PEA Soup

Character Project's Essay and Book Prize Winners

2013-06-19T14:15:27-05:00

The Character Project (www.thecharacterproject.com) is happy to formally announce the winners of our Essay and Book Prize Competition. In philosophy the winners included Tom Hurka and Iskra Fileva. Please be sure to congratulate them!

http://news.wfu.edu/2013/06/18/a-good-character-summer-reading-list/

Wisconsin Metaethics Program

2013-06-12T18:23:20-05:00

2013 Workshop Program below the fold.

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 27

9am - 10:15am     BARRY MAGUIRE (Princeton)
                              Grounding the Autonomy of Ethics
                              Chair: Eric Wiland

10:45am - Noon    TRISTRAM McPHERSON (Virginia Tech) &
                            DAVID PLUNKETT (Dartmouth)
Deliberative Indispensability Does not Justify Ontological Commitment
                            Chair: Andrew Alwood (Virginia Commonwealth)

1:45pm - 3pm       ELIZABETH HARMAN (Princeton)
                            The Irrelevance of Moral Uncertainty
                            Chair: Brad Cokelet (Miami)

3:30 - 4:45pm       WINNER, Marc Sanders Prize in Metaethics (TBA)

5:15pm – 6:30pm   DAVID COPP (UC-Davis)
                            Rationality and Moral Authority
                            Chair: Andrew Reisner (McGill)

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 28

9am - 10:15am     KENNY WALDEN (Dartmouth)
                           Practical Reason Not As Such
                           Chair: Joshua Schechter (Brown)

10:45am - Noon   CONNIE ROSATI (Arizona)
                           Agents and “Schmagents”
                           Chair: Karl Schafer (Pittsburgh)

1:45pm - 3pm       KNUT OLAV SKARSAUNE (NYU)
                            The Good, the Bad, and the Supervenient
                            Chair: Don Loeb (Vermont)

3:30pm – 4:45pm JAMIE DREIER (Brown) **KEYNOTE ADDRESS**
                            Explaining the Quasi-Real

5:15pm – 6:30pm ALISON HILLS (Oxford)
                            Cognitivism about Moral Judgement
                            Chair: Steve Finlay (USC)

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 29

9:30am - 10:45am NICK ZANGWILL (Durham)
                            Expressivism and the Social Function of Morality
                            Chair: Stan Husi (UW-Milwaukee)

11:15am -12:30pm JUSTIN CLARKE-DOANE (Birmingham & Monash)
                             Debunking Arguments: Genealogical and Explanatory
                             Chair: Christian Coons (Bowling Green)

Further information can be found at the workshop website.

Open for Questions...?

2013-06-09T18:23:02-05:00

It’s an unexpected honor to be included in this series along with greats like Tom Hurka, Tim Scanlon, Sally Haslanger, Elizabeth Anderson, Nomy Arpaly, and David Enoch, so let me start by thanking Dale and the Daves for including me. This summer, between moving house and trying to enjoy some time with my daughter, who just had her first birthday, I’m trying to spend some time reflecting on my work so far, and how it fits together. So I thought that the best way to open this discussion would be to say something general, and then open up the discussion to questions on any topic whatsoever.

Over the last ten years or so, I’ve written about a lot of different topics, including reasons, rationality, supervenience, reduction, expressivism, the conseqentialism/deontology divide, particularism, moral semantics, the wrong kind of reason, pragmatic encroachment, truth, epistemic expressions, and a little about the history of moral philosophy. That might sound like a mess of unconnected topics, but to me, they’re all tightly interrelated in interesting ways:

I’m a reductive realist about the normative, because I think that this offers the best explanation of the necessary connections between the normative and the non-normative, including supervenience. I’m a proponent of the idea that reasons are the key to understanding the normative, both because I think that this yields the most promising kind of substantive normative theory and because I think that reasons are the key to a plausible and defensible reductive normative realism. Key to understanding other normative concepts in terms of reasons is the wrong kind of reason problem, whose proper solution, I think, makes room for a better understanding of many important issues in epistemology, including pragmatic encroachment on knowledge. I’m an increasingly sympathetic critic of expressivism, one of the main competitor approaches to reductive realism in metaethics, and have become particularly interested in its most promising applications outside of metaethics, including to epistemic expressions and truth. And I’ve done a lot of work using both metaphysical and linguistic arguments to examine the argument structure of the relations expressed by normative words like reason, good, and ought, because only if we think clearly about what we are actually talking about are we going to avoid making a variety of simple mistakes.

I think that’s about the best that I can sum up my views in a single paragraph. I don’t claim to still believe quite everything that I’ve said in print, however, so maybe I’ll get a chance to clarify or revise in the discussion. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Featured Philosopher: Mark Schroeder

2013-06-09T17:12:30-05:00

Hi Soupers,

I'm thrilled to introduce our next featured philosopher, Mark Schroeder! You all know Mark for his groundbreaking books Being For and Slaves of the Passions, as well as a a number of significant articles in metaethics and thereabouts. Since Mark already has his PEA Soup bona fides, he's going to post his own set of comments later this evening. But until then, let me express my excitement for what should prove to be a fascinating discussion!

- dd

Ethics Discussion at PEA Soup: Chike Jeffers's "The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's 'The Conservation of Races'"

2013-06-05T13:28:48-05:00

We are pleased to announce our next Ethics discussion on Chike Jeffers's new article, "The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's 'The Conservation of Races." Jeffers is an assistant professor at Dalhousie University. The article is available open access here. Tommie Shelby, professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard, is kicking off the discussion with a critical precis of Jeffers's article. Here now is Tommie Shelby:

Chike Jeffers’s article is rich, subtle, provocative, and carefully argued. It makes contributions to a number of related debates within what has come to be called the philosophy of race. Jeffers offers a fresh interpretation of Du Bois’s influential essay “The Conservation of Races” (1897) and helpfully situates his reading within the context of leading commentaries on that piece. Extracting insights from Du Bois, he defends a cultural theory of the meaning of “race” that highlights the cultural dimensions of racism. And he stakes out a position on the ethics of resistance to racism, calling for the conservation of racial identities now and in the imagined postracist future.

In recent philosophical writings about Du Bois’s famous essay, one frequently encounters the claim that Du Bois was here defending a social constructionist theory of racial difference, which is typically contrasted with a scientific/naturalist theory of race that emphasizes inherited biological differences. On the social constructionist view, races are entirely the creation of social forces and institutional conventions, which are structured by group-based domination. Jeffers persuasively argues that this interpretation of the early Du Bois gets two things wrong. First, it fails to see that Du Bois did not completely reject the scientific theory of race. Du Bois acknowledged that there were biological differences between the races but insisted that these physical traits, which he held to be largely superficial, could not explain the “deeper” differences between the groups we call “races.” Second, the social constructionist reading mistakenly takes Du Bois to be reducing race to political dynamics when, in fact, Du Bois thought of races as primarily cultural groups that have intrinsic value.

Jeffers does not deny that Du Bois was engaged in a political project in advancing his race theory. This was not some purely academic philosophical analysis of the concept of race. Du Bois was trying to justify the need for race-based solidarity and group organization to fight against the forms of oppression that blacks and others suffered under. But, says Jeffers, his race theory cannot be reduced to this antiracist project. Races, for the early Du Bois, would be worth preserving even in a world without racism, because races embody and sustain valuable cultural traditions and ideals.

Now Du Bois defended the claim that races should be preserved—which we might call the racial conservation thesis—by invoking a racial origins narrative and a philosophy of history. He believed that races, not individuals or classes, were the primary agents of historical progress. Each race had its own distinctive contribution to make to civilization and human progress, and these racial ideals could not be fully realized unless races maintained their cultural integrity.

Jeffers defends the racial conservation thesis drawing on insights from Du Bois's “Conservation” essay. However, he doesn't want to defend it in the way that Du Bois does, namely, by relying on a dubious anthropology and a speculative philosophy of history. Instead, he agrees with the political theory of race that races are not primordial natural groupings operating according to laws of historical development but rather socially constructed groups. Yet he insists that these socially constructed races have created their own distinctive cultures in the crucible of racial domination and, through this culture, have become relatively cohesive ethnoracial peoples. Race is, Jeffers argues, a social construction but this construction has political and cultural dimensions. The political side demands that we eradicate racial hierarchy and exclusion; the cultural side demands that we preserve the integrity of races.

There are weak and strong forms of the racial conservation thesis. The weak version says that we should not allow cultural diversity to be suppressed in favor of cultural homogeneity. Individuals should be permitted to maintain the cultural aspects of their racial identities without this negatively affecting their rights or life chances. The strong version says that members of racial groups have a duty to actively preserve their group’s cultural integrity. Jeffers maintains that the weak version may be appropriate in the postracist utopia but the strong one is valid until then, at least for members of subordinate races. His argument for the strong version is based on the claim that resistance to the cultural dimensions of racism requires that those subject to this form of domination refuse to assimilate.

I find Jeffers’s interpretation of Du Bois compelling and agree with his criticisms of Du Bois’s version of the cultural theory. I also think he properly registers two key worries about his own version of the theory: its paradoxical implications for thinking about “white identity” and its seeming conflation of race with ethnicity (or nationality). I do however have some further doubts and questions about Jeffers’s defense of the weak and strong versions of the racial conservation thesis.

I think the weak version of the conservation thesis is basically correct, and in its defense I would simply say that unreasonable pressures to assimilate or to abandon one’s people’s traditional ways wrongly interference with individual liberty. And cultural intolerance born of racial hostility is certainly unreasonable, to say the least. I take it Jeffers would not disagree. But he also wants to explain why it would be valuable (though not a duty) for the members of historically oppressed racial groups to maintain their racial culture even after racism (political and cultural) has been defeated.

Jeffers says, “There is, in fact, reason to think that the historical memory of creating beauty in the midst of struggling to survive oppression can and should persist as a thing of value in black culture long after that oppression has truly and finally been relegated to the past” (20). I’m not entirely sure what this claim means, for there are two ambiguities in this and similar statements. I would distinguish valuing something because it is beautiful or useful from valuing something because our ancestors created it under oppressive circumstances, as these are different modes of value. I would also distinguish appreciating what our ancestors’ cultural traditions meant to them from appreciating these traditions as things valuable in themselves.

If something is a beautiful or otherwise worthwhile cultural product or practice, then we should admire it and seek to preserve it regardless of its racial pedigree or the circumstances of its origin (though admittedly its origins might taint it in some way). We don’t need a cultural theory of race to explain why we should preserve beautiful or useful things. What is at issue is whether the fact that one’s oppressed ancestors created a set of traditions under trying conditions provides one with an independent reason to carry on these traditions, and if so, what kind of reason this is.

Suppose a politically constructed racial group, in the process of their long and successful historical struggle against racial domination, developed a set of distinctive cultural practices, some of which were indispensible for their survival and sanity under unjust conditions or were essential weapons in their protracted fight against injustice. Their descendants, now free from racial domination, should take great pride in their ancestors’ resilience and triumph over oppression. They should also feel gratitude for the sacrifices their ancestors made to set them free. Accordingly, they might rightly celebrate and commemorate the cultural traditions that played such a crucial role in their ancestors’ lives. This would serve as remembrance of their ancestors’ ordeal and as tribute to their accomplishments. But, first, this would be a way of honoring one’s ancestors by celebrating something that meant something to them. We value it because it was valuable to them and we value them. And, second, there are other ways to express gratitude or pay tribute to one’s racially subordinate ancestors—e.g., constructing and visiting memorials or museums, learning and teaching the history of their struggle, and building on their legacy by fighting against other injustices.

Apart from finding beauty and utility in these traditions or honoring their heroic creators, I don’t see that a member of a historically oppressed racial group would, in the imagined postracist future, have a reason to practice and further develop these traditions. I’m not certain whether Jeffers would agree with my interpretation of the meaning and implications of the weak racial conservation thesis. I suspect that what I say here doesn’t quite capture everything he had mind. But perhaps he will tell us.

My concerns about the strong version of the conservation thesis are more serious. Jeffers wants to embrace Du Bois’s conclusion that races should be preserved but to reject the philosophy of history that Du Bois used to defend it. The trouble is that Du Bois’s perfectionist philosophy of history (or something similar) would appear to be needed to justify the claim that members of subordinate races have a duty to conserve their race’s culture. Du Bois argues that each race has a unique contribution to make to human progress that only it can make and so its members must maintain their cultural identity until that mission is complete. The resistance argument that Jeffers endorses is parallel only if we assume that preserving the denigrated culture of one’s race is the only appropriate way to resist the cultural dimensions of racism. What is missing from Jeffers’s argument, as far as I can tell, is a good reason to believe that the only appropriate response on the part of oppressed racial groups to Eurocentrism and racialized cultural intolerance is for these groups to maintain their (alleged) cultural distinctiveness in symbolic defiance. I’m skeptical that this reason can be supplied.

I agree that blacks, for example, should not seek to assimilate to European-derived cultural norms out of a sense of inferiority or to gain the esteem of whites who look upon us with contempt. This would be an undignified capitulation to white supremacy and a blameworthy accommodation to injustice. Indeed, one defensible mode of resistance to the cultural dimensions of racism is to draw attention to or to exaggerate even our minor cultural differences from the dominant group. This is one way that we affirm our self-respect in the face of injustice and express our solidarity with those similarly oppressed. We should also resist racially motived social pressure to abandon the cultural ways that we find valuable and meaningful. What I seriously doubt, though, is that a black person has a duty to not assimilate if he or she finds more value in cultural ways of European origin. Such a person should of course do their part to ensure that those who favor the cultural ways of their racial ancestors are free to embrace these traditions without unfair repercussions. But I don’t see how the person’s assimilation or love for European culture would be a betrayal of the black freedom struggle.

Moreover, cultural racism sometimes expresses itself by suggesting that members of subordinate races are incapable of fully assimilating European-derived culture. Such racist ideologies have functioned as a rationalizations for denying some groups important opportunities. Could an appropriate mode of resistance to this kind of cultural racism be to demonstrate that one can, in fact, embody these cultural characteristics? I think it could. And if so, wouldn’t this show that there couldn’t be a duty to maintain the integrity of one’s race-based cultural identity?

June is "K" and "L" Month on the Soup!

2013-06-03T10:09:03-05:00

If you are a contributor whose first name starts with "K" or "L," it's your special month, and we encourage you to post something. Check the calendar of events to make sure you won't be posting on top of some other planned event. Remember, we are happy to see more informal blogging, so feel free to let that half-baked idea rip!

Ethics Discussion at PEA Soup: Chike Jeffers's "The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's 'The Conservation of Races'"

2013-05-31T23:20:44-05:00

We are pleased to announce that our next Ethics discussion will be on Chike Jeffers's new article, "The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's 'The Conservation of Races." The article has already been made open access here. Tommie Shelby, professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard, will be kicking off the discussion with a critical precis of Jeffers's article. Our discussion will begin Wednesday, June 5th. We hope to see you there!

Featured Philosopher: T.M. Scanlon

2013-05-27T09:42:20-05:00

Hello all,

It's very exciting for all of us at the Soup, and a true honor for me, to introduce T.M. Scanlon as this week's featured philosopher. Tim certainly needs no introduction to the PEA Soup crowd, as his work in moral philosophy has been truly agenda-setting. Therefore, I think I'll simply get out of the way, and let his post---which begins below the fold---speak for itself. Without further ado, then, please welcome T.M. Scanlon!

As a frequent and admiring reader of PEA Soup over the years I am very pleased to be asked to be a Visiting Philosopher in this new series. I will be happy to try to respond to questions about any of the things I have written. Lately I have been thinking particularly about equality, trying to revise and extend my views about the diversity of objections to inequality and to consider how they apply to recent political controversies about increasing inequality. I have also been thinking about blame and responsibility.

I believe that one cannot argue sensibly about moral responsibility, understood as a precondition for moral blame, unless one begins from a clear account of what blame involves. It makes a difference, for example, whether blame is simply a negative moral evaluation or a form of punishment. The latter view makes incompatibilism more plausible, the former favors compatibilism. It seems to me that the correct account of blame must be in between these extremes, and I have advanced my own particular account of blame in my book, Moral Dimensions. But whether or not people are persuaded of that account, I hope that they will take seriously the general thesis that an answer to the question of moral responsibility depends on some account of what blame is.

In this general area, I have revised somewhat my views about desert. In earlier work, including my Tanner Lectures on the significance of choice and Chapter 6 of What We Owe to Each Other, I rejected the idea of moral desert because I identified it with the idea that the fact that someone has behaved badly can make it a good thing that he or she should suffer some loss. I still find the latter view morally unacceptable. But it now seems to me that this rejection of desert is too quick. Desert should not be identified with this retributivist idea. There is, I believe, a distinct category of valid desert-based justifications. A desert-based justification for treating a person in a certain way claims that this form of treatment is made appropriate simply by facts about what that person is like, or what he or she has done. By simply, I mean without need to appeal to other factors such as the good consequences of treating the person in this way or to the fact that this treatment is called for by some institution or practice that is independently justified. Moral blame, gratitude, and some honors and distinctions can be justified in this way, and these justifications do not presuppose that the qualities that form the basis for justification are all under the person’s control. The responses are justified simply by what the person is like, or has done. By contrast, legal punishment, insofar as it involves forms of hard treatment such as fines or imprisonment, cannot be justified purely on the basis of desert, nor can significant differences in economic reward be justified in this way. I argue for these views in “Giving Desert Its Due,” which has just appeared in Philosophical Explorations.

These are some of the things I have been thinking about recently, but as I said I would be happy to respond to questions about other things as well. I look forward to the discussion.

Subjectivism and Mind-Dependence

2013-05-13T04:12:15-05:00

I’ve been recently interested in subjectivism and how serious the objections to it are in the end. In part, this is a project of thinking how well or badly off the view comes out when we compare it to expressivism. In this post, I am interested in the claim that subjectivism makes morality objectionably dependent on our attitudes. The strategy which subjectivists have often recently adopted is to try to argue that subjectivists can usually give similar responses to objections as expressivists. Here, I want to use this strategy to explore the mind-dependence objection.

Here’s the objection as it is usually formulated against expressivists:
1. For the expressivists to think that kicking dogs is wrong is to hold an attitude of moral disapproval to kicking dogs.
2. Therefore, if we didn’t morally disapprove of kicking dogs, it wouldn’t be wrong.
3. But, kicking dogs would be wrong even if everybody approved of it.
4. Therefore, expressivism makes morality objectionably mind-dependent.

We all know Blackburn’s response to this objection. This is to deny that expressivism commits you to premise 2. According to him, 2. is a first-order moral claim. To utter 2. is to express approval toward a certain possible moral sensibility. This sensitivity is such that it lets its own attitudes toward kicking dogs be affected by what attitudes toward kicking dogs people have. As Blackburn put it in Spreading the Word (1984, 198):

“Suppose someone said ‘if we had different sentiments, it would be right to kick dogs’. Apparently, he endorses a certain sensibility: one which lets information about what people feel dictate its attitude to kicking dogs. But nice people do not endorse such sensibility. What makes it wrong to kick dogs is the cruelty and pain to animals”.

This response can be simplified by ignoring the higher-order attitude account of conditionals which Blackburn accepted at the time. As I see it, the basic idea is that we consider a scenario in which dogs are kicked and we do not disapprove of it. To utter 2. is to express one’s current lack of disapproval toward kicking dogs in those circumstances. Given that we currently do disapprove of kicking dogs in that counterfactual scenario, we cannot be asked to accept 2 according to expressivists. Rather, in order to express our disapproval toward kicking dogs in the described counter-factual scenario, we can only strongly assert 3.

A similar objection can be formulated against subjectivists:
A) For subjectivists, for me to think that kicking dogs is wrong is for me to believe that I disapprove of kicking dogs.
B) Therefore, if I didn’t morally disapprove of kicking dogs, it wouldn’t be wrong.
C) But, kicking dogs would be wrong even if I approved of it.
D) Therefore, subjectivism makes morality objectionably mind-dependent.

It seems to me that subjectivists could offer a similar response to this objection as expressivists. They too could understand B) as an internal, moralising claim. On this understanding, the antecedent of the subjunctive conditional describes a hypothetical situation in which I lack attitudes of disapproval towards kicking dogs. The wrongness-claim in the consequent then reports what my attitudes toward kicking dogs in those circumstances are. However, there’s no reason for the subjectivists to claim the consequent reports my attitudes toward kicking dogs as they are in the hypothetical situation. Rather, it can report my current actual attitudes toward dogs being kicked in those circumstances. And, because I currently am against kicking dogs even in the hypothetical circumstances in which I would not disapprove of kicking dogs, B) comes out as false and C) as true. As a result, the objection seems to fail for the same reason as it does against expressivism.

Thus, the way forward for subjectivists is to say that moral words like ‘wrong’ describe our actual attitudes even in the context of modal sentences that describe scenarios in which we have different attitudes. This is in the same way as according to expressivists these words express our actual attitudes even in the contexts of modal sentences that describe scenarios in which we have different attitudes.

If we understand subjectivism in this way, we end up with what is called ‘actually-rigidified speaker subjectivism’ (Schroeder 2008, 17, fn. 2). This is the view according to which ‘X is wrong’ is true iff and just because I actually now disapprove of X. Now, I know that there are objections to this kind of actualisation moves with the kind of modal problems I have been discussing. Here I would like to know what the most serious of these problems are.

I’m also interested in whether these are only objections to the subjectivist response to the problem or whether they also affect the expressivist response. Given that these responses are so similar to one another, it’s hard for me to see an objection here that could only affect Blackburn but not subjectivists or subjectivists but not Blackburn. So, for example, Zangwill’s claim that these responses make moral mind-independence a matter of having a certain moral stand rather than a matter of a conceptual truth seems to equally apply to both responses if it applies to one of them. I’d be delighted though if there were objections that only affected one of these responses and not the other.

A Searchable Database of Philosophers?

2013-05-09T08:48:09-05:00

I have been thinking for a while that it would be quite valuable if there were a list of philosophers that was searchable by area of research, gender, race, grad student/junior/senior status, etc. Such a list would appear to be useful to folks searching for appropriate referees for papers, for folks trying to make sure they are not overlooking excellent junior women for their volume or conference on Kantian ethics, or for folks trying to fill out an APA symposium on a particular topic.

After posting this idea on Facebook yesterday I learned from Sally Haslanger that the APA ad hoc committee on the status and future of the profession has determined that there is a need for such a database. I was especially happy to also learn from Dave Chalmers that the good folks who bring you Phil Papers (and such) are planning just such a database.

So I was hoping to generate some discussion about what this database should look like. It seems clear to me that it should be at the individual’s option whether he or she is listed by sex or race. Should participation be entirely voluntary such that others may not list one as philosopher of science? This seems trickier. On the one hand, it would be nice if the list was complete or nearly so and there are some who may not object to being so listed but will not get around to bothering to register. On the other, it is possible that a person may be mislabeled if they do not do the labeling themselves. Seemingly it would be ideal if people had the option of adding their CV or a write up of their interests to their listing in the database. Another issue is if there should be a limit to the number of areas of philosophy a person can claim as areas of research. If there is such a limit, then people like Frank Jackson might be left off lists they belong on. But if there is no such limit people might exaggerate how many areas they are research active in. Also, what are the categories we want people to be able to register (or be registered) under? How fine-grained should those categories be?

I seek input on these and other questions concerning such a database of philosophers.