Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2010) 13:125–136 DOI 10.1007/s10677-009-9210-6
Sentimentalism: Its Scope and Limits John Skorupski
Accepted: 1 October 2009 / Published online: 21 October 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract The subject of this paper is sentimentalism. In broad terms this is the view that value concepts, moral concepts, practical reasons—some or all of these—can be analysed in terms of feeling, sentiment or emotion. More specifically, the paper discusses the following theses: (i)
there are reasons to feel (‘evaluative’ reasons) that are not reducible to practical or epistemic reasons (ii) value is analysable in terms of these reasons to feel. (iii) all practical reasons are in one way or another grounded in evaluative reasons. (i) and (ii) are accepted while (iii) is rejected. Keywords Sentimentalism . Reasons . Egoism . Blame
1 Sentimentalism: Humean and Non-Humean In broad terms sentimentalism is the view that value concepts, moral concepts, practical reasons—some or all of these—can be analysed in terms of feeling, sentiment or emotion. When we consider sentimentalism in moral philosophy there is a tendency to think immediately of Hume, and of such famous dicta as that “Morality … is more properly felt than judg’d of”, or that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (Treatise, III.ii.ii, II.iii.iii). Now it is arguable that Hume’s overall epistemology in fact commits him to outright nihilism about all reasons: that is, to the view that no statement of the form ‘There is reason to = ’ is ever true. Hume himself might have agreed with that, at least when in the study, though no doubt not when out of it. However people have found more positive doctrines in Hume. Examples include a belief/desire psychology that repudiates the distinction between desire and will as motivating factors, or the normative claim that there is reason to do something only if it will prospectively satisfy a desire. And these doctrines have in turn lead some philosophers to expressivist or dispositionalist views in meta-ethics. J. Skorupski (*) University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK e-mail:
[email protected]
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However the sentimentalism that I am interested in does not go down any of these Humean, or neo-Humean, routes. In one way it is as distant from Hume as sentimentalism can be, because its starting point is not merely that there are reasons for actions and beliefs, but that there are reasons for feelings as well. Thus it expands the domain of reasons, instead of shrinking it to zero. Nor is this sentimentalism committed to the consequences people have drawn from Hume. It can be cognitivist rather than expressivist at the metanormative level; in moral psychology it can and does reject desire/belief psychology and accept that a distinction exists between will and feeling; in the normative theory of practical reasons it can reject the view that a reason for an action exists only if that action prospectively satisfies a desire. In many ways this sentimentalism has more affinities to Adam Smith’s position in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments than to David Hume. It is this form of sentimentalism whose scope and limits I want briefly to outline, though I shall pay more attention to scope than to limits.1
2 Reasons First something must briefly be said about reasons. Reasons are facts that stand in a reason relation to responses (in the way that fathers are males who stand in a relation of fatherhood to children). By a ‘response’ I mean an action, a belief or a feeling. It is crucial for our purposes to note that we do not just talk about practical and epistemic reasons, but that we also talk about reasons for feeling—for affective responses, such as gratitude, resentment and so forth. Reasons for belief are epistemic reason, reasons for action are practical reasons—reasons for feeling we can call ‘evaluative’ reasons. They are constantly in our conversations and our minds. I give some examples: He has reason to feel proud of himself: despite all the pressure he won the match. That electrician has failed to turn up again! Yes, you have every reason to be annoyed with him. There’s good reason for my gratitude—she helped me out of a very tight corner. There is no reason for you to feel ashamed of yourself—the mistake you made in reading the navigation chart was perfectly understandable. In each case there is a fact that is, or constitutes, or in the last example fails to constitute, a reason for an affective response. Now the first thesis of the kind of sentimentalism we are considering here is that there are evaluative reasons which are not reducible to epistemic or practical reasons. Next, if reasons are facts that stand in a reason relation to responses, what are these reason relations? I submit that there are three. Let ‘ = ’ ranges over actions, beliefs, and feelings. First, one can say that some particular facts are a reason, weaker or stronger, for some person at some time to = . Second, one can say that taking everything that counts for and against into account there is more or less strong overall reason for a person at a time to = . And third, one can say that some facts give a person at a time sufficient reason to = . That gives us the following relational predicates: Specific reasons of degree: facts πi are at time t a reason of degree of strength d for x to = – R(πi, t, d, x, = ) 1 This is the revised text of a lecture given at the Ethical Theory and Moral Practice conference in Amsterdam, March 2008. It outlines a fuller account of sentimentalism’s scope and limits that will be presented in John Skorupski, The Domain of Reasons, Part III, (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010).
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Overall reasons of degree: facts πi are at time t overall reason of degree of strength d for x to = – Ro(πi, t, d, x, = ) Sufficient reasons: facts πi are at time t a sufficient reason for x to = – S(πi, t, x, = ). Thus we have three irreducible reason predicates which range over three distinct kinds of state, attitude or act: beliefs, feelings and actions. Propositions containing these predicates are true or false. In particular there are true and false propositions about what there is reason to feel. This is the framework for our discussion of sentimentalism.
3 Sentimentalism About Value and Sentimentalism About Practical Reasons Sentimentalism as understood here can come in a weaker and a stronger form. In its weaker form it is the view (i) that there are irreducible reasons to feel and (ii) that value is analysable in terms of these reasons to feel. We can call this sentimentalism about value. As to (i): there is an immanent rationality of the feelings. That is, the nature and strength of evaluative reasons can be assessed only from within, in their own hermeneutic terms. Consider again the examples above. We understand that when you win the match despite all the pressure, you have reason to be proud—that when someone who is supposed to be doing a job for you fails yet again to turn up you have reason to be annoyed—that you have good reason to be grateful to someone who helps you out of a very tight corner—and no reason to feel ashamed of yourself just because you made a very understandable mistake in reading the navigation chart. This is hermeneutic or interpretative understanding, an understanding that stems from our knowledge of what those feelings are. (ii) says that all value terms can be analysed in terms of reasons; but not that all of them are analysable in terms of evaluative reasons. The claim is not that one should analyse the meaning of ‘good evidence’ say, or ‘a good power drill’, in terms of evaluative reasons. Value-terms span the whole tripartite field of reasons. However, often when we talk about value what we have in mind is not so much epistemic or practical value as aesthetic and ethical value in the broadest sense; or as one might better say, if the much-discussed ‘buckpassing’ analysis is accepted,2 as the sentimentalist thinks it should be, we have in mind all those value terms that are analysable in terms of evaluative reasons. From now on I shall use the term ‘value’ in this way. In its stronger form, sentimentalism adds a thesis about practical reasons: (iii)
all practical reasons are in one way or another grounded in evaluative reasons.
This is universal sentimentalism about practical reasons. This stronger thesis does not seem to me to be true: I think there are practical reasons that are not grounded in evaluative reasons. It is here then that we come to the limits of sentimentalism. Nonetheless it remains true, and important, that very many practical reasons are indeed grounded in evaluative reasons. By what logic, though? If at least some practical reasons are somehow grounded in evaluative reasons, there must be some principle or principles that bridge the gap from propositions about evaluative reasons to propositions about practical reasons. There is, it seems to me, such a principle; we can call it the Bridge principle. 2
I defend this analysis of ‘good’ in Skorupski 2007
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4 The Bridge Principle All feelings tend to manifest in characteristic behaviour. In particular, many feelings dispose to intentional actions that are characteristic of the particular feeling. This does not apply to all feelings; joy for example does not seem to prompt to any characteristic action, as against involuntary behavioural expression. The Bridge Principle applies to that narrower class of feelings which have a characteristic propensity to prompt one to some type of intentional action. A first stab at it is this: (1)
If there’s reason for x to feel there’s reason for x to do what feeling characteristically disposes one to do—to do the ‘-prompted action’.
Here are some examples. Out of sheer goodness of heart, someone does me an unrequested good turn. That fact certainly gives me reason to feel grateful. And because I have reason to feel grateful to him for his good turn, I have reason to act from that gratitude, for example by thanking him or giving him a present or by returning the favour. These are various forms of the characteristic intentional action to which gratitude prompts. Suppose on the other hand that he did me some undeserved harm. In that case I have good reason to feel resentful. And because I have reason to feel resentment I have reason to express that resentment, by protesting, insisting on an apology or even by seeking amends. Likewise, if there’s reason to be frightened of something then there’s reason to avoid it; if there’s reason to be bored by something then there’s reason not to attend to it. Flight and attention-withdrawal are the characteristic actions prompted by fear and boredom. Fear may also root one to the spot, boredom may make one yawn; but these are involuntary responses, not intentional actions. Note that the Bridge principle is stated in terms of specific reasons, not overall or sufficient reasons. It’s certainly not true, for example, that if there is sufficient reason to be frightened there is sufficient reason to run away. There may be all sorts of other reasons not to run away. Equally, there may also be reasons to do the -prompted action other than the one that is captured by the Bridge principle. For example there is often reason to thank just because thanking is an ‘expression’ of gratitude. It is not true, by contrast, that there is a reason to run away because running away is an ‘expression’ of fear. Running away is not usually an expression of fear, in this sense of ‘expression’. That is, it is not done in order to show to others that one is afraid. The extra reason, in the case of gratitude, is that showing one feels the sentiment can be an appropriate thing to do in its own right—an important part of social reciprocity and co-operation. In the case of resentment, or boredom, in contrast, the very same consideration may give reason not to express, show, what one feels. In all cases however the reason that comes via the Bridge Principle remains. Now (1) is a conditional. It does not entail (1a)
the fact that there’s reason for x to feel is a reason for x to do what feeling prompts one to do.
Is this stronger claim true? Certainly the existence of the Bridge-based reason is dependent on the existence of the evaluative reason. There is Bridge-based reason to thank because, in virtue of there being, reason to feel grateful. However that does not make (1a) true. It is not the existential fact that there is some reason for me to feel grateful that constitutes a reason for me to say thank you. Rather, the fact that you have done me a good turn is both a reason to feel grateful and a reason to thank you. In general the fact that is a reason to feel , whatever that fact may be, is always also a
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reason to do the -prompted action; and it is a reason to do that action in virtue of being a reason to feel . A Bridge-based practical reason exists in virtue of the existence of an underlying evaluative reason. Thus we have the following final statement of the Bridge Principle: (2)
Whatever fact gives x reason to feel gives x reason to do the -prompted action, in virtue of being a reason to feel .
What is the status of the Bridge Principle? I believe it is a priori but I do not claim that it is true by any definition. Rather, for each action-prompting feeling or sentiment, , to grasp the nature of , in particular its proper intentional object, is to grasp the truth of the principle for that instance. Our understanding of the nature of feelings is ineliminably, though of course not wholly, normative. Emotions have their own hermeneutic principles, constitutively linking the reasons for them and the actions they prompt with their intentional objects. A hermeneutic principle is a principle whose truth one can see for oneself (as against learning of its truth by testimony) only by experiencing and apprehending in one’s imagination the emotion which it concerns.3 It is for example by grasping in one’s experience and imagination what it is to feel grateful that one understands the link between gratitude’s intentional object and the action to which it prompts. A ‘gratitude-blind’ person could not grasp that link. So we have found a way in which some practical reasons at least are grounded in evaluative reasons. One knows, for example, that some particular facts are a reason to thank someone by understanding what gratitude is, hence knowing them to be reasons to feel grateful and understanding the link between gratitude and thanks. If all practical reasons could be shown to fall under the Bridge Principle we would have a purely sentimentalist account of practical reasons Any reason to do something could be traced back, via Bridge, to something there was reason to feel. If this were so, then, the epistemic basis of practical as well as evaluative reasons—the basis on which they are known—would be our affective dispositions. For in the first place, our knowledge of evaluative reasons is so based. Furthermore, understanding a feeling includes understanding what actions it prompts. The Bridge principle channels knowledge from feelings to actions: in virtue of knowing that there is a reason to feel something one knows there is a reason to do the thing prompted by that feeling. In this way, on a universal sentimentalism about practical reasons, the affective dispositions would become the sole epistemic basis of practical as well as of evaluative reasons. Furthermore, evaluative reasons would become, via the Bridge principle, the sole normative source of practical reasons: practical reasons would exist solely in virtue of the existence of some underlying evaluative reasons. How plausible is this strong programme? Its plausibility is greatly strengthened by two points that I now want to discuss, namely, that one can give a sentimentalist account of a person’s good in terms of what there is reason for that person to desire, and that one can give a sentimentalist account of moral wrongness, and thus of all the moral concepts, in terms of what there is reason to blame. I am not going to defend either of these claims fully here, but I do think a pretty full defence of them can be given, and thus my overall aim is to consider the state of play, so to speak, if they are indeed defensible.
3
I assume that one cannot apprehend in imagination an emotion one has no capacity to experience. But if that is false imaginative apprehension is enough.
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5 The Concept of a Person’s Good Take first the concept of a person’s good. The sentimentalist thesis is that a person’s good consists in the realisation of whatever there’s reason for that person to desire. A state of affairs is part of a person’s good if and only if there is reason for this person to desire that it obtain. One can also say that a person’s good consists in the realisation of whatever is desirable for that person, using this phrase to mean whatever there’s reason for that person to desire. ‘Desire’ can be used, and often is, in a narrow way. In this narrow usage, I may choose to go and visit a very boring relative, living on his own, because I think I ought to do so, even though I don’t have the slightest desire to do so. The fact that I lack any desire to visit him may well be something I’m not very proud of, but being honest with myself, I have to admit that it is so. In general, it can be the case that I do something because I think I should, for a variety of reasons, moral and non-moral, without feeling any desire to do so. In this quite ordinary sense I can choose not to do what I most desire to do. On the contrary I may choose to do what I don’t have the slightest desire to do. I will refer to this as the substantive sense of ‘desire’. ‘Want’ can also be used in this substantive sense: I really don’t want to visit him, but I think I should. Another perfectly ordinary usage, of ‘want’ in particular, though also of ‘desire,’ is what can be called the ‘aim-eliciting’ use. I can in this sense ask ‘Why do you want to do that?’, or ‘Why did you want to do that?’ meaning to ask you for your aim, purpose or intention in doing it. In asking you the question I am asking about your aims or objectives—why you have or had this particular thing on your list of things to be done, if possible and opportune. Because there can be intermediate aims, aims one has in order to achieve further aims, there can also be instrumental desires in the aim-eliciting sense of ‘desire’. One can want to do this thing in order to achieve something else that one wants to achieve. In contrast, there are no instrumental desires in the substantive sense. The distinction between instrumental and final reasons has no application to evaluative reasons, any more than it does to epistemic reasons. Just as there is no such thing as an instrumental reason or a final reason to believe something, so there is no such thing as an instrumental or a final reason to admire, hate, love or desire something. If I think that some action is a means to something I fervently desire, I may well do it with a good deal of eagerness—however that action itself is not something I substantively desire to do; unless there has been substantive goaldisplacement my eagerness stems from anticipation of that which I substantively desire. The analysis of a person’s good refers to substantive desires. Substantive desire should be placed with the feelings, not with the will. Hence when we assess whether there’s reason for a person substantively to desire something we’re assessing an evaluative, not a practical reason. The facts which constitute a reason to desire something are the facts which make it desirable, just as the facts which constitute a reason to admire something are the facts which make it admirable. There may of course be an instrumental practical reason to bring it about that one believes something or desires something, so far as one has the power to do that. There are the all-too-well-discussed types of case in which, for example, one is offered a million pounds if one believes that there are Martians amongst us or if one desires to sleep in a cesspit. In these cases one has instrumental practical reason to bring it about that one believes or desires appropriately, but no epistemic reason to believe or evaluative reason to desire. Note therefore that when I say that a person’s good is what there is reason for that person to desire, I am not talking about a practical reason to bring it about that one desires something but about an evaluative reason to desire it, a reason which admits no distinction between ‘instrumental’ and ‘final’. Thus the sentimentalist proposal is that an object
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contributes to a person’s good if and only if there is evaluative reason for that person to desire it substantively. The epistemic criterion for reasons to desire is the same as in the case of all evaluative reasons—mainly though not only a person’s actual affective dispositions. We do not need to delay on the various refinements that could usefully be added to this, nor on the difficulties of knowing what people actually desire, let alone what there is reason for them to desire. Their desires, at any rate, are bases for judging what there is reason for them to desire. I don’t think a naturalistic truthcondition can be given for propositions about what there is reason to desire, any more than for propositions about reasons in general. But for present purposes we can leave that issue open. However another issue requires attention. It is not particularly controversial to assert that if something is part of my good there is reason for me to desire it. But many would say that there can be reason for me to desire an object even though it’s no part of my good. If that is right, then defining personal good in terms of what there is reason for a person to desire is too broad. People desire many things such as the good of certain others, or states of affairs whose coming to pass they will not be aware of, and perhaps couldn’t be—for example because they’ll be dead by that time. One view is that these desires are not reason-supported. (By a reasonsupported feeling I mean a feeling there is reason to have.) Another is that they are reasonsupported but that achieving them is not a part of one’s good. The second view is incompatible with my sentimentalist proposal, since on that proposal the good of these others, and the existence of these states of affairs, is a part of your good. But I want to argue that even though these desires can be reason-supported my definition of a person’s good is not too broad. What there is reason for a person to want depends on his affective nature and how it has developed. There are some potentials that are determinate at the beginning, and some that are determined by basic life-choices and also just by the accidents of life. In particular there will be determination from the ties and commitments in which the person comes to be contained, by choice or otherwise. Putting it another way, there is an important selfconstructive element in a person’s good. Suppose an art-collector, caught in his burning house, shouts out to us ‘Don’t worry about me, save my art collection’. One could certainly describe him as caring more about his art-collection than his own well-being. But one could also say that the fate of his artcollection has become a part of his good. The art collector may have perfectly good reason to care more about his art-collection than about his personal flourishing. He has spent a lifetime on it, he has put most of himself into it, and he quite reasonably wants to pass it on to others. This is a substantive desire, which turns on his love for the pictures, his project of benefiting others in the particular way he can, and his craving for recognition. It seems to me a reasonable desire. If it is, then on the sentimentalist proposal saving the art-collection contributes to his good. It’s even possible that in this desperate situation, where either he burns or his art collection does, saving his art collection contributes more to his good, though obviously not to his physical and mental flourishing, than saving him. That would be so if there is sufficient reason for him to desire the saving of the art collection more strongly than the saving of his own life. The same may go for a drowning mother who desires more strongly that her drowning children be saved than that she should be. That can be a reasonable state of desire. If it is, then the good of her children has become a more important part of her good than her own flourishing, in the narrow sense referred to above. To say this is not to confuse the good of a person with what is good ‘from their point of view’. The latter phrase, if it means anything clear, means what they believe to be good. No doubt the mother thinks that the saving of her children is good. We think that too. But it is also, for her, a part of her good. As for the art collector, he thinks his collection is valuable, and that
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saving it is good. But his relation to that good is different to ours. Because the collection is valuable, and a value made by his life-time efforts, its preservation has become part of his good. A deep feature of the good of human individuals is that human beings are able to achieve this kind of self-enlargement by identifying with other objects, people, causes, and assimilating the good of those ‘significant others’ into their own good. Human beings are by nature a kind of being whose good can transcend its own physical and mental flourishing. We can say, it is true, that the art collector and the mother sacrifice themselves. But that does not show that what they do is not a part of their good. Someone may go to civic meetings which she has no desire at all to go to, out of pure conscientiousness. She may be said to ‘sacrifice herself’. What then of someone who has become thoroughly identified with the town, enjoys making himself useful, and goes for that reason? Does he sacrifice himself? He wants to go and his desire to go is reasonable, even if he’s going to find this particular meeting boring. He wouldn’t say he was sacrificing himself. Contributing to the good of the town has become a part of his good. All the same, at the end of his civic career, he deserves thanks for the sacrifices of time and energy that he’s made. He was giving up, for the good of the town, something rightly considered as precious—his time and energy—which he was entitled to use as he thought fit. It would be a misconceived response to say ‘Well, he only did it because he felt like doing it.’ Pursuing something as a part of your good is not necessarily acting selfishly or self-interestedly in any normal sense. On the contrary, making the good of the town a part of your own good is in itself admirable, and something that deserves thanks. We can also go on the offensive, by asking if some reason-supported desires are nothing to do with one’s good, what is the difference between those that are and those that are not? If it is too broad to characterize a person’s good as that which there is reason for that person to desire, how should one characterize it more narrowly? And furthermore, once we’ve acknowledged that not all action is desire-based, what motivates the posited further distinction between substantive desires for my own good and substantive desires for things that form no part of my good? What is its ethical point? A wide range of ethical positions give an important role to the notion of a person’s good. They hold that my own good, or that of people I care for, or that of people in general, is something I should in one way or another take account of. Now suppose our proposal is wrong. In that case what contributes to a person’s good and what there is reason for that person to desire can diverge. If this divergence arises, then, what should we be taking account of—the good of the person in question, or what there is reason for them to desire? If an outcome promotes a person’s good, but is not an outcome that there is reason for the person to desire, does that give us reason to produce the outcome—for that person’s sake? Or, vice versa, if it promotes an outcome that there is reason for them to desire, but does not promote their good? It is hard to see what normative authority the notion of a person’s good can have, if it diverges in this way from what there is reason for the person to desire, or what criterion could be used to determine the extent of the divergence.
6 Moral Wrongness So much for sentimentalism about the concept of a person’s good. What now about the concept of moral wrongness? Here I think the following sentimentalist account can be defended: (3)
It is morally wrong for x to α if and only if, were x to α from the beliefs that are actually warranted for x then either x would be blameworthy for α-ing or extenuating circumstances would apply to x’s α-ing.
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The qualifications about warranted beliefs and extenuating circumstances are required, I believe, but they need not detain us and I will not go into them. The important thing for present purposes is the basic idea, which is to characterise moral wrongness, and thereby the other moral concepts, via the notion of blameworthiness. There is a causal meaning of ‘blame’ in which one can blame the weather for the train delay, etc. Saying the weather is to blame is just saying that it is the proximate cause of the unfortunate result. It is not this causal sense of ‘blame’ that is in play in (3). There is also moral sense. One can say, for example, both that Mary was to blame for the misunderstanding, and that she should not actually be blamed—she was justifiably attending to something else that was happening. She was to blame in the causal sense, but not in the moral sense. Blame in (3) is to be understood in the moral sense. Now when we talk of blaming someone in this sense we are normally referring to a judgement, or an action that is the expression of that judgement. The judgement is a judgement about the appropriateness of a sentiment—‘the blame-feeling.’ To judge that someone is morally blameworthy is to judge that the blame-feeling towards them is reasonsupported, that there is sufficient reason for it, whether or not one actually feels it. The act of blaming is the act of expressing that judgement. For convenience, I am going to use the term ‘blame’ to refer to the feeling rather than the judgement and the action. Thus in (3) ‘blameworthy’ means ‘blame-feeling-worthy’: there is sufficient reason for the sentiment of blame. It may of course happen, for a variety of reasons, that though the blame-feeling is reason-supported and the judgement that it is is warranted, it should not be expressed. Given these elucidations, I claim that (3) is a priori. Now it might be granted that (3) is an a priori truth; but denied that it can be a definition of ‘morally wrong.’ On the contrary—blame in the moral sense is defined as that sentiment which there is reason to feel towards something that is morally wrong. So (3) is true by definition—but by definition of ‘blame’. ‘Morally wrong’ is semantically primitive in the sense that it is indefinable. I accept this objection as a point, so to speak, about the lexicon of English. But I think the concept of the morally wrong can nonetheless be characterised in terms of the concept of an evaluative reason for blame. On this approach to the concept of moral wrongness we cannot appeal to a definition of ‘blame’ as ‘that sentiment which there is reason to feel towards something that is morally wrong.’ To be fruitful, this approach must characterise the blame sentiment without appealing to the notion of moral wrongness. How to do this? In general, we characterise emotions by the objects that arouse them and the actions which they prompt. We may indicate the objects by showing exemplary cases, and where possible, by stating some general condition on the objects. Thus we could fix the blame-feeling by saying that it is what one is disposed to feel towards an agent in a variety of sufficiently well-described cases, for example towards an agent who steals, or who ignores a person who has fallen ill in the street. Furthermore, a general condition on moral blame is important: the object of the blame-feeling must be something which we think the agent had reason not to do, and which we think the agent could have refrained from doing. This is of course not sufficient; the nature of the reasons matters. It is the fact that the agent did the thing, despite those reasons, that gives sufficient reason for responding with the sentiment of blame. A further fix on the blame sentiment comes from another direction—from the characteristic action which it prompts. Blame does not prompt, like anger, towards attack, or like fear, towards flight. It is not resentment, because resentment is specifically occasioned by what is taken as injury to oneself. Gratitude and resentment are agent-relative feelings, constituting the realm of
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benefits and torts, whereas the blame-feeling is agent-neutral and constitutes the realm of right and wrong. If there is reason for anyone to feel it towards the object, there is reason for everyone to feel it. Its characteristic behavioural quality is a chilliness or a shrinking away or withdrawal rather than aggression. This is particularly clear in one’s own case, in the experience of self-blame or guilt—which could hardly be resentment directed against oneself, but is indeed a shrinking from oneself. Blame, I have elsewhere argued, disposes towards withdrawal of recognition.4 To withdraw, withhold or refuse recognition is to cut off relations or refuse to enter into them, to exclude, in however partial and temporary a way; in more extreme cases it leads to ostracism, casting out, outlawing. Like fear, blame disposes to the creation of distance between oneself and the object; but the difference is that the disposition of fear is to fly, whereas the disposition of blame is to cut off, exclude. Guilt, self-blame, is the withdrawal of recognition from oneself. (Hence ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.’) This sketch of the blame sentiment could be filled in much further. In particular, an essential part of the full story is that withdrawal of recognition holds out the possibility of reconciliation. But let’s assume for the sake of discussion that we can fix the sentiment clearly enough to allow non-question-begging introduction of a term that denotes the sentiment: ‘b’. ‘b’ refers to the sentiment that is (i) the appropriate response to certain representative examples of belief and action, and that (ii) prompts a characteristic type of action, namely, withdrawal of recognition. We then have the following definition: (3a)
It is morally wrong for x to α = Df were x to α from the beliefs that are actually warranted for x, and without any extenuating circumstances, there would be sufficient reason to b x for α-ing.
7 Strong Sentimentalism If the accounts of personal good and moral wrongness I have given are correct, what is the prospect for strong sentimentalism? I mentioned earlier a general condition the sentiment of blame must meet to be reason-supported. This condition said, in part, that the object of the blame-feeling must be something which the agent had reason not to do. It makes no sense to blame someone for doing something there was no reason for them not to do. Now we can develop that point into the following principle: (4)
If, were x to α from warranted factual beliefs, either x would be b-worthy for α-ing or extenuating circumstances would apply to x’s α-ing, then x has reason not to α. From (3a) and (4), it follows that
(5)
If it is morally wrong for x to α then x has reason not to α.
Thus on the sentimentalist account moral wrongness depends on the existence of reasons. What does not follow, however, and is not true, is that the fact that it is morally wrong for x to α is a reason for x not to α. Moral wrongness does not constitute in itself a reason not to act; rather, moral wrongness supervenes on the kind of reasons there are not to act. This is important from the point of view of a sentimentalist theory of practical reasons. It means that the sentimentalist account of moral wrongness makes no contribution whatsoever to the theory of practical reasons, except in so far as it itself falls under the 4
Skorupski 1999, part III.
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Bridge principle. That is: if there’s reason to blame someone, there’s reason to withdraw recognition. The Bridge principle, as we have seen, provides a normative source of practical reasons. A strong sentimentalist view would be that it is the only such source. In that case the practical reasons on which moral obligation and moral wrongness supervene would have to come from the Bridge principle.
8 Egoism Now the Bridge principle certainly provides quite a lot. In particular, it combines with our analysis of personal good to generate formally egoistic reasons. For what is the action prompted by the substantive desire to (have) O? Pursuit of O. Thus we have the following special case of the Bridge Principle: Whatever gives x reason to desire O gives x reason to pursue O Now since by definition O is a part of my good just if there is reason for me to desire O, we can substitute into this special case of the Bridge principle, producing the following result: Whatever makes O a part of x’s good gives x reason to pursue O. Thus the Bridge principle generates formally egoistic reasons. (I say ‘formally egoistic’ because they need not in any ordinary sense be selfish. Whether formally egoistic reasons are selfish depends on your substantive theory of personal good.) However the Bridge principle does not entail the truth of egoism. What egoism says is that all practical reasons are formally egoistic. The Bridge principle actually entails the opposite, because it generates practical reasons based on evaluative reasons other than reasons to desire. If for example a performance is excellent, there is reason to admire it. So by the Bridge principle there is reason to applaud it. But as a matter of fact I may feel no admiration and no desire to applaud it. Indeed there is no reason for me to desire to applaud it—there is just reason for me to applaud it. It is important that in general there may be reason to do something, even though there’s no reason to desire to do it. I have an aunt and an uncle, let’s say. My aunt is a highly amusing gossip and a good cook, whereas my uncle has become a tedious curmudgeon. Thus there’s good reason to desire the company of the first, but no good reason to desire the company of the second. Yet if I don’t visit him no-one else will. So that’s a reason to visit him. I probably should do it. But this is a non-egoistic reason, and so if it is a reason egoism is false. There may be reason to pursue something, even though there’s no reason to desire it. Thus for example there’s some reason to pursue the well-being of anyone at all, at least in the sense of helping where one can, but it doesn’t follow that there’s reason to desire the well-being of anyone at all. When it comes to the well-being of most individuals on this planet, let alone on other planets, most of us quite reasonably fail to have any desires whatsoever on the matter. The people whose well-being I substantively desire are people with whom I’m affectively involved, in one way or another. As regards others, if I’m decent I wish them well, or rather, I will them well, where ‘willing them well’ refers to a standing disposition of good will which includes something like a readiness to help when it’s reasonable and possible to do so.
9 The Good and the Right These examples bring us to the limits of strong sentimentalism, because they strongly suggest that there are practical reasons that are not Bridge-based. Indeed I believe that
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critics of sentimentalism have been right in one important respect. Sentimentalism gives no satisfactory account of the various ways in which certain requirements of impartiality enter into practical reason. Some requirements of impartiality involve the notion of desert, and these can be accounted for in terms of sentimentalism, inasmuch as they trace back to agent-neutral feelings such as admiration and blame. But other requirements of impartiality enter in a different way, for example through doctrines of universal rights and doctrines of impersonal good. What is their epistemic basis? I believe it is constituted by pure dispositions of the disinterested will, not by dispositions of the feelings. If we accept that the epistemic basis of all practical reasons consists in dispositions of the will, then we have something like Kant’s view of the relationship between will and practical reason. Kant however thought these dispositions of the will were all pure, in the sense that they were not dependent on anything else, whereas the Bridge principle gives us dispositions of the will that depend on dispositions of the feelings. But he was right to think that some dispositions of the will, the disinterested ones, are pure, and these give us the epistemic basis of impartiality, or the good will. In a longer discussion I would argue that the practical normative sources that rest on this basis bifurcate into two: essentially the Good and the Right. The principle of Good simply says that there is impartial or agent-neutral reason to promote the good of anyone at all. The principle underlying theories of rights is less easy to state. It involves the notion of what a person may permissibly demand of others, which is basic to the idea of a right. It then says that if it is morally permissible for x to demand that y αs, that fact is a reason for y not to fail to α without x’s permission. It is at least not clear that this Demand principle can be reduced to the principle of Good. Indeed I believe that there are just three normative sources of practical reasons. One is provided by evaluative reasons via the Bridge principle; its epistemic basis is the affective dispositions. The other two underlie impartial good and impartial right. The epistemic basis of these two principles is the dispositions of the disinterested will. They therefore lie beyond the scope of a sentimentalist theory of reasons, and beyond the scope of this discussion.
References Skorupski J (1999) Ethical explorations. Oxford University Press, Oxford Skorupski J (2007) Buckpassing about goodness. In: Rønnow-Rasmussen T, Petersson B, Josefsson J, Egonsson D (eds) Hommage à Wlodek. Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz. http:// www.fil.lu.se/hommageawlodek/site/papper/SkorupskiJohn.pdf