Share this comment
Why do such critics go wrong when they make the stronger claim? In particular, why are you so quick to rule out the claim "there are limits in principle to systematic moral theorising"? That claim seems to fall out quite naturally of arguments like Cowen's, which don't necessarily entail abandoning all attempts at constructing or evaluat…
Why do such critics go wrong when they make the stronger claim? In particular, why are you so quick to rule out the claim "there are limits in principle to systematic moral theorising"? That claim seems to fall out quite naturally of arguments like Cowen's, which don't necessarily entail abandoning all attempts at constructing or evaluating systematic theories but only insist on an awareness of the context and limits of that enterprise. Meanwhile, the claim "we should be careful about systematic moral theorising, because it is a difficult enterprise", while it may be true, is just part of a different discourse and irrelevant to arguments like Cowen's.
More precisely, arguments like Cowen's are based on premises of the following form: provably, all attempts at systematic moral theorising in domain X run into absurdities or paradoxes or contradictions. This is true of both population axiology and decision theory. This premise is completely irrelevant to the claim "we should be more careful about our moral reasoning in domain X": we have *proven* that these paradoxes are not due to sloppy reasoning, that they are in some sense inevitable; maybe being careful will prevent us from making additional mistakes, but that is irrelevant here. However, Cowen's premise could be interpreted as good evidence for the claim 'there are limits to moral reasoning in domain X': the paradoxes are taken to illustrate more-or-less exactly where the limits lie. If you believe that one of the paradoxes is not so paradoxical, or one of the absurdities not so absurd, you can reasonable reject this argument; but it's at least not obviously wrongheaded.
Indeed, arguments of the form 'paradoxes are inevitable when we apply X widely; therefore, there must be limits on the application of X' are in general perfectly good arguments, if not strictly deductively valid. Consider the argument that there are limits to the principle of set-theoretic comprehension, because paradoxes are inevitable when it is applied too widely - a near-universally accepted inference in the philosophy of mathematics. By contrast, arguments of the form 'paradoxes are inevitable when we apply X widely; therefore, we should be apply X widely but be careful when we do so, lest we become too confident in one view over another' seems obviously invalid - the premise just irrelevant to the conclusion.
I think your argument here rests on conflating very different senses of "paradox". The unrestricted set-theoretic paradoxes involve showing that the (unrestricted) principle straightforwardly entails contradictions, and so cannot be true. The "paradoxes" of population ethics instead show that "common sense" moral verdicts are inconsistent, and so we must bite some bullet or other. In such a context, I think the putative "absurdity" of rejecting a prima facie intuitive verdict is undermined. We can try to judge which verdict is least bad, and there's no great cost to accepting one counter-intuitive verdict in order to avoid others -- or in order to *enable* us to make more positively intuitive, plausible claims.
In fact, I'd say there are three major reasons to reject your analogy here:
(1) It's conceivable (broadly speaking) that one might actually be faced with the choices described in puzzle cases, so a complete theory should give an answer as to what the correct choice to make in such a scenario would be. By contrast, you could never find yourself in a town where the barber shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves. Logical paradoxes limit the space of possibilities. Moral ones plainly don't; instead, they simply make it challenging to *know what to say* about the possibilities in question.
To say "there are limits to systematic theorizing" doesn't answer what one should do if one finds oneself in the actual situation described in a puzzle case. Rather, it is simply to give up. I don't see any reason to do that.
(2) Silence in puzzle cases (due to restricting the domain of one's moral verdicts) doesn't avoid absurdity. As mentioned in the OP, it's not just that we want to *refrain* from asserting that Z is better than A; it's that we *positively* want to say that A is better than Z. Silence can't achieve that.
(3) As indicated above, I don't think biting the bullet on one of these cases is all that big a cost, in context. There's a big difference between *prima facie counterintuitive* and *outright absurd*, and I think it takes systematic theorizing to determine which category one falls into. Being supported by overwhelmingly plausible principles is precisely how we can show that a prime facie counterintuitive result need not be counterintuitive all things considered, or at the end of reflective equilibrium. In other cases, we might take the putative counterexample to illuminate what is now an obvious flaw or oversight in a principle that turned out to only be prima facie plausible. So it all depends on the details. (And that's just as it should be.)
[this comment was based on a misreading of Richard's comment, I'm not sure I hold to this.]
I'll grant you that the analogy to unrestricted comprehension was perhaps specifically poor; but there are related set-theoretic paradoxes that I could have used instead, and the analogy stands. Perhaps think about the rejection of nonwellfoundedness. If we think of a paradox as a collection of individually intuitive premises that jointly entail a contradiction, then the paradoxes of population ethics and the paradoxes of set theory are on a par: Russell's paradox is special in requiring only one (non-definitional) premise to generate a contradiction, but that isn't true of all set-theoretical paradoxes. The argument schema I proposed still stands, as one that is often quite good albeit definitely not deductively valid. Going point-by-point:
>To say "there are limits to systematic theorizing" doesn't answer what one should do if one finds oneself in the actual situation described in a puzzle case. Rather, it is simply to give up. I don't see any reason to do that.
This seems completely wrong to me. Systematic theorising (in your sense, which I think means 'trying to figure out a complete, globally consistent ranking across decisions') is indeed one way in which philosophy can help us make decisions in puzzle cases. But it's hardly the only one. Virtue ethics here is the obvious example: rather than trying to identify some algorithmic rule that you apply in puzzle cases, philosophy tells you how to cultivate dispositions that you will then rely on to make your decisions. (To be clear, I'm not a virtue ethicist and I think you can reasonably say that this is an unhelpful way to approach ethics - it's just an example.) Approaches that emphasise the need for context-specific judgment - including particularism, but also certain strains of Kantian thinking that draw from Theory and Practice and the Third Critique - also fit in here. To be sure, if you take any of these routes, you can no longer answer the question 'what is the content of the global better-than relation on decisions?'. But I don't think that's an objection, it's just a redescription of the position 'there are limits to systematic theorising'. I'm 'giving up' on the project of systematic theorising, but I'm not 'giving up' on thinking (as you imply), or even on the project of trying to help people make tricky ethical decisions.
>Silence in puzzle cases (due to restricting the domain of one's moral verdicts) doesn't avoid absurdity. As mentioned in the OP, it's not just that we want to *refrain* from asserting that Z is better than A; it's that we *positively* want to say that A is better than Z. Silence can't achieve that.
I agree with this, but I don't see the relevance. As mentioned in another comment of mine, a sufficiently weak deontic logic could get around this. Or if you don't want to go down that route, you can assert 'A is better than Z' and 'utopia is better than a barren rock' but then remain silent about the general principles that are required to bridge the gap between 'utopia is better than a barren rock' and 'A is not better than Z'. (Yes, this is a 'gappy' moral view, so it's not a systematic moral theory - but again, my entire position is that this is not necessarily a bad thing, so it's question-begging to call this 'giving up' or 'not thinking'.) Or you can invoke a certain kind of value pluralism: these various principles all represent real values, but they are incommensurable and can conflict. General, all-purpose silence about every ethical question is indeed absurd; reasonable silence on certain questions based on informed judgments about the limits of systematic theorising need not be.
>There's a big difference between *prima facie counterintuitive* and *outright absurd*, and I think it takes systematic theorizing to determine which category one falls into.
Certainly, *one* of the things that can help us distinguish those two categories is systematic theorising. But it's not clear that it is the *only* way to do that. David Lewis makes an interesting point somewhere writing about Graham Priest: while Priest may have pushed those who believe in LNC towards greater clarity in their systematic theorising, ultimately there was no systematic way to decide 'yay' or 'nay' for LNC. Yet Lewis (and I!) still regard ~LNC as outright absurd, not just prima facie counterintuitive; and I think we're justified in that. When it comes to population ethics, I think the same is true of the Absurd Conclusion (for example).
--------------------------------------------------------
Anyway, the analogy with set theory was not one on which my argument turned. My point was just that insisting on the limits of systematic theorising is a *reasonable position* here (it happens to also be my position, but I wasn't directly defending it), and that it is invalid to argue as you did:
> such critics go wrong when they make the stronger claim that there's something inherently bad or misguided about trying to identify the best systematic theory. It's not that there are strict limits in principle to moral reasoning, but just that it gets really *difficult*, so we shouldn't have much confidence in our verdicts when reasonable theories diverge.
This is just a non-sequitur; the critics' stronger claim really is a defensible response to the philosophical difficulties (although certainly not one anyone should be 100% confident in), one that is not defused either by your post or by your invocation of the difficulties of moral philosophy.
What you quote there isn't an *argument*, but just a presentation of my view. I'm just explaining two things I think, not suggesting that one logically follows from the other!
Ah, then I misread - my apologies!
No worries, I appreciate your comments -- lots of good food for thought! :-)