[I\u2019ve succumbed to the urge to use italics in this, although my original aim was to express these thoughts as a thread of Tweets. \u2014 Jeremy]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 [I\u2019ve succumbed to the urge to use italics in this, although my original aim was to express these thoughts as a thread of Tweets. \u2014 Jeremy] 1There is a variety of different kinds of ought. For example, rationally, \u201canyone who believes that p and that p implies q ought to believe that q\u201d. Prudentially, \u201cwe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":84,"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bowmangraphics.ie\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
There is a variety of different kinds of ought<\/em>. For example, rationally, \u201canyone who believes that p<\/em> and that p<\/em> implies q<\/em> ought to believe that q<\/em>\u201d. Prudentially, \u201cwe ought to take vitamin D daily\u201d. In chess, \u201cplayers ought to get their opponent\u2019s king into checkmate\u201d. And so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course there are moral<\/em> oughts as well. But focusing on moral oughts tends to cloud our judgement on the nature of oughts in general, because most of us yearn for something we can\u2019t have: \u201cmoral facts\u201d. To grasp the true nature of oughts, let\u2019s accept that they are non-factual<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An ought enjoins a particular sort of behaviour<\/em>. It might explicitly or implicitly contain a description of the sort of behaviour it enjoins, or explicitly or implicitly contain a description of a goal \u2014 the state of affairs the enjoined behaviour promotes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words, oughts have \u201ccontents\u201d. This means they have something in common with other claims that have contents, such as ascriptions of various \u201cpropositional attitudes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The basic propositional attitudes are belief<\/em> and desire<\/em>, whose contents correspond to declarative sentences. Schematically, A<\/em>b(p<\/em>) \u2014 \u201cagent A<\/em> believes that p<\/em>\u201d, A<\/em>d(p<\/em>) \u201cagent A<\/em> desires that p<\/em>\u201d. Other propositional attitudes (hope, fear, etc.) are combinations of belief and desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An ought takes the form a(p<\/em>) \u2014 \u201cact so that p\u201d, addressed to no one in particular. It\u2019s a content-bearing claim, but it\u2019s not a propositional attitude. It doesn\u2019t have truth conditions, and it stands or falls independently of whether or not any agents comply with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the content sentence p<\/em> of an ought is true or false, and an attribution<\/em> of belief or desire to particular agent A<\/em> is true or false, an ought is neither true nor false. Oughts aren\u2019t connected to specific agents \u2014 whom they are addressed to is a matter of context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All oughts purport to have an obliging or binding<\/em> force on those they are addressed to \u2014 they prescribe, exhort, demand or direct behaviour. This purportedly binding aspect distinguishes oughts from merely factual claims, which just describe what happens to be the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An ought has binding force only if it gives its addressee a reason to act<\/em>. Such a reason is a combination of beliefs (about facts) and a desire (for a goal). If there is wide factual agreement between issuer and addressee, the crucial ingredient is a shared desire\/goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oughts are addressed to genuine agents \u2014 beings that act and have reasons to act. At the very least, they must have beliefs and desires and the ability to \u201cchoose\u201d how to act, even if this amounts to nothing more than a stronger desire overruling weaker desires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some agents (such as thermostats) are so rudimentary, their goal-directed states hardly count as desires at all \u2014 or not full desires, anyway. Very well then, think of those states as \u201csub-desires\u201d of \u201csub-agents\u201d. It is a matter of degree, not of kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rudimentary agents also have \u201csub-beliefs\u201d \u2014 belief-like states which co-vary reliably with states of the world. (The co-variance is non-semantic information \u2014 semantic information enters the picture with interpretation and the attribution of propositional attitudes.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oughts extend to other agents somewhat as true beliefs extend to the facts that make them true. The analogy is not exact, but it\u2019s close enough to rule out talk of \u201cmy ought\u201d \u2014 it misses the point in much the same way as talk of \u201cmy truth\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Addressees must be already committed<\/em> to a shared goal for any ought to have leverage over them \u2014 in the above examples, the goals are of believing truths, of staying healthy, and of winning at chess. (To someone who wants to die young, \u201cyou ought not to smoke\u201d has no leverage.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the issuer of an ought and its addressee already share a goal, they needn\u2019t always strive harmoniously to achieve the same state of affairs \u2014 consider opponents in chess. But nothing further need be done for an ought expressing the shared goal to bind them both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What truth is to belief, satisfaction is to desire. A desire is satisfied<\/em> when its goal is realized, whether or not the agent knows that it is realized. So in the present context the word \u2018satisfaction\u2019 has nothing much to do with \u201ca feeling of satisfaction\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Below, I refer to the \u201cbroadness\u201d of desires and \u201cscope\u201d of their goals, meaning the range of states of affairs that would satisfy them. (Analogously, the scope of the sentence \u2018The<\/em> cat is on the mat\u2019 is narrower than the scope of the sentence \u2018A<\/em> cat is on the mat\u2019.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is possible to implant a new desire (and thereby a new goal) in an agent, by using persuasive enough evidence to change their background beliefs, combined with an appeal to a broader desire that the agent has already, with a goal of wider \u201cscope\u201d than the original goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, suppose you want to go to Starbucks for coffee. I could make you want to go to Costa instead, if I could persuade you that Starbucks is closed. I\u2019d also have to appeal to a broader desire that you have already \u2014 for any kind of coffee \u2014 with its goal of wider scope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could implant a further new desire, if I could persuade you that no coffee is available anywhere nearby, and could appeal to a goal of still wider scope, the object of a yet broader desire: for a hot drink\u2026 And so on, through ever-broader desires for goals of wider scope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This pattern of appealing to goals of ever-wider scope mirrors that of persuasion by appealing to factual claims of increasing generality, eventually reaching laws<\/em> \u2014 the most general sort of factual claim. Laws \u201cconfer warrant\u201d, by assuring us that something \u201cmust\u201d be the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, suppose I throw a ball up into the air. We know that \u201cwhat goes up must come down\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s a law-like generality that admits of no exceptions. So this particular ball \u201cmust\u201d come down again, sooner or later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We needn\u2019t take the \u201cmust\u201d here to express any sort of \u201cnatural necessity\u201d. We use the word \u2018must\u2019 because the law and initial conditions yield an expectation<\/em>, which is in fact fulfilled \u2014 much as we say \u201cthat must be him!\u201d if we\u2019re expecting a visitor and the doorbell rings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As well as being general, laws are systemically important to an agent\u2019s belief system \u2014 lawlike beliefs are the ones we are most reluctant to give up in the face of new evidence. Likewise, the widest goals are systemically important to agents\u2019 systems of desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We might give up the goal of having a cup of Starbucks coffee for the wider goal of having any sort of coffee, and that for the goal of having a hot drink, and that for the goal of being refreshed\u2026 The wider the goal we retreat to, the more unshakeable it becomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oughts have a \u201cflavour of necessity\u201d, whose strength depends on the scope of the shared goals that underwrite them. This is different from a \u201cflavour of universality\u201d, whose strength depends instead on how widespread the goal is in the population at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The retreat to ever-broader desires reflects the shrub-like<\/em> structure of any desire system. We start off at a young outer shoot and work our way down towards one of relatively few ground-level stems of our most basic values: love, truth, beauty, loyalty, morality, comfort, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Extending this metaphor, beneath ground level basic stems are attached to a single root, life\u2019s \u201cprime directive\u201d: promote the proliferation of your genes in future generations. This is the source of all basic desires, urges, values, goals, etc. (but it is not itself a desire).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The generality of a law confers a warrant to believe, and likewise, the width of scope of a goal confers \u2014 or at least purports to confer \u2014 the \u201cto-be-done-ness\u201d of a summons to act. The \u201cought\u201d of the latter is analogous to the \u201cmust\u201d of the former.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New beliefs can change intermediate desires aimed at goals of narrow scope, as we saw above, but they have less leverage over broader desires aimed at goals of wider scope. The wider the scope of a goal, the more resistant it is to \u201cnew information\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The thought that oughts<\/em> can be derived from is<\/em>es alone is partly inspired by the idea that new information can change intermediate desires, as above. If facts can change desires, the idea seems to go, facts might be able to posit goals as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But oughts derive their to-be-done-ness from broader desires aimed at goals of wider scope, and these are resistant to such change. Beliefs and reasoning can\u2019t change the most basic desires \u2014 the purpose of reason is to serve those desires by helping to realize them, as Hume saw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The thought that oughts can be derived from is<\/em>es alone is also inspired by the idea that having a desire is a fact about an agent. A factual inquiry might seem to reveal an agent\u2019s \u201cown oughts\u201d, but these lack the binding power that characterizes genuine oughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a fact about chess that the object of the game is to get the opponent\u2019s king into checkmate, and it\u2019s a fact about chess players that they are guided by that goal. The ought that expresses the goal does not describe<\/em> any such facts, but instead prescribes<\/em> behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ought that expresses the object of the game of chess has binding power over someone who is committed to playing proper chess, but not over someone who wants to end a game quickly by playing \u201csuicidal chess\u201d (i.e. deliberately sacrificing his own men).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such a player would be wholly compliant with all of the \u201cfactual\u201d rules of chess \u2014 which describe how each piece can move, how they are arranged at the start of the game, etc. \u2014 but he is not playing proper chess, because he is not bound by the non-factual \u201cought of the game\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oughts are expressions<\/em> of desire rather than descriptions<\/em> of desire. Mere descriptions of an agent\u2019s psychological states can\u2019t yield genuine oughts, because their distinctive feature is binding force, and that can only apply to agents who share the relevant desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Desires are real psychological states of agents, but their goals (states of affairs that would satisfy them) usually don\u2019t exist \u2014 desires point to a lack, need or want. By contrast, inasmuch as oughts actually direct behaviour, they often point towards real states of affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, the rules of the road say that drivers ought to stop for pedestrians at zebra crossings. And they usually do. So the ought points towards innumerable facts \u2014 the countless occurrences of actual drivers routinely stopping for pedestrians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because many familiar oughts are usually or \u201cnormally\u201d followed like that, the word \u2018norm\u2019 is often used as a synonym for \u2018ought\u2019 (used as a noun). This is misleading, because the word \u2018ought\u2019 is prompted here by a mere expectation that agents will act to bring it about that p<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is an epistemic expectation on the part of the observer, underwritten by enumerative induction, rather than an ought expressing a reason to act that agents have themselves. It has no binding power over them, unlike their own desire for the goal that p<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The word \u2018norm\u2019 can also be used to mean \u201cwhat an ought expresses\u201d \u2014 the prescriptive counterpart to a (descriptive) \u201cproposition\u201d. Abstraction here works as a protective smokescreen. The many difficulties associated with the concept \u201cproposition\u201d are inherited and worsened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even if all members of a group act so as to bring it about that p<\/em>, a new member A<\/em> might have no reason to act in that way. No matter how many other similarities they may share, without a desire that p<\/em>, there is nothing to bind A<\/em> to act so as to bring it about that p<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The word \u2018normative\u2019, derived from \u2018norm\u2019 and intended to mean roughly \u201chaving the binding force of an ought\u201d is also misleading inasmuch is it stays true to its etymology \u2014 suggesting as it does that a rule or standard is required for binding power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is sometimes said that \u201cbelief is normative\u201d. That sounds like a category error, as a claim might be normative (by being an ought) but a belief is a thing<\/em>, not a claim<\/em>. Beliefs have content, like claims, but contents are usually descriptive rather than prescriptive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the best that can be made of the claim that belief is normative is this: beliefs play an indispensable part in fixing the binding power of oughts. And we are guided by oughts when we attribute beliefs to agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The latter is no minor matter, as beliefs just are what correct attributers of belief say they are, guided as they are by principles of charity. As Davidson noted, there\u2019s nothing more to learn about belief than what a fully-informed interpreter would ascribe as content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Principles of charity include: presumptions in favour of the truth of an agent\u2019s beliefs and the coherence of his desires; a presumption in favour of his logical competence; and a determination to lower our expectations \u2014 to work \u201cdownwards\u201d \u2014 only when necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such principles of charity guide all attributions of thought to others (and ourselves \u2014 \u201ccharity begins at home\u201d). Because thoughts themselves are delineated and individuated by such attributions, we might call these principles \u201cthe oughts of thought\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These principles of charity are not expressible as factual claims. They are oughts that guide conduct \u2014 the activity of interpretation. The essential ingredient of all oughts being goal-directedness, this puts goal-directedness or desire at the very centre of all mental life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we must be careful not to think of desire as a subjective experience of yearning. It is instead the cause of habitual behaviour aimed at a fixed goal. A strong desire is not a vivid sense of yearning, but fixation on a goal that overrules similar fixations on other goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In effect, to posit a goal for the purpose of prediction and explanation is to adopt Dennett\u2019s \u201cdesign stance\u201d. To go further and also attribute representational states which co-vary in a reliable way with states of the world is to adopt his \u201cintentional stance\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a rudimentary agent such as a thermometer, goal and representation might be \u201ckeep the room at 70\u00b0\u201d and \u201cthe room is now at 65\u00b0\u201d, the latter embodied by curvature of a bimetallic strip. These are rudimentary analogues of desire and belief, posited by the intentional stance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The difference between these rudimentary states and full-fledged desire and belief is one of degree \u2014 of interconnectedness. An agent with genuine beliefs has a belief system, a detailed map of his world. An agent with genuine desires has many goals, a blueprint for his world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can be assured of the reality of these states: they are reasonably determinate because interpreters converge on their content, and routinely utter truths about them. And such states have causal powers, because causal links are trivially written into them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, a belief that it is raining is typically caused by the fact that it is raining. A desire to have a cup of coffee typically causes an agent to buy a cup of coffee. The interpretative process that attributes contents like these presupposes such causal connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So mental states like beliefs and desires, posited by the intentional stance, are \u201cwoven by interpretation\u201d. This has some interesting side effects. For example, an interpeter can\u2019t assign too many false beliefs to an agent. The result is that \u201cmost beliefs have to be true\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of these reflections is intended to work as an argument against radical scepticism, as they assume a great deal about the world and the nature of mental representation \u2014 assumptions that the radical sceptic claims to forbid himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because principles of charity embody rationality, they make it impossible to ascribe out-and-out irrationality, such as the having of contradictory beliefs. Agents can have odd preferences and false beliefs, but they can\u2019t act \u201ccontrary to reason\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is because charity enjoins us to re-interpret the contents of an agent\u2019s mental states in such a way as to admit that we were originally mistaken about them, and accept that the agent acted reasonably after all, even though his beliefs and desires may now seem bizarre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is not to say that agents can\u2019t pretend to act unreasonably. In the traditional version of vranyo<\/em>, an agent blatantly utters known falsehoods as a show of strength; an agent can also deliberately act \u201cunreasonably\u201d as a show of strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It can work as a show of strength because falsity and unreasonableness usually \u201cset you back a bit\u201d. If you can afford it, you must be well off. If you can thrive, you must be rich indeed. To reject obvious truths or justice is to set oneself back by defying social expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In effect, that is to trumpet one\u2019s place at the top of the pecking order.
(Petruchio: \u201cI say it is the moon.\u201d
Katherine: \u201cI know it is the moon.\u201d
Petruchio: \u201cThen you lie. It is the bless\u00e8d sun.\u201d
Katherine: \u201cThen God be blest, it is the bless\u00e8d sun.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We routinely attribute mental contents to animals like dogs as well as to humans. But such attributions and the states they individuate correspond to specifically human vehicles of communication (declarative sentences) and human categories (words of our language).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a disconnect between actual thought processes of the brain (with its activation spaces and activation vectors) and our attributions of mental content (which are shaped by the needs of communication). The former are typically continuous, the latter discrete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Holism \u2014 the idea of the twentieth century \u2014 has done much to bridge this gap. The future may bring new ways of thinking about knowledge \u2014 no longer as \u201cjustified, true belief\u201d but as reliable<\/em>, faithful<\/em> representation of non-sentential<\/em> form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"