An act with a normative end

Here’s an interesting set of cases that I haven’t seen a philosophical discussion of. To get some item B, you need to affirm that you did A (e.g., took some precautions, read some text, etc.) But to permissibly affirm that you did A, you need to do A. Let us suppose that you know that your affirmation will not be subject to independent verification, and you in fact do A.

Is A a means to B in this case?

Interestingly, I think the answer is: Depends.

Let’s suppose for simplicity that the case is such that it would be wrong to lie about doing A in order to get B. (I think lying is always wrong, but won’t assume this here.)

If you have such an integrity of character that you wouldn’t affirm that you did A without having done A, then indeed doing A is a means to affirming that you did A, which is a means to B, and in this case transitivity appears ot hold: doing A is a means to B.

But we can imagine you have less integrity of character, and if the only way to get B would be to falsely affirm that you did A, you would dishonestly so affirm. However, you have enough integrity of character that you prefer honesty when the cost is not too high, and the cost of doing A is not too high. In such a case, you do A as a means to permissibly affirming that you did A. But it is affirming that you did A that is a means to getting B: permissibly affirming is not necessary. Thus, your doing A is not a means to getting B, but it is a means to the additional bonus that you get B without being dishonest.

In both specifications of character, your doing A is a means to its being permissible for you to affirm you did A. We see, thus, that we have a not uncommon set of cases where an ordinary action has a normative end, namely the permissibility of another action. (These are far from the only such cases. Requesting someone’s permission is another example of an action whose end is the permissibility of some other action.)

The cases also have another interesting feature: your action is a non-causal means to an end. For your doing A is a means to permissibility of affirming you did A, but does not cause that permissibility. The relationship is a grounding one.

Playing to win in order to lose

Let’s say I have a friend who needs cheering up as she has had a lot of things not go her way. I know that she is definitely a better badminton player than I. So I propose a badminton match. My goal in doing so is to have her win the game, so as to cheer her up. But when I play, I will of course be playing to win. She may notice if I am not, plus in any case her victory will be the more satisfying the better my performance.

What is going on rationally? I am trying to win in order that she may win a closely contested game. In other words, I am pursuing two logically incompatible goals in the same course of action. Yet the story makes perfect rational sense: I achieve one end by pursuing an incompatible end.

The case is interesting in multiple ways. It is a direct counterexample to the plausible thesis that it is not rational to be simultaneously pursuing each of two logically incompatible goals. It’s not the only counterexample to that thesis. A perhaps more straightforward one is where you are pursuing a disjunction between two incompatible goods, and some actions are rationally justified by being means to each good. (E.g., imagine a more straightforward case where you reason: If I win, that’ll cheer me up, and if she wins, that’ll cheer her up, so either way someone gets cheered up, so let’s play.)

The case very vividly illustrates the distinction between:

1. Instrumentally pursuing a goal, and

2. Pursuing an instrumental goal.

My pursuit of victory is instrumental to cheering up my friend, but victory is not itself instrumental to my further goals. On the contrary, victory would be incompatible with my further goal. Again, this is not the only case like that. A case I’ve discussed multiple times is of follow-through in racquet sports, where after hitting the ball or shuttle, you intentionally continue moving the racquet, because the hit will be smoother if you intend to follow-through even though the continuation of movement has no physical effect on the ball or shuttle. You are instrumentally pursuing follow-through, but the follow-through is not instrumental.

Similarly, the case also shows that it is false that every end you have you either pursue for its own sake or it is your means to something else. For neither are you pursuing victory for its own sake nor is victory a means to something else—though your pursuit of victory is a means to something else.

Given the above remarks, here is an interesting ethics question. Is it permissible to pursue the death of an innocent person in order to save that innocent person’s life? The cases are, of course, going to be weird. For instance, your best friend Alice is a master fencer, and has been unjustly sentenced to death by a tyrant. The tyrant gives you one chance to save her life: you can fence Alice for ten minutes, with you having a sharpened sword and her having a foil with a safety tip, and you must sincerely try to kill her—the tyrant can tell if you are not trying to kill. If she survives the ten minutes, she goes free. If you fence Alice, the structure of your intention is just as in my badminton case: You are trying to kill Alice in order to save her life. Alice’s death would be pursued by you, but her death is not a means nor something pursued for its own sake.

If the story is set up as above, I think the answer is that, sadly, it is wrong for you to try to kill Alice, even though that is the only way to save her life.

All that said, I still wonder a bit. In the badminton case, are you really striving for victory? Or are you striving to act as if you were striving for victory? Maybe that is the better way to describe the case. If so, then this may be a counterexample to my main thesis here.

In any case, if there is a good chance the tyrant can’t tell the difference between your trying to kill Alice and your intentionally performing the same motions that you would be performing if you were trying to kill Alice, it seems to me that it might be permissible to do the latter. This puts a lot of pressure on some thoughts about the closeness problem for Double Effect. For it seems pretty plausible to me that it would be wrong for you to intentionally perform the same motions that you would be performing if you were trying to kill Alice in order to save people other than Alice.

Bidirectionality in means and ends

I never seem to tire of this action-theoretic case. You need to send a nerve signal to your arm muscles because there is a machine that detects these signals and dispenses food, and you’re hungry. So you raise your arm. What is your end? Food. What is your means to the food? Sending a nerve signal. But what is the means to the nerve signal?

The following seems correct to say: You raised your arm in order that a nerve signal go to your arm. What has puzzled me greatly about this case in the past is this. The nerve signal is a cause of the arm’s rising, and the effect can’t be the means to the cause. But I now think I was confused. For while the nerve signal is a cause of the arm’s rising, the nerve signal is not a cause of your raising your arm. For your raising your arm is a complex event C that includes an act of will W, a nerve signal S, and the rising of the arm R. The nerve signal S is a part, but not a cause, of the raising C, though it is a cause of the rising R.

So it seems that the right way to analyze the case is this. You make the complex event C happen in order that its middle part S should happen. Thus we can say that you make C happen in order that its part S should happen in order that you should get food. Then C is a means to S, and S is a means to food, but while S is a causal means to food, C is a non-causal means to S. But it’s not a particularly mysterious non-causal means. It sometimes happens that to get an item X you buy an item Y that includes X as a part (for instance, you might buy an old camera for the sake of the lens). There is nothing mysterious about this. Your obtaining Y is a means to your obtaining X, but there is no causation between the obtaining of Y and the obtaining of X.

Interestingly, sometimes a part serves as a means to a whole, but sometimes a whole serves as a means to the part. And this can be true of the very same whole and the very same part in different circumstances. Suppose that as a prop for a film, I need a white chess queen. I buy a whole set of pieces to get the white queen, and then throw out the remaining pieces in the newly purchased set to avoid clutter. Years later, an archaeologist digs up the 31 pieces I threw out, and buys my white queen from a collector to complete the set. Thus, I acquired the complete set to have the white queen, while the archaeologist acquired the white queen to have the complete set. This is no more mysterious than the fact that sometimes one starts a fire to get heat and sometimes one produces heat to light a fire.

Just as in one circumstances an event of type A can cause an event of type B and in other circumstances the causation can go the other way, so too sometimes an event of type A may partly constitute an event of type B, and sometimes the constitution can go the other way. Thus, my legal title to the white queen is constituted by my legal title to the set, but the archaeologist’s legal title to the set is partly constituted by legal title to the white queen.

There still seems to be an oddity. In the original arm case, you intend your arm’s rise not in order that your arm might rise—that you don’t care about—but in order that you might send a nerve signal. Thus, you intend something that you don’t care about. This seems different from buying the chess set for the sake of the queen. For there you do care about your title to the whole set, since it constitutes your title to the queen. But I think the oddity can probably be resolved. For you only intend your arm’s rising by intending the whole complex event C of your raising your arm. Intending something you don’t care about as part of intending a whole you do care about is not that unusual.

Moral fetishism and intentional aiming

For a long time I’ve had an odd fascination with cases where you have to intentionally aim at something that is neither your end nor a means to your end. The first case to come to my mind was something like this: Let’s say you want to send a nerve signal from your brain to your forearm (e.g., maybe you are hooked up to a device that detects these nerve signals and dispenses chocolate covered almonds). What do you? You wiggle your fingers! Wiggling your fingers, however, is not your end. But neither is it a means to the sending of the nerve signals. On the contrary, the nerve signals are the cause of the finger motions. But you can’t directly aim at the nerve signals, so you have to aim at finger wiggling instead.

A more ordinary kind of case I’ve found is follow-through in racquet sports, where you continue racquet motion after hitting the ball (or shuttle), because your brain will make the swing weaker at the time of contact unless you’re trying to continue the movement after the swing. But there is no point to the movement after the time of contact—the ball isn’t somehow magically steered by the racquet once it no longer touches it. So the movement of the racquet after impact is neither means nor end.

Outside weird laboratory setups and some sports cases, it is hard to think of cases of this odd phenomenon where one takes aim at an action that one neither instrumentally or finally cares about. But I’ve just realized a very interesting application. There is a philosophical literature about what people call “moral fetishism”. Those who push this line of thought think that there is something wrong with aiming your actions specifically at rightness of action, instead of at the thick reasons (your friend’s need, your promise, etc.) that make the action right.

Now, I think there are cases where you need to aim at rightness. The cases that come to mind are ones where you need to rely on a moral expert to figure out what is the right thing to do and why. One family of cases is where you are a small child and are relying on parental authority. Another is when you are a medical professional, are dealing with a morally complex case, and are relying on the advice of an ethics committee. And probably the most common case is when you are a religious believer and you are relying on what you take to be divine revelation about what is right (a different case is where you are a believer and are relying on supposed revelation about what is commanded by God). One may take these cases to be a refutation of the objections to moral fetishism, since in these cases one may be driven to pursue rightness by genuine conscientiousness rather than by any fetishism.

However, over the last couple of days I’ve realized that there may be a way of acting in these cases in a way that gives the objectors to moral fetishism what they want—and that I actually rather like this way of acting in the cases. When an action is right, there are reasons why it is right. In straightforward cases, we can easily say what these are: it helps a friend in need, it fulfills a promise, etc. But the cases in the previous paragraph are ones where the agent cannot give these reasons. Nonetheless, these reasons exist, and the adviser is thought to have them.

We can now imagine that the agent aims at rightness not because the agent values rightness in and of itself, but because the agent values the thick but unknown reasons for which the action is right. This could be rather like the finger-wiggling and racquet-sport cases. For it could be that just as the agent doesn’t care about the finger-wiggling and follow-through as an end, and neither is a means to what the agent cares about, similarly the agent doesn’t care about the rightness, and the rightness is not a means to what the agent cares about, by aiming at rightness the agent gets what they do care about, which is acting in accordance with thick (but unknown) reasons. Furthermore, like in the finger-wiggling case, the thing one really cares about—the nerve signal or the satisfaction of thick reasons—is explanatorily prior to the thing one aims at. (The follow-through case is a bit more complicated; probably what aims at is a whole swing, of which the good hit is a part, so the good hit is a part of the whole swing and in that way prior to it.)

It may help to think about a specific moral theory. Suppose utilitarianism is correct, and one has a moral oracle that tells one what the right action is, and one acts on the deliverances of this oracle. One need not care about the rightness of these actions—but they are right if and only if they maximize utility, and it is the utility maximization one cares about.

Thus in the case where one relies on testimony to do what is right, but one cares about rightness because one cares about the values that rightness yields, one is no more and no less a rightness fetishist than the typical racquet-sport coach is a follow-through fetishist. But in any case, what is going on is not problematic.

All that said, I think caring about rightness as such to some degree is also appropriate. That’s because one should care about oneself, and acting rightly is good for one.

More on directed activity without ends

In my previous post I focused on how the phenomenon of games with score undercuts the idea that activity is for an end, for some state of affairs that one aims to achieve. For no matter how good one’s score, one was aiming beyond that.

I want to consider an objection to this. Perhaps when one plays Tetris, one has an infinite number of ends:

• Get at least one point.

• Get at least two points.

• Get at least three points.

• ….

And similarly if one is running a mile, one has an infinite number of ends, namely for each positive duration t, one aims to run the miles in at most t.

My initial worry about this suggestion was that it has the implausible consequence that no matter how well one does, one has failed to achieve infinitely many ends. Thus success is always muted by failure. In the Tetris case, in fact, there will always be infinitely many failures and finitely many successes. This seemed wrong to me. But then I realized it fits with phenomenology to some degree. In these kinds of cases, when one comes to the end of the game, there may always be a slight feeling of failure amidst success—even when one breaks a world record, there is the regret that one didn’t go further, faster, better, etc. Granted, the slightness of that feeling doesn’t match the fact that in the Tetris case one has always failed at infinitely many ends and succeeded only at finitely many. But ends can be prioritized, and it could be that the infinitely many ends have diminishing value attached to them (compare the phenomenon of the “stretch goal”), so that even though one has failed at infinitely many, the finitely many one has succeeded at might outweigh them (perhaps the weights decrease exponentially).

So the game cases can, after all, be analyzed in the language of ends. But there are other cases that I think can’t. Consider the drive to learn about something. First, of course, note that our end is not omniscience—for if that were our end, then we would give up as soon as we realized it was unachievable. Now, some of the drive for learning involves known unknowns: there are propositions p where I know what p is and I aim to find out if p is true. This can be analyzed by analogy with the the infinitely-many-ends account of games with score: for each such p, I have an end to find out whether p. But often there are unknown unknowns: before I learn about the subject, I don’t even know what the concepts and questions are, so I don’t know what propositions I want to learn about. I just want to learn about the subject.

We can try to solve this by positing a score. Maybe we let my score be the number of propositions I know about the subject. And then I aim to have a score of at least one, and a score of at least two, and a score of at least three, etc. That’s trivial pursuit, not real learning, though. Perhaps, then, we have a score where we weight the propositions by their collective importance, and again I have an infinite number of ends. But in the case of the really unknown unknowns, I don’t even know how to quantify their importance, and I have no concept of the scale the score would be measured on. Unlike in the case of games, I just may not even know what the possible scores are.

So in the case of learning about a subject area, we cannot even say that we are positing an infinite number of ends. Rather, we can say that our activity has a directedness—to learn more, weighted by importance—but not an end.

Of Tetris, ends, and the beatific vision

Suppose I am playing Tetris seriously. What am I aiming at?

It’s not victory: one cannot win Tetris.

A good score, yes. But I wouldn’t stop playing after reaching a good score. So a merely good score isn’t all I am aiming at. An excellent score? But, again, even if I achieved an excellent score, I wouldn’t stop, so it’s not all I am aiming for. A world-record score? But I wouldn’t stop as soon as my score exceeded the record. An infinite score? But then I am aiming at an impossibility.

A phrase we might use is: “I am trying to get the best score I can.” But while that is how we speak, it doesn’t actually describe my aim. For consider what “the best score I can get” means. Does the “can” take into account my current skill level or not? If it does take into account my skill level, then I could count as having achieved my end despite getting a really miserable score, as long as that maxed out my skills. And that doesn’t seem right. But if it does not take into account my current skill level, but rather is the most that it could ever be possible for me, then it seems I am aiming at something unrealistic—for my current skill level falls short of what I “can” do.

What is true of Tetris is true of many other games where one’s aims align with a score. In some of these games there is such a thing as victory in addition to score. Thus, while one can time one’s runs and thus have just a score, typical running races include victory and a time, and sometimes both enter into the runner’s aims. This is not true of all games: some, like chess, only have victory (positions can be scored, but the scores are only indicative of their instrumentality for victory).

It’s worth noting that a score can be either absolute, such as time in running, and relative, such as one’s place among the finishers. In the case of place among finishers, one may be aiming for victory—first place—but one need not be. One might, for instance, make a strategic decision that one has no realistic hope for first place, and that aiming at first place will result in a poorer placement than simply aiming to “place as well as one can” (bearing in mind that this phrase is misleading, as already mentioned).

Insofar as aims align with a score, we can say that we have directed activity, but there seems to be no end, so the activity is not end-directed. We might want to say that the score is the “end”, but that would be misleading, since an end is a state you are aiming at. But typically you are not just aiming at the state of having a score—in Tetris, you get a score no matter what you do, though it might be zero. In timed fixed-distance sports, you need to finish the distance to have a time, and for some endurance races that in itself is a serious challenge, though for “reasonable” distances finishing is not much of an accomplishment.

I think what we should say is that in these activities, we have a direction, specified by increasing score, but not an end. The concept of a direction is more general than that of an end. Wherever there is an end, there is a direction defined by considering a score which is 1 if one achieves the end and 0 if one fails to do so.

So far all my examples were games. But I think the distinction between direction and end applies in much more important cases, and helps make sense of many phenomena. Consider our pursuits of goods such as health and knowledge. Past a certain age, perfect health is unachievable, and hence is not what one is aiming at. But more health is always desirable. And at any age, omniscience is out of our grasp, but more knowledge is worth having. Thus the pursuits of health and knowledge are examples of directed but not always end-directed activities. (Though, often, there are specific ends as well: the amelioration of a specific infirmity or learning the answer to a specific question.)

(Interesting question for future investigation: What happens to the maxim that the one who wills the end wills the means in the case of directed but not end-directed activity? I think it’s more complicated, because one can aim in a direction but not aim there at all costs.)

I think the above puts is in a position to make progress on a very thorny problem in Thomistic theology. The beatific vision of God is supremely good for us. But at the same time, it is a supernatural good, one that exceeds our nature. Our nature does not aim at this end, since for it to aim at this end, it would need to have the end written into itself, but its very possibility is a revealed mystery. Our desire for the beatific vision is itself a gift of God’s grace. But if our nature does not aim at the beatific vision, then it seems that the beatific vision does not fulfill us. For our nature’s aims specify what is good for us.

However, we can say this. Our nature directs us in the direction of greater knowledge and greater love of the knowable and the lovable. It does not limit that directedness to natural knowledge and love, but at the same time it does not direct us to supernatural knowledge and love as such. As far as we naturally know, it might be that natural knowledge and love is all that’s possible, and if so, we need go no further. But in fact God’s grace makes the beatific vision possible. The beatific vision is in the direction of greater knowledge and love from all our natural knowledge and love, and so it fulfills us—even though our nature has no concept of it.

Imagine that unbeknownst to me, a certain sequence of Tetris moves, which one would only be able to perform with the help of Alexey Pajitnov, yields an infinite score. Then if I played Tetris with Pajitnov’s help and I got that infinite score, I would be fulfilled in my score-directed Tetris-playing. However, it would also be correct that if I didn’t know about the possibility of the infinite score, it wasn’t an end I was pursuing. Nonetheless, it is fulfilling because it is objectively true that this score lies in the direction that I was pursuing.

Similarly, our nature, as it were, knows nothing of the beatific vision, but it directs us in a direction where in fact the beatific vision lies, should God’s grace make it possible for us.

This also gives a nice explanation of the following related puzzle about the beatific vision. When one reads what the theologians say about the beatific vision, it appears attractive to us. That attractiveness could be the result of God’s grace, but it is psychologically plausible that it would appear attractive even without grace. The idea of a loving union of understanding with an infinite good just is very attractive to humans. But how can it be naturally attractive to us when it exceeds our nature? The answer seems to me to be that we can naturally know that if the beatific vision is possible, it lies in the direction we are aimed at. But, absent divine revelation, we don’t know if it is possible. And, trivially, it’s only a potential fulfillment of our nature—i.e., a good for us to seek—if it is possible.

Does this mean that we should reject the language of “end” with respect to the beatific vision? Yes and no. It is not an end in the sense of something that our nature aims at as such. But it is an end in the sense that it is a supreme achievement in the direction at which our nature aims us. Thus it seems we can still talk about it as a supernatural end.

Follow-through

As far as I know, in all racquet sports players are told to follow-through: to continue the racquet swing after the ball or shuttle have left the racquet. But of course the ball or shuttle doesn’t care what the racquet is doing at that point. So what’s the point of follow-through? The usual story is this: by aiming to follow-through, one hits the ball or shuttle better. If one weren’t trying to follow-through, the swing’s direction would be wrong or the swing might slow down.

This is interesting action-theoretically. The follow-through appears pointless, because the agent’s interest is in what happens before the follow-through, the impact’s having the right physical properties, and yet there is surely no backwards causation here. But there not appear to be an effective way to reliably secure these physical properties of the impact except by trying for the follow-through. So the follow-through itself is pointless, but one’s aiming at or trying for the follow-through very much has a point. And here the order of causality is respected: one swings aiming at the follow-through, which causes an impact with the right physical properties, and the swing then continues on to the “pointless” follow-through.

Clearly the follow-through is intended—it’s consciously planned, aimed at, etc. But it need not be a means to anything one cares about in the game (though, of course, in some cases it can be a means to impressing the spectators or intimidating an opponent). But is it an end? It seems pointless as an end!

Yet it seems that whatever is intended is intended as a means or an end. One might reject this principle, taking follow-through to be a counterexample.

Another move is this. We actually have a normative power to make something be an end. And then it becomes genuinely worth pursuing, because we have adopted it as an end. So the player first exercises the normative power to make follow-through be an end, and then pursues that end as an end.

But there is a problem here. For even if there is a “success value” in accomplishing a self-set goal, the strength of the reasons for pursuing the follow-through is also proportioned to facts independent of this exercise of normative power. Rather, the reasons for pursuing the follow-through will include the internal and external goods of victory (winning as such, prizes, adulation, etc.), and these are independent of one’s setting follow-through as one’s goal.

Maybe we should say this. Even if all intentional action is end-directed, there are two kinds of reasons for an action: the reasons that come from the value of the end and the reasons that come from the value of the pursuit of that end. In the case of follow-through, there may be a fairly trivial success value in the follow-through—a success value that comes from one’s exercise of normative power in adopting the follow-through as one’s end—but that success value provides only fairly trivial reasons. However, there can be significantly non-trivial reasons for one’s pursuing that end, reasons independent of that end.

Two versions of the guise of the good thesis

According to the guise of the good thesis, one always acts for the sake of an apparent good. There is a weaker and a stronger version of this:

• Weak: Whenever you act, you act for an end that you perceive is good.

• Strong: Whenever you act, you act for an end, and every end you act for you perceive as good.

For the strong version to have any plausibility, “good” must include cases of purely instrumental goodness.

I think there is still reason to be sceptical of the strong version.

Case 1: There is some device which does something useful when you trigger it. It is triggered by electrical activity. You strap it on to your arm, and raise your arm, so that the electrical activity in your muscles triggers the device. Your raising your arm has the arm going up as an end, but that end is not perceived as good, but merely neutral. All you care about is the electrical activity in your muscles.

Case 2: Back when they were dating in high school, Bob promised to try his best to bake a nine-layer chocolate cake for Alice’s 40th birthday. Since then, Bob and Alice have had a falling out, and hate each other’s guts. Moreover, Alice and all her guests hate chocolate. But Alice doesn’t release Bob from his promise. Bob tries his best to bake the cake in order to fulfill his promise, and happens to succeed. In trying to bake the cake, Bob acted for the end of producing a cake. But producing the cake was worthless, since no one would eat it. The only value was in the trying, since that was the fulfillment of his promise.

In both cases, it is still true that the agent acts for a good end—the useful triggering of the device and the production of the cake. But in both cases it seems they are also acting for a worthless end. Thus the cases seem to fit with the weak but not the strong guise of the good thesis.

I was going to leave it at this. But then I thought of a way to save the strong guise of the good thesis. Success is valuable as such. When I try to do something, succeeding at it has value. So the arm going up or the cake being produced are valuable as necessary parts of the success of one’s action. So perhaps every end of your action is trivially good, because it is good for your action to succeed, and the end is a (constitutive, not causal) means to success.

This isn’t quite enough for a defense of the strong thesis. For even if the success is good, it does not follow that you perceive the success as good. You might subscribe to an axiological theory on which success is not good in general, but only success at something good.

But perhaps we can say this. We have a normative power to endow some neutral things with value by making them our ends. And in fact the only way to act for an end that does not have any independent value is by exercising that normative power. And exercising that normative power involves your seeing the thing you’re endowing with value as valuable. And maybe the only way to raise your arm or for Bob to bake the cake in the examples is by exercising the normative power, and doing so involves seeing the end as good. Maybe. This has some phenomenological plausibility and it would be nice if it were true, because the strong guise of the good thesis is pretty plausible to me.

If this story is right, it adds a nuance to the ideas here.

An odd poker variant

Suppose Alice can read your mind, and you are playing poker against a set of people not including Alice. You don’t care about winning, just about money. Alice has a deal for you that you can’t refuse.

• If you win, she takes your winnings away.

• If you lose, but you tried to win, she pays you double what you lost.

• If you lose, but you didn’t try to win, she does nothing.

Clearly the prudent thing to do is to try to win. For if you don’t try to win, then you are guaranteed not to get any money. But if you do try, you won’t lose anything, and you might gain.

Here is the oddity: you are trying to win in order to get paid, but you only get paid if you don’t win. Thus, you are trying to achieve something, the achievement of which would undercut the end you are pursuing.

Is this possible? I think so. We just need to distinguish between pursuing victory for the sake of something else that follows from victory and pursuing victory for the sake of something that might follow from the pursuit of victory.

Intention and entailment

Suppose Alice intends to hit Bob with a stick. There are two ways that the stick could be involved in Alice’s intentions. First, Alice might not care that it is a stick she hits Bob with, but a stick happens to be ready to hand. In that case, her hitting Bob with a stick is a means to her hitting Bob.

Second, Alice might care about hitting Bob with a stick—perhaps she is punishing him for hitting a defenseless person with a stick and wants the punishment to match the crime. In that case, hitting Bob with a stick is not a means to her hitting Bob, as her hitting Bob does not figure in her intentions apart from the stick. But even in that case it seems right to say that Alice intends to hit Bob. For while it is false to say in general that

1. if p entails q and Alice intends p then Alice intends q

(even if one adds that Alice knows about the entailment, or makes the entailment relevant in the sense of relevance logic), it seems that the following special case is true:

2. if q is a specification of p and Alice intends q then Alice intends p.

Alice’s hitting Bob with a stick is a specification of Alice’s hitting Bob.

A similar point applies to conjunctions. If Alice intends to hit Bob with a stick and to insult him, she intends to hit Bob with a stick and she intends to insult him. But sometimes at least, hitting Bob with a stick and insulting him do not figure as independent intentions. Yet they are intended nonetheless. So we have another special case of (1):

3. if p is a conjunct of q and Alice intends q then Alice intends p.

It is an unhappy situation that some special cases of (1) are true, but (1) is not true in general, and I do not know how to specify which special cases are true.

Intending as a means or as an end

I used to think that it is trivial and uncontroversial that if one intends something, one intends it as an end or as a means.

Some people (e.g., Aquinas, Anscombe, O’Brian and Koons, etc.) have a broad view of intention. On such views, if something is known to inevitably and directly follow from something that one intends, then one intends that, too. This rules out sophistical Double Effect justifications, such as a Procrustes who cuts off the heads of people who are too tall to fit the bed claiming that he intends to shorten rather than kill.

But if one has a broad view of intention, then I think one cannot hold that everything intended is intended as an end or as a means. The death of Procrustes’ victim is not a means: for it does nothing to help the victim fit the bed. But it’s not an end either: it is the fit for the bed that is the end (or something else downstream of that, such as satisfaction at the fit). So on broad views of intention, one has to say that Procrustes intends death, but does not intend it either as a means or as an end.

While this is a real cost of the broad theory of intention, I think it is something that the advocates of that theory should simply embrace. They should say there are at least three ways of intending something: as a means, as an end, and as an inevitable known side-effect (or however they exactly want to formulate that).

On the other hand, if we want to keep the intuition that to intend is to intend as a means or as an end, then we need to reject broad theories of intentions. In that case, I think, we should broaden the target of the intention instead.

In any case, the lesson is that the characterization of intending as intending-as-a-means-or-as-an-end is a substantive and important question.

Intention doesn't transfer to inevitable consequences

Some people, maybe as part of a response to the closeness problem for Double Effect, think:

1. Whenever I intend A while knowing that A inevitably causes B, I intend B.

This is false. Suppose I play a game late at night in order to have late night fun, knowing that late night fun will inevitably lead to my being tired in the morning. Now, if I intend something, I intend it as a means or as an end. I clearly don’t intend to be tired in the morning as a means to having had fun in the evening: there is no backwards causation. But I also don’t intend being tired in the morning as an end: the end was my late night fun, which led to being tired. So if I don’t intend it as a means or as an end, I don’t intend it at all, contrary to 1.

More precisely:

2. I intend E as my end and know that E inevitably causes F.

3. If I intend something, I intend it as a means or as an end.

4. If I know that something is caused by my end, then I do not intend it as an end.

5. If I know that something is caused by my end, then I do not intend it as a means.

6. So, I do not intend F as an end or as a means. (2, 4, 5)

7. So, I do not intend F. (3, 6)

8. So, sometimes I act intending E and knowing that E inevitably causes some effect F without intending F. (2, 7)

9. So, (1) is false.

Intending the end without intending the known means

It is said that:

• he who intends the end intends the means.

But the person who doesn’t know how a computer keyboard works does intend to close circuits when writing an email, even though the closing of circuits is the means to writing emails.

Perhaps, though, when they learn how computer keyboards work, that might change their intention, so that now they intend to close circuits whenever they intentionally type a character? But that is psychologically implausible: the activity of the practical intellect involved in typing is normally unchanged by learning how a keyboard works. (There are, of course, special circumstances where it may change. For instance, if one knows that one is near some very delicate electrical equipment whose functioning could be affected by the closing of these circuits, then one’s deliberation might change.) The knowledge of what happens in typing remains merely non-occurrent knowledge, not affecting the activity of the practical intellect or the will.

One might think, though, that if one occurrently knows that the means to typing an email is the closing of circuits, one is intending to close circuits. But even this need not be true. For instance, a person who is writing a technical article on how keyboards work may well be occurently knowing that their movements are transformed into data in computer memory by means of closing electrical circuits, but this occurrent knowledge may very well still not affect either their practical intellect or their will. (Indeed, when I wrote the opening paragraph of this post, I no doubt occurrently knew how keyboards work, but I don’t think this affected my intentions.)

For one’s knowledge to affect one’s intentions it needs to enter into the deliberation. For that, it needs to be occurrently and practically taken by the agent as practically relevant. For most people under most circumstances, that computer keyboards work by closing circuits is not practically relevant. But if it is Sabbath and one is an Orthodox Jew who believes that closing circuits is forbidden on the Sabbath, then the knowledge is apt to be taken as practically relevant: if one still types, that is apt to become an act of rebellion or of akrasia, and if one refrains from typing, that act is apt to be done as a mitzvah. However, one could imagine the sad case of such an Orthodox Jew who types on the Sabbath anyway, and eventually becomes so calloused that the fact that circuits are being closed stops entering into deliberation, though the fact is still known by the theoretical intellect. Such a person’s intentions may eventually drift to those of the typical gentile.

So, what is one to say about the principle that he who intends the end intends the means? There is of course a trivial version:

• he who intends the end intends the intended means.

Maybe we can do a little better:

• in intending the end one intends the means insofar as they enter into deliberation.

I am not sure this is right, but it’s the best I can do right now.

Note an interesting thing. If this last version is right, then the means may enter into deliberation on the opposite side, against the action. For instance, if one thinks it’s forbidden to close electrical circuits on the Sabbath, but one chooses to do so, that the means involve the closing of electrical circuits is apt to enter into deliberation on the con side of typing, not on the pro side (unless one is positively rebellious).

Two ways to pursue y for the sake of z

The phrase

1. x pursues y as a means to z

is ambiguous between two readings:

2. x pursues y-as-a-means-to-z

and:

3. x’s pursuit of y is a means to z.

Case (2) is the standard case of means-end relationships: Alice goes on the exercise bike to keep her healthy.

But (3) can be a different beast. Bob’s psychologist has told him that it would be good for him to secrete more adrenaline; maybe striving to win at tennis is the most efficient of the safe methods for secreting adrenaline available to Bob; so, Bob relentlessly pursues victory in tennis. It is not the victory, however, that releases the adrenaline in my hypothetical story: it is the pursuit of that victory. In that case, it is Bob’s pursuit of victory that is a means to (mental) health. Moreover, it could be the case that what secretes adrenaline most effectively is the non-instrumental pursuit of victory:

It looks to me like in all these cases what we have are instances of final causation, where y’s endhood is caused by z’s endhood. In case (2), it is y’s instrumental endhood that is caused by z’s endhood, while in some cases of (3), like Bob’s adrenaline-releasing pursuit of victory, it is y’s non-instrumental endhood that is caused by z’s endhood.

There can also be cases where y’s instrumental endhood is caused by z’s endhood, but y is not a means to z. For instance, we could imagine that Bob’s psychologist told him that given his peculiar motivational structure, the most efficient way for him to release adrenaline would be to strive to gain money by winning at tennis. In that case, Bob pursues winning at tennis instrumentally for the sake of gaining money, but this pursuit is finally caused by his pursuit of adrenaline. So, the victory’s instrumental endhood is finally caused by adrenaline’s endhood, but the victory is instrumental to money, not adrenaline.

Note, also, that normally a case of (2) is also a case of (3): when x pursues y-as-a-means-to-z, then x’s pursuit of y is also a means to z. But there are pathological cases where this is not so.

Instances fo (3) that are not instance of (2) look like cases of higher order reasons. But they need not be cases of reasons at all. For case (3) can be subdivided into at least two subcases:

1. x voluntarily chooses to pursue y in order that z might be achieved by the pursuit

2. The unchosen teleological structure of x (e.g., the nature of x) is such that x’s pursuit of y is ordered to z.

In type (a) cases, indeed z can provide a higher order reason. But in type (b) cases, there need be no reasons involved. Lion cubs pursue play in order that they might grow strong, let’s say. But growing strong doesn’t provide lion cubs with a reason to pursue play, because lion cubs are not (let us suppose) the sorts of beings that can be responsive to higher order reasons. Nonetheless, there is final causation: the end of strength causes play to be an end.

Non-instrumental pursuit

I pursue money instrumentally—for the sake of what it can buy—but I pursue fun non-instrumentally.

Here’s a tempting picture of the instrumental/non-instrumental difference as embodied in the money fun example:

1. Non-instrumental pursuit is a negative concept: it is instrumental pursuit minus the instrumentality.

But (1) is mistaken for at least two reasons. The shallower reason is an observation we get from the ancients: it is possible to simultaneously pursue the same goal both instrumentally and non-instrumentally. You might have fun both non-instrumentally and in order to rest. But then lack of instrumentality is not necessary for non-instrumental pursuit.

The deeper reason is this. Suppose I am purely instrumentally pursuing money for the sake of what it can buy, but I then remove the instrumentality, either by ceasing to pursue things that can be bought or by ceasing to believe that money can buy things, without adding any new motivations to my will. Then clearly the pursuit of money rationally needs to disappear—if it remains, that is a clear case of irrationality. But if non-instrumental pursuit were simply an instrumental pursuit minus the instrumentality, then why wouldn’t the removal of the instrumentality from my pursuit of money leave me non-instrumentally and rationally pursuing money, just as I non-instrumentally and rationally pursue fun?

There is a positive element in my pursuit of fun, a positive element that would be lacking in my pursuit of money if I started with instrumental pursuit of money and took away the instrumentality and somehow (perhaps per impossibile) continued (but now irrationally) pursuing money. It is thus more accurate to talk of “pursuit of a goal for its own sake” than to talk of “non-instrumental pursuit”, as the latter suggests something negative.

The difference here is somewhat like the difference between the concepts of an uncaused being and a self-existent being. If you take away the cause of a brick and yet keep the brick (perhaps per impossibile), you have a mere uncaused being. That’s not a self-existent being like God is said to be.

Optimism

I've been gradually realizing just how important it is to presume our ideological and political opponents to be motivated by pursuit of the good and true. Of course, in some cases the presumption is false, but likewise sometimes our co-partisans--and we ourselves--are motivated badly.

Here's a psychological advantage of making this presumption. If we lose out to our opponents (say, in the polis, in a department meeting, etc.), it's much less depressing when we see it as nonetheless a kind of victory for the true and the good--for we presume that the desire for the true and the good is what energized our opponents in their victory, what made them persevere, what made them win support.

It may seem not in keeping with a Christian view of this world as fallen to make this presumption. But at the same time, while this world is fallen, Christ's grace is widespread. And wherever people are moved by the true and the good, there is a likelihood that grace is at work. In fact, it is precisely the fact that the world is fallen that makes it likely that grace is at work where the pursuit of the true and the good energizes people.

None of this minimizes the importance of energetic disagreement when needed. If Fred and Sid disagree on which of two ropes to throw the drowning man, and Sid with great energy carries the day and throws the rotten rope to the drowning man, although Fred can see it as a kind of victory for the good in that Sid was being driven by the good, nonetheless the drowning man is likely to drown. So the presumption that our opponents are motivated rightly is fully compatible with resisting them respectfully to the best of our ability. Indeed, the very fact that Sid is pursuing the good is a reason for Fred resist Sid's mistaken choice of rope, so as to save Sid from an action that does not in fact achieve what Sid wants it to achieve.

Suppose it's granted that the presumption is helpful. But what justifies the presumption? Is it justified merely pragmatically? I don't think so. I think there is a general presumption that things are working rightly, a presumption that we should minimize the attribution of malfunction. (This general presumption may be what keeps us from scepticism, what makes it appropriate to trust in our senses and our fellows' testimony.) And it is a lesser defect to be wrong about the means than about the ends.

The human as the end-setter

Perhaps the deepest question about human beings is about the source of our dignity. What feature of us is it that grounds our dignity, gives us a moral status beyond that of brute animals, provides us with a worth beyond market value, makes us into beings to be respected no matter the stakes?

I was thinking about the proposal (from the Kantian tradition, but rather simplified) that it is our ability to set ends of ourselves that is special about humans. But as far as I put it, the proposal is obviously inadequate. Suppose I take our Roomba and program it to choose a location in its vicinity at random and then try to find a path to that location using some path-finding algorithm. A natural way to describe the robot's functioning then is this: The robot set an end for itself and then searched for means appropriate to that end. So on the simple end-setting proposal, the robot should have dignity. But that's absurd: even if one day someone makes a robot with dignity, we're not nearly there yet, and yet what I've described is well within our current capabilities (granted, one might want to stick a Kinect on the Roomba to do it, since otherwise one would have to rely on dead-reckoning).

Perhaps, though, my end-setting Roomba wouldn't have enough of a variety of ends. After all, all its ends are of the same logical form: arrive at such and such a location. Maybe the end-setting theory needs the dignified beings to be able to choose between a wider variety of ends. Very well. There is a wide variety of states of the world that can be described with the Roomba's sensors, and we can add more sensors. We could program the Roomba to choose at random a state of the world that can be described in terms of actual and counterfactual sensor values and then try to achieve that end with the help of some simple or complex currently available algorithm. Now, maybe even the variety of ends that can be described using sensors isn't enough for dignity. But now the story is starting to get ad hoc, as we embark on the hopeless task of quantifying the variety of ends needed for dignity.

And surely that's not the issue. The problem is, rather, with whole idea that a being gets dignity just by being capable of choosing at random between goals. Surely dignity wouldn't just require choice of goals, but rational choice of goals. But what is this rationality in the choice of goals? Well, there could be something like an avoidance of conflicts between goals. However, that surely doesn't do much to dignify a being. If the Roomba chose a set of goals at random, discarding those sets that involved some sort of practical conflict (the Roomba--with some hardware upgrade, perhaps--could simulate pursuing the set of goals and see if the set is jointly achievable in practice), that would be cleverer, but wouldn't be dignified.

And I doubt that even more substantive constraints would make the random end-setting be a dignity-conferring property. For there is nothing dignified about choosing randomly between options. There might be dignity in a being that engaged in random end-setting subject to moral constraints, but the dignity wouldn't be grounded in the end-setting as such, but the being's subjection of its procedures to moral constraints.

The randomness is a part of the problem. But of course replacing randomness with determinism makes no difference. We could specify some deterministic procedure for the Roomba to make its choice--maybe it sorts the descriptions of possible ends alphabetically and always chooses the third one on the list--but that would be nothing special.

If end-setting is to confer dignity, the being needs to set its ends not just subject to rational constraints, but actually for reasons. Thus there must be reasons prior to the ends, reasons-to-choose and not just constraints-on-choice. However, positive reasons embody ends. And so in a being whose end-setting makes it be dignified, this end-setting is governed by prior ends, the ends embodied in the reasons the being is responsive to in its end-setting. On pain of vicious regress, such a being must be responsive to ends that it did not choose. Moreover, for this to be dignity-producing, surely the responsiveness needs to to these ends as such. But "an end not chosen by us" is basically just the good. So these beings must be responsive to the good as such.

At this point, however, it becomes less and less clear that the choice of ends is doing all that much work in our story about dignity, once we have responsiveness to the good as such in view. For this responsiveness now seems a better story about what confers dignity. (Though perhaps still not an adequate one.)

Objection: No current robot would be capable of grasping ends as such and hence cannot adopt ends as such.

Response: Sure, but can a two-year-old? A two-year-old can adopt ends, but does it cognize the ends as ends?

An interesting thesis in Aquinas

In Summa Theologica I-II 1 2 repl. 2, Aquinas makes the interesting claim:

To order something toward an end belongs to one who impels himself toward that end.

Aquinas' claim here seems to be that if A has a teleological directedness at E, then if B is a cause responsible for A's directedness at E, then B is also directed at E. If this is correct, then the telè of God's creatures must all be goods that God's goodness impels him to. Our ends must be God's ends, and hence we have a metaphysical argument for the benevolence aspect of divine love.

Is Aquinas' thesis true? This sort of thing would be a counterexample: As a computer science class exercise, I am suppose to make a computer program that sorts an array of numbers. I thereby order the program toward the end of sorting the array of numbers, but I am not myself impelled to sorting the numbers—in fact, I don't care about sorting the numbers, because my grade depends on the program, not on the actual sorting. I think Aquinas has to say that the computer program is not really impelled to sorting the numbers. It is, at best, impelled to getting me a good grade. Or maybe Aquinas will simply deny genuine teleology in artifacts.

Winning

I find the concept of winning in a game really puzzling. Consider two games: checkers and kechers. In checkers, you win by the opponent having no legal move (this can happen two ways: all of the opponent's pieces are captured, or all of the opponent's pieces are blocked). In kechers, you win by not having a legal move. All the other rules of checkers and kechers are exactly the same. A legal game of checkers looks exactly like a legal game of kechers, and vice versa. Wherein the difference?

There are many possible answers: players' intentions, social context, language, etc. I think some of the answers end up being circular. Others fail because they fail to explain why it is the case that whenever x and y are playing checkers, they each have a prima facie reason to bring it about that the other has no legal move.

Here is a suggestion. We have a God-like power of creating ends (of course, like every power of ours, it is exercised only by the concurrence of God). When I come to participate in a game of checkers, I create a new end for myself, the end that the other have no legal move. Its objectively being an end of mine, I have reason to pursue it, and others have reason to wish me well in the pursuit of it. To be an end is not just to be pursued, of course: it is to be such that one have reason to pursue it.

Kantians, of course, will not be at all puzzled by the idea that we can create new ends for ourselves. But they will be puzzled by my next move. This next move is one that I make in response to the following second question: "How do we distinguishes cases where an end that we create is a victory condition for a game, from cases where it is not? How are games distinguished from other pursuits?" On the suggestion I want to explore, the answer to this question is very simple: We do not distinguish these. All and only the ends we create for ourselves are victory conditions for games. To play a game is to strive to win (so someone who throws a match is not really playing), and to strive to win is to pursue a self-created end. So now we have a story about what games are and how they differ from other pursuits: A game is a pursuit of an end that I have created for myself.

But aren't there other cases of ends that we can create, besides games? Can we not, say, set ourselves the end of becoming a great biologist, or an amateur astronomer, or the fastest draw in the West? In each case, I will say this: To the extent that the goal is valuable independently of our end-creation (it is valuable to understand living beings, to study the heavens even if only in an amateurish way, or to be able to defend the innocent), to that extent one is not playing a game. But insofar as the end achieves additional value through our making it our end (it is valuable for anyone to be a great biologist, but perhaps especially so for those who set out to become such), thus far we are playing a game, perhaps a solitary one.

But games don't matter deeply, while some ends we set for ourselves do matter deeply! Take love: If I choose to marry one person rather than another, then I make this person's happiness into an end of mine. I create an end for myself here, surely. Or take art: I accept a genre, and I work within it—I thereby create a genre-relative end, but that end is surely not just a game! However, these worries are mistaken. Consider love. First, I already ought to pursue the happiness of every human being—I ought to love my neighbor as myself. Second, insofar as I come to pursue a special marital end, it is because I am called to it—or at least, I come to be called to it when I undergo the sacrament of matrimony. If I weren't called to it (either generally, in the way I am called to love all neighbor, or more specifically), it would be a game—or a self-deception. Now consider art. Here, I am quite willing to say that insofar as one isn't pursuing some end independent of one's creation (beauty, truth, etc.), thus far one is playing a game. But it is important to note that while games may not matter deeply, they do in fact matter.

Pursuing as an end and pursuing as a means

One might think that to pursue (desire, hope for) something is to pursue it either as a means or as a final end. But that is false. Here is a nice case. Let us say that you don't know whether symmetry is worth having for its own sake. An omniscient being (or just an axiological expert) tells you that you will be better off for ensuring the existence of large symmetrical patterns on your walls. You ask whether this will be good in and of itself for you, or whether it is merely instrumentally good. The being declines to answer. You now have good reason to pursue the large symmetrical patterns on your walls (and desire and hope for them). But notice that you are not pursuing the patters as either a means or as an end. You are not pursuing the patterns as a means, because you do not believe that they are a means to anything valuable. You are not pursuing them as a final end, because you do not believe that they are intrinsically valuable. Instead, you believe the disjunction of the two value claims, and that is enough to justify your pursuit (and desire and hope).

In fact, this sort of thing is quite common. We have good reason to think that something is valuable, say because friends we respect pursue it, but we sometimes don't know whether it is valuable merely as a means or as an end. But this ignorance doesn't stop us from pursuing it. Thus, one may well pursue good reputation without having settled whether it is intrinsically or instrumentally worth having.

It is common to divide up pursuit (desire, hope) into the instrumental and non-instrumental. If so, then this case counts as non-instrumental, simply because it is not, in fact, instrumental. However, the term "non-instrumental" is often used as if it were more than just the denial of "instrumental". A "non-instrumental desire" is thought of as a desire for the thing itself, for instance. The above shows that this is mistaken, because it makes one think that there is a dichotomy where in fact there is a trichotomy: the instrumental, the intrinsic, and that which is neither instrumental nor intrinsic.

I've for a while been bothered by the phrase "non-instrumental value", which makes it sound like it's a derivative notion with the basic notion being that of instrumental value. And now I see that I have good reason to avoid the phrase. For non-instrumental value corresponds to non-instrumental pursuit. And the category of non-instrumental pursuit is not a natural way to slice things up: it is a disjunction of final pursuit and neither-final-nor-instrumental pursuit.

Interestingly, though, while the phrase "non-instrumental desire" is extensionally problematic given the kinds of cases I've been talking about, "non-instrumental goods" does manage to be extensionally right: it slices axiological nature along its joints, because the third category that arises for pursuit, desire and hope arises from subjective considerations, and hence does not apply to the good itself. But, nonetheless, it is better to avoid the phrase. "Intrinsic" or "basic" is better.