Pragmatic Conceptual

Analysis and Our Reasons for

Following NormsJustin C. Fisher

University of British Columbia

March 10, 2008

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jcfisher

(Positive) Normative ConceptsWhen one recognizes that doing something would be…

– epistemically rational,

– practically rational, or

– morally right…

this often leads one to do that thing.

The primary use of positive normative concepts is to mark things as being worth doing.

Why Follow Norms?What reasons do we have to let (positive) normative concepts guide what we do?

– Why be rational?

– Why be moral?

Presumptions about BenefitsI presume there are some ‘benefits’ that we clearly have reason to pursue:

–These may be for self or for loved ones.

–I stake no stance regarding whether these involve pleasure, health, desire satisfaction, and/or something else.

Our question ≈ “What’s so beneficial about following norms?”

A Natural StrategyQ1: What do our normative concepts mean?

– What criteria would be sufficient to make something count as being rational or as being morally right ?

Q2: What general reasons would we have for doing things that meet those criteria?

OverviewI survey possible approaches to Q1.

– Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis

– Intuitive Conceptual Analysis

– Naturalized Conceptual Analysis

Of these, Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis, alone, gives a plausible answer to Q2.

So, we should either…

– embrace Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis, or

– strongly consider being amoral.

?

Modest GoalsI’m aiming only to show some relations between various views of concept-meaning and questions about our reasons to accept the guidance of normative concepts.

I will not argue today that…

– We should embrace Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis.

– We generally have reason to be moral.

– We should adopt any particular first-order views about the nature of morality. ?

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What I actually believe.

Approaches to Q1

Q1: What do our normative concepts mean?

A methodology tells you to look at various parameters to make conclusions about meaning – but this presupposes a theory that those parameters determine (or at least correlate strongly with) meaning.

Theories of Meaning

A theory of meaning says how various parameters determine meaning – this suggests the methodology of discovering values for those parameters and plugging them into the theory.

Methodologies to reveal Meaning

Methodologies and Meanings• Intuitive Conceptual Analysis

Intuitive Meaning (whatever best satisfies intuitions surrounding our concept).

• Naturalized C.A. Causal Meaning (whatever best unifies the paradigm cases, where these are usually taken to be causes of usage of the concept)

• Pragmatic C.A. Pragmatic Meaning (whatever best sustains beneficial patterns of usage).

Frank Jackson (1998, pg 31)“[H]ow should we identify our ordinary conception? The only possible answer, I think, is by appeal to what seems to us to be most obvious and central about free action, determinism, belief, or whatever, as revealed by our intuitions about possible cases.

Intuitions about how various cases, including various merely possible cases, are correctly described in terms of free action [etc…] are precisely what reveal our ordinary conceptions of free action [etc…]”

Different Versions of Intuitive Conceptual Analysis…

•employ intuitions with different content

– intuitions about possible cases

– intuitions about generalizations

– intuitions about paradigm instances

•seek intuitions from different people (ordinary folk vs. various sorts of experts)

•resolve conflicts between intuitions in different ways

Application to Morality

Start pumping the relevant intuitions…

Then seek an account of morality that best fits these intuitions.

Messy Intuitions• Our intuitions often disagree.

• Joshua Greene has interesting results correlating different people’s intuitions about various trolley problems with whether they tend to use emotional or calculating centers of their brains as they intuit – this suggests that intuitive conflicts are very deep-seated in our psychology and will be perpetual…

• It’s not at all clear how we should resolve these conflicts.

Morality’s Intuitive Meaning?• Consequentialism?

• Deontology?

• Virtue Ethics?

• Divine Command Theory?

• Something so queer that it couldn’t have any instances (ala Mackie)?

• Some weighted and contextualized hybrid of all of these?

Intuitive Meaning and Q2• Why do what’s moral if what’s moral is just

what happens best to satisfy a jumble of mixed-up intuitions?

• It’s not clear what intuitive meaning moral concepts will have, nor even whether there will be any instances matching this meaning.

• The intuitive meanings of most concepts have no special connection to benefits… Why think moral concepts will turn out to be any different?

Do Our Intuitions Insist that Being Moral is Beneficial?

If this were an intuition that Intuitive Conceptual Analysis had to respect, then we would expect a strong connection between morality and benefits.

But, intuitively, it’s often hard to be moral, precisely because there are so many potential benefits tempting us to go astray.

If it turns out that morality is usually beneficial, that will be surprising news.

Benefits Shape Intuitions?Hume: We tend to feel approbation for things that benefit ourselves and/or our comrades. So approbation is bound to track benefit.

But, in local interactions, we often get poor feedback about what is really beneficial.

And our intuitions are also shaped by many other factors – e.g., television – and there is no obvious reason to think that these factors would track benefits.

Inductive Evidence?• Why not take some instances that seem

pretty clear, and see whether doing these things tends to be beneficial?

• But, do all or even most of the intuitively clear cases really tend to be beneficial?

• What can this tell us about cases that are less clear?

Methodologies and Meanings• Intuitive Conceptual Analysis

Intuitive Meaning (whatever best satisfies intuitions surrounding our concept).

• Naturalized C.A. Causal Meaning (whatever best unifies the paradigm cases, where these are usually taken to be causes of usage of the concept)

• Pragmatic C.A. Pragmatic Meaning (whatever best sustains beneficial patterns of usage).

Kornblith (2002, pg 10-11)“We begin, often enough, with obvious cases, even if we do not yet understand what provides the theoretical unity to the kind we wish to examine. Understanding what that theoretical unity is is the object of our study, and it is to be found by careful examination of the phenomenon, that is, something outside of us, not our concept of the phenomenon, something inside of us.”

Naturalized Analysis Pictorially

Which Paradigm Cases?• Ones that intuitively strike us as central

to a concept? (Jackson, Chalmers)

• Ones present at the initial baptism of a concept? (Kripke)

• Ones that are the source of information we associate with the concept? (Evans, Boyd)

• Ones that most commonly cause us to token the concept? (Fodor?)

The Qua ProblemThere will usually be any number of more-or-less natural groupings that the given paradigm cases belong to. How can we isolate “the right one”?

– Add a sortal

•Determined by intuitions or intentions?

•Externally determined?

– Add a large set of clear counter-cases

Naturalized Conceptual Analyses

• Putnam on many natural kinds.

• Kornblith on knowledge.

• Griffiths on emotions.

• Braddon-Mitchell on causation.

• Boyd (and other ‘Cornell Moral Realists’) on moral goodness.

Boyd (1988) “How to be a Moral Realist”

Homeostatic Property Cluster Kinds are kinds whose characteristic properties tend to co-occur for good reason.

A term refers to the kind that regularly causes us to associate information about that kind with that term.

Our term “good” is causally regulated by, and hence refers to, a particular HPC-kind.

Boyd’s Analysis Pictorially

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Causal Meaning and Q2• Why do what’s good, if goodness is just

some natural cluster of properties that we regularly identify as ‘goodness’?

• Most natural clusters of properties bear no special connection to human benefits – why think this case is any different?

• Maybe we got lucky and latched onto a natural cluster that happens to be a great guide to benefits; but this would be a fairly surprising stroke of luck.

Upshot

There’s a lot to like about Boyd’s picture:

– It gives moral kinds a plausible home in the natural world.

– It offers a plausible moral epistemology and a fairly plausible moral semantics.

But it seems to miss out on the strong links between morality, motivation, and our reasons for doing things.

Methodologies and Meanings• Intuitive Conceptual Analysis

Intuitive Meaning (whatever best satisfies intuitions surrounding our concept).

• Naturalized C.A. Causal Meaning (whatever best unifies the paradigm cases, where these are usually taken to be causes of usage of the concept)

• Pragmatic C.A. Pragmatic Meaning (whatever best sustains beneficial patterns of usage).

Conceptual Reverse-Engineering

(0) Start with a conceptual system that works pretty well

(1) Analyze how it works as well as it does

(2) Figure out which explications would allow it to do this good stuff more consistently.

Help Wanted

Needed: one technical

notion to serve as an

explication of concept C.

Must do well at delivering

benefits in the same ways

that uses of C have in the

past.

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2.5 children,

diapers not

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320 East

No early

birds.

Announce

Local

dog

wedding

For sale:

A tall

Narrow

Advertising space

at the edge of a

highly visible

classified ad.

evenings.

Wanted:

Someone to write

humorous

classified ads to go in

margins.

Sally Haslanger in “What Knowledge is and Ought to Be”:

“[T]he best way of going about a project of normative epistemology is

first to consider what the point is in having a concept of knowledge: what work does it, or (better) could it, do for us? And

second, to consider what concept would best accomplish this work.”

Why “Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis”?

Why “Pragmatic”?

– PCA focuses on pragmatic benefits.

– PCA is itself pragmatically useful.

Why “Conceptual Analysis”?

– PCA employs an empirical analysis of how our pre-existing concepts have been beneficially used.

– PCA aims to specify in a formal way what those concepts mean.

Example: Hurons and Scurvy

Huron Indians were fairly good at recognizing and treating scurvy – e.g., they are credited with curing Cartier’s crew.

This attribution of concept-meaning is based upon what actually worked about their practice, and not upon the various false categorizations or mistaken intuitions they surely had.

Pragmatic CA Pictorially

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Comparison of PCA and Boyd

Boyd effectively looked for a natural cluster among the set of things that have caused us to associate information with a concept.

Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis effectively looks for a natural cluster among the set of things that have enabled beneficial usage of the concept.

Usually, this set will correspond roughly to a subset of Boyd’s set of causes.

But it is an interesting subset, one that bears a special relation to benefits.

So what is Moral Goodness?–Depends on what counts as a benefit (i.e., upon what we have basic reasons to pursue).

–Depends upon how our moral concepts have delivered benefits (an empirical question).

My guess:

–Our moral concepts have primarily yielded benefits by sustaining stable, cooperative circles of friends.

–They have done this by recommending actions that are ‘pro-social’ (=‘virtuous’?) and/or involve certain elements of social regulation.

Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis and Q2

–PCA looks for a cluster that underlies regular patterns in the beneficial use of a concept.

–By defn, the primary use of positive normative concepts is to recommend things to do.

–So a PCA of such a concept will find a cluster of things that it tends to be beneficial to do.

Q2 : Why do what’s good?

PCA: Because we know goodness is a natural cluster of things that it tends to be beneficial to do.

Caveats1. We need to be working with a notion

of benefits that we have reason to pursue.

2. We need to apply the concept in accord with its pragmatic meaning.

3. The world must continue to cooperate in delivering the same old benefits.

4. We may miss out on novel ways of getting even better benefits.

5. We may face novel sorts of harm.

A defeasible reason to follow positive normative concepts

It is a reasonable default presumption that these caveats are not triggered, and hence that our positive normative concepts will be a beneficial guide.

But when we get evidence that our situation is significantly different from the situations in which a normative concept has proven worthwhile, then this reason may be defeated.

PCA Brag SheetPCA preserves the benefits of Boyd’s view:

– A perfectly naturalistic Moral Realism.

– Plausible epistemology and semantics.

And it gives us more:

– PCA respects the central importance of the motivational role of moral concepts.

– PCA captures the normativity of morality – it shows why it is reasonable for us to be guided by moral considerations.

Options(1) Defend some form of (a) Intuitive or

(b) Naturalized Conceptual Analysis:

(i) Give up on the thought that we generally have reason to be moral.

(ii)Find other arguments for the general beneficialness of morality, so construed.

(2) Seek a new semantics for moral concepts.

(3) Accept Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis, naturalistic moral realism, and a general defeasible reason for being moral.