Natural law: Between objectivism and subjectivism

Aristotelian natural law approaches provide an attractive middle road between objectivist and subjectivist answers to various normative questions: the answers to the questions are relative to the kind of entity that they concern, but not to the particular particular entity.

For instance, a natural law approach to aesthetics would not make the claim that there is one objective beauty for humans, klingons, vulcans and angels. But it would make the absolutist claim that there is one beauty for Alice, Bob, Carl and Davita, as long as they are all humans. The natural lawyer aestheticist could take a subjectivist’s accounts of beauty in terms, of say, disinterested pleasure, but give it a species relative normative twist: the beautiful to members of kind K (say, humans or klingons) is what should give members of kind K disinterested pleasure. The human who fails to find that pleasure in a Monet painting suffers from a defect, but a klingon might suffer from a defect if she found pleasure in the Monet.

Supervenience and natural law

The B-properties supervene on the A-properties provided that any two possible worlds with the same A-properties have the same B-properties.

It is a widely accepted constraint in metaethics that normative properties supervene on non-normative ones. Does natural law meet the contraint?

As I read natural law, the right action is one that goes along with the teleological properties of the will. Teleological properties, in turn, are normative in nature and (sometimes) fundamental. As far as I can see, it is possible to have zombie-like phenomena, where two substances look and behave in exactly the same way but different teleological properties. Thus, one could have animals that are physically indistinguishable from our world’s sheep, and in particularly have four legs, but, unlike the sheep, have the property of being normally six-legged. In other words, they would be all defective, in lacking two of their six legs.

This suggests that natural law theories depend on a metaphysics that rejects the supervenience of the normative. But I think that is too quick. For in an Aristotelian metaphysics, the teleological properties are not purely teleological. A sheep’s being naturally four-legged simultaneously explains the normative fact that a sheep should have four legs and the non-normative statistical fact that most sheep in fact have four legs. For the teleological structures are not just normative but also efficiently causal: they efficiently guide the embryonic development of the sheep, say.

In fact, on the Koons-Pruss reading of teleology, the teleological properties just are causal powers. The causal power to ϕ in circumtances C is teleological and dispositional: it is both a teleological directedness towards ϕing in C and a disposition to ϕ in C. And there is no metaphysical way of separating these aspects, as they are both features of the very same property.

Our naturally-six-but-actually-four-legged quasi-sheep, then, would differ from the actual world’s sheep in not having the same dispositions to develop quadrapedality. This seems to save supervenience, by exhibiting a difference in non-normative properties between the sheep and the quasi-sheep.

But I think it doesn’t actually save it. For the disposition to develop four (or six) legs is the same property as the teleological directedness to quadrapedality in sheep. And this property is a normative property, though not just normative. We might say this: The sheep and the quasi-sheep differ in a non-normative respect but they do not differ in a non-normative property. For the disposition is a normative property.

Perhaps this suggests that the natural lawyer should weaken the supervenience claim and talk of differences in features or respects rather than properties. That would allow one to save a version of supervenience. But notice that if we do that, we preserve supervenience but not the intuition behind it. For the intuition behind the supervenience of the normative on the non-normative is that the normative is explained by the non-normative. But on our Aristotelian metaphysics, it is the teleological properties that explain that actual non-normative behavior of things.

Evil, omniscience, and other matters

If God exists, there are many evils that God doesn’t prevent, even though it seems that we would have been obligated to prevent them if we could.

A sceptical theist move is that God knows something about the situations that we don’t. For instance, it may seem to us that the evil is pointless, but God sees it as interwoven with greater goods.

An interesting response to this is that even if we knew about the greater goods, we would be obligated to prevent the evil. Say, Carl sees Alice about to torture Bob, and Carl somehow knows (maybe God told him) that one day Alice will repent of the evil in response to a beautiful offer of forgiveness from Bob. Then I am inclined to think Carl should still prevent Alice from torturing Bob, even if repentance and forgiveness are goods so great that it would have been better for both Alice and Bob if the torture happened.

Here is an interesting sceptical theist response to this response. Normally, we don’t know the future well enough to know that great goods would arise from our permitting an evil. Because of this, our moral obligations to prevent grave evils have a bias in them towards what is causally closer to us. Moreover, this bias in the obligations, although it is explained by the fact that normally we don’t know the future very well, is present even in the exceptional cases where we do know the future sufficiently well, as in the Carl, Alice and Bob case.

This move requires an ethical system where a moral rule that applies in all circumstances can be explained by its usefulness in normal circumstances. Rule utilitarianism is of course such an ethical system. Divine command theory is as well: God can be motivated to issue an exceptionless rule because of the fact that normally the rule is a good one and it might not be good for us to be trying to figure out whether a case at hand is an exception to the rule (this is something I learned from Steve Evans). And St. Thomas Aquinas in his argument against nonmarital sex holds that natural law is also like that (he argues that typically nonmarital sex is bad for the offspring, and concludes that it is wrong even in the exceptional cases where it’s not bad for the offspring, because, as he says, laws are made with regard to the typical case).

Historically, this approach tends to be used to derive or explain deontic prohibitions (e.g., Aquinas’ prohibition on nonmarital sex). But the move from typical beneficiality of a rule to its holding always does not require that the rule be a deontic prohibition. A rule that weights nearer causal consequences more heavily could just as easily be justified in such a way, even if the rule did not amount to a deontic prohibition.

Similarly, one might use typical facts about our relationships with those closer to us—that we know what is good for them better than for strangers, that they are more likely to accept our help, that the material benefits of our help enhance the relationship—to explain why helping those closer to us should be more heavily weighted in our moral calculus than helping strangers, even in those cases where the the typical facts do not obtain. Once again, this isn’t a deontic case.

One might even have such typical-case-justified rules in prudential reasoning (perhaps a bias towards the nearer future is not irrational after all) and maybe even in theoretical reasoning (perhaps we shouldn’t be perfect Bayesian agents after all, because that’s not in our nature, given that normally Bayesian reasoning is too hard for us).

Ownership and ontology

We can own dogs, trees, forests, cars, chairs, computers and cupcakes, but of these examples, only dogs and trees really exist. Many of the things we own do not really exist. This makes me sceptical of the idea that there are strong property rights independent of positive law.

You might stop me by saying that my ontology is simply too restrictive. Maybe forests, cars, chairs, computers and cupcakes all really exist. I doubt it, but the examples of non-existent things we can in principle own can be multiplied. It is just as reasonable to talk of owning the vacuum inside a flask as it is to talk of owning the cocoa inside a cup. In both cases, labor was needed to generate the “thing” owned, and there is a reasonable moral expectation of non-interference with respect to it. (I would be destroying your property if I beamed a gas into your vacuum flask.)

What does this have to do with scepticism of strong property rights independent of positive law? First, it becomes very difficult to draw a principled line between ownables and non-ownables. Second, once we recognize that we can own things that don’t exist, such as vacua, it becomes difficult to distinguish “things” we have created and own from other kinds of outcomes of our activity. It then becomes plausible that the relevant right is one that should apply to outcomes of activity without much regard for whether that outcome is a thing that exists, a “thing” that doesn’t exist, or some other kind of outcome, such as a mountain’s being enchanted. There seems to be some kind of a right not to have the intended outcome of one’s virtuous activity destroyed without good reason. But how good the reason has to be will vary widely from case to case, so it is unlikely that this kind of a right will ground a strong view of property rights independent of positive law.

But the difficult is not the impossible. For it may be that although it would be difficult to make the needed distinctions, these distinctions could be grounded in highly detailed facts encoded in our natures.

Mathematical structures, physics and Bayesian epistemology

It seems that every mathematical structure (there are some technicalities as to how to define it) could metaphysically be the correct description of fundamental physical structure. This means that making Bayesianism be the whole story about epistemology—even for idealized agents—is a hopeless endeavor. For there is no hope for an epistemologically useful probability measure over the collection of all mathematical structures unless we rule out the vast majority of structures as having zero probability.

A natural law or divine command epistemology can solve this problem by requiring us to assign zero probability to some non-actual physical structures that are metaphysically possible but that our Creator wants us to be able to rule out a priori. In other words, our Creator can make us so that we only take epistemically seriously a small subset of the possibilia. This might help with the problem of scepticism, too.

An argument for theism from certain values

Some things, such as human life, love, the arts and humor, are very valuable. An interesting question to ask is why they are so valuable?

A potential answer is that they have their value because we value (desire, prefer, etc.) them. While some things may be valuable because we value them, neither life, love, the arts nor humor seem to be such. People who fail to value these things is insensitive: they are failing to recognize the great value that is there. (In general, I suspect that nothing of high value has the value it does because we value it: our ability to make things valuable by valuing them is limited to things of low and moderate value.)

A different answer is that these things are necessarily valuable. However, while this may be true, it shifts the explanatory burden to asking why they are necessarily valuable. For simplicity, I’ll thus ignore the necessity answer.

It may be that there are things that are fundamentally valuable, whose value is self-explanatory. Perhaps life and love are like that: maybe there is no more a mystery as to why life or love is valuable than as to why 1=1. Maybe.

But the arts at least do not seem to be like this. It is puzzling why arranging a sequence of typically false sentences into a narrative can make for something with great value. It is puzzling why representing aspects of the world—either of the concrete or the abstract world—in paint on canvas can so often be valuable. The value of the arts is not self-explanatory.

Theism can provide an explanation of this puzzling value: Artistic activity reflects God’s creative activity, and God is the ultimate good. Given theism it is not surprising that the arts are of great value. There is something divine about them.

Humor is, I think, even more puzzling. Humor deflates our pretensions. Why is this so valuable? Here, I think, the theist has a nice answer: We are infinitely less than God, so deflating our pretensions puts us human beings in the right place in reality.

There is much more to be said about arts and humor. The above is meant to be very sketchy. My interest here is not to defend the specific arguments from the value of the arts and humor, but to illustrate arguments from value that appear to be a newish kind of theistic argument.

These arguments are like design arguments in that their focus is on explaining good features of the world. But while design arguments, such as the argument from beauty or the fine-tuning argument, seek an explanation of why various very good features occur, these kinds of value arguments seek an explanation of why certain features are in fact as good as they are.

The moral argument for theism is closely akin. While in the above arguments, one seeks to explain why some things have the degree of value they do, the moral argument can be put as asking for an explanation of why some things (more precisely, some actions) have the kind of value they do, namely deontic value.

Closing remarks

1. Just as in the moral case, there is a natural law story that shifts the argument’s focus without destroying the argument for theism. In the moral case, the natural law story explains why some actions are obligatory by saying that they violate the prescriptions for action in our nature. But one can still ask why there are beings with a nature with these prescriptions and not others. Why is it that, as far as we can tell, there are rational beings whose nature prescribes love for neighbor and none whose nature prescribes hatred for neighbor? Similarly, we can say that humor is highly valuable for us because our nature specifies humor as one of the things that significantly fulfills us. (Variant: Humor is highly valuable for us because it is our nature to highly value it.) But we can still ask why there are rational beings whose nature is fulfilled by the arts and humor, and, as far as we can tell, none whose nature is harmed by the arts or humor. And in both the deontic and non-deontic cases, there is a theistic answer. For instance, God creates rational beings with a nature that calls on them to laugh because any beings that he would create will be infinitely less than God and hence their sensor humor will help put them in the right place, thereby counteracting the self-aggrandizement that reflection on one’s own rationality would otherwise lead to.

2. Just as in the moral case there is a compelling argument from knowledge—theism provides a particularly attractive explanation of how we know moral truths—so too in the value cases there is a similar compelling argument.

Divine command and natural law epistemology

I am impressed by the idea that other kinds of beings from humans can appropriately have different doxastic practices from ours, in light of:

1. a different environment which makes different practices truth-conductive, and

2. different proper goals for their doxastic practices (e.g., a difference of emphasis on explanation versus prediction; a difference in what subject matter is more important).

Option (a) is captured by reliabilism, but reliabilism does not by itself do much to help with (b), and suffers from an insuperable reference class problem.

I know of two epistemological theories that nicely capture the differences between epistemic practices in the light of both (a) and (b):

• divine command epistemology: a doxastic practice is required just in case God commands it (variant: commands it in light of truth-based goods)

• natural law epistemology: a doxastic practice is required just in case it is natural to its practitioner (variant: natural and ordered towards truth-based goods).

Both of these theories have an interesting meta-theoretic consequence: they make particularly weird thought experiments less useful in epistemology. For God’s reasons for requiring a doxastic practice may well be linked to our typical way of life, and a practice that is natural in one ecological niche may have unfortunate consequences outside that niche. (That’s sad for me, since making up weird thought experiments is something I particularly enjoy!)

(Note, however, that both of these theories have nothing to say on the question of knowledge. That’s a feature, not a bug. I think we don’t need a concept of (propositional) knowledge, just as we don’t need a concept of baldness. Anything worth saying using the language of “knowledge” or “baldness” can be more precisely said without it—one can talk of degrees of belief and justification, amount of scalp coverage, etc.—and while it’s an amusing question how exactly to analyze knowledge or baldness, it’s just that.)

Two explanatory stories in Natural Law

One of the most fundamental claims of classical Natural Law (NL), as I understand it, is that:

1. The right exercise of our wills is precisely that which fullfills the proper functions of the will.

This claim is, I think, close to trivial. What is much less trivial is the further NL claim that the “fulfills the proper functions” explains the “right”. There are two (at least) ways of running this explanatory story:

A. To fulfill the proper function of the will is good for us, and it’s right to pursue what’s good for us.

B. It is directly true that the right is what fulfills the will’s proper function. Exercising the proper function of the will, like exercising any other natural faculty, of course good for us, but that isn’t what makes it right.

Story A makes the theory a form of eudaimonism, since it implies that what is good for us is generally to be pursued.

Story B does not claim that what is good for us is generally to be pursued, though it is compatible with that claim. Story B claims that one of the things that are good for us—the proper exercise of the will—is to be done, but it does not claim that other things good for us are to be pursued, and does not even claim that that one thing is to be pursued (for it is a different thing to do what is right and to pursue doing what is right). As far as it goes,

Story B is compatible with, say, total selflessness, the theory that the one thing to be pursued is the good of everybody else. To get total selflessness, all one needs is to supplement Story B with the theory that the proper function of our will is fulfilled precisely in the pursuit of the good of everybody else. Likewise, Story B is compatible with eudaimonism—one just needs to add that the pursuit of our good is what in fact fulfills our will. But it is also compatible with kakodaimonism, the theory that the one thing to be pursued is one’s own languishing. (One might think that it would be self-defeating to pursue one’s own harm if pursuit of one’s harm were the proper function of our wills, since the pursuit would fulfill one’s will and hence be good for one. But that would be to confuse the good pursued with the good of pursuit.)

In other words, Story B has much less in the way of normative ethics implications: it is very strictly a story about the meta-level.

There is reason to prefer Story A: it leads to a helpful normative ethics by itself.

There is reason to prefer Story B: the normative ethics that Story A leads to is a form of rational egoism.

I like Story B. But Story B must be supplemented with an account of what fulfills the will.

The answer to that is love.

Four problems and a unified solution

A similar problem occurs in at least four different areas.

1. Physics: What explains the values of the constants in the laws of nature?

2. Ethics: What explains parameters in moral laws, such as the degree to which we should favor benefits to our parents over benefits to strangers?

3. Epistemology: What explains parameters in epistemic principles, such as the parameters in how quickly we should take our evidence to justify inductive generalizations, or how much epistemic weight we should put on simplicity?

4. Semantics: What explains where the lines are drawn for the extensions of our words?

There are some solutions that have a hope of working in some but not all the areas. For instance, a view on which there is a universe-spawning mechanism that induces random value of constants in laws of nature solves the physics problem, but does little for the other three.

On the other hand, vagueness solutions to 2-4 have little hope of helping in the physics case. Actually, though, vagueness doesn’t help much in 2-4, because there will still be the question of explaining why the vague regions are where they are and why they are fuzzy in the way there are—we just shift the parameter question.

In some areas, there might be some hope of having a theory on which there are no objective parameters. For instance, Bayesianism holds that the parameters are set by the priors, and subjective Bayesianism then says that there are no objective priors. Non-realist ethical theories do something similar. But such a move in the case of physics is implausible.

In each area, there might be some hope that there are simple and elegant principles that of necessity give rise to and explainingthe values of the parameters. But that hope has yet to be born out in any of the four cases.

In each area, one can opt for a brute necessity. But that should be a last resort.

In each area, there are things that can be said that simply shift the question about parameters to a similar question about other parameters. For instance, objective Bayesianism shifts the question of about how much epistemic weight we should put on simplicity to the question of priors.

When the questons are so similar, there is significant value in giving a uniform solution. The theist can do that. She does so by opting for these views:

1. Physics: God makes the universe have the fundamental laws of nature it does.

2. Ethics: God institutes the fundamental moral principles.

3. Epistemology: God institutes the fundamental epistemic principles for us.

4. Semantics: God institutes some fundamental level of our language.

In each of the four cases there is a question of how God does this. And in each there is a “divine command” style answer and a “natural law” style answer, and likely others.

In physics, the “divine command” style answer is occasionalism; in ethics and epistemology it just is “divine command”; and in semantics it is a view on which God is the first speaker and his meanings for fundamental linguistic structs are normative. None of these appeal very much to me, and for the same reason: they all make the relevant features extrinsic to us.

In physics, the “natural law” answer is theistic Aristotelianism: laws supervene on the natures of things, and God chooses which natures to instantiate; theistic natural law is a well-developed ethical theory, and there are analogues in epistemology and semantics, albeit not very popular ones.

Theistic Natural Law and the Euthyphro Problem

Theistic Natural Law (TNL) theory seems to be subject to the Euthyphro problem much as divine command theory (DCT) is. On DCT, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:

1. Why did God command what he commanded rather than commanding otherwise?

On TNL, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:

2. Why did God create beings with the natures he did rather than creating beings with other natures?

In both cases, one can respond by talking of the essential goodness of God, by virtue of which he makes a good choice as to how to fittingly match the non-normative with the normative features of creatures. In the DCT case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing what sorts of creatures to create and what sorts of commands to give them. In the TNL case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing the non-deontic and deontic features of natures and then creating creatures with these natures. Thus, in the DCT case, God has reason to coordinate the sociality of creatures with the command to cooperate, while in the TNL case God has reason to actualize natures that either both include sociality and the duty to cooperate or to actualize natures that include neither.

So in what way is TNL better off than DCT with regard to the Euthyphro problem? The one thing I can think of in the vicinity is this: TNL allows for there to be deontic features that necessarily every natural includes, and it allows for there to be some deontic features of creatures that are entailed by the non-deontic features. For instance, perhaps every possible nature of an agent includes a prohibition against pointless imposition of torture, and every possible nature of a linguistic agent includes a prohibition against lying. But I am not sure this difference is really relevant to the Euthyphro problem.

I do prefer TNL to DCT, but not because of the Euthyphro problem. My reason for the preference is that many moral obligations appear to be intrinsic features of us.

Of course, the above arguments presuppose a particular picture of how natural law works. But I like that picture.

Agents, patients and natural law

Thanks to Adam Myers’ insightful comments, I’ve been thinking about the ways that natural law ethics concerns natures in two ways: on the side of the agent qua agent and on the of the patient qua patient.

Companionship is good for humans and bad for intelligent sharks, let’s suppose. This means that we have reasons to promote companionship among humans and to hamper companionship among intelligent sharks. That’s a difference in reasons based on a difference in the patients’ nature. Next, let’s suppose that intelligent sharks by nature have a higher degree of self-concern vs. other-concern than humans do. Then the degree to which one has an obligation to promote the very same good–say, the companionship of Socrates–will vary depending on whether one is human or a shark. That’s a difference in reasons based on a difference in the agents’ nature.

I suspect it would make natural law ethics clearer if natural lawyers were always clear on what is due to the agent’s nature and what is due to the patient’s nature, even if in fact their interest were solely in cases where the agent and patient are both human.

Consider, for instance, this plausible thesis:

• I should typically prioritize my understanding over my fun.

Suppose the thesis is true. But now it’s really interesting to ask if this is true due to my nature qua agent or my nature qua patient. If I should prioritize my understanding over my fun solely because of my nature qua patient, then we could have this situation: Both I and an alien of some particular fun-loving sort should prioritize my understanding over my fun, but likewise both I and the alien should prioritize the alien’s fun over the alien’s understanding, since human understanding is more important than human fun, while the fun of a being like the alien is more important than the understanding of such a being. On this picture, the nature of the patient specifies which goods are more central to a patient of that nature. On the other hand, if I should prioritize my understanding over my fun solely because of my nature qua agent, then quite possibly we are in the interesting position that I should prioritize my understanding over my fun, but also that I should prioritize the alien’s understanding over the alien’s fun, while the alien should prioritize both its and my fun over its and my understanding. For me promoting understanding is a priority while for the alien promoting fun is a priority, regardless of whose understanding and fun they are.

And of course we do have actual and morally relevant cases of interaction across natures:

• God and humans

• Angels and humans

• Humans and brute animals.

Natural law love-first metaethics

Start with this Aristotelian thought:

1. Everything should to fulfill its nature, and every “should” fact is a norm specifying the norm of fulfilling one’s nature.

But not every “should” is a moral should. Sheep should have four legs, but a three-legged sheep is not morally defective. Here’s a hypothesis:

2. A thing morally should A if and only if that thing has a will with an overriding norm of loving everything and that the thing morally should A is a specification of that norm.

On this theory, moral norms are norms for the same Aristotelian reason that all other norms are norms—all norms derive from the natures of things. But at the same time, the metaethics is a metaethics of love. What renders a norm a moral norm is its content, that it is a specification of the norm that one should love everything.

Why is it, on this theory, that I should be affable to my neighbor? Because such affability is a specification of the norm of fulfilling my nature. But that needn’t be my practical reason for the affability: rather, that is the explanation of why I should be affable (cf. this). What makes the norm of affability to my neighbor a moral norm? That I have a norm of love of everything, and that the norm of affability specifies that norm.

And we can add:

3. A thing is a moral agent if and only if it has a will with an overriding norm of loving everything.

One could, perhaps, imagine beings that have a will with an overriding norm of self-benefit. Such beings wouldn’t be moral agents. But we are moral agents. In fact, I suspect the following is true:

4. Loving everything is the only proper function of the human will.

Given the tight Aristotelian connection between proper function and norms:

5. All norms on the human will are specifications of the norm of loving everything.

This metaethical theory I think is both a natural law theory and a love-first metaethics. It is a natural law theory in respect of the sources of normativity, and it is a love-first metaethics in respect of the account of moral norms. Thus it marries Aristotle with the Gospel, which is a good thing. I kind of like this theory, though I have a nagging suspicion it has problems.

A defense of natural law eudaimonism

My main objection to natural law ethics has for a long time been that it looks egoistic because it is eudaimonistic. One version of that worry is the “one thought too many” objection: You should just do good to your fellow humans because they are who they are, because they are your fellow human beings, or something like that, but definitely not because doing so leads to your flourishing.

I think there is a nice—and probably well-known to people other than me—response to this version of the worry, and to many similar “one thought too many” worries. To put this “one thought too many” worry more abstractly, the worry is that the metaethics will infect the reasons for action in an unacceptable way. But the response should simply be that, first, what metaethics asks is this question:

1. What makes the reasons for action be reasons for action?

Here, read “reasons” factively as “good reasons” or even “good moral reasons” (I don’t actually distinguish the two, but many do), not as motivations. And, second, insofar as R is my reason for my action, I am acting on account of R, not on account of R being a reason. Compare: what causes the fire is the match, not the match’s being a cause.

Thus, the natural lawyer should say that what makes the fact that an action promotes the good of my neighbor be a reason is that I flourish (in part) by intentionally (under this description) promoting the good of my neighbor. But the reason for the action is that the action promotes the good of my neighbor, not that I flourish by intentionally promoting the good of my neighbor. The natural law answer to the metaethics question (1) is this:

2. R is on balance a reason for action if and only if, and if so then because, I flourish by acting on R.

We do in fact flourish by intentionally promoting the good of our neighbor. Note that (2) does not by itself yield any egoism in our motivations. We could imagine selfless beings that flourish only insofar as they are intentionally promoting the good of their neighbor as a final end, and who are blighted insofar as they are intentionally promoting their own good or flourishing. We are, of course, not such selfless beings, but we don’t learn the fact that we are not such beings from (2). In fact, (2) is fully logically compatible with us being such beings. Hence, the metaethical theory (2) cannot by itself give rise to the “one thought too many” worry I started the post with. (Of course, some natural lawyers will go beyond (2). They may say that in fact our happiness is the end of all our actions. If so, then I think they are subject to the “one thought too many” worry.)

It is important to add a little bit to the above story. While it is true that “this benefits my friend” is typically reason enough, and that I don’t need to act on the second order fact that “this benefitting my friend is a reason”, we also do have such second order reasons. That there is a reason for an action is itself a reason for action. A parent might tell a child: “You have good reason to do this, but I can’t explain the reason right now.” In that case, the child could well be acting on the second-order reason that there is a first-order reason. (The child could also be acting on a first-order reasons to please the parent).

Here is another kind of case. I start off without any belief about whether R is a reason for action, and R leaves me cold. Maybe I am completely insensitive to considerations of privacy, and the fact that an action promotes someone’s privacy just leaves me completely cold. But I observe my virtuous friends, and see that they are acting on reasons like R, and I notice that their so acting contributes to what I admire about them. I conclude that R is in fact a good reason for action. But that’s purely intellectual. I am still left quite cold and unmotivated by the fact that some proposed action A falls under R. But what I can do at this point is to act on the second-order reason that A falls under a good reason. I can even say what that good reason is. But I cannot act on it itself, because it leaves me cold.

These are, however, non-ideal cases. If I know that R is a good reason, I should strive to form my will to be motivated by R. It will be better to act on R than to act on the knowledge that R is a reason. And thinking about these cases makes the response to the “one thought too many” worry about natural law even more compelling, I think. It does promote my flourishing to promote my flourishing, though I think that it doesn’t promote my flourishing as well as promoting the flourishing of others does. So that kindliness to others promotes my flourishing is a reason for benefiting others, just not as good a reason as that it benefits others. But such “not as good reasons” are important for our moral development: we are not yet in the ideal state, and so that “one thought too many” is still needed.

This helps make me feel a lot better about natural law ethics. Not quite enough to embrace it, though.

Permissibility of the natural

The usual way to argue that an action is permissible is to argue that the arguments against the action’s permissibility fail. But it would be really nice to be able to give a more positive argument for an action’s permissibility. Sometimes one can do so by showing that the action is obligatory, but (a) that doesn’t help with the permissibility of non-obligatory actions, and (b) often an argument for the obligatoriness of a positive action presupposes the action’s permissibility (e.g., the obligation to kill a dog that is attacking one’s child when no other means of defense is available presupposes the general permissibility of killing dogs with good reason).

Here is a place where Natural Law (NL) can provide something quite useful, namely this principle:

1. If A is a natural action, then normally A is permissible.

This principle could, for instance, be used to generate intuitively compelling positive arguments for such controversial theses as:

2. It is normally permissible to eat animals.

3. It is normally permissible for us to reproduce.

4. It is normally permissible for us to prefer those more closely related to us.

In addition to Natural Lawyers, theists in general might have reason to endorse (1), on the grounds that our nature comes from God.

Of course, there is always going to be a difficulty in determining whether the antecedent of (1) is true.

Non-theistic non-NL theories are unlikely to endorse (1) except as a rule of thumb. And it will be an interesting explanatory question on those theories why then (1) is true even as a rule of thumb.

Natural Law decision theory

One of the things I’ve learned from the St Petersburg Paradox and Pascal’s Wager is that we are rationally required to have attitudes to risk that significantly discount tiny chances of benefits, rather than to maximize expected utility. This requirement is rational because failure to have such attitudes to risk makes one subject to two-person diachronic Dutch Books. But it is also clearly irrational to significantly discount large chances of benefits.

But where are the lines to be drawn? Maybe it’s not worth enduring an hour of sitting on an uncomfortable chair for a 1/10¹⁰⁰⁰ chance of any finite length of bliss, but enduring an hour of sitting in such a chair for a 45% chance of 1000 years of bliss is worthwhile. As long as we thought the decisions were to be made on the basis of expected utility, we could have said that the lines are to be non-arbitrarily drawn by multiplying probabilities and utilities. But that fails.

It is possible, I suppose, that there is a metaphysically necessary principle of rationality that says where the line of the negligibility of chances is to be drawn. Perhaps an hour in the uncomfortable chair for a 1/10¹⁰⁰⁰ chance of a finite benefit cannot possibly be worthwhile, but for a 1/10⁶ chance of a large enough finite benefit it is worth it, and there is a cut-off precisely at π ⋅ 10⁻⁹. But the existence of any such a metaphysically necessary cut-off is just as implausible as it is to think that the constants in the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary.

(Vagueness is of no help. For even if the cut-off is vague, the shape—vague or exact—of the vagueness profile of the cut-off will still look metaphysically contingent.)

One could leave it to the individual. Perhaps rationality requires each individual to have a cut-off but where the cut-off lies is up to the individual. But rationality also places constraints on that cut-off: the person who is unwilling to sit in an uncomfortable chair for an hour for a 45% chance of 1000 years of bliss is irrational. (I deliberately made it 45%. The cut-off isn’t at 1/2, which would be satisfyingly non-arbitrary.) And where the constraints on the cut-off lie is itself something to be explained, and again it is implausible that it is metaphysically necessary.

In morals, we also have similar cut-off phenomena. It is morally wrong to put someone in prison for life for stealing an ordinary book, while a week of community service is morally permissible. Whence the cut-off? The problem in both cases comes from two features of the situation:

1. We have a parameter that seems to have a normative force independent of our minds.

2. That parameter appears to be contingent.

Utilitarianism provides an elegant answer, but no analog of that answer seems to apply in the rationality/risk case. Kantianism is out of luck. Divine command theory provides an answer, but one whose analogue in the case of rationality is quite implausible: it is irrational to be unwilling to sit in the uncomfortable chair for the 45% chance of the great benefit, rather than forbidden by God.

Natural Law, on the other hand, provides a framework for both the moral and the rational cases by saying that the parameter necessarily comes from our nature. Our nature is independent of our minds, and hence we do justice to (1). But while it is presumably not a contingent fact that we have the nature we do, it is a contingent fact that the persons that inhabit the world have the natures they do. Humans couldn’t have these normative risk or moral parameters other than they do, but there could easily have existed non-humans somewhat similar to us who did. The explanation is parallel to the Kripkean explanation of the seeming arbitrariness of water having two hydrogen atoms. Water couldn’t have had a different number of hydrogen atoms, but something similar to water could have had.

More and more, I think something like Natural Law is a powerful framework in normative areas outside of what is normally construe to be moral theory: in decision theory and epistemology. (I hedge with the “normally construe”, because I happen to think that both decision theory and epistemology are branches of moral theory.)

Normative powers and theism

There’s a curious puzzle for the following conjunction of views:

1. theism
2. normative power account of promises.

To introduce the puzzle, think about making baskets. I have the power to make a (pretty shoddy, I expect) basket come into existence. I would exercise the power by going to the river, gathering reeds and weaving them together. But God can directly make the basket come into existence, simply by willing it to exist. The point generalizes: all the things I can make exist, God can simply make exist by willing them to exist.

On the normative power account of promises, by going up to a friend and promising to dance a jig, I make an obligation for myself come into existence. So God can simply will my obligation to dance a jig into existence.

But that seems wrong. Of course, God can bring it about that I am obligated to dance a jig. God has a myriad of ways of doing so. God can, for instance, make a rich person inform me that if and only if I dance a jig, she’ll give a million dollars to a good cause. Or God can simply issue a command to me to dance a jig. But the idea that God can simply will the obligation into existence seems wrong. That would imply that there is a world just like this one, differing only in respects like: (a) God wills that I be obligated to dance a jig, (b) I am obligated to dance a jig and (c) I ignorantly fail in that obligation. That just doesn’t seem right. (The world where God commands me to dance a jig is different: it is essential to a command that it be expressed to the person being commanded.)

Well, but in a sense there are some things God can’t bring about simply by willing them, even though we can. For instance, I can bring into existence a hand-made basket. But God can’t bring a hand-made basket into existence simply by willing it, because the concept of a hand-made basket precludes it being brought into existence in any way but by hand. So our principle that God can directly bring into existence anything we can bring into existence needs to be qualified to exclude things whose description specifies something about how they are brought into existence. (If essentiality of origins holds, then things whose description include de re reference may be like that.)

But obligation to dance a jig doesn’t seem to be like that. It doesn’t seem to carry reference to how it’s brought about, in the way that hand-made basket does. There are multiple ways an obligation to dance a jig can come about, e.g., promises, authority and consequences.

I think a natural law approach has a nice escape from this. Suppose it is a part of the concept of an obligation that it be partly constituted by the nature of the obligated entity. Then God can’t just directly bring about obligations by willing them into existence. He would have to bring about an entity with a particular nature. God could bring it about that an agent is obligated to jig, but he would have to do it either by working through general norms grounded in the agent’s nature (say, by issuing commands if the agent has a nature that requires her to obey) or by creating an agent with a particular sort of nature, say a nature that strives to jig.

And divine command theories also don't have any problem: God commands us to keep promises, and that's all there is to that. There is, however, a difficult question there about the grounds of God's obligation to keep promises.

Should a non-theist care at all about what I said? I think so. Even if there were no God, the thought experiment of God simply willing the normative fact seems illuminating. It suggests that normative facts aren’t just be free-floating facts to be brought about by “normative powers”.

The problem of sleep

Consider this natural law argument:

1. Rational functioning is a basic good.
2. One may never intentionally act against a basic good.
3. In intending to fall asleep, one intends to stop rational function (i.e., thought).
4. Therefore, it is wrong to intend to fall asleep.

One could, I suppose, embrace the conclusion and say something like this: At night, we foresee but do not intend sleep. At night we lie down in bed, accepting but not intending the evil of sleep, much like a person who foresees death might lie down to face death in comfort. But this just won't explain all our practices. First of all, we often lie down and close our eyes to sleep hours before we would expect sleep to overtake us were we to stay up. It seems clear that we lie down and close our eyes in order to accelerate the sleep process. And sometimes, with good reason, we may take medication to help us fall asleep. To condemn such practices would be highly counterintuitive. In fact, one might take the anti-sleep argument as a reductio ad absurdum of natural law reasoning, which appears to be committed to premises (1) and (2).

It is tempting to dismiss the argument by saying that we need sleep to be rational. But that doesn't touch the argument. There are circumstances where the only way to survive is by killing an innocent person--but the end does not justify such a means. Likewise, if (1)-(3) are true, even if the only way we can maintain rational functioning is by sleeping, such a means is impermissible.

Aquinas discusses the question whether sex can be permissible in light of the fact that sex involves such an "excess of pleasure" that "it is incompatible with the act of understanding" (he attributes the latter claim to Aristotle). His answer is that sex can be done in accordance with reason, and what is done in accordance with reason is not sinful. He then says: "For it is not contrary to virtue, if the act of reason be sometimes interrupted for something that is done in accordance with reason, else it would be against virtue for a person to set himself to sleep." Unfortunately, Aquinas doesn't tell us which premise of the anti-sleep argument is false. It is not even clear that he has the same argument clearly in mind. In the case of sex, after all, the hampering of rational function looks like a side-effect (it's interesting that Aquinas doesn't just use Double Effect here) which need not be intended, while in sleep the lack of thought seems central.

For years I've struggled with the anti-sleep argument (but lost no sleep over it). I have two responses. Both of them leave (1) and (2) intact, but query (3). The first response is that in intending to fall asleep one intends to put off one's rational functioning rather than to stop it. A philosopher who leaves his office to walk around the beautiful campus intends that his rational functioning occur outdoors rather than in his office. Likewise, one might intend that one's rational functioning occur in the morning rather than late at night. And the reasons can be similar. The rational functioning outdoors or in the morning is likely to be fresher than in the office or late at night. The analogy here is strongest if one accepts a B-theory of time (and in fact, it may be an argument for a B-theory of time that it makes it easier to justify sleep).

The second answer is that sleep is not actually a cessation of rational function. It is very plausible that unconscious mental processes occur during asleep (it is clear that brain processes do!)--and an important part of sleep involves consciousness anyway. Sleep seems to be an important part of our rational functioning rather than an interruption. Clearly it is not an action against a basic good to switch from one kind of rational functioning to another, say turning one's mind from practical to abstract matters.

A difficulty with the second answer is that some people may not know that rational function continues in sleep. Yet surely such ignorance doesn't make it wrong to fall sleep. I agree. But we can also say that such a person may not intend the cessation of rational functioning. She may simply intend sleep, a particular natural human organic process. And if I am right that sleep is not constituted by a cessation of rational function, then we cannot even say that she "implicitly" acts against rationality or anything like that.

So, the anti-sleep argument fails, and natural lawyers can sleep with a sound conscience.

Parameters in ethics

In physical laws, there are a number of numerical parameters. Some of these parameters are famously part of the fine-tuning problem, but all of them are puzzling. It would be really cool if we could derive the parameters from elegant laws that lack arbitrary-seeming parameters, but as far as I can tell most physicists doubt this will happen. The parameters look deeply contingent: other values for them seem very much possible. Thus people try to come up either with plenitude-based explanations where all values of parameters are exemplified in some universe or other, or with causal explanations, say in terms of universes budding off other universes or a God who causes universes.

Ethics also has parameters. To further spell out an example from Aquinas' discussion of the order of charity, fix a set of specific circumstances involving yourself, your father and a stranger, where both your father and the stranger are in average financial circumstances, but are in danger of a financial loss, and you can save one, but not both, of them from the loss. If it's a choice between saving your father from a ten dollar loss or the stranger from an eleven dollar loss, you should save your father from the loss. But if it's a choice between saving your father from a ten dollar loss or the stranger from a ten thousand dollar loss, you should save the stranger from the larger loss. As the loss to the stranger increases, at some point the wise and virtuous agent will switch from benefiting the father to benefiting the stranger. The location of the switch-over is a parameter.

Or consider questions of imposition of risk. To save one stranger's life, it is permissible to impose a small risk of death on another stranger, say a risk of one in a million. For instance, an ambulance driver can drive fast to save someone's life, even though this endangers other people along the way. But to save a stranger's life, it is not permissible to impose a 99% risk of death on another stranger. Somewhere there is a switch-over.

There are epistemic problems with such switch-overs. Aquinas says that there is no rule we can give for when we benefit our father and when we benefit a stranger, but we must judge as the prudent person would. However I am not interested right now in the epistemic problem, but in the explanatory problem. Why do the parameters have the values they do? Now, granted, the particular switchover points in my examples are probably not fundamental parameters. The amount of money that a stranger needs to face in order that you should help the stranger rather than saving your father from a loss of $10 is surely not a fundamental parameter, especially since it depends on many of the background conditions (just how well off is your father and the stranger; what exactly is your relationship with your father; etc.) Likewise, the saving-risking switchover may well not be fundamental. But just as physicists doubt that one can derive the value of, say, the fine-structure constant (which measures the strength of electromagnetic interactions between charged particles) from laws of nature that contain no parameters other than elegant ones like 2 and π, even though it is surely a very serious possibility that the fine-structure constant isn't truly fundamental, so too it is doubtful that the switchover points in these examples can be derived from fundamental laws of ethics that contain no parameters other than elegant ones. If utilitarianism were correct, it would be an example of a parameter-free theory providing such a derivation. But utilitarianism predicts the incorrect values for the parameters. For instance, it incorrectly predicts that that the risk value at which you need to stop risking a stranger's life to certainly save another stranger is 1, so that you should put one stranger in a position of 99.9999% chance of death if that has a certainty of saving another stranger.

So we have good reason to think that the fundamental laws of ethics contain parameters that suffer from the same sort of apparent contingency that the physical ones do. These parameters, thus, appear to call for an explanation, just as the physical ones do.

But let's pause for a second in regard to the contingency. For there is one prominent proposal on which the laws of physics end up being necessary: the Aristotelian account of laws as grounded in the essences of things. On such an account, for instance, the value of the fine-structure constant may be grounded in the natures of charged particles, or maybe in the nature of charge tropes. However, such an account really does not remove contingency. For on this theory, while it is not contingent that electromagnetic interactions between, say, electrons have the magnitude they do, it is contingent that the universe contains electrons rather than shmelectrons, which are just like electrons, but they engaged in shmelectromagnetic interactions that are just like electromagnetic interactions but with a different quantity playing the role analogous to the fine-structure constant. In a case like this, while technically the laws of physics are necessary, there is still a contingency in the constants, in that it is contingent that we have particles which behave according to this value rather than other particles that would behave differently. Similarly, one might say that it is a necessary truth that such-and-such preferences are to be had between a father and a stranger, and that this necessary truth is grounded in the essence of humanity or in the nature of a paternity trope. But there is still a contingency that our world contains humans and fathers rather than something functionally very similar to humans and fathers but with different normative parameters.

So in any case we have a contingency. We need a meta-ethics with a serious dose of contingency, contingency not just derivable from the sorts of functional behavior the agents exhibit, but contingency at the normative level--for instance, contingency as to appropriate endangering-saving risk tradeoffs. This contingency undercuts the intuitions behind the thesis that the moral supervenes on the non-moral. Here, both Natural Law and Divine Command rise to the challenge. Just as the natures of contingently existing charged objects can ground the fine-structure constants governing their behavior, the natures of contingently existing agents can ground the saving-risking switchover values governing their behavior. And just as occasionalism can have God's causation ground the arbitrary-seeming parameters in the laws of physics, so God's commands can ground the arbitrary-seeming parameters in ethics (the illuminating analogy between occasionalism and Divine Command is due to Mark Murphy). Can other theories rise to the challenge? Maybe. But in any case, it is a genuine challenge.

It would be particularly interesting if there were an analogue to the fine-tuning argument in this case. The fine-tuning argument arises because in some sense "most" of the possible combinations of values of parameters in the laws of physics do not allow for life, or at least for robust, long-lasting and interesting life. I wonder if there isn't a similar argument on the ethics side, say that for "most" of the possible combinations of parameters, we aren't going to have the good moral communities (the good could be prior to the moral, so there may be no circularity in the evaluation)? I don't know. But this would be an interesting research project for a graduate student to think about.

Objection: The switchover points are vague.

Response: I didn't say they weren't. The puzzle is present either way. Vagueness doesn't remove arbitrariness. With a sharp switchover point, just the value of it is arbitrary. But with a vague switchover point, we have a vagueness profile: here something is definitely vaguely obligatory, here it is definitely vaguely vaguely obligatory, here it is vaguely vaguely vaguely obligatory, etc. In fact, vagueness may even multiply arbitrariness, in that there are a lot more degrees of freedom in a vagueness profile than in a single sharp value.

Reverse engineering conscience

I was thinking about the method of cases in ethics, and it made me think of what we do when we apply the method as a reverse engineering of conscience. Reverse engineering of software has been one of the most fun things in my life. When I reverse engineer software, in order to figure out what the software does (e.g., how it stores data in an undocumented file format), I typically employ anywhere between one and three of the following methods:

1. Observe the outputs in the ordinary course of operation.
2. Observe the outputs given carefully crafted inputs.
3. Look under the hood: disassemble the software, trace through the execution, do experiments with modifying the software, etc.

In ethics, there are obvious analogues to (1) and (2): looking at what our conscience says about actual cases that come up in our lives and looking at what our conscience says when fed carefully crafted imaginary cases. Reverse engineering of conscience suffers from two difficulties. The first is that method (3) is largely unavailable. The second is that conscience malfunctions more often than production software typically does, and does so in systematic ways. We can control for the second by reverse engineering the conscience of virtuous people (assuming we have--as I think we do--some independent access to who is virtuous).

But now suppose that this all works, that we really do succeed in reverse engineering conscience, and find out by what principles a properly functioning conscience decides whether an action is right or wrong. Why think this gives us anything of ethical interest? If we have a divine command theory, we have a nice answer: The same being whose commands constitute rightness and wrongness made that conscience, and it is plausible to think that he made it in order to communicate his commands to us. Perhaps more generally theistic theories other than divine command can give us a good answer, in that the faculty of conscience is designed by a being who cares immensely about right behavior. Likewise, if we have a natural law theory, we also have a nice answer: The faculty of conscience is part of our nature, and our nature defines what is right and wrong for us.

But what if conscience is simply the product of unguided evolution? Then by reverse engineering conscience we would not expect to find out anything other than facts about what kinds of behavior-guiding algorithms help us to pass on our genes.

So if all we do in the method of cases is this kind of reverse engineering, then outside of a theistic or natural law context we really should eschew use of the method in ethics.

Prudential rationality

Prudential rationality is about what an agent should do in the light of what is good or bad for the agent. Prudential or self-interested rationality is a major philosophical topic and considered fairly philosophically fundamental. Why? There are many (infinitely many) other categories of goods and bads, and for each category it makes sense to ask what one should do in the light of that category. For instance, family rationality is concerned with what an agent should do in the light of what is good or bad for people in the agent's family; leftward rationality is concerned with the good and bad for the people located to the agent's left; nearest-neighbor rationality with the good or bad for the person other than the agent whose center of mass is closest to the agent's center of mass; green-eye rationality with the good or bad for green-eyed people; and descendant rationality with the good or bad for one's descendants. Why should prudential rationality get singled out as a topic?

It's true that in terms of agent-relative categories, the agent is particularly natural. But the agent's descendants is also a quite natural agent-relative category.

This question reminds me of this thought (inspired by Nancy Cartwright's work). Physicists study things that don't exist. They study the motion of objects in isolated gravitational systems, in isolated quantum systems, and so on. But there are no isolated systems, and any system includes a number of other forces. It is, however, sometimes useful to study the influences that particular forces would have on their own.

However, in the end what we want to predict in physics is how real things move. And they move in the light of all the forces. And likewise in action theory we want to figure out how real people should act. And they should act in the light of all the goods and bads. We get useful insight into how and why real things move by studying how they would move if they were isolated or if only one force was relevant. We likewise get useful insight into how and why real people should act by studying what actions would be appropriate if they were isolated or if only one set of considerations were relevant. As a result we have people who study prudential rationality and people who study epistemic rationality.

It is nonetheless crucial not to forget that the study of how one should act in the light of a subset of the goods and bads is not a study of how one should act, but only a study of how one would need to act if that subset were all that's relevant, just as the study of gravitational systems is not a study of how things move, but only of how things would move if gravity were all that's relevant.

That said, I am not sure prudential rationality is actually that useful to study. Its main value is that it restricts the goods and bads to one person, thereby avoiding the difficult problem of balancing goods and bads between persons (and maybe even non-persons). But that value can be had by studying not prudential or self-interested rationality, but one-recipient rationality, where one studies how one should act in the light of the goods and bads to a single recipient, whether that recipient is or is not the agent.

It might seem innocent to make the simplifying assumption that the single recipient is the agent. But I think that doing this has a tendency to hide important questions that become clearer when we do not make this assumption. For instance, when one studies risk-averseness, we lose sight of the crucially important question of whose risk-averseness is relevant: the agent's or the recipient's? Presumably both, but they need to interact in a subtle and important way. To study risk-averseness in the special case where the recipient is the agent risks losing sight of something crucial in the phenomenon, just as one loses a lot of structure when instead of studying a mathematical function of two variables, say, f(x,y)=sin x cos y, one studies merely how that function behaves in the special case where the variables are equal. Although one does simplify by not studying the interaction between the agent's and the recipient's risk-averseness, one does so at the cost of confusing the two and not knowing which aspect of one's results is due to the risk-averseness of the person qua agent and which part is due to the risk-averseness of the person qua recipient.

Similarly, when one is interested--as decision theorists centrally are--in decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, it is important to distinguish between the relevance of the uncertainty of the person qua agent and the uncertainty of the person qua recipient. When we do that, we might discover a structure that was hidden in the special case where the agent and recipient are the same. For instance, we may discover that with respect to means the agent's uncertainty is much more important than the recipient's, but with respect to ends the recipient's uncertainty is very important.

To go back to the gravitational analogy, it's very useful to consider the gravitational interaction between particles x and y. But we lose an enormous amount of structure when we restrict our attention to the case where x=y. We would do better to make the simplifying assumption that we're considering two different particles, and then think of the one-particle case as a limiting case. Likewise for rationality. While we do need to study simplified cases, we need to choose the cases in a way that does not lose too much structure.

Of course, if we have an Aristotelian theory on which all one's actions are fundamentally aimed at one's own good, then what I say above will be unhelpful. For in that case, prudential rationality does capture the central structure of rationality. But such theories are simply false.