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Patricia S. Greenspan: Asymmetrical Practical Reasons (pp. 1-3)

Explicator's note: I found this article hard to get into. Just check out the first paragraph! The sentences are very convoluted, and for no good end that I can see. Of course, this makes a clear explication all the more necessary. I'm falling back on a paragraph by paragraph note taking. We'll see where that ends up. (I'll point out that I think this is a draft, so it should not be taken as completed work, and criticism should be interpreted in that light.)

¶ 1. The conventional (homogeneous) view: reasons for or against (positive and negative reasons) exhibit the same range of normative force. That is, merely that a reason is for an action (let's say) or against it does not give you any sense of how compelling a reason it is. Greenspan rejects this view for the view that only negative reasons can be compelling. So there is an asymmetry between negative and positive reasons.

¶ 2. Negative reasons count against the option, not just for the omission of the option. The latter is a positive reason for the not-doing. The former is a criticism of the option (or of taking the option). Thus far, I am with the standard view.

¶ 3-6. Here, she gives an example that illustrates one aspect of the asymmetry, to wit, having a positive reason for an alternative (in the example, "wear the green jacket") does not generate any negative reason, e.g., against the other alternatives (e.g., "wear the blue jacket"). Now I'm a bit worried, since in the prior paragraph, the generated positive reason was with regard to the very same option. That is, having a reason against the option is a reason to not take that option. In this paragraph the options shift. Now, having written that, I think I see the alignment: having a reason for choosing the green jacket does not generate a reason against not wearing the green jacket (in the example, since not wearing a jacket isn't an option, a reason against wearing the green would have to be a reason for wearing another jacket, since that is what's required to not wear the green). The nutshell is that positive reasons "unless they really conceal or are taken to imply serious negative reasons [emph. added] seem to allow for rational alternatives". Positive reasons support recommendations, whereas negative reasons support prohibitions.

That qualifier is pretty significant. What's the difference between concealing or being taken to imply serious negative reasons and negative reasons generating a positive reason for not the option? Aren't there negative reasons that are as weak as some of these positive reasons? I wore the blue coat yesterday and that's generally a reason against wearing it again today, just, for me, not a very strong one. Ceteris paribus, it's a reason not to wear the blue. In the light of almost any other reason, it's negligible. Similarly, my mild positive reason for wearing the green is, ceteris paribus, a reason against wearing the blue. I think the confusing thing is that the positive reason is so weak, that mere whim can override it. (Whimsy is a valid fashion/style motivation, after all.) And it does open one up to critcism, however mild, or, at least, to question. Letting whim rule in these mild cases doesn't impugn one's general rationality (indeed, one might have second order reasons for not being so rigid all the time), but, in the light of other trends, they could be indicators of problems.

¶ 7-8. Greenspan is trying to weaken the connection between reasons per se and bindingness or compulsion. That is, she argues against "the view that reasons compel". This is, of course, not to say that reasons can't be overruled. Reasons have strengths and can be weighed. But, on this view, reasons always have force, but rational action is determine by the balance of forces. I don't know why this analogy doesn't suggest that there might be zero or negligible force reasons, or that our will might itself have force, but ok. Greenspan is with "some recent [but uncited] authors" in thinking that there are optional reasons, that is, reasons that allow us options. Now, of course, as Greenspan points out, you can get optionality in a balance of force model, that is, the reasons for each option is roughly equal, so none determines. Greenspan specifically claims that pure positive reasons are merely optional.

¶ 9-11. She gives a paradigm example:

To illustrate the kind of case I have in mind: I recall an occasion when a University administrator, trying to offer positive motivation for faculty to serve on committees, appealed to the possibility of attaining power in the University. Now, I would grant that this is a reason to serve — and a reason for me, a reason I “have”, at any rate once it is brought to my attention — though I think I would still be within my rights, rationally speaking (as well as otherwise), to turn it down. Nor do I have to refer to the various academic and other goals I have, as competing reasons that serving on a committee might tend to undermine. We might suppose that I have the extra time but feel no need to fi ll it with anything. Even considered just in itself, apart from any competing reasons, power of the sort in question is something I could see as a potential benefit and in that sense take as a reason but not as a compelling reason.

The last sentence is crucial: it is a potential benefit. It's being a potential benefit is sufficient to make it a reason, but not a compelling reason. There is a bit of ambiguity in the term "compelling reason" between a reason with any normative force, and one with overriding normative force. We agree that attaining power in the University in this situation is not overriding. But I'm not sure that it has no pull, whatsoever. For example, perhaps I don't want power. It may not interest me. I may have no projects that require it. Since I only have finite resources, any action has to be weighed as to whether it'll be worth the bother and worth the risk of cutting off future options, including the option to be a bit idle.

Greenspan acknowledges that the positive reason might act in coordination with associated negative reasons, e.g., if failing to take power would negatively affect other goals or projects. But wouldn't other positive goals do that? E.g., "free food!", "free travel", or "lots of fun meetings with cool beureaucrats" might make it seem like the benefits were worth making a decision. Each additional positive reason increases the pull. Greenspan might retort that each of these points up a negative reasons, lack of free food, travel, or fun meetings, so these are really negative reasons in disguise. But this line seems vacuous, if I would suffer from the lack of free food, then I see a clear negative reason. But if the lack of these other things is a negative reason why isn't the lack of power a similar reason? I can't have everything and I can't practically have everything I could in some sense have. And, of course, the pursuit of everything I could have, even could easily have, might have costs. (The paradox of hedonism rears up.)

¶ 12. Here she responds to the idea that lack of power is a reason against declining committee service. Her reply is that the negative formulation implies a criticism of her current level of power, thus is not strictly equivalent to the positive formulation. Frankly, I don't see it. The negative formulation is that you lack this additional power, which has benefits (as she's acknowledge). So she fails to have those acknowledged benefits if she doesn't take the power. She might be ok with that. The benefits aren't so very great, or too much bother, or she suspects that similarly good or better benefits might come along (is this an opportunity cost negative reason?). I don't see why these are additional if the positive reasons generated by a negative reasons are not also additional. What are pure negative reasons?

¶ 13. So, her line is based on the "critical conception of practical reason" rather than the "action guiding conception of practical reason". That is, on her view, reasons are responses to criticism; action guidance is consequential on a need to feel justified in our actions. Negative evaluation is more important than positive evaluation, she claims, hence it's more important to avoid criticism based on negative reasons than to, what, garner praise based on positive reasons?

¶ 14. Motivational force, whether internalist or externalist (and she is internalist: rationality itself produced motivation to avoid significant criticism), is based on a threshold of adequacy. Once you are over the threshold, that is, once you have sufficient justification for your choice, then you are done. Additional justification only adds breathing space, so to speak. If you have overkilling justification, then there is little critical activity to fear. Indeed, having a habit of overkill may make you, by default, less subject to critical encounters.

¶ 15. So we arrive at the heart of her view of rationality. Negative reasons are critical; positive reasons respond to criticism. To get over the threshold requires having a response to every significant criticism, that is, to have sufficient positive reasons to overcome any obtaining negative reasons. If there is no negative reason, then all the positive reason does is provide a guard against some possible criticism. (Is having no reason to do something a criticism? "Why did you do that?" "No reason." "That's not a reason." "Do I have to have a reason for everything?" This is intelligible dialogue which supports Greenspan somewhat. It seems to be a defense to have no reason in the absence of more specific criticism. Of course, what one might expect next is, "Aimlessness isn't good. You need to have purpose; to make choices; to weigh options; to explore possibilities." Now, is this generalized criticism proving Greenspan's point? After all, I did have to appeal to a criticism. But the criticism is not having reasons for making choices. One can see a more refined dialogue wherein someone only avoids criticism. It seems to me that these second order criticisms are cruicial.)

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Explicator's note: This covers through page 3. While I still think the first paragraph is painful, the close reading is helping me get into Greenspan's style. Which is good, since there are some juicy bits to mull over. I'll be taking up the remaining pages in later posts.

Shorter explication of Peter Carruthers: On Being Simple Minded

My explication of Carruthers' critique of a Davidson argument that animals have no thoughts is rather long. That's ok, but I feel like it needn't be so long. It gets a bit tangled at the end, too. So here's a terse explication.

Carruthers argues that requiring thoughts to be expressible (by the thinker) as that-clauses requires that someone else be able to express that very thought as a that-clause. To express a thought one must be able to think that thought. However, there are thoughts of very smart people (like Einstein) which no one else could think (or, at least, there could be such thoughts). Such thoughts would not be co-thinkable, thus they would not be thoughts. But they are thoughts, so co-thinkabilty (and thus expressibility as a that-clause) is not a necessary condition of thoughthood. Thus, animals cannot be said to lack thoughts merely on this ground.

My problem with this is that I do not see where actual co-thinking is required by the Davidson argument. Surely, it is enough that someone can express the content, or, more to the point, that someone with the requisite limits lifted could express (and think) it. The point is to be hooked up to language in general, not to any particular language user.

Peter Carruthers: On Being Simple Minded (Davidson argument rebuttal)

In On Being Simple Minded, Peter Carruthers offers a simple (and I think simple minded) critique of an argument of Davidson to the effect that animals cannot have thoughts, properly understood. I don't have the Davidson article at the moment ("Thought and Talk") so I'll defer determining whether Carruthers got the argument right in his re-presentation, which is a bit moot anyway since I don't think Carruthers' critique works on the re-presentation. Carruther's explication of Davidson is in paragraph 7, and his critique in 8. First, paragraph 7:

These considerations give rise to an argument against the very possibility of non-linguistic thought, which was initially presented by Davidson (1975). The argument claims first, that beliefs and desires are content-bearing states whose contents must be expressible in a sentential complement (a that-clause). Then second, the argument points out that it must always be inappropriate to use sentential complements that embed our concepts when describing the thoughts of an animal (given the absence of linguistic behavior of the appropriate sorts). In which case (putting these two premises together) it follows that animals cannot be said to have thoughts at all.

First cut schematic (only for beliefs; works the same for desires):

1. For a state to be a belief, it must a) have content and b) that content must be expressible as a sentential complement
2. In order for the content of a state to be expressible as a sentential complement, the bearer of the state must exhibt certain sorts of linguistic behavior
3. (Most) Animals have no linguistic behavior of the certain sorts
4. Most animals have no beliefs

There seems to be some nuance lost. Is there something special about it being inappropriate to use our concepts when describing the thoughts? I.e., when we use our concepts to describe the content person's thoughts we are implicitly (or explicitly I guess) saying something about their linguistic behavior. E.g., if I say, "you believe that cheetahs are fast", I am implying something about your propensity to, for example, assent to the sentence, "Do you believe that cheetahs are fast", and to say "yes" in response to "Are cheetahs fast?", and to say "No way!" to "Cheetahs are really slow, aren't they?" But I would have thought that a key fact about my using the term 'cheetah' to describe the content of your thought is that 'cheetah' and (some part of your thought) are coreferential (or otherwise "about" the "same thing"). Of course, it might be that without some sort of linguistic behavior, there is no possibility of reference (or whatever semantic relation we need). I don't find that enormously plausible. However my point is that even if (many) of our concepts have strong ties to linguistic behavior, it seems possible that at least some of our concepts, or some part of our concepts, could have aspects which aren't essentially tied to linguistic behavior such that we could use those aspects of our concepts to characterize the content of animal states. Rather, it might be that the content of animal states are expressible as sentential complements using our concepts in virtue of some aspects of those concepts that are not tied to linguistic behavior.

Or, to point to another dimension, we might substantively share states with non-linguistic animals. In our cognitive economy, these states hook up to a variety of internal and external linguistic behavior. So it might be appropriate to use concepts to describe the content of an animal state that we would use if we were, ourselves, in that state.

I am not convinced that it's the use of our concepts that's problematic, but then it is a bit hard to see why the second premise is true. It may be as simple as that since there is no possibility of the animal expressing the content of the state as a that-clause, that particular state (and thus its particular contents) are not expressible (by the bearer of the state) as a sentence. That is, the animal cannot express that state and its contents directly, although, of course, it can make what state it is in clear by means of other behavior (but how clear?).

Clearly, I'm going to have to check out the Davidson directly, so let us turn to the Carruthers' critique:

The error in this argument lies in its assumption that thought contents must be specifiable by means of that-clauses, however. For this amounts to the imposition of a co-thinking constraint on genuine thoughthood. In order for another creature (whether human or animal) to be thinking a particular thought, it would have to be the case that someone else should also be capable of entertaining that very thought, in such a way that it can be formulated into a that-clause. But why should we believe this? For we know that there are many thoughts - e.g. some of Einstein’s thoughts, or some of the thoughts of Chomsky - that we may be incapable of entertaining. And why should we nevertheless think that the real existence of those thoughts is contingent upon the capacity of someone else to co-think them? Perhaps Einstein had some thoughts so sophisticated that there is no one else who is capable of entertaining their content.

Carruthers' attacks premise 1a (in the above schematic) by means of a reductio ad absurdum:

1. For a state to be a belief, it must 1) have content and 2) that content must be expressible as a that-clause
2. In order for the content of a state to be expressible as a that-clause, there must be another being capable of being in the state with that content and expressing it as a that-clause (the co-thinking constraint)
3. There are thoughts that some people have had that any of us know we could not have
4. There are (perhaps) thoughts that some people could have that no one else could have
5. But clearer, these are thoughts, so co-thinking is not a necessary condition of thoughthood

I'm afraid I find this refutation exceedingly silly. Surely the expressibility constraint can't be that there is someone right now who could also have that thought (and what is the bounds of the "could"? there are thoughts I could have if I were somewhat better read, or took the time to learn the literature, or just were smarter or had a better attention span)? Imagine that every other thinker in the universe died and I survived, surely that is not sufficient to turn my mental recitiation of "God, this sucks" into a non-thought!

Surely, the expressibily has to relate to general language competence, not to my occurrent capabilities. Einstein (I find the "super genius" stuff quite quaint both overall and in the particular choices) was a linguistic being. We can assess his expression of the contents of his mental states for, e.g., grammaticality. We can puzzle over them. We can distinguish his linguistic output from his grunts and wails. We can imagine that there would be someone as smart, or smarter!

Take a that-clause that is one million words long. No human being ever could have a thought that was directly expressed by that that-clause. But it is easy to imagine a mind capable of entertaining such a thought (just up the memory/attention span). And it would be a thought.

Interestingly, I think this provides a way out for animals too. Just because they cannot express the contents of their mental states as that-clauses, doesn't entail that they are not so expressible. Now we should be careful to distinguish between contents describably by that-clauses and those expressible by such. They often are related. Perhaps what an animal has is a rather attenuated thought, or some other sort of mental state. It may not be well articulated (almost certainly not). But we have such not so well articulated thoughts. Thoughts that (perhaps temporarily) escape expression. Some animals might be so strange to us that we cannot usefully analogize any of our states to theirs. They feel pain, for example, but not obviously the way we do, for example. Indeed, in the next few paragraphs (and in the rest of the paper) Carruthers takes up similar points:

The common-sense position is that (in addition to being formulated and co-thought from the inside, through a that-clause) thoughts can equally well be characterized from the outside, by means of an indirect description. In the case of the ape dipping for termites, for example, most of us would, on reflection, say something like this: we don’t know how much the ape knows about termites, nor how exactly she conceptualizes them, but we do know that she believes of the termites in that mound that they are there, and we know that she wants to eat them.

Now Carruthers wants to avoid the Dennettian intentional stance position, that is, while it is worth talking about animals as if they had thoughts, they still do not if we take our talk about them as being realistic. (That's not quite how I remember Dennett, but that's for another day.) Even a strong version of the intentional stance (where it is the case that all there is to having a thought is being usefully described as having a thought), would (properly) not satisfy Carruthers. He wants to show that the criteria for having thoughts is weaker than the co-thinking/expressibility/having language requirement, but not vacuous.

But I don't think all this is well motivated by the critique above. Co-thinking, in these crude forms, is not a sensible reading (I hope) of Davidson. Or, rather, I can construct a Davidsonian position that does not rely on co-thinking, but only on expressivity. To be a thought is to be a state of a being such that the content of the thought is available to being expressed by that being (somewhat idealized) by an utterance involving a that-clause. Consider occurrent thoughts only. It seems reasonable to say that if I have a state whose content I couldn't state (pace, inchoate thoughts) that that state isn't an occurrent thought. I might not be able to state it clearly. I might not be able to get it out because I'm tongue tied. But if there is no connection whatsoever between the contents of my state and utterability, then in what sense is it an occurrent thought of mine? I can imagine it being a repressed thought, but then, if I unrepressed it, I can speak it. I can imagine that I don't have to words to do it justice (for example, I don't have the French words to do most of my thoughts justice), but if I could find the words, perhaps with great effort, perhaps by invention, then I certainly don't want to deny its thoughtness or even its occurrent thoughtness. Similarly, my thought has to be able to interact with other thoughts and other mental facilities, and do so in a content directed way.

Structured Formats and "Knowledge Management"

Blogger is very nice for getting something up easily and it's simple to use. Alas, I forgot it doesn't seem to have categories or tags (why not? it's not that hard to support; weird). Oh well. I really just want to motivate myself to write stuff up, so it's good enough for now. The other thing I would like is more structured explications. I played around a little with this back in grad school for some classes I taught. For example, in an outline, some headings are "topics" and some are part of a reconstruction of an argument. It would be nice to be able to distinguish these in a format. But again, actually doing stuff is more important than nice IT, so HTML it is for now.

Raison

I've been out of the active philosophy game for far, far too long. I've not been taking classes, or teaching classes, or attending talks, or writing papers, or doing research (in philosophy). That's so sad! So I'm way out of practice. For me, a key philosophical practice and skill is explication, whether by means of a precis, or an outline, or study questions. But it's hard to motivate myself to do them in isolation. Hence, this blog, wherein I shall post, at least for myself, explications of papers and arguments. Maybe some other stuff as well, but the main goal is to get me back in the explication mode.