Ethics Matters: Ethical Issues In Pragmatic Perspective [1st Edition] 3030520358, 9783030520359, 9783030520366

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Ethics Matters Ethical Issues in Pragmatic Perspective

Nicholas Rescher

Ethics Matters

Nicholas Rescher

Ethics Matters Ethical Issues in Pragmatic Perspective

Nicholas Rescher Department of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-52035-9    ISBN 978-3-030-52036-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Susanne Meinl Extraordinary Historian

Preface

Problems of ethics and moral philosophy have preoccupied me for many years, and I have on various occasions published studies dealing with these issues in the professional literature of philosophy. A number of these studies are included here, along with a good deal of unpublished material. (Details of prior publication are given in the relevant chapter’s notes.) The book covers a varied spectrum of ethical topics, ranging from the fundamental considerations regarding ethical values, to the rationale of obligation, and the ethical management of societal and personal affairs. Its coordinative aim throughout is to show how fundamental general principles underpin the stance we can appropriately take on questions of specific ethical detail. I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her painstaking efforts in preparing this material for publication. Pittsburgh, PA

Nicholas Rescher

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Contents

1 Personhood  1 2 The Ethical Import of Value Attribution 41 3 The Rational Validation of Ethical Values 57 4 Rationality and Moral Obligation 73 5 On Compromise and Obligation 85 6 Moral Luck 97 7 Fairness Problems123 8 On the Ethics of Inaction127 9 Ancestor Worship?137 10 Distant Posterity (A Philosophical Glance Along Time’s Corridor)143

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11 Is There a Statute of Limitations in Ethics?169 12 An Ethical Paradox173 13 Collective Responsibility177 14 Allocating Scientific Credit193 15 Morality in Government and Politics207 16 Problems of Betterment215 17 Sovereign Immunity in Theological Ethics233 18 Perfectibility Problems237 Coda245 References247 Index251

CHAPTER 1

Personhood

1   Part I: Humans as Persons 1.1  Human Beings and Being Human Man is an animal and Homo sapiens a mammalian species. But man is not just that, but is a person as well. And this means that we must be able to do—at least sometimes—those sorts of things that mark a person as such and differentiate them from the rest of creation. There are various questions of transition which the Theory of Evolution has made unavoidable. One is that of the point of development at which the pre-human humanoids morphed into Homo sapiens: what does it require for a humanoid mammal to be accounted human? And another is that of the point at which humans qualify as rational agents: what does it require for a member of Homo sapiens to qualify as a rational and morally responsible person? Being human is a relatively straightforward matter. The question just doesn’t arise save in the context of the beings we encounter on the surface of our planet. But being a person is something a great deal more difficult and problematic. Here we are dealing not with biological taxonomy but with a complex manifold and convoluted theoretical matters. For here we are dealing not just with facets of what observationally is the case, but with a manifold of more problematic issues regarding what can and might be. In evolutionary biology, Homo sapiens is a developmental subgroup of beings within the wider category of humanoids. Homo sapiens is a © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_1

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classification subgroup of beings included within the potentially wider groupings of persons. Persons emerge late in the evolutionary time-table—and for understandable reason. For three stages of evaluative sophistication are involved: 1. The plus/minus, pleasure/pain, nice/nasty affective reactivity we find throughout the organic realm. 2. The desirable/undesirable judgmental responses that provide evaluation as we move it along the transit from higher primates to proto-humans. 3. The right/wrong of ethical evaluation rooted in the developed sense of community that comes on the scene with interactive among Homo sapiens. Stage 1 requires sensibility, stage 2 requires conscious reactivity, stage 31 requires rational evaluation by comparison with what would be and should be different and calls for an awareness of contrast. Persons alone have an inner thought-life. Reflectivity is present throughout the range of significantly developed organisms: animals can feed themselves, wash themselves, protect themselves, move themselves, but only persons have the cognitive reflexivity needed for forming a self-conception that enables them to interest themselves, concern themselves, and apprehend and appreciate their own consideration. They alone have the self-­ awareness needed for a self-image in comparative content with feature-attribution to others. Only persons can be proud or ashamed of themselves. Only they can appreciate that there are things they ought or ought not to think or do. Only they can gain entry into the realm of normativity. Animals can form habits of action; persons alone can adopt practical norms and rules. Personhood is a well-established category of human understanding. The Greeks personalized the forces of nature in the Olympian gods. And throughout human history—from before Aesop until after Brer Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh—we humans make persons of the animals that survive us. The “pathetic fallacy”—the ascription of human characteristic to the innovative creations of nature and artifice (the “cruel sea,” the “unsuitable” machine, the “unrelenting” rain, and the like)—is something so natural and commonplace as to deserve a kinder name.

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To all appearances, then, we ourselves hold dual citizenship, both in the human community and in the society of persons. However kinship with our fellows has a somewhat different aspect in the two cases. We are bound to our fellow humans by bonds of biological kinship. And these ground claims to fraternal solidarity that enjoin mankind and in the pursuit of basic needs—the security of life, liberty, opportunity in the pursuit of happiness. Personhood, by contrast, is a more difficult matter. Its impetus is rather paternal than fraternal. To persons we can not only support in basic needs but support in ethical innovation, to enhance the realization of potential, to support their cultural growth, to aid not only their well-being and security and to promote their ultimate ethical and “spiritual” constitution. For, like good parents we actually should—and often do—want to see our fellow persons to be not just better off but to become better people. 1.2  Capacities of Persons Personhood is a decisive classification and being a person is a binary matter—one either is or is not a person. But while we cannot be more or less of a person, one can be a better or worse person. One can certainly honor the obligations and harness the opportunities that being a person puts at one’s disposal to a greater of lesser extent. In this regard personhood is like kingship: a matter of better or worse even if not of more or less. It is important to distinguish between degrees of personhood (which there cannot be) and degrees of evidence for ascribing personhood (which there certainly are). Granted, the grounds for ascribing personhood to X can be partial and incomplete, but X’s personhood (if indeed there) cannot prove to be partial and incomplete. Incomplete evidence for something is not evidence for something incomplete. Again, someone can display and manifest the features requisite for personhood to varying degrees, but that does not make this individual more or less of a person. To reemphasize, personhood as such is a matter of the possession of capabilities and not of the extent and requiring of their actualization. The extent to which a creature quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck may constitutes a stranger case for saying that it is a duck, but it does not make it more of a duck. Like being a person, being a duck, is not a matter of degree. As a creature that makes its way in the world by the guidance of information, we intelligent agents have a need for knowledge. And this enjoins

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a cognitive dynamism on us whose natural consequence is a disaffection from intellectual standing and an aversion to boredom. Our minds require cognitive nourishment every bit as much as our bodies require physical nourishment, and keeping the mind occupied becomes as important as keeping the body fed. Characteristic of persons at large is an impetus to being what is going on in the world and how things function there. Persons must be mind-endowed. They must be capable of having belief, forming opinions about things—in sum to process information, be it correctly or incorrectly. But they must also be capable of having evaluative attitudes about things, pro or con, favorable or unfavorable. Persons are bound to have beliefs about how matters stand in the world, creating for themselves some sort of mental thought-model about its arrangements. And they have various needs and wants that give them an interest in what goes on. On this basis—their beliefs and their interests— they make choices. It is this capacity to deploy beliefs, evaluations, and choices into conjoint operation in an endeavor to produce results is what defines them as persons. Agency guided by cognition, evaluation, and choice constitute the heart of the matter. And to be fully a person, a being should not only preside over the aforementioned capabilities of cognitive and practical intelligence (belief, desire, choice) but be conscious and indeed self-conscious thereof. A reasonable accommodation has to be achieved between two conflicting ideas: • That the limits of a person’s cognitive world are set by the limits of the individual’s experience. Experience accordingly sets limits to the individual’s cognitive reach beyond which it cannot venture very far. • That a person’s reflexivity of understanding enables them to realize that reality extends above and beyond them on cognitive range. The idea of a self, predicated on the contrast between the individual concerned and the rest—both the impersonal remainder but also the personal others. And persons as intelligent beings have a conception of their place in impersonal nature and also as members of a wider grouping of other persons. This twofold, contrastive differentiation is at the cognitive disposal of persons as intelligent agents, and endows them with an unavoidable awareness of a realm of being that extends beyond the self.

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The evaluative dimension spills over into the cognitive. Persons are first and foremost cognitive agents, beings who act on the basis of information and thought. For such beings, radical skepticism is not an option: a systemic refusal to accept contentions creates a 100 percent certainty of lacking the information needed to guide action. A person can reasonably be a mild sceptic, denying the prospect of settling factual issues with 100 percent certainty. But a person cannot reasonably be radical sceptic holding that all factual claims are equimeritorious and that none is deserving of greater credence than any other. For without evaluation rational decision and thereby rational action becomes impossible and persons will no longer function as rational beings. 1.3  Requisites for Personhood And so, it has to be acknowledged that the physical embodiment of persons (if any) involves issues very different from that of personhood itself. The person at issue might be a multi-nodal plurality of jellyfish-like creature swimming connectively in a soupy sea. Or it might be a climate of disembodied potencies leaping from one organic level to another temporarily enhancing it to a different mode of realization. The possibilities are endless, and await the inauguration of science-fiction unified. But this has important consequences, namely, that personhood as such is detached from its physical manifestations, independent of its species and kinds. (Personhood as such knows no race or sex.) The duties, rights, and claims of personhood stand independent of all of these further taxonomic considerations. They are something more fundamental and deep-rooted, with ethical and metaphysical ramifications that stand independently on their own feet. So just what are these person-characterizing capabilities—those personabilities as we shall call them. To all appearances they stand as follows: 1. Intelligence: the ability deploy thought for acquiring and processing information, encompassing consciousness, perception, reasoning 2. Agency: the ability to perform actions—alike mental (e.g., direct attention) and physical (i.e., shift stones) and form habits and rules of action 3. Will: the ability to make decisions, act purposively, using intelligence to direct action for the realization of chosen objectives, thus fusing the two preceding abilities.

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4. Affectivity and judgment: the capacity for positive and negative reductivity, to feel pleasure and pain and to evaluate conditions pro and con, so as to effect evaluation and appraisal, prioritization, assessment of worth 5. Reflectivity or self-awareness: the realization of oneself as a being having the preceding abilities that characterize personhood 6. Communication: the ability to exchange thought with others 7. Socialization: community enlistment and social interaction subject to shared norms and rules The possession of these personabilities does not require the agent to exercise them constantly and consistently. It is simply a matter of being able to do so often and to some nontrivial extent. Capacity rather than performance is of the essence here. These personabilities are majoritatively necessary and sufficient conditions for qualifying as a person.2 Here the connection is one of logico-­ conceptual implication. With evidentiation, however, far less is required. The connection need not be one of logico-conceptual necessitation, but can be a matter of eventual indications, with evidentiation, with considerations of inductive harmonization now in the foreground. Above all, persons must be able to obtain and manage information. And to this end communication is virtually inevitable. For one thing there is the matter of communication with oneself of other times and places by means of memory, recollection, memoranda, and records. For another there is the matter of communication with others. The recording and transmission of information is thus an essential resource of personhood. And the use of language is indemonstrable for the realization of these requisites. All of the essentials of language use—pattern recognition, symbolist realization, pattern detection, habitat acquisition, rule following, etc.—are needed for the operation of the process that implements person-­ definitive capabilities. Persons occupy a special place on Nature’s stage because they are “free agents.” They are agents because they can act through thought-guided intervention in the course of events. And they are free because their thought can be developed autonomously rather than as an automaticity responding to experimental conditioning. No doubt higher primates— and even “lower” animals—can also engage in thought-guided action, but only as the product of stimulus-response experience. Human persons can move beyond this to shape their thinking by experience-transcending

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speculation and conjecture in the light of speculation, conjecture, hypothesis, and counterfactual. Ironically one of the hallmarks of this cognitive skill is the prominence of error due to conclusive-presupposing and wishful thinking. The autonomous self-management of belief characteristic of freely formed beliefs and decisions makes persons cognitive amphibians capable of functioning alike in the spheres of reality and speculative conjecture and mere—and even fact-controversy—positivity. Affectivity and judgment, of course, have both a positive and a negative dimension. But equally important is the negative domain where the question is: Can they suffer—physically or mentally? Can they undergo pain, dismay, frustration? The capacity to function in this domain of the pleasure/pain spectrum is yet another key definitive facet of personhood. Persons are marked as such not only by positive but by negative features as well. As finite beings they are subject to physical pain, mental suffering, and existential termination (i.e., death). Be they natural or artificial, persons are subject to the principle that “nothing lasts forever.” Even if a sort of immobility would be achieved through ongoing processual reportative we would come up against the Ship of Theseus paradox that a reconstituted vessel is only by custom and jurisprudence the same. The Tragic Sense of Life of which the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote so movingly is as inseparable from persons as their own shadow. Whenever there is a plurality of interactive persons it is only to be expected that persons should cluster together into groups. Many factors conspire to result in this: the efficacy of collaboration, the commonality of interest or experience (“Birds of a feather flock together”). The clustering is all too common, “Don’t take it personally” means “Don’t be surprised or offended at being treated in that way; everyone in your group is going to be treated likewise.” The connectivity among persons that is established via groupings reflects a social proximity that is clearly a matter of more or less within many divisions: kinship, friendship, comradeship, colleagueship, etc.—and above all shared experiences: old soldiers find companionship even with the enemies they fought earlier on. (When you meet in totally strange fellow timespans of distant corners of the world you are immediately friends.) 1.4  Being a Person To count as a person calls for functioning on two fronts: the physical to provide for interaction with nature that can provide information, and the

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mental to access, process, and use this information. Both physically interactive and cognitively functional operations must figure in a person’s repertoire. A person must be able to realize things. But are there any specific, particular, identifiable things that a person must be able to realize? Presumably yes—at least at the level of capacities and capabilities. Presumably Cartesian reformalization of an ability to think of oneself as a being, “a thing that can think,” is something of which any actual person must be capable. The ability to see oneself as a distinctive unit in the world’s larger scheme if things—to think the distinction between self and other—is an integral essential feature of personhood. The personabilities are not necessarily conjoined: it is theoretically possible for beings to have some while lacking others. Thus in specific • A being could have intelligence but lack agency. It could be a mere spectator to events it cannot affect, a witness to but not participant in the passing scene. • A being could act without itself possessing cognition and intelligence. It can be a mere machine like those that nowadays produce automobiles. • A being could act with willing purposiveness but lack the cognitive integration of selfhood. It can function as would a band of musicians who just happen to perform the same piece. Such beings, though possible, would not qualify as persons. The personabilities fall into two groups: the indispensable and the likely (or quasi-mandatory). The first division includes intelligence, agency, will, affability, reflexivity. The latter category covers the collective aspect of communication and socialization. In effect this means that the social aspect could theoretically be absent or—as rather multi-nodal beings— integrated into one single “organic” unit. Being a person is a matter of performatory potential—of the capacity for doing the things that typify the things that persons typically do. It is not a matter of more or less—or even of better or worse. What is taxonomically determinative is simply whether or not, and not more or less or better or worse. Even doing something poorly manifests the potential of doing it. (One need not be a competent performer to manifest a capacity.) Personhood is a tertiary property. Magnets have the dispositional capacity to collect iron filings. Sugar has the dispositional capacity to

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dissolve in water and diffuse its sweetness there. Acts of violence or of vandalism have the dispositional capacity to evoke shock and aversion in humans. Dispositions of this sort—to evoke a certain sort of cognitive or affective reaction in humans—are tertiary properties. (Secondary properties, by contrast, inhere in those despondent features that evoke a sensory regime in sentient beings.) The tertiary properties correlate with the metal responses for mind-endowed beings, the responses being judgmental rather that sensitive (as with secondary properties). Personhood is a descriptive characterization of just this sort.

2   Part II: Non-human Persons 2.1  Other Persons Interestingly, it does not lie in the concept of a person that one must necessarily have a body. To be sure, one must be able to act, but this agency could in theory be purely mental—involving solely, say, the direct communication between minds through a sympathetic resonance of some sort. Only contingently—only among agents for whom the transmission of information requires sending physical signals and where its recording requires a physical depository—will persons have to be embodied. Being a person thus contrasts with being human. We humans are Homo sapiens, a biological species that has evolved here on planet earth. To be sure, we are—or like to think we are—persons. But there is no good reason to think that we have a monopoly here—that we are the only persons in the universe. After all, Homo sapiens is a biological category. And what is at issue with personhood is a functional category, a being with the capacity to do certain sorts of things. And there is no basis for envisioning exclusivity here. There is no decisive reason for thinking that humans are the sole and exclusive instances of access to personhood. For one cannot but acknowledge the very real prospect that those non-human persons could perform—and possibly perform better than ourselves—far better at the various person-characterizing abilities than we humans. Christiaan Huygens’ (d. 1695) book Cosmotheros (published posthumously in 1698) was a landmark in the history of speculation about alien life in the cosmos. On the one hand, it was a monumental exercise in imaginative speculation on a scale not reduplicated to the time of Jules Verne and H.  G. Wells. But on the other, it was disappointingly

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conservative. For Huygens, “planetarians” were pretty much like ourselves in makeup, in social organization, and in culture. The difference for him was not all that great. Their variation for his contemporary Netherlanders was not greater—and sometimes less—than that of his contemporary South Sea islanders. And such a failure of imagination also threatens our present deliberations. The threat is that just because the concept at issue with person-here and person-there is one and the same, the realization of that concept must also be very similar. But this similarity should in fact extend no further than that for conceptual features that are at issue with personhood as such. And that list of indistinguishable essentials can surely not extend far beyond the handful of aforementioned personabilities. Examining the scale of nature enable us to see what separates us from the “lower” form of animal life, thus manifesting the basis for our claims to rise above those “inferior” species. The issue is what precedes Homo sapiens in the evolutionary order is critical here. However, the present deliberations call for a very different perspective. Now the question is not what separates us from the “below,” but rather what joins us to what does or might lie “alongside.” The crux here is not differences from the lower forms of being, but rather commonalties that join us to other “higher” forms—be they actual or possible. 2.2  The Evolutionary Perspective How is it that persons have come to exist in the world? Like everything else they have come to be there in the course of natural events inserted into Nature’s scheme of things by the processes of evolution: first apes, then humanoids, then proto-humans, and then full-fledged human persons—and elsewhere conceivably either sort of persons emerged by analogous developmental processes. There is no reason why a Nature capable of evolutionary intelligence would not in due course engender rationality as well, and the same with an emergence of agents whose doings are guided by intelligence and reason. Like persons and people, in the course of natural processuality evolution has given rise to persons as well. There is no need to think that anything super- or supranatural is at work here. Beings with all sorts of abilities—physical, perceptual, cognitive, and imaginative engaged in the course of Nature’s ongoing processuality. There is no need to exert the manifold of personabilities from this course of things.

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Thought, decision, speculation, and the rest are emergent capacities that increasingly complex and substandard natural beings have come to muster. Persons as we know them are the product of evolutionary development. Apes evolved into humanoids; humanoids into humans, humans into persons. Evolution brings new qualities to the fore that can transcend origins. DNA molecules are an assemblage of physical atoms but they encompass the key to organic life. Birds doubtless initially developed song for signaling warnings of danger, but that did not preclude the evolutionary transmutation of song-behaviors into means for establishing territoriality against potential competition. The physical rooting of an activity or process does not restrict or circumscribe its functional character. The emergence of new modes and levels of operation, function, and behavior that transcend the capabilities of their causal origination is in fact characteristic of evolutionary processes. For the first microseconds of cosmic history after the big bang there was no chemistry. The early stages of the universe had no place for biology. There was no foothold in nature for laws of sociology or market-economics before the origin of man. The emergence of new phenomena at different levels of scale and organizational complexity in nature means the emergence of new processes and stats at these levels. The transition from protophysical to physical and then to chemical and onwards to biological law reflects a succession of new levels of operational complexity. And this holds good for purposive intelligence as well—it is a new phenomenon that emerges at a new level of operational complexity. New products and processes constantly develop from earlier modes of organization. The emergence of the psychological processes that open up meaning and purpose is simply another step in this course of development of new levels of functional complexity. It is important to bear in mind, however, that while causal explanation proceeds from a mind-external point of view, cognitive functions like meaning and purpose can be comprehended as such only from within—in the order of hermeneutical understanding. The physical processes that lie at the causal basis of thought are, as such, fully open to second-party (“external”) examination, description, explanation, and modelling. But the ideational aspect of thinking can of course only be apprehended in one’s own first-hand experience (though of course it can be described to others who have similar experiences at their disposal.) There is, accordingly, a crucial difference between having a causally productive account of the physical-process concomitants of human mental operations (of the sort that biological evolution provides) and having experiential access to

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its products “from within.” Meaning, intending, understanding, purposing are all resources that are only at the disposal of someone who himself has the appropriate sort of foothold within the realm of mind. Understanding them requires performing them, and performing them requires being a mind and having those mental experiences. (Explaining them, on the other hand, can, in principle, be managed by any sort of sufficiently intelligent being.) Proper heed of this distinction between the productive causal basis and the descriptive functional nature of mental operations should lead to the recognition that one should not ask an evolutionary account of mind to do the impossible in this regard. Such an account can perfectly well explain the developmental origination of mental operations in terms of their causal basis, but it cannot make their inner experiential character intelligible. The existence of mental functions like meaning and purpose can be accounted for on evolutionary principles. But their qualitative nature is nevertheless something that can be adequately comprehended only “from within,” from a performer’s rather than an observer’s perspective. The purposive intentionality of certain mental processes is part and parcel of the internalized, experiential aspect of the workings of the mind. One can fully understand a physical process like the spider’s web-­ weaving without being a spider—without ourselves being in a position to perform this process and so without having what it feels like to perform the activity. But one cannot fully understand a cognitive process like color-­ vision or symbol-interpretation or anger without experiencing that sort of thing. It is one thing to explain how operations originate and another to know what it is like to perform them. The physiology of inebriation can be learned by everyone. But only the person who drinks can comprehend it in the “inner” experiential mode of cognitive access. The mental performances that reflect meaning and purpose can be understood only from within the orbit of experience (though their occurrence can doubtless be detected and accounted for through external scientific-causal examination). Talk of meaning, intending, purposing, and the like is bound to experience—to performer’s perspective—and thus differs from the neurophysiology of brain processes which is wholly accessible to external observers. They reflect issues that evolutionary explanations simply do not address, given their altogether different orientation to the causal dimension of the matter. An evolutionary account of the physical processes involved in mental operations is thus by no means reductive (or eliminative) of the inner

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dimension of intentionality and meaning. In addressing the issue of the physical conditions and processes that engender (i.e., causally produce) those mental operations at issue with intending, purposing, meaning, etc., it is by its very nature silent regarding their phenomenological character, which can be grasped only “from within.” An evolutionary productive/ causal account is developed from the angle of the observer’s perspective, whereas the substantive content of these processes has of necessity to be grasped from within the vantage point of a performer’s perspective. And of course the former, scientific, evolutionary, neurophysiological account of thought processes does nothing to eliminate or preclude the contextual aspect of meaning and purpose which can be appreciated only from the “internal,” performer’s standpoint. But incompleteness is one thing, and defectiveness quite another. The former (evolutionary) account is nowise deficient or defective for failing to provide for the latter (phenomenological/hermeneutic) one—which is in principle impossible because of the different levels of consideration that are involved. All that we can reasonably ask of an evolutionary account of mental operations is that it should explain the emergence of the capacities and processes thought. The inner phenomenology of thinking lies beyond its range—not because of its deficiencies, but because of the simple fact that it addresses altogether different issues. We cannot fault an evolutionary account of the origination of mind for failing to provide that which no causal account of mind’s origination could possibly deliver on its own— cognitive access to the inner, phenomenological nature of mental experience. The nature of the apparatus of thought does not restrict the substance of our thinking. An evolutionary account of mind is not at odds with intentionality, purpose, meaning, and the like because it does not even address these issues. And this is not a shortcoming because it is designed to answer very different sorts of questions—questions which lie in the order of causal explanation rather than hermeneutic explication. An evolutionary account of the development of our capacities for mental operation accordingly leaves open scope for purpose and meaning because it does not—and cannot by its very nature—shut the door on issues that it simply does not address. And it clearly cannot be faulted for failing to deal with an issue (viz. the nature of understanding and intentionality) that lies entirely outside the range of its causal concerns. Intentionality (aims and purposes and the like) forms part of the thought-machinery of thinkers, even as mathematical objects triangles and spheres do. They do not evolve in nature but come to feature in the

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operations of (sufficiently sophisticated) minds operating in social interaction. How minds arise and come to acquire their talents and capacities is one thing, what they do with them is another. Biological evolution has to do with the first; intentionality with the second. Evolution operates with respect to the workings of mind—with its processes; intentionality is a matter of its products. There is—and can be—no incompatibility between them, seeing that different issues are involved. To be sure, then, an evolutionary account of mind is predicated on a position that is “materialistic” in viewing the mind as having a crucial basis for its operations in the processes of the body (and the brain in particular).3 But this sort of causal-origin materialism is nowise at odds with an hermeneutical idealism which maintains that we understand various of the world’s processes in terms of concepts and categories drawn from the “inner” experience of the mind’s self-observation.4 Evolution’s “mechanical,” causal accounting for our experiences of purposiveness and intentionality is nowise at odds with the inner experienced aspect of these phenomena. The former issue belongs to the domain of the causal explanation of experiencing as events in the physical world, the latter to the phenomenology of our experiences as phenomena in the world of thought. The long and short of it is that a Darwinian account of the origin of mind does not—and by its very nature cannot—conflict with intentionality and purpose because its range simply does not extend to this domain. But of course, it would simply be foolish to deny the originative power of evolutionary processes. To say that a purposive being cannot arise by evolution in a theretofore purpose-lacking world is much like saying that a seeing being cannot arise by evolution in a theretofore vision-lacking world or that an intelligent being cannot arise by evolution in a theretofore intelligence-lacking world. A commitment to the spirit of Darwinism may well impede an acceptance of the purposiveness OF nature, but it clearly does not and cannot impede an acceptance of purposiveness IN nature, through the emergence within nature of beings who themselves have purposes, intentions, goals, etc. No doubt, Darwinian natural selection ill-accords with an anthropomorphism of nature, but it certainly does not preclude an anthropomorphism of man. The long and short of it is that acceptance of an evolutionary account of the origination and operation of human intelligence leaves ample scope for meaning and purpose in the domain of our human doings and dealings. And it would surely be both naive and mistaken to think that our

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human assessment of purpose, meaning, and value is somehow undermined or neglected by an account which sees their origination in capacities that have been acquired through development in the natural course of evolutionary events. After all arranging that logical reasoning, like our other capabilities, has come our way in the evolutionary course of things. If indeed Homo sapiens were the only type of persons actually to exist in the universe then this has to be seen as a matter of sheer contingency. There can be no sense of fundamental principle of natural law why other, different realizations of the class persons should not be in existence. The principle of ontological uniformity. What can happen in fact once here and now can possibly (in theory) happen once more there and then! On this basis, there can, of course, be non-human persons. For it is clear that there is no reason of principle—no basic laws of nature (be they physical, chemical, or biological—that could preclude the possibility of persons other than Homo sapiens. With a bit of speculation one can readily construct a list of possibilities ranging from • Humanoids: evolutionary antecedents to Homo sapiens • Aliens • Robots • Creatures of fiction (e.g., Merlin) • Superior beings (e.g., angels) Theoretically persons can come into the world by artifice: science fiction has long inured us to the idea of sophisticated robots that have advanced from “artificial intelligence” to “artificial personality.” And— however much precedence and principal rationality may stand in the way—there is no reason of fundamental principle why this project cannot be carried to successful completion in the creation of machines that have the entire array of the personabililtes at their disposal. Moreover, there is yet another natural way to realize this end, namely, evolution. For in our own case, if authentic persons we indeed are, then evolution is how we get there. After all, the prospect of non-human persons—the concept of persons over and above humans—should be seen as commonplace. It is a long-­ standing and familiar conception. We find it well entrenched in religion: with gods, and angels, and the “persons” of the Trinity. We find it at work in the concept of extraterrestrial aliens, common thought, science fiction

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and not absence from science itself. It is at work in speculation about robots and artificial beings combined in the laboratory. Special complexities arise in the case of multi-modal compound persons. There are various possibilities here. One striking example would be a plurality of persons jointly and collectively operating as a single unified power-steamer in a unified directorate. A single “body” is thus shared in a joint governing board composed of otherwise distinct persons. In this way, a plurality of persons join in an interactive collaboration to create yet another additional person —a “legal person” as it were—constituted by the entire collectivity. 2.3  Identifying and Re-identifying Persons Let it be that we see ourselves duly entitled to accept X as a person. But which person? How are persons to be identified? Persons—as we know or can imagine them—are embodied beings. In the usual course of things we can thus identify them via their bodies. But in theory—and in imaginative science fiction—we can envision persons as impersonal forces or agencies. Then we can identify them only by what they do. And even when embodied the prospect of their changing bodies becomes imaginable, as does their splitting—say as X or Y every other day. Should this happen, one would need to rethink the issue of personal identify from the ground up. But in the meantime it is best to walk on the side of the street where the sunshine of realism shines, proceeding—ad interim at least—to have it that a person is defined by what it does and how it goes about doing it in the physical realm. The issue of reidentification can be addressed analogously. When are we dealing with the same person as the one we dealt with a month or year or decade ago? This too can be addressed on the principle that persons are defined by what they physically do. Yet, even in the absence of physical continuity there is the psychic continuity of thought life—the perpetuation of capabilities, the continuity of recalled experience and perspective, of decision and action, and the harming of experiential flux and its aid to continuity in memory. The continuity of personhood, in sum, is encapsulated in that of experience (cognitive and emotive) of mental life in general. Reidentification of person lies in the continuous functioning of a personality. And given the vast number of different ways in which each of these requisites can be realized, and the multitude of the resulting

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combinations, the uniqueness of persons in any finite universe should be no surprise. Every person is unique. Everyone has their own characteristic make-up, their own way of thinking and doing, their own style. (Le style c’est l’hommes). With persons this uniqueness is not physical (as with fingerprints or facial identification parameters). Rather it is procedural, behavioral, operational. It is this uniqueness of style that constitutes what is called personality. And it is this that identifies persons as the individuals they are. The theology of divine or angelic persons gives rise to unique difficulties of its own. The Neoplatonism and Christian doctrine of the trinity has engendered endless theological and philosophical debates and disputes, focusing on the mystery of how a single, unique being can be constituted as three distinct persons. Possibly available here is the seemingly viable idea of a single person with distinct personalities manifesting themselves in different relationships (much as a single woman may in different contexts function in different roles as a mother, a wife, and a physician). But no single such resolution has ever proved adequate to the varying perspectives and conceptions of all different parties to the discussion. Even as embodied persons who can in theory be deathless and immortal, replacing and renewing whatever constitutes their physical makeup, happen to wear out. But as this process continues ongoingly over time, the cognitive dynamism inherent in personhood eventually changes the patterns of thought and cognate that we read the condition of the Ship of Theseus puzzle where the question of self-identity becomes increasingly pressing in the wake of an increasingly altered self. As the thread of sameness becomes increasingly stretched in an ever-changing universe to a point where it is so thin that its identification becomes a matter of courtesy rather that constituted fact. Theology is wise to emplace its eternal angels into a heavenly realm detached from the ever-changing consolations of a natural world. Personality—the mode and manner of the comportment of persons as manifested through their doings and dealings, their performative style—is the secular equivalent of their traditional “mortal soul.” Persons as a generic type is exemplified in particular individuals as instances. These are unique, each possessed of a “one of a kind” persona. From the perspective of others this is a “personality,” from the perspective of the individual it is an ego. (Borrowing in this usage to indicate that

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someone is outstandingly noteworthy, we also characterize such a “celebrity” as a “personality.”) The persona of a person consists in the unique amalgam of personal characteristics (personabilities) that identify this individual and set it apart from all others. Such a recognition of one’s own uniqueness and consequent acknowledgment of the uniqueness of others is part and parcel of the endowment of persons in general. People define what they are by what they do. And this indeed is immortal. It is what it is—now and forever. As the Poet Omar Khayyam has it in his Rubaiyat: “The moving finger writes and, having wrote, moves on; not all thy pretty not wit will call it back to cancel half-time; nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.” What we do ever after remains part of the world’s history. It may be but a drop in the vast ocean of world history, but it is there as an indispensable and ineradicable part; and one in whose absence the control could not be what it is. Person-formulation is a characteristic proceeding. The aim of the process is to one person for another by adopting adopt many of the individual’s identifying features and personabilities. Of course this project can only be carried through to a limited extent. It may, however, on some occurrences be sufficiently developed to mislead parties into mistaken beliefs.

3   Part III: Personhood as Transcendental 3.1  Personhood as Reflective Persons, like books, have two dimensions: the concrete, physical, observable open to sensory inspection, and the intrinsic, covert, reflective dimension of meaning that comes to expression only in the interaction with others. The physical aspect of the book is observable to everyone—even to him for whom its text is “all Greek.” And then there are those who can enter into the meanings and messages that those ink-marks represent. Similarly, a person has an exotic open to observation and inspection as well as a covert to existence dimensions of personality and character accessible only in interaction with persons, the individual itself included. A person is thus Janus focused, presenting one aspect (the ontological) to the world at large and another (the ethical) only to the world of persons. A person thus occupies two realms: the overt realm of discernible constitution and the covert and observation-transcendent reality of apprehensible significance and symbolic meaning. And just as books can exist as

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such (rather than as mere physical objects) only in a world where there are minds to apprehend their message, so here are persons as such (rather than mere physical beings) only in worlds where this is apprehensible by intelligent agents (conservably including only the individual itself).5 Presumably we have no doubt that we ourselves are persons. But what of others? To view someone as a person is to regard them as being most like ourselves in all fundamental respects. Attributions of personhood transcends the information provided by sensory observation. For being a person calls for the capacity to consider a whole host of mental operations—understanding evaluating feelings, etc.,—whose functionary can at most be evidential but not established by observational means. Observation tells one that you are following X—i.e., following with a view to finding X’s intended destination—is merely a plausible conjecture about matters above and beyond the sensory realm and invokes information supplements by plausible guesswork alone. That and how you move is observable; why you do so is not (even though it often can be inferred plausibly for the former). The imputation of purpose is observation transcendent; it can be evidentiated but not established by observational means. When accepting someone as a bona fide person I am not making an observation report but moving beyond the observable realm. So we now stand at the threshold of a somewhat convoluted but crucially important line of thought resting on two crucial considerations: Point 1. Although ascriptions of personhood can be evidentiated and plausiblified, they cannot be conclusively established and incontestably demonstrated.

This is so because personhood requires that the being in question is • An intelligent agent • Capable of forming a self-image • Possessed of an action-guiding manifold of values and perceived interests None of these functions lie open to sensory inspiration. Granted, the actions that reflect this modus operandi can be observed. But neither individually nor collectively is this conclusive. Those

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observables probabilify, plausibilify, substantiate—but they do not establish, prove, demonstrate. They confirm but do not establish. And this leads to: Point 2. In the final analysis, the ascription of personhood is not a matter of established fact but is an evidence-transcending imputation. It involves a move from likelihood and plausibility to assurance and factuality and accordingly is not an observational report, but a transcendental imputation. Its justification accordingly does not lie in the epistemic realm of factual knowledge, but in the realm of situationally appropriate supposition.

The capabilities that are definitive of personhood fall into two groups: the overt that readily admit of observational/empirical verification, and the covert that do not. The grouping is as follows: • Overt: intelligence and the behavioral-oriented goals that guide our interactions with the external world) • Obscure: will motivation and self-oriented values (reflexivity in self-­ concerned matters) What actions we perform in the world is relatively open to inspection. And so is what comprises the needs and wants at which those actions aim. But objectives, plans, and the like are another matter. And as any intelligence operative knows, capabilities are easy to master but intentions more difficult to discern and are wide open to conjecture and guesswork, seeing that crucial features of personhood relate to issues regarding how such a being thinks and—above all—thinks of themselves. Instantiation of humanity is basically observational and empirical, but personality is an observation-transcending (albeit observation-­ evidentiated) reflection of mind-geared capabilities, which turns on the imputation of mental capabilities. The difference renders in the distinction between seeing that something is so and seeing something as being so. Personhood accordingly is not a matter of evidentiation but of indication-­based imputation: its justifying crux is not overtly conclusive evidentiation but plausible but conjectural imputation. It is out of reach of observational determination. Its entanglement in matters of motivation and reflexivity render it (to some extent) transcendental, so that its ascription is always (to some extent), presumptive. The (remote) possibility of a slip between cup and lip—between claim and actuality—is always there.

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3.2  Grounding Claims to Personhood Claims to personhood are made on behalf of two groups of individuals: (1) the very small group consisting only of oneself and (2) others. In claiming personhood for oneself, one has two pivotal resources: introspection (i.e., reflexive self-appreciation) and observation. This duality greatly ensures the task by reducing the need for speculative conjecture and reference by analogy. The self has prioritized access not to what it overtly does, but to what it understands and undertakes thereby. With others, by contrast, we rely to a far greater extent on analogy, supposition, and speculation. To claim personhood for oneself one must view oneself in a certain particular light. One must attribute to oneself all of the various person-­ essential characteristic capacities and capabilities: intelligence, agency reactivity(?), and the rest. One must, in sum, regard oneself in the light not just as a species member (Homo sapiens) but as an intelligent and responsible agent capable of making appropriately informed judgments and decisions. No doubt there are people who do not view themselves in this light. Some do not bother to think of the matter being sufficiently engaged on other fronts. Some have given the matter much thought (Lucretus and Spinoza) and have come to hold other discordant view about humans (themselves included). But no matter—as already emphasized the issue is one of what people can do not what they actually do. In failing to see oneself as a person and seeing oneself as something else—a robot, perhaps, or a creature of someone else’s thought—one can readily be mistaken. But what of the other side? Can we be mistaken in thinking of oneself as a person? For sure we are—or can be—mistaken about virtually anything! But if they indeed are intelligent beings who are possessed of appropriately correct conceptions of the matter and who think of themselves as persons on this basis, then this is something about which they cannot (in the postulated circumstances) possibly be mistaken. The ultimate reason for acknowledging others as persons lies in the ethics of self-respect. The personhood we cherish in ourselves is entangled with that yearning for companionship and that generosity of self-analysis beings as dividing acknowledgment and affinity. We could not regard

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ourselves as we would like if we did not reach out to others when evidential considerations permit. But why see ourselves as persons? Why take ourselves to have this special actual experience-transcending status? (1) Because we can—personhood is clearly a good thing, and nothing bars our way to it; (2) its assumption is beneficial; it enhances our standing in our own eyes and in that of others; (3) it serves motivation to motivate and energize our obligation to make the best of ourselves; (4) it facilitates a beneficial understanding of ourselves, the environing world, and our place in it; (5) it motivates and reinforces our sense of the collegiality, reciprocity, and mutual aid solidarity with others. People generally do—and certainly should—regard personhood as one of their most prized and indispensable features. They mostly do—and certainly should—rather lose a hand than their reason or their capacity for choice and action. It is just exactly those of our features that qualify as persons that do—and should—constitute our most dearly prized resources. Anything that compromises or diminishes our personhood is monumentally anathema to us. Persons should by rights not only realize their personhood but treasure it as something special, a feature that gives in a special status to one’s self in the world’s scheme of things and calls for the recognition and respect of others. We should accordingly honor personhood in ourselves because we do and should take its possession as the justifying basis for the status that we claim for ourselves. We are—and we think of ourselves as—intelligences functioning a being of speculation, supposition, and imagination. And it is this reflectivity of self-apprehension in a complex negotiation between reality and possibility that we become not just members of the species Homo sapiens but also citizen of the community of persons. The crux here is the transition from Reflexivity to Reciprocity, the transit from self-conception to other-acknowledgment—from how we see ourselves (as possessing a special status that provides for a characteristic manifold of rights and claims) to how we must regard and treat others (whom we procedurally would (and ethically must) regard as occupying the same position). What we have is an effect, an analogue to the Golden Rule. That rule stipulates that with regard to action we should, insofar as possible:

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• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you Whereas the present precept has it with regard to thought that we should. Insofar as possible: • Think of others as having the same status that you claim for yourself. Both the original action-geared Golden Rule and its thought-geared generalization extend into the wider range of people-in-general. And of course, in both cases these “others” are (and should be) not only our fellow humans but persons at large. A dual morality is inherent in a common perspective: “Do right by everyone” (sunam anique tribuere). For what is “the just due” of others. To those others who are persons—however distinct from us they may be— we owe just and appropriate treatment because of this very fact: because they are persons. The requirement to a justice to our posterity (however distinct) and to whatever alien persons the universe may have in store inheres in this very fact. But why and how? Because it is demanded as a status as persons—and in particular as rational agents. For in valuing personhood in ourselves, we—as rational beings—can do so only because we take it (personhood) to be of value, and if that is so it must be viewed as valuable and thereby as having value whenever it is found. And so we owe respect and moral treatment to those others because they are persons. On the other hand, we owe good treatment to animals (avoid being inhuman) and even to inert objects (avoid vandalism) because we are persons. For acting otherwise would damage our self-respect and make us unworthy in our own right.

4   Part IV: The Ethical Dimension 4.1  The Ethical Landscape Being a person is a categorical condition—one either is or is not a person: there is no matter of degree about it. But while status is two-sided here, merit is not, and while one cannot be more or less a person, one can be a better person or worse. For all those capacities and potentialities that define personhood (intelligence, evaluation, action in pursuit of properly

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assessed objective, etc.) are proceedings that can be pursued more or less ably, adequately, and effectively. And the more fully and adequately agents cultivate this prospect the better a person they will be. To be a good person, in sum, is to do extensively and well the sort of things that define a person as such. Ultimately what justifies the presumptive and speculative imputation at issue with personhood alternative is a matter of moral obligation. It is through seeing myself as a person that I become (ethically) obligated to acknowledging the personhood of others. Ascriptions to personhood as validated in the action not of factual/observation but on the order of ethical/practical/evaluative reason. What this means is that we are now moving not in the region of observably ascribable fact but in that of ethically appropriate and perhaps even morally obligatory conviction. In a way we have moved from the domain of theoretical/cognitive reason into that of what Kant would characterize as prudent/moral deliberation. The pivotal factor that provides a rational justification for this mode of proceeding lies in the matter of ethical self-obligation. But this faces problems. For a question immediately arises: To whom do we owe this moral obligation? Here the answer clearly cannot be: We owe it to them. For this would be circular in putting the cart before the horse. For we do not have any moral obligation toward that until they are confirmed as members of the moral community—until we have enrolled them as fellow persons—which is just exactly the matter that is at issue (sub judice so to speak.) The fact is that there is indeed a fellow person to whom this obligation is due and this is ourselves. We see ourselves as persons, as intelligent agents (etc.). Indeed it is exactly this that we primarily prize about ourselves. (We would rather lose an arm and a leg than to lose our reason, our self-consciousness, or free agency.) What we value in ourselves we must—as rational beings—see as being of value. Whenever present and whenever focused—even in others. We do or should want to make the most of our own personhood. And acknowledging personhood in others is part and parcel of this prospect. To be good at personhood is to be a good person, and generosity of spirit is part and parcel of this.

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Acknowledging the personhood of other epistemically licit beings is point of being a good person. And it is this factor of making the best of ourselves which (via generosity of spirit and openness to empathy) that provides us with authorization to extend recognition to others. On the ethical side of the matter, there are two prominent questions: What do we owe to persons, and why do we owe it to them? What we owe to a being, if indeed it is a person, is principally two things. The first is recognition, acknowledgment as a person. After all, persons are different and distinctive, and thereby deserve to be acknowledged as such by those others capable of so doing. Be they human or not, persons have a distinctive status in Reality’s scheme of things and thus merit inert recognition as something special, something whose possession of these person-invoking characteristic demands recognition and respect. Special care is accordingly due to proper care for the well-being and proper interests of persons. They are not “things” ethically available for exploitation in the service of our own wants and desires. Why do we owe other persons this care for their well-being and interests? We owe it to them exactly because we ourselves are—and see ourselves—as persons. As such—as rational beings—we could not prize our personhood and thus value personhood in ourselves if we did not regard personhood itself as a thing of value. (Rational people will only value what they deem to be valuable, even as they will only believe what they deem to be belief-worthy.) And the simple rational consistency that is inherent in personhood demands the personhood be seen as fit to be respected and valued wherever it may be found. Rational beings must deem the things that they themselves value as deserving it, as being valuable. All the same, there is no question that the interests of persons can conflict, both individually and collectively in groupings. When this occurs with individuals there is no automatic, algorithmic resolution. Disinterested third parties can almost always arise at better resolutions than those immediately concerned, but there is often no realizable way to reevaluation. And the problem can be far worse with groupings. Worst of all are science fiction cases of the sort modeled in H.  G. Wells’ Time Machine where evolution divides mankind into two subspecies, whose members can exist only by exploiting the life of members of the other. Ethical considerations are necessarily and convincingly applicable to persons, but that is not to say that in some conditions and circumstances they cannot behave in ethically unacceptable ways.

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Given the wide variations even of human lifestyles—ranging from archaic intuits to rainforest dwellers to individuals of the Serengeti—it hardly makes sense of common needs to persons, some at the level of wide generality (nourishment, maintenance care, information access, and the like). Life, liberty, and the pursuit of autonomous goals figure among the universal endowments of persons, entitled to recognition, acknowledgment constitution, respect, self-determination. They do so because all of the embellishments become so many factors involved in the proper respecting of persons as agents not only enabled but obligated to the expression of personabilities. 4.2  Obligations That Persons Owe to Themselves and Others Thus one thing that persons owe themselves is self-development—the preservation, consolation, and enhancement of these characteristics that mark them as persons. Exactly because our personhood is the last thing we would want to lose and our personality is so precious to us we owe it to ourselves and to the powers and potencies that have brought us into existence to substantiate and develop our personhood in the fullest and best way. In view of the opportunities that personhood puts at their disposal, persons incur certain obligations. Being a person is to be the bearer of rights and responsibilities. The framework among the rights is to be considered and treated as a person, and the framework among responsibilities is the collective obligation to treat persons in exactly this basis. As rational agents it is only natural to be expected of persons to cultivate their opportunities for the good in all its multiple relevant dimensions. Thus prominent among the salient duties that persons owe to themselves is the reflexive of realizing themselves in the best version they can manage to be: to make the most of themselves, to do what enables them to achieve self-­ respect, to exert effort to the pursuit of appropriate objectives, to earn their claim to the special status that is definitive of personhood. Besides and not constituted to these obligations that people owe to themselves there are also the obligations of others. The nature of these obligations will of course vary in line with the specific relationship that obtains between those involved, be it as parents and children, doctor and patient, employer and employee, or the like. But additional to these are the social obligations that persons owe to others just by virtue of this fact of being fellow persons. Our moral obligation to others is thus part and

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parcel of our obligation to ourselves—to the expression and development of our personhood. Seeing that our very personhood requires us to seize opportunities to make the most and best of the opportunities for self-betterment at our disposal that we are also mandated by our personhood to be moral in regard to benevolence in suppling others in the realization of these. Self-interest—the stake we have in making the best of ourselves—projects itself outwards through the benevolence-dimension of morality. But if something has value in itself—if it is something that merits being valued—then we as rational beings should value it whenever it is formed. And so if we persons value personhood in ourselves then as individual beings one must value it on account of its merit and accordingly must value it in others as well. And so what we owe them includes preeminently several things as recognition and recognizance, and respect as fellow persons as well as mutual aid insofar as the circumstances permit and warrant. We owe this to our fellow persons insofar as warranted by • The nature and legitimacy of their needs • The availability and extent of our resources • The relationship obtaining between us (as family, friends, neighbors, etc.) • The other comparable claims on our resources The manifold of our obligations to other persons at large is definite but limited. Our moral obligation towards others depends on the ethical distance between us. In order of decreasing proximity we have: family, friends, neighbors-colleagues, fellow contemporaries, people at large, and (last but not least) persons. The moral fundamental are uniform throughout. To all we owe mutual aid in times of need, benevolence is fundamental here, but with vast differences in extent, and kind. The moral of the Good Samaritan is not that he is a typical good person, but that he is an example of the good, but someone whose virtue went above and beyond. Someone who treats a stranger as a neighbor or a neighbor as a friend as someone takes exceeds the bounds of the morally mandating into that of supererogation. Personhood can be viewed in theological perspective. The Nicene Creed has it that Jesus was begotten as divine (not so made by the Father), but made man (by God). With ordinary mortals something similar is at work. They too are begotten (as humans by their parents) but made

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persons (by Destiny). An analogous transformation of constitution is as work, albeit in an opposed direction (with Jesus to mankind, with us from it). The Homo sapiens transcendence of personhood carries us above and beyond our human condition. For Jesus the transit to humanity is a decent to a lesser life form, for us the transit to personhood is an accent to a higher life form. In simple, rational consistency we must thus view ourselves as committed to supporting, fostering, and enhancing the defining characteristics of personhood as we find them in others. In sum we should thus see ourselves as parts of a confraternity of persons who, in view if their membership in this community, occupied recognition and mutual aid. At the level of identity, at least, we are committed to rendering one another and in the common journey toward the fullest realization of our personhood. 4.3  Good Persons A person should have a properly developed sense of their own condition and a just appreciation of their standing as a person. Undue self-­abasement, self-designation, and deficient self-worth are all decided negativities. And the same holds at the opposite side of the scale: inflated, self-esteem and exaggerated self-importance are equally negative. We are bound to have mixed feelings toward outstanding personalities who, like Henry the Eighth, Kaiser Wilhelm, or Lord Curzon, presided over an outsize ego. The obligations we owe to others we owe then by virtue of the classificatory condition that reflects their relationship to us—be it as children, as parents, as neighbors, as colleagues, etc. Interpersonal proximity is a pervasive conception in our thinking about other persons. The idea of proximity admits of bull’s eye representation

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Display A:  Interpersonal proximity ranges Distant

Space

Time

Genetic relation

Friendship affinity

Extent

Encounter

Immediate Close/ nearby Distance

Here Near

Now Soon

Self Close

— Dear

Normal Large

Unique Common

Afar

Sooner or later Sometime Perhaps sometime

Near

Good

Massive

Uncommon

Remote Very

Final Enormous Rare Acquaintance Extensively Unheard of

Remote Beyond

Remote Astrono­ mically remote

And there are five corresponding proximity ranges, going from the Immediate to the Great Beyond (see Display A). The underlying ideas extend to encounter frequency. In general we will have it that the extent to which they encounter i-level phenomena, the extent to which they figure as an item of prominence in our experience. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Unique Seldom Frequent Extremely rare Virtually never

As we now show the series of level of—let us call it—proximity of intensity, the items figure with decreasing prominence in our experience. Their encounter will in general decline markedly so that we have something of an analogue to Newtonian gravitation. Given their personal constitution with its characteristic priorities, goals, preferences, and values, it is inevitable that persons should take differential attitudes towards one another, be it individually or in groups. And the “birds of a feather” principle is almost certain to come into operation. But this need not and should not diminish a commitment to the fundamental recognition of the paramount value of personhood as such. Individualized attitudes need not and should not prevent recognition and respect for the personhood of others.

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Still, at this point unwelcome and unpleasant science fiction scenarios come into view. What if (say) the evolving development of their life-­ conditions were to render one type of person species survivable only at the expense of exploiting another in which it were personally dependent? Were this indeed so then a discouragingly unfriendly universe would result and the principle that “Necessity knows no limits” unfortunately comes into operation. Theology apart, there is no reason of principle to dictate that the universe must be person-friendly. However there is another pathway of possibility here. Next to self-preservation, the most fundamental natural rights is that of kind-conservation. And at least in theory that one sort of person—be it a natural kind or kind that has come into being by artifice of some sort—can be in a position where its own prediction requires the sacrifice of another, possibly even to extraction. And then it is not only understandable but even accessible to take the dire steps when required by taxonomic survival in conflict settled between parties long before they reached a high on a rung on the developmental scale. So are there any species-specific obligations that we are to others as human beings rather than as persons—obligations that we owe a particular human that we would not owe to any other individual in similar circumstances? Apparently not. To all visible appearances, those general obligations we owe to our human fellows are one and all encompassed within their status as persons. There is no ethico/moral connection that is not inherent in these states as persons! Biology as such has little ethical import!6 Our obligation of recognition and care for other persons is inherent in their condition as persons. However while this obligation is oriented toward them and concerned for THEIR interest, it is grounded in and validated through OURS. For in the final analysis its rationale and reason for being lies in the enlightened self-interest of making the most and best of ourselves in becoming good persons. (And this rationale enjoins not only due care for other persons but also for sentient beings at large.) Often a special relation obtains between two persons: they might be kinfolk or neighbors, colleagues or friends, co-workers or classmates. To treat someone impersonally is to act towards them as though no such relationship obtained. It is to treat them as one would treat any person whatever in circumstances where no special relationship of any sort obtained. Impersonal treatment is a form of impartiality in putting aside any sort of interrelation. It is ethically mandated by the nature of certain roles and offices. (The judge should not “go easy” on his cousin; the instructor

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should not make a “teacher’s pet” of her niece.) But nothing in the ethics of empathy ever permits treating persons as a way that dismisses this fact. It is important to distinguish the principles of moral goodness from those of performatory goodness, for example, between being a good person and being a good carpenter or tennis player. For moral goodness is one sort of thing and performative goodness another. And even with persons themselves this distinction can be brought to bear, for it is one thing to be a good (i.e., ethically meritorious) person and another to be good at the sort of thing (e.g., exercising intelligence, agency, judgments, etc.) that being a person requires. However, while the distinction is clear the difference is attempted. For the sortal merit of being good AS a person calls for deploying to a significant extent the opportunities that the correlative cognitivities put at one’s disposal. And since these indicate agents with a view to the claims of others and the benefit of the community, it becomes evident that being morally good (being a good person) is encompassed within the framework of requisites in being good as a person. What makes for being good AS a person? How is one to be a Mensch? Moral goodness is only a part of it; though by no means the least important part. The entire range of personal abilities is critical here. What is needed is a fully vivid effect to optimize realization of the totality of person-­definitive character with its across-the-board deployment of those person-definitive capabilities. In sum to develop their potential as persons that is the birthright of all. Bringing this to realization—let alone to optimalization—is unrealistically demanding, however, and too dependent in favorable circumstances. Instead it is trying that is paramount, the endeavor to score an E for effort, availing oneself of opportunities, doing what one can. A good person is one who does the best possible within the limits of opportunity. Emblematic here is the behavioral anecdote of the Widow’s Mite.7 When the common and tertiary collected funds for the support of the needy, Jesus singled out a poor widow for special commemoration: “For she, in her poverty, has given all she had, her whole life-savings.” The scope of the possibility is unquestionably limited in the conditions afforded by a different world. But personal goodness is not a matter of realization and achievement, but of intention and effort, of doing the best one can within the limitations of circumstances. Why should persons make this effort? What reasons can be given to persons for this? Basically there are two: reasonableness and self-interest. It is inherent in the nature of reason that reason itself should be our

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grounds of action and that what reason implicates on its own behalf and the behalf of the interests it serves should be accepted as action-guiding. And of course it lies in the nature of our own best interests to have the best and most of the opportunities at our disposal. It is close to being tautologously self-evident that one should make the effort to make the best of themselves.

5   Part V: The Social Aspect and Community 5.1  Personhood and Ethical Community Personhood is a matter of what individuals can and should aspire to do. And to be effective in this endeavor, they must acquire, develop, strengthen, and transmit these capacities in social contexts of group interaction. And this endows personhood with a social dimension. Even a god needs associates (think of Mt. Olympus) or worshipers (think of the Book of Genesis). Persons are not solipsists. As rational beings they recognize the existence of others and acknowledge their claims to a community of condition. The interaction of persons creates a complex amalgam of self-interest and benevolence that conjoins personal advantage and mutual aid. They should not—must not—be seen as inherently indifferent objects put in the world for our convenience to be used as well. Their very personhood makes them bearers of rights. Since reciprocal recognition and respect is something persons owe one another in view of their very personhood, we are inexorably led to the idea of an ethical community of persons. The colleagueship of recursive acknowledgment, regard, and respect cannot but move from the web of light to that of action. If, we think that persons have a special status and origin, a member of probable value in the world’s scheme of things, then as virtual beings we must also act on this basis. If they merit special regard in thought, then they deserve special regard in matters of action and motivation as well. In sum, persons deserve special treatment by one another. Personhood is thus inseparable from the idea and ideal of community. Nothing is more characteristic of a person than that he regards and values himself as such. And with a rational being valuing this feature requires treating it as having value, as valuable in itself. But this, in turn, requires

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deeming it of value whenever and wherever found, so that valuing personhood in one requires doing so in you as well. In consequence, special value must be ascribed to the entire membership of the conformity of persons, and special significance, acknowledgment, respect must be ascribed to persons at large and they must be deemed colleagues, comrades, and associates in this special community of intelligent agents. Respectful recognizance is of the essence here. The nature and scope of this special condition and the responses it demands of others is the subject matter of ethics, the concern for the appropriate mode of operation in the treatment of persons by one another. Where persons encounter one another in interactive proximity the development of the communicative potential and reciprocally behavioral norms is virtually inevitable. For personhood requires a manifold of capacities that can develop and those in our impersonal environment only through the mediation of mutual aid. (Think here of even such rudimentary and impersonal collaboration as bee colonies and ant communities.) The requirements of mutual supposition and in interactive collaboration of persons calls for developing a socialization of norms that implement the norms of socialization, developing a manifold of customs, norms, morals, and laws that embody the realization of a society, a community of reciprocally supportive persons. On this basis it a clear that the evolutionary requisites for communal development require both norms of socialization and the socialization of norms. Some degree of interactive normalization is required (in both senses of the term) and the development of a community with shared customs and rules—of norms and morals—comes from a sine qua non of viable personhood. Possibly that community could develop as a plurality of interactive modes constituting a range precision. But this somewhat strange development apart from the mutual development of persons presupposes membership in a community. And the capacity of facts on their basis thus figures among the personabilities essential to realizing of personhood. Need persons be able to empathize—to commiserate and sympathize with others. Clearly this is requisite insofar as they conjoin to form interpersonal social units. And reciprocal cooperation with others of the same species and spatiotemporal proximity is virtually necessary to the formation and perpetuation of norms of interaction comportment. A natural “organic” cultivation of the personabilities requisite for personhood is almost unthinkable outside a social context.

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However in some conceivable circumstances the ways and means of communication with other species of personal being may well be missing. No doubt the interest would be there, since we are dealing with intelligent and empathetic beings. But it’s realization may require technical capacities and resources beyond what is at the disposal of the species at issue. Moreover it is possible that natural fright and self-protective instinct could predominate to effect separation.

6   Part VI: The Wider Perspective Let us pause a minute to reemphasize the principal points that have been mentioned here: 1. Ascriptions of personhood—in combination to ascriptions of humanity as not biological, empirical, scientifically formulated characterizations. They are transcendental in import. 2. They are not scientific but metaphysical in nature. 3. Their justification is not a product of theoretical reason but in that of practical reason. Their ultimate validation is not evidential but ethical. 4. They are laden with moral implications as to how persons should be treated. However, the leap to ethical considerations has to be tested from a scientific, observational springboard. At this point a reader is likely to object “You keep saying this is what persons do and this is how they think of themselves. But that is surely false. Most people do not think of themselves in that sort of way. They are much less idealist about it.” And this is surely correct. So if you do not think that Aunt June actually recognized herself as a person in the sense of these deliberations, do not condemn this discussion dismissively. Instead, acknowledge that the present project has to be considered along rather different lines. For these deliberations are not an exercise in observational psychology. They do not claim to decide what people actually do in the way of self-reflection. Rather, it is an account of what people can do, what they should do, and what they would do if they were duly reflective, insightful, and sensible. It is an exercise in the ethics of self-­ formation and the metaphysical anthropology of self-understanding. In sum it is an exercise not in psychology but in the reflectively philosophical self-understanding.

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Just what is the format and method of the sort of inquiry considered here? It is an exercise in what might be called concept elucidation. Its plan is to consider an established concept—like that of a person and to proceed to do three things: • To begin by examining the actual usage of the established terminology for dealing with the concept. A usage scrutiny of the dissonance by which that concept is standardly addressed. • A theoretical analysis of this usage in an endeavor to identify the supposition at work—to identify and coordinate the basic assumptions and considerations that explain that usage and account for its being as it. • A rational sychronalization that seeks to regulate (i.e., rule coordinate) their suppositions and assumptions under principles of understanding that serve to realize (i.e., provide a rationale for) the usage and its underlying assumptions. The overall proceedings thus have three components of concern

usage → underlying assumptions → explanatory principles

The initial basis (usage) is provided by the empirical observation of facts; the analytic phase is governed by an explanatory expectation of the assumptions that underlie these facts of usage, and the final, systematizing phase is characterized by a retrospective validation of the assumptions that exercise their determinative bearing in that initial usage. The overall procedure is thus three phased: observational, analogous, theory. And of course these need not be set out sequentially but can be intermingled in a manner complicative to the accessibility of the venture as a whole.8 * * * The concept of persons has an important bearing on the important ethical question of our responsibility to our human posterity: What do we owe to our successors? In taking personhood as the basis of obligation we obtain an immediate and cogent response to the question of the claims and entitlement that future generations have in relation to ourselves. For because those successors of ours must also be acknowledged as persons, they too

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must be seen as members of the great ethical confraternity of persons, and thereby entitled to the same manifold of duties, rights, and claims to obtain throughout this range.

7   Part VII: An Historical Postscript—The Valladolid Episode As Spain was colonizing the New World in the reign of Charles V (1516–1556), there arose a bitter discord between the lucre-hungry conquistadors and the pious friars who, on orders of the king, always accompanied their explorations. The object of dispute was the status of the local natives, the Amerindians. At the onset of Spain’s presence in the Americas it was not altogether clear whether the Amerindians were to be classed as higher primates like the large apes increasingly encountered in the exploration of Africa, or were to be acknowledged as fellow humans. The Hispanic conquistadors and the entrepreneurs who joined them found it advantageous to the position of mines and ranches (encomiendas) to see them as inferior beings available for exploitation. But the Catholic friars, who had, by order of the king, always accompanied the conquistadors from the very outset, insisted the Amerindians as fellow humans suitable for conversion to the One True Faith and potential children of the church. Were they—as the friars mainland—human beings with souls to be saved and lives to be integrated into the community of the Church? Or were they—as the conquistadors preferred to think—like some of the larger hominids of Africa, sophisticated mammals available for labor in the gold and silver mines in much the same way that camels and oxen served as beasts of burden? Were they actually humans or were they to be seen as a lesser form of being. To settle the dispute, Charles V convened a commission (junto) of eminent scholars and theologians in 1550–1551 at the College of de San Gregorio in Valladolid. The principle advocated for the two opposing sides were two Salamanca trained(?) scholars. Supporting the Indians was the Dominican Friar Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, and the only commission member with personal experience of the Indians. Opposing him was the humanist scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, the Emperor’s chaplain and official historian.

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These scholars were, as the emperor saw it, fully qualified to give appropriate counsel and advice. They assembled in 1550–1551 to resolve the issue through a scholastic debate whose focus was, in effect, the following proposition: The indigenous natives of the New World are rational and ensouled beings who, as such, deserve the protection of king and church. The Salamanca-trained Dominican friar Bartholomeo de las Casas— ever after dubbed “the Apostle of the Indies”—pleaded the friars’ case. Las Casas’s main argument was that the Amerindians were rational beings, open to communication and with a coherent organization of communal affairs. Sepúlveda’s main opposing argument was that they lacked the concept of private property and engaged in cruel practices offensive against human rights. This, he argued, marked them as inferior beings qualified as natural slaves under the specifications of Book I of Aristotle’s Politics. Unsuitable to manage their own affairs they were, despite being a humanoid, inferior beings fit for enslavement and disqualified for membership in the community of Christians. However, as Casas argued with such eloquence and cogency that the assembled sages to their everlasting credit came down on the side of humanity. Not that this made all that much difference to the hard men in charge of affairs in the Americas. For while the commission favored the perspective of las Casas, this did them little good. And although the new legislation endorsed by the Crown spoke not of the “conquest” but of the “pacification” of the natives, their actual treatment remained essentially unaltered. All the same, the episode stands out as one of the milestones in the checkered history of the development of the conception of human rights. The issue of transcendent philosophical interest here is the question of the methodology of resolution. How is one to decide whether or not a creature seemingly capable of intelligent action—possibly yet alien or android in nature—is or is not a fellow rational being? Is the matter to be addressed entirely in terms of analogies such as those at issue with the plea of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. And the contrast between the legislative natural law approach of Sepúlveda and the theological-ethical perspective of las Casas reflected the different standings between the biological issues approach of our status as Homo sapiens as the ethically grounded view of the status of persons. Here the Valladolid commission had a third option which was pressed by Sepúlveda, who saw the operative distinction not as that between sub-­ human and human (which the existence of Amerindians language and civilization seemingly settled), but that between inferior humans and

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full-fledged cultured humans. For the Amerindians, so Sepúlveda argued, were inferior humans in the sense of Aristotle’s Politics. This in the end was an issue which the Valladolid scholars left open. Yet many deep questions arise here. Does being human pivot on a close scrutiny of the extent of such analogies? Or is the operative factor simply a benefit of doubt as long as there is reasonable room for it? Does the weight of such determinations rest on the factual or on the ethical balance of the scale? Should it be necessary to press the analogy of modus operandi ever onwards into greater detail—or should even a little of it suffice to settle matters by bringing the principle of Christian charity to bear? The Valladolid episode provides much food for thought along these lines, inviting reflection about just what it is takes to qualify creatures as actually human.9 And there is a deep analogy between two problems: 1. The problem posed by evolution and confronted by the Valladolid scholars: Just where is the boundary line to be drawn between preand sub-human and full-scale rational human being? 2. The problems we face in the era of cosmic exploration and also of artificial intelligence: Just where is the boundary to be drawn between more primitive modes of information-guided agents and actual persons, fully rational and responsible agents? Both issues transcend the prospect of settlement by mere description which cannot distinguish between the prospect of programing against reason-directed will.

Notes 1. For a good overview of the philosophical issues involved see Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge, MA; 1984). 2. The individual condition A on a necessary condition for B when B → A and a sufficient condition when A → B. The condition group A is unfavorably necessary for B when B → (most A) and majortatively sufficient when (most A) → B. 3. Some of the issues in this chapter are dealt with in greater detail in the author’s Conceptual Idealism (Oxford, 1973). 4. Quoted in K.  R. Popper, The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism (London, 1982), p. 89.

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5. Analogous: Collections of planets can exist in depiction worlds: Conditions can exist only in worlds where there are perspectives (Conceptual Idealism.) 6. Analogously it is their condition group status as sentiment beings, rather than as felines, that guide the ethical claims that cats and tigers have on us not to subject them to needless pain or abuse. 7. Mark 12: 41–44; Luck 21: 1–4. 8. The methodology is akin to What Rudolf Carnap called the “rational reconstruction” of concepts. However the present approach is and rather at the explanatory consists of concepts than to their ameliorative reconstruction. The aim is less prescriptive than descriptive. 9. On the issues see Bartholomeo de las Casas, “A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies” in his Writings ed. and tr. by George Sanderlin (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993); William H.  Prescott, The History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain (London: Routledge, Warne & Routledge, 1855); William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice.

Bibliography Aquinas, Thomas. 1270. Summa theologica (ca.). Aristotle. 1552. Nicomachean Ethics (ca. 330 B.C. De las Indas). Huygens, Christiaan. 1698. Cosmotheros. Kant, Immanuel. 1797. The Metaphysics of Morals. Kropotkin, Peter. 1902. Mutual Aid. La Mettrie, Julien de. 1748. Man a Machine. Las Casas, Bartolomé, Brivisima relación de le des drussión. Locke, John. 1690. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Lucretius, De natura rerum (ca. 50 B.C.) Mandeville, Bernard de. 1714. Fable of the Bees. Orwell, George. 1949. 1984. London: Secker & Warburg. Quante, Michael. 2019. Human Persons. Munster: Mentis Verlag. Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1762. Emile; or On Education. Spaemann, Robert. 1996. Personen. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

The Bible Washington, Laura and Lilly. 1999. The Matrix. Fiction. Wells, H.G. 1895. The Time Machine

CHAPTER 2

The Ethical Import of Value Attribution

1   Introduction Are our human values—ethical values included—subjective and do they lie entirely “in the eye of the beholder”? Actually, there are good reasons for thinking that this is not in fact the case. And to see why this is so, one does best to begin with looking at the idea of what valuation is all about. This discussion will address the issue of value objectivity with reference specifically to the evaluation of states of affairs (actual or possible). The evaluation of objects or features of objects can then be encompassed derivatively within this framework via the evaluation of the state of affairs at issue with the existence of such objects or of their having those features that are under consideration. States of affairs—be they actual or merely possible—have properties, for example, those of including or excluding certain others, of involving certain objects or types of objects (elephants, for example), of being rare or commonplace, recent or historic, etc. Some of these properties are dispositional—as something’s being metallic implies its conductivity. And some are additionally relational—inherent in dispositions to evoke a certain sort of response in a certain sort of interagent. Just this will be the case with such properties as those of being pleasing to people or repugnant or dangerous. The evaluation of states of affairs automatically encompasses that of objects as well. For an object being involved in a certain state of affairs is a (relational) property both of the item at issue and of that state at large. © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_2

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For example, M. L. King’s assassination is a state of affairs in which both certain properties of Dr. King (viz., his mortality) and certain properties of the circumstances of the shooting as a whole (viz., its occurrence on April 4, 1968) are alike involved.

2   Tertiary Properties Even as physical interactions with material objects evoke sensory responses in people, so mental contemplation of states of affairs can and generally do invoke their dispositional features of evoking certain responses in people. For it is a dispositional feature of states of affairs to elicit a certain response in all duly circumstanced individuals of a certain species. And this dispositional property of a state of affairs is—as a reaction in all organisms constituted in a certain way—as much of an “objective” feature of it as any other can possibly be. Accordingly, it transpires that even as: Actualities (actually existing states of affairs) can and do have the dispositional property of evoking a certain sort of response in their perception or observation by normally constituted human organisms (these are the secondary properties of the observed states of affairs)

so, also, do: Possibilities (possibly existing states of affairs—actual ones included) can and do have the dispositional property of evoking a certain sort of response in their conception or contemplation by normally constituted and suitably informed rational (and not necessarily human) organisms. (These are the tertiary properties of the contemplated state of affairs. And, of course, actual states of affairs can have such tertiary properties as well.)

Thus, for example, a person’s “(physical) similarity to Napoleon” is undoubtedly a property of his. Yet this property represents neither a primary quality nor a sensory disposition but rather a tertiary property. Or again, consider the symbol “&”. Its property of representing the conjunction “and” is certainly not something discernible by observation alone— apparent as such to a perceptive Babylonian. Nevertheless, it too is a tertiary property.

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Secondary qualities are features that any physiologically normal person can observe. Tertiary properties, by contrast, are features that only a suitably disposed thinker can recognize. There is nothing mysterious about them, they are just something conceptually different from and more complex than secondary properties. An object’s secondary properties pivot on its disposition to evoke characteristic affective reactions in the suitably responsive senses. Analogously, a state of affairs’ tertiary properties pivot on its disposition to evoke characteristic reflective responses in the suitably prepared mind. When a Greek vase is (truly) said to be “a typical 2nd-­ century-­BC Cretan amphora,” it is undoubtedly the case that an empirical property of some sort is ascribed to it. But that property is clearly neither primary nor yet secondary in the classical sense of that distinction, which was in no way designed to capture issues relating to features whose nature is dispositional, relational, context-bound, and attributively inferential. The dispositional status of secondary properties loosens their connection with the actual responses of actual observers: the issue is merely that if there were observers and if their observations were properly constituted, then what sort of response would the item evoke? And similarly with tertiary properties, the issue is that if these observers were duly apprised and if their evaluative endorsements were properly constituted, then what sort of response would the item evoke? The dispositional properties at issue thus relate to the item’s response-evoking capacities, and do not simply “lie in the eye of the beholder.”

3   Values as Tertiary Properties The tertiary properties of a state of affairs can certainly be: Cognitive: in involving the realization of descriptive facts. (For example, the state of affairs at issue in the Battle of Waterloo will evoke in any normally constituted contemplator the realization that the French side lost.)

However, tertiary properties can also prove to be: Evaluative: in evoking the realization of pro or con evaluations. (For example, the state of affairs at issue with an unprovoked act of pointless violence or destruction will evoke in any normally constituted contemplator a negative or con reaction.)

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The fact that states of affairs can possess various (tertiary) normative or value properties, which, albeit dispositional, are nevertheless objective, means that objects can have such properties as well. Thus, for example, if (or, rather, since) the state of affairs of a musical piece’s being harmonious indeed has (say) the tertiary property of being pleasing to people, then this property can (by courtesy) be said to characterize that musical piece as well. And if the state of affairs of Smith’s boorishness has the tendency property of being offensive, then Smith’s boorishness can (by courtesy) be held to be offensive as well. Value thus lies in the object and not just in the response to it; it is an inherent feature of an object that it manifests in certain transactions in which it is “evoked” in appropriately endowed intelligent beings.1 Value features are in effect tertiary properties of their bearers. Thus, the “beauty” of a vase is something which, unlike its shape, is not going to be detectable by bare straightforward observation. Like it being “a typical product of its era,” the validation of its attribution is going to require a great deal of peripheral information and principled reflection. For the ascription of a value to any thing or situation involves an implicit claim about how this item would figure in the reflective thought of an intelligent, unbiased mind that adequately reflected on its nature and ramifications. While value contentions bring persons and their reactions onto the stage of consideration, evaluations are clearly not themselves secondary properties that turn on sensory responses. For tertiary properties carry us into a new, mind-correlative realism. We ascribe secondary properties on essentially causal grounds, but tertiary properties are ascribed on essentially judgmental ones. Here, thought is pivotal and reasons come into it. And while secondary properties are specifically linked to the makeup of our human sensibility (our sense organs), nothing inherently species-­ bound is involved in the reflectivity at issue with tertiary properties. The tertiary properties of a state of affairs or object are “supervenient” upon its factual nature and descriptive context—encompassing its descriptive makeup and its descriptive embedding in the wider setting in which it figures. No doubt, if an item’s primary and secondary qualities were different, its tertiary qualities would differ as well. But this supervenience proceeds in a way in which evaluative considerations are also involved. Our concrete evaluations are—when appropriate—indeed rationally constrained by the underlying facts, but constrained in ways that involve the mediating operation of value principles. (The beauty of a vase indeed

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follows from its descriptive makeup but the derivation at issue is an enthymeme in which general principles of evaluation are deeply implicated.) As the present approach sees it, evaluation and description are connected by the following condition: • That if two items are descriptively the same in factual regards (as regards both their descriptively intrinsic and their relational features), then they are also of like evaluative condition. And, by contraposition, this further means that if two items differ in value, then they will also exhibit a difference in some factual/descriptive regard. The thesis is often characterized as a matter of value-on-fact supervenience, a conception initially invoked by R. M. Hare: Let us take that characteristic of “good” which has been called its supervenience. Suppose that we say “St. Francis was a good man.” It is logically impossible to say this and to maintain at the same time there might have been another man placed exactly in the same circumstances as St. Francis, and who behaved in exactly the same way but who differed from St. Francis in this respect only, that he was not a good man.2

But, of course, the “logical impossibility” at issue is not a matter of pure logic but rather a matter of those evaluative principles built into the use of evaluative terms like the ethical epithet “a good man.” The crucial role of such meaning-expository principles governing the use of value terms means that the “supervenient” dependency of evaluating on the “natural facts” is totally compatible with a rejection of a value naturalism that sees evaluation as derivable from matters of pure fact alone. Facts do indeed ground values, but do so only through the intermediation of evaluative principles. However, supervenience in the previously specified manner is not quite good enough. After all, if we operated a strange sort of value egalitarianism that saw everything as equi-valuable, then the preceding principle would apply flat-out. For a plausible mode of value-on-fact supervenience in a larger, more satisfactory sense, something more is required. However, there is another, no less critical relationship between factual description and normative evaluation:

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• That if two items differ sufficiently in factual regards, then they will also differ in the evaluative condition. This principle (which does not follow from the preceding) to the effect that if the facts about an item were sufficiently different, then the value situation too would be altered, is also something essential because without it an item’s evaluative condition would obtain irrespective of what the descriptive facts about it are, which is absurd. After all, any evaluation can be destabilized by altering matters in the direction of “too much of a good thing”—or, alas, by effecting a plunge from bad to yet worse. All this too is a matter of value-on-fact supervenience in an enlarged sense of the term. G. E. Moore did not serve the interests of philosophical clarity at all well in adopting the contrast terms “natural/non-natural” to characterize a distinction for which, on his own principles, the less question-begging contrasts of sensory/non-sensory or perceptual/non-perceptual would have been far more suitable.3 For, in the final analysis, all that Moore means by calling the value characteristics of things “non-natural” is that they do not represent observationally discernible features of their putative bearers, that they are, in their nature, not sensible. (However, to call them “super-­ sensible” would introduce the wrong connotations here—what has “higher” or “lower” to do with it?) To characterize the evaluative features of things as non-natural, as Moore unfortunately did, strongly suggests that something rather strange and mysterious is going on—that the purported condition of things is somehow extra- or supernatural. And invoking this mystery invites the response that just as we have inner and outer sources to observe the natural properties of things, occurrences, or situations (the taste of an apple or the painfulness of a wound), so there is some special sense-analogous faculty to determine their value status, a mysterious value insight or “intuition” to perceive their evaluative aspects. Forgetting the good Kantian point that evaluation is a matter of judgment on the basis of principles, much of Anglo-American moral theory followed Moorean inspirations down the primrose path of a value-insight empiricism that looked to some sort of perceptual or quasi-perceptual access to value, thereby stumbling once more into the blind alley of the older British theorists of moral sense. This approach embarked philosophers on the vain quest for a value sensibility—with all of its inherent insolubilia, including the prospect of evaluative color blindness and the intractable problem of how value perception (of any sort) can justify rather than merely explain evaluations.

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The fundamental contrast, of course, should simply be between that which can be observed or inferred from purely observational data and that which cannot. The value of an item is no more perception accessible than is the ownership of a piece of property. But that, of course, does not make it something mysterious and “non-natural”—the special object of a peculiar detection faculty, a value intuition. The crucial fact is that value is not sense-perceptible but mind-judgmental: something that cannot be determined solely by observation of some sort but requires reflective thought duly sustained by background information and suitably equipped with an awareness of principles.

4   Value as Beneficiary Coordinated? To see value in this way as being a tertiary property—one that involves a disposition to evoke a pro or con reaction in the thought of an intelligent agent when contemplating what is at issue—forges a conceptual link between the possession value and the proceedings of reactive evaluators. Against such a view, the Australian philosophers Richard and Valerie Routley have proposed to demonstrate the existence of intrinsic value wholly without reference to evaluations by means of a thought experiment, which runs essentially as follows: Let it be supposed that the last living person has control of a Doomsday device that would destroy all living things and ecosystems that would otherwise survive. And as a last living act, this individual pushes the button. Surely the world would be worse off—evaluatively inferior—after this horrible deed is done than it would otherwise be. But yet despite our overmastering tendency to say this, no evaluator will (by hypothesis) be involved. Surely, then, those creatures and ecosystems have an intrinsic value independently of the presence of our appreciative evaluator. Value can exist independently of any evaluators.4

However, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this plausible-­ looking argumentation is deeply defective. Granted, there are no people in the story who can evaluatively react to that act of destruction. But that, of course, does not mean that human evaluators are eliminated—that in the situation under consideration, any and all evaluators are absent from the scene. For while there are indeed no evaluators IN the story, there yet remain upon the scene those who—like

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ourselves—are evaluators OF the story. And to approve or allow to let that vandalism go unregretted and unreproached would do irreparable harm to OUR character and OUR moral standing. The meta-story of an evaluator who countenances such a thing is the story of someone who is indeed adversely affected in point of his/her moral character. (What we have here is something of a double-effect variant of Plato’s “Ring of Gyges.”) When we TELL a story, then the limits and frame of the story are set simply by what transpires within it, and its cast of characters is set within that frame. But when we USE a story to make a point, we enlarge that frame and now will ourselves figure within its duly enlarged range. The otherwise absent so-called “fourth wall” is now erected on the stage of our narrative drama. For now, what is being said is not story internal (“The story has it that such and such”), but rather we now speak on our own account (“We take the story to mean that something or other holds”). The moment the Routleys draw lessons from their story, they themselves figure in the now enlarged framework of consideration. Prospero’s addressing the audience is as much a part of the play as are his opening lines—he does not step outside the frame but only faces another part of it, one that is almost always left unconsidered. And so, while we indeed are not figures within Routley’s story as it stands, nevertheless when we are invited to step back from the story to consider its larger meaning and an appeal is made to our normative stance with regard to it, then this introduces a new, enlarged frame that embraces us as well. And so, even when we think existing humans (rational agents) out of our stories and find that evaluative relations still apply, we do not thereby show that values are not rational-agent correlative. For it is still WE OURSELVES who are doing the appraisals and who transact that evaluative business on our own account. Think of the inverse proceeding, viz., that of thinking additional sorts of rational agents (intelligent aliens, say) into our story. And let us hypothesize a society of such agents who systemically treat their fellows with a total disregard for their interests in point of welfare and well-being. These beings are, of course, immoral and evil. But this is not (or may well not be) a judgment that THEY are involved in—it is OUR judgment. We are the ones here who transact that evaluative business on our own account. So, clearly there is a symmetry here. Just as it is that when we think people into a story and find that our values are decisive for its evaluation in point of moral issues, so it is that when we think people out of a story and find

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that values continue to be applicable, it is in fact our values that are operative. To be sure, someone might object as follows: Granted, when that thought experiment asks us to consider our ethical responses to learning that the last man will or will not destroy all life, we imagine ourselves giving the act of destruction a thumbs up and feel repugnance—not only towards the sort of person who would commit the deed, but also to the sort of person who would approve them. But while from “p is good” it is indeed reasonable to infer that “For one to recognize that ‘p is good’ is good,” the fact remains they are different judgments, and one who makes the first need not be making the second. Otherwise, a regress develops, and anyone who makes a single ethical judgment makes an infinite number of them.

But this objection hits wide of the mark. Thus, consider the Tarskiesque equivalence:

p iff T  p  — that is : itis true that p.



The affirmation or judgment that p is correlative with the implicit assertion or judgment that it is true that p. Indeed, all of the propositions of the sequence:

p, T  p  , T  T  p   , etc.



are equivalent (interdeducible and informatively identical). From the standpoint of information conveyed, one does not offer more than another. And in endorsing any of these propositions, one stands committed to endorsing the rest. But, of course, the issue here is one of systemic interrelationship. Making any of these assertions is not equivalent to making the rest in a performatory sense, but only in an informative (communicative) sense. In endorsing any of these, we ipso facto endorse the rest. But the coordination is systemic and certainly not presuppositional. Making or endorsing the claim that p does not involve FIRST making or endorsing the claim that T(p). There is no logical priority or presupposition here, but only systemic correlation. No vicious regress looms. And just the same general story holds for the pairing of “P is good” with “It is

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fitting/good to recognize that P is good”—there being no vicious regress but just systemic coordination. To reemphasize: If it is indeed the case that—as maintained above—values are tertiary properties, then one must be conceptually geared to the reactions of an act at least hypothetically invoked by evaluators. But this does not transpire as to make a vicious regress.5 Yet, does coordination of value with evaluators not mean that values are person-coordinately subjective? By no means.

5   Paramount Consequences of Seeing Values as Tertiary Dispositions When values are regarded as tertiary properties of states of affairs and objects along the lines proposed above, they immediately ensue a whole list of important features. The following instances are paramount here: 5.1  Value as Nonsubjective The question of whether or not (and if so, to what extent) a state of affairs has value does not ask whether you or I or X values it: it is not a question about the personal, idiosyncratic, subjective stance of particular individuals. Rather, what it asks—impersonally, generally, and objectively—is whether people should value it; that is, given the realities of the human situation, whether or not ideally reasonable and conscientious people are well advised to value it. The issue at the bottom is whether in prizing and pursuing the condition at issue, people are contributing towards more effectively serving their real interests. The issue is not how people do react but how they should react, how their best and deepest interests are most effectively served. The matter is emphatically not one that hinges on the idiosyncratic views and personal preferences of particular individuals. And this immediately settles some key issues. Does value lie in the eye of the beholder? Does having value require being valued? By no means! A harmonious ecosystem has value not because its participants appreciate this—after all, all of them might function below the threshold of consciousness—but because it is the sort of thing that deserves being prized so that rational evaluators will indeed prize it. Nor do we who contemplate the value of such an arrangement create its value through the act of valuing it. It has value not because it is valued

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but because it deserves to be valued—because rational beings who contemplate it do so appropriately. Such appreciators do not create that value but rather appreciate it. Subjectivity does not come into it. The value of states of affairs is not a matter of the actual reactions of particular evaluators but of the appropriate (i.e., normal and natural) reactions of natural kinds of evaluators. 5.2  Value as Factual Something has value for us humans if its pursuit and realization conduces to our capacity to thrive and flourish as the sorts of creatures we are—that is, when it facilitates our needs and appropriate wants. For example, the states of affairs ranked in meeting our need for food, shelter, clothing, friends, etc., have this character and thereby reflect legitimate values. And it is simply a matter of fact that these circumstances obtain. 5.3  Value as Attributive It is tautologous that value assumptions are evaluative and normative. But they are also attributive: that is, they address features not of the attributer as the source of attribution, but of the object as the target of attribution. They are thus also “objective” in the sense of imprinting features of the objects involved—the items or states of affairs at issue. They are object-­ characterizing precisely because if various of the relevant features of the objects at issue were different, then they would differ as well. They supervene (as the current jargon has it) upon the feature constitution of the objects at issue. If those items were sufficiently different, then the value situation too would change. 5.4  Value as Relational and Mind-Invoking Value attributions are relational: they assert a linkage between the objects at issue and other elements in the environing manifold of things. Just as color ascriptions assert a relationship between an object and its viewers (actual and potential), so do value ascriptions assert a relationship between an object or state of affairs and those who do (or might) contemplate it. And seeing that contemplation brings much upon the state of consideration, it transpires that value is mind-invoking. However, minds are

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needed not for the existence of values but for their conceptualization. For we do not have: • To have value is to be appreciated (or the reverse) but rather: • To have value is to be such as to deserve being appreciated (or the reverse) That is, the concept of being—or, rather, deserving to be—prized in its conception by a (thus necessarily) mind-endowed being is an indispensable part of the very conception of value. 5.5  Value as Dispositional Does the tree that falls unobserved in the forest make a sound? Are the poppies that bloom unobserved in the field beautiful? The answer in both cases is: Yes, of course. A noise need not be heard to qualify as such, nor does a beautiful object need to be appreciated. Sounds exist where they can be heard (though they need not be). And the same with values. They too exist where they can be appreciated, even when this is not actually in process of happening. Of course, the dispositional character of nature is clearly exhibited in the preceding exposition of the status of value as a tertiary disposition. 5.6  Value as Nonanthropocentric Values—as the preceding discussion has indicated—inhere in features of states of affairs whose contemplation evokes a positive or negative (pro or con) reaction by all (normal) organisms of a particular species of rational being. This, of course, means that there can be specifically human values (aromatic pleasantness, for example, or gastronomic healthfulness) that are specifically bound up with certain features of the human condition (our ability to smell, for example, or our capacity to taste food). But, of course, not all values need be of this highly species-specific sort: being nourishing (for example) in contrast with being tasty is a far more extensive value, and such values as informativeness or (cognitive) harmoniousness will

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presumably hold good for rational beings at large—alien intelligences presumably included. Indeed, one salient contention of moral philosophers since the days of Kant (at least) is that specifically moral values (such as candor or honesty or generosity) hold good for rational intelligences at large. Accordingly, it would surely be unduly parochial and narrow-minded to maintain that values are anthropocentric and must be seen as geared to specifically human interests and concerns.

6   Values and Reason In taking values to represent tertiary properties, it emerges that values are an instrumentality of reason. They are inextricably bound up with the question of good reasons for preferring one state of affairs to another. For it is one sort of thing to say that only rational beings can have values and something very different to say that only rational beings can have value. Thus, consider a realm devoid of minds—of intelligent beings. This sort of manifold can certainly exhibit value—aesthetic value such as elegance, for example, or even such cognitive values as orders in harmony. And this can transpire in the absence of minds from the immediate scene. For minds are not encompassed in value any more than they are in truth. Rather, they are encompassed in the very idea of being valued. The existence of value does not require the existence of minds; but the conception of value invokes the conception of minds via the fact that having value is correlative with deserving to evoke a pro or con reaction in contemplating minds. But this sort of mind-involvement is conceptual not ontological.6

7   The Epistemology of Value Given that values are objective features of states of affairs (actual or possible), how do we determine them? To clarify what is at issue here, let us consider what has become known among philosophers as “Mill’s Fallacy.” John Stuart Mill argued the desirability of happiness as follows: The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine p ­ roposes

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to itself [viz., happiness] were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. (Utilitarianism, Chap. 4)

It is commonly objected against this reasoning that visible equals “capable of being seen” and audible equals “capable of being heard,” but desirable does not come to “capable of being desired” but rather “worthy of being desired.” But Mill is not guilty of a confusion here. The linkage he (presumably) has in mind is not that being desired constitutes desirability through a meaning relationship of some sort, but that it evidentiates desirability: that a good—and perhaps even the best—evidential ground we can secure to show that something is desirable is that people desire it. His reasoning is enthymematic: • People universally seek happiness. • People are sensible enough not to be systematically deluded: What all or most of them desire is something that (almost certainly) is worthy of being desired. Therefore: Happiness is worthy of being desired.

The reasoning here is indeed from fact to value alright, but only via an enthymematic premiss that bridges the fact/value divide. For accordingly, any such inferential transition (along the lines endorsed by J. S. Mill) from what people factually desire to what qualifies as normatively desirable (i.e., deserving of being desired) hinges crucially on the availability of a (tacit) premiss to the general effect: Whatever people (commonly, generally, ordinarily) desire (prefer, prize) is worthy of being desired (preferred, prized). But this enthymematic premiss itself clearly has an evaluative status that prevents the approach at issue from achieving any reductive ends. To achieve cogency, the move from people’s preferences or desires to something’s being of value must always be mediated by some evaluative supplementation. The crux of “Mill’s Fallacy” lies in its (supposedly) purporting to be an explanation of what it means to say that something has value. And this definitional task is clearly something for which Mill’s formula is very ill suited. But criteriology—which surely is what he had in view—is something else again. One of the most cogent premisses of evidence we can have of the existence of a human value—for substantiating the claim that

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something deserves to be valued by people—is the actual circumstance that people in general do ordinarily and normally value it. After all, nature has implanted us humans in the world’s scheme of things as rational beings—as objects who occasionally are and generally ought to be rational in what they think and do. After all, values are our guide to matters of decision and action, and we use this guidance in our endeavors to satisfy our desires and, above all, our needs. On this basis, the very fact of the pervasiveness and endurance of values testifies to their efficacy and thereby to their deserving to be heeded. It is essentially this factor of the development and transmission of certain values through the process of cultural evolution—via a rational selection of that which is efficient and effective—that comes to the fore here. The very fact that certain values are pervasive and enduring serves to constitute an evidential rationale for their appropriateness, betokens the objectivity of value, and establishes valuation of something that is inherently appropriate and does not merely lie “in the eye of the beholder.” And so, specifically, states of affairs are appropriately valued by people when their subject does (or would) tend dispositionally towards a positive response that is rationally warranted through the consideration that its obtaining does (or would) prove effective in meeting some need or desire that is inherent in the situation of our species.

Notes 1. On values as tertiary properties, see also the author’s The Validity of Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 2. See R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 145, cf. also John M. Mackie, Ethics (Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 41. 3. G.  E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), Chap. 1. 4. For Richard and Valerie Routley’s argumentation here, see their “Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics,” in D. S. Mannison, M. S. McRobbie and R.  Routley (eds.), Environmental Philosophy (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980). 5. The deliberations of this section have profited from an e-mail exchange with Professor Owen Goldin. 6. This chapter is a slightly revised version of a paper of the same title originally published in Mind and Society, vol. 4 (2005), pp. 115–127.

CHAPTER 3

The Rational Validation of Ethical Values

1   Values Need Validation Can ends, goals, and values themselves be subject to rational evaluation? In an oft-cited passage in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote: We deliberate not about ends but about means. For a doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall persuade, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order, nor does any one else deliberate about his end. They assume the end and consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is most easily and best produced, while if it is achieved by one only they consider how it will be achieved by this and by what means this will be achieved, till they come to the first cause, which in the order of discovery is last.1

The sort of thinking that Aristotle has in view here—deliberation about efficient means for realizing preestablished ends—is unquestionably important in human affairs. “I need a bed; to make a bed, I need a hammer and saw; I can borrow a hammer; so I shall go and buy a saw.” Aristotle’s own examples of practical reasoning are exactly of this common and familiar sort—and are plausible enough in their way.2 However, surely not all deliberative reasoning about evaluative issues is a matter of means-to-ends. Admittedly, the doctor does not deliberate about treating illness—that choice is already settled, included as part of © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_3

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one’s decision to become a doctor. But a young person may well deliberate about whether to become a doctor in the first place—reflecting on whether this would be something good for her, given her abilities, skills, interests, options, and so on. And this sort of deliberation is not a question of means to pre-established ends at all. To all appearances, there are two very different sorts of deliberations: cognitive deliberations regarding matters of information (encompassing the issue of the efficiency of means), and evaluative deliberations regarding matters of value (encompassing the issue of the merit of ends). Whether certain means are appropriate to given ends is a question whose resolution must be addressed in the former informational order of deliberation. But whether the ends we have are appropriate as such, whether they merit adoption, is an issue which can and must be addressed in the latter evaluative order of deliberation. And rationality has a crucial role to play in such an assessment of ends. A rational agent certainly cannot say: “I adopt G as a goal of mine, but am indifferent regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of means towards this goal.” But no more can a rational person say: “I adopt G as a goal of mine, but am indifferent regarding its validity; I just don’t care about the larger issue of its appropriateness as such.” Both matters—the efficacy of means and the validity of goals—are essential aspects of practical rationality. Specifically, the question of the rationality of freely adopted ends cannot justifiably be avoided by anyone concerned for the demands of rationality as such.3 David Hume drew a sharp contrast between a (narrowly construed) “reason” that is concerned only with means, and a reason-detached faculty of motivation that concerns itself with ends—namely, the passions. And he considered these motivating passions as autonomous forces to operate outside the rule of reason proper. He regarded matters of pro and con—of desire or aversion—as simply the wrong sort of thing to count as cogent or appropriate, as lying outside the rational domain altogether. As Hume saw it, the formal issues of logic and mathematics apart, reason merely deals in descriptive information about the world’s states of affairs and relationships of cause and effect. Accordingly, reason is strictly instrumental: it can inform me about what I must do if I wish to arrive at a certain destination, but only “passion”—desire or aversion—can make something into a destination for me. Reason is thus a “slave of the passions.” Hume thus insisted:

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It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin … It is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.4

Various philosophers even now often follow Hume in saying things of this general sort: Reason is wholly instrumental. It cannot tell us where to go; at best it can tell us how to get there. It is a gun for hire that can be employed in the service of any goals we have, good or bad.5

On such a view, reason has no concern with goals as such—it can neither guide us in setting ends nor advise us about priorities when conflicts among divergent ends are to be settled. Ends, priorities, and values all lie outside the range of reason; they are no more than the product of a rationally blind attachment to some fundamentally extra-rational commitment. In this context, oddly enough, Hume and Nietzsche are birds of the same feather. This is clearly strange stuff. On any plausible view of the matter, we cannot simply beg off from the rational consideration of the validity of ends. Our motivating “passions” can surely themselves be rational or otherwise: those that impel us towards things that are bad for us or away from things that are good for us go against reason; those that impel us away from things that are bad for us and towards things that are good for us are altogether rational. We cannot divorce rationality from a concern for our best—“real” or “true”—interests. For we clearly can have desires or needs, such as the desire for harm to enemies or the need for drugs on which we have come to depend, that go clean against our real interests. The evaluative or normative aspect simply does not reduce, without residue, to the factual or descriptive. We can and should rationally deliberate not only about what we would be ill-advised to believe, because it is probably at odds with the truth, but also about what we would be ill-advised to esteem, because it is probably at odds with our interests. Like various beliefs, various evaluations are palpably crazy. Concern for the rationality of ends is important precisely because cognitive rationality is not all, because information is not the only thing that counts in life. Knowledge of matters of descriptively nonevaluative fact is

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only one good among others; reason is relevant to other matters as well.6 The instrumental rationality at issue in finding the effective means to chosen ends is only a part of rationality. For means may well be directed towards inappropriate ends. An embezzler, say, or a self-destructively neurotic person can be quite efficient in figuring out how to attain objectives. But this partial sort of rationality does not render such activities rational tout court. Rationality is a matter of proceeding intelligently, and being intelligent about some things does not make one unqualifiedly intelligent. Evaluative rationality is an indispensable component of rationality overall. The crucial fact is that we have not only inferential or logical reason, but also evaluative or axiological reason. Just as rational people only believe what is belief-worthy for someone in the circumstances, so they only value what is value-worthy: deserving of being valued. And the determination of value worthiness requires the sensible application of appropriate standards—in short, reasoning. For the quintessential work of reasoning is to determine, in the light of our best interests, what sorts of commitments are rational or reason-conforming and what sorts are not. This is so irrespective of whether the commitments at issue are beliefs or evaluations.7 We can reason not only about matters of fact, but also about matters of value. Surely reason dictates that we not only accept that which, in the light of the available evidence, is acceptance-worthy, but also prefer that which, in the light of available indications, is preference-worthy. To prefer the lesser good to the greater, or the greater evil to the lesser, or to subordinate real needs to feckless wants, is contrary to reason, albeit to evaluative rather than cognitive reason. By ignoring or dismissing the evaluative side of reason with its concern for what is worthy of preference, we do violence to reason itself. The profound error of a theory that confines reason to the search for efficient means alone is that it takes a part of reason to be the whole of it. For reason at large must care for ends as well as means. If our ends, our goals and values, are themselves inappropriate—if they run counter to our real and legitimate interests—then no matter how sagaciously we cultivate them, we are not being fully rational. A voyage to a foolish destination, no matter how efficiently conducted, is a foolish enterprise. Hume mistakenly effected a total divorce between reason and choice: “I have prov’d that reason is perfectly inert, and can never either prevent or produce any action or affection.”8 But, while we cannot by reason alone prevent or produce action, the fact remains that we can justify and thereby motivate action through providing good reasons for it.

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When rational inquiry indicates to me that doing act A is beneficial, then insofar as I am rational, it impels me towards this action. Alternatively, if it indicates that the action is detrimental, it impels me away from it. Reason’s task in relation to action is to provide grounds for or against. Of course, the consideration that something is the rational thing for me to do in the circumstances will not move me to do so unless I also take the stance “I shall heed the instructions of reason.” But just this, of course, is the stance which is routinely mandatory and indeed compelling for all those of us who see ourselves as rational agents and set ourselves to act accordingly. This means that any disconnection of reason from action is quite mistaken. To see reason as irrelevant to the validation of choice and action over and above matters of efficiency is to misrepresent it to the point of caricature. An interesting and somewhat desperate move to transcend the gulf between wants and interests—between “what we want” and “what is good for us”—is represented by Henry Sidgwick’s influential proposal to equate the latter with “what we would want if”—if we were fully informed, undisturbed by passion, painstaking in visualizing consequences, and involved with other such strictly intellectual capabilities.9 But such a stance is predicated on the highly questionable, albeit ancient, idea that an incapacity in the processing of information is the only impediment to appropriate evaluation—that “if we but knew,” we would have to make our evaluations correctly. But this is eminently problematic. Clearly, not a lack of information alone prevents the monomaniac or the masochist from correctly evaluating matters. Failures to assess means to ends are one thing; failures to think sensibly about values and priorities another. To think that we cannot reason about values—that values are simply a matter of taste and thus beyond the reach of reason, since “there’s no reasoning about tastes”—is a grave mistake. The fact that valid values implement and pivot upon our needs and our appropriate interests means that a rational critique of values is not only possible but also necessary. For values that impede the realization of our best interests are clearly inappropriate. A priority scheme that sets mere wants above real needs or sets important objectives aside to avert trivial inconveniences is thereby deeply flawed. Even great values will have to yield to the yet greater. Some things are rightly dearer to us than life itself. Economists, decision theorists, and utilitarian philosophers generally hold that rationality turns on the intelligent cultivation of our preferences. But this is problematic in the extreme. What we want or merely may think

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to be good for us is one thing; what we need and what actually is good for us is another. To move from preferences and perceived interests to genuine benefits and real interests, we must be prepared to get involved in a rational critique of ends—to examine in the light of objective standards whether what we desire is desirable, whether our actual ends are rational ends, whether our putative interests are real interests. The genuinely rational person is one who proceeds in situations of choice by asking himself or herself not the introspective question “What do I prefer?” but the objective questions “What is to be deemed preferable? What ought I to prefer on the basis of my best interests?”10 Rational comportment does not just call for desire satisfaction; it demands desire management as well. The question of appropriateness is crucial. This is an issue about which people can be, and often are, irrational; not just careless, but even perverse, self-­ destructive, and crazy.

2   Legitimate Values Root in Interests Just what sorts of considerations are at work in assessing the rational validity of ends? Values are purposive instrumentalities. They are functional objects that have a natural teleology, seeing that their task and mission is to aid us to lead lives that are both personally satisfying in meeting our individual needs and communally productive in facilitating the realization of constructive goals by the community at large. The sensible attunement of means to ends that is characteristic of rationality calls for an appropriate balancing of costs and benefits in our choice among alternative ways of resolving our cognitive, practical, and evaluative problems. Just as cognitive reason requires that in determining what we are to accept we should assess the evidential grounds for theses at their true worth, so evaluative reason requires us to appraise the values of our practical options at their true worth in determining what we are to choose or prefer. This calls for an appropriate cost-benefit analysis. Values must be managed as an overall economy in a rational way to achieve overall harmonization and optimization. While economic rationality is not the only sort of rationality, it is an important aspect of overall rationality. Rejecting such economic considerations, deliberately purchasing benefits deemed to be worth a few pennies at the expense of millions in the absence of any envisioned compensating advantages, is simply not rational. Allowing our efforts in the pursuit of chosen objectives to incur costs that outrun their

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true worth is just as irrational as letting our beliefs run afoul of the evidence. Our ends, objectives, and preferences are neither automatically appropriate nor sacred. The crucial question, as concerns rationality, is that of the true value of the item at issue. What counts is not preference but preferability—not what people do want, but what they ought to want; not what people actually want, but what sensible or right-thinking people would want under the circumstances. The normative aspect cannot be eliminated. The true value of something—its being good or right or useful—is indissolubly connected to its being rational to choose or prefer this thing. The crucial question is not “What do we prefer?” but “What is in our best interests?” It is not simply “What may we happen to desire?” but “What is good for us in the sense of contributing to the realization of our real interests?” The pursuit of what we want is rational only insofar as we have sound reasons for deeming this to be want-deserving. The question of whether what we prefer is preferable, in the sense of deserving this preference, is always relevant. Ends can and, in the context of rationality, must be evaluated. For ends, not just beliefs, can be stupid, ill-advised, and inappropriate—that is to say, irrational. By this fact, action in pursuit of what we desire is not automatically rendered rational. We must evaluate the desire itself; we must determine whether the desired object is actually desirable, something worthy of desire. Desire may be enough to explain an action, but it is not enough to qualify it as rational. Other things being equal, pursuing our wants is rational; but, generally, other things are not equal. The point is not what we do want but what we ought to want, not what we desire but what’s good for us. When these differ, rationality and desire part ways. From the rational point of view, pursuing wants at the expense of needs and real interests is counterproductive. Being desired does not automatically make something desirable; nor does being valued make it valuable. The pivotal issue is that of how matters ought to be in the light of our best interests.

3   Interests Themselves Root in Needs Evaluation of ends in the light of our individual and collective best interests thus lies at the very heart and core of evaluative rationality. But just what is it that is in our real or best interests? Partly, this is indeed a matter of meeting the needs that people universally have in common: health, satisfactory functioning of body and mind, adequate resources, human

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companionship and affection, and so on. Partly, it is a matter of the particular roles we play: cooperative children are in the interests of a parent, customer loyalty in those of a shopkeeper. Partly, it is a matter of what we fall within the validating scope of an appropriate covering principle of interest legitimation that is of universal applicability. The development of my stamp collection is in my interest only because it is part of a hobby that constitutes an avocation for me, and “securing adequate relaxation and diversion from the stress of daily cares” is in anyone’s interest. Concrete, particular interests are valid as such only if they can be subordinated to universal interests. Consider the contrasts among: • professed wants: what we say or declare that we want or prefer • felt wants: what we actually do want or prefer • real, or appropriate, wants: what the reasonable—impartial, well-­ informed, well-intentioned, understanding—bystander would think that we ought to want on the basis of what is “in our best interests” What is in our real or best interests is decisive for rationality. For rationality is not just a matter of doing what we want. If this were so, it would be far simpler to attain! Rationality is a matter of doing what we rationally ought, given the situation in which we find ourselves. But what of mere whims and fancies? If I have a yen for eating grass, is my doing so not a perfectly appropriate interest of mine? Yes, it is, but only because it is covered by a perfectly cogent universal interest, namely that of “doing what I feel like doing in circumstances where neither injury to myself nor harm to others is involved.” After all, even the satisfaction of some of our mere wants is a need. Some writers, Jean-Paul Sartre for example, see reason-providing considerations in the practical sphere as locked into a potentially infinite regress that can only be broken by an ultimate appeal to unreasoned reasons that lie in the domain of judgmental decisions and acts of will. But this is just not how things go in the explanation and validation of actions. Here, the regress of reasons—A because B because C—will and must terminate automatically and naturally with any normatively valid universal reason, an interest which is only proper and appropriate for anyone to have when other things are anything like equal. I want this sandwich

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because I am hungry, and I want to stop feeling hungry because it is painful. There is no point in going further and no need for it. When such a universal is reached, no further elaboration is called for. This circumstance is exactly what endows the matter of the rational validation of ends with its importance. To be sure, our “appropriate interests” will have a substantial element of personal relativity. One person’s self-ideal, shaped in the light of his or her own value structure, will, quite appropriately, be different from that of another. Moreover, what sorts of interests we have will hinge in significant measure on the particular circumstances and conditions in which we find ourselves, including our wishes and desires. In the absence of any countervailing considerations, getting what we want is in our best interests. All the same, people share in common a large body of real interests—for example, health and resources as regards standard of living, and opportunities and conditions as regards quality of life—and these factors of life sustainment and enrichment are what ultimately determine the validity of individualized interests. Both sorts of interests, the idiosyncratic and the general, play a determinative role in the operations of rationality. In assessing the rationality of actions, then, we cannot look just to personal motives but must invoke objectively constituted interests as well. The fact that X wants A remains a mere motive, in contradistinction to a reason, for X’s action in pursuing A until such time as X’s wanting A is rationalized through the fact that X recognizes A to have the desirable feature F, which is not just something that X wants but something that any and every reasonable person would want in the circumstances at issue.11 Note that when X wants “to marry A,” this remains unrationalized until such time as it is “covered” by the universal desideratum of “marrying a person one loves deeply.” Only a legitimation sub rations boni, as part of a universally cogent desideratum, can rationalize a valuation, or a choice or preference that flows from it. Strictly personal resolutions provide only motives, not reasons: only universal considerations can provide an adequate rationale for action. “X wants A.” Why? “X wants B and sees A as leading to B.” But why does X want B? With a rational want, we can extend this regress until we reach something that is unrestrictedly, or universally, desirable—something the wanting of which we, the questioners, see to make sense, in that we value it and think that everyone should do

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so, and think it pointless and needless to raise further questions. Only when X does that which we ourselves see as being “normal and natural” for people in general in X’s circumstances do we stop asking for further special explanations. At that point, the factor of rationality accomplishes its characteristic work. No doubt Xenophanes of Colophon was right. Even as different creatures may well have different gods, so they might well have different goods. But no matter. For us, the perfectly appropriate sort of good is our sort of good: the human good. In this regard, Aristotle did indeed get to the heart of the matter. For us, the human good is an adequate foundation for substantive, practical rationality. Given that we are what we are, this is what is decisive for us. We have to go on from where we are. In this sense alone, there is no deliberation about ends. The universally appropriate ends at issue in our human condition are not somehow freely chosen by us; they are fixed by the inescapable ontological circumstance that, like it or not, we find ourselves to exist as human beings, and thus able to function as free rational agents. The ultimate inherence of universally appropriate ends in generic human needs determines the appropriateness of our particular individual ends. Relative value—utility or means-to-ends serviceability—is no doubt important, but without due heed to the categorically normative status of those ends themselves, relative evaluation is a futile exercise from the rational point of view. To proceed rationally, we must care not just for the efficacy of means but also for the worth of ends. We are not only Homo sapiens but also Homo aestimans. The most fundamental judgment we make regarding even merely hypothetical developments is whether they are or are not a good thing. Being rational involves endeavoring to do well or intelligently that which we must by nature do, and evaluation is, emphatically, a part of this. The rationality of ends is essential to rationality as such; running, however swiftly, to a destination whose attainment conveys no benefit is pointless. Maintaining “rational consonance” with what we believe or do or value when those items—with respect to which we relativize—are not rational in the first place is useless. Principles of relative rationality are pointless in the absence of principles of categorical rationality. Wants per se—that is, wants unexamined and unevaluated—may well provide impelling motives for action but do not thereby constitute good reasons for action. To be sure, having some of our wants satisfied is among our needs. But, needs are what determine our interests, not wants as such. Our true

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interests are not those we do have but those we would have if we conducted our investigative and evaluative business properly. Our welfare is often ill-served by our wishes, which may be altogether irrational, perverse, or pathological.12 This distinction of appropriateness of real, as opposed to merely seeming wants and interests is crucial for rationality. The latter turn on what we merely happen to want at the time; the former on what we should want, and thus on “what we would want if”—if we were all those things that “being intelligent” about the conduct of our lives requires: prudent, sensible, conscientious, well-considered, and the like. The contrast goes back to Aristotle’s distinction between desire as such and rational preference. Many aspects of Aristotle’s ethical theory bear usefully on the present discussion. The rationality of ends inheres in the simple fact that we humans have various legitimate needs, that we require not only nourishment and protection against the elements for the maintenance of health, but also information or “cognitive orientation,” affection, freedom of action, and much else besides. Without such varied goods, we cannot thrive as human beings; we cannot achieve the condition of human well-being that Aristotle called “flourishing.” What this involves, and how it particularizes to the concrete situation of specific individuals, is something complex and internally variegated. But this overarching desideratum is what validates the rest. Flourishing as humans, as the sorts of creatures we are, patently is for us an intrinsic good, though not, to be sure, necessarily the supreme good. We are so situated that from our vantage point—and who else’s can be decisive for us?—flourishing is clearly something that must be seen as good. We need not deliberate about it, need not endeavor to excogitate it from other premisses; for us, it comes direct, as an inevitable given.

4   The Structure of Argumentation Potentially, the most promising strategy for the rational validation of values is to exploit the analogy of a coherence epistemology for the validation of our factual truth claims. Coherence methodology is a matter of the systematization of the data. We begin by rounding up the data—the prima facie truth laws that have some initial credibility in the manner of the provisional truths of an epistemic reliabilism. We then proceed to resolve our descriptive and explanatory questions on a larger scale through a process of inference to the best systematization.13

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Let us now shift this process, by analogy, to the evaluative domain. Here we begin with prima facie evaluations. These are the sorts of claims at issue with near-truisms, evaluations so weak as to be effectively trivial. These prima facie evaluations are analogous to the prima facie duties of ethical theory, on the order of “In normal circumstances, and when all other things are equal, promise-keeping is preferable to promise-­breaking.” In the case of personal evaluations, we begin with considerations regarding the quality of life, and in particular those that bear on the satisfaction of people’s interests, of meeting their needs and wants. The factors initially at issue are those that are life-enhancing or life-diminishing; positivities or negativities, respectively. And the sorts of near-trivial prima facie evaluations at issue here would be on the order of: • Other things equal, enjoyment is positive; distress is negative. • Other things equal, well-being is positive; pain is negative. • Other things equal, happiness is positive; sadness is negative. • Other things equal, feeling well is positive; feeling ill is negative. • Other things equal, the more of a positivity, the better; the more of a negativity, the worse. Such prima facie evaluations are not very exciting in themselves, and they are not controversial. But their systematization has significant results and would, in the ethical case, for example, validate such injunctions as: • Do not inflict needless pain on people. • Do not cause people pointless distress. • Do not offend people simply for your own pleasure. The grounding principle of the systematization of prima facie evaluations is a functional perspective, in which values have a role and exist for a purpose. As instruments with a role and function, values serve as guideposts to action; they help us analyze our decisions towards the enrichment of life. Evaluation is about enhancing quality of life: increasing life’s positivities and diminishing its negativities. Regarding matters of validation, evaluations should be seen from a purposive, functional, teleological, and thus an ultimately pragmatic perspective. Their legitimacy and appropriateness can be assessed in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness in enhancing the quality of life. The test of their validity can be found in the consequences of their pursuit and

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implementation: the pragmatic test of success in terms of the enhancement of quality of life as reflected in the “trivial” prima facie value-facts considered above. Does this instrumental approach to values consign intrinsic values to the scrap heap of irrelevancy? By no means. The functionalistic pragmatism operates at the meta-level; it bears on the justification of adopting certain values. It says nothing about the nature of these values. Consider the intrinsic value of a beautiful natural terrain, for example. The terrain, as such, serves no function; its beauty is not there in order that people should be able to appreciate it. But the acknowledgment and prizing of such an intrinsic value, call it “beauty in terrains,” is something that evolves in human life, and herein lies the crux of its pragmatic or instrumental justification. The process of value justification sketched here turns on two doctrinal components: coherentism and pragmatism. It turns on a coherentist’s “inference to the best systematization,” with the systematizing process centering about those near-trivial value-truisms regarding quality-of-life positivities and negativities. This process is justificatory because values are considered from a functional perspective as instrumentalities whose very raison d’être lies in the domain of quality-of-life enhancement.

5   Circularity and Closure: The Systemic Unity of Reason The rational validation of values must itself carry evaluative commitment. Such factors as legitimate individual needs and constructive communal goals carry great weight. But schadenfreude and the satisfaction of destructive urges are out. The test of efficacy pivots on the promotion of rational ends, and rational ends must be evaluatively appropriate, hinging ultimately on the extent to which they subserve the realization of our appropriate interests. A seeming circularity is at work here. Value legitimation turns on appropriate interests, and interest legitimation turns on a process of evaluation. This sort of circularity is not, however, anything vicious and self-­ endeavoring. For, clearly, all sectors of reason must be invoked and coordinated in any formula that adequately characterizes the overall nature of rationality. Rationality demands that our beliefs, evaluations, and actions should make sense. This means that the whole fabric of rationality must be

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seamless: cognition, evaluation, and action must form a cohesive unit. Under the aegis of rationality, these three domains form part of a single, uniform, and coordinated whole. If our acts are based on inappropriate beliefs, they lack rational justification; if our beliefs do not admit of implementation in practice, they too suffer a defect of rationality; if our values are inappropriate, they clearly go against reason. In no such case would a rational agent be able to muster the confidence necessary for effectual thought and action. This holistic unity of reason serves to secure our analysis against a charge of circularity. Someone might object, “How can you say that A presupposes B and C, and yet that B presupposes A and C?” I respond that this is not what I have said. I have spoken in terms of involvement, not presupposition; of mutual connection, not preliminary requirement. What is at issue in relating the three modes of rationality is a matter not of sequential priority but of systematic coordination. The circularity that is relevant is the fact that there must be evaluative inputs into the rational evaluation and validation of values. This is not vicious; it is simply part of the self-supportiveness of reason. A skeptical objection remains. For one might argue as follows: All this emphasis on the role of reason is problematic. For surely our own intellectual tradition, with its heavily rational orientation, is not the only viable one. Consider such alternatives as the mysticism of the Zen Buddhist, the other-worldly religiosity of monasticism, the aestheticism of the Bohemian, the utopianism of the political visionary. Rationality does not occupy a high place in such alternative value hierarchies, since various other values, such as desirelessness, self-control, godliness, or attunement to the march of history, take a superior place. How, then, can we ultimately justify a determinative role for the value commitments of our own particular rationalistic tradition, with its emphasis on cognitive truth and pragmatic success, in contrast to the variant values of such reason-subordinating traditions?

But this line of objection has its difficulties. Questions about the rational appropriateness of an appeal to reason are analogous in character to the question, “Can I ever pose meaningful questions?” By the time we pose this question, it is already too late to ask. We have reached a juncture where no further observations on the issue can reasonably be demanded. If the objector demands a rational justification for valuing reason, then this consideration gives rationality a special standing of context-relative preeminence from the very outset.

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After all, how can someone who is prepared to join the mystic or the Bohemian in subordinating reason to other values sensibly proceed? How can he or she cogently defend such priorities save by reasoned argumentation? And how can someone intelligently implement these priorities save by thinking their implications through? A person can certainly live a life that does not grant prominent value to reason. Instances abound on every side. But, given the nature of reason, one cannot do so intelligently. A mode of life can indeed be advocated from the standpoint of an irrational tradition—mystical, say, or aesthetic, or hedonic—but such a justification can be cogent only insofar as it is rational. The autonomy of reason from external pressures means that reason answers to no greater or higher authority; there is no higher court to which appeal from the decrees of reason can reasonably be made. This is not to say that we live by reasoning alone. Seeing reason as autonomous is not a denial of important human goods and goals outside the domain of ratiocination. Rather, insofar as other human enterprises have valid claims upon us, our reason is in a position to discern this and to value them for it. Reason, then, is the proper arbiter of value, albeit not an external arbiter but a complex quality-control resource that itself incorporates an evaluative sector. Reason is, moreover, the ultimate arbiter here. For it lies in the nature of things that “the rational thing to do” cannot be rationally overridden; the “rational thing” must win out in rational deliberation. Proceeding unintelligently is never sensible. We can certainly reject or neglect reason, but we cannot do so in a sensible, rationally defensible way. To produce an argument against reason is already to do it homage. Reason is autonomous: no wholly alien authority is in a position to lord it over reason. Rational justification, including the rational justification of placing reliance on reason, admits of no court of appeal whose authority is not endorsed by reason itself.14

Notes 1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1112b12–20. 2. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1032b17–22; De Motu Animalium, 701a18–20. A helpful guide to Aristotle’s theory of practical reasoning is Norman O. Dahl, Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

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3. On the rationality of ends, see Stephen Nathanson, The Ideal of Rationality (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1985). The social science aspects of the issue are treated in S.  I. Benn and G.  W. Mortimore, Rationality and the Social Sciences (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), especially Pt. ii, “Rationality in Action.” As these authors point out, social scientists are caught in a dilemma between the impetus of Max Weber’s influential contention that social science must be value free and the idea that the social scientist should be able to proceed prescriptively and render policy advice. It is clearly one thing to inform clients about how to get what they want and another to counsel them about where their real interests lie. 4. David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Bk. II, Pt. iii, sect. 3. For Hume, the only inappropriate desires are those that depend on erroneous beliefs: “a passion must be accompanied with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable” (ibid.). 5. Herbert A.  Simon, Reason in Human Affairs (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), pp. 7–8. 6. On this theme, see the final chapter of the author’s The Limits of Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, l984). 7. On this theme, see the final chapter of the author’s The Limits of Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, l984), p. 8. On the matter of rational versus irrational ends, see Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958), and Bernard Gert, The Moral Rules (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). 8. Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, p. 458. 9. Henry Sidgwick, A Method of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1928), pp. 111–112. 10. A good exposition of the opposing position may be found in Frederick Schick, Having Reasons: An Essay in Rationality and Sociality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 11. We cannot define “the rational thing” as being “what every rational or reasonable person would want” since this would be circular. But that, of course, does not preclude the contention at issue from specifying a necessary relationship. 12. See the author’s Welfare (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972). Cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 421. Rawls traces this line of thought back to Henry Sidgwick. 13. See the author’s The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). 14. Presented at the 24th Conference on Value Inquiry, D’Youville College, April 19, 1996.

CHAPTER 4

Rationality and Moral Obligation

1   Rationality, Self-Interest, and Morality Rationality is (“by definition,” as it were) a matter of seeking optimal (best available) resolutions to the problems we face in life. It consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate objectives. It impels us to act for the best. Does this mean that rationality requires people to be good? The relationship between morality and rationality has been debated since classical antiquity. In the course of these discussions, it has become clear that various fundamental distinctions are needed to deliberate sensibly about this issue. It is appropriate to begin by attending to some of them. One’s self-interest—one’s own welfare and well-being—is certainly a sensible objective for people and thus a guiding factor for rationality. But just what sort of “self-interest” is at issue here? In regard to “self-interest,” it is very much in order to distinguish between: (i) what someone wants ( ii) what somebody thinks is good for him: what he deems beneficial on the basis of the information at his disposal (iii) what somebody objectively ought to want: what actually is beneficial for him In line with this perspective, we do well to distinguish between mere desires, subjective interests, and objective (or real) interests, respectively.

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The demands of rationality will certainly go beyond (i). But they cannot go as far as (iii), seeing that, in the existing state of information, there may simply be no way to discern accurately what actually is beneficial in the circumstances. All that can—and should—be demanded for rationality is a strengthened version of (ii): (ii*) what someone has good reason (in the prevailing state of his information) to think to be truly beneficial to him The point is that while rationality does not demand going the entire distance to (iii), it does require us to go as far in that direction as our circumstances realistically permit. Rationality demands that we pursue not quite our real interests as such, but our determinably real interests—our real interests as best that the prevailing circumstances enable us to discern them. Yet another distinction is crucial in the present context, namely, that between selfish (narrow) and enlightened (wide) self-interest. For people not only frequently do but also generally should make the interests of others a part of their own—shaping their own personal interests so as to include those of others.1 Most of us do, and all of us should, construe our interests in an enlarged way to include those of parents, siblings, spouses, children, and—perhaps in decreasing degree—friends and associates, fellow countrymen, humanity at large, and possibly sectors of the animal kingdom as well. (With interest, something akin to a law of gravitation is operative, where the strength of attraction falls off with the “social distance” separating other individuals from ourselves.) Putting these two lines of thought together, we arrive at the theses: (1) Rationality requires doing what one can to cultivate one’s determinably real self-interest. (2) People’s self-interest, properly construed, also embraces the best interests of others to some extent. Now, given that due attention to the (real) interests of others is the crux of morality, it follows on this basis that in some degree at least, rationality carries morality in its wake. Once we recognize that the pursuit of (determinably) real self-interest in its wider, enlightened mode is an appropriate objective for people in general, it becomes clear—seeing that it is a cardinal principle of morality to safeguard and promote the real interest of

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people—that morality is in substantial measure not only compatible with the demands of reason, but itself constitutes an important part of them. Rationality calls on us to act for the best. But for whose best? A whole host of issues spring up at this point. Whose goods and advantages and interests are at stake with rationality? Is it just the agent’s (i.e., does selfishness lie at the core of rationality)? Or is it that of people in general, so that rationality involves morality as well? The facile either/or dichotomy of self-interest versus general interest must be transcended by recognizing that—as many philosophers since Plato have stressed—the general interest is itself a crucial part or aspect of one’s self-interest. It is in my own interest to care for the interests of others—that their interests are at one remove a part of my own because human life is communal and human welfare systemic. The boat we build through our actions is one that we must sail in together. Because of the systemic interconnectedness of the world’s arrangements, it would be a gross mistake to think that action contrary to the welfare of others is without consequences for one’s own. Yet this is not the end of the story.

2   The Coordination of Morality and Prudence The systemic interconnection among the interests of people coexisting in a shared world means that the interests of others are in fact a part of one’s own. But there is also an important normative aspect to the issue. For the fact is that one also ought to include the interests of others within one’s own. What is the rational ground of obligation? For what sort of reason is it that one ought to do that which one ought to do? If the obligation at issue is a moral obligation, then these grounds should be moral grounds. It must be for sound moral reason that someone ought to do whatever it is that he morally ought to do: valid moral obligations must rest on cogent moral grounds. To say that X should (i.e., morally should) do A is tantamount to saying that a correct (appropriate) application of valid moral rules and principles would indicate that A should be done by X. We thus arrive at: (I) “One ought (morally) to do A” (in the prevailing circumstances) iff “valid moral rules and principles require one’s doing A in those circumstances.”

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From a rule-moralist perspective, this comes close to being a tautologous truth. But the question, of course, remains: What is a “valid moral principle”? This is addressed by: (II) “M is a valid moral principle if people ought (morally) to endorse M.” Here, we once again have an essentially conceptual (“analytic”) truth. A valid moral rule is—“by definition,” as it were—just exactly one whose endorsement morality requires. Now, putting (I) and (II) together, we get: (III) All valid moral rules and principles tacitly require that they themselves should be endorsed by people. And this, of course, is not news. Nor is it a matter of “circular reasoning,” but merely one of noting the coherence (or self-supporting nature) of morality. A morality that does not endorse itself in this way could not qualify as such. It should be observed that principle (II) is a definitional specification of rule validity in the moral case. It is not, of course, a test criterion. Where, then, are we to turn for such a test criterion? This question is to be resolved, at least partially, by the consideration that a moral rule is valid when it is the case that, were this rule to be adopted and implemented by people in general, the result would conduce to the best real interests of people in general; that is, if most or all were to follow the rule, then most or all would benefit thereby. Given morality’s concern for people’s interests, its being generally interest-facilitative is a sufficient (though not necessary) condition for the moral appropriateness of a rule. One proviso must be added here. There can, to be sure, be some nonbeneficiaries. But they must not be identifiable individuals. (And not just as regards their onomastic identity as “John Jones,” but also as regards their descriptive identification as “the first person to enter the room.”) Who they are must be veiled in the unpredictability that generally prevails in human affairs. If there are unfortunate exceptions, they must be hidden in a fog of statistical uncertainty. Our quest for a test criterion thus leads to:

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(IV) M is a valid moral principle in this case, among others, that “M is such that, were it followed in general, then this would conduce to the best (real) interests of people in general.” It should be reemphasized that this is not a necessary condition, but only a sufficient one. And note that principles (II) and (IV) together yield: (V) “People ought to endorse the principle M” obtains whenever “M is such that, were it adopted and implemented in general, then this would conduce to the best (real) interests of people in general.” We can now profitably return to our initial question: What is the ground for moral obligation? Why should someone do that which, morally considered, he ought to do? Note that the question is ambiguous; it admits of two interpretations: ( 1) Why ought I (morally) be moral? (2) Why should I (self-interestedly) be moral? Both questions have a straightforward answer—though, to be sure, very different ones. The answer to (1) lies in the fact that that’s what the principles of morality themselves require—that that’s the moral thing to do in virtue of principle (I) above. (And this, as we have observed, is not a vitiating circularity but a mark of the essential self-supporting nature of morality.) And the answer to (2) lies in principle (V) above. I myself have an interest-oriented stake in being moral because this conduces to the best (real) interests of people in general, myself presumably included. (Recall those observations about the statistical fog.) As Kurt Baier has argued cogently during many years, everyone benefits in a setting in which people regard moral considerations of right and wrong as the weightiest of reasons. Thus, prudence (due heed of my own interests) and morality (due heed of the interests of others) alike enjoin the primacy of moral considerations. And so, a rationality geared to the heed of one’s true interests is bound to add its voice to the chances of approbation. Morality is indissolubly linked to the enlightened prudence of real or true interest through the simple (Hobbesian) recognition that

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everyone—myself prominently included—has a better chance of faring well in a society of moral agents.

3   On Self-Interest and Selfishness But what of those cases in which doing the moral thing patently exacts a price in terms of selfish personal advantage? One must look on this issue as being much like any other conflict of interest situation. I simply have to decide where my priorities ought to lie, whether with morality or with selfish advantage. And this decision has larger implications for us. For it is not just a matter of deciding what I want to do in this case. Because of the ramified nature of the case, it is a matter of deciding what sort of person I am to be. And it is now that the crucial difference between real and seeming interests comes into play. The course of our deliberations requires the postulation of a case along the lines of the “Ring of Gyges” episode of Plato’s Republic, a case where one has to “pay a price” for doing the moral thing—where there is a conflict between morality and narrowly self-interested prudence. Now, the salient feature of such a case is that it is by deciding how to act here that we effectively decide what sort of person we want to be. For in acting immorally, I produce two sorts of results: 1. The direct result of my action—presumably certain gains that it would secure for me 2. The indirect result of making me a person of a certain sort, viz., someone who would do that sort of thing to realize that sort of result In so acting I make myself into a person of a certain sort. Even if no one else knows it, the fact still remains that that’s what I’ve done—I’ve made myself into a person who would do that sort of thing in order to realize that sort of benefit. And my self-respect is (or ought to be) of such great value to me that the advantages I could secure by immoral action do not countervail against the loss of self-respect that would be involved. In acting in a way that I recognize to be wrong, I sustain a loss and (if my head is screwed on straight) sustain it where it counts the most—in my own sight. A vicarious concern for others enriches one’s life and makes one not only a better but also a more fully developed person.

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Doing what one wants is not automatically a matter of selfishness; that very much depends on what it is that one happens to want. As one recent author points out, “while it does sound distinctly odd to say that a person embarked on a life of self-sacrifice and devotion to others is pursuing his own good,”2 there is nothing odd about saying that such a person is leading a life which (as he sees the matter) it is good for him to lead. One’s vision of the good can (and should) include arrangements where one’s self is not cast in the role of a prime beneficiary. Surely there is nothing in any way inherently unreasonable or irrational about a selfless concern for others. Indeed, there is no adequate reason for calling a man unreasonable if his actions militate against his own narrowly selfish advantage. To be sure, a man will be unreasonable, indeed irrational, if his actions systematically impede his objectives. But—convenient oversimplification apart—there is no justification whatever for holding that his only rationally legitimate objectives are of the selfish or self-­ interested sort. It is a travesty of this concept to construe rationality in terms of prudential self-advantage. Neither for individuals nor for societies is “the pursuit of happiness” (construed as narrowly selfish pleasure) an appropriate guide to action; it must be counterbalanced by recognizing the importance of doing those things which we can later look back on with justifiable pride. Just as it is rational to do the prudent thing (endure the dentist’s ministrations, say) even if doing so goes against one’s immediate selfish desires, so the same story holds with doing the moral thing. Being a moral person is prominent among our (real) interests. And so, confronted with the choice between a moral action and a narrowly selfish action that only satisfies my mere desires, my real or true interest automatically lies on the side of the moral choice. Morality is indeed a matter of self-interest, but only if one is prepared to distinguish true (real) interests from merely apparent interests (“what’s good for me” from “what I want”). Back, then, to that original question: “Why be moral—why do what morality demands?” This is an ambiguous question that can be construed in three importantly different ways: ( 1) Why be moral—from the moral point of view? (2) Why be moral—from the standpoint of enlightened prudence, of an intelligent heed of our real interests? (3) Why be moral—from the standpoint of the selfishness of desire satisfaction?

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Here, as elsewhere, the answer we arrive at depends on the question we ask. If we ask (1), the answer is simply that morality itself demands it. And if we ask (2), the answer is that enlightened prudence also demands it, that our real and truly “best” interests require it for the reasons indicated above. But if we ask (3), the situation is quite different. There just is no earthly way to validate morality from the standpoint of selfishness, of self-­ interest narrowly construed, in terms of the satisfaction of mere (raw and unevaluated) desires. And this is to be welcomed, not lamented—from the moral point of view, at any rate. This is for the very reason that the being of morality lies in countervailing the siren call of immediate gratification. All considered, it is point (2) that is crucial here. And in its light, the basic question of the relation of morality and rationality may be resolved via the argument: 1. The intelligent cultivation of one’s real self-interest is quintessentialy rational. 2. It is to one’s real self-interest to act morally—even if doing so goes against one’s immediate selfish desires. Therefore: It is rational to be moral. There is nothing all that complex about the relationship between rationality and morality. We have, more or less by definition: Rationality: doing the intelligent thing (in matters of belief, action, and evaluation) Morality: doing the right thing (in regard to action affecting the interests of others) The concordance of morality with rationality is established through the fact that the intelligent thing to do and the right thing to do will ultimately coincide. To forego rationality is to abandon (as best we can tell) the intelligent cultivation of appropriate interests. Given the fact that we have a genuine interest in being the sort of person who cares for the interests of others, morality is part of the package. The rational person will also be morally good—conscientious, compassionate, kind, etc.—because his own best interest is served thereby, seeing that he has a real and sizable stake in

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being the sort of person who can take rational satisfaction in the contemplation of his own way of life. “But what if I just don’t happen to be the sort of person who gets satisfaction from contemplating the quality of my life and its constituent actions?” Then, (i) we must feel sorry for you, and (ii) we are (normatively) justified in setting your stake in the matter at naught. Your stance is like that of someone who says: “Appropriate human values mean nothing to me.” Your position seems afraid of that most basic of rational imperatives: to realize oneself as the sort of creature one happens to be. In being profoundly unintelligent, such a stance is profoundly irrational as well. In the final analysis, to act immorally is to act unreasonably because it compromises one’s true interests—partly for Hobbesian reasons (fouling one’s own nest) and partly for Platonic ones (failing to realize one’s human potential). Even David Hume is drawn towards such a view. As he sees it, even if those “sensible knaves” whom he imagines to take improper advantage of their opportunities for selfish gains in a moral society “were … ever so secret and successful,” they would still themselves emerge “in the end, the greatest dupes” because they have “sacrificed the invaluable enjoyment of a character, with themselves at least, for the acquisition of worthless toys and gewgaws.”3 The sensible knave automatically foregoes the pleasure of “peaceful reflection on one’s own conduct” (ibid.). And because he cannot then sustain even his own critical scrutiny, the knave also renders himself unable to enjoy membership in an organized society (which, as Hume sees it, is perhaps no lesser loss). Such a position is essentially identical with that which Plato attributes to Socrates in The Republic: that being unjust and immoral—regardless of what immediate benefits it may gain for us—is always ultimately disadvantageous because of the damage it does to our character (or psyche) by making us into the sort of person we ourselves cannot really respect. (“What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?”) On such a view, it is not the case that the impetus of morality subsists through its rewards, either intrinsic (“virtue is its own reward”) or prudential. We should be moral not because it (somehow) pays, but because we ought to be so as part and parcel of our ontological obligation towards self-realization. But does not reasonableness itself require vindication? Let us suppose that in defending an action it is shown that (under the circumstances) it outweighed its alternatives in reasonableness. Does this put an end to the

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matter, or must some further champion be coaxed into the list on behalf of reasonableness itself? I do not see how we can answer otherwise than NO! It seems to me that a reasonable act or judgment requires defense no more than a good move or plan at chess does. Its reasonableness—like the goodness of the move—may require demonstration, but no additional justifications can reasonably be required.

4   The Rationale of Norms Being antisocial—flaunting the established rules and customs of the society—is something that merits not just displeasure but also condemnation. It is a matter of doing something that is not just annoying but also bad, not just boorish but also wrong. It deserves not just dislike and disapproval, but also reproach and reprehension. But how is it that social practice has normative force? What accounts for the fact that we should drive on the putatively mandated side of the road, greet random strangers we encounter in the morning, or eat our food in a mannerly way? Whence comes this link between social conformity and ethical normativity? Why is social conformity not only common but also ethically mandated? The answer is straightforward. What ties social conformity to moral propriety is the factor of social benefit—of public utility and general advantage. For acting with a view to the interests of others is at the heart and core of morality, and those laws and customs have come to be established practices and constituted exactly because following them is to the general benefit of the community at large. To be sure, there may be no inherent advantage to driving on the left (or right) side of the road. But once customs or laws coordinate a generality of procedure one way or the other, keeping to the rule is obviously to everyone’s advantage in avoiding inconvenience, delay, and collisions. Accordingly, it is the factor of general advantage that mediates between mere—and often arbitrary—custom and ethical propriety, endorsing the former with the authority of the latter. In this way, what is on first view mere social practice comes to acquire the force of moral mandate. Conforming to the rule of practice is something one ought to do (with all ethically due normativity) because it effectively advantages the general benefit, thus making an ethical mandate out of what is inherently a mere social practice. After all, the uniformization inherent in an established social practice serves the communal benefit in many ways, specifically by:

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• Reducing friction in social interaction • Aligning conduct that makes it easier to indicate what is going on • Shaping expectations in ways that facilitate social interaction • Showing respect for others as individuals and the society at large The internalization in individual consciousness of a society’s coordination rules has a substantial social advantage. For once a mode of precedence acquires the status of an ethical and moral mandate, it becomes self-policed in the consciousness of individuals. To the extent that this acculturation process succeeds, it averts the need for the enforcement mechanisms that are artificial, expensive, and often unpleasant.

5   The Problem of Normative Force If morality is a matter of (true) self-interest, then whence does it get its normative force, its obligatoriness, and its stern imperation of duty? Three levels of imperation can be considered: (1) The ontological: realize your highest potential—an obligation you owe not only to yourself but also to the world system that has brought you forth. (2) The rational: do the best you can in the circumstances in which you find yourself. (3) The moral: safeguard the interests of others in the circumstances in which you find yourself. Now, (3) can indeed be grounded in (2)—safeguarding the interests of others is part of acting for the best, including what is the best for us. But its normative force does not inhere simply in this. For in the final analysis, it derives from (1), in which (2) itself is ultimately grounded. Morality is a matter of (true) self-interest alright. But it is not this circumstance that endows its injunctions with their normative force. That is something that comes from the ontological imperative to realize the best that is in us—to make the most of our opportunities for the good.4

Notes 1. Cf. the author’s Unselfishness: The Role of the Vicarious Affects in Moral Philosophy and Social Theory (Pittsburgh, 1975).

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2. Stephen L.  Darwall, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983). 3. David Hume, Enquiry, II, p. 283. 4. This chapter is a revised version of “Rationality and Moral Obligation,” Synthese, vol. 72 (1987), pp. 29–43.

CHAPTER 5

On Compromise and Obligation

1   Preliminaries Regarding Compromise In English usage, the word compromise has two very distinct senses. In one, it means to act so as to endanger the existence of something good. (For example, one might adopt a diet that compromises one’s health.) In the other, it means to accommodate an opponent in matters of disagreement or conflict by accepting a less than preferred outcome in the interest of achieving a reciprocally acceptable accommodation. Both senses of the term will be at issue in the present discussion. We begin with the former. In any situation of choice among competing alternatives, the options may be grouped into four evaluative categories: (α)  Ideals: what one would ideally like to have; what one would choose to have if one could have one’s way about it—which may or may not actually be practicable (β)  Desiderata: what one would most like to have among the actually available alternatives—which may fall well short of one’s α choice (γ)  Acceptables: what one would be willing (albeit reluctantly) to settle for under the circumstances of the situation (ξ)  Unacceptables: what one would be truly sorry to accept—an outcome that would leave one feeling discontented and put upon

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Compromise occurs in the context of category γ, when someone voluntarily accepts an alternative of inferior status where one of superior status is thematically available but not practically attainable. Why compromise? The prime reason for compromise is that this serves to avert or at least mitigate the conflict inherent in adversarial situations. One makes do with category γ if ξ-resolutions loom. The appeal of compromise lies in the fact that its prime alternative is open conflict. Its advantages include avoiding personal frustration, aggravation, conflict, and antagonism, and the realization of fairness, justice, and collective harmony. A compromise can also be reached either spontaneously or by means of negotiation. Of course, compromise is not always a general benefit. In situations of controversy or conflicts of interest, there may well also be “third parties” above and beyond the actively concerned competitors whose interests are also at stake. They, of course, are going to have their own view of the matter. What looks to be a plausible compromise for the parties immediately concerned may occur at the expense of others. (The Versailles negotiation at the eve of World War I affords invariable examples of this situation.) Some of the special measures that can facilitate reaching a compromise include: • Compensation. The gainers compensate the losers. • Alternating occasions. This can proceed along such lines as: “On this occasion me, on that other occasion you.” • Arbitration. Let a third party decide a settlement. There is a great deal that the wider society can and should do to encourage the settlement of interpersonal disagreements by compromise. It can make various adversary processes illegal (e.g., by outlawing dueling) or by making noncompromise costly (e.g., resort to litigation). It can facilitate amenable settlement via intervention or arbitration. And it can provide rewards (e.g., Nobel-like prizes) for those who settle disputes by available compromise.

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2   Altruistic vs. Self-interest Compromise Compromise can be made positively or negatively. Its quest for a middle way can be between conflicting obligations and bound to yield results on the negative side. On the other hand, a compromise between conflicting opportunities will yield a positive result either way. It is good to give to a good cause, but with only a limited sum available to support several of them, some sort of compromise must be made. For one cannot give to B what one is giving to A. Sometimes a compromise between bad options is unescapable; sometimes a compromise between good choices is also so. (Recall the dictum: “I would have been happy with either, were t’other dear charmer away.”) There are, in principle, two sorts of reasons for compromise: the self-­ advantaging and the disinterested. Let it be that I have a choice among three alternatives (A, B, C) with the following expected results:



I get A 2 B 1 C 0

You get 5 1 2

If my only concern is self-advantage, I will, of course, choose alternative A. But if I take an interest in your well-being, I might well choose B where I can disadvantage you minimally at a small cost to myself. In this event, my proceeding would be one of virtuous compromise.

3   A Change of Perspective One speaks not only of compromise among rival people or groups but also among competing forces or factors. Even single individuals themselves can be conflicted with respect to interests, duties, and principles of action, and in all of these regards, compromise becomes a possibility. And here, some sort of harmony accommodation among competing concerns is both necessary and deniable. Moreover, a very different situation obtains with the source of a compromise among competing commitments, duties, and principles. Such

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conflicts of delegation raise a different and characteristic set of issues to which we now turn.

4   On Conflicts of Obligation Are matters of obligation suitable for compromise? To begin with, there is the question of whether there are actually conflicts of obligation. Immanuel Kant thought there were not. Yet how could this be? You are morally obligated to keep your promise to Jones to meet him at noon, but en route you encounter an injured person who needs your attention as a physician. Clearly, there is a conflict here—a clash of duties whose conjoint satisfaction is impossible. But Kant had other considerations in view. His ethical theory was one of idealization. In an ideal order, people do not have conflicting obligations. And in an ideal world, nature does not intervene to block mandated performances. But Kant has it that such conflicts simply curtail one’s obligations with the greater duty annihilating the lesser. When lifesaving clashes with appointment keeping, the lesser obligation simply vanishes as such: there is no conflict of obligations because the lesser “duty” no longer functions as such. This is pretty much how Kant looked at it. But this is not really how things actually work. The reality of it is that being outranked by a conflicting but greater obligation does not annihilate the lesser one but merely puts it into suspension. And it accordingly leaves in place a residue of derivative duties in relation to its nonperformance, namely, to explain, to apologize, and (insofar as possible) to compensate. Granted, obligations can conflict: professional duties can clash with parental ones; the duty of promise keeping can issue in contradictions; you cannot repay Peter with the money you owe Paul. But when you must unavoidably default on an obligation, it is not annihilated but replaced by a residual penumbra of others. Resolving such conflicts by having the greater obligations override those of lesser weight can become difficult and problematic in trans-­ categorical matters. Our human obligations form a web of complex interrelations whose discrepancies can readily lead to conflict and contradiction. You promise to meet Smith at the station the next time he comes to town (which he rarely does). You promise to take Jones to the doctor when next he needs to go. However, by unhappy circumstance, both of these times coincide. A conflict of duties confronts you. Or again, an

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accident sets the house afire. Beyond otherwise reasonable expectations, you must help rescue the victims at the very moment when other duties lie elsewhere. Obligations and duties come in many forms. There are duties of action (honor your parents) and inaction (don’t steal). There are duties of performance (salute a senior officer) and prevention (discourage vandalism). There are duties to individuals (protect your little brother) and to the general public (don’t let inebriated friends drive). All of these can come into conflict where one duty can be honored only at the expense of another. And conflicts will not only arise within but also even between the different categories of obligation. Seeing that obligations themselves are not equal—some are momentous matters of life or death and others are matters of mere inconvenience—conflicts between them can involve differences that are minute or massive. But assessing the comparative magnitude of the matter can be problematic—a special instance of the problem of comparative evaluation at large, of “comparing apples and oranges” as colloquial discourse has it. That mountains are bigger than molehills is not open to debate but whether or not they are better depends on one’s purpose (for climbing, yes; for planting, no.) In the limited contact of particular purposes, this sort of thing can be done, but on the whole, there is no one-size-fits-all resolution. And it is clear that there is no general mode of calculation—no algorithm—by which one can figure out what is “the right thing to do” in a situation of a conflict of obligations. Instead, there are several possibilities: (1) It is, in the circumstances of the situation, clear what the appropriate cause of action is. (2) It is, in the circumstances, unclear which of several alternative courses of action is not inappropriate although none appear as predominantly appropriate. (3) It is, in the circumstances, totally uncertain which course of action is appropriate. There just is no cogent reason for thinking some of them are superior to others. In case (1), the agent gets full credit for doing the right thing. In case (2), he gets partial credit for doing one or another of the not-inappropriate things. In case (3), he avoids getting outright blame for whatever he ends

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up doing. That is as far as deliberation on the basis of general principle can take that matter, and it is often rather insufficient.

5   Standards of Obligation Management It is important to distinguish between personal and group obligations, since different ground rules can be applicable. For example, a state’s obligations are always ultimately self-engendered, and the obligations that a state can make (e.g., to protect the rights of its citizens travelling abroad or to provide public pensions for the elderly) are such that they can be unmade and situational, as well. Unlike individuals, a state can remove conflicts of obligation simply by decision. But all the same, an inability to meet and honor an obligation can arise in many ways. It may be due to: 1. A self-produced incapacity resulting from performatory overreaching by “biting off more than one can chew” (e.g., by making incompatible promises) 2. The interference of a conflicting obligation (e.g., the volunteer firefighter kept from an appointment by the “call of duty”) 3. The blockage of a nontangible development (e.g., getting mugged en route to an appointment) Only in the first two cases is there a conflict of obligations—in the second case, it is venial, and in the first, it is culpable. After all, an incapacity to honor an obligation is culpable whenever it results from one’s own errors in obligation management. However, conflict can also arise in no-fault situations of misfortune inflicted upon us by eventuations entirely outside our range of action and control. Conflicts of obligation admit of no synoptically positive resolution. But there is also the opposite side of the coin—conflicts that admit of no universally negative resolution. There are ethical recommendations as well as ethical mandates. You should certainly use some of your wealth for doing good. But the funds you provide for supporting good cause A cannot also go to good cause B. The time and effort you dedicate to the poor is not available for dedication to the ailing. There are conflicts among opportunities for doing good even as there are conflicts among opportunities for averting misfortune, among works of moral mandate as well as among

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works of moral supererogation, among ways of averting the reprehensible as among ways of averting the regrettable.

6   Is the Rule to “Avoid Conflicts” Appropriate? Avoiding conflicts of obligation is not an end in itself. One can always avoid them by not assuming obligations. There is no conflict between professional and spousal obligation for the unemployed bachelor. But this is clearly not an appropriate proceeding. Resolving obligation conflicts appropriately is a key normative obligation and failure in this regard is emphatically reprehensible. When conflicts arise, we must be sure to have the less serious obligations give way to those of greater weight. But the reality of it is that rationality as such will only go so far in resolving conflicts of duty. For rationality is here a matter of conflict resolution on the basis of context-appropriate procedures and processes for the assessment of comparative merit. And this is something that is simply not always practicable, since the assessment of resolution merit calls for determining the comparative weight or import of those competing obligations, and abstract rationality can only decide this in a limited range of cases. Especially in matters belonging to different categories—familial versus professional obligations, say, or collegial versus social obligations—rationality as such is of little avail, and reason must be supplemented by a reasonableness that looks to common-sensical good judgment rather than rational calculation. The issue of which obligations must yield way to others creates difficulty because there may be no decisive way of assessing the comparative gravity of the failing. We have meta-obligations—reflexive obligations—to manage our obligations competently. But reliability alone does not do the entire job for us.

7   Are Obligation Conflicts Always Rationally Resolvable? There is, to be sure, the plausible principle to: • Resolve conflicts of obligation by having the lesser give way to the greater

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On this basis, there is never a need for compromise. But this approach has its problems. For tenability, it must be prefaced by the qualifier: “whenever possible.” And the regrettable fact of the matter is that there is no generally workable procedure—no algorithm—for assessing the comparative magnitude of obligations. Granted, in conflict situations one obligation will have to give way to the other. But in the circumstances of the prevailing situation, abstract reasoning may well not be able to settle the question of precedence and priority. Conflicts of obligation exhibit flaws in the fabric of reality by constituting misfortunes that would not exist in an ideal order of things. They require damage control designed to make the best of a bad situation. The operative principle here is to make the best of a bad situation. When obligation conflicts occur, is it always clear which obligation outweighs the other? By no means. Not only can there be a perfect equivalence of alternatives, as per Buridan’s ass perplex, where arbitrary resolutions alone are reasonable prospects, but things can also get far more complicated. For conflicting obligations can arise between entirely different areas of concern. After all, obligations can arise within numerous life projects: family, profession, citizenship, personal friendship, even mere human fellowship. A great deal of perplexity and anguish can readily arise when conflicts of duty arise among such different modes of relationship. For there is often no painless way of settling conflicts among such different modes of obligation. And abstract rationality affords no universal panacea. It is plausible to say that conflicts of duty should be so resolved as to minimize the resulting negativity. And just as rational action can be seen as subject to a principle of least action (of economy), so conflict resolution shall be subject to a principle of least damage—of harm minimization. But this is easier said than done. In human affairs, positivities and negativities—merits and defects—are more easily identified than measured, more readily noted than composed. Whenever a factor of desirability, such as that of simplicity or economy or convenience, fissions into a plurality of different respects or aspects, these will often—perhaps even generally—prove to be combination resistant. Consider the analogy of ease and convenience in the context of food. This is clearly something that is subject to proliferation of alternatives: • Easier to produce • Easier to prepare

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• Easier to digest • Easier to acquire All of these are independently valuable factors. A food that is easy to prepare for eating (e.g., a ripe banana) will not be easier to come by if we don’t live in a banana-growing region. And just the same sort of situation is going to obtain in the case of such concepts as obligatoriness. For virtually every choice situation is bound to be aspectivally diversified, subject to different aspects that cannot simply be forced together in smooth coordination because more of one of them will be obtainable only at the sacrifice of another. Comparative obligation is in just this same boat. And so, in the end, if various obligation conflicts are not rationally resolvable, some sort of practical adjudication will have to be imposed to effect a compromise among them. A sensible-seeming choice among various theoretically open probabilities will have to be made where a single rationally mandated upshot is available.

8   Issues Regarding the Proper Management of Obligations Consider the following situation: X has borrowed $100 from each of Y and Z in substantially similar circumstances. The day of repayment has arrived and en route to repayment, X is robbed of everything except $100. What is X to do?

Four alternatives suggest themselves as prime prospects of procedure: 1. To repay Y in full and Z not at all. 2. To repay Z in full and Y not at all. 3. To determine by lot whom to repay in full. 4. To pay $50 to each of Y and Z, and give promissory notes for the rest. The ethical principle to “Meet your obligations to the greatest possible extent” eliminates alternative 4. The rational principle to “Treat like cases alike” eliminates alternatives 1 and 2. And so, given both principles, only alternative 3 remains. This presumably is the rationally appropriate resolution, provided that it proves impossible to negotiate a result acceptable to all. For it alone meets the requirements of heeding the prominent Principle

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of Reason: “In deciding your actions, satisfy as best you can all of the relevant principles of obligation-conflict management.” Honoring those principles of obligation is itself an obligation. So, in general, there is the overarching obligation: To manage obligation conflicts appropriately. Consider, for example, such injunctions as: • Don’t take on obligations that involve more than you can predictably manage. • Don’t run needless risks of conflict of obligations, but nevertheless. • Do your reasonable share in the overall enterprise of obligation bearing. • Be realistic and honest in assessing the limits of possibility in matters of meeting obligations. And this in turn engenders a cascade of further obligations: • To be candid in acknowledging your obligations and endeavor to know them. • In meeting an obligation, it is needful to acknowledge and accommodate conflicting obligations. • When such a reconciliation with conflicting obligations is not practicable, to try for an inherently reasonable compromise and for a sensible resolution of the default. It is perfectly possible for an agent to be not only free from reprehension and blameless in the face of a conflict of obligation, but even for this to be a basis for laudability and credit, as well. It is possible but not easy because for this to transpire, it is required (1) that the agent bears no culpable responsibility for the occurrence of the conflict, and (2) that the agent takes all necessary steps required to counteract the negativities that such a conflict invariably issues in its wake. To whom do we “owe” it to honor the obligations of rationally appropriate obligation management? The fact of it is that many individuals are involved, seeing that we owe: 1. Ourselves (as capitalizing on the opportunity of making ourselves as good as we can be) 2. The direct beneficiaries whose interests are at stake in our meeting the obligation

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3. Tour fellows at large, who all have a stake in obligation honoring’s capacity to produce a user-friendly environment 4. Reality at large, which has afforded us the benefit of opportunities of acting for the good Obligations and duties engender a reflexive demand of a self-oriented nature. We should be dutiful about duty just as we should be candid about candor or honest about honesty. We owe the duties of morality to each and every card-carrying member of the community of moral agents. It is not just an error but a reprehensible failing to “let down the side” in matters of morality and ethics. Comporting ourselves as morally conscientious agents is in the end something that we owe to the moral community at large.

9   The Religious Aspect The Christian’s resolution of any conflict between obligations to one’s faith and to one’s society is straightforward and should proceed without compromise: one must render onto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and onto God that which is God’s. The theme of compromise in this context came into prominence (albeit unfortunately not in practice) in recent philosophy from German post– World War II theology when a number of theorists—both Protestant and Catholic—thought back to the Nazi era’s issue of what Christians owe to their faith and to their state. Accordingly, adjusting one’s ethical or religious commitments at the behest of political demands gives the very idea of compromise a bad name.1 In principle, the handling of these matters should not be too difficult. It should be guided by two principles: (1) A reasonable religion would not impose requirements at odds with our ethical and moral commitments, but would reinforce and sustain them, and (2) a reasonable state would not make demands of people that run counter to their moral and religious commitments. Of course, things in this world are not always as they ought to be. But when they are not, then we ourselves have the obligation to do our best to make them so.

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10   Conclusion Is a willingness to compromise a virtue or a flaw? It all depends. In matters of interpersonal conflict located in divergent interests, a compromise of reasonable accommodation is by and large positive. And in matters of conflict of personal interests, the situation is much the same. But matters of duty and obligation are something else again—especially in ethically relevant matters After all, if one has good principles, one should not readily compromise them. The prime rule of compromise is to let the lesser negativity prevail over the greater—the Rule of Negativity Minimization. An immediate consequence is that compromise should never result in maximal negativity: that there are some things we should not compromise because doing so would be unacceptably negative. In particular, those things which serve to define oneself as the person one is should never be compromised away: one’s self-­ respect, for example, and one’s basic commitments to cardinal virtues such as honor, truth, and justice. One certainly should not “compromise one’s principles”—not because there is anything wrong with compromise as such, but because the region of principles is the wrong place for it. Ethics and personal virtues are human basics—they are the formative functions that make us into the particular persons we are. Even as we must not sell our bodies into bondage, so we must not yield up our souls to unworthy compromises. All this is a matter of self-preservation—not of life but of personhood.

Note 1. Prominent contributions to this discussion include: W.  A. Jöhr, Der Kompromiss als Problem der Gesellschafts, Wirtschafts und Staatsethik (Tübringen, 1958); H. Nohl, Die sittlichen Grunderfahrungen (Frankfurt: Verlag Schulte-Bulmke, 1947); H.  Steubing, Der Kompromiss als ethisches Problem (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1955).

CHAPTER 6

Moral Luck

1   Introduction Deliberations about specifically moral luck do well to begin with some preliminary considerations regarding the nature of luck as such. Even as “the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,” so sometimes—no doubt more rarely—does the most haphazard effort yield a splendid success. Some people scheme, strive, and struggle to achieve their ends—and fail to make even a plausible start. Others have great benefits thrust into their hands fortuitously. Fortune is fickle, smiling on some and scowling at others without the least apparent rhyme or reason. Some are lucky and others unlucky. That is just how life goes. The role of chance in human affairs was once the topic of extensive discussion and intensive debate among philosophers. In Hellenistic Greece, theorists debated tirelessly about the role of eimarmené, the unfathomable fate that remorselessly ruled the affairs of humans and gods alike, regardless of their wishes and actions.1 The Church fathers struggled mightily to combat the siren appeal of the idea of fortuna, and Saint Augustine detested the very word fate.2 The topic of good or bad fortune, along with the related issue of the extent to which we can control our own destiny in this world, was ardently controverted in classical antiquity and came to prominence again in the Renaissance. And the topic undoubtedly has a long and lively future before it, for it is certain that, as long as human life continues, luck will play a prominent part in this domain.

© The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_6

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Almost invariably, luck—good or bad—powerfully affects our lives. A chance encounter at a sporting event leads X into the career that constitutes her life’s work. By whim, Y decides to eat at a certain restaurant and meets the woman who is to be the love of his life—or eats the food that will lay him low with stomach poisoning. An unanticipated traffic jam leads Z to miss a flight that crashes. Luck holds us all in an iron grip. There is no getting around the fact that much of what happens to us in life— much of what we do or fail to achieve or become—is a matter not of inexorable necessity or of deliberate contrivance, but one of luck, of accident or fortune. As Pascal trenchantly put it: “You find yourself in this world only through an infinity of accidents” (vous ne vous trouvez au monde que par une infinite’ de hazards), seeing that: “Your birth is due to a marriage, or rather to a series of marriages of those who have gone before you. But these marriages were often the result of a chance meeting, of words uttered at random, of a hundred unforeseen and unintended occurrences.”3 As Pascal saw it, our very lives are a gamble. And his famous Wager argument is in fact an invitation to think about the big issue of life in this world and the next in the manner of a gambler. One of the classical treatments of the role of luck in human affairs is the Pocket Oracle (Oraculo manual y arte de prudencia) by the Spanish moralist Balthaser de Gracian y Morales (1601–1658). First published in 1647, this book is a series of 300 pithy precepts, each accompanied by a brief commentary, setting out the guidelines of prudent action. It enjoyed a great popularity, was echoed by La Rochefoucault, and admired and translated into German by Schopenhauer.4 Gracian’s book depicted the human situation as an analogy with card games and formulated practical advice on this basis. His position in this regard stood as follows: In this life, fate mixes the cards as she lists, without consulting our wishes in the matter. (“Baraja como y cuando quiere la suerte,” sec. 196) And we have no choice but to play the hand she deals to us. But the wise man bides his time and places his bets when conditions are favorable. (“Pero el sagaz atienda al barajar de la suerte,” sec. 163) He tests the waters, as it were, before getting in too deep, and if matters look inauspicious, withdraws to play again another day. (“Conocer el dia aciago, que los hay. Nada saldra bien, y aunque se varie eljuego, pero no la

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mala suerte. A dos lances, convendra conocerle y retirarse, advirtiendo si estci de did 0 no lo esta,” sec. 139) The sagacious gambler never counts on luck’s lasting and prepares for adversity amidst good fortune. (“Prevenirse en la fortuna prospera para la adversa … Bueno es conservar para el mal tiempo, que es la adversidad cara y falta de todo,” sec. 113) There are rules for coping with risks and the sagacious person can facilitate good fortune. (“Reglas hay de ventura, que no toda es acasos para el sabio; puede ser ayudado de la industria,” sec. 21) Of these rules, the most important is to play well whatever hand fate may have dealt. (“La mejor treta deljuego es saberse descartari: mas importa la menor carta del triunfo que corre, que la mayor del que paso,” sec. 31) Another cardinal rule is to know when to quit: the knowledgeable gambler never “pushes his luck”. (“Saberse dejar ganando con la fortuna es de tahllres de reputacion … Continuada felicidad fue siempre sospechosa: mas sequra es la interpolada y que tenga algo agridulce aun para la fruicion: Cuanto mas atropellandos las dichas, corren mayor ries go de deslizar y dar al traste con todo… Cainsase la fortuna de lievar a uno a cuestas tan a la larga,” sec. 38) Thus, one crucial rule is not to deem oneself as destined for domination. To think oneself to be the ace of trumps is a fatal flaw. (“No ser malilla. Achaques es de todo lo excelente que su mucho uso viene a ser abuso,” sec. 85)

In this way, Gracian analogized the conduct of life to card play and reinterpreted the guidelines of good card sense as principles of life. Life and playing cards are both games of chance, as it were, and the precepts for effective operation in both contexts are fundamentally akin. Gracian’s perspective struck a responsive note among his fellow Spaniards. Gambling has long been a prominent facet of Spanish life. (The Loteria Nacional, established by Carlos III in 1763, is the oldest surviving national lottery.) Official estimates indicate that money spent in gambling currently amounts to some 15 percent of family income, making Spain a world leader in this regard.5 Spaniards widely view gambling not as a human weakness or vice, but as a plausible opportunity for improving one’s condition. As they see it, life is precarious; in all of our doings and dealings we cannot count on things going “according to plan.” Planning,

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prudence, foresight, and the like can doubtless help to smooth life’s path, but they are far from sufficient to assure a satisfactory outcome to our efforts. Chance, accident, and luck—fortune, in short—play a preponderant and ineliminable role in human affairs. In all of our doings and undertakings we humans give hostages to fortune. The outcomes of our efforts do not lie in our control: fortune (chance, contingency, luck) almost invariably plays a decisive part.6 Luck unquestionably deals with different people very differently. But fortunately, there are many different sorts of human goods—riches, intelligence, good looks, an amiable disposition, artistic talent, and so on. Mercifully, a person dealt a short suit in one department may well get a long suit in another: one can be unlucky at the gaming table of worldly fame and still be lucky in love. In a way, money is the most democratic of goods. In contrast to good looks or intelligence or a healthy constitution, one does not have to be born into money, but can, with fortune’s aid, acquire it as one goes along. Luck marks the deep conflict between the actual and the ideal in this world. The most needy and deserving people do not, in general, win the lottery (and if they did, there would, ironically, be no lotteries for them to enter). Luck is the shipwreck of utopias—the rogue force that prevents ideologues from leveling the playing field of life. Only before God, the just law, and the gravedigger is the condition of all alike and equal. Rationalistically minded philosophers have always felt uneasy about luck because it so clearly delimits the domain within which people have control over their lives. One way of reading the lesson urged by skeptics from classical antiquity to the present day is as follows: That no matter how conscientiously we “play by the rules” in matters of factual inquiry, there is no categorical assurance that we will answer our questions correctly. Even in science there is an ineliminable prospect of a slip between evidence and generalization. Moreover, there can be epistemic windfalls: cases where we “play it fast and loose” as far as the rules are concerned and still get our answers right. Then too there is on the epistemic side the issue of “serendipity”— the finding of areas of our questions or solutions to our problems by pure lucky chance rather than by design, planning, contrivance, and the use of methods. In managing our information, as in managing other issues in this life, luck can become a determinative factor. Admitting that an element of unplannable unforeseeability pervades all human affairs,7 Renaissance humanists often inclined to the optimistic

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view that rational endeavor can prevail against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. For example, Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), in his tracts De miseria humanae conditionis and De varietate fortunae, championed the efficacy of rational virtue: “The strength of fortune is never so great that it will not be overcome by men who are steadfast and resolute.”8 Fortune as such is no more than the product of the interaction between human reason and nature’s forces—both products of God’s endowment of his world. Others took a much less sanguine line. Therefore, in Chapter 25 of The Prince (1513), Machiavelli, after surveying the cruelties and haphazards of the politics of his day, set more pessimistic limits to human endeavor by assigning half of what happens in this domain to the intractable power of fortuna, though her rogue force might be partially tamed by prudently installed dikes and embankments.

2   What Is Luck? What is luck? In characterizing a certain development as lucky for someone, we preeminently stake two claims: 1. That as far as the affected person is concerned, the outcome came about “by accident.” (We would not claim that it was lucky for someone that his morning post was delivered to his house—unless, say, that virtually all of the mail was destroyed in some catastrophe with some item of urgent importance for him as one of a few chance survivors.) 2. That the outcome at issue has a significantly evaluative status in representing a good or bad result, a benefit or loss. (If X wins the lottery, that is good luck; if Z is struck by a falling meteorite, that is bad luck; but a chance event that is indifferent—say, someone’s being momentarily shaded by a passing cloud—is no matter of luck, one way or the other.) Accordingly, the operation of luck hinges on outcomes on what happens by accident rather than by design. Luck requires that the favorable outcome in view results not by planning or foresight but “by chance”—by causes impenetrable to us, or as the 1613 Lexicon Philosophicum of Goclenius put it, “not by the industry, insight, or sagacity of man, but by some other, altogether hidden cause” (non ab hominis industria et acumine iudicioque dependens, sed a causa alia occulta). Luck is a matter of

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our condition being affected, be it for good or ill, by developments that are neither intended nor foreseen, but lie substantially outside the domain of our control. However, note that happy or unhappy developments can remain a matter of luck from the recipient’s point of view even if its eventuation is the result of a deliberate contrivance by others. (Your secret benefactor sending you that big check represents a stroke of good luck for you even if it is something that he has been planning for years.) Luck fares rather mixedly in European languages. The Greek tuché is too much on the side of haphazard. In Latin, fortuna comes close to its meaning, with the right mixture of chance (casus) and benefit (be it positive or negative). But German has the misfortune that Gllick means not only luck (fortuna) but also happiness (felicitas). The French chance (from the Latin cadere reflecting “how the dice fall”) is a close equivalent of luck, however. And the Spanish suerte is also right on target. On the other side of the coin, several languages have a convenient one-word expression for specifically bad luck (French malchance, German Pech)—considering the nature of things, a most useful resource, which English unaccountably lacks. (Despite its promising etymology, misfortune is not quite the same, because it embraces any sort of mishap, not merely those due to accident but also those due to one’s own folly or to the malignity of others.) Often—in lotteries, in marrying an heiress, or in escaping unscathed from an explosion thanks to the shielding of someone else’s body—one person’s good luck can be attained at the cost of another’s ill.9 But good luck can also be victimless. If, by some lucky stroke, the world escapes an apocalyptic epidemic—or a nuclear war—everyone is lucky without any price paid by some unfortunates. The core of the concept of luck is the idea of things going well or ill for us due to conditions and circumstances that lie wholly beyond our cognitive or manipulative control. Luck pivots on incapacity. In the affairs of an omniscient being who knows all outcomes or an omnipotent being who controls all outcomes, there is no scope for luck. (God is exempt from the operation of luck.) A physical system is said to be chaotic when its processes are such that minute differences in an initial state can engender great differences in the result, with diminutive local variations amplifying into substantial differences in eventual outcomes. (The weather is a fairly good example.) This sort of situation is pervasive in human affairs. Very small differences in how we act or react to what occurs about us can make an enormous difference in the result. A tiny muscle spasm can lead us to grasp and breathe

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in the germ that kills. The slightest change in timing can make the difference between buying a winning or a losing ticket in a lottery. Chaos (in this somewhat technical sense) pervades our human affairs and means that “luck”—that is, the impetus of chance on matters of human weal and woe—is destined to play a major role in our affairs. Yet, luck inheres even more prominently in cognitive than in physical limitations. Even in a causally (or, for that matter, theologically) deterministic world, we can appropriately characterize as happening “by chance” from our human point of view those eventuations whose embedding in the world’s causal (or rational) structure lies altogether beneath the threshold of any observations and discriminations that we could possibly manage to make. For then their rationalization (however real) could play no possible part in our deliberations and determinations. Accordingly, ontological determinism notwithstanding, such eventuations would figure in our thinking as matters of fortuitous chance. Their results are matters of “luck” for us, because (by hypothesis) no planning or foresight on our part can play even the slightest determinative role in the matter.

3   Can Luck Be Managed? This aspect of incapacity is crucial. For one must avoid the tempting but catastrophic mistake of considering luck a force or agency in nature that can be harnessed—or a power or talent of some sort that people can manage or manipulate. The idea that luck is a somehow personified power or agency whose services can be enlisted and whose favor can be cultivated or lost is an ancient belief, reflected in classical antiquity by the conception of the goddess Fortuna (Greek Tuché), often depicted on ancient coins as the bestower of prosperity, equipped with a cornucopia. Philosophers (especially Cicero) and theologians (especially the Church fathers) eloquently inveighed against this superstition—generally in vain. To be sure, the diffusion of Christian belief in an all-powerful deity countervailed against a mystical belief in luck. And post-Cartesian philosophy, with its increasing faith in scientific reason, reinforced this tendency among thinking people. Nonetheless, as with other ancient superstitions such as astrology, the practice of seeking to win her favor by giving homage to “lady luck” has never been altogether extinguished. The belief in an unlucky day (Friday the 13th),10 a luck-producing object (a rabbit’s foot), or a luck-controlling force (one’s lucky star) turns

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on the idea that luck is something that can be promoted or influenced. But all this is mere superstition. It withdraws luck from the domain to which it belongs—that of uncontrollable chance or circumstance—and domesticates it to the more familiar and comfortable realm of the regular and manageable. But alas, if luck could be manipulated, then it would cease to be what it ex hypothesi is, namely, luck. If luck could be managed, we would not have the proverb, “You can’t beat a fool for luck.” Though (virtually by definition) we cannot control or manipulate the chance element in human affairs, we have certainly come to understand it better and thus to accommodate ourselves to it more effectively. The bachelor male who moves from a job in a factory that employs only men into an office heavily staffed with unmarried women thereby obviously improves his chances of finding a wife and thus securing domestic bliss— or its opposite. The person who buys a lottery ticket at least creates the opportunity to win; one who does not has no chance. Luck is not a force or agency that we can manipulate by way of bribery or propitiation. But it is something we can control within limits, by modifying the way we expose ourselves to it. There is certainly little, if any, point in “cursing one’s luck” when ill fortune befalls us. There is no sensible alternative to acknowledging the futility and wastefulness of rage and resentment—as opposed to a constructive determination to work to shape a world where the likelihood of misfortunes and disasters is diminished. The workings of luck are beyond our reach; whether we will be lucky or unlucky is something over which— virtually by definition—we can have no control. But the scope or room for luck is something we can indeed influence. The student who works hard does not rely on luck to pass the examination. The traveler who maps the journey out in advance does not rely on luck to produce a helpful and knowledgeable person to show the way. Foresight, sensible precautions, preparation, and hard work can all reduce the extent to which we require luck for the attainment of our objectives. We can never eliminate the power of luck in our affairs—human life is unavoidably overshadowed by the threat of chaos. But we certainly can act to enlarge or diminish the extent of our reliance on luck in the pursuit of desired ends. There is everything to be said for striving to bend one’s efforts into constructive lines and then—win, lose, or draw—to take rational satisfaction in this very fact of having done all one could. (Admittedly, there will be circumstances when this is pretty cold comfort—as when one finds oneself on a tumbrel headed for the guillotine. But that is just life!)

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What is regrettable about the superstitious management of luck—keeping track of one’s unlucky days, carrying a rabbit’s foot, thanking one’s lucky stars, planning by odd numbers, and all the rest—is that it is counterproductive. It diverts time, energy, and effort away from the kind of effective planning and working that has some real chance of improving one’s lot. For to some extent, a wise person is indeed in a position to manipulate luck—not via occult procedures but by thoughtful planning and sensible action. In various contexts, the prudent person can pick and choose the risks that are incurred. There are, above all, three ways in which we can influence the element of luck in our lives: 1. Risk avoidance. People who do not court danger (who do not try to cross the busy road with closed eyes) need not count on luck to pull them through. 2. Insurance. People who take care to make proper provisions against unforeseeable difficulties by way of insurance, hedging, or the like need not rely on luck alone as a safeguard against disaster. 3. Probabilistic calculation. People who try to keep the odds on their side, who manage their risks with reference to determinable probabilities, can thereby diminish the extent to which they become hostages to fortune. Note, however, that in the main these represent means for guarding against bad luck and its consequences. The prospects we have for courting good luck are fewer, though there are indeed things we can do to put ourselves in its way. (Only by buying a ticket for the lottery can we possibly win it; by improving our qualifications we can increase the chances of securing a good job.) But the fact remains that, in this real world of ours, good luck can be managed only within the narrowest of limits. To be sure, in one important regard a “superstitious” feeling that luck is “on one’s side” in one’s present endeavors can make a difference. This has no bearing—obviously—when one is involved in a position of pure chance (like playing the horses), but such a presentiment can certainly influence outcomes in circumstances where one’s mental attitude counts because a feeling of confidence can affect performance. When a sales representative is dealing with “a difficult customer” or a tennis player with a “tough opponent,” the feeling that today is one’s lucky day—that on this occasion, success will come one’s way even “against the odds”—can make

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a real difference for one’s prospects. But, of course, this is less a matter of actual luck than of psychology. We Americans are imbued with the can-do spirit. The attitude of fatalistic resignation is alien to us. We enthusiastically agree with the old Roman (Plautus) who said that sagacious people make their own luck or fortune (“Sapientts ipse fingit fortunam sibi”). And the fact that this is unquestionably an unrealistic assertion does not prevent it from being a sensible attitude. For when we toil in the way of our cognitive deficiencies, we generally cannot be certain what will happen if we really make the effort and try. And so, by making these confident efforts, we increase the prospects of producing excellent, though otherwise unexpectable, results. People can, accordingly, come to grips with luck in some promising ways. Perhaps most important, they can do this by taking sensible measures to shield themselves against the consequences of bad luck. Be it in lotteries or in business, in romance or in warfare, one can manage one’s affairs so as to reduce reliance on luck alone to yield a favorable issue. For example, only the commander who maintains a strategic reserve is in a good position to take advantage of an unexpectedly created opportunity. Napoleon’s well-known tendency to entrust commands to marshals whose records showed them to have “luck on their side” did not (in all probability) so much betoken superstition as a sensible inclination to favor those who had demonstrated a record for the sagacious management of risks in warfare. Chance favors the prepared—those who are so situated as to be in a position to seize opportunities created by chance.11 Those on the lookout for unanticipated openings can best take full advantage of them when they occur. Nevertheless, it is necessary and important to bear in mind that one cannot rationally manage and manipulate particular, genuinely stochastic outcomes, for that would be a contradiction in terms: if they were responsive to causal manipulation, those eventuations would not really be matters of chance at all. The idea of the rational management of chance eventuations is an absurdity—which does not alter the circumstance that the rational management of the opportunities that chance may bring our way is a very real talent. The issue of the extent to which society should make up for the vagaries of luck in their impact on the fortunes of its members is an interesting question of social philosophy.12 One widely respected ethicist tells us that in the just social order, bad luck will be redressed in various regards “since inequalities of truth and natural endowment are undeserved, these

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inequalities are to be somehow compensated for.”13 Presumably, this would be done by improving the lot of the unfortunates rather than by leveling everyone else down to their condition. If so, clearly, being born in the right place and time—in a society willing and able to afford this vast compensatory project—would itself be a massive stroke of luck. But should we even try somehow to compensate people for their unasked-for deficiencies in intelligence, talent, good looks, ambition, and “drive,” or for their psychological hardships, medical disabilities, or difficult children? Even raising these questions brings a smile, because the list is, in principle, unending. Luck’s complexity and scope in human existence is too large for manipulability. There is simply no way of leveling the playing field of life. Indeed, efforts in this direction are in good measure inherently self-­ defeating. In trying to compensate people for ill luck, we would surely create more scope for luck’s operation. For whatever forms of compensation we adopted—money, increased privileges, special opportunities— they are bound to be such that some people are in a better position to profit by them than others, so that luck expelled by the front door simply reenters by the back. Moreover, it is by no means clear that everyone would welcome such compensation. Many of us would look joylessly on the agents of the Commissariat of Equalization coming to inform us of our awards for having an obnoxious personality or—to take a more philosophical example—for being egregiously devoid of common sense. Although social utopians might be tempted to compensate for bad luck in this world, philosophers—characteristically less sanguine—have generally looked elsewhere for compensation: to the next world with the Church fathers, the unending long run with Leibniz, or the noumenal order with Kant. Throughout, recourse to a transcendental domain betokens a sober recognition of the unavoidable role of luck in this world’s scheme of things. Bismarck regularly said that a special providence safeguards children, fools, and the United States of America. But of all the world’s people, it is perhaps those of Spain who rely most heavily on luck. As we saw earlier,14 gambling has long been a prominent facet of Spanish life, perceived not as any weakness or vice but as a reasonable tactic for improving one’s condition.

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4   Can One Have Moral Luck? To all appearances, luck comes to bear not only on the factual issue of what happens to us in life, but also upon normative issues of moral appraisal.15 For one thing, insofar as the moral status of an action depends on its consequences, these can often be ruled by matters of mere accident. (For example, it may be a matter of pure chance whether someone eats a poisoned apple put maliciously under a tree.) For another, whether or not a malign individual (a vandal, say, or an embezzler) is able to practice this vice will depend on the existence of opportunities, which can also be a matter of pure chance. The impact of luck on moral issues occurs particularly at three levels. First off, there is that of particular actions. Particular Actions. Consider the case of the lucky villain who burgles the house of his grandfather, whom he knows to be absent on a long journey. Unbeknownst to him, however, the old gentleman has meanwhile died and made him his heir. The property the villain “steals” is therefore his own—legalistically speaking, he has in fact done nothing improper: a benign fate has averted the wrong his actions might otherwise have committed. In his soul or mind—in his intentions—he is a wicked thief, but in actual fact, he is quite guiltless of wrongdoing under the postulated description of his act as one of “taking something that belongs to oneself.” By contrast, consider the plight of the hapless benefactor. To do a friend a favor, he undertook to keep her car for her during an absence on a long journey. At around the expected time, the car is reclaimed by the friend’s scheming identical twin—of whose existence our good-natured helper had no inkling. With all the goodwill in the world, he has, by a bizarre act of unhappy fate, committed the misdeed of giving one person’s entrusted property over to another. In intention, he is as pure as the driven snow, but in actual fact, he has fallen into wrongdoing. Such cases illustrate how particular actions of a certain moral orientation can misfire because of the intervention of fortuitous circumstances. In fact, considerations of exactly this sort lead Kant to put such moral accidents on the agenda of ethical theorizing. For him, they furnish decisive indications that consequentialism will not do—that we must assess the moral status of actions on the basis not of their actual consequences but largely on the basis of their intentions. As Kant sees it, moral status and stature are wholly determined by what one wittingly tries to do and not by one’s success, or by actual performance. And there is much to be said for

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this view. But things can also be said against it. This becomes clear when we turn to the next item. Courses of Action. Consider the case of the night watchman of a bank who abandons his post to go to the aid of a child being savagely attacked by a couple of men. If the incident is “for real,” we see the night watchman as a hero. However, if the incident is a diversion stage-managed as part of a robbery, we see the night watchman as an irresponsible dupe. And yet, from his point of view there is no visible difference between the two cases. How the situation turns out for him is simply a matter of luck. In this way, various courses of action acquire an appraisal status depending largely or wholly on how matters turn out, whether this is something that lies largely or wholly outside the agent’s sphere of control. Human life is paved with such pitfalls. This seems to underscore the Kantian position. But does it actually do so? To clarify the matter further, let us now shift attention from action to character and consider moral qualities. Character traits—moral ones included—are dispositional in nature, relating to how people would act in certain circumstances. For example, candor and generosity represent morally positive dispositions; dishonesty and distrust represent negative ones. But note that a person can be saved from the actual consequences of malign dispositions by lack of opportunity. In a society of adults—in a mining camp, say, or on an oil rig—the child molester has no opportunity to ply this vice. Again, the very model of dishonesty can cheat no one when, Robinson Crusoe-like, he lives shipwrecked on an uninhabited island—at any rate until the arrival of the man Friday. Perhaps all of us are to some extent in this sort of position—we are moral villains spared through lack of opportunity alone from discovering our breaking point, learning our price. As Schopenhauer somewhere observed, the Lord’s Prayer’s petition, “Lead us not into temptation,” could be regarded as a plea for matters so to arrange themselves that we need never discover the sorts of people we really are. But what, then, of the moral position of the individual who is not virtuous by disposition and inclination, but has the good fortune to be able to stay on the good side of morality because the opportunity for malfeasance never comes his or her way? As one recent discussant insists, “If the situation never arises, he will never have the chance to distinguish or disgrace himself in this way, and his moral record will be different.”16 But then, must morality not let such a blackguard off the hook, seeing that the issue

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of opportunity lies beyond the agent’s control and “It seems irrational to take or dispense credit or blame for matters over which a person has no control …”17 Plausible though this may sound, it gets the matter wrong. The difference between the would-be thief who lacks opportunity and his cousin who gets and seizes it is not one of moral condition (which, by hypothesis, is the same on both sides); their moral record may differ, but their moral standing does not. From the vantage point of one who “sees all, knows all” through a vision that penetrates into a person’s depths, the moral status of the two individuals would be the same. The morally lucky culprit is lucky not in that his or her moral condition is superior, but simply because he or she is not unmatched. Lacking the occasion to act, one cannot be found out. We frail and vulnerable humans may indeed be lucky in enjoying a destiny that does not involve having one’s weaknesses exposed, one’s limits tested, one’s vices exhibited. But the luck involved relates not to our moral condition but only to our image: it relates not to what we are but to how people (ourselves included) will regard us. The difference at issue is not moral but merely epistemic. (With the merely would-be wrongdoer who lacks opportunity, we cannot, of course, deplore the act, which never occurred, but we can and must, by hypothesis, deplore the moral condition of the individual.)18 From the moral point of view, how people think and how they decide and determine to act counts every bit as much as what they actually manage to do. The person who is prevented by lack of opportunity and occasion alone from displaying cupidity and greed still remains at heart an avaricious person and (as such) merits the condemnation of those right-­ thinking people who are in a position actually to know this to be so—if such there are. Morality encompasses more than action: it is a matter of inner condition of which actual action is the overt expression. This helps to explain why it is that, although the coward can excuse himself by pleading his nature and his naturally timorous disposition, the immoralist cannot comparably plead her natural inclinations and tendencies, and expect her innate cupidity, avarice, lecherousness, or the like to get her off the moral hook. For in such a case, it is exactly her disposition that condemns her. (The fact that she did not come by her disposition by choice is immaterial; dispositions just are not the sort of things that come up for selective choice.) After all, it makes no sense to say things like, “Wasn’t it just a matter of luck for X to have been born an honest (trustworthy, etc.) person, and for

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Y to have been born mendacious (avaricious, etc.)?” For it is just exactly those dispositions, character traits, and inclinations that constitute these individuals as the people they are. One cannot meaningfully be said to be lucky in regard to who one is, but only with respect to what happens to one. Identity must precede luck. It makes no sense to envision a prior featureless precursor who then has the good (or bad) luck to be fitted out with one particular group of character traits rather than another. In person theory as in substance theory, there is no appropriate place for bare particulars that, having a priori a nondescript (propertyless) prospect identity, can then be filled out with properties a posteriori. People’s moral attributes do not come to them by luck but emerge from their nature as free individual agents. Holding people responsible for their moral character (rather than seeing this as something added fortuitously ab extra) is an inherent part of the fundamental moral presumption involving treating a person as a person. To see this as an extraneous adulation that may or may not come one’s way by luck is simply to cease to treat people as people. The moral status of people as agents is a matter of the “interior” dimension (their intentions and inclinations); it is in significant measure a matter of “how they would act if.” And here, to be sure, we have no choice— given the difficulties of epistemic access—but to form our judgments of people on the basis of what we observe them to say and do. But all that is mere evidence when the moral appraisal of human agency is at issue. The “morally lucky” villain is not morally lucky (by hypothesis, he is a villain); he is lucky only in that his reprehensible nature is not disclosed. The difference is not moral but epistemic; it is a matter of not being found out, of “getting away with it.” It is precisely because both one’s opportunities for morally relevant action and (unfortunately for utilitarianism) the actual consequences of one’s acts lie beyond one’s own control that they are not determinants of one’s position in the eyes of morality. Of course, the point cuts both ways. The virtuous person can be preempted from any manifestation of virtue by uncooperative circumstance. Here is the moral heroine primed for benign self-sacrifice, prepared at any moment to leap into the raging flood to save the drowning child. But fate has cast her into an arid and remote oasis, as devoid of drowning children as Don Quixote’s Spain was lacking in damsels in distress. To be sure, we would be unlikely to recognize this heroism in either sense of the term. On the one hand, we would be unlikely to learn of it. And on the other, we would, even if evidence did come our way, be ill-advised to reward it in

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the absence of circumstances that brought it into actual operation. (For one thing, we would not be confident that it is actually strong enough not to break under the pressure of an actual need for its manifestation.) But what, then, of one’s inclinations, disposition, and character? Are not these issues also outside our control? This issue must be faced, though with telegraphic brevity here. The salient point is that, even after all the needed complications and qualifications are made, the fact remains that these personality features are not merely things regarding which we happen to “have no choice”—they are, by their very nature, things to which the idea of choice does not apply. Putting these factors outside morality’s reprobation with the standard excuse that the agent “has no control” over them involves a category mistake. This is because the whole control issue is irrelevant here from the angle of moral concern seeing that, although in some (morally irrelevant) sense one’s inclinations, disposition, and character merely fail to be “matters within one’s control,” these factors are not things that lie outside oneself but, on the contrary, are a crucial part of what constitutes one’s self as such. The role of luck in human affairs has the consequence that the lives we actually lead, including all the actions we actually perform, need not in fact reflect the sorts of persons we really are. In the moral domain, as elsewhere, luck can obtrude in such a way that—be it for good or for bad— people simply do not get the sort of fate they deserve. And this specifically includes our moral fate too—for good or ill, we may never be afforded the opportunity of revealing our true moral colors to the world at large. What does all this mean? Does it mean (as Kant thought) that morality is not of this world—that moral appraisal requires making reference to an inaccessible noumenal order that stands wholly outside this empirical sphere of ours? Surely not! Most recent discussions of “moral luck” fail to appreciate that the opportunity-deprived immoralist’s good luck appertains not to her moral status but merely to her reputation. The prime considerations from the moral point of view are things not apparent to the naked eye: character, disposition, and intention. The moral significance of acts lies in their serving as evidence in this regard. And the moral bearing of luck enters in because its operation can deflect the evidential linkage by disrupting the normal, standard import of actions. We must form our moral judgments not on the basis of what happens transcendentally in an inaccessible noumenal order, but rather on the basis of that most prosaic of all suppositions; namely, that things happen as they

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generally and ordinarily do, that matters take the sort of course that it is only plausible to expect. Moral evaluation as we actually practice it generally reflects the ordinary course of things. Ordinarily, breaking and entering is a wicked thing to do. Ordinarily, leaving one’s post to help someone in need is a good thing. Ordinarily, driving while drunk increases the chance of harm to others. Ordinarily, mendacious people cause pain when they scatter lies about them. Ordinarily, people ultimately get to manifest their true colors. Moral appraisals are standardized in being geared to the situation of the ordinary common run of things. Admittedly, luck, be it good or bad, can intrude in such a way as to prevent matters from running in the tracks of ordinariness. And then things go wrong. Moral acts that normally lead to the good can issue in misfortune. But that is just “tough luck.” It does not— or should not—affect the issue of moral appraisal. People who drive their cars home from an office party in a thoroughly intoxicated condition, indifferent to the danger to themselves and heedless of the risks they are creating for others, are equally guilty in the eyes of morality (as opposed to legality) whether they kill someone along the way or not. Their transgression lies in the very fact of their playing Russian roulette with the lives of others. Whether they actually kill someone is simply a matter of luck, of accident, and of sheer statistical haphazard. But the moral negativity is much the same one way or the other—even as the moral positivity is much the same one way or the other for the person who bravely plunges into the water in an attempt to save a drowning child. Regardless of outcome, the fact remains that, in the ordinary course of things, careless driving puts people’s lives at risk unnecessarily and rescue attempts improve their chances of survival. What matters for morality is the ordinary tendency of actions rather than their actual results under unforeseeable circumstances in particular cases. In claiming this, one recent writer says: “Whether we succeed or fail in what we try to do [in well-intentioned action] always depends to some extent on factors beyond our control. This is true of … almost any morally important act. What … [is accomplished] and what is morally judged is partly determined by external factors. However jewel-like the good will may be in its own right, there is a morally significant difference between actually rescuing someone from a burning building and dropping him from a twelfth story window while trying to rescue him.”19 The difference our author speaks of is indeed there. But only because of a lack of specificity in describing the case. Preeminently, we need to know why it was that

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our rescuer dropped the victim. Was it from carelessness or incompetence or a sudden flash of malice? Or was it because despite all due care on his part, Kant’s “unfortunate fate” intervened and a burnt-out timber gave way under his feet?20 If so, then Kant’s assessment surely prevails. Where a moral agent’s success or failure is differentiated only and solely by matters of pure luck, then there is patently no reason for making different moral appraisals one way or the other. To say this is not, of course, to say that we may not want to differentiate such situations on nonmoral grounds; for example, to reward only successful rescues or to punish only realized transgressions as a matter of social policy pour encourager les autres. It is imperative in this regard to contemplate Bernard Williams’ example of the person who abandons a life of service to others to pursue his art, a decision whose moral justification (according to Williams) will ultimately hinge on how good an artist he turns out to be, which largely depends not on effort but on talent and creative vision, issues at the mercy of nature’s allocation over which he has no control.21 But what earthly reason is there for seeing the moral situation of the talented Gauguin as being in this regard different from that of the incompetent Ignaz Birnenkopf and to excuse the former where we would condemn the latter? The impropriety of an abandonment of a moral obligation is not negated by the successes it facilitates on other fronts. Kant’s point that the talented and untalented, the lucky and the unlucky, should stand equal before the tribunal of morality is well taken, and Hegel’s idea that great men stand above and outside the standards of morality has little plausibility from “the moral point of view.” The Kantian idea goes straight back to the tradition of the Greek moralists who were generally attracted to the following line: how happy we are will in general be a matter of chance and accident; pleasure is bound to depend on happenstance and fortune, on the fortuitous opportunities that luck places at our disposal. If fate treats one adversely enough, then one may simply be unable to realize the condition of affective happiness (as counter-distinguished from rational satisfaction). Chance plays a predominant role here—circumstances beyond one’s control can be decisive. But our virtue is something that lies within our own control and thus reflects our real nature. And this holds quite in general for the achievement of well-being along the lines of the Greek eudaimonia. One is entitled to take rational satisfaction in a life lived under the guidance of sound values irrespective of how circumstances eventuate in point of happiness. One’s affective happiness lies in the hands of the gods, but one’s moral goodness

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is something that lies in one’s own power. Moral appraisal is a resource for the guidance of life. Its rules and principles are—and have to be—geared to the realities of this world, to the normal (standard, typical) course of things. Rational evaluation is a matter of rules and principles, and in the moral case, they have to be attuned to the structural, normal course of things. Here, Kant is surely right in following the lead of the Greeks. Morality as such is impervious to luck: no matter how things eventuate, the goodness of the good act and the good person (and the badness of the bad act and the bad person) stands secure from the vagaries of outcomes. But Kant’s analysis of this situation went wrong. If morality prescinds from luck, this is not because morality contemplates the ideal situation of a noumenal sphere, but because morality contemplates the normal situation of the ordinary course of things in this mundane sphere of our quotidian experience, a course from which the actual sequence of events can and often does depart. There is, to be sure, some good reason for viewing the failed and the successful rescue in different lights. For, by hypothesis, we know that the person who brings it off successfully has actually persevered to the end, whereas the person whose efforts were aborted by a mishap might possibly have abandoned them before completion for discreditable motives such as fecklessness, folly, or fear. We recognize, after all, that an element of uncertainty pervades all human activities and an uncharacteristic flash of inconstancy might possibly deflect someone in the process of performing a worthy act. But if we did somehow know for certain—as in real life we never do—that, but for circumstances beyond one’s control, the agent would indeed have accomplished the rescue, then we will have no basis for denying moral credit. Our reluctance to award full credit has its grounding in considerations that are merely epistemic and not moral. I submit that in this regard Kant’s perception was quite right. Thus, consider a somewhat variant case—that of the brave woman who leaps into the raging waters (or the flaming inferno) to save a trapped child. Only after the fact does she learn that it was her own. Had she known it all the time, she would indeed have gotten full marks for motherly solicitude, because under the circumstances we would have to presume that this, rather than disinterested humanitarianism, provided the motive. But once we establish that she had no way of realizing this at the time, we have to award her full moral credit.

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To be sure, with a little novelistic imagination we can all envision bizarre circumstances in which the exercise of the standard virtues (truth-­ telling, kindness) repeatedly produces disastrous effects. But their status as virtues is geared to the standard course of things—how matters standardly and ordinarily go in the actual world. Because morality is geared to the world’s ordinary course of things, heroic action is not a demand of morality but a matter of supererogation. (And this, of course, is the Achilles heel of Kant’s analysis.) The salient point is that the person who defaults on a valid obligation in pursuit of a greater good has to be judged by the nature of the action irrespective of the ultimate consequences. In giving the money you entrusted to me to a needy cousin, the negative moral status of my action is not affected by whether this actually manages to save the person’s life. It is in fact not difficult to construct examples that illustrate the advantages of the present normalcy-oriented approach as compared with Kant’s noumenal perspective. Consider the case of Simon Simple, a well-­ intentioned but extremely foolish lad. Thinking to cure Grandmother’s painful arthritis, Simon bakes her for 20 minutes at 400 ° Fahrenheit in the large family oven. He labors under the idiotic impression that prolonged exposure to high temperatures is not only not harmful to people but actually helpful in various ways—curing arthritis among them. His intentions are nothing other than good. Yet, few sensible moralists would give Simon a gold star. For he should know what any ordinary person knows: that broiling people by prolonged exposure to temperatures of 400 ° is bad for them. We base our moral judgment on the ground rules of the ordinary case, and Simon’s good intentions simply do not get him off the hook here. (That is just another aspect of his bad luck.) The artist who abandons his family to follow his guiding star, the father who sacrifices his child to the demands of his god, the statesman who breaks his word to his associates for the national good do not “violate pedestrian morality in the name of a higher moral good”—they allow extramoral objectives to override moral considerations. We may or may not decide to excuse them in so acting, on the basis of “everything considered” deliberations. We may, in the end, conclude that they acted “rationally” (i.e., for good and sufficient reasons). But we must not deceive ourselves into thinking that they acted morally, after all—that their moral status as such is somehow safeguarded by their luck in realizing larger objectives of some sort.

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The person who defaults on a valid moral commitment (a promise, say, or an obligation of some sort) is not excused by a fortunate issue of this fault. A transgressor whose unforeseeable consequence turns out to have a fortunate issue for those concerned (a felix culpa) is still a transgressor. And the same holds for the morally virtuous act gone awry through the intervention of an unbound fate. Insofar as moral assessment is consequentialistic, it is geared to the normal, standard, foreseeable consequence that we have to look at and not to the fortuitous issue of the individual case. What has been said here about the relationship of luck to morality holds for the relationship between luck and practical rationality as well. Even if performing a certain action is in fact conducive to realizing your appropriate ends (if, say, ingesting yonder chemical substance will actually cure your illness), it is nevertheless not rational so to act if you have no knowledge of this circumstance (and all the more so if such information that you have points the other way). Even when we happen by luck or chance to do what is, under the circumstances, the best thing to do, we have not acted rationally if we have proceeded without having any good reason to think that our actions would prove appropriate—let alone if we had good reason to think that they would be inappropriate. The agent who has no good reason to think that what she does conduces to her appropriate ends is not acting rationally. And this deficiency is not redeemed by unmerited good fortune, by luck’s having it that things turn out all right. Rationality in action is not a matter of acting successfully towards our ends, but one of acting intelligently, and given the role of chance in the world’s events, these are not necessarily the same. From the moral point of view, the crucial thing is to earn “a gold star” for effort. Whether our circumstances are straightened or easy, whether our childhood is protected or brutalized, whether our chances in life are many or few—all this is not a matter of our own choosing but lies “in the lap of the gods.” But what matters from the angle of morality is what we make of the opportunities at our disposal, such as they are, however meager. Of those to whom little is given, little can be expected, and of those to whom much is given, much can be expected. Our horizons for moral action may be narrow or wide—that depends on the vicissitudes of facts. From the moral point of view, however, it is—to reemphasize—effort that counts. Those who confront a steep slope cannot be expected to make progress comparable to that of those who find an easy path before them.

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Situations and circumstances are realities of luck, but the rational evaluation of moral blame or credit is, of course, designed to take this into account. In sum, although the role of luck may be decisive for the consequences of our actions, it is not so for their evaluative status, be it rational or moral.

5   Do People Deserve Luck? Can someone have deserved or undeserved good luck? Of course. Good luck often comes to the unworthy; ill luck often comes to those who deserve better. But if genuine luck is at issue (with its admixture of real fortuitous chance), then it would always be a mere superstition to contemplate the matter in retributively causal terms—to think that people come by their good or bad luck because they somehow deserve it. Under normal circumstances, what ultimately matters for the moral enterprise is not achievement but endeavor. And it is exactly this that prevents luck from being a crucial factor here. Luck, be it good or ill, generally comes to people uninvited and unmerited. Life is unfair—and luck is, above all, the reason why. The key lesson here is once again Kant’s. We would do well to see luck and fortune as extraneous factors that do not bear on the moral assessment of a person’s character. What actually happens to us in life is generally in substantial measure a product of luck and fate, of “circumstances beyond our control.” It is crucially important, then, to recognize the role of luck in human affairs—for good and ill alike. For otherwise, one succumbs to the gross fallacy of assimilating people’s character to their actual lot in life. The recognition of luck, more than any other single thing, leads us to appreciate the contingency of human triumphs and disasters. “There but for some stroke of luck go I” is a humbling thought whose contemplation is salutary for us all. One cannot properly appreciate the human realities so long as one labors under the adolescent delusion that people get the fate they deserve. During every century of the existence of our species, this planet has borne witness to a measureless vastness of unmerited human suffering and cruelly unjust maltreatment of people by one another. Only in exceptional circumstances is there any link between the normative issue of the sorts of people we are and the factual issue of how we fare in this world’s course of things. The disconnection of the two factors of fate and desert, which luck so clearly signalizes, is a fact of life, a perhaps tragic but

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nevertheless characteristic and inescapable feature of the human condition. But from the specifically moral point of view, it is desert that is determinative and fate is ultimately—and mercifully—irrelevant. With respect to responsible rational agents, we do—and must—take the stance that however much their fortune may depend on matters of chance and circumstance, their moral condition is something that lies in their own hands.22

Notes 1. Some earlier Greek speculations about the impetus of tuchê (chance) on people’s prospects for the good life are treated in Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge, 1986). 2. He abhorred the word as being literally unintelligible: “Abhorremus praecipue propter vocabulum, quod non in se vera conservit intelligi” (De civitate dei, v. 9). For Augustine, all that occurred was part of God’s plan. What we call chance is simply a matter of human ignorance. 3. “Trois Discours sur la condition des grands,” in Oeuvres Completes, ed. Louis Lafuma (Paris, 1963), p. 366. 4. For a brief account of Gracian, see the article by Neil McInnes in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp.  375–376. For a fuller treatment, see Alan Bell, Balthasar Gracian (Oxford, 1921). 5. The Economist (August 29, 1987), p. 49. At present, the largest ever lottery is El Gordo (“the fat one”) held in Spain with a prize well in excess of $100 million. In 1988, Spain’s 38 million inhabitants gambled away more than $25 billion—over $650 per capita (New York Times, May 14, 1989). To be sure, the phenomenon is not confined to Spain. In 1793, the construction of the “Federal City” in the District of Columbia was promoted by a “Federal Lottery” in which George Washington himself bought at least one ticket. 6. On this perspective, Spanish philosophers took the prominence of fortune in human affairs to betoken the limits of human power, setting the stage for a fundamentally pessimistic appreciation of the power of human reason for guidance in this sublunary sphere. We find this attitude prominent not only in the great figures of the Golden Age of Spanish literature, who were more or less contemporaries of Gracian (in particular Quevedo and Calderon), but also much later—in Unamuno’s insistence that human reason is inadequate and unsatisfactory as a guide to life, and in Ortega y Gasset’s rejection of the utility of scientific reason as a directrix of human affairs. The idea that life is too chancy and fortuitous a thing to be manage-

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able by rational means runs as a recurrent leitmotif through the history of Spanish thought. Gracian’s recommendation of the gambler’s perspective fell on fertile ground. 7. Nam rerum humanorum tanta est obscuritas varietasque, ut nihil dilucide sciri possit (Erasmus, Encomium moriae, XLV). 8. For an illuminating discussion, see Antonino Poppi, “Fate, Fortune, Providence and Human Freedom,” in C.  B. Schmitt et  al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 641–667 (the quotation is from p. 653). 9. As one German writer puts it, often “the guardian angels of those who have luck are the unlucky” (Die Schutzengel derer, die Glück haben, sind die Verunglücich) (Hans Pichler, Persönlichkeit, Glück, Schicksal (Stuttgart, 1947), p. 47). 10. “El martes ni te cases ni te embarques” (Neither marry nor journey on the Tuesday), runs a Spanish proverb. 11. When the New York Mets won the 1969 World Series despite being generally viewed as the inferior team, some attributed this outcome to “mere luck.” As reported by Arthur Daley in the New York Times, Branch Rickey rejected this imputation with the sage observation that “luck is the residue of design.” (James Tuite (ed.), Sports of the Times: The Arthur Daley Years (New York, 1975), p. 285; I owe this reference to Tamara Horowitz). 12. The question is interestingly discussed in Richard A.  Epstein, “Luck,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 6 (1988), pp. 17–38. 13. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 100. 14. See p. 144 and note 5 above. 15. Compare Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck” [Chapter 3]. See also Bernard Williams’ essay on the topic [Chapter 2] and Norvin Richards, “Luck and Desert” [Chapter 9]. 16. Nagel, “Moral Luck,” p. 65. 17. Ibid., p. 61. 18. To be sure, the law—for very good reason—deals only with realizations; the merely would-be lawbreaker lies beyond its condemnation. But morality and law simply differ in this as in other regards. To take the Williams and Nagel law on “moral luck” is in fact to take an overly legalistic view of morality. 19. Nagel, “Moral Luck,” p. 58. 20. “Even if it should happen that, by a particularly unfortunate fate or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this [good] will should be wholly lacking in power to accomplish its purpose, and if even the greatest effort should not avail it to achieve anything of its end, and if there remained only the good will (not as a mere wish but as the summoning of

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all the means in our power), it would sparkle like a jewel in its own right, as ­something that had its full worth in itself” (Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, sec. 1, para. 3). 21. Williams, Moral Luck, pp. 38ff. 22. This essay is a revised version of a paper delivered in Atlanta in December 1989 as a Presidential Address to the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association and published in its Proceedings, vol. 64 (1990), pp. 5–20.

CHAPTER 7

Fairness Problems

There are basically two modes of fairness: 1. Egalitarian fairness: to divide benefits and burdens among people equally, with identical shares for each. Such fairness consists in treating everyone alike. 2. Desertive fairness: to divide benefits and burdens differentially in due proportion with the desert of the individual. Such fairness consists in giving everyone their appropriate shares, their “just dues”. The second of course leaves open the question of how desert is to be adjudged, whether by need or by contribution (or some combination thereof). For present purposes this issue of desert-determination is not critical because present concern is with the contrast between (1) and (2). There are also two distinct modes of social justice according as the pivotal ideal of the enterprise is regarded as being a matter of: 1. Floor-elevating justice (minimum-maximization): improving the condition of the worst-off 2. Safety-netting justice: (deficiency minimization) ensuring that as few as possible fall beneath the level of acceptable minimality It is clear that in conditions of scarcity these two can disagree. Thus suppose an economy of scarcity with only 10 resource units available for © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_7

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distribution among 5 participants. Here floor-elevating justice would call for a distribution of 2 units apiece. But with 3 as the level of minimal sufficiency, safety netting justice would call for allocating 3 units to three of the parties—thus (regrettably) leaving two in the lurch. In principle, an economy can have any one of three overall conditions: Display 1: On fairness and justice in economical conditions Economic condition

Fairness

Insufficiency Sufficiency Affluence

Egalitarian √ √ √

Justice Desertive X ? √

Floor-elevating ? ? ?

Safety-netting X √ √

KEY: √, always achievable; X, never achievable; ?, only conditionally achievable Note: Sufficiency is determined by the possibility of achieving safety-netting justice

1. Insufficiency/Poverty: Less than what is required to meet the basic needs of its people 2. Sufficiency/Adequacy: Enough to meet everyone’s needs 3. Superfluity/Affluence: More than enough to meet everyone’s needs The situation prevailing here is depicted in Display 1. A larger lesson immediately emerges, namely, that matter of fairness and justice are critically affected by the state of the resources available for distribution. The crucial fact for the theory of distributive justice is the achievability of fairness and justice critically depends on the nature of the envisioning economy. In an economy of sufficiency, egalitarianism is (as ever) achievable and (by definition) safety-netism will be realizable. Whether desertism can be realized remains an open question. The situation regarding distributive justice in an economy of insufficiency is complex. For here the ever-available egalitarian distribution may put everybody below at the basic level of adequacy (and a fortiori desert-­ fairness may be unachievable), and moreover is bound to leave some people without a safety net. The overall lesson of this schematic and abstract analysis is clear: Only under favorable economic conditions can all of the desiderata inherent in considerations of justice and fairness possibly be achieved. Clearly a healthy economy is the best and most effective means towards justice. But of

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course these considerations relate to what can be realized in the setting of a sufficiently productive economy. For these deliberations have proceeded entirely at the level of possibility. What is or will be done in an issue that remains untouched by an analysis based in general principles. Theory can only determine what can be, what will be is another matter. For while the issue of what economy can do for its people is a question of theoretical principles, what it will do is not a question of theory at all; it is entirely a matter of politics. However, the problem of scarcity is not something that arises only with the economy as a whole. It also arises at the level of small-scale detail. Thus suppose it takes a dose of medicine A and one of medicine B to cure an ailment. If we have one dose of A to distribute among two patients, one of whom already has taken B it might in theory seem only fair to distribute it by lot between the two. But is it “fair” to take the risk of depriving the other patient of effective treatment when its recipient can receive no possible benefit? Obviously not! For consider the following two seemingly appropriate and unproblematic principles of fair and just distribution: I. [Allocation Fairness] To be fair an allocation must distribute equal components among the recipients but when this is not possible then the opportunity (chance) or realization must be equalized. II. [Benefit Fairness] To be fair an allocation must distribute in a way that equalizes the benefit that recipients deem for their allocation. III. [Communal Fairness] To be fair an allocation must distribute in a way that maximizes the benefit for the group as a whole. Now in the light of those principles consider the following situation: We have to deal with a group of three ailing individuals. In order to survive, they each need a dose of two medicines, A and B. One dose of each is available for distribution. However, X already has a dose of A and Y a dose of B. What, then is the fair allocation?

Theoretically, there are nine possible distributions of two items among three recipients is possible. And in point of abstract fairness a random choice among them will treat everyone alike. But this conformity to principle I will leave Principles II and III by the wayside. Moreover note the benefit fairness is only realized with a random choice among three distributions

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X Y A+ B — — A+ B — —

Z — — A + B

(1) (2) (3)

These are the only distributions that assure each participant of an equal chance of survival. However, there is another distribution that will ensure two survivals, namely



X Y Z B A —

Would it then ultimately be fair to X and Y to adopt the previous II-style route to “fairness”? Should we not rather at this point adopt a variant mode of fairness and implement: IV. [Group Fairness] To be fair to a group, an allocation must maximize the number of its individuals whose needs are met. This line of thought leads to point of broader impact via the consideration that fairness to indicate can sometimes conflict with achieving justice for the larger community. To all appearances it would seem that fairness is inherently problematic. For it seeks to continue under one single uniform conception a variety of ideas that can, in various particular cases, fail to be cogently achievable in leading to conflicting and incompatible results. Fairness, that is to say, is one of those conceptions (C) that admits of a variety of versions C1, C2, … Cn each constructive to a corresponding set of characteristic requirements R1, R2, … Rn whose conjecture is unrealizable on grounds of inconsistency. A great many of the basic conceptions of political economy (democracy, for example, or equality) are also of this nature. And such concepts are bound to lead to endless and futile controversy, seeing that a group of conflicting ideas can only be rendered coherent by abandoning some of them, and since this can always be achieved in different ways, no one single resolution can ever be cogently represented as rationally compelling.

CHAPTER 8

On the Ethics of Inaction

1   Inaction Terminology to the contrary notwithstanding, wrongdoing does not require doing but can result from inaction as well. The immobile bystander who lets wickedness go its unhampered way, or the indifferent passer-by who rejects the role of Good Samaritan, both fully deserve reprehension. Or again, a brutal parent is beating his child. You stand by and do nothing. An inebriated friend is about to take his car on the road. You let things take their course. A careless camper is striking matches to light his cigarette in a rain-starved forest. You ignore the proceedings. Your colleague nurse is in the process of administering the wrong medication to a patient. You do nothing about it. Here, those indifferent to preventable evils are no less wrongdoers than those who actively transgress. That nonagent bears no causally productive responsibility—his failure (such as it is) is one of inaction. But this nonetheless opens the door to reprehension. We bear moral responsibility not just for what we do, but also for what we fail to do—not just for our actions but also for the inactions and omissions that we let happen when we remain inert and passively “let things run their course” without any effort to intervene in the course of events. Throughout such cases, the immobile agent bears no causal responsibility for the harm about to ensue. Those mishaps are the product of the agency of others, and moral responsibility for a reprehensible outcome does not require causal responsibility for it. Thus, suppose that I fail to give you a much-needed warning of impending disaster and, knowing this © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_8

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to be the case, simply “let things run their course.” I am not causally responsible for the harm you suffer, but yet bear a great deal of moral responsibility. Even without causal intervention in the course of events, my failure to want to help—let alone try to do so—is morally reprehensible. Inaction too can be a sin. However, inaction and omissive passivity come in two forms: deliberate and inadvertent, or witting and heedless. I can fail to give you needed aid intentionally and (so to speak) with malice aforethought, or else can do so simply from blithe ignorance of your need for aid. These, of course, are ethically very different situations. To all ethical intents and purposes, deliberate inaction is a mode of action—a consciously managed mode of proceeding whose ethical status is fully on par with any other sort of action. Unwitting inaction, by contrast, is an ethically very different situation: it is venial (excusable) unless the information deficit at issue is somehow the agent’s fault and “he should have known better.” In point of moral appraisal, omissions fall into the same evaluative range as commissions. They too can be right or wrong, benevolent or malicious, deliberate or accidental, justified or unjustified, mandated or prohibited. Omissions can even bestow supererogative boons, as with the creditor who desists from pressing a justified claim on some impoverished debtor whom it would crush.

2   Presumptions of Agency and Inaction Intention is the factor that most decidedly differentiates in matters of action and inaction. With actions, we presume that the agent intended their consequences; with omission, we presume that the agent did not intend their ramifications. In giving the antidote to poison victim Smith, Jones is presumed to be looking to a recovery: in failing to do so, he is presumed to be unaware of its need. With action, we presume intent; with omission, we presume inadvertence. Action looks to be purposive and goal oriented; omission and inaction in the format of unknowing look to indecision and lethargy. And there is plausible reason for this disparity. For every action there are multiple omissions. In eating this apple, you pass many others by. In buying a pound of sugar, you abandon the option of two or three. There are just too many alternatives to address them all with explicit motive and attention. Most of them we bypass unhesitatingly. And herein lies the rationale for the fact that in ethical deliberations, we standardly presume

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that errors of commission (inappropriate actions) are done deliberately and errors of omission (inappropriate inactions) are done unwittingly. We incline to think the worst of wrongdoers and give defaulters the benefit of the doubt. In this regard, agents and inactions tend to be viewed differently. Presumptions are belief commitments that qualify as pro tem acceptable and remain in place until such time as specifically counter-indicative information comes to light. This means that such presumptions are defeasible, and can become unraveled by the course of events. In matters of the ethics and morality of human agency, we standardly presume that agents “know what they are doing” and freely intend to be doing it. Specifically, we presume that in acting, the agent: • Acts freely and on his own account • Is aware of the nature of his acts • Realizes their likely consequences • Intends these consequences Of course, all of these presumptions may be defeated and fail to obtain in a particular case. But they hold good unless and until defeating considerations come to light to provide the agent with some excuse. The language of harmful action so functions that certain injuries can only be inflicted unintentionally. If what you do kills someone without your awareness and intention (e.g., by knocking a flower pot off a balcony wall onto the head of a passer-by), what you do is not murder. If, without realizing the ownership of it, you make off with someone’s property, this is not theft. Morally significant transgressions have to be committed knowingly. If you intend to do away with the president but the poison you prepare for this is accidentally ingested by the prime minister instead, this killing is not an assassination. If a careless waiter accidentally spills the poison into your drink, this is not suicide. With actions of this sort, the issue of intention is settled by the descriptive nature of the act, and any prospect of excuse on grounds of inadvertence is removed. But at this point the question arises: What of inaction? Are any comparable presumptions operative in relating to what agents fail to do in circumstances where a certain course of action would appear to be in order? What are we to make of the situation where someone fails to save poor drowning Mirabelle?

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With authentic actions, we presume adequate cognition of the relevant facts. When you tell a falsehood, we presume you are aware of it. When you help a victim, we presume it is because you know he needs aid. With authentic omissions (inactions), by contrast, we presume ignorance. When you let him suffer unaided, we presume you were ignorant of his need for help. Absent explicit indications to the contrary, we assume that the omission (inaction) was excusable—that the agent did not know his help was needed, was unable to provide it, or the like. What people believe, and how, is important in these matters. “He didn’t know that the gun was loaded” will fail to be a viable excuse in circumstances where he should have known otherwise—or even merely have considered its possibility. Here, ignorance is no excuse. Recrimination is righty allocated in line not only with what people do know but also with what they should have realized. Thus, even unwittingly done, wrongdoing can be blameworthy.

3   Excuses for Inaction It deserves note that there is a crucial difference between the presumptions at issue with actions and those at issue with inactions. The presumptions of action (consequence awareness, consequence intention agency freedom, and autonomy) all involve factors that confirm agent responsibility for the act. By contrast, the presumptions that govern inaction and omission (unknowing, inability, and the like) lead to get the agent “off the hook.” With actions, we surmise culpability; with inaction, the benefit of the doubt generally serves to excuse. Action and inaction work under exactly opposed presumptions in regard to responsibility. But either way, we assume that the agent knows “what they are doing.” In situations where ethical considerations would normally require an agent to act in a certain way, failure to do so may nevertheless be excusable. The viable excuses generally fall into four categories: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Unknowing—ignorance and misinformation Incapacity—inability to act effectively Interference—control or compulsion by others Domination—overriding by a greater conflicting obligation

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In morally appraising the actions of people, we standardly presume that none of these apply. However, an agent’s seeming misdeeds can be excusable and exempt from recrimination. Thus, when the agent fails to offer help because he does not know it is needed; when someone, friend though he is, cannot mitigate your shortage of funds because he has none himself; when an official is forced to aid the plot because otherwise the plotters will kill his family; or when someone does not help the drowning child owing to engagement in defusing a bomb—all of these actions are free from recrimination. The world’s woes are such that your help is needed in vastly more cases than you can ever know about. For the most part, your inaction is venial and excusable on this basis, seeing that you do not know about them all and it cannot really be said that you ought to do so. But generally, you ought to know about some of them, and when this is so, inaction would merit reprehension. Life being what it is, a complex dialectic is set in train with excuses, as per: • Excuses • Excuse-defeaters • Excuse-defeat invalidators • Etc. In theory, an ongoing dialectic of considerations and counter-­ considerations can be at work. Are there any actions or omissions that are totally inexcusable—beyond the possibility of any extenuating conditions? Presumably not—as long as the depths of evil are bottomless, at any rate. For anything is acceptable when required to avert something yet worse. All the same, with excusable wrongs, there always remains the mandate to feel sorrow and regret. Defaulting on an obligation—however adequate the excuse—still leaves the residual obligation to respond with sorrow and regret. Excuses for inappropriate action or inaction, however extensive and justified, never wipe the moral slate clean.

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4   Evaluating Action and Inaction From an ethical point of view, actions can be graded on a five-category basis: positive neutral negative

mandatory/obligatory positive but not mandatory indifferent, optional negative but not prohibited prohibited/forbidden

And omissions are open to analogous appraisals. Perhaps the idea of ethically positive omissions may seem somewhat counter-inductive. But it is clear that (for example) you should refrain from giving medical assistance where someone more qualified than you is available. People merit moral approbation to the extent that their record of action is deliberately contrived to include positive actions and to omit negative ones. For maximal moral merit, a person’s record must be large in deliberate acts of positive merit and small in inexcusable acts of negative merit. For maximal discredit, the reverse must be the case. Cases of mixed merit pose problems. What is one to say of the person who never does anything of positive moral merit but also never does anything that is morally negative? Or again of the person who does much that is morally negative but even more that is morally positive? The subject is replete with such rather difficult issues of moral assessment since both action and inaction figure crucially in assessment. The person who culpably fails to save a drowning child does not kill her, yet what he does is almost as bad. But just exactly how bad is something that we cannot readily assess. We cannot say that it is just as bad— that he is effectively guilty of that child’s death. Because dozens of others could be in exactly this same condition though there is but a single dead child. Nor can one say that when there is a dozen of them, each is partly guilty of one-twelfth of a child-death. After all, what each individual does is entirely independent of what is done by those others who are in a like condition.

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To all appearances, in matters of moral guilt and culpability, there is no quantifying the extent of wrongdoing. Such negativities are perhaps comparable, but not measurable.

5   The Problem of Groups A group can collectively proceed reprehensibly—“Someone should have acted!”—without engendering individual reprehension (“Smith ought to have done something!”). There is no distributivity here: you can be member of a reprehensible group without being reprehensible yourself. Where group action or inaction is reprehensible, individual similarity may nevertheless be acceptable. Jones is embarking on an unhealthy lifestyle and self-destruction. Somebody among his associates ought to warn him. If no one among them lifts a finger, then this group deserves reproach. But no single member bears culpability. Crying “Fire!” in the auditorium should doubtless have been done by somebody, yet no one in particular can be blamed for not doing so. Someone in the family should see to it that immobile grandfather is fed even when there is no one in specific who is charged with this. (The saying has it that what is everyone’s business is nobody’s business.) Group responsibility has two different versions: the collective, where the responsibility belongs to the group as a whole without explicitly involving any of its members, and the distributive, where responsibility belongs individually to each and every group member. And we cannot move automatically from collective to distributive obligation in moral reasoning; that is, with M meaning “it is (ethically) mandated that …,” we cannot move from: M  x  W  x  Someone or other ought to have given a warning





to:

 x  MW  x  A certain particular individual ought to have givenn a warning

It is true—even if unfortunate—that collectively geared obligations do not always engender distributively specific duties. What is collectively obligating may fail to be so at the level of individuals.

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6   Complications A brief excursion into symbolic abbreviations will prove instructively useful. Let: • A, A1, A2, … represent actions • x, y, z, … represent agents • A(x) represents: “x does A” • M represents: “It is mandatory that” Group obligation to act or omit is a complex issue because considerable possible variation is in prospect. Specifically, there are four interrelated possibilities for group obligation: 1. General: Every member of the group is obligated to do A (∀x)(x ∈ G ⊃ MAx) 2. Specific: Some particular member of the group is obligated to do A (∃x)(x ∈ G & MAx) 3. Collective: The overall group is obligated to do A M(∃x)(x ∈ G & Ax) 4. Distributive: It is obligatory that all group members do A M(∀x)(x ∈ G ⊃ Ax) Various of these conditions can obtain in the absence of the others. And similar complications arise with regard to the moral status of group omissions (i.e., with ~A in place of A). The expression MA(x) can be read in two ways: “It is mandatory (obligatory for) x to do A,” or simply “x ought to do A.” Thus, x engages in an error of commission when Ax & M~A(x), and an error of omission when ~ Ax & MA(x). Thus, consider: • “Omitting A is universally mandated to G-members” (∀x)(x ∈ G ⊃ M~A(x))

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=~(∃x)(x ∈ G & P A(x)), where P (permitted) is ~M ~ And contrast this with: • “Doing A is permitted by some G-members” (∃x)(x ∈ G & P A(x)) Note that the one is the negation of the other. An error of omission occurs when an agent fails to do what is right: (1) MA1(x) & ~A1(x) And an error of commission occurs when the agent does what is wrong: (2) A1(x) & M~A2(x) Now, if we treat inaction as a mode of acting, then we can let A2 be ~A1. Then (2) becomes: ~A1(x) & M~~A1(x) Which is simply (1) once more. Thus, under the supposition in question, errors of omission are transmuted into errors of commission, with nonperformance as a mode of performance. A failure to do what is right then becomes an act of wrongdoing, and the difference between commission and omission is obliterated. However, as we saw above, there is good reason for not taking this step—save in the special case of deliberately intended omissions.

CHAPTER 9

Ancestor Worship?

1   A Big Question What do we owe to our predecessors? What duties and obligations do we have to those who have preceded us and produced the manifold of physical, social, and cultural artifice in which we live our lives? Most of what they did that is of value to us was not done for us at all. Certainly, we never made any contractual agreement with them. From the angle of deontological contractualism, we owe them nothing. So, is there anything antecedent-specific that we do retrospectively owe to our predecessors? Since our predecessors (over the near term at least) are fellow human beings, we owe them what we owe to human beings at large: respect, honesty, and compassion in making judgments about them, as well as due care for what is in their legitimate interests. These are universal obligations which, being due to all of our fellows, are, of course, due to our predecessors as well. And so, even as being a good person calls for acting so as to take due heed of the best interests of others insofar as this is practicable and appropriate, so being a good successor/heir calls for such a proceeding regarding one’s predecessors. Insofar as they too are persons—and indeed persons whose actions have, for better or worse, set the stage for our own lives—we owe them what we owe to anyone. An interesting discussion of relevant issues is presented in a recent book by the Swiss philosophy broadcaster Barbara Bleisch. Entitled Why We © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_9

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Owe Nothing to Our Parents,1 its thesis is that we owe nothing to our parents simply as parents—merely as agents who have brought us into the world. Insofar as we do owe them something, it is only for whatever they may thereafter have specifically done explicitly for our benefit. If there is nothing they did along those lines—say, by giving us up for adoption upon arrival—we are under no obligation of any sort to them. Obligation would only arise from services rendered—we owe neither money nor gratitude to parents simply for having brought us into the world. Indebtedness can and should come into play upon arrival only in relation to what has been done explicitly to make us safe and comfortable in the world. And in this regard, parents are in no different a position from anyone else. There simply are no parent-specific obligations. But, of course, there is a difference between abstract principles and practical procedure. And then the preceding structuring becomes largely irrelevant when social practice becomes the critical factor. Society at large cannot care adequately for the nurture and welfare of individuals. Given the situation of humans in nature’s scheme of things, it makes good sense that moral custom should have it as a rule that a person’s parents (broadly construed in relation to familial bonds) should bear special responsibility for the development of individuals, and that therefore, normally and as a rule, financial obligation should come into play. Insofar as society succeeds in acculturating parents to act dutifully, reciprocity can require children to act in loco filiorum. Moral internalization has immense social benefits. So, if we assume that we are dealing by and large and on the whole with good and caring parents, then it will be expedient to presume that these offspring should be good and caring children, but what does this mean? Just what would plausibly count as obligations that we have to our ancestors above and beyond those that we owe to people in general?

2   Some Examples 2.1  Respect Clearly, what we owe to our predecessors is not worship but respect. Worship is not in order because those predecessors are the wrong sort of being for its applicability—they are mundane and not higher beings. Respect, by contrast, is something else again. In the end, there are two bases for respecting people: (1) for what they are and (2) for what they do.

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The former—unearned respect—is universal, grounded simply in their being people, fellow humans. However, the latter—earned respect—is grounded on what there is by way of positive contributions to the ongoing story of mankind. Accordingly, we are obligated in virtue of our own human condition to acknowledge and respect our fellows as what they are, and—no less importantly—to acknowledge and respect them for the positivities of what they have achieved along the difficult road of human history. 2.2  Honesty and Fairness De mortuis nihil nisi bonum obviously holds only for the recently departed whose near and dear ones are still living and deserve due care towards their sensibilities. Apart from this, however, we owe both to ourselves and to our fellows candor and honesty. We must accordingly judge others with reference to the circumstances, considerations, and standards of their place and time, and neither can we expect them to know facts that only become accessible elsewhere, nor should we expect it of them that they should hold values not in vogue in their place and time. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” should be the maxim. Granted, if someone does better by our standards, we are bound to think well of them for this very reason. But this is a matter of supererogation—something we are not entitled to expect, let alone demand of them. 2.3  Gratitude Then, too, there is the matter of gratitude. To be sure, not gratitude for what they have done for us—because what they did was doubtless not done for us but for themselves. Rather, it is a matter of gratitude not for but that—gratitude that they have prepared the way for us; a gratitude not to them but rather for whatever they have done to ease our own tasks in this world. But, then, to whom is this debt of gratitude ultimately due? Clearly, not to those past antecedents, given that they were doubtless motivated by considerations in which we had no part. Rather, that debt is owed to us— to ourselves as self-declared human beings. For it is the right, proper, and decent thing to do to be duly appreciative for benefits received—on whatever basis and for whatever reason. As decent human beings, we have to

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recognize those unwitting benefactors as constituting a positivity, “a good thing,” in the world’s scheme of things. Simply by utilizing their opportunities for utility in the world’s positivities, they have provided us with the occasion for doing so ourselves by “doing the right thing” in regard to the appreciation of positivity. 2.4  Care Another category of indebtedness relates to due care for the things in which our predecessors have a stake. This leads to such obligations as: • Acknowledging and celebrating their contributions to human well-being • Tending their graves and—where appropriate and practicable—their memorials and monuments • Honoring their wishes (insofar as appropriate and practicable) These matters of filial piety define obligations that we ought to accept and honor.

3   The Reason Why What makes such obligations a matter of duty: why is it right, proper, and fitting that we should acknowledge such indebtedness? Clearly, not to please those predecessors. After all, nothing changes the life eventuation of those whose doings are acknowledged posthumously— it is too late for them to take any pleasure or displeasure in the things we say about them. Nor yet is it to repay them for services rendered. (After all, they are not able to receive any payment.) Instead, these are all things we should ultimately want for the sake of establishing our own decency. In the end, then, due recognition of the merits and demerits of our predecessors is an obligation we owe less to them than to ourselves. It is part of the obligation to make ourselves into good (and thereby just) people. We owe it to ourselves to make the most and best of ourselves. And this involves, among much else, being the sort of persons who acknowledge due obligations—including their indebtedness to those who have gone before.

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A different question yet remains: Do we owe to our own familial ancestors in particular anything that we do not owe to our predecessors at large? Presumably, yes. And for obvious, effectively pragmatic reasons. Just as we bear particular responsibilities for those who are linked to us by family (grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren) because this works best for a more effective collection of effort, so it is with respect to antecedence. Familial proximity makes for more focused concern and efficacy in matters of obligation as elsewhere. It is simply a matter of efficiency and the overall economy of effort in the pursuit of an appropriate objective.

Note 1. B.  Bleisch, Warum wir unseren Eltern nichts schulden (Munich: Hanser Verlag, 2018).

CHAPTER 10

Distant Posterity (A Philosophical Glance Along Time’s Corridor)

1   Introduction One of the subject-definitive aims of philosophy is to facilitate an understanding of our human condition in the world’s scheme of things. This calls for a concern not only for what is, but also for what is not—or at any rate not yet. And in this regard deliberations regarding our eventual posterity1 are bound to raise difficult and troublesome questions throughout the entire range of philosophical concern, alike in metaphysics, in the theory of knowledge, in ethics, in philosophical anthropology, and elsewhere. One problem with the future is that there is an awful lot of it. We can contemplate next week, or next year, or the year 10,000—or astronomical-­ scale future such as the world of the year 10 trillion. Contemplating so vast a range is bound to be challenging. For pretty well any particular concrete thing X that we can name, identify, or indicate—ranging from ourselves, our earth, our solar system, our galaxy, and perhaps even our universe—there is a value of N such that the statement “we cannot be reasonably sure that X will continue to exist and still be there N years hence” holds. And not only does such uncertainty prevail throughout the range of nonexistent objects, but comparable problems pertain to particulars at large. When t is a time in the past, the phrase “the situation at time t” has a definite referent, its detail is fixed and permanent. However when t lies in the future, this phrase has a wide spectrum of possible referents, projecting a manifold of diverse and discordant alternatives. And ideas like “our © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_10

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personal posterity at t” and “humanity’s descendancy at t” are caught up in a proliferation of possibilities, because there are not (and at any rate not yet) any identifiable members of such groupings. As far as we are concerned, the idea of our posterity confronts us with speculative possibilities rather than specifically well-defined items. In every matter of concern, be it demographic or economic or meteorological, our ability to predict matters of detail deteriorate markedly as we look more deeply to the future. We cannot ever be sure about the individuals we are dealing with. Think of our putatively identifying expression like “The oldest person living in New York City in the year 3000.” Will the city even still exist by then—or will it have been annihilated by tidal storms or by a nuclear holocaust? Will it still be fit for human habilitation? Or what if there are several candidates for “oldest inhabitant?” Our putatively identifying expressions may fail to identify. The projection of the present generation into the next admits of easy overview. Even now the transit of generations unfolds interactively about us. But as one follows this process further along and looks to children of children of children, matters become increasingly clouded in a speculative obscurity that eventually leaves little point in distinguishing between descendancy and posterity. For in both cases alike there is no way of identifying individuals, confronting us with a mass of humanity whose involvement with us and the things we know, do, and value is as distant on the one side (blood relationships) as it is on the other (genealogical disconnection). Of course spirit kinship is something else again: kindred spirits are as readily encountered on the one side as on the other. What is one to say about the status of things (and people) that do not yet exist—and indeed possibly never may? For aught we can know to the contrary with assured confidence our attempt to identify future particulars are almost uniformly mistaken. In the year 2500 there will doubtless be people living in Paris but we cannot securely identify any one of them. Philosophers have long been intrigued by this issue of what are called “contingent futurities,” then thought on the matter going back to Aristotle’s discussion of “the sea battle tomorrow” is his tract On Interpretation. As thought carries us further and further into the future our cognitive access to particulars fades away in an increasingly deep fog or unknowing. We can identify family members to deal with next year but we have little information of our descendancy of three generations hence. And as to our

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posterity of ten generations hence we can only make wild conjectures. The personnel of the distant future is an impenetrable mystery to us. The principal point for present purposes is that such problematic possibilities—like the even more extreme mere possibilities, imaginative fictions (like winged horses or gold mountains) we know never to exist—can nevertheless be objects of supposition, thought, and deliberation. They can figure in our imaginings, our plots, and our plans. Since we acknowledge their possibility they can figure as thought objects in our deliberations. And that status—tenuous though it is—suffices for them to be objects of interest and concern for us. Even as we can be frightened by mere figments of our imagination, so we can be preoccupied with and concerned about them. A merely imagined ghost or monster can have every bit as much impact upon us as the real thing would do. So there can be no question but that those mere “contingent futurities” can exert as powerful an influence on our present thought as their eventual realization itself might do. In discussing futurity it will be convenient to adopt the descriptive terminology outlined in Display 1. In the main the present discussion will (as its title indicates) focus on our posterity in the distant future—the period a goodly number of generations hence. Let us count as a generation the elapsed time between the average age of parents when their first child is born—presently some 30 years (with the mother 25 and the father 35). This means that we will have roughly three generations per century. And we may assume that it takes some 300 generations for evolution to effect a significant change in the sort of hominid at issue. On this basis we can limit the horizon of concern to the distant (but not remote) future. To all manageable intents and purposes, the region of the very remote lies beyond our cognitive horizons. We had best focus on what is characteristically distant (rather than “remote” in our here-specified sense).2 It should be clear that the difficulties of information-access that such a discussion faces will become all the more extensive and troublesome as one moves further out along time’s corridor. Over eons we must expect evolutionary processes to do their innovative work. And that homo sapiens will still exist as such and occupy this planet in the very remote (let alone the astronomically distant) future is a dubious proposition. In the very short range—the immediate future—prediction is reasonably practicable because it is a safe prediction that things will stay much the same because it takes time to bring significant changes about. In the very long range—the astronomical future—all bets are off thanks to the prospect of extinction.

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Display 1  Posterity’s chronological timeframe Stages of humanoid futurity

Futurity level (Order of magnitude in 10n years)

Future temporality (in years)

Immediate Near

1 2

Distant

3

Remote

4

Very remote

5–6

Astronomical

7+

up to10 on up to 100 (over decades) on up to 1000 (over centuries) on up to 10,000 (over millennia) on up to 1,000,000 (over eons) huge! (over cosmic eras)

Note: The historical reversal of this time-scale is instructive. Level 7+ goes back to the evolution of primates, level 6 to the earliest per-humans, level 5 to the species homo, and level 4 to the origination of agriculture, with the onset of recorded history soon to come

There is no question but that futurity presents difficulties in philosophy. For how can ethical, social, and political philosophy possibly take future people into account when neither individually nor collectively do we have any reliable information about them? Precisely because we cannot as yet tell what our posterity will think, we face great difficulty in relating ourselves to this. Supposing certain historical continuities we feel confident that in regard to knowledge, and scientific knowledge—in particular, be it factual or formal—our successors will doubtless vastly improve on what we have to offer. Cognitive progress seems assured. And technological progress as well. However, moral and cultural progress are something else again. Perhaps the masses are more enlightened but whether the standard bearers are superior is certainly debatable. And in arts it is problematic whether leading lights of the present are superior to Velasquez or Shakespeare. Of course in such matters we want to be judged by our own standards. After all they wouldn’t be our standards if we did not deem them appropriate. But that is perhaps unduly egocentric. At any rate one thing is clear. In none of these matters—scientific, cultural, ideological—can we expect the conditions of the present to persist. All across the board we have it that we stand to the future as the past stands to us. And this means that there is little on the side of positive

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information at our disposal; all that we have is the negative side: difficult, yes; foreseeable, no. For many philosophical purposes, however, there is fortunately not much one needs to know about the specifics of our posterity. Most of the salient philosophical issues regarding our posterity can entirely by-pass the issue of its actual composition and to some extent indeed even the issue of its actual existence. For many of the salient issues can be addressed at the hypothetical level via such questions as: If there were descendants of ours in the year 5000 would they • Deserve considerations in our present plans? • Merit our now making sacrifices on their behalf? • Be a fitting subject of obligation on our part? • Believe as we do regarding the inhumanities of Nazi Germany? • Judge ethical (economic, political) matters by the same standards as ourselves? • Be likely to be pleased by (of approve of) our doing various things? One may well begin this series with affirmative responses, but this inclination would seem to become increasingly diminished as one moves down the list. The philosophy of history in its grand scale is yet another point of contact between the issue of future generations and that of world chronology. If the Hegelian tradition of world progress holds good, future generations will live under vastly more favorable utopian conditions. If the Nietzschean doctrine of world stabilizing eternal recurrence holds good, the life-­history of future generations will substantially repeat the circumstances and conditions of the past. But in both cases, the matter becomes extremely speculative. The awkward fact of it is that it is virtually impossible to achieve credible predictive detail with respect to our distant posterity. After all, we ourselves can bear witness that even a single generation—our own—can bring drastic and unforeseeable change in such portentous matters as global warming, increases in human longevity, mass migration from the Near East, and opiate drug crises in advanced societies.

2   Predictive Basics Fundamental to any sensible discussion of the matter is the detail/security relationship.

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Consider the following series of claims: • In the year 3000 there will exist 4,785,976 humans in Mozambique • In the year 3000 there will exists more than 3 million humans in Mozambique • In the year 3000 there will be many human individuals in Mozambique • In the year 3000 there will be vertebrates in Mozambique • In the year 3000 there will be organisms in Africa

detail ↑

→ security

Display 2  The retail/security relationship

Clearly it is easier to make a safe prediction the more vague we become about it. On this basis we have to reason with the fundamental epistemological relationship set out in Display 2. Accordingly, in deliberating about the future we need to specify how much detail and how much security we are asking for. In dealing with future populations, for example, we may consider the number of people on July 1, 2075: • “On Long Island to the nearest dozen,” or “In the area of New York City to the nearest 10,000?” Definitiveness clearly makes a big difference for what we can reasonably claim. Our capacity to eliminate possibilities—to rule out what cannot then possibly be the case for aught we now know to the contrary—declines markedly over time. The resulting epistemic situation is depicted in Displays 3 and 4.

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Volume of future possibilities [at a given level of detail] that we ↑ cannot securely exclude on the basis of present knowledge [at a given level of security]

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→ Futurity

Display 3  Cognitive control of future possibilities (The range of what might then be for aught we now know)

As these predictive basics indicate, Yogi Berra had it right: “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” Our human future is veiled in obscurity. We have no clue about whom we will be dealing with as regards our own descendancy four or five generations hence. Few and far between are those of whom one can say, as Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare that they are “not of an age but for all time.” And in the long run we remain uninformed not only as to whom we are dealing with but even what we are dealing with as regards types of humanoids at issue. For in the course of many generations evolution is bound to do its transformative work. And what sorts of beings will then emerge is not open to informed foresight but to speculative guesswork. The remote future is a topic about which we know precious little. This is not an occasion for enlarging the range of speculation about the human future. There is no shortage of literature on the topic. H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine was an important landmark here. But the ball had already been rolling for a long time if one can count utopian works such as Plato’s Republic or Tomas Moore’s Utopia as moving in this direction, as well as fictional speculations regarding man’s future, such as G. B. Shaw’s “Back to Methuselah” or Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man, to say nothing of science fiction. The present discussion makes no attempt to expand this mass of conjecture about human societies, but merely endeavors to indicate and clarify the range of issues that the contemplation our posterity puts on the philosophical agenda.

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Volume of what we can securely ↑ predict at a fixed level of detail → Futurity Display 4 Cognitive control of future possibilities (The range of secure predictability)

Henry Clay’s declaration that “The constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity” hit the nail on the head.3 As regards long-term success in the realization of our projects, the cultivation of our values, and the appreciation of our efforts, we have no alternative but entrust matters to our posterity; in this context they are “the only game in town.” It is therefore strongly in our interests to inform and motivate them and doing what we can in this direction is very much in our benefit. In many ways the law is designed to tie the hands of posterity through the generality of its strictures. When it prohibits polygamy it does it not just for us but for our grandchildren. When it mandates a decennial census it binds the agents and activities of the future. But laws can be changed or abrogated, and uncertainty always casts its shadow over their own future. The abolition of entail, the prohibition of perpetuities, and various measures to contend the influences of a “dead hand” have all tended to make the future less amenable to present control. And so despite various efforts to regulate and control human affairs, how our posterity will comport itself remains obscured in a fog of uncertainty. So what—if anything—can a philosopher reasonably say on the subject? To achieve confidence in the matter, one can only address the issues on a purely conceptual basis, “If I have great-grandchildren, they will have to be offspring of my grandchildren.” If certainty is required, then such near-­ tautology is pretty well the best we can do. Our remote progeny is bound to be one vast mystery for us. Not only can we say almost nothing about what they will be like, we cannot even say for sure whether or not they will be there. Our view of them will have to be hypothetical, speculative, and conjectural. We cannot even identify them: They will certainly have an identity, but there is little or nothing specific that we can say about it.

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3   Ontology: Descendancy and Posterity The most basic metaphysical issue relating to our posterity beyond then generations hence relates to the issue of identity and identification. When talking of our successors of the year 2500 we simply do not know who is at issue. Nor can we claim on any basis other than the most speculative what can be said about them at the level of generic description. What they are like physically, how they think cognitively, how they manage their affairs politically, what engages them personally—the whole array of crucial facts about them—are for us matters shrouded in the fog of unknowing. They are, for us, neither identifiable nor discernable. Our only access to information about them proceeds via pure speculation. As far as we are concerned, they are not identifiable individuals but mere possibilities. In looking to the humans of the future we are not dealing with known quantities but with conjectural possibilities. Thus consider such prospectively identifying descriptions as: • My eldest grandson’s (age 14) grandson • The 100th president of the USA • The Mayor of London in the year 3010 Such individuals are neither fictional (“merely possible”) nor actual (“definitively extant”) but speculative (“realistically possible”). We cannot say whether they will exist or not: their existence is contingent and may or may not come to be. With future people we really “do not know whom we are dealing with.” In relation to this dictum “to be is to be identifiable” is problematic because they are certainly not identifiable by us or indeed any living being. What they admit of in the here-and-now is description and not identification. To be sure, we can sometimes be virtually certain of their existence. (“The oldest living Chinese person”) in 3000. But even then there is virtually nothing further to be said about them. Are they male or female, tall or short, sleek or fat: there is no way of knowing. Alike their existential and their descriptive condition is a puzzle for us. The conditions that will prevail in the life-setting of our distant posterity are for us unfathomable—a mystery. Will they live in a utopian Eden-­ on-­Earth where our own fondest wishes for them are more than realized? Or will they live in deepest misery in a setting compared to which Dante’s “Inferno” is a South-Sea paradise? Who can possibly tell? While we can

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study the past, we can only speculate about the future. The world of the distant future lies substantially beyond our ken. All that we can reasonably surmise is that the conditions of life will be very different for them from what they are for us.

4   Communication and Control The question of our dealings in relation to distant posterity cannot be described as pressing or urgent. After all, what’s the rush? By hypothesis their impact will be felt only in the very distant future so there does not seem to be any great need for hurry. But no matter how distant the destination, our journey there has to begin now. Our relationship to our eventual posterity is unavoidably complicated by problems of communication. After all, we have no prospect of interaction with our distant (remote) posterity. Short of that unrealizable dream of travelling in time, they cannot communicate with us. Nor are our efforts to communicate with them (e.g., via time capsules) likely to be understood as we would have it be. For all practical purposes we live in separate worlds. For while we can certainly attempt to give them messages, whether they will receive them is one problem, and how they will accept them yet another, seeing that their concerns, interests, and values are likely to be very different from everything we could envision. Insofar as Egypt’s pharaonic tombs carried messages for the ages, it is clear that we have not received them in the spirit in which they were intended. As any parent soon comes to recognize, control over our posterity is very limited. And even merely cognitive control—information—is a problematic issue. We humans do not have a good track record at predicting the course of human affairs. The transiency of thing already lamented by the Greek poet Simonides and reflected in the all-destructive “tooth or time” of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (tempus edax rerum) is a fact of life with which we must all come to terms. As we look at the world about us we cannot but acknowledge that “all this will change.” But while we cannot but acknowledging that this is so, we know very little about the how of it. There is a significant information asymmetry between the past and the future. We know for sure that four generations ago we had 24 = 16 ancestral great-great-grandparents. But the size of our own posterity five generations hence is bound to be shrouded in mystery. If there are always 3 children—each of which have three children there will be 34 = 81 people

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in that posterity-cohort; but if our great-grandchildren all remain childless there will be none. Even the size—let alone the composition—of our descendancy is a highly problematic issue. Abortion, reproductive restriction (as per Communist China’s “one child” policy), and the sort of gender selection once practical in the Indian subcontinent, could certainly influence the biostatistics of the next generations. And socio-political arrangements are more difficult to manipulate trans-generationally. (The jury is still out in North Korea’s endeavors in this direction.) And the abandonment of fashion can sweep matters of thought, creativity, and culture. How subsequent generations will manage their lives in large measure lies unfathomably beyond our knowledge and control—and perhaps even beyond our wildest imaginings. Once present for any reason—chance, choice, uncertainty, chaos, and the like—impredictability always ramifies over a far wider domain. For the world’s processes constitute a fabric of cause-and-effect interconnections within which all those impredictable occurrences themselves proliferate further causal consequences that are thereby also bound to be impredictable. And this immediate totality expands and diffuses with the impact of choice, chance and their congenerers. It means that once unpredictability gains any foothold at all, it can ramify, spreading like wildfire to spread throughout the environing domain of cause and effect relationships. For want of a horseshoe nail an entire kingdom may be lost. Small accidents can produce great effects which, for that very reason, can prove to be unpredictable. Moreover, it is a fact of life that the volume of reliable predictive information about matters of detail in any field (be it meteorology or population or economics) diminishes over time: the more distant the future, the less detail we can confidently claim to know about it. And this Predictive Decay increases as we move the highest of our concern more and more deeply into the future, the range of reliable prediction becomes ever smaller. With increasing futurity our analogies weaken, our extrapolations fade, collapse, our conjectures erode. Broad generalities must remain in place, but the volume of reliable detail is increasingly diminished. And so as we contemplate the situation of our posterity over the increasing distant future, we come to realize that there is very little we can confidently say about their knowledge, their values, and their life-situations—and indeed even about their scientific understanding of the physical universe that we share with time.4

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5   The Problem of Future Knowledge But is it not an important factor of commonality that we and our distant posterity inhabit that same world subject to the same laws of nature? Well, yes and no. We certainly do inhabit the same physical universe subject to the same laws of nature. However, how they think about those laws of nature and even what they take them to be is changeable and thereby problematic for us. And when we shift the environmental perspective from the physical world to the social or political or economic world’s our uncertainty regarding those eventual arrangements is all the more drastic. And so, despite our sharing the physical universe in common, there is every reason to think that our remote posterity and ourselves think about things in similar terms. While when our scientific successors of later generations will investigate the same nature we ourselves do, nevertheless the sameness of the object of contemplation does nothing to guarantee the sameness of the ideas about it. It is all too familiar a fact that even where human (and thus homogeneous) observers are at issue, different constructions are often placed upon “the same” occurrences. Primitive peoples thought the sun to be a god and the most sophisticated among the ancient peoples thought it a large mass of fire. We think of it as a large thermonuclear reactor, and heaven only knows just how our successors will think of it in the year 3000. As the course of human history clearly shows, there need be little uniformity in the conceptions held about one selfsame object by differently situated groups of thinkers. Since science is always the result of inquiry into some sector of nature, this is inevitably a matter of a transaction or interaction in which nature is but one party and the inquiring beings another. The result of such an interaction depends crucially on the contribution from both sides—from nature and from the intelligences that interact with it. A kind of “chemistry” is at issue, where nature provides only one input and the inquirers themselves provide another—one that can massively and dramatically affect the outcome in such a way that we cannot disentangle the respective contributions of the two parties, nature and the inquirer. Each inquiring civilization must be thought of as producing its own, itself ever-changing cognitive product—all more or less adequate in their own ways—but with little if any actual overlap in conceptual content. Human organisms are essentially similar, but there is not much similarity between the medicine of the ancient Hindus and that of the ancient

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Greeks. There is every reason to think that the natural science of different astronomically remote civilizations should be highly diversified. Even as different creatures can have a vast variety of lifestyles for adjustment within one selfsame physical environment like this earth, so they can have a vast variety of thought-styles for cognitive adjustment within one selfsame world. After all, throughout the earlier stages of man’s intellectual history, different human civilizations have developed their understanding of nature in a substantially different way. And the speculative shift to an extraterrestrial perspective is bound to amplify such cultural differences. Perhaps reluctantly, we must face the fact that on a cosmic scale the “hard” physical sciences have something of the same cultural relativity to which we are accustomed with the material of the “softer” social sciences. The fact is that all such factors as capacities, requirements, interests, and course of development affect the shape and substance of the science and technology of any particular place and time. Unless we narrow our intellectual horizons in a parochially narrow way, we must be prepared to recognize the great likelihood that the “science” and “technology” of a later civilization will be something very different from science and technology as we know it. We are led to view that our human sort of natural science may well be sui generis, adjusted to and coordinate with a being of our physical constitution, inserted into the orbit of the world’s processes and history in our sort of way. It seems that in science as in other areas of human endeavor we are emplaced within the thought-world that our technological and social and intellectual heritage affords us. The posture of future generations is entirely hidden from our view.

6   Sociological Futurology Anthropology standardly deals with the condition of human cultures— generally those whose extant sites and artifacts we can visit through travel. Unfortunately, the cultures of the future—our own posterity included— are not comparably observable, because time-travel is not available to us save in imagination. Relating those future cultures to ourselves is deeply problematic because neither physically nor cognitively do we have any way to get there from here. Things will be different, autres temps, autres moeurs, as the Greek proverb better known in this French version has it. And yet it is just in these different circumstances of which we know virtually nothing that our distant posterity is going to live.

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We identify ourselves in contrastive groupings—culturally, racially, socioeconomically, educationally. And we are drawn to the idea that our familial posterity should maintain our own group identifications—ideally we would want them to be much like ourselves in these regards. But we also realize full well that the world being what it is, this type-homogeneity is unstable over the long term, and that some generations down the road our posterity may have little type uniformity with ourselves save for DNA. Accordingly, predictive uniformities and laws are problematic matters in human history. Granted, “there are no zombies in mankind’s cultural arrangements—societal conditions do not come back from the dead, once slavery is abolished, that is the end of it; once corner grocery stores have expired, they are gone for good? But insofar as tenable, such generalizations are of negative bearing: they exclude possibilities but do not tell us what will happen. How our distant posterity will manage its domestic, commercial, and cultural affairs is a mystery to us. Within the whole range of human enterprise, religion is perhaps the most stable and enduring. To all visible appearances, it is safe to bet that the present world’s major religions will still be there in clearly recognizable forms 50 generations hence. And what has historically defined them will still be there: Israelites will exclaim that “the Lord thy God is one,” Christians will pray to “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” Muslims will chant “There is no God but Allah” and exclaim that “God is Great,” Buddhists will continue to seek the path to moksha. All the same there is, in the end, very little that we can say that goes beyond the rudimentary essentials of providing for people’s needs (food, shelter, clothing, and belief) and for the transgenerational transmission of life, technology, knowledge, and spirituality. We know that such requirements must be met, although how this will be accomplished is pretty much beyond our ken.

7   Ethical Issues: (1) Our Concern for Them As with humans in general, our posterity falls within the orbit of our dutiful obligations. In accepting the idea of “doing unto others …” we have to include among those others also those who are yet to come. A big problem looms before us at this point. We cannot ever be securely confident that we know what our distant posterity is like as a biological organism, and even less can we be confident about the beliefs, values, goals, and aspirations that will come to obtain at that juncture. We cannot have any

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warranted assurance that whatever “program” we deem ourselves to have seen in matters of science, scholarship, morals will be permanent and that the human “achievements” in thought and certainly what we prize will in times to come enjoy the respect and esteem we think them to deserve. Why, then, should we be concerned, caring, and supportive regarding those eventual successors of ours. What obligates us to our posterity: We know them not, nor can we establish any sort of interactive relationship with them. So why care for them at all? What significance can posthumous developments have for us? Why not “live for the moment”—eat, drink, and be merry, and let the future look after itself? What responsibility have we toward our posterity? After all, think of Joseph Addison’s complaint that: We are always doing something for Posterity; I would fain see Posterity do somethings for us.”5 Perhaps we should take to the line of total indifference towards what happens more than 100 (or 1000 or 10,000) years hence? Perhaps those temporally remote successors should be viewed like planetary aliens in point of discounted remoteness and we should thereby view long-term global warming or radiological pollution with detached indifference. But it seems is difficult to bring ourselves to take this line. Still, yet some of the standard ethical theories make it difficult. Any sort of contractalism is impracticable here. And any sort of reciprocate involves the challenging difficulty of thinking ourselves into remote futurity. The linkage becomes so thin that it becomes difficult to bring the familiar factors of contractuality or of reciprocity into it. Only a theological approach (“We are all God’s Children”) or an idealistic one (“You should be a Mensch about it and see others in your own image”) seems to have the necessary grasp. We should do this because we ultimately have no real choice in the matter. If our attenuates and values have any future at all—and this is admittedly uncertain—then this will have to be realized through our posterity. It is a matter of faute de mieux—indeed of this-or-nothing. With regard to the survival of values all of our eggs are in this one basket—if we do not rely on our posterity we have nowhere else to turn. And then too there is the ethics of the matter. Morality demands that we should care for one another’s interests. It does not really specify much about those others—their gender, their race, or for that matter their birth data are all put aside. We have as little real excuse for writing off our chronologically distant successor as we do for writing off our spatially

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distant contemporaries: the issue of space and time really does not come into it. Insofar as the Golden Rule has ethical traction, we really cannot excuse ourselves from concern responsibility toward them. For what we would ideally want is for ourselves to function in the moral calculus of our successors in a way that takes account of our own claims and contributions. And if this is something we would ask of others then it is something that we ourselves must be prepared to grant to others ourselves. Care for the interests of posterity thus functions as part and parcel of the ideal order to whose cultivation we stand morally committed. After all, ethics is not respecter of persons and moral obligations in particular include everyone. Such moral importance as “Never needlessly impose avoidable negativities on anybody” does not ask about the birth date of the beneficiary involved and hold not just for our contemporaries but for future people as well. And this clearly also holds for such moral maxims as: • Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. • Strive for to the greatest good of the greatest number. • Never needlessly do damage to the best interest of others. None of them involve any question as to the birthday of the people included. In the eyes of morality, as in the eyes of God, all people are equal. We clearly have some responsibility towards our immediate posterity. So from an ethical standpoint we clearly have considerable responsibilities towards posterity. We obviously have some responsibility towards our immediate posterity. After all, we are causally responsible for their being in the world. And we have a quasi-contractual agreement with them: We’ll take care of you when young; you’ll take care of us when old. But our remote descendancy is something else again. To undertake responsibility towards them—to concern ourselves for their well-being and operations even to make sacrifices on their behalf—is not a duty, but a laudable work of supererogation that is nowise a response to claims that they have upon us. In assuming responsibility for them we gain credit not because we are fulfilling an obligation of some sort, but because we are doing something that makes us into better people than we otherwise would be—something in the doing of which we can take justifiable pride. For by caring for them we have succeeded in making the world a better place than it otherwise would

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be—and ourselves better people. Insofar as a duty is involved, it is a matter of duty to ourselves. It seems plausible to contend that we have an interest in the condition of our distant posterity insofar as we choose to take such an interest, so that the matter altogether depends on us. What difference would it make for us if human life did not survive over 1000 generations hence? After all, we ourselves and our feeble efforts are likely, indeed almost certain, to have passed into total oblivion by 10 generations hence. And yet it seems that we cannot quite bring ourselves to look on that futurity with total indifference. For as the kind of being we are, there are certainly ongoingly permanence things that matter for us—causes, principles, values—which the extinction of human life would irreparably damage. Without human persons there would no longer be scope for human justice; without intelligent beings there could be no honesty, no honor, no efforts in the face of adversity, none of those many virtues we respect and prize. Many things that mean much to us personally would cease to exist and the value of the world—our world—would thereby be diminished. And insofar as we are by nature beings drawn to such a view of things, the condition of distant posterity does actually matter to us, as something that matters for us. So in the end, the matter is not one of indifferent option. Just as we are grateful to our predecessors for something they have done and sometimes wish that they had done this or that for our benefit, we should (by priority or reasoning) be mindful of doing likewise for our successors. The things we deem fitting for our antecedents to have done for us, their posterity, we must likewise deem qualified as calls upon us for the benefit of our posterity. It is often said that “life is unfair,” and this dictum is never truer than in relation with transgenerational issues. For in fact the present generation makes innumerable decisions with regard to matters in which future generations have a profound stake and yet no say whatsoever. For us, posterity’s interests here come into play only vicariously—that is only insofar as we internalize them by way of taking an interest in them and making their interests a part of our own. We have an interest in them (that is a stake in their well-being) only insofar as we decide to make it so. Yet, all the same, their interests—their welfare and well-being—is largely in our hands, and there is nothing they can do about it (except perhaps to complain when it is too late for any remedy). What could be less fair than that?

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While most of our obligations stem from agreements and understandings that establish duties to others, some of them are obligations that we automatically have to ourselves, and their defaults are not open to reprehension by others but rather open the door to self-reproach. The category includes not only the obligation to make something of our talents and our opportunities for doing good but also our care for our parents and grandparents, and even for animals and of the environment, none of which results from agreements of some sort—actual or virtual. It is this sort of reflexive obligation to make ourselves into good people that is at issue with our future generations. The obligations involved here are not so much duties we owe to them as duties we owe to ourselves. For total indifference toward other people would discredit us as hard-headed, and deprive us of what could and ideally would be one of life’s satisfactions and rewards. What is at issue is an ethical responsibility here that issues from the larger metaphysical obligation to make ourselves into good people. Just how much do we owe to posterity? What sort of sacrifice can one reasonably ask of this generation for the sake of rendering the conditions of its successors better than it would otherwise likely be? Presumably a good deal as far as the next generation or two are concerned. There are people we know and love (in some measure) and in whose well-being we have a personal stake. And in any event the next generation is an object of special concern because it is through it alone that the existence of future generations can possibly be realized. Still with the passage of time—say ten—let alone 50 generations, the picture grows murkier. But one consideration is sure and should be handled with care. In considering our relation to our remote posterity there is daunting and ominous disparity that has to give us pause, namely, that while we are not in a position to do much good we indeed are in a position to do great harm. For while the upwards potential is very small we can do them great and irreparable damage by way of damage to the planet or even more disasteredly be effectively extinguishing human life through atomic warfare. It is a tragic fact of our condition that we can do so little on the positive side and so much on the negative. But there is nothing laudable about an indifferentism that looks uncaringly at the present. Yet be our stance towards future generations ever so well-intentioned and helpful, nevertheless there are substantial albeit unwelcome limits to what we can effectively do. Suppose (for example) that we adopt measures for population control to avert undue pressure on limited resources. And

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now there unforeseeably emerges an uncontrollable disease that pushes the consequentially reduced population below the level of survivability. The reality of it is that even our best-intended actions can unforeseeably have unfortunate and unintended long-range consequences. The fact is that we are massively underinformed about the situation of future generations, and how can we effectively act to foster their needs and desiderata when we do not know just what these are? No doubt they will care for life, liberty, and happiness, but what if their circumstances have the interests of the one (say life and health) come into conflict with those of another (liberty of action)? Action on posterity’s behalf can be a tricky business. So why should it be supposed that we have grounds for special concern for our own descendants? The pivot seems to lie in the fact of human limitations—the circumstance that we cannot effectively engage ourselves with the concern of everyone as a whole, so that the scope of our effective engagement has to be limited, and that genealogical distance seems to be a natural mode of concentration. If you have the good fortune to leave a million dollars and spread this over your fellow citizens at large this comes to a small fraction of one single cent, a benefit that means nothing to anyone. But if you spread it over the limited members of your near-term familial or affective posterity, it can make a constructive contribution to many lives. Considerations of abstract justice yield way to considerations of pragmatic efficiency. But that is not the end of it. For what obligates us to care for the interest of our posterity is not some sort of fictitious contract. Rather it is our own reflexive obligation to profit by opportunities for the good—specifically to make ourselves into the sort of being who can take justifiable pride in what they do. The intention here is much the same as that involved in care for the welfare of animals, for the avoidance of vandalism, for respecting the tombs and monuments of the dead. It is neither our responsibility to the beneficiaries at issue, nor yet our duty to those of our contemporaries who take an interest in that sort of thing, but rather is—in the final analysis—a part of our duty to ourselves.

8   Ethical Issues: (2) Their Concern for Us As the preceding considerations indicate, we are bound to be very imperfectly informed about the cognitive stance of future generations, and can say but very little regarding what they will think. But we are even worse off with respect to their evaluative stance, and can only speak for less

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assurances about what they will value—even merely in regard to cognitive values (importance, significance, interest). And when it comes to their aesthetic or moral value (or beauty and its lack and of justice and its contrary) there is virtually nothing that we can assert with unalloyed confidence. It does not take a great stretch of imagination to see that our successors may think differently from ourselves about matters of mores, morals, and public policy. Thoughts two centuries hence in these matters may well differ from that of the present as much as those do for that of our Victorian ancestors. The abortion practices of the present, its regulatory rigmarole in economic affairs, and its penchant for managing public affairs via the judiciary rather than the legislative exemplify matters on which our successors two centuries hence may well judge ourselves harshly. It is integral to conscientious morality that people should care for what others—or at least their sensible fellows—think of them and their doings. And insofar as we have reasons to hope that our posterity will have its share of sensible people we need to have some care for what they will think of us. At this point the question arises: Will they be judging us by our standards or by theirs? We ourselves have little hesitation about judging our predecessors by our standards. However unjust or unreasonable this may be, it is nevertheless what we generally do. And we cannot reasonably expect that our posterity will do otherwise. Since we cannot tell just exactly what those standards may be, this tends to moot the whole matter. So the best we can do is to shelve the problem, to be firm and consistent in applying our own standards in our own case, and making sure that these standards have a sound and solid rationale for being as is. Obvious requisites of conservation and preservation apart, acting for the benefit of our immediate posterity is difficult and challenging, and doing so for the benefit of the more distant successors is even more so. The contingencies of fate create uninsuperable obstacles to this and the arrangements of man—e.g., the abolition of entail and the laws against perpetuities—make it even more so. There is little we can do to provide benefits even to our immediate progeny, in whose interests our own stake is presumably is personally greatest. Granted, there are some more-or-less permanent goods that can be transmitted—but real estate is subject to disasters of nature, and gold and other valuables to those of man. Perhaps the only thing of permanent value we try to provide to them is a good

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example by those standards which, having stood the test of time since antiquity, hold good promise for the future as well. The contingency of human affairs means that we have all too little information about remotely future generations. Their problem, however, is the reverse—one not of too little information about our generation but of too much. Their knowledge of our generations will be impeded by the fact that there are also so many other, intervening generations to know about. We can hardly expect that they would bestow much attention on us. So what can be said about their obligation to us? Does our distant posterity really owe us anything? Does it have an obligation to render us acknowledgment, appreciation, or respect, be it individually or collectively? Individually presumably not, seeing that almost certainly they will not know much if anything about us as individuals. Moreover, what individuals are to come into it becomes a real problem for them. After all, there are 2 people in the paternal group, 4 is the preceding grand-parental, 8 in the generation before. As one goes back for many generations one encounters an unmanageably large manifold of people: when we figure as part of someone’s antecedence, we are invariably there along with innumerable others. And as one’s view regresses further into the past there come to be more people for attention than can be fitted into any manageable agenda. So given the pressing issues that doubtless figure in the agenda of their time, it would be unrealistic for us to expect that those future people would take much heed of us as individuals. Perhaps the most appealing thing about ancestor worship is the thought that one of these days we ourselves will likely be someone’s ancestor. The extent of our familial concern diminishes more rapidly as we move inwards into increasing degrees of cousinhood than it does as we move downwards along the scale of genealogical descent. In the usual course of things we feel greater concern for our grandchildren than our first cousins (even though the latter share more of one’s DNA than the former). Concern is the product of largely cultural factors that have evolved under the pressure of social efficiency in providing for successive generations. Accordingly the analogy between synchronous genealogical distance and dichromic genealogical distance is not rigid. But at great distances the difference becomes negligible. Causal impact, like gravity, diminishes with distance. We can exert more impetus on what happens near to us than what is far away, be it in space or time. Barring a planetary catastrophe, whatever impact we can have on the weal or woe of distant generations is rather minimal. And there is rather

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little they can do for us. But not nothing. For to whatever extent they take notice of us and—above all—of the causes and values we hold near and dear, they will be doing things that are of interest to us in every sense of that flexible term. Of course the nearer generations are of far greater significance for us than those more remote. After all, the only things we can possibly do on behalf of those later generations will have to be transmitted through—or at least maintained by the nearer generations, which are obviously in a position to unravel our best efforts to reach posterity—to disassemble our pyramids so to speak. Our access to distant generations is largely at the mercy of the intervening generations. To be sure, immediate posterity matters most to us. Here we can see more clearly what can effectively be done. Moreover, blood is thicker than water and facticity produces congeniality. In the near term we owe special consideration and take special interest in our children and grandchildren. How far does this extend? When we think about the world of 300 generations hence, does DNA matter—and should it? As the contingencies of life thin out the continuities of connecting—as public individuals are no longer identifiable at all and individuals fade into the mass of humanity—the contemplation of individuals as such becomes impracticable and they blend indistinguishably in the mass of humanity. Our concern for the distant future—such as it is—has to be not for our own descendants but for humanity at large. After all, we have no clue about what role (if any) our personal descendancy will play in our posterity. But in the long run that doesn’t matter. What matters most to us and what we will principally care for is not the survival of our DNA but the survival of our values, of the sorts of things which—like virtues, culture, devotion, religion—number among the abstractions that matter to us. The Spanish philosopher Unamuno lamented el sentimiento trágico de le vida engendered by the certainty of death, but the thought that all the things I care for go into the grave with me is more freighting than the thought of death itself. But if these things are to survive this is wholly at the mercy of our posterity.

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9   Issues of Inquiry Methodology (2): The Basic Analogy It is always a problematic question what sector of the present will survive into the future. For survival into the more remote future will depend in what is done in the nearer, and like so much else about the future this itself uncertain and presently imponderable. If restored to life, many an Egyptian pharaoh would reflect with sorrow on the theme of the present’s impotence regarding the future. To be sure, information is generally more secure than things. Our access to Greek mathematics is in even better shape than our access to Greek architecture. But on every side preservation is determined by subsequent action, something that lies at the mercy of transient interests, concerns, and occupations. We cannot obtain information about the human condition in the future by direct observational means. Instead we must take recourse to indirect methods, and here the prominent instrument at our disposal will be analogy. And here the Basic Analogy of two essentially equivalent relationships will stand before us: as our sole cognitive gateway to understanding. WE : THEY : : OUR ANTERIORITY : US

or equivalently THEY : US : : WE : OUR ANTERIORITY

We must, that is to say, have it that their condition vis-à-vis ourselves is roughly the same as our condition is vis-à-vis that of our predecessors. So to obtain a rough idea of how the situation of our successors of 100 years compares to ours, the best available procedure is to consider how our situation relates to that of 100 years ago. Perhaps one qualification should be made. Various theorists since Henry Adams envision an ongoingly accelerated pace of socio-­technological change. So if we are to look ahead for 100 years via the envisioned Basic Analogy, then we should look back not just 100 but (say) 300 years. Other theorists envision a process transformational deceleration and would consequently see looking back only 50 years for realistic guidance. But in any case. Such a modified perspective would not unravel the fundamental structure of the larger lesson at issue: that we face a future that is radically

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different in ways that cannot possibly be foreseen in any detail. And accordingly our efforts on behalf of posterity’s welfare (insofar as we make them) would be seen as a part of a virtual contract, a deal exchanging our concern for their well-being in exchange for their retrospective concern with us and our activities—an idealized bargain effecting an exchange across the insuperable chasm of time.

10   Conclusion Traditional Chinese wisdom has it that “every human should have a child, write a book, and plant a tree.” And I am tempted to add “build a house” to the list. For a common rationale invites these decidedly discordant actions. All of them are ventures of reaching out into a future we ourselves will not live to see. They are all actions that extend beyond our reach and impact on the world beyond the point where we ourselves are no longer there. They reflect our personal involvement with the future and offer those who succeed us a useful token of our own personal stake in the world’s ongoing processuality. The very fact that we know so little about the posterity means that some special presumptions are in order. After all, for aught we know: • Some of our personal descendancy or family members may be among them • There may well be among the people with whom we have a kinship of blood than of spirit • These are the only people through whose mediation our own values and interests can be kept alive Given this situation we have to acknowledge that we have a real stake in the future—even when its condition grows to be remote. We find ourselves in a rather paradoxical situation. On the one hand, in this enlightened age we all—people and philosophers in particular—are convinced that questions about the world and its ways can and should be addressed by way of scientific inquiry. And yet there is one immensely important sector of reality (alike natural and human) about which the sciences have relatively little to say, namely, the future and its future and its biological, social, communal, and cultural affairs. Our relationship to distant posterity raises challenging questions throughout the range of philosophical concern—be it metaphysical,

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ethical, sociological, epistemological, or even religious. Yet while undeniably important it yet remains largely neglected in present-day philosophy—philosopher of science included. The future seems to represent a massive gap in philosophy and the human sciences in general. There does not seem to be a single philosophical dictionary, handbook, or encyclopedia that has an entry under the word “posterity.”

Notes 1. Some terminological elucidation is on order. The following vocabulary will be adopted here: descendants: children and children of descendants antecedents: parent and parents of antecedents posterity (successors): descendants of living people anteriority (predecessors): antecedents of living people kinfolk: one’s blood relatives, past, present, future family: one’s relatives as defined by legal, social, or cultural conventional. (In some cases one’s tribe.) familial posterity: decendents of living family members familial anteriority: antecedents of living family members 2. The ontology of nonexistent objects is addressed in the author’s Imagining Irreality: A Study of Unreal Possibilities (Chicago: Open Court, 2003) which provides an extensive bibliography of the subject. 3. Speech in the U.S. Senate, 29 January 1850. 4. The larger situation regarding our knowledge regarding the future is discussed in the author’s Predicting the Future: An Introduction to the theory of Forecasting Albany: SUNY Press, 1998) which provides extensive bibliographical information on the subject. 5. The Spectator: 20 August 1714.

CHAPTER 11

Is There a Statute of Limitations in Ethics?

1   The Problem of Limitation Does ethics authorize us to stop feeling guilt and self-reproach at a certain point with regard to our misdeeds of long ago? Can we take the view that those ethical and moral transgressions were done by someone else for whom our present self need no longer take responsibility? Can we maintain that over the years we have become “a different person” so that the occasion for self-reproach has vanished? But who or what can authorize such a judgment of detached identity? And who or what can authorize such expiry? It would clearly be inappropriate to have an agent himself do so. And there appears to be no other candidate for this role. So whence could that authorization come?

2   Two Variant Situations It becomes important in this context to differentiate three factors: • Personal regret • Self-reproach and guilt • Other reprehension and recrimination. As regards the first, personal regret, there just is no expiry date for appropriate cessation. When we commit a wrong and make an ethical

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transgression, it is proper—and morally mandatory—that we should bear some responsibility and regret it ever after. But reprehension and recrimination by others is something else again. In these regards, personal regret, self-reproach, and repentance should eventually wipe the slate clean where others are concerned. Of course, terminating reproach does not mean providing approval, be it by oneself or others; the withdrawal of blame does not mean the inserting of praise. When we no longer condemn the misdeeds of others and cease recrimination, this does not and should not mean that we approve of what was done. But reprehension should eventually cease. How long is this “eventually”? Two considerations become paramount here: the seriousness of the offense and the repentance of the perpetrator. For a very central fact in ethics is that, here, the expiring is not simply a matter of time but it depends critically on the agent’s subsequent comportment—in particular the issue of repentance, contrition, and making amends which are sine qua non conditions for the termination of disapproval by others. So, here, termination is conditional and not simply chronological. What authorizes this view of things? The management of these matters ultimately pivots on the following questions: What is the function and aim of the moral enterprise? What is the rationale for the practice of praise and blame in these matters? Why is it that mankind has instituted a custom of ethics and mortality in making judgments about matters of human interactions? The answer to such questions is straightforward. Morality exists to provide personal motivation for social impetus towards advancing the public benefit and the well-being of the individuals who constitute the community. And if regret and recrimination are to serve any constructive function, they must ultimately function as motivating incentives for agents to act for the public good. But reproach and reprobation—and other forms of agent-external social pressure—while effective at first, ultimately become counterproductive. They estrange the individual from the society and increasingly counter-motivate against a socially constructive role. And when recrimination by others ceases to be a constructively motivating incentive towards the good, it becomes pointless. It makes sense to take the line eventually that the individual has “paid his debt to society” and that the community should be prepared “to let bygones be bygones.” And so, to summarize. Basically, there are two sorts of ethical and moral reproach and disapproval:

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• Self-imposed: regret, self-reproach, contrition • Other-imposed: reprobation, blame, recrimination Now, in regard to the first, there is no statute of limitations. Regret is ever-­ appropriate. But as regards the second, there is a limit. In the face of regret and contrition on the offender’s part, reprehension and recrimination by others can and should fade away over time. The role should clearly depend on the magnitude of the offense and the seriousness of its consequences. But a fading away of negative other-responses would clearly be in order, given the inherent goal status of the moral enterprise. And so, the answer to our question accordingly becomes bifurcated. As regards to self-imposed disapprobation, there just is no statute of limitations at all. There is no reason why we should ever fail to regret our transgressions. But with respect to other-imposed disapprobation, there is an ultimate (but not chronological) limit inherent in the counterproductivity considerations mentioned above.1

Note 1. Moral theory pivots on two related but crucially distinct questions: (1) What is it that morality demands of us? and (2) Why is it that one should acknowledge and honor these demands? The present chapter addresses a part of the first question but it leaves the second entirely out of sight. However, the author has treated it at some length in his books Moral Absolutes (New York: Peter Lang, 1989) and Ethical Studies (Riga: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2018).

CHAPTER 12

An Ethical Paradox

1   A Puzzle If asked for fundamental principles of ethics, most theorists would unhesitatingly include the following two: 1. Benevolence: Ethics and moral propriety alike require an agent to do that which offers the best chance of a good outcome for those involved. 2. Uniformity (Kantian Generalization): Ethics and moral propriety alike require an agent to do what is appropriate for all others in the same circumstances. The reality of it, however, is that these seemingly unproblematic principles can come into conflict in certain situations. Let it be that in the circumstances at issue some undeserved misfortune will befall a certain person when exactly one of three switches—each controlled by independently functioning and reciprocally uninformed operatives—is switched in the ON (+) position. Assuming that you are one of the operatives, how should you set your switch? The overall range of possibilities stands as per Display 1. The Principle of Benevolence would clearly have you choose the OFF (−) setting, seeing that the chance of a good outcome then looks to be twice as large as choosing the ON (+) setting.

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Display 1  Alternatives for the three agents Switch Settings

• • •

You

Associate 1

Associate 2

Result of the combination

+ + + + − − − −

+ + − − + + − −

+ − + − + − + −

bad bad bad good bad good good bad

Note, however, that the three of you are all in exactly the same position, so the other two would also, by this reasoning, be called upon to make the OFF (−) setting, subject to the Principle of Uniformity. A negative outcome for our hapless victim is thus assured. Something is seriously amiss here. Viable ethical principles cannot—or should not—ensure ethically unacceptable outcomes. Resolving the Problem

So, just what is it that ethical propriety would actually require in the circumstances? The striking fact is that propriety requires that you do not come to a definite decision at all. Rather, it demands recourse to randomization. And this should not be seen as all that surprising. After all, ethically reasonable decisions do sometimes call for a recourse to chance and probability. For instance, the award to rival claimants of an indivisible good that cannot be shared may have to be decided by a coin toss, with equality of process doing duty for equality of outcome. Now, if each party makes the choice of  +  with probability x and the choice of − with probability 1−x, then our eight possible outcomes will have the probabilities shown in Display 2. Accordingly, the total probability for the three good outcomes would be 3x(1 − x)2 = 3x − 6x2 + 3x3. And (via a bit of calculus) this quantity is seen to be maximized at 3 – 12x + 9x2 = 0 or 1 − 4x + 3x2 = 0. But since the probability x has to lie

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Display 2  Probability of alternative settings Switch Setting

• • •

You

Associate 1

Associate 2

Probability of the setting

+ + + + − − − −

+ + − − + + − −

+ − + − + − + −

x3 x2(1−x) x2(1−x) x(1−x)2 (1−x)x2 (1−x)2x (1−x)2x (1−x)3

in the range from 0 to 1, we have it that this condition is satisfied only for x = 1/3 and x = 1. But the latter of these (viz., a choice of + by all parties) is already ruled out of contention as unacceptable so that we arrive at x = 1/3 as the appropriate resolution. The upshot accordingly is this: • No uniformly fixed choice-resolution procedure can satisfy the demands of ethical propriety in these circumstances. Only the adoption by all participants of a “mixed strategy”—adopting a + setting with probability 1/3 (and a  −  setting with probability 2/3) will maximize the chances of a good outcome (at 4/9).

2   Some Lessons Recourse to mixed strategies raises some significant questions: Given this sort of situation where the ethically appropriate resolution is somewhat difficult, complex, and subtle, what can be expected of people? How can they be free from reproach and reprobation for failing to do that which ethics ideally demands? This carries us back to the doctrine of ethical probabilism (much debated in the Renaissance) which held that any conscientious effort to do the right thing—however far it may fall off from actually achieving this— should be deemed adequate to protect a well-intentioned agent from blame and recrimination.

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And another lesson emerges here: namely, the need to reconstrue the Principle of Uniformity or Procedure at issue with Kantian generalization. To achieve its viability, one must shift from a uniformity of choice to a uniformity of choice-determination process, and this uniformity must be based on the invocation of stochastic processes. And just this calls Kantian generalization into question—and for good reason. Moreover, another significant issue arises. Clearly, the idea of “doing the same thing” at work in Kantian generalization has its problems. For just when is it that different people are “doing the same thing” or “acting alike in the same way?” Thus, consider: Both Tom and Jerry put $1 into the collection basket at church, but Tom does so with 10 dimes and Jerry with 4 quarters. Or again, both X and Y nap after lunch, but X does so after eating a hotdog and Y after eating a hamburger. Have these people “done the same things” or not? Granted, two people do the same thing where the things they do answer the same description. But everything depends on how to specify that description. And at some point, it is always going to happen that these descriptions will have to part ways when different contexts are at issue. It thus appears that the idea of “doing the same thing in the same circumstances” is something that is bound to encounter problems in its ethical applications. For just how far are we to go in requiring the descriptive sameness of actions and of contextual circumstances? If too little is required, the rule becomes implausible; if too much is required, the rule is trivialized. The generalization at issue in Kant’s universalization principle is plausible in the abstract, but becomes very difficult to pin down in matters of practical implementation.

CHAPTER 13

Collective Responsibility

1   The Issue What is involved in a group’s being responsible for producing a collective result? What conditions must be satisfied for it to be appropriate for us to praise or blame a group for some result of its doings? In addressing this problem, the natural step is to begin by basing our understanding of group responsibility upon that of individual responsibility. Now, here, at the level of individuals, responsibility for a result is clearly a matter of producing the result through one’s own deliberate agency—barring the intrusion of defeating aberrations, for example, duress or deceit. For responsibility to enter in, it is not enough that that untoward result be produced as the causal result of an individual’s actions, it must also be intended in some appropriate fashion. Carrying this idea over to groups, one thus needs to address two pivotal issues: group agency and group intention. Unfortunately, neither is anything like as simple and straightforward as one might wish.

2   Problems of Group Agency The “responsibility” at the focus of the present discussion will be of the sort that opens the door to evaluative and normative appraisals, so that praise and blame will be pivotal considerations.1 The merely causal “responsibility” of productive contribution is, of course, neutral in this regard—a merely necessary but not sufficient condition. For authentic © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_13

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responsibility, some element of intentionality must always attend to causal participation—the factor of productive intentionality is crucial. All the same, causal or productive involvement is an important part of the picture. And as regards causality, the first thing to note is that a group can bring it about that a certain result obtains without any member of that group having any significant or substantial contributory relationship to the production of that result as such. Thus, if every dweller in a town adores his neighbor’s cats and hates his dogs, they can collectively produce the result that all the town’s cats are loved and all its dogs hated, even though this may occur in such a way that no one ever desires—or even contemplates—this result. And the same sort of thing happens if every driver happens to be out on the road and a traffic jam results. Moreover, in such a case, no one contributes more than a minute share to the result, and sometimes, interestingly, the smaller the individual shares—the more people on the road, say—the worse the result. Such situations are legion; groups regularly manage to produce results which their members have little or nothing to do with. The fact is that when a group collectively produces a certain result, none of its individual agents need do anything that bears significantly on that result as such. Indeed, often this result is something the individuals could not facilitate even if they wanted to—which they well may not. Consider “The affidavits made by Tom and Jerry created a conflict of testimony.” Clearly, neither agent—acting on his own—did anything that was in and of itself conflict-engendering. Again, suppose that a hardware store carries ten hammers and that ten customers come along and buy them. Among them they have “exhausted the store’s supply of hammers.” But, of course, nothing of this sort figures in any of their thoughts or actions. In all such cases, it makes no visible difference as far as the individual agent is concerned whether that contributory act obtains in isolation or in an unwitting, merely fortuitous concert with other agents for the production of an untoward aggregate result. The inherent statuses of contributing individuals’ doings are clearly not affected one way or the other by the essentially accidental circumstances of context. And even should it eventuate that the collectivity is a disaster, the fact remains that the individual’s act may well be perfectly innocuous—absent any or all personal foresight and understanding in relation to the aggregate end-product. Neither in production nor in contemplation need a group’s individual members play a significant role in such cases.

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The circumstance that an individual’s act constitutes a contributing part of a certain overall result represents a feature of that act, all right—but only a contextual feature of it. And this context is, in general, something over which the individual in question has no control nor even significantly productive influence. (Think, for example, of the “wave” created by spectators at a sporting event, where each individual simply stands up and raises his or her arms—or, even more drastically, think of what happens when a foreign expression enters a language as a “loan word.”) Moreover, the contributory aspect of the action may well lie entirely outside the individual’s awareness. (That individual’s contribution to the wave may simply be an aping of his neighbor in a mere social conformity.)

3   Problems of Group Intentions Suppose that someone comes across a nearly unconscious sufferer on a country lane. After providing an effective but rather slow-acting medical remedy, he goes off to get further assistance. Then another person comes along and does exactly the same. But these remedial doses, though individually helpful and appropriate, nevertheless create a jointly fatal overdose. The two people acting together have, in effect, caused the sufferer’s demise by their well-intentioned actions. And this is the polar opposite to what they intended or expected. This “Good Samaritan Mishap” illustrates the sort of thing that can—and often does—happen with interactively produced results, where product and intention can readily diverge. For intention and responsibility, then, distributive activities that collectively engender a result by way of causal production are clearly not enough. Overt purposiveness in relation to this result must be added. Suppose that X wants p, Y wants q, and that they act accordingly. Joined together, the group X-and-Y wants p-and-q. Yet, neither X nor Y may want this outcome or anything like it. (Indeed, wanting it may be senseless, as when q happens to be not-p.) Accordingly, the overall upshot may well be something seen by both as eminently undesirable, as when X wants to kill Y, and Y wants to kill X. With groups of agents, the separate intentions of individuals cannot simply be combined. Here, wholes have features that, as far as intentionality is concerned, are in no way mere sums of the parts. Group responsibility clearly calls for coordination and depends on the extent to which the group acts as a unit within which the actions of individuals are concerted. With the product of a merely fortuitous confluence

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of influence of individual actions (e.g., a bank run), group responsibility is clearly out of the picture. The element of collaborative coordination—of a “conspiracy,” so to speak, in producing the result—is an indispensable requisite. The difference between acting as a coordinated group and acting as only a collection of disjoint and disaggregated individuals is crucial here. With group responsibility, as with individual responsibility, this factor of intention is critical. The weaker the element of intentionality, the weaker that of responsibility. Thus, consider the series: • Active and deliberate participation in the production of a result • Passive agreement in its production • Detached spectatorship • Reluctant acquiescence (going along) Responsibility clearly fades away as we move down the line here. The closer the “degree of association” of the individual with the production of a collective result, the greater the responsibility (and the greater the extent of blame or credit). From the causal point of view, individual contributions appear to sum up productively. The individual agents make their causal contributions to the whole, and the whole consists of the sum of the parts—causally speaking. But intentions certainly do not work this way. Groups regularly bring things about that none of their members plan, intend, or indeed even ever envision. Every cowboy just wants to kill his few buffalo—no one contemplates extermination of the species. There is no way to sum up individual intentions to underwrite the imputation of an aggregate intention vis-à-vis the overall result. The denizens of the city of London rebuilt their city after the great fire of 1666, and the inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina, did the same after the catastrophic destruction wrought by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Collectively, they accomplished the task, but distributively, each property owner simply addressed the problems of his or her own situation. Among those who were active in the rebuilding, virtually no one had any intentions in regard to the bigger object—the intentions of each were for the most part focused on the particular micro-­ task at hand. The overall macro-achievement lay outside the reach of anyone’s intention. A group’s interactively produced macro-results are all too frequently uncontemplated, unforeseen, unplanned, and even undesired by many, most, or even all of that group’s individual members.

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And so, while the responsibility or intention of groups must indeed derive from and inhere in that of its constituent individuals, it will actually do so only in special circumstances. The coordinative factor of an at least vicarious consent must be there: absent individual participation (of an at least statistical, majoritarian sort), there must at least be centralization through representation. The fact of the matter is that without an appropriate coordination of individual intentions, it makes no sense to impute intention to a group. It makes sense to say that a collectivity wants or intends something only when we have either: 1. Consensual subscription: when the macro-objective at issue is something that the generality or the substantial majority of group members want as such, and thus rendering it into an object of the collective volonté générale, so to speak, or: 2. Representative endorsement: when the duly delegated representatives of the group’s members agree to producing the result in question To be sure, distributive coincidence is not sufficient to yield the sort of intent at issue. The element of collectivity must be present. And there must be the right sort of coordination. The members of a board may distributively happen to be of one mind in all wanting the chairman dead, but this does not mean that the one who goes and shoots him is implementing a group consensus. Their “wanting him dead” does not come to “wanting him killed,” let alone “wanting him killed by X.” Here, those who have remained inert have certainly not “agreed” to the murder simply in view of their (perhaps reprehensible) attitude. The members may “want him dead” but do not agree to his being rendered so by the sort of action at issue. For collective responsibility, the group must constitute something of a “moral person” with a collective unity of mind. And the conjunctivity at issue means that whenever group responsibility does in fact exist, there must be responsible individuals: group responsibility cannot exist without individual responsibility. And this need for a proper grounding in the responsibility of individuals means that it cannot happen that a group does something wrong without there being culpable individuals at whose door some of the blame can be laid. (Note that it is

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crucial for the tenability of this statement that it reads “something wrong” and not merely “something bad.”) Group responsibility must have a rooting in the responsibilities of individuals and cannot manage to exist without this. All the same, collective responsibility is just exactly that—collective. It emphatically does not function distributively—it cannot automatically be projected upon the individuals who constitute that collectivity. We can indeed reason from “Tom, Dick, and Harry talked about mathematics” to “Tom and Dick talked about mathematics.” But we can no more reason from “Tom, Dick, and Harry carried the piano upstairs” to “Tom and Dick carried the piano upstairs” than we can reason from “Tom, Dick, and Harry filled up the sofa” to “Tom and Dick filled up the sofa.” Only in very special cases will the doings of collectivities project down to their component units.2

4   Consequences for Collective Responsibility With these considerations about causation and consent in mind, we can profitably return to our initial question. When the individual actions of diverse agents collectively issue in an overall result, there is, by hypothesis, a collective causality in point of productivity. But does moral responsibility follow from this? Is there also automatically room for guilt and credit, praise and blame, laudation and reprehension? Given the aforementioned complexities of collective intentionality, the answer is clearly a negative here. For this reason, it would be folly to argue that the individually intentional actions of the members of a group produced a certain result, and hence the members of the group are individually responsible for that result. Exactly as in the accidental overdosing case considered above, no single agent in a group whose acts are conjointly disastrous need do anything wrong or blameworthy. Without the requisite coordination of individual intentions through consensus or delegative authorization, it makes no sense to speak of group intentions. So-called “guilt by association”—by merely being a member of a group that collectively produces a bad result—is just not enough to establish a valid imputation of responsibility. In a bank run, every depositor just wants his own money from the bank—no one foresees or intends the ruin and bankruptcy that ensues. But who is responsible? “Everybody and nobody” and so, in the final analysis, no one. Except in special conditions and circumstances—when the proper sort of coordination

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obtains—the intentions of individuals simply do not aggregate into some sort of group product: they do not somehow blend together into a group intention. And where intention is absent, there too responsibility is missing. When a group produces an unintended disaster, the situation as regards culpability is exactly the same as when an individual produces a wholly unintended disaster—to wit there simply is no culpability. Without a normative responsibility that transcends mere causality, there can be no actual guilt. When this sort of thing happens, we can regret but cannot reproach. The pivotal fact in this connection is that responsibility for the collective transgressions of groups can be projected down upon its component individuals only in special conditions. For only where group malfeasance indeed roots in the informed consent of individuals through coordination or delegation can those individuals be held to blame. And even then, only subject to limits. For to be culpable, individuals must form part of that consensus and be party to its consent. The defenses of “I was opposed to it” and “I cast my vote against it” must be allowed their due weight in matters of individual exculpation. Escaping group responsibility by dissociation is thus possible throughout the spectrum, from explicit abstention to actual opposition. The ideological impetus of the ethically inspired resisters to Nazism is a case in point. Their actual efforts were futile and unavailing (perhaps often even incompetent). But symbolically, they are of the greatest significance in providing a highly visible token of the fact that the German people in general did not go along here, so that the moral properties require an explicit line to be maintained between Germans and Nazis. On the other hand, however, individuals can indeed be held responsible for group actions even if in a strict sense they “didn’t have anything to do” with the malfeasance at issue. For when their intentionality is betokened by way of consent or consensus, then those evil acts which its agents (few though they may be) actually perform on behalf and under the consensual aegis of the wider group will also fall into the responsibility sphere of its individual members. Association is not enough to establish responsibility, but the sort of association involved in being an “accessory” of sorts—be it consensual or delegative—can prove sufficient. And even tacit consent can do so. The acquiescing citizenry is indeed responsible for the authorized actions of its duly delegated agents.

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5   The Legal Aspect: Moral vs. Legal Responsibility A thorny question now arises. If an appropriately structured coordinative basis in individual responsibility is indeed required for the moral responsibility of a group, then what of collectively produced outrages that are uncoordinated? Two contrasting positions are possible here. At the one pole there is the “Protestant” position that individuals are the prime (perhaps even the sole!) bearers of responsibility. The position is that agents stand on their own feet in matters of evaluation appraisal. And so, when a group produces a collective result, then its individual agents are responsible ONLY for their own individual acts—and so only for their free and intended individual contributions. They are responsible for and creditable with only those negativities and positivities that they themselves engender through their own suitably deliberate actions. Contextual considerations can be dismissed from the moral point of view. In practical effect, we can simply forget about group responsibility as a distinct issue: moral deliberation can be limited to the domain of individuals; group evaluations are at most statistical summaries. At the other pole is the “Hebraic” position that the community is the prime (perhaps even the sole!) bearer of responsibility for collectively produced results—that what the group collectively does can and must be laid unavoidably at its collective door in point of responsibility. (To be sure, whether this collective responsibility can then be downloaded upon the constituent individuals of the community still remains as an additional and potentially controversial question, but the responsibility of the community as a whole remains in any event—irrespective of how we answer this additional question.) In effect, the group is thus treated as a responsible individual in its own right in a way that is essentially independent of the responsibilities of its members. Groups are morally autonomous: they stand on a collective footing—the idea is simply rejected that the responsible actions of groups must inhere in or derive from its individual members. We thus come to the question: As regards specifically moral responsibility, which is the right line to take here—the “Protestant” or the “Hebraic”? At this point, the question of law versus ethics comes to the fore. To start with, it deserves to be noted that in actual practice we generally allow legality and morality to go separate ways. And we do so for very practical reasons. Some examples will help to make this point.

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Strictly speaking, the person who drives home drunk after the office party and has the good luck not to have an accident that injures others is in exactly the same moral position as the person who fails to be so lucky.3 But legally, there is all the difference in the world here: legally, the latter is (so we suppose) guilty while the former is altogether guilt free. Here, the legal standing of the two is thus very different. The law is concerned with actual results in a way that morality is not. Again, military law holds the commander responsible for mishaps for which there may well be no actual causal responsibility at the personal level. So, here, there will be situations where one will be morally innocent but legally culpable. And again, in group punishment situations, one charges the “innocent” members of the group with an onus of responsibility that has no moral basis. Here, too, the law can reflect the society’s pragmatic care for results in a way that bypasses moral complications. The fact is that the law is part of a system of social contract that has other fish to fry than that of fixing moral culpability, and in consequence, it often insists on beneficial overall results at the expense of strict justice. The pivotal point is that legal and administrative systems embody a concern for certain social desiderata distinct from strict justice per se. This circumstance makes for a crucial difference between moral and legal responsibility.4 From the moral point of view, the proper line will have to be that the source and basis of responsibility is always with individuals. Thus, moral responsibility belongs to groups only insofar as the individuals are suitably active within them. Groups can only bear responsibility derivatively— either by way of aggregation (consensus) or by way of delegation (via representation). And moral responsibility is in a way inalienable. It remains with those causally contributing individuals even when they transmit it to the group with which they act. But with legal responsibility, the situation is different. Groups can be legal persons and thus bear legal responsibility. For legal responsibility is alienable and capable of transfer and delegation. Forming a corporation (or “legal person”) or imposing a collective sanction on a criminal group or a destructive society makes perfectly good sense. In this contrast between moral and legal responsibility we thus find a reflection of the contrast between the aforementioned “Protestant” and “Hebraic” positions on responsibility. And as far as moral wrongdoing is concerned, the “Protestant” position is surely plausible: the moral culpability of groups must inhere in that of their individuals—with the result

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that there can be collective acts that are unfortunate and regrettable, but yet not wrong, owing to the absence of any personal wrongdoing.

6   Some Lessons An instructive lesson emerges from these deliberations. If, as was insisted above, (i) the only avenue to group responsibility/reprehension is indeed via group intention, and moreover (ii) group intention requires coordination—either through an aggregation afforded by consensus or through a centralized delegation to representative deciders—then it follows that (iii) there will unavoidably be many instances where group-engendered outrages will “fall between the stools” as far as responsibility and reprehension goes. And this means that there will thus be group-engendered catastrophes for which the responsibility admits of no specific allocation to individuals, since it is a “merely fortuitous confluence of individual actions” that does the mischief. Who, then, can be held responsible for the carnage on America’s roads, the poor performance of its schools, the decay of its social conscience and its public civility? Clearly, only those who bear some sort of immediate responsibility. Reproaching the group as a whole makes no sense here, seeing that the requisite element of interpersonal coordination is lacking. Such aggregate negativities are the confluence of the uncoordinated and disjointed actions of innumerable individuals. They result from the causal contributions of many but the intentionality of none. And this lack of intentionality precludes the availability of actual culprits.5 Those aggregate effects which come to be realized through the vicissitudes of context lying beyond the ken and control of the individuals involved have to be viewed as “accidents of circumstance” with respect to which the chain of moral responsibility is severed en route to an aggregate causal result. As the case of the “Good Samaritan” overdose illustrates, those terrible overall results have come about through the intentional doings of individuals, all right, but there is nothing intentional about them as such. The only relevant intentions were fragmentary and disjointed— and so for this very reason were the responsibilities of individuals. That overall catastrophe was never envisioned—let alone intended—by anybody. The responsible actions of people produce disaster, all right, but a disaster which, as such, is detached from the responsibility of individuals (in any sense over and above the causal).

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Thus, the perhaps unwelcome fact of the matter is that individually, the actions of people can still be blameless—and perhaps praiseworthy—even in cases where the collective, combined result of their actions is a disaster. (The destabilizing rush of people to the side of the boat from which a cry of “Save me!” emanates is perhaps something of an example.) When such aggregated mishaps occur as a causal result of people’s unconcerted actions, there is nothing that those disaggregated individuals can be held culpable for, there is no occasion for blame allocation: here, collective actions can engender aggregate outrages that are entirely culprit-free as far as individual agents are concerned. The prospect of a lack of any suitable basis for attributing a communal intent means that the action of groups can sometimes produce terrible results for which there is neither collective responsibility nor individual fault. What we have here is a fact of life that moral philosophy and common sense alike simply have to take in their stride. For in this regard, group causation is like nature causation—the group in effect acts like an unmanageable natural force rather than a voluntary personal agent. There is no sense in blaming the chair that we stumble over in the dark. When uncooperative nature produces a bad result, there simply is no one who can plausibly be asked to bear the burden of reproach. We regret the result but cannot find someone to blame for it. It’s just “one of those damn things” that we have to come to terms with in a difficult world. And much the same thing has to be said when unhappy aggregate effects come about through the disaggregated actions of members of a group. Morally, each individual can, should, and must bear responsibility for his or her own individual acts and intentions. But, to reemphasize, the aggregate effect— however unfortunate—may prove to be just one of those unfortunate things.6 This, at least, is how matters stand from the moral point of view. And there is a significant lesson here. Causal and moral responsibility behave very differently in situations of collectivity. By hypothesis, an agent whose intended actions play a contributing part on the side of causal production will thereby and for this very reason bear a share of causal responsibility in relation to the overall product. But, of course, moral responsibility is not like that; it is not simply a matter of aggregation. For here, the whole can be less than the sum of its parts—or more. No causal collective results can exist without individual causal contributions. But collective morally negative or positive results can indeed emerge in situations where individuals make no personal contributions of a morally positive or negative coloration.

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But what about group responsibility for faults of omission—for culpable inaction? The pivotal considerations here are a failure to act in the presence of opportunity, when this matter of opportunity pivots on (i) the existence of a suitable occasion where action is called for, (ii) an awareness that this is so, be it by the group at large or those duly responsible for the conduct of its affairs, and (iii) the availability of the requisite means for action. On this basis, the culpable inaction of groups is again something substantially analogous to the situation with regard to individuals. Still, when groups neglect doing something that they (morally speaking) ought to do—that is, ought to do as a group—can the blame for these omissions be laid at the door of its individuals? The answer is “Yes, but …” namely, but only under special conditions obtaining when that group neglect is the result of a culpable (or “inexcusable”) oversight on the part of individuals. If, as maintained above, it is indeed the case that group responsibility must inhere in individual responsibility and cannot exist without it, then this will also hold insofar as responsibility for omission is concerned. (Q: But just which individuals are responsible for the group’s default? A: Exactly those whose intentionality was causally involved. Intentional causation is again the crux—absent the usual array of responsibility deflectors.)

7   A Review of the Argument The preceding deliberations, though brief, tell a rather complicated story. It is accordingly useful to pass the overall argument in review: 1. Responsibility presupposes (i) productive agent-causality and (ii) deliberate intentions. 2. The productive causality of groups can issue from the entirely disconnected and uncoordinated agency of its constituent individuals. There are accordingly two modes of group productivity: (i) the actually coordinated and (ii) the uncoordinated and “accidentally” confluent, as it were. 3. For the intentionality of group products, there must be a coordinative synthesis of the individuals’ intentions. Such coordinative cohesion can take two forms: the informally consensual or the formally representational. In the former case, we have the explicit agreement of (or at least most of) the members; in the latter case, we have the imputed consent of the members at issue via the mediation of representational institutions.

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4. Where the products of group activity are concerned, it only makes sense to speak of group intentions in the case of coordinated productions. Without the synthesis or unification of actions, there is no meaningful collective intention. 5. An absence of intentionality means that group actions may be disastrous without there being any wrongdoing on the part of individuals. 6. However, group actions cannot be wrong absent individual wrong doing. For— 7. Intention—and thus responsibility—must initiate with individuals. Groups can achieve such a condition only “by derivation”—that is, via the mechanics of personal and/or delegated consent. Accordingly— 8. Group intention/responsibility therefore exists only with coordinated group products produced under conditions of a synthesis of individual intentions via consensus or delegation. Then and only then is it proper to project group responsibility onto its component individuals—and only to the extent that their own intentions were causally involved.

8   Consequences One significant consequence of these deliberations is that group responsibility can lapse into nothingness where rogue regimes abrogate the normal processes of representative government. The people of Uganda cannot be held responsible for the excesses of Idi Amin’s regime, nor the people of the Soviet Union for those of Stalin, whose transformations of governmental organism through state terrorism they neither foresaw nor endorsed. On the other hand, the responsibility of Americans for the atomic bombing of Japan in World War II or for the defoliation of crops and the destruction of villages in the Vietnam War cannot be denied—not on this basis of flawed intentionality, at any rate. (But, as noted above, this collective responsibility of the group does not automatically devolve upon its individual members.) At this point, an interesting question arises. For group intentions, we have appealed to two coordinative factors: distributive consensus and centralized consent through representational institutions. But what if these two get out of joint with one pointing in one way and the other pointing elsewhere? What becomes of group responsibility when the group’s legally

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constituted representatives act in the face of a general consensus to the contrary? For example, should one impute to the people of Britain credit for abolishing the death penalty or reprehension for tolerating fox hunting, seeing that Parliament’s position on these issues is decidedly out of phase with the opinion polls? There is—and there can be—no simple answer here. What we have is yet another illustration of the fact that conceptual tidiness cannot be secured in a difficult world. In such situations, we confront complex questions that require complex answers.

Appendix Collective Credit The preceding deliberations have mainly taken into view the negative side of evaluative responsibility in regard to blame and guilt. But, of course, there is also the positive side of praise and credit. And it is—and should be—reasonably clear that the overall situation here must be regarded as being substantially analogous in this regard. However, the analogy is not complete. An important and interesting difference arises. When several individuals actively collaborate in doing something bad (say, in a murder conspiracy), then each of them is standardly credited with—that is, bears legal and moral blame for—the production of that negative result: each of them is regarded as being “guilty of murder.”7 But when individuals actively collaborate in the production of something good (say, in making a scientific discovery or in establishing a museum), then they are credited only with their own particular identifiable contribution. And there is a sound rationale for this. It would seem that the difference in treatment here lies in the practicalities of the matter rather than in purely abstractly theoretical considerations. In our laws and social moves, we systematically seek to discourage individual participation in the doing of bad things and to encourage the efforts of individuals towards the doing of good. And these desiderata are clearly reflected in the disanalogy at issue. Let us explore this aspect of the issue a bit further. Anyone who has ever worked on a crossword puzzle with a collaborator realizes that, here, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts—that the collaboration synergy of people working together is something superior to the mere compilation of their separate achievements. In such collaborative problem-solving

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situations, we encounter the synergetic potentiation of teamwork. The work of one member helps to potentiate that of another. In joining forces, the group members pave the way to an entirely new level of achievement. But in such cases, to whom does the credit for this advancement—this “collaborative surplus”—properly belong? When individuals cooperate collectively in the production of something positive, the “surplus” of achievement over and above what individuals accomplish on their own will generally be allocated in proportion with the extent to which they make their individual contributions. And for a good practical reason. For it is clear that such a principle of procedure will provide a maximum of reasonable encouragement. And so, there is a lesson here. Our standards of justice are often the fruit of sensible practical considerations, and even ethics is not beyond the reach of practicality.8

Notes 1. Legal or institutional responsibility is something else again—something rather different from moral responsibility. The captain is “responsible” for what happens on the ship; the officer is “responsible” for the acts of subordinates. But what is at issue here involves a rather different use of the term. 2. Compare G. J. Massey, “Tom, Dick, and Harry, and all the King’s Men,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 13 (1976), pp. 89–107. 3. On this feature of “moral luck,” see the author’s treatment in Luck (New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, 1995). 4. On these issues, see Nicholas Rescher and Carey B.  Joynt, “Evidence in History and the Law,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 56 (1959), pp. 561–578. 5. Note that so long as we refuse to project group responsibility onto the constituent individuals, then—even in the “Hebraic” case—we are confronted with the anomalous upshot that a group can, through the deliberate actions of the individuals involved, produce a terrible result for which, as regards individuals, “no one is to blame” through lack of the right sort of intent in the point of individuals. 6. I am grateful to my colleague David Gauthier for helpful commentary on this issue. 7. To be sure, the presence of some degree of active participation is a crucial factor. Mere membership—wholly passive and inert—in a group that is collectively responsible does not as such contribute to the individual’s moral blame or credit. And so, the terrible things done by the Nazis at large detract nothing from the credit of Schindler, a Nazi. 8. This chapter is a slightly revised version of an essay of the same title originally published in the Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 29 (1998), pp. 46–58.

CHAPTER 14

Allocating Scientific Credit

1   Basic Issues Considering the obvious interest and importance of the topic it is surprising that theoreticians of science have paid relatively little attention to the problems of credit for scientific discoveries. One exception is Robert K. Merton’s widely quoted quip that scientific findings are almost invariably attributed to the wrong originator.1 And this should not be all that surprising since the process of making them is generally one of many steps, each prefigured but prior anticipations. The matter of credit for scientific discovery constitutes a unique issue, different from innovation in technology, or architecture, landscape gardening. The different is manifest in the following respects: • There is a sharper, more decided interest in the matter by a wider audience of concerned bystanders. A wide range of bystanders pay close attention: scientists, science reporters, science populizers, and often the wider public as well. • There are well entreated and widely accepted customs, conventions, and rules. • More rewards and resources are at issue. Merton’s remark notwithstanding, major scientific innovations are commemorated by names: Newton’s Laws, Maxwell’s Equations, Plank’s Constant. This sort of thing does not happen often in other fields. © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_14

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Various insight illuminate how credit for discoveries in matters of science and learning is actually bestowed. One example is the Merton’s so-­ called Matthew Principle to the effect that fame attracts credit: that the tendency is for the well-known to be recognized while the obscure are allowed to retain their obscurity. However, such empirical observations, interesting though they are, do not concern us here. The present deliberations abstract from historical practice to focus upon the ethical question of proper allocation—of how such credit ought in theory to be allocated. It is the issue not of possession but of desert that will preoccupy us here. The resultant problem of credit allocation has two parts respectively defined by two very different questions: • The amount of credit: How much credit should be allocated to the discovery? • The distribution of credit: How should this credit be divided among the individuals involved in making the discovery?

2   Assessing Credit First off is the fact that scientific discoveries come in different sizes and can be large, medium, or small.2 In fact, they have rather different dimensions of merit, since they can be interesting or uninteresting, important or unimportant, useful or useless, easy or difficult. Since our intent is here focused on the cognitive dimension, it is importance and difficulty that will be at the forefront of concern. First, how is importance to be assessed? A mixture of three factors are paramount: • Theoretical clarification in the contribution of insight into the fundamental processes of nature, and its opening up of doors; solving old problems and posing new ones • Applicative utility for the enhancement of humans health and well-being • Realization difficulty: the amount of skill, originality, and creativity required for its realization, given the difficulties and obstacles involved These factors are the prime determinants of the amount of credit people envision for new discoveries in science. The first two relate to the importance of what is discovered, the third to the technicalities of its achievement.

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Rather different matters are at issue with regard to these matters. Theoretical clarification looks to the range and the depth of our understanding of the relevant domain of phenomena. Applicative utility hinges on the discovery’s potential for imposing the state of human affairs in relation to the length and quality of life. Realization difficulty is a matter of the intellectual and technological challenge posed by the research effort required realizing the discovery at issue. All of these contribute interactively to form the basis of assessing the overall merit and importance of scientific findings. As regards that starter set of important questions, it should be observed that “importance” of a question turns on the extent to the transformation that its answer effects within the domain of inquiry at issue. But two very different sorts of things can be in view here, either a mere growth or expansion of the relevant body of knowledge, of a revision of it that involves replacing some of its members by contraries thereof and readjusting the remainder to restore overall consistency. This second sort of change in a body of knowledge (revision-change rather than mere augmentation-­ change) is in general the more significant mode, and a question whose resolution forces this sort of change is virtually bound to be of greater importance or significance than a question which merely fills in some of the terra incognita of our knowledge.

3   The Amalgamation Problem The distressing reality is that assessing scientific importance poses substantial difficulty—for very fundamental reasons. Invariably, an object of evaluation will have different parameters of merit corresponding to different dimensions of positivity. Thus a dwelling house can have such merits as roominess, good condition, location, and many others. And scientific finding will have informativeness, interest, generality, methodological innovation, substantive connectivity, and others all contributing to its overall importance. Any such merit multidimensionality poses the question of trade-off: how much of this gets to be equivalent to how much of that. And at this point a crucial problem arises, that of trade-off instability. For virtually always, there simply is no fixed trade-off proportionality: the situation is one of “it all depends.” Think of evaluating meals: if you are very hungry, nourishability in all, if you are not as hungry, palatability rises in importance. Ongoing variability reigns here, because the issue becomes

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conditionalized by circumstances. The trade-off between X1 and X2 is not fixed but becomes a function of the contextual circumstances. The point is that there is no single, uniquely appropriate way of amalgamating the various factors of multidimensional merit into a single overall rationality compelling result. (The situation is akin to that of the Arrow Paradox in welfare economics.) And this, of course, has immediate and drastic implications for weighing the overall impetus of discoveries—and beyond that for assessing scientific progress. To get a closer grasp of the relevant issues to help it consider an oversample illustration. Consider the situation of just two dimensions of merit, D1 and D2, and let each of them be assessed within just three levels, High (H), Middling (M), and Low (L). Overall we then have nine possibilities Dimension D 2

Dimension D1

H

M

L

H

1

2

3

M

4

5

6

L

7

8

9

Dominance comparison puts 1 at the top and 9 at the bottom of the scale. And of course 2 will precede 3 and 5, with similar conditions prevailing elsewhere. The problem, however, is that binary dominance will not settle the issue of 2 vs. 4, 3 vs. 7, or 6 vs 8. To settle these issues we will need to prioritize D1 and D2. And when this is circumstantially variable rather that invariably fixed, the issue will remain when up in the air. In a way, the issue of importance sets up an infinite regress. To assess relative importance at a higher level of appropriateness we will need to assess circumstances at a lower level, and here—at least in theory—the story repeats itself. To resolve the regress of merit-formula amalgamating we will have to terminate at some point within an “enough is enough” and there are no considerations of general principle that determines this point. In the end this requires an extraneous supplemental judgment based on functional and pragmatic considerations.

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So in the end we have to resign ourselves to the fact that in view of this multidimensionality the assessment of scientific importance will always require some degree of rationally unforced adjudication and means that in the end we cannot disentangle the issue of importance completely from that of interest.

4   The Problem of Allocation Now let us turn from what is to be divided to the process of division itself. It is helpful to introduce a bit of terminological regimentation at this point. For it is useful to distinguish between distributive cooperation, which is simply coordinated effort towards the realization of a common goal, and actual collaboration or collective cooperation which is a matter of working together with interactive feedback towards such a goal. The term cooperation will accordingly serve as a broader umbrella to cover both of these cases. Distributive problem solving occurs when problems are disassembled into separate components that are addressed separately—often by distinct investigators. With such cooperation the overall problem is divided into component subproblems subject to a division of labor. Perhaps because variant specialties are at issue, each investigator (or investigative group) does its work separately and their efforts, though coordinated, are disjoint, with different contributors providing different pieces of the whole. Thus with the lexicographic problem of explaining the orthography and meaning of English words we may have a research mode where investigator No 1 may take on the As, investigator No. 2 the Bs, and so on. Or in a decoding effort, for example, one investigator works on verbs and adverbs another on nouns and adjectives, another on particles, etc. A very different situation obtains when cooperative problem solving proceeds collectively and collaboratively. Here there is not just cooperation but actual teamwork or collaboration with different operators fusing their efforts in conjoint interaction. Collaborative work on a crossword puzzle is a good example. As anyone who has tried it knows, the relationship of feedback interaction renders this something far more effective than simply compiling the results of different individuals working separately. Problem solving here proceeds interactively with the efforts of different contributors interconnectedly intertwined with that of others. But what of the organizer of a multilateral research effort? Does this individual not deserve much of the credit? Surely so. For what we usually

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have here is simply a divisible effort with one individual or group providing the planning and organization of the research and another group carrying out the work. This being so, the overall process of problem-solving is divisible into two sectors: devising the plan and then carrying it out. And then each party gets credit for its own contribution: the organizers for the organization, the implementers for their implementation. Neither party deserves credit for the contribution of the other: the organizers get a lion’s share of credit for the conceptual design of the inquiry, the implementers get the residual credit for whatever accomplishments are invested in the execution of the plan. And, of course, when the organizers also function as active investigators and are themselves members of the research team, then they deserve whatever additional credit goes with the discharge of this role. As regards the proper distribution of credit this will, of course, depend on the way in which the research efforts were organized. Here there are three main possibilities. –– Individual effort [individual and personal allocation] –– Collaborative teamwork [conjunctively joint and advisable allocation to the whole group] –– Multilateral coordination [partitive distribution] Each of these requires separate consideration. Individual effort centers on a single investigator toiling in Robison Crusoe-like isolation in the pursuit of an idiosyncratic line of investigation. The Albert Einstein of the Berne Patent Office is the model of this sort of thing. Here the allocation of credit for discoveries is, of course, simplicity itself. The principle is easy: no associates, no sharing. With multilaterally coordinated researches the situation is more complex. Here there are three main alternatives for organizational structure: • Hierarchically unified • Procedurally coordinated • Consilient or independently supplementary All of the modes of organization are multilateral in combining various subinquiries into one comprehensive unit in the production of a particular finding. But the difference is crucial.

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Hierarchically structured multilateral discovery proceeds for a centrally controlled project where each component makes its separate contribution in a way whose alignment with the rest is the work of a central coordinative agency. The creation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos is a paradigm of this sort of research organization. With this organizational mode, credit belongs mainly to that central directional itself with some secondary allocation to the various subordinate “sub-contractors” (as it were) who contributed their piece to the overall puzzle. Multilateral discovery is coordinated when its various contribution subunits work with each unit aligning its productive effort with a view to what the others are doing in the common effort to reach a shared end. And this can clearly be either divisible or indivisible. The history of Antarctic exploration affords an illustration as does multilateral research into the causality of historical exposition such as the French Revolution with its political, economic, and sociological ramifications and interconnections. Here credit for the overall result is indivisible, belonging to the various investigators in a sort of joint tenancy with no individually partitioned share (as in a termancy in common.) Consilient investigation occurs by unplanned commonality where different investigations happen to fit together to yield an overall significant outcome. The resolution of the yet realized solutions of the “Hilbert Problems” in pure mathematics illustrates this sort of phenomenon. With consilient investigation then, every subcontribution stands alone by itself with its own silent share of credit. The credit for the overall contribution is thus held on a sort of joint tenancy with end contribution entitled to them in particular shares of the overall credit. Logical analogies are thus operative here, somewhat as follows: • When a group finding stems from collective cooperation, credit cannot be allocated differentially. It belongs to the group members indivisibly, collectively, and equally: they all share and share alike with respect to the aggregate outcome. They are, to speak in legal terminology, tenants in common of the discovery at issue.3 In fact it would be inappropriate here to distribute partial credit to the individual investigators because in the conditions ex hypothesi at issue there is not a practicable way of doing so. Credit for genuinely collaborative teamwork is effectively indivisible and belongs to the group-as-a-­ whole and to individuals only as members thereof. However—

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• When a group finding stems from distributive cooperation (in which case is must of course address a factorable problem), then the individual contributors simply gets the credit that goes with their piece (or pieces) of the problem. Here the whole is equal to the sum of its parts and the parts get evaluated separately as making so much percentage of the whole. With authentic collaborations, credit for discoveries is thus comparatively unproblematic since contributions can be broken apart and credited to specific individuals. Here the classic principle of fair-share proportionalism obtains, with credit to be divided in line with individual claims. However, with collective credit for solving nonfactorable problems the situation is more complex. Here there is no proportioning of shares. Nevertheless, the classic principle of proportionality/fairness is not actually violated. For here there actually are no competing individual claims. With collective collaboration, claims have to be made in the first instance on behalf of the group-asa-whole and credit then allocated to individuals as members thereof. The claim of each individual participant is simply that of having functioned as an integral and essential member of the entire team. And the credit he gets is a matter of basking in sunlight of collective achievement.

5   Some Abstract Examples Let it be that we can inventory the possible solutions of the investigative problem on hand. And suppose that there are 9 possible solutions as per the following 3 x 3 array, with O indicating the ultimately correct solution.

O

Let it be that both X and Y are investigators in the matter and that X determines that the solution cannot lie in the corner position while Y determines that it must lie in the third row. Then between the two they have solved the problem: the solution that of the dot-marked position. Other things equal (which is saying a lot) the large share of credit will go to Y, seeing that Y has eliminated six possibilities to X’s four. (Note, however that if Y had shown that the solution must be in the second (middle)

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row—an achievement of exactly the same magnitude—the problem would remain unsolved.) Despite the substantial redundancy (fully half of X’s eliminations were also eliminated by Y) the collaboration proves to be decisively effective. The illustration highlights the complex situation arising with scientific progress over time. For if X’s work had been done well before Y’s then Y would likely be credited with the discovery as a whole, given that it was his contribution that finally resolved the problem, while if the timing were reversed, then the credit would likely be so as well. Scientific credit is thus not just a matter of what but also of whom. There is a critical difference in point of credit for discovery when the overall research is collaboratively/justly or competitively/separately organized. Thus suppose two investigators, X and Y, respectively estimate the following range of possibility. Y X

Between them they have solved the problem. Now with a collaborative (joint) investigation one would credit them jointly with full credit but with a competitive (separate) investigation one would credit X with arriving at 4/9 of the solution and Y at arriving at 6/9 of the solution, to be sure with some redundancy but (more importantly) in a way that actually yields a solution (which their fractional successes themselves yield only by good luck, as it were).

6   Timing Issues Note that this also references the idea that with discovery timing is everything. If X and Y had made their separate calculations at different times, then we confront to very different situations. • X does his work first. Then Y gets full credit for the discovery which in turn consists of reducing that 5-possibility field to one. X is here seen as a preparatory stage-setter.

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• Y does his work first. Then X gets full credit for the discovery which in turn consists of reducing a 3-possibility field to one. Y is here seen as a preliminary stage-setter. Consider once more a problem-resolution space with the configuration of a tic-tac-toe grid. And again suppose that we have two investigators X and Y working separately in noncollaborative cooperation. And now let it be that X determines that the solution lies in column three. But Y cheats. He claims to have shown that the solution must lie in boxes 2 or 3, whereas actually all that he is entitled to claim on the basis of the information he has developed is that it lies somewhere in the first row. Note that: • Between the two of them they have solved the problem: as a group they get full marks. • As far as individual epistemic credit goes, their shares are equal. By hypothesis each has succeeded in eliminating six possibilities. • However, as far as ethical or moral credit goes the inquiry as a whole is contaminated by Y’s cheating. • Nevertheless, from the ethical point of view X is altogether blameless: he is innocent as the driven snow. And so— • Y must bear the entire burden of ethical discredit. • Yet all the same Y’s moral culpability and cheating in fact nowise afflicts or contaminates the problem resolution collaboratively arrived at. Nor does it abolish Y’s epistemic credit for his contribution. The example brings to light the very different modus operandi of moral and epistemic credit. The two types of credit function on entirely different principles. This issue deserves closer scrutiny.

7   The Pragmatic Dimension Why are the rules of distribution as is? Analogously, inquiry too is a functional enterprise. But it has a very different sort of goal-structure—one that prioritizes knowledge as such. For the discomfort of unknowing is a natural component of human sensibility. To be ignorant of what goes on about us is almost physically painful for us—no doubt because it is so dangerous from an evolutionary point of view. It is a situational imperative for us humans to acquire information

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about the world. The requirement for information, for cognitive orientation within our environment, is as pressing a human need as that for food itself. The basic human urge to understand—to make sense of things—is an integral and characteristic aspect of our make-up—we cannot live a satisfactory life in an environment we do not understand. For us intelligent creatures, cognitive orientation is itself a practical need: cognitive disorientation is physically stressful and distressing. And inquiry—the means by which we satisfy this need—is accordingly product driven. The advancement of knowledge is the paramount for the enterprise of inquiry. With collective collaboration epistemic credit belongs to a group holistically and resists a distributive breakdown to individuals. And the rationale of this difference is straightforward. Where individual effort is paramount we want to maximize personal incentives. But where interactive collaboration counts we want to sink individual self-preoccupation in the interests of cooperation towards the common goal. And so from the angle of investigative teamwork we need a disincentive to “I’ll keep my share, thank you” egoism as counterproductive to the enterprise. With the interactive collaboration at issue in investigative teamwork it makes sense to sink individual self-preoccupation in the interests of cooperation towards the common goal. And so from the angle of investigative teamwork there is good reason for establishing a strong disincentive to the idea “I’ll do my separate bit and will keep my separate share, thank you.” But in moral matters individual action and inaction are the crux. So here, where individual effort is paramount, it is advantageous to maximize personal incentives. With individual responsibility credit must be treated on a strictly personal, individualized basis. The fact is that inquiry too is a functional enterprise. But it has a very characteristic sort of goal-structure—one that prioritizes the achievement of knowledge. For the discomfort of unknowing is a natural component of human sensibility. To be ignorant of what goes on about us is almost physically painful for us—no doubt because it is so dangerous from an evolutionary point of view. It is a situational imperative for us humans to acquire information about the world. The requirement for information, for cognitive orientation within our environment, is as pressing a human need as that for food itself. The basic human urge to understand—to make sense of things—is an integral and characteristic aspect of our make-up— we cannot live a satisfying life in an environment we do not understand. For us intelligent creatures, cognitive orientation is itself a practical need: cognitive disorientation is physically stressful and distressing. And

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inquiry—the means by which we endeavor to satisfy this need—is accordingly product driven. The advancement of knowledge is the paramount task for the enterprise of inquiry. And it is just here that methodological pragmatism comes into it. For such a pragmatism is a doctrine based on the idea that the rational legitimization of a practice or procedure or instrumentality lies in its effectiveness and efficiency at realizing the goals and purposes of the domain in which this practice or procedure or instrumentality has been instituted. And just this accomplishes the work that is needed in the present case. In the end, then, it is the pragmatics of the functional teleology of the enterprise that both explains and validates those relevant principles of operation. Inquiry, morality, law, etc., represent particular sorts of human projects, each of which is characterized by a distinctive goal structure of ends, aims, and objectives of its own. And the cardinal rule of pragmatic rationality is the same throughout: “Proceed in a manner that is optimally efficient and effective in realizing the purposes at hand.”4 It is exactly this purposive dimension of the enterprise in which the modus operandi of its rules for allocating credit and/or reprehension will ultimately be governed by considerations of effectiveness and efficiency in goal-realization. In the end it has to be acknowledged that scientific credit is a very complex matter. It requires ethicists to delineate the principles of distributive justice, scientists to access importance, statisticians to assess effects, and historians of science to clarify who did what. Few human undertakings are as interdisciplinary in nature as is the allocation of credit for scientific discovery.

Notes 1. And there is also the Law of Eponymy of the economist Stephen M. Stigler, which has it—with only mild exaggeration—that “No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.” On these issues see Stephen M. Stigler, Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (London: Doubleday, 2003) has it that: “There are three stages in scientific discovery. First people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important, finally they credit the wrong person.” 2. The history of inquiry—in science and elsewhere—is, of course, a mixture of progress and error, of finding and misfinding, of getting information and misinformation. And we have no alternative here to seeing “discovery” as a

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matter of discovery facts, taking this to mean the facts as we see them from the standpoint of the present state of the field. 3. “The central characteristic of a tenancy in common is simply that such tenant is deemed to own by himself, with most of the attributes of independent ownership, a physically individual part of the entire parcel.” (Thomas F.  Bergin and Paul G.  Haskell, Preface to Estates in Land and Future Interests, 2nd ed., University Textbook Series (Foundation Press, 1991), p. 54. 4. What we have here is not an act-pragmatism (“Take that course of action which is optimally efficient and effective…”) because in the contingency of affairs, individual outcomes are inherently less predictable than statistical tendencies. Observe that the situation is structurally much the same here as that in ethics in the case of act-utilitarianism vs. rule-utilitarianism.

References Boring, E.C. 1927. The Problem of Originality in Science. American Journal of Psychology 39: 70–90. Bryson, Bill. 2003. A Short History of Nearly Everything. London: Doubleday. Greene, M. 2007. The Demise of the Lone Author. Nature 450: 1165–1169. Csiszar, Alex. 2019. The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Flier, Jeffrey S. 2019. Credit and Priority in Scientific Discovery. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 621: 189–215. Merton, R.K. 1951. Priorities in Scientific Discovery. American Sociological Review 22 (6, Dec.): 635–659. ———. 2010. The Matthews Effect in Science. Science 159: 56–63. Rescher, Nicholas. 2005. Credit of Making a Scientific Discovery. Episteme 1: 189–200. Shen, Hua-Wei, and Albert-László Barabási. 2014. Collective Credit Allocation in Science. Proceeding of the National Academy of Science 111: 12325–12330. Wuchity, S., B.F. Jones, and B.V. Tzi. 2007. The Increasing Dominance of Terms in the Production of Knowledge. Science 316: 1036–1039.

CHAPTER 15

Morality in Government and Politics

Philosophers like to go about their work in an Olympian, detached, and coolly analytical spirit. They can take little professional comfort in dealing with issues that are hotbeds of emotion and acrimony on the current scene of political controversy. Moreover, philosophers like their problems to be subtle and intricately wrought, calling for a delicate fusion of competing considerations. They are at home when critical intelligence is called for in laying bare the theoretical complexities of finely balanced controversies. Nothing could be further from this favored terrain than the issue of morality and ethics in government and politics. Here, only one side of the question seems to present a live option. Like clean air or good food, morality in public life is hard to be against. Happily, however, there is one theoretical issue that is both central to the problem of morality in public life and has received considerable attention at the hands of the great theoreticians of the past: Is a public figure in government and political affairs entitled to special concessions in point of moral criticism and ethical appraisal? Do political and governmental agents constitute a special category in this regard? Two sorts of arguments have been espoused in support of the view that agents on the public stage in government and politics are not to be judged by the same moral standards that apply generally to individuals acting on their own behalves (in propria persona). The first of these I shall call the Titan theory. Its main theoretical exponent was Hegel; its best publicist was Thomas Carlyle. According to this theory, public agents are © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_15

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extraordinary in the root sense of that term. They are cast in roles that are, as it were, larger than life. They take greater risks, play for greater stakes, and carry larger responsibilities. Accordingly, we must not judge them by the ordinary standards applicable to common folk. Men whose actions are played out on the stage of world history cannot be expected to abide by the rules and restraints that govern the acts of ordinary men. It is not so much that they are above the petty morality of ordinary life as that they move in a sphere that lies outside it, a sphere where different standards and criteria are operative. Hegel himself put the issue as follows: The deeds of great men, who are the Individuals of the World’s History … [are] justified in view of that intrinsic result of which they were not conscious … But looked at from this point, moral claims that are irrelevant, must not be brought into collision with world-historical deeds and their accomplishment. The Litany of private virtues—modesty, humility, philanthropy and forbearance—must not be raised against them.1

The second position is what might be called the raison d’état theory. Its main historical exponent was Machiavelli, and its paradigmatic practitioner was reputedly Cardinal Richelieu. In contrast to the preceding theory, this finds a fundamental difference not in the nature of the agent and his role, but rather in the nature of the acts. Acts carried out by a public agent as a trustee for the public interest or common good are for this reason to be placed in a special category where their performance is thereby exempt from criticism by standards operative in the common run of cares. They must be judged solely in terms of the public interest or common good. Both of these theories are widely held in aversion and even—in academic circles—in derision. This seems a real mistake. For while neither theory qualifies as totally and finally correct, nevertheless a great deal can be said for each of them. The Titan theory holds that public men are not to be judged by ordinary standards. It is not that the moral and ethical aspect is irrelevant in the reasoned evaluation of the doings of leaders of state, but it is certainly not decisive; indeed, it does not really count for much. Public men—the higher functionaries of government and politics—play a large-scale role in our affairs. They are the decision-makers, the problem solvers of a society, and the movers of men. They function within the purposive context of the leadership role and this is what defines the exact standard by which they must be judged.

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The specialist must in the first instance be judged by the quality of his special performance. In the hospital emergency room, all one cares about is that the surgeon be (1) competent and (2) not beset by extraneous worries and pressures that impede the efficient exercise of his competence. Whether he is a kind husband or thoughtful neighbor, whether he treats full stops lightly when driving or exceeds the statutory limit of the catch when fishing are now very subordinate issues. It is hard to believe that the case can be altogether different with men of politics and government. No amount of probity, honesty, and freedom from breath of scandal offsets the populist mediocrity of Calvin Coolidge, the thoroughly honest and decidedly undistinguished holder of the presidential office.2 All his private virtues can avail but little in the scale when an assessment of the quality of his leadership is at issue. Nor was any imputation of evil-doing ever cast against Benjamin Harrison, but had his failure to secure reelection to the Senate in 1887 not propelled him into the US Presidency in 1888 no great regrets would be in order. To the utter indifference of posterity, we would have simply traded a presidential mediocrity for a competent senator. On the other side of the coin, no failure in regard to ethical standards and moral proprieties could push people like John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt off the pedestals they occupy as colossi of American history. In judging statesmen as statesmen, considerations of ethics and morality carry but little weight on the evaluative scale. The issue of political achievement is altogether predominant. This is the very large grain of truth in the Titan theory. Turning now to the theory of raison d’état (Staatsraison or “national security considerations,” as we tend to call it nowadays), it is often asserted that the operatives of government, as servants of the agency that maintains the rule of law, must always act within the law. Those with historically more elongated memories cannot be so sure. Two brief true stories illustrate why this is so. When Henry L.  Stimson took office in 1929 as Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State, he promptly closed down the ludicrously modest “Black Chamber,” the cryptanalysis activity operated conjointly by the State and War Departments. Supposedly, Stimson acted with the remark that “Gentlemen do not read one another’s mail.”3 However admirable his ethics, this action strikes us and, indeed, Stimson himself not too long afterwards as extremely naive and utterly unrealistic to the facts of life in international dealings. It does not require profound knowledge of the

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conduct of World War II to realize that had Stimson’s position been followed, the damage to American interests—and American lives—would have been immense. Though an appeal to Realpolitik, this appears altogether convincing in the case at hand. Thus, it would seem that acts which qualify unproblematically as ethically commendable in private transactions may to all intents and purposes not be fitting and proper in the public theater of action. The second story concerns the period prior to World War II when relations between the USA and Japan entered into a state of progressive deterioration. The attention of US intelligence agencies came to focus on various Japanese consulates, in particular the one in Honolulu. The telephone lines into that Honolulu consulate must have had a large audience. In late 1941, the courts rumbled and the Justice Department enforced the wiretap rules, with the result that on December 2, 1941, the army and navy wiretaps were put away. J. Edgar Hoover was not that easily moved; the FBI’s taps remained in operation and they soon produced significant results. On December 5, a lowly cook in the consulate called his irate girlfriend to explain that he had been “standing her up” for the past few days because they were busy day and night burning major documents, destroying codes, and demolishing all the cryptographic equipment save for a single code machine. Though every security-conscious operation occasionally destroys obsolescent materials, here was something altogether out of the ordinary: a crash program of systematic destruction on a near-total scale. The entire intelligence community in Honolulu was alerted by this rather vivid war signal. Roberta Wohlstetter’s masterful analysis of the warning signals prior to the Pearl Harbor attack cites this as one of the clearest signs of imminent hostilities actually available to the people in Hawaii.4 So far as I have been able to determine, no one in any serious position in government or politics ever uttered a single word of reproach against this instance of FBI lawbreaking. The mantle of raison d’état covers this episode as securely as the anxious mother wraps the new-born babe. Is this other than as it should be? Surely any serious person since Henry L. Stimson has genuinely expected governments in matters of this sort to operate wholly this side of the law. This, then, is the element of truth in the theory of raison d’état. There are likely to be certain occasions for every public servant when an affective discharge of his official duties will clash with playing it strictly in accordance with the rules, and when,

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because of the nature of the risks and the balance of costs and benefits, a persuasive case can be made for putting the interests of the office first. Both the Titan theory and the theory of raison d’état place the acts of a public agent on a level that can in certain cases transcend that of the ordinary, everyday norms of ethics and legality. Both envisage exceptions based on the extraordinary nature of certain cases. In each instance, the justification of this departure from the usual norms is something which, in general, cannot be fully known at the time. The concept of justification here operates retrospectively: it cannot be fully determined save with the wisdom of hindsight. This is so not because the end justifies the means, but because the evaluative quality of the means themselves is something which just assessment calls for a historical and retrospective view—frequently over a very long term. The agent in effect takes a leap into the unknown and appeals for his justification to the course of subsequent events. In general, this involves a factor beyond one’s control, the element of luck (fortuna) whose role in human affairs has ever been viewed as being as important as it is imponderable. Historically, American leaders have fared rather well in this regard, a fact attested by Bismarck’s obiter dictum that God is on the side of children, fools, and the United States of America. One cannot but hope that those happy times are not altogether at an end.

1   Agents and Models So far, I have tried to illustrate the contention that the issue of “ethics in public life” is not as straightforwardly one-sided as one might think at first view. Let us probe a little more deeply into the character of the complexity. The intense difficulty for governmental and political figures lies in the fundamentally dualistic role in which they tend to be cast nowadays, especially in the context of a democratic society. We expect our “public servants” to function in two very different roles: as doers and as exemplars. The former casts public officials in the role of decision-makers, movers of men, and problem solvers; the latter casts them as models, paradigms, and inspirers. We want our public men to be efficient in producing results and admirable in the way in which they go about it. Can we have it both ways? And what are we to do when we cannot have it so? There is a marvelously amusing short story by James Thurber of 1931 vintage that points up the difficulty.5 The protagonist is a garage mechanic named Jack Smurch, who proposes to circumnavigate the globe nonstop

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in an ingeniously modified 1920 vintage monoplane. One fine day in July, Smurch “proceeded to spit a curse of labacious juice into the still air, and took off, carrying with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and six pounds of salami.” There is much ballyhoo and much laughter; everyone is convinced the thing is a cheap joke, a hoax, a publicity stunt. Everyone is wrong. Ten days and one circumnavigation later, the yokel mechanic sets his plane down at Roosevelt Field for a perfect three-point landing. Instantly, he is the hero of the decade. Unfortunately, a less Lindbergh-­ like hero can hardly be imagined. Not to put too fine a point on it, Jack Smurch is a greedy boor. Here is the paradox: a supreme achiever on the one hand; a moral Neanderthal on the other. Fortunately, the idolatrous public is offered a way out. The people who are charged with the vain task of building a suitable image for the hopeless Smurch manage to push him out of the 10th floor window just before his first news conference. That is the jest of Thurber’s story. The moral he wants to extract is clear and not all that far from the truth. Americans, in particular, are unwilling to tolerate flawed heroes. When it transpires that one of our idols is cracked, we insist on hastening then to swift destruction. Does this make sense? Is it reasonable to insist uncompromisingly that our political and governmental agents be both outstanding performers and ethical paragons? Of course, it is understandable enough that we should want to have it both ways. After all, there is no reason for restraint at the level of what we should ideally like to have. We want our children to be intellectually bright, socially adept, and irreproachable in conduct. But in our family affairs or our business relationships, we are prepared to be realistic. Whatever fanciful notions we entertain at the level of what we might want, we are ready to rest satisfied with a good deal less when it comes down to the harsh facts of what we can get. Outside the hothouse arena of political and governmental affairs, we are commonsense people, not doctrinaire idealists.

2   The Real and the Ideal These considerations take us back once more to the dialectic of the real and the ideal. It is undeniably important to have ideals, to uphold and maintain them, and to strive to translate them into reality insofar as possible. But surely it is not treason to our ideals to recognize that their attainability in the face of the recalcitrant circumstances of the real world

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may have to be partial and incomplete. There is a large and important difference between cynicism and realism, and it is one that deserves recognition and emphasis. If the history of the twentieth century has taught us only one thing, it is this: The veneer of civilization still lies very thin over the human condition. The real conflict of politics is not that between good and bad persons, but that between, on the one hand, those motives and tendencies of thought which try to make one’s environing society habitable and its institutions work for the general good, and, on the other hand, those forces which are simply destructive, negative, and nihilistic, and which invite us to strike at whatever does not correspond to our notions of perfection. The real quality of political leadership is revealed not by the test of adherence to the ethical rules, but by assessing the extent to which, on balance, a contribution has been made on the positive side of the ledger. The big step in developing maturity and balance of judgment in human affairs is the recognition that humanity cannot be divided into good and bad persons, that people and issues are not just ethically black and white, but come in all those grayish shades and gradations that lie in between. For a complex variety of reasons, the area of public agents in politics and government seems to be the last domain where a democratic society is willing to apply this maturity of balanced judgment. Regrettably, upon entering the hall where political and governmental affairs are under discussion, we all too often check our common sense and natural human tolerance at the door. Regrettably, I have no promising, concrete suggestions as to how we in academia might be able to ameliorate this state of affairs. All I can offer is the small but possibly useful suggestion that perhaps the most effective way towards an education for realism is the cultivation of historical perspective. For this study of history and particularly its biographical dimension is a vastly useful desideratum. In addition, it would also do nothing but good to reintroduce undergraduate ethics courses of the old style, that is, concerned not solely with systematic abstractions, but also with the substantive nitty-gritty of the rational deliberation of ethical decision-­ making in realistic cases.6

Notes 1. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), Pt. III.

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2. For a clear and by no means unsympathetic vignette of Coolidge’s administration, see Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday (New York: Harper and Row, 1931). 3. See Henry L.  Stimson’s obituary in the New York Times, October 21, 1950, p. 1. 4. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962). 5. James Thurber, “The Greatest Man in the World,” reprinted in E. B. White and K. S. White (eds.), A Subtreasury of American Humor (Boston: Putnam, 1961), pp. 355–361. 6. This chapter was originally published under the same title in the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 48 (1974), pp. 259–266.

CHAPTER 16

Problems of Betterment

1   Potential Impediments Can we humans appropriately see ourselves as change agents endeavoring to effect improvements in the prevailing order of things? We standardly accept the idea that it makes a difference what people do—that how they choose to act will affect the course of things. We suppose that we can and do act in the world to create situations that would not otherwise come about. But is this sort of thing true? After all, this belief could in theory be wrong—for any of various reasons. Among these, three stand out: Fatalism has it that as a matter of necessitation and of determinism, there is a foreordainment providing for the inevitability of the course of events. And fatalists flatly deny that we can possibly succeed in our efforts to change the course of events so as to improve the world beyond what would otherwise be. Futilitariansim, on the other hand, urges a theory of human impotence. Here, our human place in the scheme of things is seen as being too small and insignificant to have any substantial effect on the course of things. We are impotent—unable to produce significant efforts. Those things that bear on the world’s merit will happen anyway—irrespective of what we do. The effects of our efforts will dampen out in the larger scheme of things—like tossing a single grain of sand into the Pacific Ocean. While the world is not optimal and can indeed be improved © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_16

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upon, humans are impotent to effect such improvements; we mere frail mortals cannot effect changes—let alone improvements—on the course of occurrence. Cosmic perversity, by contrast, is a deeply pessimistic stance, holding that what we do does make a difference—but always negatively. The idea of collateral damage is central to ramifications here. It is—unfortunately— entirely possible for the removal of even a Hitler from the world stage to be achievable only at the price of visiting upon mankind an even greater disaster. In the present context, the idea is that while the world’s particular existing negativities are in theory remediable, the endeavor to arrange for this will involve an even larger collateral array of mishaps overall. The cost of avoiding those manifest evils of this world would then be the realization of an even larger volume of misfortune.1 On this basis, there stands before us an array of dreary world perspectives that would negate any prospect of our effecting improvements in the world. So, can we cogently see ourselves as free-will agents able to change matters for the good? We surely can. For we cannot but believe that our action-determinative choices make a difference. It is natural for us—and indeed under the circumstances, inevitable—to proceed in the conviction that what we do has a positive influence on the subsequent course of events. But what justifies such a hopeful position?

2   Free Will Issues Suppose that someone dropped a vase on the floor, where it broke into bits. Why did she do this? This is certainly something that could be explained in rather different ways: • She hated seeing the thing about the house. • She resented it because it had been given to her by a faithless former admirer. • She was carrying it but had a sudden painful muscle spasm in her arm. Three decidedly different sorts of explanation are thus available here. The first is an explanation by reasons. It envisions answering the question “What reason/ground/purpose did you, the agent, have for what you did?” The answer here calls for a first-person account presenting matters

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from the agent’s point of view. The second explanation proceeds by motives. The fact on which it pivots may never figure explicitly in the agent’s conscious awareness—it may well never actually “enter her mind”: the answer is given from a third-person, bystander point of view. (However, once a motive is actually acknowledged by the agent, it can at once be retrospectively recharacterized as a reason, through being internalized into the first person.) The third explanation, by contrast, proceeds in terms of natural causes disconnected from the agent’s thought. Here, the agent’s thoughts, beliefs, and motives—conscious or not—will not enter in at all. For this very reason, free agency is out of the picture here. The fully adequate explanation of a free action cannot proceed in this third mode alone, exactly because agent determination by thought is of the essence wherever free volition is at stake. Thought control by the agent is of the essence. To maintain that we humans are equipped with a free will is to claim for us a certain particular sort of ability: the capacity to make choices and decisions through deliberative thought based on our own motivation, without the outcome-determinative intrusion of factors and processes whose operations are wholly beyond our personal control. The principal point of such a position is that our actions issue from our choices and decisions, which themselves are productively made by us rather than being causally made for us by processes lying outside of our control. After all, choice is bound up with our sense of reality’s contingent futurity, since in making a choice we endeavor to bring to realize one sort of future rather than another. Our own thinking must be in charge here, and this means (among other things) that if our deliberatively formed choices and decisions had eventuated differently, then our endeavor to implement them would have been correspondingly different. When a decision is made freely, the agent is productively responsible for it, and responsibility can be an unwelcome burden. The gravity of a decision is determined by the importance and magnitude of what is at stake. And here we can encounter what is often referred to as “the agony of decision” where the stake is great and one’s confidence in the correctness of resolution is small. Freedom of choice and decision is not always a thing of unalloyed positivity. In matters of decision and choice, due deliberation is not only procedurally possible but will also be morally mandatory when important issues are involved. Suppose I have to make a decision in which someone’s welfare is at risk. Shall I do it or not? And suppose that I resolve this choice

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by delegating it to a random device, say a die: come 1 to 5, I’ll help; come 6, I’ll not. This selective delegation would be a grave act of dereliction because this is the sort of matter I should properly decide by conscientious deliberation. It frivolously treats as rationally indifferent—though not, to be sure, probabilistically indifferent—something that by rights must be treated in a serious and responsible way. It degrades the dignity with which humans and their interests should be addressed by their fellows. Due deliberation can thus be a duty as well as a method. With authentic freedom, the matter of motivation becomes crucial. The ancient term autexousía—which in earlier Greek meant “absolute power,” and subsequently indicated the self-determination at issue with manumission from slavery—was used by the Church Fathers to stand for the sort of autonomy characteristic of free will: the power of self-­ determination. Just as in politics that coercion and force are the prime impediments to freedom, so in personal agency that external manipulation and undue influence are its prime impediments. With free will, the only viable sort of constraint upon someone’s decisions with choice are those impressed by the agent’s thoughts and deliberations in the process of deciding: any sort of thought-external constraint or compulsion in an agent’s choices and decisions is antithetical to free will. However, while doing something freely certainly requires thought, it need not necessarily involve a great deal of it. When someone acts “on impulse” or “in a fit of rage,” she loses self-control. But only in the limited sense of control by her usual and customary self. Yet, even impulsion by one’s “lower self” is not yet external manipulation and leaves the agent still in charge—and responsibly so, seeing that rage is not yet quite the outright madness that fully defeats responsibility. And so, within the scope of our freedom as we see it, we rational agents can both act and act for good reasons—the betterment of things included.

3   The Future And then, alas, there is the problem of the future. Pretty much everyone agrees that we cannot change the past. But most of us are convinced that we can change the future. When one speaks of changing the future, one does not (or should not) mean changing it from what it is irreversibly destined to be, given that the present is what it is. (If Fred is dead now, we cannot have it be tomorrow that he has never passed.) The science-fiction prospect of travelling

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backwards in time to avert disapproved actualities is simply too far-fetched. Rather, one (presumably) means “changing it from what it would otherwise be if one did not presently act on the matter.” Actually, in the context of agency, there are four futures or—more cautiously formulated—four different ways to looking at the future. They are: • The future as it will evolve if the agent does not intervene • The future as the agent thinks it will evolve if he does not intervene • The future as it will evolve if the agent does intervene • The future as the agent thinks it will evolve if he does intervene The object of rational planning is to endeavor to realize the optimal result of having the actual future be identical with that which is envisioned as desirable. However, the imperfection of human knowledge being what it is, there is no way ever to produce a totally failproof guarantee that this will be so. After all, the realities being what they are, we have no guarantee that the actual future will ever be just as we envisioned it. Slippage is always possible here. So, how are we to manage rational planning for the future? Fortunately, we have observational access to past futures. And just this affords us with the resources for planning. For the basis of planning is experience. One thing that we learn from experience is that different ranges of phenomena are variously stable. In parts of the globe, the temperature is volatile; in other parts, it is uniform. In some cultures, life follows a fixed pattern; in others, it is in constant flux. But conditions are not always and everywhere benign in this respect. Experience teaches that our knowledge of the future is spotty. Predictive foresight of the future is only possible with stable phenomena—in matters where the future is like the past. As David Hume rightly insisted, the predictive presupposition that the future is like the past underlies all of our claims about the future, and we can never have unconditional guarantees here. All purposive action is future-oriented. It aims at bringing about a condition of things which, in the agent’s judgment, would otherwise not—or probably not—obtain. But things being what they are, the agent inevitably acts on the face of potentially mistaken views about the future. A rational agent cannot but acknowledge the possibility of error in the judgment of future events. For it is simply a fact of life that our knowledge of the future

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is imperfect—that the prospect of being mistaken here is an unavoidable fact of the human condition. After all, it is always today; tomorrow never comes. We inevitably live in the present. The future is never a present reality to us, all we ever actually have in hand is the envisioned future. Imagination is our only window that is presently open to the future. As far as we are concerned, the future is a thought construct, every bit as unreal as centaurs and unicorns. No one has ever observed the future. Aristotle was the first theorist to address explicitly the problem of the future. In On Interpretation, he noted that the future can be open in respect of its occurrences, so that (for example) it is as yet indeterminate which side will prevail in the sea battle projected for tomorrow. Whether this indeterminacy is ontological in that the actual outcome remains undecided or whether it is merely epistemological in being unknown and unknowable is an issue debated by philosophers to the present day. Like the future itself, its determination appears to be an open question. One of the prime tasks of scientific inquiry is to afford us a better grasp of the future. This automatically makes the discovery of nature’s laws into one of the pivotal aims of the enterprise, seeing that, by definition, these laws are always and everywhere the same. Scientific progress always carries advances in predictability in its wake. But the whole course of its history teaches that this impacts upon the course of human affairs only to a very limited extent. The fog of uncertainty in which we make our life’s journey never lifts to all that great an extent. The most stable feature of the world is the inevitability of change. The Greek poet Simonides spoke wisely of the all-devouring truth of time. And just herein lies the basis for the inherent recalcitrance and uncertainty of human agency. We must live our lives and conduct our affairs with a view to a future whose realities lie largely outside our ken and control. All human endeavor is subject to riskiness and uncertainty. To live is to give hostages to fortune.2

4   Imponderability And so, the problem of improvement is not all that simple. For whether matters will actually turn out for the better in the wake of our benign intentions is something regarding which we regrettably cannot secure rational information. Regrettably, we can never really know for certain. Man’s situation in the world’s scheme of things is such that we cannot

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know with unintelligent confidence that when we act in ways intended to make the world a better place that we will actually succeed. For we live in the domain of fact and for us there is no entry through the doorway of counterfact. We have no way of undoing what we have done and replaying the course of events to see how matters would have eventuated otherwise.3 Human freedom pivots crucially on the contrastive conception of otherwise: it is predicated in the idea that we can (i.e., have the facility) for choosing and acting differently from what is actually done, and that matters would eventuate differently were we to do this. But, of course, there is no way of establishing this capacity to choose another act different than the actual one by any examination and analysis of the realm of actuality itself. The efficacy of our efforts at world improvement is impossible to establish. We unhesitatingly believe that we can intervene and change the course of events, but there is no way to establish this. The controversy between efficacy and impotence is undecidable. For here we confront an array of close to intractable questions: . Whether the world is improvable at all 1 2. Whether we ourselves can ever act freely for its improvement 3. Whether this is so in the particular case that presently confronts us 4. Whether even should this be so, our intervention in the course of events will actually produce the benign results that we have in view All of these pivotal issues involve questions for which no categorically assured answer can confidently be provided. Each is sufficiently complex as to engender real risks for the doctrine of world improvability. The daunting reality of it is that we humans live in a nearly impenetrable fog of uncertainty as regards our ability to improve the world. We have no categorical assurance that our efforts to make things better will result. (Indeed, we have no categorical assurance that they will not make them worse.)

5   The Butterfly Effect as a Substantive Obstacle to Tinkering But are the problems here all that serious? Surely envisioning world improvement would not be all that hard. After all, it wouldn’t have taken much to arrange some small accident that would have spared us a Stalin.

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To figure out how this sort of thing could be arranged—to the world’s vast improvement!—is not rocket science! Alas, dear objector, even rocket science is not good enough. For what stands in the way here is the massive obstacle of what is known as the Butterfly Effect. This phenomenon roots in the sensitive dependence of outcomes on initial conditions in chaos theory, where a tiny variation in the initial conditions of a dynamical system can issue in immense variations in the long-term behavior of the system. E.  N. Lorenz first analyzed the effect in a pioneering 1963 paper. Leading to the comment of one meteorologist that if the theory were correct, “one flap of a seagull’s wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever.”4 With this process, changing even one tiny aspect of nature—one single butterfly flutter—could have the most massive repercussions: tsunamis, droughts, ice ages—there is no limit. With this phenomenology in play, rewriting the course of the cosmos in the wake of even the smallest hypothetic change is an utter impracticability.5 A chaotic condition, as natural scientists nowadays use this term, obtains when we have a situation that is tenable or viable in certain circumstances but where a change in these circumstances—even one that is extremely minute—will unravel and destabilize the overall situation with imponderable consequences, producing results that cannot be foreseen in informative detail. Any hypothetical change in the physical makeup of such a world—however small—sets in motion a vast cascade of further such changes either in regard to the world’s furnishings or in the laws of nature. For all we can tell, reality is just like that. And now suppose that we make only a very small alteration in the descriptive composition of the real, say, by adding one pebble to the river bank. But which pebble? Where are we to get it and what are we to put in its place? And where are we to put the air or the water that this new pebble displaces? And when we put that material in a new spot, just how are we to make room for it? And how are we to make room for the so-displaced material? Moreover, the region within six inches of the new pebble used to hold N pebbles. It now holds N + 1. Of which region are we to say that it holds N − 1? If it is that region yonder, then how did the pebble get here from there? By a miraculous instantaneous transport? By a little boy picking it up and throwing it? But then, which little boy? And how did he get there? And if he threw it, then what happened to the air that his throw displaced which would otherwise have gone undisturbed? Here, problems arise without end.

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As we conjure with those pebbles, what about the structure of the envisioning electromagnetic, thermal, and gravitational fields? Just how are these to be preserved as was, given the removal and/or shift of the pebbles? How is matter to be readjusted to preserve consistency here? Or are we to do so by changing the fundamental laws of physics? Limits of necessity can root not only in the fundamental principles of logic (logical impossibility) but also in the laws of nature (physical impossibility). For every scientific law is in effect a specification of impossibility. If it indeed is a law that “Iron conducts electricity,” then a piece of nonconducting iron thereby becomes unrealizable. Accordingly, limits of necessity are instantiated by such aspirations as squaring the circle or accelerating spaceships into hyperdrive at transluminal speed. Many things that we might like to do—to avoid ageing, to erase the errors of the past, to transmute lead into gold—are just not practicable. Nature’s modus operandi precludes the realization of such aspirations. We finite creatures had best abandon them because the iron necessity of natural law stands in the way of their realization. “But is the Butterfly Effect not an artifact of the ‘laws of nature’—the rules by which nature plays the game in the production of phenomena? And would not omnipotent God alter those rules so that the world’s occurrences are no longer inextricably intertwined?” This is a tricky question that requires some conceptual unraveling. An omnipotent creator could ex hypothesi create a chaos. But he could not create a cosmos that affords a user-friendly home for intelligent beings without thereby creating the sort of coordinated fabric of intelligible lawfulness that carries a Butterfly Effect in its wake. For how else could those intelligent agents make their way in the world? An existential manifold could possibly dispense with the lawful coordination that underpins the Butterfly Effect, but an intelligence-supportive (“noophelic”) nature could not possibly. The lawful order inherent in the Butterfly Effect could not be abandoned without massive collateral damage to the intelligible order of things. To “fix” some negative aspect of the world would involve a change of how things happen within it, i.e., altering the laws of nature under whose aegis things happen as they do. And the effects of this will prove imponderable. As one writer has cogently argued: To illustrate what is here meant: If water is to have the various properties in virtue of which it plays its beneficial part in the economy of the physical world and the life of mankind, it cannot at the same time lack its obnoxious

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capacity to drown us. The specific gravity of water is as much a necessary outcome of its ultimate constitution as its freezing point, or its thirst-­ quenching and cleansing functions. There cannot be assigned to any substance an arbitrarily selected group of qualities, from which all that ever may prove unfortunate to any sentient organism can be eliminated especially if … the world … is to be a calculable cosmos.6

What the Butterfly Effect means is that we can no longer be glibly facile about our ability to tinker with reality to effect improvements in the world by somehow removing this or that among its patent imperfections through well-intentioned readjustments. For what would need to be shown is that such a repair would not yield unintended and indeed altogether unforeseen consequences, leading to an overall inferior result. And this would be no easy task—and indeed could prove to be one far beyond our feeble powers. “But could this situation not have been avoided altogether? After all, that Butterfly Effect is the result of the fact that, in certain respects, the laws of nature have yielded a system of the sort that mathematicians characterize as chaotic. Surely one could change the laws of nature to avoid this result.” It is no doubt so. But now we have leapt from the frying pan into the fire. For in taking this line, we propose to fiddle not merely with this or that specific occurrence in world history, but we are engaged in conjuring with the very laws of nature themselves. And this embarks us on the uncharted waters of a monumental second-order Butterfly Effect— one whose implications and ramifications are incalculable for finite intelligences. The point is simple: Yes, the world’s particular existing negativities are indeed remediable in theory. But to avert them in practice might well require accepting an even larger array of negativities overall. The cost of avoiding those manifest evils of this world would then be the realization of an even larger mass of misfortune. And the very possibility of this prospect shows that the Improvability Argument does not suffice to accomplish its aim.

6   The Package-Deal Predicament: The Teeter-Totter Effect “But surely if one effected this or that modification in the world without changing anything else, one would improve matters thereby.” Perhaps. But the difficulty lies in that pivotal phrase “without changing anything else.”

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In anything worthy of the name “world,” the constituent components are interrelated and interconnected. You cannot change one without changing innumerable others. The situation is not unlike that of language. Change the U of GUST to I and you do not leave the rest unchanged. Everything changes: shape, meaning, pronunciation. Most of us would have little difficulty in conjuring up a few of our fellows without whom the world would be better off—or so we think. But the problem is that in a lawful world getting rid of them would have to be achieved in a way that effects broader changes—more virulent diseases, more enterprising murderers, stronger impetus to suicide—all of which have wider and potentially deleterious consequences. A world is an infinitely complex arrangement of interrelated features and factors. And it is bound to have these coordinated in a complexly interrelated harmony. Modify this and you disturb that. The world we actually have—and indeed any possible alternative to it—is a package deal. Once we start tinkering with it, it evaporates. In seeking to change it, we create conditions where there is no longer any anaphoric “it” to deal with. To tinker with a world is to annihilate it. Perhaps something else, something altogether different might take its place. But this something else could readily prove to be worse overall. To render this idea graphic, one should consider W. W. Jacobs’ chilling story of The Monkey’s Paw, whose protagonist is miraculously granted wishes that actually come true—but always at a fearsome price.7 But if the world indeed is a package deal, then the prospect is open that those “natural evils” are simply the price of achieving a greater balance of positivity over negativity—be it by way of causation (as the extinction of earlier species paved the way for the rise of Homo sapiens) or by way of outright composition (as the fixing of those initial conditions of cosmic evolution has made possible a world featuring organic existence). Either way, this world’s natural evils are actually a means towards the greater good—as per the traditional theodicies. What is crucial in this regard is the operation of natural laws, in view of what the universe is as an orderly cosmos instead of an anarchic jumble. For only this can provide a home for beings whose actions are grounded by thought. Only through some degree of understanding of the orderly modus operandi of a world can an intelligent being whose actions are guided by beliefs come into operation. And in a realm in which what happens proceeds in accord with natural laws, a finite embodied creature is inevitably at risk of mishap. Bruce Reichenbach has it right: “Natural Evils

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are a consequence of natural objects acting according to natural laws upon sentient, natural creatures.”8 A natural order cannot be perfect. For as Plato already insisted, the imperfectability of the natural universe is an inevitable aspect of its physical materiality, its embodiment (somatoeides, Politikos 273B).9 And he is followed in this view by the entire neo-Platonic tradition.10 “But could not the amount of human suffering that there is in the world be reduced?” For sure it could. But the question is: At what cost? At the price of there being no world at all? At the price of there being no humans in the world? At the price of having all humans be ignorant, dull, and unintelligent? At the price of having only humans without empathy, sympathy, and care for one another? The proper response to all of these questions is simply: Who knows? No one can say with any assurance that the cost of such an “improvement” would be acceptable. The salient point at issue here is straightforward. Granted, the world’s particular existing negativities are in theory remediable. But to arrange for this will likely require accepting an even larger array of negativities overall (the Monkey’s Paw effect). The cost of avoiding those manifest evils of this world would then be the realization of an even larger volume of misfortune. The thesis here is effectively that of Leibniz: It is not intended to claim that the world is perfect, but just that it is optimal—the best possible with the emphasis not on best but on possible.

7   An Open Option: Nothing to Lose We simply have to come to terms with the fact that we live in a world without guarantees—a world where we can never act with unalloyed confidence in success. Nothing guarantees the prospect of world improvement. But, on the other hand, there is no demonstrable impediment either. There is no way of demonstrating the matter one way or the other—both possibilities are there: either way, the prospect stands open. In relation to the question of the world’s improvability, one must acknowledge it as an unavoidable feature of the human condition that we humans invariably act under conditions of potential mishap—that our best intended and best planned actions will “gang aft agley.” All the same, we do not and must not permit this prospect to immobilize us into pervasive inaction. In the endeavor to achieve our objectives, we simply have to do the best that we can. And in the circumstances, it would be foolish and

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unreasonable to ask for more than this. (Ultra posse nemo obligatur, as the Roman legal dictum wisely had it.) Accordingly, in our aspirations and endeavors to improve the world—as in so many other contexts—we have no real alternative but to hope and presume that the conditions under which our efforts might well succeed do actually obtain. In the manner of Pascal’s Wager, we have to forge ahead and make the effort—to “give it our best shot.” What, after all, do we have to lose? While there is just no way of demonstrating the productive efficacy of our actions—no way to demonstrate that things would have gone awry had we acted differently—nevertheless, we are not only free but rationally entitled to presume that this is so. After all, the opposite stance is also incapable of demonstration. And we are rationally entitled to this by ultimately pragmatic considerations that function in the realm of practical reason. This idea demands a bit of development.

8   A Practical Policy The upshot of these considerations is thus clear. The idea that the world’s defects can be fixed by tinkering is decidedly implausible. And given the fact that re-engineering the world as a whole lies beyond our feeble powers, we have to face up to the consideration that—for all we can tell—this is indeed the best of possible worlds, and that changing the existing condition of the universe in any way whatsoever will diminish the sum-total of its positivities. We have to face the prospect that there is no “quick fix” for the negativities of this world. No guarantees can be issued that our efforts to improve matters will actually succeed. Our proceedings here will have to be validated by considerations of practical reason rather than the assurances of unique reasons. There is no assurance that our efforts will succeed; it’s just that we realize that our goals will not be realized if we do not try. We cannot say that we will win the race if we enter it, but know that we will not win if we do not. The crucial presumption at issue with the productive efficacy of human choice and action, while indemonstrable in the theoretical (factual) order of deliberation, is rationally justified in the practical order of deliberation. This rests on three considerations:

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1. As far as theoretical reason is concerned, there is no way of establishing the productive efficacy of our well-intentioned efforts to improve the course of things and the reverse holds as well. However— 2. It is natural (by way of an evolutionary engendered belief inclination)forustoadoptthiscommitmenttoproductiveefficacy.Andintheend— 3. We have nothing to lose (and potentially a good deal to gain) by adjusting this supposition. What we have here is a fundamental belief commitment whose rational justification lies ultimately in the practical order of reasoning. And just this is the pivot of rational deliberation on the matter: the fact that we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying. For we know for sure that we cannot win the lottery if we do not buy a ticket. And there are innumerable situations where, to all visible appearances, events will not look after themselves—where goods cannot be realized if we don’t make an effort and bad situations will not manage to improve themselves. So, granted! We have no guarantee that our efforts at world amelioration will succeed in improving matters. But whenever success is not something we can expect to achieve without effort, no guarantees need be demanded. In such cases, the mere possibility that our efforts may prove to be availing gives support to the idea that it is sensible to make them. In the end, then, a teleologically functionalistic style of practical reasoning lies at the core of pragmatic thinking, one whose approach lies in showing that a certain way of proceeding is the most effective (or perhaps only) way of achieving a certain objective. On this basis, pragmatic reasoning invokes argumentation that does not argue for the (theoretical) truth of a proposition but rather for the (practical) rationality of a modus operandi.11 In this light, it is the object of the present discussion to elaborate the rational credentials of our human endeavors for improving the condition of things. Not surprisingly then, practical reasoning itself provides for the rational justification of praxis, affording from its own resources a rationale for our endeavors to act for the betterment of things that lies in the order of practical reasoning. The pragmatic point of view is crucial here. And it is only natural and fitting that the rational justification of action should proceed in the practical (rather than theoretical demonstrative) order of justification.

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9   A Moral Dimension Moreover, seeing ourselves as free agents who can effect change represents a theoretically open option that is practically mandated for us by moral considerations. For we not only can proceed on its basis, but also should, actually. It is tempting to think that our obligations, be they moral or legal, arise from agreements and contracts—if not always individually and voluntarily made, then at any rate rooted in a social basis through our place in a community. But this is not always so. Obligations also sometimes inhere not in what we do—individually or collectively—but simply in what we are. Some obligations are assumed voluntarily—for example, those of a husband to his wife or those of a sea captain to his passengers. Others root in involuntary contingent circumstances such as those of a person towards his neighbor or those of playground parents towards children not their own. But some obligations are incumbent upon agents simply by virtue of the sorts of beings they are: they are ex conditio rather than ex officio. These ontological obligations preeminently include acknowledging in others the merits one claims for oneself as a rational agent. All things that actually exist in the world have ontological requisites: all are involved with conditions that must be met for them to come into being and to continue there as the kind of things they are. For the most part, these requisites will be material or physical in nature: warmth, food, and oxygen being examples with respect to humans in particular. But sometimes, the requisites will be immaterial. For human persons have not only a great many physical requisites but also such immaterial ones as our need for knowledge (information) and evaluative orientation (direction/ guidance). And meeting a recognized need is a (prima facie) obligation for rational beings. It is ontologically (rather than, say, morally or legally) incumbent upon us to endeavor to satisfy those requirements that are rooted in our status as rational agents. Viewed in this perspective, it is ontologically incumbent on an intelligent free agent to act so as to realize himself as the sort of being he actually is. We are, by our very nature, situationally mandated to acknowledge what we are in what we do. Accordingly, action to realize and sustain themselves as the sorts of beings they are is rationally incumbent on intelligent agents: the realizations of their circumstantial requisites is rationally mandatory for them. And the operative principle of the ontological mandate for intelligent agents is so to comport themselves as to realize their potential for the

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inherent positivities of their own natural kind. Acting intelligently in these regards relating to their personal and social interests is morally incumbent on intelligent agents in general simply by virtue of the kinds of beings they are. And this is a matter not just of prudential but also moral demands. Such ontological duties and obligations, then, are neither voluntarily assumed nor contingently circumstantial. They are embedded in one’s nature as the sort of being that one is. And it is this feature that marks such obligations as inherently ontological. And as such, they belong to a region of normativity where prudential self-interest and other-oriented moral obligation coalesce.

10   The Irony of Inevitable Success The ironic fact of it is that inevitably by trying we automatically succeed in this matter of world improvement. For irrespective of their outcomes, the very fact of our making those efforts at amelioration would make the world a better place than it otherwise would be. In the end, a world whose rational agents have the intention to make things better and who exert effort in this direction will automatically enhance the world’s merit through the manifestation of these intentions and efforts: the mere trying itself makes the world a better place than it otherwise would be, irrespective of whether those efforts yield fruit. In this regard, “virtue is its own reward.”12

Notes 1. An intriguing example of the adverse consequences of “improving” matters in the world is afforded in Kenneth Boulding’s study of the unhappy consequences of significant life prolongation: “The Menace of Methusalah” in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. 55, no. 7 (March 1965), pp. 171–179. 2. This section was originally published in the Baltic Journal of Philosophy, vol. 1 (2009), pp. 5–6. 3. Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyât: “The moving finger writes …”. 4. Lorenz’s discussion gave rise to New Line Cinema’s 2004 feature film The Butterfly Effect starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. 5. Think here of the fine-tuning of the initial conditions of cosmic evolution that plays so prominent a role in the setting of the Anthropic Hypothesis. 6. F.  R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, 2 vol.’s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), vol. II, p. 201.

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7. The story is contained in W. W. Jacob’s anthology The Lady of the Barge (London and New York: Harper books, 1902). An intriguing example of the adverse consequences of “improving” matters in the world is afforded in Kenneth Boulding’s study of the unhappy consequences of significant life prolongation: “The Menace of Methusalah” in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. 55, no. 7 (March 1965), pp. 171–179. 8. Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), p. 106. I myself would amend the passage to read “the inevitable consequences.” The issue is one of the “collateral (damage)” that is unavoidable in pursuing the greatest achievable measure of the good. 9. See Timaeus, 28Cff, 35A, 50Dff. 10. Even—indeed especially—in the sunlight, material objects will cast a shadow. Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, III 2.5. 11. Since, in theory, that modus operandi could be factual inquiry, the efficacy of truth-determinative methods could also be the object of pragmatic validation. This approach to inquiry was the central thesis of the author’s Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976). 12. This chapter is a slightly revised version of a paper on “The Pragmatics of Betterment” published in Contemporary Pragmatism, vol. 1 (2013), pp. 59–71.

CHAPTER 17

Sovereign Immunity in Theological Ethics

1   The Idea of Sovereign Immunity Closely akin to the ancient Protagoras-Euathlus paradox of contractual obligation is a doctrine clash that arose among Renaissance jurists regarding the conception of sovereign immunity. This principle is encapsulated in a precept of Roman jurisprudence law to the effect that rex non potest peccare: the king can do no wrong; he is “above the law.”1 However, it transpires that this principle is a double-edged sword. There is, on the one hand, its usual interpretation to the effect that if the king ordered it, then it cannot be classed as wrong: the legal system must accept royal mandates as uncontestably beyond its reach and jurisdiction. The king as sovereign authority and source of lawfulness cannot be bound by legislation. The reasoning that emerges here runs as follows: • The king can do no wrong • The king authorized the act at issue ··· The act at issue is lawfully indisputable and uncontestable But the fact of it is that the inverse reasoning is equally cogent:

• The king can do no wrong • The act at issue is not lawfully indispensable and uncontestable ··· The king did not authorize the act at issue © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_17

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The upshot of this second inference is that the supposed royal order is not really qualified to count as authentic and should be deemed invalid and void. The first inference validates the act; the second delegitimizes it. Two very different and drastically opposed constructs are in play here: –– The king is all-powerful. He stands above and beyond the law as its ultimate source and arbiter. –– The law is all-powerful. The king can do no wrong because the law will not let him. It will not recognize it as an authentically kingly act if it is wrong. On this basis, opponents to the royally mandated but judicially questionable executions of Thomas Becket in Britain or of Constable Don Alvaro de Luna on the order of Juan II in Spain maintained the illegality of these proceedings. In effect, this approach to the matter turns the usual conception of sovereign immunity on its head.2 The analogy of God and king is pervasive in Mediterranean theism, and the idea of sovereign immunity in law poses the question of an analogous idea of sovereign immunity in ethics. Here, the only even remotely plausible answer to the question “Who will be ‘above the law’ where moral judgment is at issue?” is: “Only God himself.” This line of thought led theologians to devise the “Divine Command Theory of Morality” based on the following line of reasoning:

• People should do God’s will • God’s will determines what is morally right • People should do what is morally right because God commends it

2   Two Rival Theories Theistic moralists have always agreed on three contentions with regard to ethical transgressions such as murder, theft, malice—say, X for short: –– X is wrong –– God condemns X –– God condemns what is wrong

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But they have disagreed about the interrelationships among these three principles. For there are two alternative ways of interrelating them, and thus creating two theories of morality:

I

• God condemns what is wrong • God condemns X X is wrong

II

• God condemns what is wrong • X is wrong ··· God condemns X

Here, approach I would have it that what is wrong is made so by God’s condemnation. In the course of making his condemnatory judgments, God decides, as it were, what is to be the moral status of acts. He is the determinative arbiter of immorality. This is known as the “Divine Command Theory” of the morality of right and wrong. By contrast, the advocates of approach II can be construed as having it that God’s condemnation follows the (independently existing) principles of ethics—how God’s intellect acknowledges ethical status as preexisting fact (as with arithmetic or logic) outside the range of his will, choice, and creativity. This is the “Ethical Autonomy of Theory” of the morality of right and wrong.

3   Variant Perspectives We thus have two versions of sovereign immunity: monarchal and theistic, where both reject the idea of ultimate arbiter/decider, as per: King: the law immunizes the king against wrongdoings by exempting anything to act for being wrong and preventing its acknowledgment as a wrongful act. God: his benevolence precludes God’s doing wrong, preventing his doing anything wrongful. And here once against the one theory turns the other on its head. By Divine Command theory, murder is wrong because God condemns it; by Ethical Autonomy theory, God condemns murder because it is wrong. Ethical Autonomy subordinates God’s will to the mandates of morality; Divine Command theory places these feelings at the disposal of God’s choice and thus puts God himself above and beyond the law.

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Both theories agree on the ethico-theological principle that “God can do no wrong.” But Divine Command theory has this so because it sees God as the determiner and decider with respect to what is wrong, The Ethical Autonomy theory sees this not as a matter of logico-conceptual necessity but rather as a consequence of divine benevolence. God can do no difficulty, not because this must be so thanks to the conceptual necessities of the divine essence, but rather thanks to divine benevolence—the fact that God is good. And so, the question of sovereign immunity in theological ethics opens the door to two very different perspectives on God and two radically different doctrines of theistic morality.

Notes 1. A post-monarchical theory of the state would, of course, put society at large (“Leviathan”) in place of the monarch contemplated here. This immediately leads to a form of ethical relativism. 2. On the historical issues, see Nicholas Round, The Greatest Man Uncrowned: A Study of the Fall of Don Alvarado de Luna (London: Támesis Books, 1986); esp. pp. 162–164.

CHAPTER 18

Perfectibility Problems

1   The Unrealizability of Perfection “Go and design a perfect car,” “Go and arrange a perfect vacation.” These are instructions no one can possibly fulfil. For cars and vacations, like other goods in general, are inherently complex and multidesideratal, since it is a key fact of axiology that every evaluation-admitting object combines a plurality of evaluative features and every good a plurality of desiderata. And this circumstance makes perfection unattainable. For it lies in the nature of things that desirable features are in general competitively interactive. A conflict or competition among desiderata is an unavoidable fact of life. They cannot all be enhanced at once since more of the one can only be realized at the expense of less of the other. Take a car—an automobile. Here the relevant parameters of merit clearly include such factors as speed, reliability, repair, infrequency, safety, operating economy, aesthetic appearance, road-handling ability. But in actual practice such features are interrelated. It is unavoidable that some will trade off against others. And it would be ridiculous to have a supersafe car with a maximum speed of two miles per hour or to have a car that is very inexpensive to operate but spends most of its time in a repair shop. And similarly throughout the range of the desirable we encounter inherent conflicts among the relevant desiderata. There is no avoiding the fact that we cannot concurrently maximize all of the parameters of merit of any object of desire. For what is at issue here is something very general and very fundamental. Alike in ordinary and in philosophical usage, perfection is a matter of © The Author(s) 2021 N. Rescher, Ethics Matters, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_18

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freedom from any and all limitations and deficiencies.1 On this basis, a perfect object of some inherently valuable sort would be one that realizes every mode of relevant merit to the highest possible degree. And this is simply infeasible. In sharpening the pencil point we render it more breakable; in enlarging the book’s small print we render it more cumbersome. Every concretely realizable good is imperfect, because, as the medieval schoolmen rightly said, imperfection (imperfectio) is coordinate with privation (privatio) and the competitive interaction of desiderata means that such a shortfall in some positive respect or other is unavoidable. This circumstance can also be regarded from another point of view. For the same result is reached when perfection is viewed in Aristotle’s manner that on something is perfect (teleios)2 when it achieves all of its positive potentialities. Taken overall, positive potentialities will also be mutually exclusive. In tightening the string of a bow or musical instrument we bring it nearer to the breaking point. And quite generally enhancing one positive potentiality can be achieved only at the cost of lessening the extent to which we can cultivate other potentialities in other directions. So in this respect too, it transpires that perfection is unachievable. The irony here is that the person who is intent on seeking perfection is in fact driven to immobilization. For as Voltaire’s dictum has it, “The best is the enemy of the good.” In refusing to accept something that is less than perfect one condemns oneself to having—nothing at all.

2   Trade-Offs and Opportunity Costs Whenever we deal with objects of value where several concurrent desiderata are competitively involved—and thus effectively always—we face a situation where synoptic across-the-board optimization is impossible in principle because more of the one value can only be achieved at the price of settling for less of the other. Both uniformity and size are merits of emeralds, but an increase of the one can be achieved only at the price of a decrease of the other. We want our discourse to be both pithy and adequate to the facts, but must inevitably sacrifice the one in order to foster the other. The person who wants to be both well-liked and truthfully honest will be forced to make sacrifices one way or the other. We want the library to be both conveniently usable and comprehensive, and yet each desideratum conflicts with the other. In pursuing objects of multidimensional value, the payment of what economists call opportunity costs becomes unavoidable. All of our efforts

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to obtain good objects or achieve valued objectives require us to make compromises. Throughout the domain of valued goods it transpires that some among the relevant value-constituting features can be enhanced only at the price of diminishing others. It thus lies in the nature of things that value realization is always a matter of balance, of trade-offs, of compromise. Different aspects of merit always compete in point of realization. A concurrent maximum in every dimension is simply unavailable in this or indeed any other realistically conceivable world. With inherently conflicting desiderata, across-the-­ board maximization is in principle impossible—in practice and generally in theory as well. All that one can ever reasonably ask for is an auspicious overall combination of values. Perfection—maximum realization of every value dimension all-at-once—is simply unrealizable. And of course it makes no sense to ask for the impossible.

3   The Burden of Choice and the Inevitability of Regret The unrealizability of overall perfection in the presence of competing desiderata has far-reaching consequences. It brings the inevitability of choice in its wake. Consider a simple example. We have a housing budget of a certain fixed size. Two desiderata are foremost in our mind: . Transport convenience to our workplace at the center of town 1 2. Spaciousness of the accommodation Now in investigating the matter we find that the following situation obtains (on average): Round-trip travel time/to and from the town center at our budget

Square footage of an accommodation rentable

0 1/2 hour 1 hour 2 hours

1000 1500 2000 3000

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At a work year of 200 days we now realize that we can obtain additional square footage at the cost of 5 feet for 1 hour of additional commuting time yearly. We have to decide: What price (in time) are we prepared to pay for added spaciousness? The commitment to any object of choice invariably involves such complex trade-offs among the conflicting desiderata involved. And this means that any choice is a matter of compromise—of a negotiation among those conflicting aspects of value. All choices are accordingly a matter of closing doors, of foregoing opportunities to augment some desiderata. Every choice is a narrowing of horizons, of foregoing possibilities which, in some respect, realize certain desiderata to a greater degree than we presently accept. In such circumstances we have a situation of the inevitability of regret. For every increase in one of the relevant assets involves some loss in point of another: every gain has its dark side through invoking some sort of loss. The deep and wide truth of John Gay’s couplet in the Beggar’s Opera: How happy could I be with either? Were t’other dear charmer away! The exclusionary nature of choice—to opt for more of our desideratum is ipso facto to opt for less of another. Of course the other side of the coin is also there. While in choosing we always sacrifice certain desiderata, we do not do so without compensation. For the sacrifices we make do—or when we choose wisely should—have a more-than-compensating return by way of benefit in respect of other desiderata. It is just that we cannot have it both ways. Man is Homo optans—Choosing Man, a creature that must make choices. And being a rational creature as well through our status as Homo sapiens means that those choices have to be made on the basis of rationally configured evaluations. Man is thus Homo aestimans, Evaluative Man, as well. Comparative evaluation is also an unavoidable requisite of the human condition. The burden of choice—and thereby of reason-guided evaluation—is one of the definitive features of the human condition.

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4   Finitude Not at Fault It should be stressed that the reason why absolute perfection is unachievable in the setting of complex goods has nothing to do with human finitude. The reason why I cannot construct a perfect house (one proximate both to my work and to the sea-shore) or build a perfect car (one that is compact for parking but roomy for passengers) has nothing to do with the limitation of my resources but lies in the inherent incompatibility of the diverse desiderata at issue. In the more familiar range of cases we merely have a scarcity of resources. That is we cannot spend the same dollar on each of two desired items or the same hour at two different congenial activities. In such cases we have different goods in view and cannot expend our limited resources upon them all. However, in the cases now at issue there is only one single good at stake but one that has distinct aspects of merit which are so interrelated that we cannot move several directions at once. The problem now at issue is not one of the scarcity of resources on our part but one of a limitation that roots deep in the very nature of things. The fact that a mere augmentation of resources will not mend matters means that there is a deep irony in the condition of “the man who has everything.” For his affluence simply increases the range of desiderata he can satisfy individually while leaving in place the unavailability of a conflict between those he can satisfy conjointly. He can afford to eat the greatest delicacies in unlimited quantity—but only at the expense of his health. He can afford to build his dream-house and to go on his dream vacation—but immediately confronts the need to compromise by sacrificing the enjoyment of one to realize the pleasures of the other. And the difficulty here is not the limited scope of our resources of time and money and power—not human finitude—but the inherent nature of things, in the natural conflict of coordinate desiderata, the fact that we cannot have our cake and eat it too, that our mechanisms can achieve greater versatility only at the cost of added complexity, and so on.

5   Not Maximality But Optimality Throughout our pursuit of goods we face the situation of a choice of alternative combinations of advantages. And since we cannot pervasively maximize we have to compromise: we have to decide what it is that, given our situation, is the most acceptable compromise for us. We continually

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confront the problem that in order to realize one desideratum to an acceptable extent we must assess how much are we prepared to pay in terms of the opportunity cost of a lessened realization of its competitors. The crux is to achieve a satisfactory balance among those competing desiderata: to realize a constellation or profile of desiderata which—taken together and in combination—yields an overall result that is on balance at least as good—and certainly no worse than any realizable alternative. The idea is that of a result that represents not that unrealizably ideal of “the perfect car” or “the perfect vacation,” but a car or a vacation which, while obviously not perfect, is at least unsurpassed by any of the available alternatives. It is important to realize that the term “optimum” bears two quite different senses. A strong optimum is an alternative that is better than any other. A weak optimum is an alternative that is not bettered by any other— that is “as good as any to be had.” Strong optima are by nature unique— there cannot be more than one of them. But weak optima are potentially plural and competitive. What the preceding deliberations show is that in the pursuit of desired objects we cannot concurrently maximize with respect to all the desiderata at issue and therefore we cannot in general hope to optimize in the strong sense of this term. There are always alternatives. And in consequence weak optimization is the best we can manage to do. Since categorical perfection is impracticable, compromises must be made throughout the sphere of our pursuit of the good. And the choices at issue here will invariably be such that we can enhance the realization of one desideratum only at the cost of accepting the diminished realization of another. The unattainability of perfection—the inherent impracticability of concurrently maximizing all of the modes of merit in the goods we seek— means that we are inevitably entrapped in circumstances of choice. And no choice can be made without paying the price of an opportunity cost, so that no alternative we opt for is altogether exempt from regret. This too is part of what makes for what Miguel de Unamuno called the “tragic sense of life.”3

Notes 1. Perfection as such is absolute and idealized. To be sure there is also a subsidiary sense of the term as merely meeting the needs of a particular occasion. (“Joan is the perfect wife for John,” “Tom is the perfect man for the

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post,” “A drill is the perfect instrument for the job.”) This is a different use of the term. 2. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Δ16, 1021b12-1022a2. 3. This chapter is a revised version of a paper entitled “Homo Optans: On the Human Condition and the Burden of Choice” printed in Idealistic Studies, vol. 29 (2009), pp. 149–153.



Coda

Issues of ethics and morality invariably turn on values and evaluations: they bear on the question of what sort of life—good or bad, worthy or unworthy—one is to make for oneself and what sort of person one proposes to be. For us as rational beings, the answer is (or should be) straightforward: one ought to try to make the best of the opportunities that fate has put at our disposal for finding a congenial niche amongst the existents in the world. And as rational beings, we do—or should—want to think clearly and cogently in seeking an understanding of these matters sufficient to function effectively in this regard. It is important to realize that— and why—this desideratum can be achieved to only a very limited extent. Yet, it is equally important to realize that there will be no movement in this direction without the collaborative congeniality that ethics seeks to foster.

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References

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Index1

A Adams, Henry, 165 Adams, John, 209 Addison, Joseph, 157 Allen, Frederick Lewis, 214n2 Aristotle, 37, 38, 57, 66, 67, 71n2, 144, 220, 238 Augustine, 97, 119n2 B Baier, Kurt, 77 Becket, Thomas, 234 Benn, S. I., 72n3 Berra, Yogi, 149 Birnenkopf, Ignaz, 114 Bismarck, Otto von, 107, 211 Bleisch, Barbara, 137 Boulding, Kenneth, 230n1 Bracciolini, Poggio, 101 Bryson, Bill, 204n1 Buridan, Jean, 92

C Calderon, Pedro de la Barca, 119n6 Carlos III, 99 Carlyle, Thomas, 207 Carnap, Rudolf, 39n8 Chardin, Teilard de, 149 Charles V, 36 Churchland, Paul, 38n1 Cicero, 103 Clay, Henry, 150 Coolidge, Calvin, 209, 214n2 Curzon, G. N., 28 D Dahl, Norman O., 71n2 Daley, Arthur, 120n11 Dante, 151 Darwall, Stephen L., 84n2

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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E Einstein, Albert, 198 Epstein, Richard A., 120n12 Euathlos, 233 G Gasset, Ortega y, 119n6 Gauguin, Paul, 114 Gauthier, David, 191n6 Gay, John, 240 Gert, Bernard, 72n7 Goclenius, 101 Gracian y Morales, Balthaser de, 98, 99, 119–120n6 H Hare, R. M., 45 Harrison, Benjamin, 209 Hegel, G. W. F., 114, 207, 208 Henry the Eighth, 28 Hoover, Herbert, 209 Hoover, J. Edgar, 210 Horowitz, Tamara, 120n11 Hume, David, 58–60, 72n4, 81, 219 Huygens, Christiaan, 10 J Jackson, Andrew, 209 Jacobs, W. W., 225 Jöhr, W. A., 96n1 Jonson, Ben, 149 Joynt, Carey B., 191n4 Juan II, 234 K Kant, Immanuel, 24, 53, 88, 107, 108, 112, 114–116, 118, 121n20, 176

Khayyam, Omar, 18 Kutcher, Ashton, 230n4 L La Rochefoucault, 98 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 36, 37, 39n9 Lincoln, Abraham, 209 Lorenz, E. N., 222, 230n4 Luna, Don Alvaro de, 234 M Machiavelli, Niccolo, 101, 208 Massey, G. J., 191n2 Maxwell, J. C., 193 McInnes, Neil, 119n4 Merton, Robert K., 193, 194 Mill, John Stuart, 53, 54 Moore, G. E., 46 Moore, Tomas, 149 Mortimore, G. W., 72n3 N Nagel, Thomas, 120n18 Napoleon, 42, 106 Nathanson, Stephen, 72n3 Newton, Isaac, 193 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 59 Nohl, Hermann, 96n1 Nussbaum, Martha C., 119n1 O Ovid, 152 P Pascal, Blaise, 98, 227 Pichler, Hans, 120n9 Plank, Max, 193

 INDEX 

Plato, 48, 75, 78, 81, 149, 226 Plautus, 106 Popper, K. R., 38n4 Poppi, Antonino, 120n8 Prescott, William H., 39n9 Protagoras, 233 Q Quevedo, Francisco de, 119n6 R Rawls, John, 72n12, 120n13 Reichenbach, Bruce, 225 Richards, Norvin, 120n15 Richelieu, Cardinal, 208 Rickey, Branch, 120n11 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 209, 212 Round, Nicholas, 236n2 Routley, Richard, 47 Routley, Valerie, 47 S Sartre, Jean-Paul, 64 Schick, Frederick, 72n10 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 98, 109 Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 36–38 Shakespeare, William, 37, 146, 149 Shaw, G. B., 149 Sidgwick, Henry, 61 Simon, Herbert A., 72n5, 116 Simonides, 152, 220 Smart, Amy, 230n4

Smurch, Jack, 211, 212 Spinoza, Benedict, 21 Steubing, Hans, 96n1 Stimson, Henry L., 209, 210 T Tennant, F. R., 230n6 Theseus, 17 Thurber, James, 211, 212, 214n5 U Unamuno, Miguel de, 119n6, 164, 242 V Velasquez, Diego, 146 Verne, Jules, 9 Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 238 W Washington, George, 119n5 Weber, Max, 72n3 Wells, H. G., 9, 25, 149 Wilhelm, Kaiser, 28 Williams, Bernard, 114, 120n18 Wohlstetter, Roberta, 210 X Xenophanes of Colophon, 66

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