This is really interesting! Just for clarity, I take you and Tucker both agree that 1) a movitivation/attitude being fitting doesn't answer the question of whether or not one morally ought to have it, since fitting motivations can sometimes be instrumentally bad, and 2) the motivations we morally ought to have are the ones that make the world go best (which seems undeniable for a consequentialist!).
So it seems the disagreement is on what to do with fittingness. I'm sympathetic to your point that talk of truth and falsity doesn't get to the heart of the criticism we want to make of someone with perverse motivations. But I'm not sure that fittingness does either. Fittingness alone doesn't carry heavy moral baggage--it'd be unfitting for me to prefer to watch Desperate Housewives over Game of Thrones, but that isn't a serious criticism of my moral character. We need moral stakes for a criticism to carry moral weight; when someone desires that others suffer that seems like a motivation that could really harm others and make the world worse.
Anyhoo, if we want to say that fittingness doesn't convey serious criticism on its own but does when there are moral stakes at play, I don't see why Tucker couldn't say the same of truth/falsity. Having false beliefs alone isn't a serious criticism, but it can be when those false beliefs have stakes.
At any rate, if it's the stakes at hand that are doing the work in our criticisms of others, I don't see what difference it makes whether we talk of a motivation being false or unfitting (and I agree they may be the same thing!).
I think "ought" is prima facie ambiguous when applied to judgment-sensitive attitudes like beliefs and desires (though as we'll see, I actually think there's something conceptually defective about your preferred usage!). It can either pick out:
* fitting / rationally warranted attitudes -- e.g. epistemically justified beliefs, and desires whose objects are indeed desirable, the latter being a kind of "moral ought". Now, just as consequentialists needn't feel the slightest pressure to deny epistemologists' claims about what people ought (or have reason) to believe, so we needn't deny the corresponding sorts of claims about what people ought (or have reason) to desire.
* (instrumentally) good/desirable attitudes, i.e. the ones we ought *to choose* if given the choice.
Because the latter concerns our reasons for action, rather than our reasons for the attitudes in question, I think it's actually misleading to say that we ought to desire [objective bads that it would be instrumentally valuable to desire]. We ought to [try to bring about such a desire], but that's not the same thing. The rationality of choosing a state does not entail the rationality of the state itself, as per Parfit's "rational irrationality".
As I explain in my Beyond Right & Wrong draft:
> I personally find it clearer to think of all reasons as reasons of fittingness. For example, an apparent "practical reason for belief" can be better understood as a higher-order fitting reason to *desire* to have that belief. After all, what is made rational by *the fact that believing p would benefit you* is not the epistemic process of believing *p*, but the practical process of wanting and pursuing *belief in p*. This practical consideration is no more a "reason for belief" than my gustatory reasons for wanting to eat chocolate are "reasons for chocolate". (Chocolate doesn't respond to reasons of this sort; my desires do. Likewise, reasons for desiring a belief are not reasons for beliefs. The mere fact that beliefs, as judgment-sensitive attitudes, are capable of responding to *their own* types of reasons shouldn't lead us to mistake practical reasons as ever being directed *to* them---even when a belief is the goal-state that a reason-for-desire directs us *to pursue*.)"
* * *
So, I think it's conceptually confused to hold that one "morally ought to *have* instrumentally good attitudes." Ought entails reasons, and reasons don't work like that. We morally ought to *choose* instrumentally good attitudes (and desire them, be glad to have them, and so on). But we morally ought to *want* the objects that it's morally fitting to want.
There's no conflict here, because we shouldn't necessarily want (or choose) to have fitting attitudes. It's perfectly coherent to hold that we ought to bring it about that we have desires whose objects are not the things we ought to desire. It's just another form of rational irrationality (or virtuous viciousness, or fitting unfittingness).
I think the underlying mistake of consequentialists who resist this line of thought is that they are implicitly assuming something like:
*(Oughts are Practical Endorsements):* If S sincerely believes that one ought to believe that p, then S whole-heartedly endorses the state of believing that p, and would discourage one from taking a magical pill that induces the opposite belief.
But this principle is silly and nobody ought to believe it. Once you explicitly reject it, you can more easily appreciate how we can say that you ought to desire [good things] even though we don't *practically endorse or recommend choosing* that desire (if it turns out to be instrumentally bad).
Okay, it's helpful to distinguish between the different oughts that are at play. I wonder if there's anything to be said for some oughts mattering more than others. I'm not sure quite how to cash out this thought, but I'm inclined to think that the sort of moral ought that guides choices is authoritative, and has a kind of must-be-done-ness built into it that (say) the epistemic ought doesn't.
One thing we could say is that the we as moral agents are concerned with what choices to make, and so the ought that ranges over choices is action-guiding in a way that oughts ranging over beliefs or attitudes won't be. But I think there's more going on; the criticisms we make in light of someone acting wrongly seem much more serious than criticisms of someone's irrational beliefs or unfitting attitudes.
I remember us talking about having different conceptions of this 'authority' idea, so this may just be a point of disagreement. But I do wonder if, on the fittingness-first approach, there's any way to say that some oughts matter more than others (or if that's just something you want to deny). Thanks for the response!
Yes, I think the normative cluster associated with value and choiceworthiness has much greater normative significance than, say, irrational beliefs. It's more important -- which is to say that we should *care more* about it. Or, as I set out in an old post: (https://www.philosophyetc.net/2014/05/fittingness-and-normativity.html )
> The difference in normative "quality" comes not from the raw status of "being a fittingness relation", but rather from the significance of the attitudes which are thereby warranted. Warranting belief is perhaps a fairly weak kind of normative significance, whereas warranting intense moral outrage is another matter altogether. One misses these important variations in normative significance if all one considers is the relation of warrant, glossing over the crucial question of what response is thereby being warranted.
I think the problem that I have with fittingness is that I don’t think there is something to fit here. I think something is good for someone because it is desired by them, while fittingness seems to need some source of goodness for someone that is prior to their desires. One could say that it is fitting for others to desire things because they are desired by the one that it affects, but I suspect this will run into problems when there are deep conflicts of interest.
In any case, I suspect it’s better to make ones behaviors track all desires, rather than making them only track one’s own desires and make one’s desires track the desires of others.
How could one's behavior track all desires without one's motivations doing the same? What is motivating the behavior in question?
I think it's fitting to desire that people's lives go well. If the latter is a matter of desire satisfaction, then I'd say that it's fitting to desire that people's desires (in general) are satisfied. That's why helping people to achieve their (harmless) goals is virtuous, and gratuitously obstructing them is vicious.
This would risk vacuity if everyone had *only* this fitting desire, but human nature furnishes us with plenty of other desires whether they're warranted or not. (I take it that most desires, on this account, are not "unwarranted" in the sense of being normatively criticizable, but just non-warranted: we might say the normative facts don't commit one either way regarding the question of what first-order desires to have.)
This is really interesting! Just for clarity, I take you and Tucker both agree that 1) a movitivation/attitude being fitting doesn't answer the question of whether or not one morally ought to have it, since fitting motivations can sometimes be instrumentally bad, and 2) the motivations we morally ought to have are the ones that make the world go best (which seems undeniable for a consequentialist!).
So it seems the disagreement is on what to do with fittingness. I'm sympathetic to your point that talk of truth and falsity doesn't get to the heart of the criticism we want to make of someone with perverse motivations. But I'm not sure that fittingness does either. Fittingness alone doesn't carry heavy moral baggage--it'd be unfitting for me to prefer to watch Desperate Housewives over Game of Thrones, but that isn't a serious criticism of my moral character. We need moral stakes for a criticism to carry moral weight; when someone desires that others suffer that seems like a motivation that could really harm others and make the world worse.
Anyhoo, if we want to say that fittingness doesn't convey serious criticism on its own but does when there are moral stakes at play, I don't see why Tucker couldn't say the same of truth/falsity. Having false beliefs alone isn't a serious criticism, but it can be when those false beliefs have stakes.
At any rate, if it's the stakes at hand that are doing the work in our criticisms of others, I don't see what difference it makes whether we talk of a motivation being false or unfitting (and I agree they may be the same thing!).
I think "ought" is prima facie ambiguous when applied to judgment-sensitive attitudes like beliefs and desires (though as we'll see, I actually think there's something conceptually defective about your preferred usage!). It can either pick out:
* fitting / rationally warranted attitudes -- e.g. epistemically justified beliefs, and desires whose objects are indeed desirable, the latter being a kind of "moral ought". Now, just as consequentialists needn't feel the slightest pressure to deny epistemologists' claims about what people ought (or have reason) to believe, so we needn't deny the corresponding sorts of claims about what people ought (or have reason) to desire.
* (instrumentally) good/desirable attitudes, i.e. the ones we ought *to choose* if given the choice.
Because the latter concerns our reasons for action, rather than our reasons for the attitudes in question, I think it's actually misleading to say that we ought to desire [objective bads that it would be instrumentally valuable to desire]. We ought to [try to bring about such a desire], but that's not the same thing. The rationality of choosing a state does not entail the rationality of the state itself, as per Parfit's "rational irrationality".
As I explain in my Beyond Right & Wrong draft:
> I personally find it clearer to think of all reasons as reasons of fittingness. For example, an apparent "practical reason for belief" can be better understood as a higher-order fitting reason to *desire* to have that belief. After all, what is made rational by *the fact that believing p would benefit you* is not the epistemic process of believing *p*, but the practical process of wanting and pursuing *belief in p*. This practical consideration is no more a "reason for belief" than my gustatory reasons for wanting to eat chocolate are "reasons for chocolate". (Chocolate doesn't respond to reasons of this sort; my desires do. Likewise, reasons for desiring a belief are not reasons for beliefs. The mere fact that beliefs, as judgment-sensitive attitudes, are capable of responding to *their own* types of reasons shouldn't lead us to mistake practical reasons as ever being directed *to* them---even when a belief is the goal-state that a reason-for-desire directs us *to pursue*.)"
* * *
So, I think it's conceptually confused to hold that one "morally ought to *have* instrumentally good attitudes." Ought entails reasons, and reasons don't work like that. We morally ought to *choose* instrumentally good attitudes (and desire them, be glad to have them, and so on). But we morally ought to *want* the objects that it's morally fitting to want.
There's no conflict here, because we shouldn't necessarily want (or choose) to have fitting attitudes. It's perfectly coherent to hold that we ought to bring it about that we have desires whose objects are not the things we ought to desire. It's just another form of rational irrationality (or virtuous viciousness, or fitting unfittingness).
I think the underlying mistake of consequentialists who resist this line of thought is that they are implicitly assuming something like:
*(Oughts are Practical Endorsements):* If S sincerely believes that one ought to believe that p, then S whole-heartedly endorses the state of believing that p, and would discourage one from taking a magical pill that induces the opposite belief.
But this principle is silly and nobody ought to believe it. Once you explicitly reject it, you can more easily appreciate how we can say that you ought to desire [good things] even though we don't *practically endorse or recommend choosing* that desire (if it turns out to be instrumentally bad).
Okay, it's helpful to distinguish between the different oughts that are at play. I wonder if there's anything to be said for some oughts mattering more than others. I'm not sure quite how to cash out this thought, but I'm inclined to think that the sort of moral ought that guides choices is authoritative, and has a kind of must-be-done-ness built into it that (say) the epistemic ought doesn't.
One thing we could say is that the we as moral agents are concerned with what choices to make, and so the ought that ranges over choices is action-guiding in a way that oughts ranging over beliefs or attitudes won't be. But I think there's more going on; the criticisms we make in light of someone acting wrongly seem much more serious than criticisms of someone's irrational beliefs or unfitting attitudes.
I remember us talking about having different conceptions of this 'authority' idea, so this may just be a point of disagreement. But I do wonder if, on the fittingness-first approach, there's any way to say that some oughts matter more than others (or if that's just something you want to deny). Thanks for the response!
Yes, I think the normative cluster associated with value and choiceworthiness has much greater normative significance than, say, irrational beliefs. It's more important -- which is to say that we should *care more* about it. Or, as I set out in an old post: (https://www.philosophyetc.net/2014/05/fittingness-and-normativity.html )
> The difference in normative "quality" comes not from the raw status of "being a fittingness relation", but rather from the significance of the attitudes which are thereby warranted. Warranting belief is perhaps a fairly weak kind of normative significance, whereas warranting intense moral outrage is another matter altogether. One misses these important variations in normative significance if all one considers is the relation of warrant, glossing over the crucial question of what response is thereby being warranted.
I think the problem that I have with fittingness is that I don’t think there is something to fit here. I think something is good for someone because it is desired by them, while fittingness seems to need some source of goodness for someone that is prior to their desires. One could say that it is fitting for others to desire things because they are desired by the one that it affects, but I suspect this will run into problems when there are deep conflicts of interest.
In any case, I suspect it’s better to make ones behaviors track all desires, rather than making them only track one’s own desires and make one’s desires track the desires of others.
How could one's behavior track all desires without one's motivations doing the same? What is motivating the behavior in question?
I think it's fitting to desire that people's lives go well. If the latter is a matter of desire satisfaction, then I'd say that it's fitting to desire that people's desires (in general) are satisfied. That's why helping people to achieve their (harmless) goals is virtuous, and gratuitously obstructing them is vicious.
This would risk vacuity if everyone had *only* this fitting desire, but human nature furnishes us with plenty of other desires whether they're warranted or not. (I take it that most desires, on this account, are not "unwarranted" in the sense of being normatively criticizable, but just non-warranted: we might say the normative facts don't commit one either way regarding the question of what first-order desires to have.)