Philosophy
433
History of Ethics
Darwall
Winter 2008
I
Hobbes and Normativity
A.
The orthodox naturalist (subjectivist) solution Recall
Hobbes’s problem: how to account for the
normativity (oughtness) of the laws
of nature, consistently with with
empiricism and
materialism. Again, the orthodox view of
Hobbes’s solution is that
(i)
he holds a subjectivist
theory of value
(ii)
he assumes that all human beings have a
desire for
self-preservation, and
(iii)
that the laws of nature are empirical
generalizations
about what is necessary for self-preservation.
B. The problems with this
solution
(i)
it collapses the distinction between what I
actually
desire and what I should desire
(ii) it
can’t account for fundamental ethical disagreement.
(iii) The basis on which
commentators attribute it to Hobbes (6.7) is insufficient.
What Hobbes says there is that whenever we
desire something we call it good. He
doesn’t say that calling something good is saying of it that we desire
it.
II. A projectivist interpretation of Hobbes:
A.
Hobbes explicitly analogies
the case of value to color. (To think
about ethical properties on the model of secondary properties is very
common
these days.
B. He offers a projectivist
account of color.
C. He offers a projectivist
account of value (and of normativity).
III. Hobbes’s projectivist account of color.
We should begin with Hobbesis
theory of color in 1.4. First, there is
the "seeming, or fancy" "which men call sense; and [which] consisteth, as to the eye, in a light, or colour figured; to the ear, in a sound; to the
nostril, in
an odour . . . " These experiences are "a representation
or appearance of some quality, or other accident of a body without
us." Our experience of color, for
example, represents it as in the objects
we experience. However,
considered reflection on our experience shows that this cannot be so. There is nothing in the object "that causeth [our experience] but so many several
motions of the
matter, by which it presseth our organs
diversely." There are only the
material properties of the object that cause us to see it as colored. The colors and sounds that we experience
bodies as having are not in the bodies themselves.
"For if [they were] . . . they could not
be severed from them, as by glasses, and in echoes by reflection, we
see they
are: where we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in
another." So there is nothing, actually, to color but the material
processes in us and in the objects we experience, although this is not
what
appears to us. Color appears to us as in
the object, although it really isn't.
IV. Hobbes’s projectivist interpretation of value.
This account of the sensible experience of
colors, sounds, savors, odors, etc., is importantly analogous with
Hobbes's
account of value. And in
making this analogy, Hobbes may well
be the initiator of a metaethical tradition that seeks to understand
value on
the model of what Locke called "secondary qualities"--e.g., color,
sound, odors, tastes, etc. [Another
important figure would be Hume; there has recently been a resurgence of
different versions of view like this from writers like John Mackie,
David Wiggins,
David Lewis, Michael Smith, John MacDowell,
and Mark
Johnston.] Let us see how Hobbes sets it
out.
We may begin with Hobbes's theory of
action in Ch. 6. He starts with a
distinction between vital and animal motion. The former is common to any living thing, the latter is "otherwise called voluntary;
as to
go, to speak, to move any of our limbs, in such a manner as is first
fancied in
our minds." (6.1)
A.
Every voluntary action begins with an "endeavor":
"these small beginnings of motion,
within the body of man, before they appear in walking, speaking,
striking, and
other visible actions."
These "endeavors" always
have some object of thought to which
they are directed (what philosophers sometimes call an "intentional
object"). "[W]hen it is toward
something which causes it, it is called appetite or desire." "And when the endeavour
is fromward something, it is generally
called
aversion."
Desire and aversion are the same
thing as, respectively, love and hate (6.3) "save that by desire, we
always signify the absence of the object; by love, most commonly the
presence
of the same."
B. In addition to
these motions toward or from a "fancied" object, there is also an
associated experience or fancy of the desire, which Hobbes calls
"delight" or "pleasure".
(6.10)
C. So far, the
analogy between this color experience is as
follows:
(i) the
material motion
of endeavor (desire/appetite) is analogous to the material
underpinnings of
sense experience.
(ii) “delight”
or
“pleasure” is analogous to the “seeming” or “fancy” involved in color
experience.
(iii) In color experience, this
fancy is as of color (as an objective,
categorical property). What is the
object of delight or pleasure when we have a desire?
Here is Hobbes’s answer: “pleasure
therefore, or delight, is the
appearance or sense of good." (6.11)
D.
Now let’s read Hobbes’s passage about good and evil: “whatsoever is the object of any man’s
appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth
good: and
the object of his hate and version, evil.” (6.7) This does not say
that in calling something good we say that we desire it.
Rather, Hobbes’s view must be this. Whenever we desire
something we see it as (and call it) good. As
in the case of color, we project a property
onto it that it literally does not have.
This is a projectivist
theory of value.
V. The normativity of the laws of nature
according to projectivism (a first run).
Return now to our question about the
normativity of the laws of nature. We
can agree with the orthodox interpretation that Hobbes is assuming that
everyone wants self-preservation.
According to that interpretation, the reasoning involves in laws
of
nature is something like this:
1.
I want to
preserve
myself.
2.
I can
preserve myself
only if, say, I keep covenants (the 3rd law of nature)
3.
Therefore, I
should
keep covenant.
The
problem with this analysis, as we saw, is that we seem to be getting an
‘ought’
out of an ‘is’. As I interpret him, Hobbes is indeed
assuming that everyone desires self-preservation, but his view is that
when we
desire something we accept an evaluative (or normative) premise.
1.’ Preserving
myself is good.
2.’ I
can preserve myself only if, say, I
keep covenant
3.’ Therefore,
I should keep covenant.
VI
Value
and deliberation.
We can leave it open whether Hobbes
is
committed to thinking that, literally, all ethical propositions are
false (like
Mackie’s error theory), or whether he
would accept some noncognitivist projectivism. It is clear, however, that Hobbes thinks that
ethics is unavoidable, since deliberation
is unavoidable so long as we have desires and desires are unavoidable
so long
as we are alive. (See 6.49,53 on
deliberation, also 6.55 and 6.58) Leviathan
is a deeply practical work in the sense that it is addressed to
deliberating agents.
Consider the connections Hobbes
draws in 6.49f between value, desire, and deliberation.
A. Deliberation is simply a series
of desires until action.
B. We have desires, and therefore
deliberate, so long as we are alive
C. The will is the last desire
before action.
D. (Because of A), when we
deliberate “divers good and evil consequences of the doing, or omitting
the
thing propounded, come successively into
our
thoughts.” (6.49)
Notice, however, that there is a
problem lurking here. Hobbes says that
“appetites, and aversions, are raised by foresight of the good and evil
consequences.” (6.57) But if projectivism is true, isn’t this backwards? To see the consequences as good, must I not
already
have the relevant desire? Similarly, a
pattern of deliberation, such as 1’,2’,3’, is supposed to explain how a
person
can acquire a desire to perform some specific action, say, keep some
covenant. And it looks as though it does
so by getting me to judge 3’ (that I should keep covenant). But how can I judge that unless I already
desire to keep covenant? Practical
deliberative
reasoning seems to create new desires through accepting practical
conclusions,
but the idea can’t be that I literally desire to keep covenant because
I judge
that I should keep it if judging that I should keep covenant (keeping
covenant
would be good) is itself a consequence of the desire.
Presumably, Hobbes is assuming that
when I have the desire I express in 1’ and the belief expressed in 2’,
and see
the connection between them, then I will have the desire I express in
3’. But what is the status of whatever
mechanism
that assures this? Isn’t Hobbes
assuming, in effect, that I implicitly accept or follow
a norm of
instrumental rationality that takes me from 1’ and 2’ to 3’. This is a practical version of the Lewis Carrol Problem, which highlights the
necessity of rules
of inference in theoretical reasoning.