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.

Forgiveness

If I have done you a serious wrong, I bear a burden. I can be relieved of that burder by forgiveness. What is the burden and what is the relief?

The burden need not consist of anything emotional or dispositional on your side, such as your harboring resentment or being disposed not to interact with me in as amicable a way as before or pursuing my punishment. For, first, if I secretly betrayed you in such a way that you never found out you were wronged, my burden is still there. And, second, if you die without forgiving me, then the burden feels intact—unless perhaps I believe in life after death or divine forgiveness.

The burden need not consist of something emotional or dispositional on my side, either. For if it had to, I could be relieved of it by therapy. But therapy might make it easier to bear the burden, or (if badly done) may make me think the burden is gone, but the burden will still be there.

People often talk about forgiveness as healing a damaged relationship. But that’s not quite right, either. Suppose I have done many grave wrongs to you over the years that have completely ruptured the relationship. You have finally, generously, brought yourself to forgive me some but not all of them. (A perhaps psychologically odd story: you are working backwards through your life, forgiving all who have wronged you, year by year. So far you’ve forgivenes the wrongs in the last three years of your life. But my earlier wrongs remain.) The remaining ones may be sufficient to make our relationship remain completely ruptured.

The burden is fundamentally a normative feature of reality, as is hinted at by the use of “debt” language in the Lord’s Prayer (“Forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us”). By wronging someone, we make a move in normative space: we burden ourself with an objective, and not merely emotional, guilt. In forgiveness, the burden is removed, but the feeling of burden can remain—one can still feel guilty, just as one’s back can continue hurt when a load is removed from one’s back.

Insofar as there is a healing of a relationship, it is primarily a normative healing. There need not be any great psychological change, as can be seen from the case where you have forgiven me some but not all wrongs. Moreover, psychological change can be slow: forgiveness can be fast, but healing the effects of the wrongdoing can take long.

So far we have identified the type of thing that forgiveness is: it is a move in normative space that relieves something that the wrongdoer owes to a victim. But we are still not clear on what it is that the wrongdoer owes to the victim. And I don’t really know the answer here.

One possibility it is that it has something to do with punishment: I owe it to you to be punished. If so, then there are two ways for the burden to be cleared: one is by being punished and the other is by being forgiven. I can think of one objection to the punishment account: even after being adequately punished, you still can choose whether to forgive me. But if punishment clears the burden, what does your forgiveness do? Maybe it is at this point that the psychological components of forgiveness can enter: it’s up to you whether you stop resenting, whether you accept the clearing of the burden? Plus, in practice, it may be that the punishment is not actually sufficient to clear the burden—a lifetime in jail is not enough for some crimes.

Another possibility is that there is something normative and emotional. I owe it to you to feel guilty, and you can clear that debt and make it no longer obligatory for me to feel that way. That, too, doesn’t seem quite right. One problem is circularity: objective guilt consists in me owing you a feeling of guilt, but a feeling of guilt is a feeling that I am objectively guilty. Maybe the owed feeling has some other description? I don’t know!

But whatever the answer is, I am convinced now that the crucial move in forgiveness is normative.

The authority of game rules

I just set myself this task: Without moving my middle and index fingers, I would wiggle the ring finger of my right hand twenty times in ten seconds. I then fulfilled this task (holding the middle and index fingers still with my left hand). What was I doing by fulfilling my intention? I think I was playing and winning a game, albeit not a very fun one.

Here are four ways of describing a game fitting my intentions:

1. Victory condition: Wiggle ring finger 20 times in 10 seconds. Rules: Don’t move middle and index fingers.

2. Victory condition: Wiggle ring finger 20 times in 10 seconds without moving middle finger. Rules: Don’t move index finger.

3. Victory condition: Wiggle ring finger 20 times in 10 seconds without moving index finger. Rules: Don’t move middle finger.

4. Victory condition: Wiggle ring finger 20 times in 10 seconds without moving middle and index fingers. Rules: None.

Each of these generates the same gameplay: exactly the same things count as victory, since cheaters never win, and so you win only if you follow the rules. Ockham’s Razor suggests that they are all the same game. In other words, whether we put some constraints as rules or build them into the victory condition is just a matter of descriptive convenience.

If this is right, then here is a first attempt at a simple account of what we are doing when we play a game:

5. To play a game is to try to achieve the game’s victory condition without breaking the rules.

This gives a neat, simple and reductive account of the authority of the rules: Their authority comes from the fact that according with them is a necessary condition for achieving an end that one has adopted. It is simply the authority of instrumental rationality.

Of course, all sorts of complications come up. One is that games sometimes have score instead of a victory condition. In that case, what you are doing is aiming at higher scores rather than trying to achieve a specific victory condition, with some sort of an understanding of how breaking the rules affects the score (maybe it sets the score to zero, or maybe it you get whatever score you had just before you broke the rules). This tricky, and I explored these kinds of directional aiming in my ACPA talk last fall.

A bigger problem is this. My story started with a single player game. But things are more complicated in a two player game.

Problem 1: According to (5), if you plan to cheat, then you aren’t trying to achieve the victory condition without breaking the rules, and hence you aren’t playing the game. But to cheat at a game you have to play it! So in fact you never cheated!

Response: I think this is the right result for a single player game you play on your own. By planning to cheat in some particular way, I am simply the changing what game I am playing—and I can do that mid-game if I so choose. For instance, speedrunners of video games sometimes set themselves rules for what kind of “cheating” they are allowed to do: Can one use emulation and save states? Can one use glitches? Can one use automation, and where? If they are playing solely on their own, none of that is really cheating, because it is allowed by the rules they set themselves: their goal is to complete the game faster within such-and-such parameters.

But if you are playing against another or there is an audience to the game, things are different. We could just say this: You are cheating in the sense that you are deceiving the audience and the other player into thinking you are playing the game. Or we could say that there are two senses of playing a game: the first is simply to try to achieve the victory condition without breaking the rules, and the second is an implicit or explicit agreement with other persons to be playing a game in the first sense (e.g., indicated by signing up for the game).

Problem 2: Suppose I plan to beat you at chess while following the rules. To that end I drive to your house. Then my driving to your house is an attempt to achieve chess victory without breaking the rules, and hence by (5) the driving appears to be a part of the gameplay.

Response: This seems to me to be a pretty serious problem for the account actually. There seems to be an intuitive distinction between an action according with the rules that promotes victory and a move in the game. Another example is taking a drink of water while playing chess and doing so with the intention of improving one’s mental functioning and hence chances at victory. In taking the drink, one isn’t playing.

Or is one? When I think about it, the distinction seems kind of arbitrary and without normative significance. Take an athlete who is training for the big game. We want to say that they aren’t playing yet. But notice that in most modern sports the training itself falls under rules—specifically, rules about performance enhancing drugs. We could easily say that the training is basically a part of the game, a part that is much more loosely regulated than the rest. Similarly, many sports regulate the breaks that players can take, and deciding how to apportion the allowed break time (e.g., to take a drink of water, to relax, to stretch, or to refrain from taking it in order to make the other player think one isn’t tired) seems like a part of the game. Or take bodybuilding. It seems quite a distortion of the game to think only of the time in front of the judges as the gameplay.

What about the drive? That sure doesn’t seem to be a part of the game. But is that so clear? First, in a number of settings not showing up yields a forfit, a kind of loss. So you can lose by failing to drive! Second, you can choose how to drive—in restful or a stressful way, for instance—based on how this will affect the more formal gameplay.

Note that in chess, thinking is clearly a part of the gameplay. But you can start to think however early you like! You can be planning your first move should you end up winning the toss and playing white, for instance, while driving. Or not. The decision whether to engage in such planning is a part of your competency as a player.

Problem 3: It seems possible to play games with small children without trying to win, hoping that they will win.

Response: Maybe in such a case, one is pretending to play the game the child is playing, while one is playing a different game, say one whose victory condition is: “My child will checkmate me after I have made it moderately difficult for them to do so.” This is deceitful (the child will typically be unhappy if they figure out they were allowed to win), and deceit is defeasibly wrong. Is there a defeater here? I have my doubts.

Problem 4: I can try to run to my office in five minutes as a game or in order to be in time for office hours. There is a difference between the two: only in the first case am I playing. But in both cases the definition of (5) is satisfied.

Response: Maybe not. In (5), we have an ambiguity: it is not clear whether the fact that the victory condition is the victory condition of a game is a part of the content of one’s intention. If it is a part of the content of one’s intention, then the problem disappears: when I run in order to be on time, I am not aiming to get there in time as a game. But if we require the ludic component to be itself a part of the intention, however, then we lose some of the reductive appeal of (5) absent an account of games.

Should we require a thought of a game to be a part of the intention? Maybe. Suppose you find an odd game machine that dispenses twenty dollar bills if you tap a button 16 times in a second (quite an achievement). You try to do this just to get the money. Are you playing a game? I suspect not. For suppose a friend on a lark took your driver’s license and loaded it into the machine, and the only way to get it back is to tap the button 16 times in a second. You aren’t playing a game!

Perhaps we could say this. Instead of requiring the game part of (5) to be in the content of the intentions, we can require that something about the victory part be a part of the intentions. And perhaps what makes something a victory for you in the relevant sense is that in addition to whatever instrumental and intrinsic value it has, it is in part being pursued simply to achieve a goal one has set oneself as such. That’s what makes it not entirely serious. A game is a kind of whim: you just decided to pursue a goal, and off you go, because you decided to do so. (Of course, you might have good reason to have whims!)

Problem 5: Doesn’t the story violate the guise of the good thesis, since the victory need have no good in it apart from your setting it to yourself as an end, and hence your setting it to yourself as an end can’t be justified by its good.

Response: The case here is similar to one of my favorite family of edge cases for action theory, such as when you get a prize if you can induce electrical activity in the nerves from your brain to your arm, so you raise your arm. The raising of your arm has no value to you. But you have reason to set the rising of your arm as an end, since setting the raising of your arm as an end is a means to inducing the electrical activity in the nerves. In this case, the rising of the arm is worthless, either as an end or as a means, but aiming at it has value, since it causes the electrical activity in the nerves. (Depending on how one understands the response to Problem 4, it may be that one is then playing a simple little game with oneself.)

Similarly, if something is purely played as a game, the end has no value prior to its being set. But there are two values that you can aim at in setting victory-by-the-rules as your end: the value of achieving ends and the value of striving for achievable ends, to both of which the setting of achievable ends is a means. And maybe there is the good of play (which may or may not be subsumed under the values of striving for and achieving ends). So you have the guise of the good in an extended way: the end itself is not an independent good, but the adoption of the end is a good. That’s how it is in the electrical activity case.

Final remarks: The difficulties do not, I think, affect the basic account that the fundamental normative force of the rules of a game simply come from instrumental rationality: following the rules is necessary for the achievement of your goal. And there is a secondary normative force in multiplayer games, coming from general moral rules about compacts and deceit.

But perhaps we shouldn’t even say that there is normative force in the rules. They simply yield necessary conditions for achievement of one’s end. Perhaps they have no more, but no less, normative force than the fact that I need to exert energy to get to my office is.

Video: Three Mysteries of the Concrete

Alexander Pruss, “Three mysteries of the concrete: Causation, mind and normativity”, Christian Philosophy 2022, online, Cracow, Poland, September, 2022.

The three big mysteries of the concrete world

There are three big mysterious aspects of the concrete world around us:

• the causal

• the mental

• the normative.

The three mysteries are interwoven. Teleology is the domain of the interplay of the causal and the normative. And the mental always comes along with the normative, and often with the causal.

There is no hope of reducing the normative or the mental to the causal. Some have tried to reduce the normative to the mental, either via relativism (reducing to the finite mental) or Plantingan proper functionalism (reducing to the divine mental), neither of which appears particularly appealing in the end. I’ve toyed with reducing the mental to the normative, but while there is some hope of making progress on intentionality in this way, I doubt that there is a solution to the problem of consciousness in this direction.

Theism provides an elegant non-reductive story on which the three mysterious aspects of concrete reality are all found interwoven in one perfect being, and indeed follow from the perfection of that perfect being.

I wonder, too, if there is some way of seeing the three mysteries as reflective of the persons of the Trinity. Maybe the Father, the ultimate source of the other persons, is reflected in causality. The Son, the Logos, in the mental. And the Spirit, the loving concord of the Father and the Son may be reflected in the normative. But such analogies can be drawn in many ways, and I wouldn’t be very confident of them.

What I think is wrong with Everettian quantum mechanics

One can think of Everettian multiverse quantum mechanics as beginning by proposing two theses:

1. The global wavefunction evolves according to the Schroedinger equation.

2. Superpositions in the global wavefunction can be correctly interpreted as equally real branches in a multiverse.

But prima facie, these two theses don’t fit with observation. If one prepares a quantum system in a (3/5)|↑⟩+(4/5)|↓⟩ spin state, and then observes the spin, one will will observe spin up in |3/5|^2=9/25 cases and spin down in |4/5|^2=16/25 cases. But (roughly speaking) there will be two equally real branches corresponding to this result, and so prima facie one would expect equally likely observations, which doesn't fit observation. But the Everettian adds a third thesis:

3. One ought to make predictions as to which branch one will observe proportionately to the square of the modulus of the coefficients that the branch has in the global wavefunction.

Since Aristotelian science has been abandoned, there has been a fruitful division of labor between natural science and philosophy, where investigation of normative phenomena has been relegated to philosophy while science concerned itself with the non-normative. From that point of view, while (1) and (less clearly but arguably) (2) belong to the domain of science, (3) does not. Instead, (3) belongs to epistemology, which is study of the norms of thought.

This point is not a criticism. Just as a doctor who has spent much time dealing sensitively with complex cases will have unique insights into bioethics, a scientist who has spent much time dealing sensitively with evidence will have unique insights into scientific epistemology. But it is useful, because the division of intellectual labor is useful, to remember that (3) is not a scientific claim in the modern sense. And there is nothing wrong with that as such, since many non-scientific claims, such as that one shouldn’t lie and that one should update by conditionalization, are true and important to the practice of the scientific enterprise.

But (3) is a non-scientific claim that is absurd. Imagine that a biologist came up with a theory that predicted, on the basis of their genetics and environment, that:

4. There are equal numbers of male and female infant spider monkeys.

You might have thought that this theory is empirically disproved by observations of a lot more female than male infant spider monkeys. But our biologist is clever, and comes up with this epistemological theory:

5. One ought to make predictions as to the sex of an infant spider monkey one will observe in inverse proportion to the ninth power of the average weight of that sex of spider monkeys.

And now, because male spider monkeys are slightly larger than females, we will make predictions that roughly fit our observations.

Here’s what went wrong in our silly biological example. The biologist’s epistemological claim (5) was not fitted to the actual ontology of the biologist’s theory. Instead, basically, the biologist said: when making predictions of future observations, make them in the way that you should if you thought the sex ratios were inversely proportional to the ninth power of the average weights, even though they aren’t.

This is silly. But exactly the same thing is going on in the Everett case. We are being told to make predictions in the way you should if the modulus squares of the weights in the superposition were chances of collapse. But they are not.

It is notorious that any scientific theory can be saved from empirical disconfirmation by adding enough auxiliary scientific hypotheses. But one can also save any scientific theory from empirical disconfirmation by adding an auxiliary philosophical hypothesis as to how confirmation or disconfirmation ought to proceed. And doing that may be worse than obstinately adding auxiliary scientific hypotheses. For auxiliary scientific hypotheses can often be tested and disproved. But an auxiliary epistemological hypothesis may simply close the door to refutation.

To put it positively, we want a certain degree of independence between epistemological principles and the ontology of a theory so that the ontology of the theory can be judged by the principles.

The Fifth Way, also remixed

Thomas writes:

We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

Central to Aristotle’s thought is the normative thesis that all substances have proper functions or ends defined by their immanent forms. Moreover, Aristotle makes the statistical claim that for the most part things things function correctly—they function to fulfill their ends.

The statistical claim is epistemologically important: that an activity or structure is usually exhibited by members of a kind is a central piece of evidence for that activity’s or structure’s correctness. But logically the statistical facts and the normative facts are independent: it is logically possible for all sheep to be three-legged, or for only a few pecan trees to produce pollen.

To see that we are committed to the connection between the normative and the statistical facts, consider the ridiculousness of the hypothesis that one of the ends of salmon is to prove theorems about high-dimensional topology. The utter unsuitability of the salmon brain to that end is conclusive evidence against the hypothesis. But this is only if we think there is a connection between the normative and the statistical facts—without such a connection, we could simply suppose that all salmon fall short of their topological researcher nature.

Note, too, just how massive the coincidence between the normative and statistical facts is: we see it across millions of species.

As Aquinas concedes, in intelligent substances we have some hope of an explanation of the coincidence: the intelligent substance consciously aims at its self-fulfillment. (Though leaning on this may be too much of a concession, because we still need to explain why this aiming isn’t futile, like a crank’s attempts to trisect angles.) But why do unintelligent substances’ activities in fact harmonize with their self-fulfillment, and do so massively, across all the millions of species we have? Why is it that we do not salmon-like fish with mathematical activity as their purpose, snake-like reptiles with flying as their end, and apes whose primary purpose is turning their bodies into gold by exposure to solar radiation?

A theistic explanation of the massive coincidence is compelling, and it provides another theistic solution to the shortcomings of a pure Aristotelian system.

Vagueness about moral obligation

There is a single normative property that is normatively above all others, that overrides all others: moral obligation.

I think the above intuition entails that there cannot be any non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation.

There are two main non-epistemic approaches to vagueness: deviant logic and supervaluationism. Deviant logic is logically unacceptable. :-) That leaves supervaluationism. But on supervaluationism, there would have to be many acceptable precisifications of our concept of moral obligation. Each such precisification would presumably be a normative property. But only a precisification that was normatively above all others could be an acceptable precisification of our concept of moral obligation. And there can only be one precisification above all others. So there can only be one acceptable precisification of moral obligation.

The above argument is too quick. The supervaluationist can say that in the claim “Moral obligation is above all other normative properties”, we have another candidates for vagueness: “above” (or “overrides”). Then we need to engage in coordinated precisification of “moral obligation”, as well as “above”. For each coordinated precisification, the aboveness claim will be true: “Moral obligation_i is above_i all other normative properties.”

I think, however, that once we allow for a variety of precisifications of “above”, we betray the intuition behind the aboveness thesis. That in some sense moral obligation is above personal convenience is not the bold and bracing intuition of the overridingness of morality. Thus, I think that if we are to be faithful to that intuition, we cannot allow for non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation.

And this, in turn, greatly limits how much non-epistemic vagueness there can be. For instance, if there is no vagueness about permissibility, then it cannot be vague whether something is a person, since vagueness about personhood leads to vagueness about moral obligations of respect. Indeed, it is not clear that there can be any non-epistemic vagueness if there is no non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation. Suppose I promise to become bald, and I have a small amount of hair. Then I am non-bald if and only if I am obligated to remove some hair.

An exercise in vacuity

I’ve been thinking what an Aristotelian would say about the thesis that the normative supervenes on the non-normative. That thesis holds that:

1. any two possible worlds that have the same non-normative facts have the same normative facts.

So, the first question I asked myself was: What sorts of non-normative facts are there on the Aristotelian view of the world? First, every fact involving a natural kind is normative, since natural kind concepts are normative concepts—sheep are the sorts of things that should have four legs (among other things) and electrons are the sorts of things that should repel other electrons (among other things). Second, because natural kind membership is essential, it seems that any facts about particulars will also be normative, since all particulars other than God (and by divine simplicity there are no non-normative facts about God) are essentially members of natural kinds. Could there at least be some non-normative facts about how many objects exist? I don’t think so. For to exist is to be a substance, or to be related appropriately to a substance (say, by being an accident of a substance). But a part of what it is to be a substance is to have a form which governs how one ought to behave, and that’s normative. So existential facts are normative, too.

In fact, it’s looking to me like there are no non-normative facts on an Aristotelian view. Hence, if (1) were to hold, we would have to have:

2. any two possible worlds have the same normative facts.

But since all facts are normative, it would follow that:

3. any two possible worlds have the same facts.

But since possible worlds are distinguished by their facts, we see that on an Aristotelian view, the supervenience thesis basically says:

4. there is only one possible world.

And that’s false.

Deflating particular normative states of affairs?

Some actions lead to a future normative state of affairs. A promise or valid command leads to a future state of affairs of my or someone else’s being obliged to fulfill it. A wrongful action leads to a state of obligation to repent. And so on.

Here are two views of these states of affairs:

• Deflationary: There is nothing more to these states of affairs than general conditional moral normative facts, such as the facts that you should keep your promises, together with the fact of the triggering action, such as that you’ve promised to ϕ.

• Non-Deflationary and Causal: These states of affairs are metaphysically irreducible aspects of reality that are caused into existence by their triggering actions.

In fact of the deflationary view is that it’s deflationary, and hence supported by Ockham’s Razor.

But I think there are some reasons to accept the non-deflationary view. First, suppose you now come to the time where the normative state of affairs obtains: you must now fulfill your promise or you must now repent. Then the deflationary view implies an odd sort of “tyranny of the past”. What obliges you is not anything about the present, but something about the past. Your present obligations, on the deflationary view, do not supervene on the present state of the universe. This might especially bother presentists, but I think it’s also a bit worrying to eternalists like me.

Second, the “general conditional moral normative facts” the deflationary approach deals with will have to have extremely complex antecedents. For instance, for a command, there will be a fact of the form:

• If you were validly commanded to ϕ, and you have not yet fulfilled the command, and the command wasn’t changed by a higher authority, and circumstances have not relevantly changed, and …, then you should ϕ.

My worry about this is that there might be an infinite number of possible ways for a command obligation to disappear that would have to be put in the “…”. But perhaps not. Perhaps all I’ve said above is enough.

However, there is some reason not to be persuaded by this consideration. It is reasonable to think that human beings have normative powers: our actions can create reasons and obligations for ourselves and others. But one way for the obligation from a promise or command to disappear is for the non-normative circumstances to change. For instance, if I promised to do a minor errand, and a giant herd of yaks blocked my way, so that I could only do the errand via an unreasonably large detour, I might be off the hook normatively. But it seems implausible that a herd of yaks has the causal power to annihilate normative facts. So, it seems, even the non-deflationist may want the normative states of affairs to be conditional: “I should do the errand unless it becomes unreasonable.”

Third, the phenomenology of being released from an obligation—say, by being forgiven or a promisee’s releasing you—is an experience as of a load being removed. That “load” felt like a real thing which was annihilated.

Fourth, being forgiven changes your obligations by removing your guilt, at least assuming repentance. But it seems that God could forgive you a sin without announcing the forgiveness in any way, or in any other non-normative way changing the world. In such a case, God’s forgiveness would have a contingent normative effect. But God is simple, and hence all contingent facts about God are grounded in necessary truths about God and contingent facts about creation. But then if there is no non-normative change in creation due to the forgiveness, there must be a normative change in creation due to it.

On the non-deflationary causal view, divine forgiveness consists in God’s destroying the normative state of affairs of your being guilty. On the deflationary view, it’s got to be grounded in something like a divine “I forgive you” speech act, whether specific to your case (e.g., God telling you in your heart that you’ve been forgiven), or general (e.g., God’s announcing that anything the Apostles forgive is forgiven by God in John 20:23). But in the case of our forgiving someone the speech acts are announcements of a contingent state of affairs of forgiveness that goes beyond the announcements. That state of affairs, in the case of a simple God, cannot be internal to God. And it seems like it’s normative.

I find the last two considerations fairly powerful, but not conclusive. Of course, I accept divine simplicity, but the claim that God can forgive without any announcement isn’t completely obvious. Divine forgiveness could be like a Presidential pardon, which must be promulgated.

For us non-naturalists, it would be cool if we could argue for the non-deflationary view. For on this view, naturalism is false: we have causal powers that go beyond those described by the sciences, namely the causal power to produce normative states of affairs.

Update: Here's an argument in favor of deflation. While a particular obligation feels like a something ("a load"), what we cite as reasons for action is often not a resultant normative state but the original triggering action: "You promised!" or "I need to make it up to her given what I did." But on the causal non-deflationary view, the original triggering action is not even a part of the reason for action: it is, rather, a cause of the normative state, and the normative state itself is the reason. Of course, this isn't conclusive, because it could be that we mention the triggering action as evidence for the resultant reason. We likewise say: "I need go home because I left the kettle on." That I left the kettle on is no reason to go back home. That the kettle is still on is a reason to go home, and that I left the kettle on is evidence that that the kettle is still on.

Normative powers

Consider:

1. Purely physical things have only physical powers.

2. Normative powers (i.e., powers of producing normative effects, such as promises and commands) are not physical powers.

3. We have normative powers.

4. So, we are not purely physical.

I guess what I am not sure about in this argument is whether “power” is used univocally between “physical powers” and “normative powers”.

Book in Progress: Norms, Natures and God

I have begun work with a working title of Norms, Natures and God, which should be a book on how positing Aristotelian natures solves problems in ethics (normative and meta), epistemology, semantics, metaphysics and mind, but also how, especially after Darwin, to be an intellectually satisfied Aristotelian one must be a theist. The central ideas for this were in my Wilde Lectures.

There is a github repository for the project with a PDF that will slowly grow (as of this post, it only has a table of contents) as I write. I welcome comments: the best way to submit them is to click on "Issues" and just open a bug report. :-)

The repository will disappear once the text is ready for submission to a publisher.

Anti-reductionism and supervenience

In the philosophy of mind, those who take anti-reductionism really seriously will also reject the supervenience of the mental on the non-mental. After all, if a mental property does not reduce to the non-mental, we should be able to apply a rearrangement principle to fix the non-mental properties but change the mental one, much as one can fix the shape of an object but change its electrical charge, precisely because charge doesn’t reduce to shape or shape to charge. There might be some necessary connections, of course. Perhaps some shapes are incompatible with some charges, and perhaps similarly some mental states are incompatible with some physical arrangement. But it would be surprising, in the absence of a reduction, if fixing physical arrangement were to fix the mental state.

Yet it seems that in metaethics, even the staunchest anti-reductionists tend to want to preserve the supervenience of the normative on the non-normative. That is surprising, I think. After all, the same kind of rearrangement reasoning should apply if the normative properties do not reduce to the non-normative ones or vice versa: we should be able to fix the non-normative ones and change the normative ones at least to some degree.

Here’s something in the vicinity I’ve just been thinking about. Suppose that A-type properties supervene on B-type properties, and consider an A-type property Q. Then consider the property Q^B of being such that the nexus of all B-type properties is logically compatible with having Q. For any Q and B, having Q^B is necessary for having Q. But if Q supervenes on B-type properties, then having Q^B is also sufficient for having Q. Moreover, Q^B seems to be a B-type property in our paradigmatic cases: if B is the physical properties, then Q^B is a physical property, and if B is the non-normative properties, then Q^B is a non-normative property. (Interestingly, it is a physical or non-normative property defined in terms of mental or normative properties.)

But now isn’t it just as weird for a staunch anti-reductionist to think that there is a non-normative property that is necessary and sufficient for, say, being obligated to dance as it is for a staunch anti-reductionist to think there is a physical property that is necessary and sufficient for feeling pain?

Supervenience and natural law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Causal theories of normative statuses

Utterances cause a variety of outcomes. For instance, a request often causes an action by another person, while saying “Alexa, turn on the lights” can cause the lights to turn on. This is not the paradigmatic thing that happens with performatives. With performatives, the outcome is (at least partially) constituted by the utterance. When the Queen utters the words of knighting, the newly created knight’s knightliness is not caused by but constituted by the utterance. One plausible argument for this is that causation has a speed of light limit, but knighting does not: the Queen could knight someone a light-year away, effective immediately.

So we have two kinds of outcome for an utterance: causal outcomes and constituted outcomes. It is plausible that sometimes utterances have both kinds. For instance, knighting someone can both constitute them as a knight and cause them to do knightly deeds.

It is widely, though perhaps often only implicitly, held that the normative statuses involved in marriages, promises and reasons of request are constituted outcomes of performative utterances.

It is, I think, worth thinking about what reasons we have to accept this performative constitution thesis. For here is another possibility: these social statuses are constituted by contingent normative properties that are caused to exist by the utterance. In such a case, the utterances producing these statuses are not performatives, but function causally, like the “Alexa, turn on the light” example.

If naturalism is true, so is the performative constitution thesis. For if naturalism is true, then normative properties supervene on physical properties, and there is no plausible physical property that is caused by uttering a promise on which the relevant normative property could supervene. Here is a quick argument: Any physical property that can be produced by promising can be produced impersonally by random quantum phenomena, but such random quantum phenomena will not result in the relevant normative properties of promise. Hence the physical act of promising must be a part of the supervenience base of the relevant normative properties.

But if naturalism is false, then we have a new possibility. It could be that marrying, promising and requesting non-physically cause relevant normative properties. The quick argument above no longer works, since random quantum phenomena need not have the power to produce these normative properties. In fact, even the speed-of-light argument concerning knighting doesn’t work, because non-physical causation need not have a speed-of-light limit.

Do we have good reason, beyond an incredulous stare, to dismiss the causal theory of these normative statuses?

I think classical theists have some reasons to opposed the causal theory. First, God has the power to directly cause all the kinds of effects we have the power to cause. So if I can cause myself to have the normative property of having promised you a dollar, God can directly cause me to have his normative property. But that’s absurd: for while God can directly cause me to promise you a dollar, it is a contradiction for the state of having promised to be caused by any means other than the making of that promise.

This is, however, only a limited opposition to the causal theory. For while God cannot directly cause me to be in a promissory state, it may well be that God can directly cause me to have the paradigmatic normative property constituting the promissory state, namely an obligation of performance with exactly the kind of weight that the promise carried. Thus, the first argument is compatible with a hybrid causal-constitutive view on which my making a promise causes the obligation but constitutes the obligation as a promissory one. Compare how my carving a statue would cause the statue but constitute it as hand-made.

The second argument against the causal theory is this. By divine simplicity, God’s contingent properties are all constituted by contingent entities outside of himself. But when God promises something, he acquires a contingent obligation. By divine simplicity, that obligation must be constituted by something contingent outside of God. And the most plausible candidate is that the it is constituted by the physical manifestation making up the promise (e.g., the voice that the promisee heard). So in the case of divine promises, neither the original causal theory nor the hybrid theory is plausible.

That said, the second argument is not very strong. For contingent beliefs are internally constituted in us and yet by exactly the same divine simplicity argument externally constituted in God. So while the fact that God’s promissory normative statuses are externally constituted gives us some reason to think ours are, this is far from conclusive. Moreover, what goes for promises may not go for other things. God (qua God) cannot marry. So the argument doesn’t apply to marriage.

In summary, if naturalism is false, then it could be the case that some of the normative statuses that are generally thought to be constituted by performative utterances are in fact caused by utterances, though classical theists have some reason to prefer the performative constitution theory in many cases.

Finally, note that there is a third option besides constitution and causation: something I call quasi-causation. If I pray for an effect, and as an outcome of my prayer, God produces the effect, I don’t want to say that my prayer caused God to produce the effect. It just seems contrary to divine transcendence to suppose we can cause God to do things. Yet there is something like causation going on here. Similarly, it could be that sometimes a normative status is not caused but merely quasi-caused by an utterance.

Catholics, in fact, are liable to think that the quasi-causal theory is at least true of one aspect of one case: sacramental marriage. In sacramental marriage, there is an intrinsic change in the parties entering the marriage as a result of the exchange of the marriage vows. But because the change happens due to God’s gracious activity, it probably cannot be said to be caused by the marriage vows. Rather, the change is quasi-caused by the marriage vows. However, it is not clear whether the relevant intrinsic change is a change with respect to a normative property.

All in all, there are many open questions here.

Four grades of normative actuality

Here are four qualitatively different grades of the normative actuality of a causal power:

0. Normative possession (zeroeth normative actuality): x has a nature according to which it should have causal power F. (An adult human who lacks sight still has normative possession of vision.)
1. First normative actuality: x has a normal (for x’s nature) causal power F. (The human with closed eyes has first actuality of vision.)
2. Second normative actuality: x exercises the normal causal power F. (The human who sees has second actuality of vision.)
3. Full (third) normative actuality: x exercises the normal causal power F and achieves the full telos of the causal power. (The human who gains knowledge through seeing has full actuality of vision.)

What I call normative possession is close to Aristotelian first potentiality, but is not exactly the same. The newborn has first potentiality for speaking Greek—namely, she is such that eventually she can come to have the power of speaking Greek—but she does not have normative possession of speaking Greek, since human nature does not specify that one should be able to speak Greek. However, the newborn does have normative possession of language in general.

I think each of the four grades of normative actuality is non-instrumentally valuable, and that the grades increase in non-instrumental value as one goes from zero to three.

Grade zero can carry great value, even in the absence of higher grades. For instance, normative possession of the causal powers constitutive of rational agency makes one be a person (or so I say, following Mike Gorman). And it is very valuable to be a person. This may, however, be a special case coming from the fact that persons have a dignity that other kinds of things do not; maybe the special case comes from the fact that persons need to have a fundamentally different kind of form from other things. For other causal powers, grade zero doesn’t seem to carry much value. Imagine that you found out that (a) normal Neanderthals have the ability to run five hundred kilometers and (b) you are in fact a Neanderthal. By finding out these things, you’d have found out that you have normative possession of the ability to run 500km—but of course, you have no actual possession of that ability. The normative possession is slightly cool, but so what? Unless one has a higher grade of actuality of this ability, simply being the kind of thing that should have that ability does not seem very valuable. And the same is true for abilities more valuable than the running one: imagine that Neanderthals turn out to have Einstein-level mathematical abilities, but you don’t. It would be a bit cool to be of the same kind as these mathematical geniuses (maybe this is a little similar to how it’s cool for a Greek to be of the same nation as Socrates), but in the end it really doesn’t count for much.

Grade one is also valuable even in the absence of higher grades. It makes for the difference between health and impairment, and health is valuable. But I can’t think of cases where first normative actuality carries much non-instrumental value. Imagine that I know for sure that I am going to spend all my life with my eyes tightly closed (e.g., maybe I am hooked up to machine that will kill me if I attempt to open them). It is objectively healthier that I have sight than that I do not. But it seems rational to sacrifice all of my sight for a slight increase in the acuity of touch or hearing, given that I can actually exercise touch and hearing (second or third actuality) while I can’t exercise sight. Even slight amounts of second or third normative actuality seem to trump first normative actuality.

Grade two seems quite valuable, even absent grade three. Here, examples can be multiplied. Sensory perception that does not lead to knowledge can still be well worth having. Sex is valuable even absent successful reproduction. Running on a treadmill can have a value even if does not achieve locomotion. While it seems to be generally true that a great amount of first actuality can be sacrificed for a small amount of second actuality, this is not as generally true with second and third actuality. One might reasonably prefer to run two kilometers on a treadmill—even for the non-instrumental goods of the exercise of leg muscles—instead of running two meters on the ground.

All of the lower grades of normative actuality derive their value in some way from the value of full normative actuality. But full normative actuality does not always trump grade two. It seems to generally trump grade one. Grade zero is special: most of the time it does not seem to carry much value, but it does in the case where it constitutes personhood. (Maybe, though, the dignity of personhood shouldn’t be thought of in terms of value.)

Types of normativity

It is widely thought that our actions are governed by at least multiple types of normativity, including the moral, the prudential and the epistemic, and that each type of normativity comes along with a store of reasons and an ought. Moreover, some actions—mental ones—can simultaneously fall under all three types of normativity.

Let’s explore this hypothesis. If we make this distinction between types of normativity, we will presumably say that morality is the realm of other-concerned reasons and prudence is the realm of self-concerned reasons. Suppose that at the cost of an hour of torture, you can save me from a minor inconvenience. Then (a) you have a moral reason to save me from the inconvenience and (b) you have a prudential reason not to save me.

It seems clear that you ought to not save me from the inconvenience. But what is this ought? It isn’t moral, since you have no moral reasons not to save me. Moreover, what explains the existence of this ought seem to be prudential reasons. So it seems to be a prudential ought.

But actually it’s not so clear that this is a prudential ought. For a further part of the explanation of why you ought not save me is that the moral reasons in favor of saving me from a minor inconvenience are so very weak. So this is an ought that is explained by the presence of prudential reasons and the weakness of the opposed moral reasons. That doesn’t sound like an ought belonging to prudential normativity. It seems to be a fourth kind of ought—an overall ought.

But perhaps moving to a fourth kind of ought was too quick. Consider that it would be wrongheaded in this case to say that you morally ought to save me, even though all the relevant moral reasons favor saving me and if these were all the reasons you had, i.e., if there were no cost to saving me from inconvenience, it would be the case that you morally ought to save me. (Or so I think. Add background assumptions about our relationship as needed to make it true if you’re not sure.) So whether you morally ought to save me depends on what non-moral reasons you have. So maybe we can say that in the original case, the ought really is a prudential ought, even though its existence depends on the weakness of the opposed moral reasons.

This, however, is probably not the way to go. For it leads to a great multiplication of types of ought. Consider a situation where you have moral and prudential reasons in favor of some action A, but epistemic reasons to the contrary. We can suppose that the situation is such that the moral reasons by themselves are insufficient to make it be the case that you ought to perform A, and the prudential reasons by themselves are insufficient, but when combined they become sufficiently strong in contrast with the epistemic reasons to generate an ought. The ought which they generate, then, is neither moral nor prudential. Unless we’ve admitted the overall ought as a fourth kind, it seems we have to say that the moral and prudential reasons generate a moral-and-prudential ought. And then we immediately get two other kinds of ought in other cases: a moral-and-epistemic ought and a prudential-and-epistemic ought. So now we have six types of ought.

And the types multiply. Suppose you learn, by consulting an expert, that an action has no cost and there are either moral or prudential considerations in favor of the action, but not both. You ought to do the action. But what kind of ought is that? It’s some kind of seventh ought, a disjunctive moral-exclusive-or-prudential kind. Furthermore, there will be graded versions. There will be a mostly-moral-but-slightly-epistemic ought, and a slighty-moral-but-mostly-epistemic ought, and so on. And what if this happens? An expert tells you, correctly or not, that she has discovered there is a fourth kind of reason, beyond the moral, prudential and epistemic, and that some action A has no cost but is overwhelmingly favored by the fourth kind of reason. If you trust the expert, you ought to perform the action. But what is the ought here? Is it "unknown type ought"?

It is not plausible to think that oughts divide in any fundamental way into all these many kinds, corresponding to different kinds of normativity.

Rather, it seems, we should just say that there is a single type of ought, an overall ought. If we still want to maintain there are different kinds of reasons, we should say that there is variation in what kinds of reasons and in what proportion explain that overall ought.

But the kinds of reasons are subject to the same line of thought. You learn that some action benefits you or a stranger, but you don’t know which. Is this a moral or a prudential reason to do the action? I suppose one could say: You have a moral reason to do the action in light of the fact that the action has a chance of benefiting you, and you have a prudential reason to do the action in light of the fact that the action has a chance of benefiting a stranger. But the reason-giving force of the fact that action benefits you or a stranger is different from the reason-giving force of the facts that it has a chance of benefiting you and a chance of benefiting the stranger.

Here’s a technical example of this. Suppose you have no evidence at all whether the action benefits you or the stranger, but it must be one or the other, to the point that no meaningful probability can be assigned to either hypothesis. (Maybe a dart is thrown at a target, and you are benefited if it hits a saturated non-measurable subset and a stranger is benefited otherwise.) That you have no meaningful probability that the action benefits you is a reason whose prudential reason-giving force is quite unclear. That you have no meaningful probability that the action benefits a stranger is a reason whose moral reason-giving force is quite unclear. But the disjunctive fact, that the action benefits you or the stranger, is a quite clear reason.

All this makes me think that reasons do not divide into discrete boxes like the moral, the prudential and the epistemic.

GPS signals, normativity and the morality of lying

I will argue that lying is never permissible. The argument is a curious argument, maybe Kantian in flavor, which attempts to establish the conclusion without actually adverting to any explanation of what is bad about lying.

GPS satellites constantly broadcast messages that precisely specify the time at which the message is sent together with precise data as to the satellite orbit. Comparing receipt times of message from multiple GPS satellites with the positions of the satellites, a GPS receiver can calculate its position.

A part of the current design specifications of US GPS satellites is apparently that they can regionally degrade the signal in wartime in order to prevent enemies from making use of the signal (US military receivers can presumably circumvent the degradation).

Now, let’s oversimplify the situation and make up some details (the actual GPS signal specifications are here and the points I am making don’t match the actual specifications), since my point is philosophy of language, not GPS engineering. So I’m really talking about GPS satellites in another possible world.

Suppose that normally the satellite is broadcasting the time n in picoseconds up to a precision of plus or minus ten picoseconds, and suppose that currently we receive a message of n in the time field from a satellite. What does that message mean?

First of all, the message does not mean that the current time is n picoseconds. For the design specifications, I have stipulated, are that there is a precision of plus or minus ten picoseconds. Thus, what it means is something more like:

1. The current time is n ± 10 ps, i.e., is within 10 ps of n ps.

But now suppose that it is a part of the design and operation specifications that in wartime the locally relevant satellites add a pseudorandom error of plus or minus up to a million picoseconds (remember that I’m making this up). Then what the message field means is something like:

2. Either (a) this is a satellite that is relevant to a war region, the current time is n ± 10⁶ ps and [extra information available to the military], or (b) the current time is n ± 10 ps.

In particular, when wartime signal degradation happens, the time field of the GPS message is (assuming the satellite is working properly) still conveying correct information—the satellite isn’t lying. For the semantic content of the time field supervenes on the norms in the design and operation specifications, and if these norms specify that wartime degradation occurs, then that possibility becomes a part of the content of the message.

Suppose lying is sometimes morally obligatory. Thus, there will be a sentence “s” and circumstances C_s in which it is both true that s and morally required to say that not s. Suppose Alice is uttering “Not s” in an assertoric way. Morality is part of Alice’s (and any other human being’s) “design and operation specifications”. Thus on the model of my analysis (2) of the semantic content of the (fictionalized) time field of the GPS message, what is being stated or asserted by Alice is not simply:

3. Not s

but rather:

4. Either (a) C_s obtains, or (b) not s.

But if that’s the content of Alice’s statement, then Alice is not actually lying when she says “Not s” in C_s. And the same point goes through even if Alice isn’t obligated but is merely permitted to say “Not s” in C_s. The norms in her design and operation specifications make (4) be the content of her statement rather than (3).

In other words:

5. If lying that s is obligatory or permissible in C_s, then lying is actually impossible in C_s.

But the consequent of (5) is clearly false. Thus, the antecedent is false. And hence:

6. Lying is never obligatory or permissible.

Note that a crucial ingredient in my GPS story is that the norms governing the degradation of GPS messages are in some way public. If these norms were secret, then the military would be making the GPS satellites do something akin to lying when they degraded their messages. But moral norms are essentially public.

Objection 1: The norms relevant to the determination of the content of a statement are not moral but linguistic norms. The moral norms require that Alice utter “Not s” in an assertoric way only when (4) obtains. But the linguistic norms require that Alice utter “Not s” in an assertoric way only when (3) obtains. And hence (3) is the content of “Not s”, not (4).

Response: This is a powerful objection. But compare the GPS case. We could try to distinguish narrowly technical norms of satellite operation from the larger norms on which GPS satellites are controlled by the US military in support of military aims. That would lead to the thought that the time field of the satellite (on my fictionalized version of the story) would mean (1). But I think it is pretty compelling that the time field of the satellite would mean (2). The meaning of the message needs to be determined according to the overall norms of design and operation, not some narrow technical subset of the specifications. Similarly, the meaning of a linguistic performance needs to be determined according to the overall norms of design and operation of the human being engaging in the performance. And it is precisely the moral norms that are such overall norms.

Second, linguistic norms are norms of voluntary behavior, since linguistic performance is a form of voluntary behavior. But a norm of voluntary behavior that conflicts with morality is null and void insofar as it conflicts, much as an illegal order is no order and an unconstitutional law is no law.

Third, on a view on which linguistic norms have the kind of independence from moral norms that the objection requires, it is difficult to specify what makes them linguistic. For we cannot simply say that they are the overall norms governing linguistic behavior. Moral norms do that, as well. A distinction like the one in the objection would make sense in the case of something where the rules are formalized. Thus, there are circumstances when the rules of chess require one to do something immoral. (For instance, suppose that a tyrant tells you she will kill an innocent unless you move a pawn forward by three squares. The rules of chess require you to refrain from doing that, but it is immoral for you to refrain from it.) But the rules of chess are simply a well-defined set of statements about what constitutes a game of chess, and it is relatively easy to tell if something is a rule of chess or not. But linguistic norms are just some among the many norms governing human behavior, and it is hard to specify which ones they are, if one can't do it by the subject matter of the norms. (I am also inclined to think that the rules of chess might not actually be norms; they are, rather, classificatory rules that specify what counts as a victory, loss, draw or forfeit; the norms governing play are moral.)

Objection 2: Content is not normatively determined.

Response: If that’s right, then my line of argument does fail. But I think a normative picture of content is the right one. In part it’s my Pittsburgh pedigree that makes me want to say that. :-)

Objection 3: Bite the bullet and say that when Alice utters “Not s”, she is in fact asserting (4) and not lying even if C_s obtains. While on this view, technically, lying is never permissible, in practice the view permits the same behaviors as a view on which lying is sometimes permissible.

Response: This just seems implausible. But I wish I had a better response.

Assertions and other illocutionary acts

I used to think one could get by without assertions in a society, using only promises. Here's the trick I had in mind. Instead of asserting "The sky is blue", one first promises to utter a truth, and then one utters (without asserting!) "The sky is blue." This has sufficiently similar normative effects to actually asserting "The sky is blue" that a practice like this could work. This observation could then lead to further speculation that promises are more fundamental than assertions.

But that speculation would, I now think, be quite mistaken. The reason is that we do two things with a promise. First, we create a moral reason for ourselves. Second, we communicate the creation of that moral reason to our interlocutors. Both parts are central to the practice of promises: the first is important for rationally constraining the speaker's activity and the second is important for making it rational for the listener to depend on the speaker. But communicating that we created a moral reason is very much like asserting a proposition--viz., the proposition that we created a moral reason of such and such a type. Consequently, promises depend on something that, while not quite assertion, is sufficiently akin to assertion that we should not take promises as more fundamental than assertions.

A similar phenomenon is present in commands, requests and permissions. With commands, requests and permissions we attempt to create or remove reasons in the listener, but we additionally--and crucially--communicate the creation or removal to the listener. Assertions, promises, permissions, commands and requests seem to be the pragmatically central speech acts. And they all involve communicating a proposition. Assertion involves little if anything beyond this communication. In the case of the other four, the proposition is normative, and the speech act when successful also makes that proposition be true. For instance, to promise to do A involves communicating that one has just created a moral reason for oneself to do A, while at the same time making this communicated proposition be true.

So something assertion-like is involved in all these pragmatically important speech acts, but they are not reducible to assertion. However if we were able to create and destroy the relevant reasons directly at will, we wouldn't need promises, commands, requests or permissions. We could just create or destroy the reasons, and then simply assert that we had done so. But our ability to create and destroy reasons is limited. I can create a reason for you by requesting that you do something, but I can't create a reason for you by simply willing the reason into existence. (Compare: I can make a cake by baking, but not by simply willing the cake into existence.) However I can create and destroy reasons through speech acts that simultaneously communicate that creation and destruction, and that's how promises, commands, requests and permissions work.

Probability and normativity

The Born rule is a central part of quantum mechanics that tells us that the probability of a particle detector detecting a particle in a region U is equal to ∫_U|ψ(x)|²dx, where ψ is normalized.

What exactly "probability" in the Born rule means depends on the particular interpretation of quantum mechanics. On some interpretations (e.g., on some interpretations of collapse interpretations) it will be a physical propensity and on others (e.g., Bohm and some versions of Everett) it will be something like a frequency. But any adequate interpretation of quantum mechanics needs to generate predictions, and hence needs to tell us what rational credences there are: what credences agents should assign to outcomes.

This means that a criterion of adequacy on an interpretation of quantum mechanics is that the Born rule must be understood in such a way that if a rational agent believes the Born rule, she should assign credences in accordance with it. There needs, thus, to be a bridge between the "probability" of the Born rule and the credences an agent should have.

The simplest version of the bridge is identity: take "probability" to mean an appropriate conditional rational credence. If that's done, then quantum mechanics is directly a normative theory: it tells us what we should believe.

On other interpretations, however, serious epistemology is needed to move from the probability in the Born rule to the credences an agent should have. For instance, we may need a version of the Principal Principle. This serious epistemology is normative: it is about the credences an agent should have.

Thus, either quantum physics includes normative claims or it needs further normative claims to generate predictions. (And there is nothing special here about quantum physics.)