Why Be An Expressivist?

I have often taken it to be a norm of philosophical inquiry that one should assume that one's fellow philosophers come to their positions for rational reasons and would reject them if given good reason to do so. One adds to that statement the ceteris paribus clause. Sometimes evidence tells us otherwise. Philosophers are not always rational. But do we have any reason to believe that the expressivist is in this camp? Given the current state of metaethics, there is no good reason to take this position.

I will start by talking about someone who is honest about his beliefs and the evidence. This someone is willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads (unlike Dawkins), and is well informed about the current state of metaethics. This someone chooses to believe in expressivism and rejects accounts of morality that are realist in nature. He is aware that others disagree and may even be somewhat familiar with the current debates in the philosophy of religion. He is not a theist. My point is that such people as this exist.

This person is an expressivist for three reasons. The first reason is naturalism. Given naturalism expressivism is the best explanation of morality. However, this person is not going to rest the entire case on a vindication of naturalism. He also claims that expressivism is the best explanation given all of our current theories of morality, regardless of whether that theory is natural. Finally, he claims that expressivism is simpler because there is no need for the extra ontology of moral realism. Let's examine these claims one at a time.

The claim that naturalism supports expressivism is something I will agree with and ignore. First off, naturalism is not a part of metaethics. It is either an epistemological belief or a metaphysical belief. Second, and more importantly, one is rarely given the reasons for believing that naturalism is true. It is presupposed in much of modern philosophy and little evidence is given to support it. Therefore, I will simply reject it and claim that my rejection is as justified as the modern acceptance of said doctrine is.

The second reason concerns the belief that expressivism is the best explanation of morality. One simply takes all current theories of morality and compares them. I will only consider varieties of moral realism. These varieties come in two forms: naturalist and non-naturalist. There are only two versions of non-naturalism: the Platonic theory and divine command theory. Naturally, both of these are implausible. The Platonic theory supposes that the moral facts are in Platonic heaven. This belief means that our knowledge of moral facts is mysterious at best. The motivation behind morality is unexplained and the rationality of morality is also unexplained. Finally, the content of the moral facts is also unexplained. The divine command theory is not any better. It suffers from the Euthyphro dilemma. It also fails to explain why some things are wrong or right even though God has not commanded that they be done or not done. Finally, it fails to explain the connection between God's commanding something and it being right. So non-natural realism is implausible.

Naturalist realism is also implausible. One cannot analytically identify any moral fact with a natural fact. For we could meaningfully ask whether or not the supposed fact "being happy" really was good. So any identity must be a synthetic identity. All of the proposed examples of synthetic identities have severe problems with them. Therefore, naturalist realism is also implausible. Therefore, realism is implausible.

Expressivism is not as implausible as these options. It ties moral motivation to conative states such as desires, commands and commitments. It explains moral reasoning by analogy with the reasoning we employ with such conative states. It also supplies an explanation for the commonalities and the differences in moral approaches by noting that most human beings want the same sorts of things. Since morals are not beliefs, there is no need to explain moral facts. Since morals are identical with our own conative states, our knowledge of them can also be explained. Although there are some problems with expressivism, realism has more problems.

The final reason is simplicity. We want a moral theory to avoid relativism, account for our moral practices and reasoning, and explain the various features of moral discourse. Since expressivism does all of this without moral facts, there is no need for a realism that does have moral facts. Therefore, expressivism is a simpler theory.

Given the point that these assertions can be rather easily defended in the current literature of moral theory, my hypothetical expressivist seems rather real. So unless we have a particular reason to doubt the rationality of a particular expressivist, we should count the expressivist as a rational philosopher. If we wish to defend realism, then we will need to develop a moral theory that is better than the ones currently available. We also need to point out reasons that an expressivist theory cannot account for morality. Until then, expressivism is not only a rational position but also the best explanation for morality in current metaethics.

Goodness as a Comparative Term

I have reached the point at which looking further into the issue of moral boundaries will not progress without a better understanding of normative terms. One of these terms is goodness. Sometimes we use this term in a comparative sense. This may be done without verbally indicating that a comparison is being performed, or with such a comparison. In all cases of comparison, an ideal is being compared with the object.

Some examples are in order. Consider the statement "this is a good piece of meat". What is meant is not that a piece of meat is morally good, but that the piece of meat is reasonably similar to the ideal piece of meat. In context, we may be speaking in terms of health, taste or some combination of those. If we are speaking of taste, then we are simply claiming that the meat tastes the way that we like meat to taste. If we are speaking of health, then we are claiming that the meat is good for our health. Consider a second example: "this construction company is better than the one that built my house". In this case the product or skills of the construction company is being compared with a second company. One is more similar to the ideal construction company than the other, and their products are more similar to the ideal than the other.

In these examples one can understand what is going on. A comparative use of the normative term good takes some act, process or object and claims that it is similar to the ideal act, process of object. This has a few interesting results. The first one is that the concept of goodness is not actually being used in some kind of moral sense. All that it means is similarity. The second one is that much of the work is being done by the ideal object, act or process. This means that every comparative use of goodness only requires the use of similarity and an ideal. What has been applied to goodness can also be applied to badness with the same result. The next step is to investigate the nature of the ideal.

Naturalism and First Philosophy: Logic & Rationality

I pointed out in an earlier post that the naturalist can still deny the necessity of first philosophy by claiming that the principle of non-contradiction is a component of something else (such as rational thought). This something else would then be justified on the basis of pragmatic value or experience. This is the final move available to the naturalist. This forces the naturalist to ground rationality by design, accident or necessity.

The idea that the principle of non-contradiction is a component of rational thought is surely true. In fact, to the extent that one denies the principle in practice one is no longer thinking rationally. So the principle of non-contradiction is a necessary condition of rationality - both practically and theoretically. However, one would not want to claim that the principle is a sufficient condition. The belief that the President is an alien because the voices told me is irrational. Yet is not contradictory.

Once again one can note that rationality can be justified pragmatically in one of two ways. Either one can claim that one's experience grounds one's belief in one's rationality or that one's rationality is grounded in the circumstances of its origin. Since rationality is a practice, it cannot be grounded unless it works correctly. I am assuming that one is rational if and only if one's thinking processes that are aimed at the truth function in a way consistent with their aim, and that at least some of one's thinking processes do aim at the truth. Now our rationality can be grounded in historical circumstances only if these circumstances caused our rationality to be truth aimed. One's experience cannot ground rationality itself, it can only justify beliefs in one's own rationality. Since that is a different claim, I will focus on the actual ground of rationality rather than our belief that we are rational.

To point out the grounding problem in a different way, consider it as the question of why it is that our thinking processes that are aimed at the truth function in a consistent manner, and why we have such processes. These are two different ways of looking at the same problem. Since the naturalist believes that science (or empirical investigation) must provide the answer to this question. Therefore, if naturalism is true then empirical investigation will be able to discover both why we have thinking processes that are aimed at the truth and why these processes are consistent. Since empirical investigation is done using rational methods, the results obtained are meaningful only if they were obtained by a rational method. That means that empirical investigation cannot ground rationality. It can only tell us (at most) what occurred in order to give us the rational processes we do have.

Since no empirical investigation has been done on the matter, one must proceed hypothetically. There are several different ways that rationality could be grounded. It could be grounded as the aim of a particular process. In that case, rationality would be designed as such. It could be grounded as the product of particular process in which rationality was an accidental by-product. This would be the case in which rationality was not designed but was made. It could also be grounded in necessity. This is the case in which rationality is eternal and so are our processes. These separate options must each be addressed before naturalism gives way to first philosophy.

Kant and the Logic of Morality

There are some people, such as my professor, who do not believe that intuition is useful for philosophy. I am not completely sure what he believes about it, but I do believe that one cannot avoid the use of some sort of intuition in morality. If I have to use it, then I might as well use it right. So why shouldn't philosophers deal with intuition? As I understand it, the only way to avoid this line of reasoning is to adopt the belief that intuition can be avoided. Now one may not be able to completely avoid it, but perhaps a certain area - such as ethics - can be done without it. If this is possible then one is left with the idea facts and logical reasoning are sufficient to know what the right thing to do is. Kant tried to do this and failed.

Kant believed that some act was morally permissible only if it could be successfully universalized. We start off with a maxim. I do something in order to achieve some result. For example, I lie about my identity because I wish to deceive someone. One takes this maxim and pretends that everyone does it. So everyone lies about their identity in order to deceive someone. Now we ask whether or not I could succeed with my action if everyone was doing it. Well, if everyone lied about their identity, then no one would believe anyone's claim about their own identity. So I would not succeed (in such a world) in my aim. Therefore, lying about my identity is immoral.

Now this procedure does get the right answer quite a bit of the time. The problem come from the fact that no limit is placed on how general a maxim is allowed to be. Consider this new maxim: I become a philosophy professor in order to fulfill a desire of mine. Can such a maxim be universalized? Imagine a world in which everyone is a philosophy professor. This would not work - we need to eat after all. So according to Kant, it is immoral to be a philosophy professor. Since this can be extended to absolutely every vocation, it is immoral to have any vocation at all! This is absurd.* Without some kind of restriction of what maxims are appropriate, this procedure does not determine what is right or wrong.

Kant could say (but I am not sure whether he does or not), that the maxim has to be as general as possible. Here is the most generally possible statement: I act because I choose to. On Kant's criteria, this is morally permissible. Nonetheless, not every kind of act is morally permissible - we all know this. So at the most general level, Kant's method fails to give unconditional permission to do something. So Kant cannot be as general as possible with his maxims.

When one looks at the philosophy professor example, one believes that it is perfectly permissible to be a philosophy professor, all other things being equal. However, it is not permissible to be in an immoral vocation such as the drug dealer or assassin. So Kant's moral view would have to say that being an assassin was wrong, but being a philosopher is not. If we use his method without restricting this maxims, this does not happen. If we do restrict his maxims in some particular fashion, then Kant has a different problem.

Kant wishes to say that one only needs the facts and reason to arrive at moral prohibitions. However, the facts do not determine how to restrict the maxims. They only determine whether a universalized maxim is successful. So reason must do so if Kant's method is to succeed. But it is far from clear how one would do this. Kant already has reason supporting the method of universalization. He claims that the usage of morality in our speech shows that all moral claims have that property. In other words, universalization is a part of moral judgments just by being moral judgments. Unless he were to make a similar - and quite implausible - claim about a particular restriction of maxims, then Kant's method fails to give us moral claims.

There is a lesson in all of this. First, one should start with what was right about what Kant said. Surely there is something to the universal character of morality. It is supposed to apply everywhere and to everyone under every possible circumstance. However, it is quite doubtful that one can get moral claims without starting with some kind of moral principles, beliefs or characters. Kant's attempt to show otherwise only illustrates this.

* This illustration and its point were taken from a lecture with the above mentioned philosophy professor.