With the twin caveats that I am not an academic philosopher and of course I don't know how this will intersect with your own vision of what you want this book to do, my attention was caught by your initial promotion of telic arguments at the beginning, and your claim at the end that "If, as I’ve argued throughout the book, deontic verdicts are less central to ethics than telic ones, it stands to reason that intuitions about deontic verdicts should play less of a role in reflective equilibrium than intuitions about telic verdicts. When we focus more on the latter, consequentialism becomes almost irresistible."
Because your promotion of a telic view of ethics is a new deeper standard, it seems to me that there is a risk that it could merge somewhat with your own more specific ethics in unnecessary ways. There is a risk that your "telic view" might have been phrased in such a way as to sneak a link to consequentialism in by the back door.
I can easily imagine people who agree that ethics should focus on the question "What matters?" but who would not find as a result that consequentialism becomes irresistible. The first and most obvious example that comes to mind is that of Christian-adjacent theism. Consider this rough paraphrase of Mark 12:30-31. "Firstly, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength. Secondly, love your neighbour as yourself." Many Christians would take this as an articulation from Jesus about the question "What matters?" The answer is that God matters firstly, and that other human beings matter secondly.
For the most part, Christians who say this do not mean that God "matters" in a consequentialist fashion. It is not that we should care about God in order that we may pay more attention to the effect that our actions will have upon the state of God! It is simply that God is worth caring about, regardless of whether we can actually have any effect on God.
If you think of "X matters" as meaning "we should care about the consequences of our actions in so far as they affect X," then a telic view would indeed lead to consequentialism! But this is not the only kind of "mattering" that, uh, matters to people.
I like the idea of your telic view very much. I think it contains insights that are worthwhile, regardless of whether they lead to consequentialism. I will leave it to you to decide whether the potential objection that I have raised has any bearing on what you are actually trying to do, here. Best wishes for your book!
I definitely don't think the telic approach *by itself* entails consequentialism (I'm at pains in Part I to argue that it's compatible with the full range of moral theories). It's more that it enables the further arguments developed in the later parts of the book, which aim to show that consequentialism coheres much better with important moral intuitions than do rival views.
Non-supernaturalist Buddhist here. What you seem to be describing here, I think I'd call a non-experientialist consequentialism. Amount of life lived in line with the Maker's Word is intrinsically valuable, do I get you right?
This looks fascinating - thanks Richard. One amateur suggestion - something explicit on the "who matters?" question? All too often that critical question of moral patiency scope tends to get neglected. That can lead readers to agree with a particular moral system while brutally (and often unthinkingly) excluding most valid moral patients (human and non-human alike) from consideration under that system. The classical menu of moral scope choices include anthropocentrism, sentiocentrism (my favourite given the Sentientism worldview), biocentrism and ecocentrism. Of course, sadly, many humans apply something much more messy and arbitrary which includes a few lucky non-human sentients while excluding very many human sentients.
All of this sounds great! It reminds me of Kantian Ethics by Allen Wood. In that book, he argues against the mainstream way to do ethics and defends a different aproach: philosophers like Kant and Mill don´t search universal principles that must be applied in concrete cases to find what is right and wrong. Instead, Kant and Mill understand ethics as a activity focus in what matters. In the case of Kant is Humanity. In the case of Mill, happiness.
I’d love to give it a read and provide commentary. My former adviser (Ish Haji) wrote extensively on the importance of the deontic category. Looks great! Jcaouett@providence.edu
The premise that ‘general welfare matters immensely’ is at best trivial (tautology), since “welfare” implies “good/desirable/preferable/valuable/worth-pursuing”, and at worst is begging the question, insofar as some kind of personal judgment of what constitutes “welfare” is smuggled into the moral (social) equation. A non-trivial task would be to prove that a particular idea of welfare is true/objective, contra any other conceptions of value. It does not suffice to posit that ‘everyone values something’ but rather what everybody ought to value THAT something, and then show what follows a priori from this premise in regard to our intentions. There can be no meaningful calculus of risks vs benefits or costs vs gains without first objectively grounding the value-system in which the calculus is performed, and thus overriding any subjective disagreements about values.
Moreover, for any moral/ethical principle to be motivating it MUST appeal, above all else, to self-interest
This all looks very interesting! I'm curious about this: "Deontic fictionalism, which adopts a rule-consequentialist criterion of rightness but denies it fundamental normative significance."
Is the criterion of rightness not fundamentally normatively significant because rightness isn't fundamentally normatively significant (because other things like fittingness and value are equally or more normatively significant)? Or does "normatively significant" here mean "important for decision making"? Or does that statement about deontic fictionalism mean something else?
That's about adopting a conception of rightness that fails to track normative reasons. (We still have an act consequentialist account of what we ought, in the reason-implying sense, to do; but then we use "right" in a way that tracks rule consequentialist verdicts -- or what an agent following a good decision procedure is likely to do -- even though rule consequentialism doesn't ground real moral reasons or indicate the action that is objectively morally preferable.)
The sentence “the agent-neutral value of others cannot reasonably be denied,” gave me some trouble. After reflection, I take it to mean that the value of others cannot reasonably be denied, if assessed from an agent neutral point of view. If this is not correct, the sentence could be rewritten more clearly. Or maybe I am just having a weird moment, and should have understood immediately.
I think he means something like: although maybe you should give extra weight to, say, your mom, one cannot deny that you should still have some weight on the interests of just random people that you have no connection to.
What about deontological systems that are directly anti-beneficence (e.g. death cults, many branches of Christianity that believe that life on Earth is merely a distraction, and so on)?
With the twin caveats that I am not an academic philosopher and of course I don't know how this will intersect with your own vision of what you want this book to do, my attention was caught by your initial promotion of telic arguments at the beginning, and your claim at the end that "If, as I’ve argued throughout the book, deontic verdicts are less central to ethics than telic ones, it stands to reason that intuitions about deontic verdicts should play less of a role in reflective equilibrium than intuitions about telic verdicts. When we focus more on the latter, consequentialism becomes almost irresistible."
Because your promotion of a telic view of ethics is a new deeper standard, it seems to me that there is a risk that it could merge somewhat with your own more specific ethics in unnecessary ways. There is a risk that your "telic view" might have been phrased in such a way as to sneak a link to consequentialism in by the back door.
I can easily imagine people who agree that ethics should focus on the question "What matters?" but who would not find as a result that consequentialism becomes irresistible. The first and most obvious example that comes to mind is that of Christian-adjacent theism. Consider this rough paraphrase of Mark 12:30-31. "Firstly, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength. Secondly, love your neighbour as yourself." Many Christians would take this as an articulation from Jesus about the question "What matters?" The answer is that God matters firstly, and that other human beings matter secondly.
For the most part, Christians who say this do not mean that God "matters" in a consequentialist fashion. It is not that we should care about God in order that we may pay more attention to the effect that our actions will have upon the state of God! It is simply that God is worth caring about, regardless of whether we can actually have any effect on God.
If you think of "X matters" as meaning "we should care about the consequences of our actions in so far as they affect X," then a telic view would indeed lead to consequentialism! But this is not the only kind of "mattering" that, uh, matters to people.
I like the idea of your telic view very much. I think it contains insights that are worthwhile, regardless of whether they lead to consequentialism. I will leave it to you to decide whether the potential objection that I have raised has any bearing on what you are actually trying to do, here. Best wishes for your book!
I definitely don't think the telic approach *by itself* entails consequentialism (I'm at pains in Part I to argue that it's compatible with the full range of moral theories). It's more that it enables the further arguments developed in the later parts of the book, which aim to show that consequentialism coheres much better with important moral intuitions than do rival views.
Non-supernaturalist Buddhist here. What you seem to be describing here, I think I'd call a non-experientialist consequentialism. Amount of life lived in line with the Maker's Word is intrinsically valuable, do I get you right?
I'd suggest trying very hard to get feedback from those who disagree. Those people are not normally reading your blog.
I am :)
This looks fascinating - thanks Richard. One amateur suggestion - something explicit on the "who matters?" question? All too often that critical question of moral patiency scope tends to get neglected. That can lead readers to agree with a particular moral system while brutally (and often unthinkingly) excluding most valid moral patients (human and non-human alike) from consideration under that system. The classical menu of moral scope choices include anthropocentrism, sentiocentrism (my favourite given the Sentientism worldview), biocentrism and ecocentrism. Of course, sadly, many humans apply something much more messy and arbitrary which includes a few lucky non-human sentients while excluding very many human sentients.
All of this sounds great! It reminds me of Kantian Ethics by Allen Wood. In that book, he argues against the mainstream way to do ethics and defends a different aproach: philosophers like Kant and Mill don´t search universal principles that must be applied in concrete cases to find what is right and wrong. Instead, Kant and Mill understand ethics as a activity focus in what matters. In the case of Kant is Humanity. In the case of Mill, happiness.
I’d love to give it a read and provide commentary. My former adviser (Ish Haji) wrote extensively on the importance of the deontic category. Looks great! Jcaouett@providence.edu
The premise that ‘general welfare matters immensely’ is at best trivial (tautology), since “welfare” implies “good/desirable/preferable/valuable/worth-pursuing”, and at worst is begging the question, insofar as some kind of personal judgment of what constitutes “welfare” is smuggled into the moral (social) equation. A non-trivial task would be to prove that a particular idea of welfare is true/objective, contra any other conceptions of value. It does not suffice to posit that ‘everyone values something’ but rather what everybody ought to value THAT something, and then show what follows a priori from this premise in regard to our intentions. There can be no meaningful calculus of risks vs benefits or costs vs gains without first objectively grounding the value-system in which the calculus is performed, and thus overriding any subjective disagreements about values.
Moreover, for any moral/ethical principle to be motivating it MUST appeal, above all else, to self-interest
I'm very interested in this. Much of this stuff seems aligned with my practical life to an extent.
Can you shoot me an early chapter to see if I'm up to the standard of reading well enough to give useful critique? I'm pretty sure I am.
Are you familiar with Aaron Rabinowitz’s work?
No, is there a particular article you'd recommend as relevant to my project?
This all looks very interesting! I'm curious about this: "Deontic fictionalism, which adopts a rule-consequentialist criterion of rightness but denies it fundamental normative significance."
Is the criterion of rightness not fundamentally normatively significant because rightness isn't fundamentally normatively significant (because other things like fittingness and value are equally or more normatively significant)? Or does "normatively significant" here mean "important for decision making"? Or does that statement about deontic fictionalism mean something else?
That's about adopting a conception of rightness that fails to track normative reasons. (We still have an act consequentialist account of what we ought, in the reason-implying sense, to do; but then we use "right" in a way that tracks rule consequentialist verdicts -- or what an agent following a good decision procedure is likely to do -- even though rule consequentialism doesn't ground real moral reasons or indicate the action that is objectively morally preferable.)
The sentence “the agent-neutral value of others cannot reasonably be denied,” gave me some trouble. After reflection, I take it to mean that the value of others cannot reasonably be denied, if assessed from an agent neutral point of view. If this is not correct, the sentence could be rewritten more clearly. Or maybe I am just having a weird moment, and should have understood immediately.
I think he means something like: although maybe you should give extra weight to, say, your mom, one cannot deny that you should still have some weight on the interests of just random people that you have no connection to.
What about deontological systems that are directly anti-beneficence (e.g. death cults, many branches of Christianity that believe that life on Earth is merely a distraction, and so on)?