will, as such, have to be backed by reasons articulated in terms of the relevant norms—norms which ultimately inhere in the architecture of our generalizable needs.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘To proceed objectively is…to render oneself perspicuous to others by doing what any reasonable and normally constituted person would do in one’s place, thereby rendering one’s proceedings intelligible to anyone. When the members of a group are objective, they secure great advantages thereby: they lay the groundwork for community by paving the way for mutual understanding, communication, collaboration. And in cognitive matters they also sideline sources of error. For the essence of objectivity lies in its factoring out of one’s deliberations personal predilections, prejudices, idiosyncrasies, and the like that would stand in the way of intelligent people’s reaching the same result. Objectivity follows in reason’s wake because of its effectiveness as a means of averting both isolation and error.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘We learn most of what we know about what makes life worth living, and how to live it well, from non-scientific [or, if you prefer, non-legal] sources–biography, narrative history, serious journalism, and religious texts [I would add ‘philosophy’], not to mention novels, poetry, drama and the visual arts. For Europeans at least, there is more insight to be got from a single volume by Jane Austen or Gustave Flaubert than a whole shelf of treatises on the social psychology of bourgeois love and marriage.’—John Ziman

‘The question of truth and the question of life’s meaning are among the most fundamental questions of moral philosophy. [….] The question of life’s meaning does, as the untheoretical suppose, lead into the question of truth—and conversely.”—David Wiggins

‘To affirm that there can be several different systems all giving us, at the same time, varying and yet legitimate “true” metaphysical descriptions of the world does not…necessarily entail that there are many realities, that nothing is absolutely real, or, put less dramatically, that there is no such thing as a single, context neutral description or account of the world, that is, as the world really is. It only means that no metaphysical description of it can be outside every possible conceptual framework, but Reality itself is. Nor does it follow that any assertions about this “real” or “true” world beyond all conceptual frameworks, are nonsense. [....] The conceptual frameworks we build in the realm of rational thought are not useless just because they cannot describe Ultimate Reality. Serious examination of, reflection on, these explanatory and interpretive schemes, their differences and overlaps, are crucial to expanding and deepening our understanding of reality, even if these conceptual frameworks (any or all possible combinations and collections of them) cannot bring us the Absolute Truth. If nothing else, they enable us to understand the relativity of conceptual truths and structures, and make us see what Pascal meant when he said that the highest function of reason is to show us the limitations of reason.’—Nandini Iyer

‘The propounder of non-absolutism…admits both non-absolutism and absolutism in their proper perspective.’—Ācārya Mahāprajñā (a Jain philosopher)

‘I think that the idealist “picture” calls our attention to vitally important features of our practice—and what is the point of having “pictures” if we are not interested in seeing how well they represent what we actually think and do? That we do not, in practice, actually construct a unique vision of the world, but only a vast number of versions (not all of them equivalent…) is something that “realism” hides from us.’—Hilary Putnam

Sources & Further Reading:

• Anderson, Elizabeth. Value in Ethics and Economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Cottingham, John. On the Meaning of Life. London: Routledge, 2003.
• Cottingham, John. The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Dupré, John. Human Nature and the Limits of Science. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2001.
• Frankena, William K. Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973.
• Goldie, Peter. On Personality. London: Routledge, 2004.
• Goldie, Peter. The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Goodman, Lenn E. In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books/Prometheus Books, 2001.
• Iyer, Nandini. “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” in Knut A. Jacobsen, ed. Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson. Leiden: Brill, 2005: 99-127.
• Kupperman, Joel. Value…And What Follows. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Lloyd, G.E.R. Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity & Diversity of the Human Mind. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2007.
• Lynch, Michael P. Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
• Lynch, Michael P. True to Life: Why Truth Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
• Lynch, Michael P. Truth as One and Many. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Lynch, Michael P., ed. The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Mason, Elinor, “Value Pluralism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/value-pluralism/.
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna. The Central Philosophy of Jainism: Anekāntavāda. Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology, 1981.
• Mou, Bo, ed. Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2001.
• Mulhall, Stephen. “Misplacing Freedom, Displacing the Imagination: Cavell and Murdoch on the Fact/Value Distinction,” in Anthony O’Hear, ed. Philosophy, the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 255-277.
• Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge, 1991.
• Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London: Penguin, 1993.
• Newell, R.W. Objectivity, Empiricism and Truth. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.
• Norton, David. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
• Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• O’Hear, Anthony, ed. Philosophy, the True, the Good and the Beautiful. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Parekh, Bhikhu. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
• Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Putnam, Hilary (James Conant, ed.). Realism with a Human Face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
• Putnam, Hilary. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993.
• Rescher, Nicholas. The Validity of Values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2000.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Cognitive Pragmatism: The Theory of Knowledge in Pragmatic Perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.
• Sen, Amartya. On Ethics and Economics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1988.
• Stocker, Michael. Plural and Conflicting Values. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1990.
• Stocker, Michael (with Elizabeth Hegeman). Valuing Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Thakchoe, Sonam, “The Theory of Two Truths in India,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/twotruths-india/.
• Thakchoe, Sonam, “The Theory of Two Truths in Tibet,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/twotruths-tibet/.
• Warner, Martin. Philosophical Finesse: Studies in the Art of Rational Persuasion. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2009.
• Wedgwood, Ralph. The Nature of Normativity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Wiggins, David. Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Ziman, John. Real Science: What It Is, and What It Means. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Zimmerman, Michael J. The Nature of Intrinsic Value. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
• Zimmerman, Michael J., “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic/.

How Good Laws—and good social norms—Make Good People

At PrawfsBlawg, they’re having a discussion of Lynn Stout’s Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People (2010): here, here, here, here, here, and here. The Princeton University Press webpage for the book introduces us to its central argument:

Contemporary law and public policy often treat human beings as selfish creatures who respond only to punishments and rewards. Yet every day we behave unselfishly--few of us mug the elderly or steal the paper from our neighbor’s yard, and many of us go out of our way to help strangers. We nevertheless overlook our own good behavior and fixate on the bad things people do and how we can stop them. In this pathbreaking book, acclaimed law and economics scholar Lynn Stout argues that this focus neglects the crucial role our better impulses could play in society. Rather than lean on the power of greed to shape laws and human behavior, Stout contends that we should rely on the force of conscience.

Stout makes the compelling case that conscience is neither a rare nor quirky phenomenon, but a vital force woven into our daily lives. Drawing from social psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary biology, Stout demonstrates how social cues--instructions from authorities, ideas about others’ selfishness and unselfishness, and beliefs about benefits to others--have a powerful role in triggering unselfish behavior. Stout illustrates how our legal system can use these social cues to craft better laws that encourage more unselfish, ethical behavior in many realms, including politics and business. Stout also shows how our current emphasis on self-interest and incentives may have contributed to the catastrophic political missteps and financial scandals of recent memory by encouraging corrupt and selfish actions, and undermining society's collective moral compass.

I’ve yet to read the book, so I can’t make any substantive comments on its thesis, although I’m predisposed to view it with favor, at least I think I understand the animating motivation for the argument. And I won’t in this post address the question of “how good laws (and good social norms) can make good people.” In any case, the emphasis in “law and economics” scholarship “on self-interest and incentives” has long been troubling, and Amartya Sen, among others, has critiqued the psychological assumptions behind homo economicus, while S.M. Amadae, again among others, has critiqued “rational choice theory” as conventionally employed in the social sciences: neither Sen nor Amadae are cited in the book. So while economists and philosophers have addressed some of the moral, psychological, and general normative assumptions that come with neo-classical economics, the problems intrinsic to “law and economics” as an area of legal study are not all found on the right side of the conjunction, for the other half of this cross-disciplinary enterprise—law—is routinely construed in strongly positivistic and instrumentalist terms (or, at best, in utilitarian fashion), which only compounds the problem.

But the questions I want to focus on concern the reliance on “conscience” to transform various areas of the law and the legal system generally. In one sense, Stout’s thesis may be judged too modest in aim and aspiration, particularly considered in comparison with the potential for the natural law tradition to reform or radically alter our laws and the attitudes of citizens to their legal system in a democratic constitutional polity. In a future post, I’ll attempt to outline the potential for the natural law tradition and aretaic legal theory to demonstrate the manner in which “good laws (and good social norms) can make good people” (and how good people may be necessary to make good laws).

The part played by conscience in our social and political life is typically circumscribed by the power of the moral no: the ethical refusal to engage in some enterprise, to perform some act, to behave in some morally repugnant manner, or to call attention to some egregious moral violation on the part of the government or some powerful institution in civil society. To invoke the call of conscience means to stand alone or apart for the sake of a fundamental or moral value or principle of ethics, grounded in the basic exercise of moral discrimination through a sacred right of refusal (hence, the ‘voice within,’ the ‘inner light’). Stout defines conscience as an “internal force that inspires unselfish, prosocial behavior,” but this definition is misleading if we consider how individual conscience is typically intended as a defense against the group. Of course the individual taking a stand on the promptings of conscience may inspire group or collective action of some sort, and those who take stand on the basis of a claim of conscience are seeking recognition by others of some moral truth or truths they see more clearly and urgently than the rest of us (what Vischer terms the ‘relational dimension’ of conscience’). But it strikes one as strange to make the inspiration of “prosocial behavior” an essential part of the meaning of the concept. I don’t mean to dismiss or diminish the power and importance of conscience, but I’m inclined to see it primarily as negative in scope, and thus restricted to an ex post rather than ex ante orientation. Consider, for example, how the notion of conscience did not assume its modern meaning until late in the eighteenth century (the seeds for the concept were sown as far back as Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, and the Stoics in the West), when individuals invoked the claims of conscience as a viable substitute for identification with sectarian religions.

The individual orientation of what Gandhi called the “Court of Conscience” and the “still small voice within,” is best seen from the vantage point of moral psychology as a developmental outcome, so much so that we take its presence as indicative of moral individuation and moral autonomy. Conscience, on this view, is thus not something one has ready-at-hand upon reaching the age of reason, for it is a potential or capacity that needs to be awakened and nurtured, in Gandhi’s words, it is “the ripe fruit of the strictest discipline.” In other words, it seems hard to believe that conscience today is, as Stout says, “a vital force woven into our daily lives,” a claim not rendered true by the sheer volume of claims of conscience in our society. This should certainly give one pause in imagining anything like a well-honed conscience (to mix metaphors) as deeply ingrained and widespread throughout society. The individuality of conscience combined with its role in the courageous or uncommon expression of warnings or admonitions or refusals—the power of no—does not appear to make it well-suited for the role Stout intends for it. To complicate matters yet further, Rob Vischer has recently noted that, “[i]ncreasingly the individual who invokes conscience is opposed not by the state, but by the similarly conscience-driven claims of other individuals and groups.” For better and worse, in the era of “rights claims,” invocations of conscience may come too easy, reflecting a conspicuous lack of the kind of cultivation and training Gandhi thought absolutely necessary to the exercise of true conscience.

There is one glaring exception to the picture of conscience I’ve sketched here and that comes, oddly enough, from Gandhi himself. Gandhi’s conscience was atypical inasmuch as his “inner voice” also came in the form of “positive guidance.” Closer to the role Stout would envisage for conscience, and unlike most of those who came before and after him in invoking claims of conscience, Gandhi’s “stress on individual conscience” was wedded to a “program of mass action,” for he in fact made conscience “the basis of all social and political action.” It’s hard to imagine, however, more than a few individuals capable of conjoining the roles of saint and revolutionary in the manner exemplified my Gandhi.

At a later date I hope to show why I think aretaic legal theory and the natural law tradition are better suited to the sorts of tasks Stout imagines for conscience, as a “tool or weapon,” in transforming our laws and the legal system.

The Linguistic Consequences of Mind-Brain Identity

I’ve got a lot on my brain.

I’m going to give you a piece of my brain.

Brain your p’s and q’s.

I don’t brain.

Make up your brain.

Brain your manners.

I’m going out of my brain.

Buddhists practice brainfulness.

I’m of mixed brain.

A brain is a terrible thing to waste.

I don’t brain.

These examples are brain-boggling.

She has one sharp brain.

Still your brain.

She’s well-versed in the philosophy of brain literature.

Approach the subject with an open brain.

It concentrates the brain wonderfully.

I turned my brain to other things.

I can’t get you out of my brain.

Out of sight, out of brain.

It crossed my brain.

I’m absent-brained.

I took a load off my brain.

The thought of her couldn’t be further from my brain.

I can’t wrap my brain around it.

My brain went blank.

They’re like-brained.

What do you have in brain?

I have half a brain to refuse her plea.

My brain was willing, but my body was not.

An enquiring brain wants to know.

His brain is rather twisted.

He has a criminal brain.

Bear in brain that I mean what I say.

It’s been on the back of my brain.

Freud discovered the hidden structures of the brain.

The date slipped my brain.

I keep replaying the episode over-and-over again in my brain.

I can see it in my brain’s eye!

She’s rather fond of brain games

There was a consensual meeting of brains.

If you put your brain to it, you’ll succeed.

His brain was on vacation, but his mouth was working overtime.

His brain is gone!

My brain was unhinged by the thought of divorce.

He has a brain like a steel trap.

That’s a pharmaceutical candidate for a brain-expanding hallucinogen.

She has a certain presence of brain.

If you don’t brain, can I go ahead of you?

Brain you, don’t forget to feed the dog.

Facts & Values, Truth & Objectivity—An Introduction (Part II)

[The series was introduced in our prior post.]

‘[E]motions can reveal value that they contain. But in addition, people’s characters and their value can be revealed by emotions. [….] [E]motions reveal not just our values and evaluations but much of our interior and exterior worlds….’—Michael Stocker (with Elizabeth Hegeman)

‘Emotions may show valuings rather than value: how a person values something, not the value something has or the value the person takes it to have, Sometimes people have emotions that contain and reveal valuings, not values; and sometimes people have emotions that reveal a lack of valuing, even in the face of acknowledged value.’—Michael Stocker (with Elizabeth Hegeman)

Emotions can be evaluatively accurate and informative, therefore we can justly say that emotions are epistemologically important for evaluations and evaluative knowledge.

‘[T]he values and evaluations of one’s having or not having certain emotions, and of the ways one has or does not have them, are rarely, if ever, central to our important ethical works, and they are often enough not even mentioned, much less discussed, in those works [among a few notable exceptions, Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good, 1970, is mentioned]. However, I do not think that their absence from our works on ethics shows that these issues lack importance. I think, rather, that it shows an important lack, and indeed something of a lack of importance, in our work in ethics.’—Michael Stocker (with Elizabeth Hegeman)

‘[We] should respect our emotional responses and listen to what they have to say to us and about us. But they are not the final arbiter: our emotional responses should be held for examination and reflection. Of course, this cannot be done from an emotionless, purely rational perspective, for there is no such standpoint, but it should be done in the light of reason and of our other emotional responses to the other things we value. And if this examination and reflections shows that our emotional responses are not appropriate, then the emotion should cease.’—Peter Goldie

‘Values enter into the very definition of what a fact is; the realm of facts cannot be defined or specified without utilizing certain values. Values enter into the process of knowing a fact; without utilizing or presupposing certain values, we cannot determine which is the realm of facts, we cannot know the real from the unreal.’—Robert Nozick

Rational acceptability in the natural sciences depends ‘on such cognitive virtues as “coherence” and “functional simplicity,” show[ing] that at least some value terms stand for properties of the things they are applied to, and not just for feelings of the person who uses the terms.’—Hilary Putnam

Our knowledge of the world presupposes values, indeed, what comes to count as the real world depends upon our values. This is evidenced in the ‘implicit standards and skills on the basis of which we decide whether someone is able to give a true, adequate, and perspicuous account of even the simplest perceptual facts…’—Hilary Putnam

‘[F]act, (or truth) and rationality are interdependent notions. A fact is something that it is rational to believe, or, more precisely, the notion of a fact (or a true statement) is an idealization of the notion of a statement that it is rational to believe. [….] [B]eing rational involves having criteria of relevance as well as criteria of rational acceptability, and…all of our values are involved in our criteria of relevance. The decision that a picture of the world is true (or true by our present lights, or “as true as anything is”) and answers the relevant questions (as well as we are able to answer them) rests on and reveals our total system of value commitments. A being with no values would have no facts either. The way in which criteria of relevance involves values, at least indirectly, may be seen by examining the simplest statement. Take the sentence “The cat is on the mat.” If someone actually makes this judgment in a particular context, then he employs conceptual resources—the notions “cat,” “on,” and “mat”—which are provided by a particular culture, and whose presence and ubiquity reveal something about the interests and values of that culture, and of almost every culture. We have the category “cat” because we regard the division of the world into animals and non-animals as significant, and we are further interested in what species as given animal belongs to. It is relevant that there is a cat on the mat and not just a thing. We have the category “mat” because we regard the division of inanimate things into artifacts and non-artifacts as significant, and we are further interested in the purpose and nature a particular artifact has. It is relevant that it is a mat that the cat is on and just something. We have the category “on” because we are interested in spatial relations. Notice what we have: we took the most banal statement imaginable, “the cat is on the mat,” and we found that the presuppositions which make this statement a relevant one in certain contexts include the significance of the categories animate/inanimate, purpose, and space. To a mind with no disposition to regard these as relevant categories, “the cat is on the mat” would be as irrational as “the number of hexagonal objects in this room is 76” would be, uttered in the middle of a tête-à-tête between young lovers. Not only do very general facts about our value system show themselves in our categories (artifacts, species name, term for a spatial relation) but, our more specific values (for example, sensitivity and compassion), also show up in the use we make of specific classificatory words (‘considerate,’ ‘selfish’). To repeat, our criteria of relevance rest on and reveal our whole system of values.’—Hilary Putnam

‘There are a variety of reasons why we are tempted to draw a line between “facts” and “values”—and to draw it in such a way that “values” are put outside the realm of rational argument altogether. For one thing, it is much easier to say, “that’s a value judgment,” meaning, “that’s just a matter of subjective preference,” than to do what Socrates tried to teach us: to examine who we are and what our deepest convictions are and hold those convictions up to the searching test of reflective examination.’—Hilary Putnam

‘(1) In ordinary circumstances, there is usually a fact of the matter as to whether the statements people make are warranted or not. [….] (2) Whether a statement is warranted or no is independent of whether the majority of one’s cultural peers would say it is warranted or unwarranted. (3) Our norms and standards of warranted assertibility are historical products; they evolve in time. (4) Our norms and standards always reflect our interests and values. Our picture of intellectual flourishing is part of, and only makes sense as part of, our picture of human flourishing in general. (5) Our norms and standards of anything—including warranted assertibility—are capable of reform. There are better and worse norms and standards.’—Hilary Putnam

‘The moral life is not intermittent or specialised, it is not a peculiar or separate area of our existence…. [W]e are always deploying and directing our energy, refining it or blunting it, purifying it or corrupting it…. “Sensitivity” is a word which may be in place here…. Happenings in consciousness so vague as to be almost non-existent can have “moral colour”… (“But are you saying that every single second has a moral tag?” Yes, roughly.)’—Iris Murdoch

Because our states of consciousness and action presuppose perceptual (or epistemic) discrimination, any such discrimination is subject to moral evaluation.

‘The moral point is that “facts” are set up as such by human (that is moral) agents. Much of our life is taken up by truth-seeking, imagining, questioning. We relate to facts through truth and truthfulness, and come to recognise and discover that there are different modes and levels of insight and understanding. In many familiar ways, various values pervade and colour what we take to be the reality of our world; wherein we constantly evaluate our own values and those of others, and judge and determine forms of consciousness and modes of being.’—Iris Murdoch

‘In recognizing the compelling power of values, and of logical principles (their normative, or what is sometimes called their ‘magnetic quality’), we humans are plainly recognizing something that goes beyond the observed facts of the natural world. And the theistic outlook now proposes to interpret these features as signifying the presence, beyond the empirical world, of a transcendent supernatural domain that is by its very nature normative—rational and moral. The two principal categories of the normative, the rational and the good, are features which traditional theology has held to apply to God in virtue of his very nature. God is goodness itself (Aquinas), he is the Logos—ultimate rationality (St. John). In short, beyond, or behind, the observable universe—the sequence of events that is simply one contingent happening after another—there is for the theist a domain of eternal value and reason, a domain that impinges on our empirical world, making us respond to something beyond the mere sequence brute facts. We human creatures (since we are ourselves rational and moral beings, at least in part) are responsive to reason and value, and in being so responsive we participate, however dimly, in the divine nature.’—John Cottingham

Facts & Values, Truth & Objectivity—An Introduction (Part I)

The following are snippets from various philosophers representative, I believe, of their thoughts on facts and values, and questions of truth and objectivity.* I have occasionally interjected my own formulations based on their views. I hope these often provocative and perspicuous reflections will prod one into exploring the articles and books from which they were drawn as found in the list of “sources and further reading” appended to the end of the material (with Part III). It is there that you will find the various arguments and explanations that make full sense of these passages as found in their original context. Although I teach in a Philosophy Department, the bulk of my formal training is in the study of religions, thus I’m an autodidact and amateur when it comes to (especially ‘professional’) philosophy. I suspect that is the case with most of our readers. Nonetheless, lack of formal training in this regard should not preclude us from assiduously cultivating an ardent interest in philosophical topics, particularly those having to do with such conventional subject areas as metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, the philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, or, for example, questions of consciousness, “meaning,” beauty, value, objectivity, “the good,” and truth more generally.

* Please bear in mind that, as David Wiggins reminds us, the “fact-value” distinction is not identical to the “is-ought” or “is-must” distinction, even if on occasion they overlap.

[This introductory series will be in three parts.]

Value(s) ‘refer to what is worth having or being, taken purely for its own sake, or what is such that (taken by itself, apart from anything it causes) it is preferable that it exist rather than not exist.’—Joel Kupperman

Value means goodness as an end: that which is worthwhile or desirable for its own sake.

We choose or determine that there be values, that they exist, but their character is independent of us.

To judge that something is good is to judge that it is properly valued.

Values are ‘intrinsic goods’ that by their nature enhance a life, that make a fundamental and positive contribution to human flourishing (eudaimonia).

‘Most philosophers who have written on the question of what has intrinsic value have not been hedonists; like Plato and Aristotle, they have thought that something besides pleasure and pain has intrinsic value. One of the most comprehensive lists of intrinsic goods that anyone has suggested is that given by William Frankena (1908-1994). It is this: life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures and satisfactions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic experience; morally good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love, friendship, cooperation; just distribution of goods and evils; harmony and proportion in one’s own life; power and experiences of achievement; self-expression; freedom; peace, security; adventure and novelty; and good reputation, honor and esteem, etc. (Presumably a corresponding list of intrinsic evils could be provided.) Almost any philosopher who has ever addressed the question of what has intrinsic value will find his or her answer represented in some way by one or more items on Frankena’s list. (Frankena himself notes that he does not explicitly include in his list the communion with and love and knowledge of God that certain philosophers believe to be the highest good, since he takes them to fall under the headings of ‘knowledge’ and ‘love.’) One conspicuous omission from the list, however, is the increasingly popular view that certain environmental entities or qualities have intrinsic value (although Frankena may again assert that these are implicitly represented by one or more items already on the list). Some find intrinsic value, for example, in certain “natural” environments (wilderness untouched by human hand); some find it in certain animal species; and so on.’—Michael J. Zimmerman

‘That which is extrinsically good is good, not (insofar as its extrinsic value is concerned) for its own sake, but for the sake of something else to which it is related in some way. For example, the goodness of helping others in time of need is plausibly thought to be extrinsic (at least in part), being derivative (at least in part) from the goodness of something else, such as these people’s needs being satisfied, or their experiencing pleasure, to which helping them is related in some causal way.’—Michael J. Zimmerman

Value judgments are implicit in emotions and in judgments that at first glance may not appear evaluative. Emotional states often function as indicators of our scale of values, of our appreciation and awareness of values.

‘[W]e notice something marked in the intentional perceptions and the beliefs characteristic of the emotions: they are concerned with value, they see their object as invested with value or importance. [….] The value perceived in the object appears to be of a particular sort. It appears to make reference to the person’s own flourishing. The object of the emotion is seen as important for some role it plays in the person’s own life. […] Another way of putting this point…is that the emotions appear to be eudaimonistic, that is, concerned with the person’s flourishing. And thinking for a moment about ancient Greek eudaimonistic ethical theories will help us to start thinking about the geography of the emotional life. In a eudaimonistic ethical theory, the central question asked a person is, “How should a human being live?” The answer to that question is the person’s conception of eudaimonia, or human flourishing, a complete human life. A conception of eudaimonia is taken to be inclusive of all to which the agent ascribes intrinsic value: if one can show someone that she has omitted something without which she would not think her life complete, then that is a sufficient argument for the addition of the item in question. Now the important point is this: in a eudaimonistic theory, the actions, relations, and persons that are included in the conception are not all valued simply on account of some instrumental relation they bear to the agent’s satisfaction. This is a mistake commonly made about such theories, under the influence of Utilitarianism and the misleading use of “happiness” as a translation for eudaimonia. Not only virtuous actions but also mutual relations of civic or personal love and friendship, in which the object is loved and benefited for his or her own sake, can qualify as constituent parts of a person’s eudaimonia. On the other hand, they are valued as constituents of a life that is my life and not someone else’s, as my actions, as people who are in some relation with me. For example, an Aristotelian really pursues social justice as a good in its own right: that is why she has put it into her conception of eudaimonia. She doesn’t want just any old conception, she wants the one that values things aright, in the way that a human being ought to. Once she puts it into her conception, however, she both seeks the intrinsic good of justice and seeks to be a person who performs just actions for their own sake.’—Martha Nussbaum

‘In reflecting about how a human being should live, a person may commend some very general goals as good for human beings in general: for example, friendship, parental love, civic responsibility. But she will also deliberate about which more concrete specification of each of these general ends she will prefer; some of this work still involves asking which specifications are to be commended for human beings in general. At some point in the process, however, we get to items that are not commended for all human beings, but are just her own ways of realizing the general human ends in her situation and context. For example, if the general goal were artistic cultivation and performance, she might realize this by playing the clarinet, but she would believe that other human beings can equally well realize it by dancing, or singing, or playing the oboe.’—Martha Nussbaum

‘If we ask what most people value most, the answers will fall mainly under three headings: ongoing features of one’s life (e.g., love, sets of personal relationships, a sense of success or achievement), particular experiences (e.g., moments of heightened awareness, or of euphoria or ecstasy), or things (e.g., money, expensive or attractive objects—perhaps only as a means, but very possibly for their own sake as well)’.—Joel Kupperman

‘To see something (e.g., a set of experiences, a way of life) as having high value is often to be motivated to promote it for other people in general, or to make it available to the people one most cares about, or to have for oneself.’—Joel Kupperman

‘Value or preciousness of persons has a dual role in my interpersonal actions. Your value generates a moral claim or constraint on my behavior toward you; because of your value, others (including me) ought to behave toward you in some ways, not in others. Also, my value is expressed in how I am best off behaving, in the kind of behavior that should flow from a being with my value, in how that value is shown or maintained in action. My value fixes what behavior should flow from me; your value fixes what behavior should flow toward you. Value manifests itself as a push and as a pull.’—Robert Nozick

There is a value cost to immoral behavior: The immoral life is a less valuable life than the moral one. ‘The immoral person thinks…his immoral behavior costs him nothing. But that is not true; he pays the cost of having a less valuable existence. He pays that penalty, though he doesn’t feel it or care about it.’—Robert Nozick

Structurally speaking, intrinsic value appears to be characterized by some degree of organic unity in which such unity suggests that the value of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Values are abstract structures that can be realized in various ways. For instance, a work of music can exemplify and refer to values.

‘Values are to be brought about, maintained, saved from destruction, prized and valued (where this last is some descriptive term of psychology plus the theory of action).’ We ought to ‘care about, accept, support, affirm, encourage, protect, guard, praise, seek, embrace, serve, be drawn toward, be attracted by, aspire toward, strive to realize, foster, express, nurture, delight in, respect, be inspired by, take joy in, resonate with, be loyal to, be dedicated to, celebrate values. With the very highest values, we are to be elevated by, enthralled by, love, adore, revere, be exalted by be awed before, find ecstasy in these highest values.’—Robert Nozick

‘We are born, as social animals, into a cultural world of value and disvalue—a world where certain things matter, as harmful, dangerous, comforting, warming and so on. If we have been brought up in the right way, we will be disposed reliably to recognize these values and disvalues and to respond as we should: as Aristotle says: “at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, and in the right way.” And if this happens, then we will care in the right way about the things that matter: not simply caring for justice and kindness as if for some vague idea, but caring that particular people in particular circumstances are treated as they should be—with fairness, honesty and consideration, so that we get angry (justifiably angry) if this doesn’t happen. It will become “second nature” to have these responses, so that our own interests narrowly conceived, are quite naturally far from being our only consideration in deciding what to do. Being disposed reliably to be motivated by specifically other-regarding moral considerations is part of what it is to have a virtue.’—Peter Goldie

‘There are some individuals whose lives are infused by values, who pursue values with single-minded purity and intensity, who embody value to the greatest extent. These individuals glow with a special radiance. Epochal religious figures often have this quality. To be in their presence (or even to hear about them) is to be uplifted and drawn (at least temporarily) to pursue the best in oneself. There are less epochal figures as well, glowing with a special moral and value loveliness, whose presence uplifts us, whose example lures and inspires us.’— Robert Nozick

‘Values are organic unities; something is intrinsically valuable in accordance with its degree of organic unity. However, it does not follow that the realm of values itself exhibits high organic unity, that diverse and apparently conflicting values can be united in some higher unity or larger harmony. [Plato would say that the realm of values does exhibit a higher unity or harmony insofar as it is, in the beginning and in the end, so to speak, and to speak metaphysically, part of the Good.] The theme of the ineradicable plurality of values, of the conflict between different values that cannot all be realized, a theme presented in Antigone and later tragedies, has been subordinated in the history of philosophy to the theme or hope of the harmonious reconciliation of all values. Recently, however, the pluralism of values has received renewed attention.’ [This is true, but the pluralism of values does not rule out, in theory, the possible harmonious reconciliation of all values.] ’—Robert Nozick

‘A person who tracks bestness, who seeks value, will have to formulate her own package of value realization; she cannot simply “maximize” on the value dimension. This package need not be an aggregate, it can pattern and unify the diverse values it realizes. In thus patterning value, the person may emulate a previous pattern exhibited by a value exemplar, or described in some tradition, or she may create a new complex unity, sculpting the value contours of her life in an original, perhaps unique way. Some significant part of the vividness of characters we read about in fiction, history, or religious texts or scriptures is their individuality in (valuable) value contouring.’—Robert Nozick

‘We value being a unique self, and come therefore also to value the particular unique self someone is. Valuing that there is a unique self spills over to valuing, for itself, that unique self there is.’—Robert Nozick

‘[T]he perfectionist aspiration to self-development…to a harmoniously hierarchically ordered being [cf. here Plato’s distinguishing and ranking of the rational, spirited and appetitive parts of the soul]…[should not] be interpreted as a denigration of what one hopes to improve on or of others not so intent. If we are to strive for a state judged higher, then something also must be ranked lower: to judge something as less than the best need not involve any elitist contempt for it.’—Robert Nozick

‘It is not implausible to think we are elevated by others who are more developed than ourselves in their striving for harmonious hierarchical development and for a valuable life. We are aided and encouraged along our own path of development by their striving for self-development and purer feeling; contrast the effects on us of encountering those with a sour mixture of one-upmanship, self-aggrandizement, desire to dominate or destroy, and other festering emotions, the effects of wending our way and bending our attention, to their motivations and trajectories. Just as a cacophony of urban noise is an intrusion if your are trying to listen to a string quartet or compose your own, so a person in the course of his own self-improvement or development will want, if merely as a means, to help raise the developmental level of those around him (or else to move into an isolated community of like-spirited persons). He will want to help them along. Even if a person were able to maintain his level and rate of (spiritual) advance and development unperturbed by others around him [like Plotinus!], not dragged down by them no matter what their state, he would still lack the benefits of associating with others who are equally or more developed. First, there is the benefit of being helped along by good examples and good companions. We all know people, I hope, who bring out the best in us, people in whose presence we would be embarrassed to speak or act from unworthy motives, people who glow. In their presence we feel elevated. We are pushed or lured or nudged further along a path of development and perfection; rather, we are inspired to move ourselves along, in the direction shown. Second, there is the joy in encountering a like person, in the experience of the other and in the mutual recognition of the mutual joy. The most intense delights, surely, are these experiences, at least as they combine with, enrich, and transfigure other delights more frequently listed. One awful psychological deformity is the resentment of excellence, not merely the inability to delight or take pleasure in it—bad enough—but the envious desire for its absence. To avoid being the object of such envy, people will hide their own excellence and camouflage their delight in it. Not only does this deprive others of the encouragement of an example, and of the opportunity for happy mutual recognition, it also alters the person’s own experience. She does not simply feel the same delight only without expressing it; an unexpressed delight is not as delightful. Resentment and envy of moral and spiritual excellence is most awful. [….] At any rate, persons developing in value will not feel or dwell in such envy; they will seek out opportunities to share the joy of being on and moving along their path. They will aid others in their own (spiritual or developmental) advance, for the pleasure of their company. (In thus aiding, they will not focus their attention upon their own pleasure but rather upon what brings that pleasure—the developed state of the others.) There is a third reason for wanting other equally or more developed persons around: their appreciation is especially worth having. In a loving relationship with another adult, the worth of what they give, including themselves, depends partially upon their estimation of themselves—whether they give something they hold precious and valuable. [….] The developed or developing person will wish for like companions, for inspiring examples to aid him along his path, for joyous company, and for meaningful affirmation of his own worth. This is the opposite of the desire to be surrounded by submissive people less developed than oneself, the desire that they be less developed.’—Robert Nozick

‘The developed person will want to help perfect others; this is the most important aid he can give them. We want to find a way of living whereby our best energies and talents are poured out so as to speak to and improve the best energies and talents of others. We want to utilize our highest parts and energies in a way that helps others flourish.—Robert Nozick

‘[T]he investigation into what is worth our caring about is a quest for self-understanding, an attempt to make sense of our own valuational responses to the world.’—Elizabeth Anderson

‘[P]eople interpret and justify their valuations by exchanging reasons for them with the aim of reaching a common point of view from which others can achieve and reflectively endorse one another’s valuations. To judge that one’s valuations make sense is to judge that they would be endorsed from that hypothetical point of view. To be rational is to be suitably responsive to reasons offered by those attempting to reach that point of view.’—Elizabeth Anderson

‘[T]he grounds of a person’s reflectively held values (if she has any) lie in her conceptions of what kind of person she ought to be, what kinds of character, attitudes, concerns, and commitments she should have. I call such self-conceptions ideals. Ideals are objects not merely of desire but of aspiration. [….] Ideals give us perspectives from which to articulate and scrutinize the way we value things.’—Elizabeth Anderson

‘[M]oral development leads to self-identification and autonomous, self-directed living, but is associative as an interdependence based in a division of labor with respect to the realization of values. The self-fulfilling life of each person requires more values than he or she personally realizes and is dependent upon other for these values. The principle of this form of association is the complementarity of perfected differences. Accordingly this meaning of “autonomy,” if the term is to be applicable, must be consistent with interdependence. [This] means, not total self-sufficiency, but determining for oneself what one’s contributions to others should be and what use to make of the values provided by the self-fulfilling lives of others. To follow the lead of another person in a matter he or she understands better than we is not a lapse from autonomy into heteronomy but a mark of wisdom. [….] [T]he self here is conceived of as a task, a piece of work, namely the work of self-actualization. And self-actualization is the progressive objectivizing of subjectivity, ex-pressing it into the world. This recognition exposes as a fallacy the modern use of “objective” and “subjective” as mutually exclusive categories. Every human impulse in subjective in its origin and objective in its intentional outcome, and because its outcome is within it implicitly from its inception, there is nothing in personhood that is ‘merely subjective,’ that is, subjective in the exclusive sense. Narcissism (with which individualism is sometimes charged) is a pathology that tries to amputate from subjectivity its objective issue. It is real enough, and was a propensity of some romantic individualisms that judged experience by the occasions it affords for the refinement of the individual’s sensibilities. But the supposition that individualism is narcissistic subjectivism represents (again) a failure to recognize divergent kinds of individualism. For eudaimonistic individualism, it is the responsibility of persons to actualize objective value in the world.’—David L. Norton

‘[People] differ in temperament, interests, intellectual ability, aspirations, natural bent, spiritual quests, and the kind of life they wish to lead. They diverge in the values they have and have different weightings for the values they share. (They wish to live in different climates—some in mountains, plains, deserts, seashores, cities, towns.) There is no reason to think that there is one community which will serve as ideal for all people and much reason to think that there is not. [….] For each person, so far as objective criteria of goodness can tell (insofar as these exist), there is a wide range of very different kinds of life that tie as best; no other is objectively better for him than any other one in this range, and no one within the range is objectively better than any other.’—Robert Nozick

‘[Moral values] refer to things we consider worth cherishing and realizing in our lives. Since judgments of worth are based on reasons, values are things we have good reasons to cherish, which in our well-considered views deserve our allegiance and ought to form part of the good life. Universal moral values are those we have good reasons to believe to be worthy of the allegiance of all human beings, and are in that sense universally valid or binding. Moral values are meant for beings like us and intended to regulate our lives. Reasons relevant to a discussion of them are therefore of several kinds, such as our assessment of our moral capacities, what we take to be our basic tendencies and limits, the likely consequences of pursuing certain values, their compatibility, the ease with which they can be combined into a coherent way of life, and the past and present experience of societies that lived by them.’—Bhikhu Parekh

A Revolutionary Spiritual Praxis

Paul Wilson, translator of several of Václav Havel’s works, including his celebrated Letters to Olga (1983/1988), and one-time member of the underground band, The Plastic People of the Universe, has an eloquent and moving remembrance in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books:

[….] “[Havel’s] vision [was] based on a democratic politics underpinned by a strong civil society and rooted in common decency, morality, and respect for the rule of law and human rights; a politics that sought to transcend racial, cultural, and religious differences by articulating a ‘moral minimum’ that Havel believed existed at the heart of most faiths and cultures and that would provide a basis for agreement and cooperation without sacrificing the unique gifts that each person, each culture, and each ‘sphere of civilization’ could bring to enrich modern life. [....]

Like many great Czechs before him, Havel insisted on the importance of truth, but with a difference. ‘Truth and love,’ he was fond of saying, ‘must prevail over lies and hatred.’ He was often ridiculed for what seemed like a Hallmark sentiment (‘Why love?’ people asked), but he defended the slogan by referring to one of his greatest insights: truth, by itself, is a malleable concept that depends for its truthfulness on who utters it, to whom it is said, and under what circumstances. As a playwright, Havel turned this insight into a dramatic device: in most of his plays, the main characters constantly lie to one another and to themselves, using words that, in other circumstances, would be perfectly truthful. Truth by itself is not enough: it needs a guarantor, someone to stand behind it. It must be uttered with no thought for gain, that is, in Havel’s words, with a love that seeks nothing for itself and everything for others.*

We are close to religious territory here, and indeed, in the week of leave-taking in Prague, I heard many discussions about Havel’s true beliefs. Was he a Catholic and, if not, was the high mass in St. Vitus’s Cathedral the right way to send him off? Yes, replied some, he had been raised a Catholic and been confirmed as a young man. Sister Veritas said she felt that Havel was “with God” more profoundly than many observant Catholics, but she admitted that he had neither asked for nor received the last rites before he died. One of his last conversations was with the Dalai Lama, whom he considered a spiritual guru. But in the circumstances, such questions seemed inconsequential, even scholastic. Havel was a deeply spiritual man who expressed his spirituality, if that is the right word, almost entirely through his actions in the world.” [….]

Hat tip to Mark Edwards, who let me know of this essay (I’ve yet to receive my hard copy of the NYRB) in his latest installment at Concurring Opinions: “Vaclav Havel, Part V: Prison, Torment and Temptation.”

Image: (Courtesy of the NYRB) Tomki Němec—Václav Havel visiting Ruzyně Prison, where he had once been incarcerated, Prague, March 1990.

On the Etiology of What Economically Ails Us (updated)

At New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science, Mark Lance writes:

“There is an important article in today’s NYT. What is fascinating about this account of Apple’s iphone production in Asia is not the usual left criticism of Asian working conditions. That is mentioned. Work is structured in an authoritarian manner, for low pay, and with long hours. But a good case is made here that this is not the main issue. Rather, the US simply lacks the economic and educational infrastructure to get the job done at all.

It would be nice if the NYT would delve into the causes of all this. They note that we lack the relevant numbers of workers with the relevant skills, that we lack huge amounts of manufacturing infrastructure, that what manufacturing we have has not kept up with the flexibility needed for 21st century production. They also note that a huge middle class that might have been trained in the relevant sorts of skills are employed in service, financial, and other auxilliary sectors of the economy. What they don’t mention is that public decisions led to this. There are no doubt many decisions over the last 40 years that left us in such a situation, but I’d like to highlight one: military spending. The US--especially since the second half of the Carter administration—has diverted enormous resources from civilian infrastructure to military spending, regularly spending more on its military than the rest of the world combined. One occasionally hears about how this level of spending contributes to deficits and wars, or how it facilitates imperialism and authoritarian regimes abroad, but far less does one hear about how it leads to a country that is incapable of producing actual goods.” [….] *

My response:

However sympathetic I am to the tenor and salutary intentions of this piece, I’m not sure that military spending, as unconscionable or unjustifiable as it may be, is responsible in the first instance for “a country that is incapable of producing actual goods.” And I truly doubt the veracity of the claim (or at least it’s arguable) that “the US simply lacks the economic and educational infrastructure to get the job done at all.” In any case, the National Security State that developed in the midst of material affluence after World War II in the form of “military-industrial complex” has not changed. What has changed, however, are the terms and conditions of capitalist globalization which, roughly, began to appear in the period between 1965 and 1973, that, as David Harvey explains in his seminal work, The Condition of Postmodernity (1990), “was one in which the inability of Fordism and Keynesianism to contain the inherent contradictions of capitalism became more and more apparent.” In the early 1970s, we see the lineaments of a new capitalist logic of “flexible accumulation” (with regard to labor markets and processes, products and services, and patterns of consumption), a logic that in many ways is playing itself out today, one in which has helped to improve the quality of life (less true poverty, although recalcitrant forms of inequality) in many parts of the so-called developing world but has altered the terrain of capitalist democracies in the affluent Northern hemispheric countries.

If one accepts the principal parts of this historical narrative, as I do, than one is not at all surprised by current events and does not believe there’s too much national economies can do (e.g., by way of ‘public decisions’) in the present configuration of economic forces, to alter the course of events in any substantive and long-term fashion. At best perhaps, that is, with a renewed political will and courage, we can hope to salvage the welfare state (which may be why Tony Judt wrote, in Ill Fares the Land [2010], about the Left today simply ‘conserving valuable pasts’ with a ‘defensive’ Social Democratic project), but I fail to see how domestic politics (apart from ex post facto efforts at regulation) can constrain or alter rather uninhibited capital flows that make for the situation Lance describes. In other words, in the first place it’s a story about the logic of capitalist forces trumping democratic decision-making: after all, it’s often labor market conditions that determine where capital (so to speak) will concentrate itself. As Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers make plain in On Democracy (1983), the nature of “capitalist democracy” places structural constraints on both the articulation and satisfaction of interests within the system. With regard to the latter, for instance, and owing to their control of investment, “the satisfaction of the interests of capitalists is a necessary condition for the satisfaction of all other interests in the system,” which means “the welfare of workers remains structurally secondary to the welfare of capitalists,” a fact we conveniently forget in times of economic abundance and low unemployment but is resurrected in the wake of the cycles, crashes, and panics endemic to capitalism. The decisions of capitalists are directly responsible for the well-being of workers, and thus we see the “interests of capitalists appear as general interests of the society as a whole, [while] the interests of everyone else appear as merely particular, or ‘special.’”

Only when we’re able to transcend the socio-economic and political conditions intrinsic to “capitalist democracy” (today’s postmodernist neoliberalism) will we be able to imagine a world in which “public decisions” are no longer invariably distorted or trumped by the turbo-capitalist economic forces in the so-called private sector (an egregious euphemism). In any case, I don’t worry about us producing actual goods so much as our distributively unequal capacity to consume goods essential to the satisfaction of “basic needs” alongside the opulent displays of conspicuous consumption by the upper classes (the allure of which still shapes the dreams of many in the other classes). One world is being created, as Meghnad Desai reminds us, but by the forces of market-led globalization (hence the WTO is displacing the UN/IMF/World Bank as the premier institution for global governance). I’m not saying we shouldn’t, let alone can’t, alter our domestic economic priorities such that spending is directed toward things like infrastructural projects or even actual goods, but given the nature of the National Security State (see, for example, Gary Wills’ Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State [2010]), to which both major parties are committed, in conjunction with this latest phase of capitalist globalization, the prospects for same, alas, appear rather bleak: witness the dismantling of the liberal welfare regime in this country and the cumulatively corrosive assaults on European corporatist and social democratic welfare regimes. It seems we’re consigned to fighting, for the near term at least, purely rearguard actions.

* I've corrected a couple of typos in the original.

Update:

Correspondence with Mark Lance prompts me to further explain why that, even if one accepts the proposition “that there is a massive difference in both manufacturing infrastructure and level of manufacturing-relevant education between major Asian countries and the US,” which I do not, the cause of this cannot be explained by “public decisions,” foremost among them being the increased level of defense expenditures. First, as I say, I don’t believe there to be a “massive difference in both manufacturing infrastructure and level of manufacturing-relevant education between major Asian countries and the US,” even if there are significant differences and especially in certain manufacturing sectors. I don’t have the empirical evidence ready-at-hand but we can leave that disagreement to the side and for the sake of argument accept the proposition as true. Now, what explains it? I would argue that cumulative public decision making, involving defense expenditures or other legislative and public policy directives and initiatives with bearing on the economy are rather beside the point, or at least impotent in the face of the economic forces of the current phase of capitalist globalization.

Capital forces in the form of corporate decision-making, investment, the search for lower production and labor costs, and so on are global in nature: there’s nothing intrinsic to “Asian capitalism” that alters that fact. As long as labor market conditions (including fairly stable social conditions, and even authoritarian politics, and such things as corruption notwithstanding) are more favorable in Asian countries, capital will move there and in fact has moved there: it is that which accounts for disparity in manufacturing infrastructure. Capitalism has, of course, different conditions and effects across the globe, but those are tending toward a “leveling” on many fronts (for instance, and generally speaking, ‘our’ collective ‘affluence’ is diminishing, while ‘their’ well-being is increasing, even if there are some classes more than others that are the immediate and principal beneficiaries of increased capital flows). There’s a price to be paid for admitting more countries to the banquet of wealth-production, and capitalists cannot completely control the various markets or overcome competition, hence they’re driven to make profit and accumulate. It is that which is the principal causal variable in explaining the state of this country’s economy. Nation-state governments no longer control economies as they “did in the halcyon quarter-century of the Golden Age of capitalism.” In Desai’s words,

“The influence of capital—either as portfolio finance or as direct investment—the hegemony of financial markets, the increasing penetration of trade, have been experienced by all the worlds: First, Second and Third. Indeed, this numerical categorization is now otiose. The benefits and costs of capitalism fall symmetrically—though not equally—on all parts of the world. For the first time in two hundred years, the cradle of capitalism—the metropolis, the core—has as much to fear from the rapidity of change as does the periphery.”

It is precisely the effects and by-products of this “rapidity of change” that, in our case, has “[led] to a country that [may at times be] incapable of producing actual goods.” We have to remind ourselves why capitalists, in the form of transnational corporations or foreign direct investment and so forth, went abroad or to the “developing” world in the first place: in search of cheaper costs of production and labor most notably. So, even if, say, defense spending had not taken off as it did, even if it were considerably less than it is today (and some of that money were directed to education), I don’t see how this would have altered the fundamental thrust of the capitalist globalization. In terms of the affluent nation-states, the primary causal variable is found in the proposition that globalization has meant an international movement of goods, capital and labor which “has increased the inequality and/or volatility labor earnings in advanced industrial societies while constraining the ability of governments to tax the winners from globalization to compensate workers for their loss.” In the face of this basic economic fact, domestic governments are severely constrained in their economic decision-making.

Why does the threat of “capital strikes” remain an effective tool in wage negotiations? Because it’s a credible threat, one carried successfully carried out on occasion (both regionally on the domestic plane and globally) owing to increased capital mobility, and the principal reason workers are willing to make concessions at the bargaining table and accept a lower share of the rent. Absent a social democratic model of development in the Asian countries, I don’t see this situation changing. It’s the impact of globalization in the rich countries, in the form of capital mobility, that explains the decline of manufacturing infrastructure in this country and the rise of manufacturing infrastructure elsewhere, not the simply the cumulative historical impact of “public decisions,” about defense expenditures or other budgetary matters. The relatively free flow of goods, capital, and labor does “create opportunities for enhancing the welfare of the poor in poor and middle-income countries,” and that, I would think is a relatively good thing, despite the immediate impact of increased inequality and income insecurity found in the richer countries. It is therefore a good thing that we find an increased ability on the part of “developing” countries to export goods to the “developed” countries. It is therefore in many respects a good thing for people in these countries that transnational corporations are contributing to the development of an industrial infrastructure, even though their profit often represents merely the ability to take advantage of cheap wages and sub-standard working conditions. The increased rate of growth in foreign direct investment reflects the ability to exploit the comparative revenue-productivity of labor in the developing world, be it in Asia or elsewhere. I can’t fathom how any municipal legislation or policy initiative can alter these global economic trends and forces such that transnational firms, for example, come to decide to reverse their preferences on this score.