Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics

Arguments in Metaethics

Christopher Cowie, Rach Cosker-Rowland, Christopher Cowie, Richard Rowland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429846410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie de la philosophie

Comparisons between morality and other 'companion' disciplines – such as mathematics, religion, or aesthetics – are commonly used in philosophy, often in the context of arguing for the objectivity of morality. This is known as the 'companions in guilt' strategy. It has been the subject of much debate in contemporary ethics and metaethics.

This volume, the first full length examination of companions in guilt arguments, comprises an introduction by the editors and a dozen new chapters by leading authors in the field. They examine the methodology of companions in guilt arguments and their use in responding to the moral error theory, as well as specific arguments that take mathematics, epistemic norms, or aesthetics as a 'companion', and the use of the companions in guilt strategy to vindicate claims to moral knowledge.

Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics is essential reading for advanced students and researchers working in moral theory and metaethics, as well as those in epistemology and philosophy of mathematics concerned with the intersection of these subjects with ethics.

Part I

Methodology

1 Companions in guilt

Entailment, analogy, and absorption

Hallvard Lillehammer

In this article, I do three things. First, I say what I mean by a ‘companions in guilt’ argument in meta-ethics. Second, I distinguish between two kinds of argument within this family, which I call ‘arguments by entailment’ and ‘arguments by analogy’. Third, I explore the prospects for companions in guilt arguments by analogy. I do so by engaging in a close reading of two examples of the type, found in Renford Bambrough’s book Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge and Russ Shafer-Landau’s paper ‘Ethics as Philosophy: A Defense of Ethical Nonnaturalism’. During the course of discussing the latter, I identify a distinctive variety of argument, which I refer to as ‘arguments by absorption’. I argue that this variety of argument (at least in the version considered here) inherits some of the weaknesses of standard arguments by analogy and entailment without obviously adding to their strength. I conclude by making some brief remarks about ethical disagreement.¹

1 Companions in guilt arguments in meta-ethics

As I define them, companions in guilt arguments have three defining features. First, they are designed to support the credentials of ethical claims by comparing those claims with other claims with which are said to share their allegedly problematic features, or which somehow entail the existence of these allegedly problematic features.² Second, the companion claims in question are supposed to be ones the relevant credentials of which are not comparably in doubt (in the same way, or to the same extent). Third, these arguments take the allegedly problematic features at their problematic face value. Thus, if both ethical claims and claims about human health imply the existence of value in some sense; if the credentials of claims about human health are assumed to be less problematic than the credentials of ethical claims; and if the values implied by both ethical claims and claims about human health are interpreted as non-relative, categorical, unconditional or absolute, then ethical claims and claims about human health are candidates for companionship in guilt. If one or more of these conditions are unsatisfied, they are not. Hence, I exclude arguments rejecting the view that the allegedly problematic features are shared (such as an argument in favour of a reductively sociobiological account of human health combined with a ‘pure’ expressivist theory of ethical claims). I also exclude arguments that compare ethical claims with claims the credentials of which are agreed to be equally problematic (such as arguments comparing ethical claims with religious claims that presuppose the existence of an infinitely powerful legislator). Third, I exclude arguments aimed to establish the credentials of ethical claims by giving a deflationary account of the allegedly problematic features they are said to share with their companion.³ For example, I exclude arguments that give either a descriptive, or relativist, analysis of ethical claims (e.g. arguments according to which evaluative claims are descriptions of mental states, or accounts according to which ethical values obtain only relative to some descriptively specifiable end, or standard).⁴ This is not to deny the independent interest or plausibility of any arguments thus excluded.⁵ Nor is it to deny that they merit the label ‘companions in guilt argument’ (although ‘companions in innocence’ would arguably be a better label for some of them).⁶ Of course, the name ‘companions in guilt’ is really just a theoretical label based on a metaphor, the reasonable definition of which is a matter of stipulation, at least up to a point. The primary driver of my definition is a specific theoretical interest, namely an interest in whether or not the credentials of ethical claims can be defended while retaining an understanding of those claims on which they are agreed to possess the very features that have made them seem distinctively problematic. To the extent that any such argument is sound, it will add to the explanatory burden of those who believe that giving some kind of deflationary or sceptical account of ethical claims is the only way to ‘save our philosophical souls’.⁷

2 Arguments by analogy and arguments by entailment

2.1 Analogy

There are at least two kinds of companions in guilt argument. The first of these I call ‘arguments by analogy’. These are arguments that seek to establish the credentials of ethical claims by showing that they have some feature in common with claims the credentials of which are not similarly in question. Given that they have some feature in common, it follows that there is some (possibly gerrymandered) sense in which they are of the same ‘kind’. (More of this below.) If this were enough to establish the objective credentials of ethical claims, then constructing a sound companions in guilt argument would be very easy indeed. All we would need to do is find some feature shared between ethical claims and some other claims the objective credentials of which are not similarly in doubt and then argue that as there is no problem with the objective credentials of the companion claims, we should not worry about the objective credentials of ethical claims either. Yet as it stands, this is obviously a bad strategy. More is needed for a successful companions in guilt argument by analogy.

Trivially, all things share some features with all other things. Yet not all the features of something are either central or essential to it. Furthermore, a feature that is problematic in one context need not be problematic in another. The arguments by analogy I am primarily interested in are ones that purport to support the objective credentials of ethical claims by showing that they have some central or essential feature in common with claims the objective credentials of which are not similarly in question, where the feature in question is one that is considered problematic, and where being problematic is something that feature is across relevant contexts. Consider the following case. Suppose I have come to believe in the existence of a type of silvery bird with gills, the average weight of which is 500 grams. Suppose I name them ‘girds’. Suppose you refuse to believe that girds exist. If I try to change your mind by offering an argument by analogy, there are at least three different ways I might fail. First, I might point to a similarity that is for present purposes accidental. (For example, that girds share their average weight of 500 grams with many familiar things in the natural world, such as certain vegetables.) Second, I might point to a similarity that is not accidental, but is not relevantly problematic. (For example, that the silvery colour of girds is shared by familiar creatures with gills, namely some of the fish in the sea.) Third, I might point to a similarity that is neither accidental nor unproblematic, but whose status as problematic does not extend across relevant contexts. (For example, that although it is rare to find a bird with gills, there are many familiar creatures in nature who also have gills, namely fish in the sea, where gills do for creatures in water what lungs do for creatures in the air.)

In the case of some arguments by analogy, the problematic feature in question is one that is considered intrinsically problematic, or problematic in itself, as instantiated by some claim or other. (Consider the historically much debated feature of something being the cause of itself.) In that case, the third condition (extension across contexts) is necessarily satisfied. Yet not all features that could reasonably considered problematic need be intrinsically problematic, or problematic in themselves. In the case of arguments by analogy focused on such features, it is not enough to establish that the problematic features associated with ethical claims are shared by other claims the objective credentials of which are not similarly in question. (Thus, there is nothing intrinsically problematic about a living creature having gills.) It also needs to be established that the problematic features associated with ethical claims are shared by other claims the objective credentials of which are not similarly in question, and are shared by those claims in such a way as to display similar relations to other features, where it is standing in the relevant relations that makes their presence problematic in the ethical case. (Thus, although there is nothing intrinsically problematic about a creature having gills, there is something problematic about a creature having gills if it spends its entire life in the air; as opposed to under water, where the other creatures with gills normally spend their time.)⁸

Perhaps most of the arguments by analogy in the literature have been officially targeted at the possession by ethical claims of some feature that is considered intrinsically problematic (such as those ‘phantasms’ of the mind that have come to be known as ‘response dependent’ properties). While this may restrict the historical interest of the fact that arguments by analogy do not have to take this form, it does not remove the theoretical interest of that fact. Thus, one problem that has been raised against some companions in guilt arguments is that they are either unsound or redundant.⁹ The possibility that not all allegedly problematic features of ethical claims are relevantly problematic across contexts ought to warn us against overstating the scope of this claim. If we are entitled to assume from the start that the problematic status of the relevant feature is preserved across contexts, then perhaps we may have limited use at best for companions in guilt arguments. (Yet even here, the fact that the feature in question is shared between ethical claims and their companions can be informative for those of us who fall short of philosophical omniscience.) On the other hand, if the status of the relevant features as problematic across contexts is anything less than self-evident such as is arguably the case for the underdetermination of theory by evidence in the case of scientific predictions versus ethical prescriptions, for example, an argument by analogy could in principle illuminate the issue by describing what makes these features distinctively problematic in some contexts and not others, and then locating ethical claims and their companions on the resulting map.¹⁰

2.2 Entailment

Arguments by entailment seek to establish the credentials of ethical claims by showing that they are implied by some set of other claims the credentials of which are not comparably in question. It follows that there is a sense in which ethical claims and their companions belong to the same ‘kind’, where belonging to the relevant ‘kind’ goes beyond the mere possession of some common feature. Thus, if some facts about sound entail facts about pitch, then sound and pitch can be said to belong to the same sensory ‘kind’ in a way that facts about pitch and facts about hue do not; even though facts about pitch (sound/hearing) and facts about hue (colour/vision) are both ‘sensory facts’, and thus form part of some wider ‘kind’. (The significance of this distinction should become clear in what follows.)

A genuinely sound argument by entailment would establish not only the existence of some central and problematic feature shared by ethical claims and their companions, but also the genuine instantiation of those features in the case of ethical claims themselves. To this extent, one would expect that interesting and plausible arguments by entailment are comparatively harder to find than interesting and plausible arguments by analogy.¹¹ Moreover (and ignorance aside), it might be worried that arguments by entailment are especially vulnerable to the aforementioned charge that they are likely to be either unsuccessful or redundant.

Yet arguments by entailment can retain their philosophical interest even in some of their less esoteric incarnations. First, even if some A claims imply B claims, it does not follow that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I Methodology
• PART II Normativity and the error theory
• PART III Alternative companions: mathematics and aesthetics
• PART IV Moral epistemology
• Index