The Origin of Oughtness

A Case for Metaethical Conativism

Stefan Fischer

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783110600728
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110599251
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

Diese Reihe präsentiert innovative Studien in deutscher oder englischer Sprache, die aktuelle Themen der praktischen Philosophie aus analytischer Perspektive behandeln. Dazu gehören Fragen aus den Bereichen der Metaethik, der normativen und der ‚angewandten‘ Ethik ebenso wie Fragen der politischen Philosophie, der Rechtsphilosophie und der Handlungstheorie.

Part I:The Phenomenon and How to Explain It

1The Phenomenon of Oughtness

Here is a great way to start a philosophical book: Quote one of the field’s time-honored paragons and portray how you intend to follow in their footsteps. The paragon of my choosing is David Hume, who, right at the beginning of his Enquiry, emphatically calls upon his fellow philosophers to not end up in the proverbial ivory tower.

Indulge your passion for science, says [nature], but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.1

The reason I am bringing this up is because I think that the ‘direct reference to action and society’ is not always obvious in the field of metaethics—and, particularly, in discussions about normativity. ‘Normativity’—what are we even talking about?

Imagine you are a metaethicist who has devoted years of his life to theories of normativity. One morning, your favorite baker suddenly asks you what you are doing for a living. Could you give an answer? Picking up on Hume’s advise: How are all these discussions about normativity, discussions you have devoted so much time to, linked to our everyday lives? Are they linked to our everyday lives? Or are they, as Hume so eloquently puts it, already characterized by the ‘obscurity in the profound and abstract philosophy’ that is not only ‘painful and fatiguing’ but also ‘the source of uncertainty and error’?2 Have we normativity theorists lost ourselves in the ivory tower?

The best way to counter doubts of this kind is to present the everyday life phenomenon that discussions on normativity are rooted in.3 Obscurity suspicions notwithstanding, I believe there really is such a phenomenon, and that we are all familiar with it (even your favorite baker). It occurs in our conscious experience on a daily basis. It is the phenomenon which, ultimately, all metaethicists engaged in the endeavor to illuminate normativity are talking about. I call it the phenomenon of oughtness. Let me introduce it.

Some of our action alternatives strike us as more important than others. As I am sitting at my desk right now, it seems quite important to me to do some research on a particular philosophical issue. Instead of doing so, however, I could practice a headstand. But somehow practicing a headstand does not strike me as important at all. At least, it strikes me as much less important than doing the philosophical research. We all know what this is like. It seems to us that we should perform certain action alternatives, while other open alternatives do not even enter the stage of conscious reflection. Usually, it does not even come to my mind that I could practice a headstand. So, there are some action alternatives that strike us as important in ways others do not. They come with a special property. Let us call this property oughtness.4

Oughtness is not easy to describe because it is ‘invisible’.5 We do not experience it by means of perception. We can see a tree or we can see that Hanna wears an orange blouse, but we cannot see that we ought to perform an action. A scientist couldn’t discover oughtness with his microscope. And yet we know that it is real. We know about it because it is part of our everyday conscious experience. It is present in our psychologies or, more precisely, it occurs in deliberations on what to do. Metaphorically speaking, oughtness is the spotlight for action alternatives in life’s grand theater play ‘What Should I Do?’; a play performed on the stage of practical deliberation.6

But action alternatives are not the only things spotlighted in deliberations; facts are spotlighted as well. For instance, when pondering on what to do, the fact that it is raining or the fact that it is Sunday may strike you as particularly relevant. So, should we say that oughtness is a property of facts and actions? That, I think, would be a bad idea. When facts are spotlighted on the stage of deliberation, it seems clear that they are spotlighted because they are relevant with respect to our actions. The fact that it is raining is spotlighted because it makes a difference to whether or not it is a good idea to take an umbrella outside. And likewise, the fact that it is Sunday is spotlighted because it makes a difference to whether or not it is a good idea to do some grocery shopping. (On German Sundays shops are closed.) This connection between a spotlighted fact and the thereby spotlighted action alternative is not surprising. After all, the play’s title is ‘What should I do?’—and, since we are creatures inhabiting a world, we can reasonably expect that facts about this world appear on the stage. So, there is no problem in saying that oughtness is a property of actions and not of facts. The question of why facts are spotlighted in this way—why we call them reasons—and how exactly they are connected to our action alternatives will occupy us at various points throughout this investigation.7

As you may already know, there are theories of oughtness that tie the phenomenon closely to our conative mental states—so-called Humean views—and others that do not. It might be thought that my way of setting up this investigation already points in a Humean direction because of its strong focus on the importance-strikings from a first person perspective. ‘You are stacking the deck’, one might think, ‘by tying oughtness so closely to our conscious experience, or psychology’. And this, the objection continues, secretly turns the scales in favor of Humeanism. A clear case of deck stacking.

But this suspicion stands unwarranted. What we said amounts to a theory-independent description of the cards we were dealt. Our description remains neutral with respect to theories of normativity. All metaethicists must agree that oughtness—whatever its nature—and the (psychological) activity of deliberating are inextricably connected. We can say without exaggeration that the described spotlightings in deliberation are the origin of all philosophical wonder regarding normativity. This is where it all starts. This is the phenomenon we want to account for.

Non-Humeans such as Korsgaard, Parfit, or Scanlon cannot deny that the phenomenon they are interested in is, ultimately, a phenomenon that occurs in our everyday life psychology. Parfit’s use of the Burning Hotel example drives this point home, I think.8 He imagines someone in a burning hotel who, standing in the window of her room and looking down onto the canal, forms the judgment ‘I ought to jump’. In our words, jumping strikes her with a particular importance. It is spotlighted in her deliberation on what to do. So, Parfit is interested in exactly the same phenomenon we are interested in. There is no deck stacking to be found here.

Let me add a further important point: Neither we nor Parfit are merely talking about psychological or motivational force when describing oughtness in the above ways. The phenomenon we are after occurs in situations in which we, say, very strongly long for eating the chocolate in front of us but in which it strikes us much more important to not do so because we are on a diet. That is, even when experiencing a strong motivational pull towards an action, it sometimes seems clear to us that, all in all, we ought not to ‘surrender’ to our longings. This is a crucial and familiar experience: Oughtness is often directed against our strong motivations.

Thus, I think, describing the phenomenon as we did is not stacking the deck in favor of theories of normativity that grant conative states a crucial role. Instead, it is a neutral and sober analysis of the connection between an often complicated and abstract metaethical debate and the everyday life phenomenon in which the debate is rooted.9 Why do some action alternatives strike us with a particular practical importance while others do not? Why do our actions have oughtness? The purpose of this investigation is to explain the phenomenon of oughtness and, thereby, answer the following question: How come we ought to do things?

Before we continue, let me add some considerations about the general importance of discussions of oughtness. Why should the baker around the corner care about theories of oughtness? The short answer is, quite generally, that philosophical reflections on the nature of oughtness tell us something about our place in the world. One of our most fundamental problems as human beings is this: We are rational creatures capable of deliberation, but now and then we really don’t have a clue about what to do. Hence, we are in a (sometimes more, sometimes less desperate) need for orientation. We want to know what kind of lives we should lead, what kind of persons we should be and what decisions we ought to take to spend the time we have in the best possible way. We face these vital questions every day and in order to answer them, we appeal to things called ‘reasons’. Reasons are the things in virtue of which we can answer these questions. They provide us with guidance by indicating that we ought to do this or that. Should I take the job in the capital, far away from home? Should the prince marry the girl even though he doesn’t really know her? Is it really a good idea to take such a huge risk for the small chance to become king? Should I take an umbrella outside? In order to find answers to these questions, we invoke reasons. And since they play such a vital role in our lives, it is an important question what a reason is and how it is related to the phenomenon of oughtness.

Many philosophers have given even more answers to the question of what constitutes oughtness. The two camps that shall occupy us during this investigation are, on the one hand, objectivists, and, on the other hand, Humeans. Both camps characterize human life quite differently. And it is a reasonable conjecture that many of us are more or less sympathetic with the one or the other because of the depictions of human life they ultimately represent.

Humeans believe that facts about pro-attitudes or desires constitute oughtness and the reasons we have.10 Objectivists, on the other hand, believe that at least some instances of oughtness are not constituted by desires.11 However, throughout this investigation, we will mainly deal with ‘more radical’ versions of objectivism, according to which no instances of oughtness are rooted in desires.12

Objectivists and Humeans accuse each other of many mistakes, some of which have to do, quite generally, with the nature of human beings. For instance, on a Humean view, what we ought to do may appear arbitrary because our desires play such an important role in it and desires seem contingent. Many philosophers do not like the idea that contingent desires determine what reasons we have regarding such important matters as how to lead our lives or what kind of person we should be. As Frankfurt puts it, if reasons were constituted by the desires we have, we are ‘helpless bystander[s] to the forces that move [us].’13 Korsgaard states that if we are, in the end, guided solely by our desires, then we are nothing but animals.14 Raz makes a similar point when he says that if there is no desire-i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Part I: The Phenomenon and How to Explain It
• Part II: Four Theories of Oughtness
• Part III: Constructing Conativism
• Bibliography
• Index