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Doug Portmore on Commonsense Consequentialism: A Bleg for Comments

Is it me or am I missing something here? If traditional consequentialism ranks outcomes according to what we have most reason to desire, what is wrong with it?

Traditional act-consequentialism is, as I define it, the view according to which both (1) act-consequentialism is true and (2) an act produces the outcome that the agent has the most reason to desire if and only if it maximizes the good. The problem with it, as I see it, is that (2) is false. I sometimes have most reason to desire the worse outcome. For instance, suppose that there are two possible outcomes: O1 and O2. O1 is the outcome in which my daughter is saved. O2 is the outcome in which Smith's daughter is saved. Assume that because Smith's daughter would live a slightly more happy life than my own daughter would, O2 is slightly better than O1. I think that despite the fact that 02 is (impersonally) better than O1, I have most reason to desire 01.

Murali on Commonsense Consequentialism: A Bleg for Comments

Argues that we should reject all traditional forms of act-consequentialism if moral rationalism is true....Argues that act-consequentialism is best construed as a theory that ranks outcomes, not according to their value, but according to how much reason each agent has to desire that they obtain.

Is it me or am I missing something here? If traditional consequentialism ranks outcomes according to what we have most reason to desire, what is wrong with it?

Jeremy on Smilansky's non-punishment paradox

The real problem is that this system would prevent people from committing the crime, even when they're willing to pay the fair punishment for doing so.

This, of course, is the point of the draconian law. Society doesn't want people to commit crime X. But this itself is a denial of individual rights. A free society can't control what people do; it can only make them pay the fair price.

If you pick a very serious crime, like homicide, then we can't have a disproportionate punishment (except maybe torture, but that's problematic for other reasons). So this only works with a crime that isn't very serious. And we can also assume that the law has exceptions as necessary (for instance, speeding to take someone to the hospital is legal). In other words, we're trying to prevent unreasonable occurrences of a non-serious crime.

Intuitively, we're imagining, somewhere in our heads, that someone might someday come along and break the law... even though the puzzle specifies that no one will! Part of what's so disturbing, I think, is the idea of no one ever committing a non-serious crime, as it suggests totalitarian states with mind control powers.

Ultimately, at least with a non-serious crime, we want people to have the freedom to choose to commit the crime, if they're willing to pay a fair price. This is the whole idea behind civil disobedience, as well as behind an "efficient breach" in contact law. If committing a (minor, non-serious) crime is worth paying its "true cost" to society for someone, it's actually unjust to prevent him from committing it by increasing the penalty.

Arguably, this isn't applicable for serious crimes like homicide, because they're so ethically wrong, but if a crime is so minor that life imprisonment would be incredibly disproportionate, it makes sense to treat it in this economic way.

Dan Boisvert on Moral discourse, speech acts, and the "by" relation

Hi Dorit,

It's great to see you here in the Soup!

There are a number of things to say, but let me focus on one. My main problem comes when I try to understand what, exactly, sentence-expression is supposed to be, which I can only understand in terms of illocutionary acts. For example, for all that I am told about sentence-expression---namely, that it is a relation that takes sentences and propositions/thoughts as its relata--the following sentences will all sentence-express the same proposition/thought that I am amazed (since each sentence will stand in some semantic relation to the truth-evaluable thought or proposition that I am amazed):

(1) I am amazed.
(2) Am I amazed?
(3) Wow!

So, something more needs to be said about this sentence-expression relation that will distinguish the semantics of these different kinds of sentences. And I don't know how to do that except by somehow appealing to the illocutionary acts typically performed with their (unembedded) uses. (And, then sentence-expression seems to collapse into act-expression.)

Can you cash out sentence-expression in a way that doesn't appeal in some way to illocutionary acts? Or, perhaps, do you think the demand to cash out sentence-expression more explicitly is unjustified?

Dorit Bar-On on Moral discourse, speech acts, and the "by" relation

It seems to me there's a way of capturing the 'layering' intuition that doesn't rely on the two speech-acts idea. It's important to note that 'expression' can take two different relata: acts of expressing express *states of mind* or attitudes whereas sentences (and sentence-like tokens) express *propositions/thoughts* (and words/phrases express *concepts*). The former is a psychological relation; the latter a semantic one. Once we take this on board, an ethical expressivist can hold that when making an ethical claim (in speech or in thought) one expresses (in the first, 'action' sense) e.g. approval, using a vehicle that expresses (in the second, semantic sense) a truth-evaluable proposition. (This, even while remaining neutral on the 'truth-makers' of ethical propositions.) Note that one can also express (in the action sense) approval using other vehicles, including ones that do not express (in the semantic sense) propositions -- e.g., one can make a gesture -- or use a vehicle that does not express use ethical vocabulary -- e.g. say "I approve". This, in a nutshell, is a view presented in Bar-On and Chrisman's "Ethical Neo-Expressivis" in the recent OSME volume (mentioned by Jussi).

John Turri on Moral discourse, speech acts, and the "by" relation

Very helpful, everyone, thank you!

christian on Moral discourse, speech acts, and the "by" relation

John,

Can't I say 'electrons are good' without believing it. I just did. So, I think we can say 'x is good' without approving of x.

Perhaps we cannot do this sincerely. But then perhaps that suggests that approval has more to do with sincerity conditions, and less to do with speech conditions.

V2 sounds good if by 'express' you mean 'convey' or 'imply'. Otherwise, I think that by asserting 'x is good' you express that x is good. We don't typically say such things if we don't approve of x, but that's to say that we convey our approval.

Dan Boisvert on Moral discourse, speech acts, and the "by" relation

(I should be more clear: For Hare, the non-assertive illocutionary act would be a directive, not an expressive.)

Dan Boisvert on Moral discourse, speech acts, and the "by" relation

Hi John,

I hope I'm not put too much of my own framework into your questions, but I can only understand talk of "layers" or performing one act "by" performing another in terms of the distinction between direct and indirect illocutionary acts. (If this is what is meant, then Heath is certainly right that we perform indirect illocutionary acts all the time by means of direct illocutionary acts.) So, we could come up with three different possibilities for performing more than one kind of illocutionary act with a single utterance:

(D1) When you say 'x is good', you perform an indirect assertive (illocutionary act) that x is good by means of performing a direct expressive (illocutionary act) expressing approval of x.

(D2) When you say 'x is good', you perform an indirect expressive expressing approval of x by means of performing a direct assertive that x is good

(D3) When you say 'x is good', you perform a direct assertive that x is good and a direct expressive expressing approval of x.

Mark is certainly right that most cognitivists would hold something like (D2), at least as some means of explaining how noncognitive attitudes are expressed by moral utterances (when they are so expressed). I would certainly hold Steve Finlay's view to be a well-worked out version of (D2). Some commentators take Stevenson and Hare to be holding something like (D1), though I think their actual views are more like (D3). (D3) is more in line with most current hybrid views, but it loses any sense of the 'layered' nature you have in mind, I think. (Perhaps Mike Ridge's notion of 'anaphora' might capture some kind of 'layering' in a (D3) kind of view?)

David Faraci on Moral discourse, speech acts, and the "by" relation

I think my concern here may be partly mirroring Mark's above. What does "approval" mean? If it's some sort of reactive attitude then neither V1 nor V2 seem true to me. I can easily imagine a utilitarian, say, who is completely convinced that happiness is the good and that rightness consists in maximizing happiness, yet does not "feel" approval for many of the acts this thereby commits him to and that he sincerely believes are right. But if "approval" doesn't refer to such an attitude, I start to worry that it means little more than "thinks good."