Justice

This post is a short one, but I just want to outline Taylor's conception of justice. For him, what is good is not in any way independent of human beings, however it is not based on convention either. He sees the good as something that emerges from the facts of human life and experience meaning that it is not arbitrary and could not be changed by human beings. Man is not the measure of all things because, at the very least, he is not the measure of himself.

Taylor understands justice in a very similar way. He sees it as being not a convention as it is something which naturally emerges as a result of the facts about human life i.e. that we are social creatures. Justice is not something that is arbitrary, nor can it be changed as, in Taylor's mind, it is simply the realization of the evil possibilities of conflict and the good possibilities of cooperation. Thus, it is in essence the principle: "do not hinder, but help". It is from this principle that all other social conventions are formed and, though these conventions may vary as a result of differing conditions that people may face, the underlying principle of justice remains. On such a picture, the moral laws of societies may differ and thus what is morally right and wrong may be relative, but the basic principle of justice remains the same and is immutable. I am reminded of Williams here.

To clarify this idea, Taylor compares justice to nourishment. Different societies eat different things, but they eat for the purpose of nourishment. Different societies have different laws and institutions but they do so for the purpose of justice. That is Taylor's idea on justice in a nutshell.

The Common Good and Sympathetic Projection

After discussing the beginnings of his ethical theory, Taylor goes on to explain how his theory handles conflicts of desires. To do this Taylor imagines first what is the greatest good for a man which he concludes is the satisfaction of all his desires. This however is impossible given that certain desires conflict with one another in that the satisfaction of one means that the other is thwarted. Given this fact, Taylor believes that the best possible scenario for man is the satisfaction of as many desires as possible. For example, suppose that a parched man comes upon a poisoned well. One of his desires is to quench his thirst by taking a drink, yet this conflicts with his stronger desire which is to continue living. As a result, the good for this man is to not drink from the poisoned well.

Taylor then takes this conception from the internal case and applies it to conflicts of desires between individuals. In such a case the COMMON GOOD (capitalized to emphasize its importance to Taylor) is the satisfaction of as many people's desires as possible with the absolute minimum being thwarted. Thus, in a situation where a child wishes to play with firearms and explosives and his family desires to live in a safe home, the common good would clearly be for the family's desire to be satisfied at the expense of the child. Given his conception of good and evil I can clearly see how he comes to such conclusions. However, what I can not see (yet) is why anyone would have a reason to act for the common good when it is not in their favor. This is sort of the problem that Hobbes faces as you said in your comment. Nevertheless though, this is only the foundation for Taylor whereas it is the whole thing for Hobbes.

Therefore, Taylor believes that all institutions, practices, laws, etc. are to be evaluated in terms of this conception of the common good. An institution that satisfies more desires than it thwarts is good, while one that does the opposite is evil. However, it is not as simple as this. Taylor does consider the strength of desires and believes that the strength must be taken into account as well. In some ways the view that he is giving sounds as though it will face problems similar to those faced by utilitarianism, but this is not the case as Taylor believes that certain desires (such as the desire to live) are in most cases always stronger than the desire to take life which means that just because a lot of people desire to kill another person it is not entailed that it would be good for them to do so.

Yet, determining the strength of another person's desire is not very easy all the time, so Taylor asks that we adopt the Hare-like idea which he calls SYMPATHETIC PROJECTION (again, capitalized because it is important down the line for Taylor) which, more or less, imagining yourself in that person's shoes. Or, more precisely, imagining that you had the desires that they do and then determining how strong such desires would be i.e. if wondering about slavery then one ought to imagine the desires of a potential slave and a potential slave-owner and take it from there.

This is essentially Taylor's foundation and though, as you have commented, it sounds a bit like Hobbes, this is not where he finishes. There is a lot to come. As a quick side note to your comment on my last post, I do not exactly see how reason could be more than a tool. Though it could be used for determining which desires to cultivate and which to try to eliminate it could only do so as a result of one having desires about their desires. (This reminds me a of way that compatiblists try to get out of determinism by talking about preferences about preferences that does not seem to work.) In other words, I may foster my desire to study philosophy but that is only because it is the sort of desire I desire to have. Nevertheless, I certainly find your point interesting about the possibility of one desiring to stack rocks, etc. It would seem that even though one desires such things they do not seem to be very good or even good for the person. Though I am not sure... We might think that they are good for that person because maybe he is a simple man and we still might say that though they are good for him they would not as good as other desires for some reason or another. At any rate, I think that Taylor could accomodate this on his conception of the Common Good by saying that the stacking stones desire is similar to the drinking desire (in the poisoned well example) and that some other, higher desire would be like the staying alive desire. Just a thought.

Conative Beings

In his book "Good and Evil", Taylor makes it clear that in his mind the most important factor about human beings, with regard to ethics, is that we are conative beings (i.e. have desires, needs, wants, goals, etc.). In other words, we have purposes and act so as to bring about certain ends; it makes sense to ask of a person why he is doing something. This is so important for Taylor because he believes that without such a fact there would be no good or evil. He imagines the world before there was life and concludes that there simply could be no good or evil there, nor could there be any in a world inhabited by beings who were not conative in their nature. Such beings would be able to percieve the world and make inferences but would never act so as to bring anything about. Worlds such as these would have no good or evil because there would be no needs or wants which could be aided or thwarted by the facts of that world. In essence, on Taylor's view good and evil exist only as the relation obtaining between the facts and a person's (or any suitably advanced being's I would imagine) desires. Good and evil are in no way woven into the fabric of the universe; they have no "higher" mystique to them in Taylor's conception.

I don't know about this. But I like the idea because such a low view of what good and evil are is usually the position inhabited by relativists and egoists, so if Taylor can pull a real deal ethical system up from such humble beginnings it would be very impressive.

Important side note: For Taylor reason is mostly just a tool of the will (which in his terminology just means the desires, wants, etc.). One desires X and then puts reason to use so as to determine the most efficient means possible for achieving his end of X. Thus, reason has little (or even nothing) to do with the end itself in Taylor's mind and is best understood as a tool.

In order to understand the nature of good and evil, Taylor entertains a thought experiment imagining that there was only one conative being on Earth. If this were so then good would consist solely in the objects of his desire and the means for achieving them and evil would consist solely in the objects of his aversion and those things that frustrate his desires. Therefore, such a world would have good and evil, yet it would not have any morally rights or wrongs. This is because there are no other people meaning that there is no standard by which such judgments can be made.

Next, Taylor imagines the addition of another conative being. The criteria for good and evil would remain the same in this case desipte the fact that these two beings may differ in their goals and aversions. Given that such a differences occur then Taylor seems to think that the goods and evils are relative to the individual. The importance of this addition however is that it creates the possibility for cooperation and for conflict. Cooperation is clearly a good as it makes possible the attainment of many other goods that could not have been attained when there was only one conative being. For example, together they can achieve more complex tasks, defend against problems more successfully, trade with one another and enjoy the pleasures of friendship. Nevertheless, conflict is also a possibility which could arise when the two beings find the same thing to be good yet only one can have it. In such a case however, the ensuing conflict could result in evils that far outweigh the good of the particular object in question. As a result, conflict would most certainly be viewed as an evil. So as to prevent these evils and encourage the goods of cooperation, certain modes of behavior will arise (Taylor calls these "rules" which threw me off at first, but then I realized that all he meant was "modes of behavior" or "ways of acting" etc., yet I feel that he should have avoided using the term "rule" simply because of the connotations that it has and the fact that it can confuse the reader a tad). An example of such a way of acting would be that whoever gets a particular good first gets to have it uncontested and so on. Over time, such modes of behavior will become increasingly more commonplace which will eventually lead to their being codified (not necessarily written) within the group. This is where morally right and wrong enter the picture as they are simply to be understood as adherence or violation of the accepted modes of behavior.

This is more or less Taylor's background for his theory. It sounds a bit contractarian, but I am not entirely sure that that is the wrong way to start. Though, I really do not know. At any rate such a start does not sound implausible. Moreover, I find it very interesting that he starts with such low conceptions of good and evil, right and wrong. To go from here to what he will later call his "ethics of aspiration" will, I think, be quite and interesting journey.

The Two Assumptions Foot Undermines

In her paper "Moral Beliefs", Foot sets out to investigate and undermine two assumptions underlying the thought that facts and values are entirely distinct. These two assumptions are: 1) One may without error base his beliefs about matters of value entirely on premises which non one else would recognize as giving evidence at all, and 2) Given the kind of statement which other people regard as evidence for an evaluative conclusion he may refuse to draw the conclusion because this does not count as evidence for him.

The thought that someone holding these assumptions would have is that saying that something is "good" is simply expressing a feeling or a "commending sentiment". Therefore because someone will feel however they feel and can commend whatever they like, not facts will change their mind unless they want themselves want to change their mind. To refute this, Foot considers the concept "dangerous" and says that it would be considered by people of this view to be a word expressing a "warning sentiment". The problem is however, that it only makes sense to warn someone about something that you yourself view as an actual threat and what you see as a threat is vulnerable to facts. For example, if you think that a lone ant is a threat you will warn against it and call it dangerous, yet if someone told you that an ant can not harm you and then proved it by picking up the insect and remaining unharmed, you would no longer view ants as such a threat. Thus, the concept "dangerous" could not have to do solely with value and have nothing whatsoever to do with the facts of the case.

Nevertheless, one may claim that what one counts as a threat is dependent on what one takes to be good and bad for himself and thus one may think that Foot has begged the question in this example. When one considers, though, such virtues such as prudence, temperance and courage it seems impossible to imagine them as being anything but good for a human life. No matter what someone's pursuit is, these qualities will be beneficial to (good for) that person. If this is true then values supervene on facts and are not entirely separate from them.

This just seems right to me, so I do not have much in the way of commentary. Nevertheless, I found it worthwhile and liked some of her examples. Now on to Taylor, but maybe a little Nagel first...

Modern Moral Philosophy - G. E. M. Anscombe

In her paper, Anscombe deals with our conception of the "moral ought" and "moral wrongs" and her conclusions are similar to the ones of Richard Taylor in the second essay of his I discussed earlier. However, she begins her paper by stating that philosophers are not in a position to do serious ethics because we do not know enough about the philosophy of psychology. Without truly understanding such things as intentions, motivations and actions, Anscombe does not think that we can even begin to answer the questions of ethics. She say that it is an ethical question whether or not an unjust man is a bad one, but what exactly "justice" is and, thus, what exactly virtues are, are questions not for ethics but for the philosophy of psychology. Because we do not know these answers she does not think that we can make much progress in ethics until answers are had.

I am not sure that I agree here. Given the nature of ethics, I do not think that it would be profitable to simply hold off in trying to answer ethical questions as they deal with issues of great importance where we must act in some way. To be fair, I think that she only means that philosophers should not write on the the subject because they do not know what they are talking about (yet), however I am not so sure about this. I know how to drive a car as well as the basics of keeping it operational despite the fact that I do not entirely understand how it works. Moreover, I would not refrain from trying to answer some sort of question which pertained to the driving of the car (not the workings of it though) despite the fact that I do not know how it works. For reasons such as these I do not think what one would need to completely understand human psychology in order to study ethics.

After this Anscombe talks about deriving an "ought" from an "is" and the problem that this poses for ethics. She thinks that it is really not a problem after all and that it is only a problem because of our conception of "morally ought" which is supposed to prompt action. She does not think that the ordinary sense of ought is like this and thus does not think that one can not derive it from and is. For example she takes the example of a plant which is suffering from a lack of watering. She thinks that it is obvious from this fact that such a plant needs water/should have water/ought to have water because such statements does not imply that the speaker wants the plant to have water but rather that the speaker recognizes the fact that the plant needs water in order to flourish. Similarly, to say that an engine should be oiled is simply to say that an engine with no oil runs badly or not at all (meaning that it does not function properly). None of this implies that these considerations have any sway over a person's actions unless that person wants see the plant flourish or the engine run. Thus there is no necessary connection between these needs and oughts and your wants and actions. However, there is such a connection when the needs are your own. (People tend to want what they need.) I found this interesting because it seems helpful to virtue ethics. If you can show that people need such an such for a flourishing life (in the way a plant needs water) then you can avoid the second problem of ethics (the why problem) of how you can get people to do good things.

Unlike the "moral ought" none of these "oughts" and "shoulds" are to be taken as having any sway over one's actions. The moral ought does however and thus it is this ought that can not be derived from is. The moral ought, according to Anscombe, only makes sense in terms of law be that divine law or a piece of Kant's self-legislation. What is important here is that the content the moral ought and the moral rights and wrongs comes from there being some sort of law that actions stand in relation to. However, given the fact that many no longer ascribe to such ideas about law ethics, Anscombe thinks that the moral oughts and rights and wrongs which are derived from them should be jettisoned as well, for without the laws they make no sense. (She also mentions a problem with thinking that such laws could be the basis for morality as there will then have to be some sort of moral imperative outside the system of laws which says that one should follow this particular system. Yet, this means that the system of laws is not enough by itself...) Despite thinking that such concepts should be thrown out, she still thinks we can do ethics because Aristotle in the ancients were perfectly able to consider ethical questions without worrying about moral oughts and rights and wrongs.

She then goes on to discuss Utilitarianism and Consequentialism and shows their many faults, yet that part was not directly relevant to virtue ethics so I will not write about it here. Near the end she talks a little about justice and distinguishes between intrinsically unjust and situationally unjust. What she sees as intrinsically unjust would be to try and judicially punish someone for something that he had not done. Whereas something that is situationally unjust would be to not pay a debt or to deprive another of his property, yet these actions could be rendered just given certain circumstance which is not the case when dealing with the intrinsically unjust. She says that a point in favor of using concepts of unjust over wrong is that in the case of an attempt to punish a man for something that he had not done there is not question whether or not it is unjust, yet one may wonder about whether or not it was wrong (in the moral sense of course). This is meant to show the superiority of the conception of justice over that of morally wrong as it is much easier to apply than the other which is fraught with difficulties.

I found this paper very interesting and also found some of its ideas to be very similar to those of Taylor (maybe he read Anscombe?). Anyway, the idea of certain moral terms being without content is something that I find very fascinating and, if true, seems to leave virtue ethics as one of the only viable alternatives.


Quick comment on the Vonnegut (sp?) story

I do not think that his story with the robot creating humanity so that they would create the materials for his ship repairs is the sort of purpose virtue ethicists are taking about. In virtue ethics the purpose that we are dealing with is the purpose of a human life qua humanity. Maybe I am wrong here, but I feel as though the considerations must in some way be internal in the sense of what is my purpose given that I am a human being, not the question is what is the purpose of human beings to, say, the universe or anything else external to humanity itself. This is very brief and underdeveloped, but I just wanted to touch on it so that I would remember it for discussion later.

Two Richard Taylor Essays

Time and Life's Meaning

As it is very important for virtue ethics that human beings have some sort of purpose, I thought that this article might therefore help in getting a conception of what that purpose might be. Moreover, because Richard Taylor is a virtue ethicist, it would seem that his account of human purpose would be very relevant in my study.

In the article, Taylor considers what makes things meaningful or important in some way. First he imagines what our universe would be like if there were no life so as to examine whether or not it would be meaningful. Though there would be novelties in such a world (i.e. snowflake patterns that have never before existed) there would be no meaning because every event that occurred would be somehow implicit in the events and conditions that came before it. Every future occurance could be predicted beforehand and, in a sense, nothing would ever change. There would be no unique occurances, so to speak.

Taylor then considers this world with the addition of animals save human beings. This world would also lack meaning for similar reasons. Again, there would be the novelty similar to that of a snowflake, but nothing of an interesting sort. Each animal would live out its life cycle with invariance resulting in no difference between, say, a squirrel from a 100 years ago and one from the present. Again, what would be lacking something that is unique. Taylor compares this world to an endless play where all the acts are identical. All that ever changes is the actual actors, yet the plot, costumes, lines, etc. are always the same. This would thus lack in meaning or significance because it would not matter which act and audience saw performed.

Finally, human beings, rational animals, enter the picture. Yet, simply adding people to the mix does not create meaning. Taylor considers the myth of Sisyphus in order to show this. Sisyphus is an example of a human being whose life is not meaningful because he does the same repetitive task all day everyday (pushing a boulder up a hill where, once on top, it rolls down and he must perform the task again). The meaninglessness would not change if he had a smaller boulder or if he liked rolling boulders as it remains pointless repetition. Taylor considers other modifications so as to show what it would take to make Sisyphus's life meaningful until he imagines that, rather than the same rock over and over, Sisyphus pushes a new rock up the hill each time and that then these rocks are put together one by one to build a beautiful temple. Yet, this is still not enough for Taylor as such a story is consistent with Sisyphus being a slave who is compelled to move these rocks. Though he may know what is going on, what he is doing and think that the temple is beautiful, his life is still not meaningful as he has no control over what he is doing. The modification that is needed in order to make such a life meaningful would be for Sisyphus to push the rocks to the top of the hill for the very purpose of creating this temple which is the product of his own creative intelligence. It is something that would not have existed but for his imagination and efforts and it is finally then that his life, or at least his current pursuit has meaning. In essence, it is creating which give meaning.

All in all, I am not so sure what I think about Taylor's ideas here. They are certainly interesting and it does seem intuitive (to me at least) to think that Sisyphus's pursuit is not meaningful or significant until it becomes something that he is doing for his own purposes as a result of his own projects. Nevertheless, I am unsure as to what the standard is here, in that is is Sisyphus or someone(thing) else that determines when his activities become meaningful. If it is him, then the whole things seems arbitrary, yet if it is something external, then what (or who) is it? Taylor does not say much here and I do not really no what to think about it, though I certainly do agree with him that there is a great difference between a world lacking entirely in any human creations (in the sense here discussed) and the same world with simply one addition, say, the Sistine Chapel. There seems to be a supreme difference in these two worlds, so I am sympathetic to Taylor's views but do not know how to justify them.

Here is a quick thought: I have been thinking about what sort of external standard Taylor could appeal to so as to justify this ideas on what makes life meaningful. Certainly an external standard seems necessary in order to prevent arbitrariness, but it also seems hard to find. However, could it be the case that the proper standard for this sort thing would be the human standard or just that which humanity sees as meaningful. So I guess my thought is that the talk about meaning and significance is to be understood in terms of meaningful, not the universe or something of that nature, but to humanity as a whole. Or, maybe, in other words, it is those pursuits and activities whose products yield the goods that make life worth living which are endowed with meaning. Just a thought...

Ancient Wisdom and Modern Folly

I thought that this essay would be worthwhile because it deals with the ancient and modern understandings of the terms "good", "happiness" and "justice" as well as touching upon the uses of such words as "right", "wrong" and "obligatory" in modern ethical theory.

It would not be odd in contemporary society to say of a poor, humble, insignificant man that, despite these features, he is a good man. For the ancients however, this would be entirely ridiculous. The notion of a good man for the thinkers of so many years past was tied to the notion of a superior man; a person who was literally better than average people. A good man is better than other men as a result of his possession of the virtues meaning it is through the possession and exercise of these that makes him superior. Being virtuous, on the ancient conception, is the same as being good, which is the same as being superior. This is not even all that odd when you think about it. A good hammer is superior to an average hammer simply because its possesses virtues that make it better at hammering nails than the average hammer. The ancients, Taylor says, thought that the opposite of a good man was a common or insignificant one which is quite different from the more modern conception whose opposite would be mean or vicious.

With regard to happiness, Taylor also thinks that the meanings of the ancients and the moderns is quite different. Nowadays we tend to describe happiness as a feeling somewhat on a par with well-being and enjoyment. Essentially, it is a subjective emotion more or less. Contrariwise, the ancients believed it to be more of a state that one inhabited given the satisfaction of certain conditions (i.e. being virtuous, having certain externals, etc.) and thus did not see happiness and something subjective at all. In the minds of the ancients, one could objectively determine whether or not one had obtained this rare and greatly valued state simply by looking at the sort of life they had led (or are leading). Happiness, on this view, in terms of the type of thing it is, is on a par with being healthy rather than with feeling depressed. The important difference here is that in wondering whether or not someone is healthy it is the testimony of the doctor that holds more weight than the person in question, whereas in the case of depression it is the testimony of the person in question which takes precedence. As a result, the final judge in determining whether or not a man is happy is not necessarily that man. With a conception of happiness like this, utilitarianism and its happiness maximization schemes are just nonsense.

Taylor also describes the ancient Greek conception of "justice" which he says two understandings. What Plato had in mind in his Republic was justice as a virtue whose expression was the harmonious condition of the soul. The other understanding, which can be found in Aristotle and others, is justice as custom regulating the buying and selling of goods, making contracts, etc. In other words, a just man would one who adhered to the laws and customs of his homeland. The idea that justice was something that had its origin outside of humanity, was universally binding and fixed was quite foreign to these thinkers despite the fact that this is just what our modern conception is like. On a conception such as this, which Taylor seems to favor, it makes no sense to speak of an unjust law because the just simply is the laws and practices of the state whose law is being discussed. Essentially, it makes justice relative to the society being discussed and thus can not be used to criticize another society (one can't say that this or that society is unjust). What one can say, however, is how well or poorly the laws, customs and practices of another society contribute to the prosperity of its citizens. This reminds me very much of Williams where in one of his final chapters he says that it would be possible to determine which ethical system is better for mankind. His idea made no sense to me at the time but in light of what Taylor is saying I think that I can make more sense of it. Moreover, thinking of justice has an important benefit: one can verify the claim that a certain set of laws is better than another for producing happy (and I mean happy in the ancient sense), thriving citizens whereas one could not verify a claim that a certain set of laws are unjust (there is nothing you could point to, other than your theory, that would confirm it). I found this very interesting.

Finally, Taylor talks about modern notions of "right", "wrong" and "obligatory". He says that such words only have a sense when set in relation to rules, laws, etc. As a result, these concepts can only be applied to actions that fall within the jurisdiction of the relevant set of laws. For the so called moral rights and wrongs, then, there must be some universal moral law which determines them. Yet showing there to be such things is exceedingly difficult and would require either a divine lawgiver, some sort of Kantian metaphysics, or etc. Whichever one of these one selects, these theories are problem laden (and I think they fail). If it is true that there are no such laws, then it is also true that there can be no moral rights and wrongs and obligations, yet this does not mean the end for ethics as these were not the things that ancient moralists were concerned with. What remains is ethics that deals with virtue and happiness and such an ethics may be very successful.

I found Taylor's analysis very interesting and good. I agree with his discussion of the ancient meanings of "good", "happiness" and "justice" and think that it is necessary to have these conceptions in mind when considering virtue ethics. Moreover, it really shows how radically different virtue ethics is as a theory when compared to the other major theories. At any rate, his discussion of moral rights and wrongs was also very interesting. I think that it is more or less correct. What he did say that I was a little unsure of was that without laws pertaining to these actions there is no murder just killing, there is no theft just taking and there is no owning just occupying. The third one seems right to me, but the first two I am unsure of. Maybe this is because I am just so acculturated with notions of moral right and wrong... What I thought was interesting though was that his view on these terms seems to imply that without the law the Williamesque "thick" concepts are eliminated. Murder is a thick concept whereas killing is not, which I thought was interesting. So far I must say that I like Taylor. I do not know if he is right, but he offers a very different way of looking at things which I think is, at the very least, worth considering.

Anyway, that is all for now. More to come shortly.

Key

The purpose of this post is just to make sure that the blog is working properly and also to be a key for future posts. The key is as follows:

1. When writing in regular type I am writing the ideas of the author I am reading.
2. When writing in italics I am writing my own thoughts and ideas.
3. When writing in bold I am asking a question.

That is all for now.