A multiple faculty solution to the problem of conscience

I used to be quite averse to multiplying types of normativity until I realized that in an Aristotelian framework it makes perfect sense to multiply them by their subject. Thus, I should think that 1 = 1, I should look both ways before crossing the street, and I should have a heart-rate of no more than 100. But the norms underlying these claims have different subjects: my intellect, my will and my circulatory system (or perhaps better: I as thinking, I as willing and I as circulating).

In this post I want to offer two solutions to the problem of mistaken conscience that proceed by multiplying norms. The problem of mistaken conscience is two-fold as there are two kinds of mistakes of conscience. A strong mistake is when I judge something is required when it is forbidden. A weak mistake is when I judge something is permissible when it is forbidden.

Given that I should follow my conscience, a strong mistake of conscience seems to lead to two conflicting obligations: I should ϕ, because my conscience says so, and I should refrain from ϕing, because ϕing is forbidden. Call the claim that strong mistakes of conscience lead to conflicting obligations the Dilemma Thesis. The Dilemma Thesis is perhaps somewhat implausible on its face, but can be swallowed (as Mark Murphy does). However, more seriously, the Dilemma Thesis has the unfortunate result that strong mistakes of conscience are not, as such, mistakes. For the mistake was supposed to be that I judge ϕing as required when it is forbidden. But that is only a mistake when ϕing is not required. But according to the Conflict Thesis, it is required. So there is no mistake. (There may be a mistake about why it is required, and perhaps one can use that to defuse the problem, but I want to try something else in this post.) Moreover, a view that embraces the Dilemma Thesis needs to explain the blame asymmetry between the obligation to ϕ and the obligation not to ϕ: I am to blame if I go against conscience, but not if I follow conscience.

Weak mistakes are less of a problem, but they still raise the puzzle of why I am not blameworthy if I do what is forbidden when conscience says it’s permissible.

Moving towards a solution, or actually a pair of solution, start with this thought. When I follow a mistaken conscience, my will does nothing wrong but the practical intellect has made a mistake. In other words, we have two sets of norms: norms of practical intellect and norms of will. In these cases I judged badly but willed well. And it is clear why I am not blameworthy: for I become blameworthy by virtue of a fault of the will, not a fault of the intellect.

But there is still a problem analogous to the problem with the Dilemma Thesis. For it seems that:

1. In a mistake of conscience, my judgment was bad because it made a false claim as to what I should will.

In the case of a strong mistake, say, I judged that I should will my ϕing whereas is in fact I should have nilled my ϕing. But I can’t say that and say that the will did what it should in ϕing.

This means that if we are to say that the will did nothing wrong and the problem was with the intellect, we need to reject (1). There are two ways of doing this, leading to different solutions to the problem of conscience.

Claim (1) is based on two claims about practical judgment:

2. The practical intellect’s judgments are truth claims.

3. These truth claims are claims about what I should will.

We can get out of (1) by denying (2) (with (3) then becoming moot) or by holding on to (2) but rejecting (3).

Anscombe denies (2), for reasons having nothing to do with mistakes of conscience. There is good precedent for denying (2), then.

I find the solution that denies (2) a bit murky, but I can kind of see how one would go about it. Oversimplifying, the intellect presents actions to the will on balance positively or negatively. This presentation does not make a truth claim. The polarity of the presentation by the intellect to the will should not be seen as a judgment that an action has a certain character, but simply as a certain way of presenting the judgment—with propathy or antipathy, one might say. Nonetheless there are norms of presentation built into the nature of the practical intellect. These norms are not truth norms, like the norms of the theoretical intellect, but are more like the norms of the functioning of the body’s thermal regulation system, which should warm up the body in some circumstances and cool it down in others, but does not make truth claims. There are actions that should be positively presented and actions that should be negatively presented. We can say that the actions that should be positively presented are right, but the practical intellect’s positive presentation of an action is not a presentation that the action is right, for that would be an odd circularity: to present ϕing positively would be to present ϕing as something that should be presented positively.

(In reality, the “on balance” positive and negative presentations typically have a thick richness to them, a richness corresponding “in flavor” to words like “courageous”, “pleasant”, etc. However, we need to be careful on this view not to think of the presentation corresponding “in flavor” to these words as constituting a truth claim that a certain concept applies. I am somewhat dubious whether this can all be worked out satisfactorily, and so I worry that the no-truth-claim picture of the practical intellect falls afoul of the thickness of the practical intellect’s deliverances.)

There is a second solution which, pace Anscombe, holds on to the idea that the practical intellect’s judgments are truth claims, but denies that they are claims about what I should will. Here is one way to develop this solution. There are times when an animal’s subsystem is functioning properly but it would be better if it did something else. For instance, when we are sick, our thermal regulation system raises our temperature in order to kill invading bacteria or viruses. But sometimes the best medical judgment will be that we will on the whole be better off not raising the temperature given a particular kind of invader, in which case we take fever-reducing medication. We have two norms here: a local norm of the thermal regulation system and a holistic norm of the organism.

Similarly, there are local norms of the will—to will what the intellect presents to it overall in a positive light, say. And there are local norms of the intellect—to present the truth or maybe that which the evidence points to as true. But there are holistic norms of the acting person (to borrow Wojtyla’s useful phrase), such as not to kill innocents. The practical intellect discerns these holistic norms, and presents them to the will. The intellect can err in its discernment. The will can fail to follow the intellect’s discernment.

The second solution is rather profligate with norms, having three different kinds of norms: norms of the will, norms of the intellect, and norms of the acting person, who comprises at least the will, the intellect and the body.

In a strong mistake of conscience, where we judge that we should ϕ but ϕing is forbidden, and we follow conscience and ϕ, here is what happens. The will rightly follows the intellect’s presentation by willing to ϕ. The acting person, however, goes wrong by ϕing. We genuinely have a mistake of the intellect: the intellect misrepresented what the acting person should do. The acting person went wrong, and did so simpliciter. However, the will did right, and so one is not to blame. We can say that in this case, the ϕing was wrong, but the willing to ϕ was right. And we can say how the pro-ϕing norm takes priority: the norm to will one’s ϕing is a norm of the will, so naturally it is what governs the will.

In a weak mistake of conscience, where we judge that it is permissible to ϕ but it’s not, again the solution is that under the circumstances it was permissible to will to ϕ, but not permissible to ϕ.

There is, however, a puzzle in connecting this story with failed actions. Consider either kind of mistake of conscience, and suppose I will to ϕ but I fail to ϕ due to some non-moral systemic failure. Maybe I will to press a forbidden button, but it turns out I am paralyzed. In that case, it seems that the only thing I did was willing to ϕ, and so we cannot say that I did anything wrong. I think there are two ways out of this. The first is to bite the bullet and say that this is just a case where I got lucky and did nothing wrong. The second is to say that my willing to ϕ can be seen as a trying to ϕ, and it is bad as an action of the acting person but not bad as an action of the will.

Supererogation on Aristotelianism

The cheetah whose maximum speed is 40 mph is subnormal. The cheetah whose maximum speed is 58 mph is merely normal. The cheetah whose maximum speed is 80 mph is supernormal. An Aristotelian can accommodate these three judgments by saying that the form of the cheetah sets two things for the cheetah’s speed: a norm and a comparison. The norm specifies what is needed for being a healthy cheetah, and the comparison specifies what is a better speed than what. And the comparison can hold among instances that meet the norm, in which case the better instance is supernormal, and it can hold among instances that fail to meet the norm, too.

Having both a norm and a comparison for a type of good is especially important in the case of open-ended goods with a lower limit but no upper limit. Thus, no matter how much a human knows, knowing more would be better (in respect of knowledge). But there is such a thing as knowing enough to be a flourishing human knower. But we can also have a norm and a comparison in the case of things where there is an upper limit. Thus, a heart that is too small or too big is unhealthy. But is a range of healthy heart sizes (specified by the norm), and some of those sizes are healthier than others (specified by the comparison). Somewhere in that range there could even be (though vagueness and multidimensionality of comparison make that unlikely) a single optimal heart size.

What is true for dispositions (maximum speed) and physical arrangements is also true for operations. There is a normal cheetah running operation, a subnormal and a supernormal one. (Note that in some cases the supernormal one will be slower than the merely normal one, since sometimes energy needs to be conserved.)

The central Aristotelian insight I want to have in ethics is that just as there is proper function in the operation of the legs, there is proper function in the operation of the will. If so, then we would expect there to be a norm and a comparison: some instances of the will’s operation are normal and some are subnormal. And among the normal ones some will be better than others. Thus, in a case where multiple operations of the will are possible, that operation that is normal but better than another normal operation is supererogatory, while an operation that is normal but not better than another normal operation is merely permissible.

There is metaphysically nothing special about the supererogatory or the obligatory on the Aristotelian picture. They are just the instances of a general phenomena in the special case of the operation of the will.

The great chain of being and the glory of God

There are things with power but no knowledge or moral will: e.g., trees. There are things with power and knowledge but no moral will: e.g., horses. There are things with all three: e.g., human beings.

These fundamental attributes mark radical qualitative differences. I suspect there are infinitely many further possible fundamental attributes besides power, knowledge and moral will. A being that had one more of these attributes would be qualitatively as far above us as we are above horses or as far as horses are above trees. But just as a horse cannot conceive of moral will, and a tree cannot conceive of anything, we cannot conceive of what these further attributes would be. All we can do is speculate that then chain power, knowledge and moral will can be continued indefinitely.

God actually has all three of power, knowledge and moral will, and has each to its maximal perfection. If my suspicion about the chain continuing ad infinitum, then all the further attributes in the chain God also has to an infinite degree. (While remaining simple.) But we have no idea what they are.

Two explanatory stories in Natural Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer to that is love.

Prosthetic decision-making

Let’s idealize the decision process into two stages:

1. Intellectual: Figure out the degrees to which various options promote things that one values (or desires, judges to be valuable, etc.).

2. Volitive: On the basis of this data, will one option.

On an idealized version of the soft-determinist picture, the volitive stage can be very simple: one wills the option that one figured out in step 1 to best promote what one values. We may need a tie-breaking procedure, but typically that won’t be invoked.

On a libertarian picture, the volitive stage is where all the deep stuff happens. The intellect has delivered its judgment, but now the will must choose. On the best version of the libertarian picture, typically the intellect’s judgment includes a multiplicity of incommensurable options, rather than a single option that best promotes what one values.

On the (idealized) soft-determinist picture, it seems one could replace the mental structures (“the volitive faculty”) that implement the volitive stage by a prosthetic device (say, a brain implant) that follows the simple procedure without too much loss to the person. The actions of a person with a prosthetic volitive faculty would be determined by her values in much the same way as they are in a person with a normal volitive faculty. What is important is the generation of input to the volitive stage—the volitive stage is completely straightforward (except when there are ties).

On the libertarian picture, replacing the volitive faculty by a prosthesis, however, would utterly destroy one as a responsible agent. For it is here, in the volition, that all the action happened.

What about replacing the intellectual faculty by a prosthesis? Well, since the point of the intellectual stage is to figure out something, it seems that the point of the intellectual stage would be respected if one replaced it by an automated process that is at least as accurate as the actual process. Something else would be lost, but the main point would remain. (Compare: Something would be lost if one replaced a limb by a prosthetic that functioned as well as the limb, but the main point would remain.)

So, now, we can imagine replacing both faculties by prostheses. There is definite loss to the agent, but on the soft-determinist picture, there isn’t a loss of what is central to the agent. On the libertarian picture, there is a loss of what is central to the agent as soon as the volitive faculty is replaced by a prosthesis.

The upshot of this is this: On the soft-determinist picture, making decisions isn’t what is central to one as an agent. Rather, it is the formation of values and desires that is central, a formation that (in idealized cases) precedes the decision process. On the libertarian picture, making decisions—and especially the volitive stage of this process—is central to one as an agent.

Depth and intensity of love

Some of this post came from a conversation with graduate students and is based on their ideas.

It looks like we can measure love along what initially are two dimensions: depth and intensity.

The depth of a love is a measure of how thoroughly intertwined the love is with one's character, how deeply rooted it is, how much of one's personality is in some way dependent on this love. The intensity of a love encompasses two dimensions: there is emotional intensity and there is intensity of will, which one might call zeal. Intensity of will measures how much effort and how much sacrifice one is willing to make for the love.

An intense love, whether intense in emotion or in will, may very well come into existence quickly, though a love can also slowly and gradually grow intense. But a deep love is unlikely to come into existence quickly, unless one's character has already been prepared for this love. Grace can prepare character in this way, but there may also be natural cases of someone who can say "I was waiting all my life for you" (I tend to be sceptical of these—I think soulmatehood between people is somewhat more likely to be something they produce over time than something they simply find preexisting).

"Free choice"

I am starting to wonder whether the way in which ordinary people, including both undergraduates and scientists, assume free choices to have alternate possibilities doesn't simply mean that the phrases "free choice" and "free will" simply mean a kind of uncompelled choice or will that involves alternate possibilities. The kind of resistance that non-philosophers show to the idea that there can be freedom and determinism, the matter-of-factness with which they assume Calvinism to be a denial of free will, seems to be good evidence that this is just what the phrases mean. If so, then the philosophically interesting question is not about the compatibility of free will and determinism, but about the compatibility of responsibility and determinism. For while the phrase "free will" very plausibly means a choice that has alternate possibilities, "responsibility" does not simply mean something with alternate possibilities.

If this hypothesis about language is correct, the ordinary lnaguage claim "Freedom is incompatible with determinism" is trivial. The claim "responsibility is incompatible with determinism" is non-trivial and controversial. One way to see that it is controversial is that the word itself is pretty broad. We talk of "causal responsibility" by non-agential causes, and that does not imply alternate possibilities.

I think none of this really affects discussion between careful philosophers. Philosophers' use "free will" differs from the ordinary use here, I think, in that in the philosophers' sense of the word, alternate possibilities are not a part of the meaning.