Best of all possible worlds

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds 

The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" (French: Le meilleur des mondes possibles; German: Die beste aller möglichen Welten) was coined by the German polymath and Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal (Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil),^[1] more commonly known simply as the Theodicy. The claim that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds is the central argument in Leibniz's theodicy, or his attempt to solve the problem of evil.^[1]

Leibniz

In Leibniz's works, the argument about the best of all possible worlds appears in the context of his theodicy, a word that he coined by combining the Greek words Theos, 'God', and dikē, 'justice'.^[2] Its object was to solve the problem of evil, that is, to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with the existence of a perfectly good, all-powerful and all-knowing God, who would seem required to prevent it; as such, the name comes from Leibniz's conceiving of the project as the vindication of God's justice, namely against the charges of injustice brought against him by such evils. Proving that this is the best of all possible worlds would dispel such charges by showing that, no matter how it may intuitively appear to us from our limited point of view, any other world – such as, namely, one without the evils which trouble our lives – would, in fact, have been worse than the current one, all things considered.

Leibniz's argument for this conclusion may be gathered from the paragraphs 53–55 of his Monadology, which run as follows:

53. Now as there are an infinity of possible universes in the ideas of God, and but one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God which determines him to select one rather than another.

54. And this reason is to be found only in the fitness or in the degree of perfection which these worlds possess, each possible thing having the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection which it involves.

55. This is the cause for the existence of the greatest good; namely, that the wisdom of God permits him to know it, his goodness causes him to choose it, and his power enables him to produce it.

Since this is a very compact exposition, the remainder of this section will explain the argument in more words. While the text refers to "possible universes", this article will often adopt the more common usage "possible worlds", which refers to the same thing, which is explained next. As Leibniz said in the Theodicy, this term should not be misunderstood as referring only to a single planet or reality, since it refers to the sum of everything that exists:

I call 'World' the whole succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things, lest it be said that several worlds could have existed in different times and different places.

Possible worlds

Possible worlds, according to Leibniz's theory, are combinations of beings which are possible together, that is, compossible.

A being is possible, for Leibniz, when it is logically possible, i.e., when its definition involves no contradiction.^[7] For example, a married bachelor is impossible because a "bachelor" is, by definition, an unmarried man, which contradicts "married". But a unicorn, if defined as a horse with a horn, contains no contradiction, so that such a being is possible, even if none exist in the actual world.

Beings are possible together, in turn, when they do not enter into contradiction with each other. For instance, it is logically possible that a meteor might have fallen from the sky onto Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's head soon after he was born, killing him. But it is not logically possible that what happens in a given world (e.g. that Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia) also does not happen in the same world (i.e. that Jimmy Wales did not found Wikipedia). While both of these events are logically possible in themselves, they are not logically possible together, or compossible – so, they cannot form part of the same possible world.

Leibniz claims in §53, then, that there are infinitely many of these possible worlds, or combinations of compossible beings, in the ideas of God. These are the worlds which God could possibly bring into existence, since not even God, according to Leibniz, could create a world which contains a contradiction.

Sufficient reason

Although God cannot create a self-contradictory world, he is all-powerful and all-knowing, as emphasized in §55. He cannot be prevented from creating a world by not knowing about it, or by lacking the power to make it. Given these assumptions, it might seem that God could create just any one of the worlds. And since there are infinitely many possible worlds, it might seem that, just as there is no greatest among the infinitely many numbers, there is no best of the possible worlds.

Leibniz rejects these possibilities by appealing to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), a central principle of his philosophical system. This principle, which he was the first to name, was once described by him as the principle "that nothing happens without a reason"; in the Monadology, which is the work at hand, he described it as follows:

31. Our reasoning is based upon two great principles: first, that of contradiction, by means of which we decide that to be false which involves contradiction and that to be true which contradicts or is opposed to the false. 32. And second, the principle of sufficient reason, in virtue of which we believe that no fact can be real or existing and no statement true unless it has a sufficient reason why it should be thus and not otherwise. Most frequently, however, these reasons cannot be known by us.

Since Leibniz adopted his principle, he could not admit that God chose to create this world rather than another – that God's choice was "thus and not otherwise" – for no reason, or "arbitrarily".

Leibniz then claims that the only possible reason for the choice between these possible worlds is "the fitness or the degree of perfection" which they possess – i.e., the quality which makes worlds better than others, so that the world with the greatness "fitness" or "perfection" is the best one. As the philosophers Michael Murray and Sean Greenberg interpreted it, this claim may be understood by the consideration that basing the choice on any other quality about the worlds would have been arbitrary, contrary to the PSR.

Leibniz claims that God's choice is caused not only by its being the most reasonable, but also by God's perfect goodness, a traditional claim about God which Leibniz accepted. As Leibniz says in §55, God's goodness causes him to produce the best world. Hence, the best possible world, or "greatest good" as Leibniz called it in this work, must be the one that exists.

Evil in the best world

Leibniz, following a long metaphysical tradition that goes back at least to Augustine, conceived of the perfection of the universe as its "metaphysical goodness", which is identical with "being", or "reality". The best world is the one with the greatest "degree of reality", the greatest "quantity of essence", the greatest "perfection" and "intelligibility". According to this tradition, "evil, though real, is not a 'thing', but rather a direction away from the goodness of the One"; evil is the absence of good, and accordingly, it is technically wrong to say that God created evil, properly speaking. Rather, he created a world which was imperfectly good.

According to the privation theory of evil, all examples of evils are analysed as consisting in the absence of some good that ought to be there, or is natural to a thing – for instance, disease is the absence of health, blindness is the absence of sight, and vice is the absence of virtue. Evil may be said to exist in the same way the hole of a donut exists: the donut was created, but the hole itself was not made, it was just never filled in – it is an absence. And just as the hole could not exist without the donut, evil is parasitic upon good, since it is the corruption of a good nature. "God is infinite, and the devil is limited; the good may and does go to infinity, while evil has its bounds."

Leibniz did, nevertheless, concede that God has created a world with evil in it, and could have created a world without it. He claimed, however, that the existence of evil does not necessarily mean a worse world, so that this is still the best world that God could have made. In fact, Leibniz claimed that the presence of evil may make for a better world, insofar as "it may happen that the evil is accompanied by a greater good" – as he said, "an imperfection in the part may be required for a perfection in the whole".

In light of the conceptual tools that have already been explained, this claim may be phrased as stating that there are goods in the universe which would not be compossible with the prevention of certain evils. This claim, which may seem counterintuitive, was elucidated by Leibniz in various ways. For instance, in the Theodicy, he used certain analogies to emphasize how the contrast provided by evil may increase the good, and make it more discernible:

Use has ever been made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of the senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to prove that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. A little acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar; shadows enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives relief to harmony. We wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point of falling and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep. Do men relish health enough, or thank God enough for it, without having ever been sick? And is it not most often necessary that a little evil render the good more discernible, that is to say, greater?

In other works, Leibniz also used his broader theory that there are no "purely extrinsic denominations" – everything that may be said about something is essential to it. So, according to Leibniz, it is technically wrong to say that "I would be better off" in another possible world: each individual is world-bound, so that, if God had not actualized this specific world, I would not exist at all. And even if, due to my great personal suffering, I should think that it would be better for me to not exist, it would nevertheless be worse for the rest of the universe, since this world is the best possible world, as was proved.^[2]

Uses outside of theodicy

Leibniz also applied his theory of the best of all possible worlds to solve the problem of induction. Out of all possible worlds, God has chosen "the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena". (Discourse on Metaphysics, §6) This justifies human beings in choosing to believe, out of the available theories, those which are simplest and have the most explanatory power.

Before Leibniz

The philosopher Calvin Normore has claimed that, according to the Stoics, this is the best of all possible worlds, and that this opinion was shared by Peter Abelard.

Avicenna argued that divine providence ensures that this is the best of all possible worlds.

Thomas Aquinas, in article 6 of question 25 of the first part of his Summa Theologiae, had affirmed that God can always make better what he has made, but only by making more things; "the present creation being supposed, cannot be better."

After Leibniz

18th century

Following the devastating Lisbon Earthquake (1 November 1755), which occurred decades after the publication of the Theodicy (1710), Leibniz's philosophical optimism and theodicy incurred considerable criticism both from his fellow Enlightenment philosophers and from Christian theologians. Critics of Leibniz argue that the world contains an amount of suffering too great to permit belief in philosophical optimism.

The claim that we live in the best of all possible worlds drew scorn most notably from Voltaire, who lampooned it in his comic novella Candide by having the character Dr. Pangloss (a parody of Leibniz and Maupertuis) repeat it like a mantra when great catastrophes keep happening to him and the titular protagonist. Derived from this character, the adjective "Panglossian" describes a person who believes that the actual world is the best possible one, or is otherwise excessively optimistic.

19th century

The physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond, in his "Leibnizian Thoughts in Modern Science" (1870), wrote that Leibniz thought of God as a mathematician:

As is well known, the theory of the maxima and minima of functions was indebted to him for the greatest progress through the discovery of the method of tangents. Well, he conceives God in the creation of the world like a mathematician who is solving a minimum problem, or rather, in our modern phraseology, a problem in the calculus of variations – the question being to determine among an infinite number of possible worlds, that for which the sum of necessary evil is a minimum.

Du Bois-Reymond believed that Charles Darwin supported a version of Leibniz's perfect world, since every organism can be understood as relatively adapted to its environment at any point in its evolution.

Arthur Schopenhauer argued, contrary to Leibniz, that our world must be the worst of all possible worlds, because if it were only a little worse, it could not continue to exist.

20th century

The Theodicy was deemed illogical by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell argues that moral and physical evil must result from metaphysical evil (imperfection). But imperfection is merely limitation; if existence is good, as Leibniz maintains, then the mere existence of evil requires that evil also be good. In addition, libertarian Christian theology (not related to political libertarianism) defines sin as not necessary but contingent, the result of free will. Russell maintains that Leibniz failed to logically show that metaphysical necessity (divine will) and human free will are not incompatible or contradictory. He also claims that when Leibniz analyzes the propositions, he is "ambiguous or doubtful..." (O'Briant). That is, Leibniz does not sound sure, and is unsure of himself when he writes his premises; and they do not work together without making Leibniz sound unsure of himself.

21st century

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga criticized Leibniz's theodicy by arguing that there probably is not such a thing as the best of all possible worlds, since one can always conceive a better world, such as a world with one more morally righteous person.

The philosopher William C. Lane defended Leibniz from Plantinga's criticism and also claimed that Leibniz's theory has pandeistic consequences:

If divine becoming were complete, God's kenosis – God's self-emptying for the sake of love – would be total. In this pandeistic view, nothing of God would remain separate and apart from what God would become. Any separate divine existence would be inconsistent with God's unreserved participation in the lives and fortunes of the actualized phenomena."

Leibniz's theodicy has been defended by Justin Daeley, who argues that God must create the best, and James Franklin, who argues that goods and evils in creation are interconnected with mathematical necessity and hence cannot be separated by divine power.

Is–ought problem

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem 

David Hume raised the is–ought problem in his Treatise of Human Nature.

The is–ought problem, as articulated by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume, arises when one makes claims about what ought to be that are based solely on statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive statements (about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious how one can coherently transition from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones.

Hume's law or Hume's guillotine is the thesis that an ethical or judgmental conclusion cannot be inferred from purely descriptive factual statements.

A similar view is defended by G. E. Moore's open-question argument, intended to refute any identification of moral properties with natural properties, which is asserted by ethical naturalists, who do not deem the naturalistic fallacy a fallacy.

The is–ought problem is closely related to the fact–value distinction in epistemology. Though the terms are often used interchangeably, academic discourse concerning the latter may encompass aesthetics in addition to ethics.

Overview

Hume discusses the problem in book III, part I, section I of his book, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739):

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it's necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.

Hume calls for caution against such inferences in the absence of any explanation of how the ought-statements follow from the is-statements. But how exactly can an "ought" be derived from an "is"? The question, prompted by Hume's small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory, and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is impossible.

In modern times, "Hume's law" often denotes the informal thesis that, if a reasoner only has access to non-moral factual premises, the reasoner cannot logically infer the truth of moral statements; or, more broadly, that one cannot infer evaluative statements (including aesthetic statements) from non-evaluative statements. An alternative definition of Hume's law is that "If P implies Q, and Q is moral, then P is moral". This interpretation-driven definition avoids a loophole with the principle of explosion. Other versions state that the is–ought gap can technically be formally bridged without a moral premise, but only in ways that are formally "vacuous" or "irrelevant", and that provide no "guidance". For example, one can infer from "The Sun is yellow" that "Either the Sun is yellow, or it is wrong to murder". But this provides no relevant moral guidance; absent a contradiction, one cannot deductively infer that "it is wrong to murder" solely from non-moral premises alone, adherents argue.

Implications

The apparent gap between "is" statements and "ought" statements, when combined with Hume's fork, renders "ought" statements of dubious validity. Hume's fork is the idea that all items of knowledge are based either on logic and definitions, or else on observation. If the is–ought problem holds, then "ought" statements do not seem to be known in either of these two ways, and it would seem that there can be no moral knowledge. Moral skepticism and non-cognitivism work with such conclusions.

Responses

Oughts and goals

Ethical naturalists contend that moral truths exist, and that their truth value relates to facts about physical reality. Many modern naturalistic philosophers see no impenetrable barrier in deriving "ought" from "is", believing it can be done whenever we analyze goal-directed behavior. They suggest that a statement of the form "In order for agent A to achieve goal B, A reasonably ought to do C" exhibits no category error and may be factually verified or refuted. "Oughts" exist, then, in light of the existence of goals. A counterargument to this response is that it merely pushes back the "ought" to the subjectively valued "goal" and thus provides no fundamentally objective basis to one's goals which, consequentially, provides no basis of distinguishing moral value of fundamentally different goals. A dialectical naturalist response to this objection is that although it is true that individual goals have a degree of subjectivity, the process through which the existence of goals is made possible is not subjective—that is, the advent of organisms capable of subjectivity, having occurred through the objective process of evolution. This dialectical approach goes further to state that subjectivity should be conceptualized as objectivity at its highest point, having been the result of an unfolding developmental process.

This is similar to work done by the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who attempts to show that because ethical language developed in the West in the context of a belief in a human telos—an end or goal—our inherited moral language, including terms such as good and bad, have functioned, and function, to evaluate the way in which certain behaviors facilitate the achievement of that telos. In an evaluative capacity, therefore, good and bad carry moral weight without committing a category error. For instance, a pair of scissors that cannot easily cut through paper can legitimately be called bad since it cannot fulfill its purpose effectively. Likewise, if a person is understood as having a particular purpose, then behaviour can be evaluated as good or bad in reference to that purpose. In plainer words, a person is acting good when that person fulfills that person's purpose.

Even if the concept of an "ought" is meaningful, this need not involve morality. This is because some goals may be morally neutral, or (if they exist) against what is moral. A poisoner might realize his victim has not died and say, for example, "I ought to have used more poison," since his goal is to murder. The next challenge of a moral realist is thus to explain what is meant by a "moral ought".

Discourse ethics

Main article: Discourse ethics

Proponents of discourse ethics argue that the very act of discourse implies certain "oughts", that is, certain presuppositions that are necessarily accepted by the participants in discourse, and can be used to further derive prescriptive statements. They therefore argue that it is incoherent to argumentatively advance an ethical position on the basis of the is–ought problem, which contradicts these implied assumptions.

Moral oughts

As MacIntyre explained, someone may be called a good person if people have an inherent purpose. Many ethical systems appeal to such a purpose. This is true of some forms of moral realism, which states that something can be wrong, even if every thinking person believes otherwise (the idea of brute fact about morality). The ethical realist might suggest that humans were created for a purpose (e.g. to serve God), especially if they are an ethical non-naturalist. If the ethical realist is instead an ethical naturalist, they may start with the fact that humans have evolved and pursue some sort of evolutionary ethics (which risks “committing” the moralistic fallacy). Not all moral systems appeal to a human telos or purpose. This is because it is not obvious that people even have any sort of natural purpose, or what that purpose would be. Although many scientists do recognize teleonomy (a tendency in nature), few philosophers appeal to it (this time, to avoid the naturalistic fallacy).

Goal-dependent oughts run into problems even without an appeal to an innate human purpose. Consider cases where one has no desire to be good—whatever it is. If, for instance, a person wants to be good, and good means washing one's hands, then it seems one morally ought to wash their hands. The bigger problem in moral philosophy is what happens if someone does not want to be good, whatever its origins? Put simply, in what sense ought we to hold the goal of being good? It seems one can ask "how am I rationally required to hold 'good' as a value, or to pursue it?"

The issue above mentioned is a result of an important ethical relativist critique. Even if "oughts" depend on goals, the ought seems to vary with the person's goal. This is the conclusion of the ethical subjectivist, who says a person can only be called good according to whether they fulfill their own, self-assigned goal. Alasdair MacIntyre himself suggests that a person's purpose comes from their culture, making him a sort of ethical relativist. Ethical relativists acknowledge local, institutional facts about what is right, but these are facts that can still vary by society. Thus, without an objective "moral goal", a moral ought is difficult to establish. G. E. M. Anscombe was particularly critical of the word "ought" for this reason; understood as "We need such-and-such, and will only get it this way"—for somebody may need something immoral, or else find that their noble need requires immoral action. Anscombe would even go as far to suggest that "the concepts of obligation, and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of 'ought,' ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible".

If moral goals depend on private assumptions or public agreement, so may morality as a whole. For example, Canada might call it good to maximize global welfare, where a citizen, Alice, calls it good to focus on herself, and then her family, and finally her friends (with little empathy for strangers). It does not seem that Alice can be objectively or rationally bound—without regard to her personal values nor those of groups of other people—to act a certain way. In other words, we may not be able to say "You just should do this". Moreover, persuading her to help strangers would necessarily mean appealing to values she already possesses (or else we would never even have a hope of persuading her). This is another interest of normative ethics—questions of binding forces.

There may be responses to the above relativistic critiques. As mentioned above, ethical realists that are non-natural can appeal to God's purpose for humankind. On the other hand, naturalistic thinkers may posit that valuing people's well-being is somehow "obviously" the purpose of ethics, or else the only relevant purpose worth talking about. This is the move made by natural law, scientific moralists and some utilitarians.

Institutional facts

John Searle also attempts to derive "ought" from "is". He tries to show that the act of making a promise places one under an obligation by definition, and that such an obligation amounts to an "ought". This view is still widely debated, and to answer criticisms, Searle has further developed the concept of institutional facts, for example, that a certain building is in fact a bank and that certain paper is in fact money, which would seem to depend upon general recognition of those institutions and their value.

Indefinables

Indefinables are concepts so global that they cannot be defined; rather, in a sense, they themselves, and the objects to which they refer, define our reality and our ideas. Their meanings cannot be stated in a true definition, but their meanings can be referred to instead by being placed with their incomplete definitions in self-evident statements, the truth of which can be tested by whether or not it is impossible to think the opposite without a contradiction. Thus, the truth of indefinable concepts and propositions using them is entirely a matter of logic.

An example of the above is that of the concepts "finite parts" and "wholes"; they cannot be defined without reference to each other and thus with some amount of circularity, but we can make the self-evident statement that "the whole is greater than any of its parts", and thus establish a meaning particular to the two concepts.

These two notions being granted, it can be said that statements of "ought" are measured by their prescriptive truth, just as statements of "is" are measured by their descriptive truth; and the descriptive truth of an "is" judgment is defined by its correspondence to reality (actual or in the mind), while the prescriptive truth of an "ought" judgment is defined according to a more limited scope—its correspondence to right desire (conceivable in the mind and able to be found in the rational appetite, but not in the more "actual" reality of things independent of the mind or rational appetite).

To some, this may immediately suggest the question: "How can we know what is a right desire if it is already admitted that it is not based on the more actual reality of things independent of the mind?" The beginning of the answer is found when we consider that the concepts "good", "bad", "right" and "wrong" are indefinables. Thus, right desire cannot be defined properly, but a way to refer to its meaning may be found through a self-evident prescriptive truth.

That self-evident truth which the moral cognitivist claims to exist upon which all other prescriptive truths are ultimately based is: One ought to desire what is really good for one and nothing else. The terms "real good" and "right desire" cannot be defined apart from each other, and thus their definitions would contain some degree of circularity, but the stated self-evident truth indicates a meaning particular to the ideas sought to be understood, and it is (the moral cognitivist might claim) impossible to think the opposite without a contradiction. Thus combined with other descriptive truths of what is good (goods in particular considered in terms of whether they suit a particular end and the limits to the possession of such particular goods being compatible with the general end of the possession of the total of all real goods throughout a whole life), a valid body of knowledge of right desire is generated.

Functionalist counterexamples

Several counterexamples have been offered by philosophers claiming to show that there are cases when an "ought" logically follows from an "is." First of all, Hilary Putnam, by tracing back the quarrel to Hume's dictum, claims fact/value entanglement as an objection, since the distinction between them entails a value. A. N. Prior points out, from the statement "He is a sea captain," it logically follows, "He ought to do what a sea captain ought to do." Alasdair MacIntyre points out, from the statement "This watch is grossly inaccurate and irregular in time-keeping and too heavy to carry about comfortably," the evaluative conclusion validly follows, "This is a bad watch." John Searle points out, from the statement "Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars," it logically follows that "Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars." The act of promising by definition places the promiser under obligation.

Moral realism

Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing the idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension." She introduces, by analogy, the practical implications of using the word "injury." Not just anything counts as an injury. There must be some impairment. If one supposes a man wants the things the injury prevents him from obtaining, has one fallen into the old naturalist fallacy? She states the following:

It may seem that the only way to make a necessary connection between "injury" and the things that are to be avoided, is to say that it is only used in an "action-guiding sense" when applied to something the speaker intends to avoid. But we should look carefully at the crucial move in that argument, and query the suggestion that someone might happen not to want anything for which he would need the use of hands or eyes. Hands and eyes, like ears and legs, play a part in so many operations that a man could only be said not to need them if he had no wants at all.

Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy, play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness.

Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if "good" were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good qualities, and this not because of the "praising" sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and temperance are.

Misunderstanding

Hilary Putnam argues that philosophers who accept Hume's "is–ought" distinction reject his reasons in making it, and thus undermine the entire claim.

Various scholars have also indicated that, in the very work where Hume argues for the is–ought problem, Hume himself derives an "ought" from an "is". Such seeming inconsistencies in Hume have led to an ongoing debate over whether Hume actually held to the is–ought problem in the first place, or whether he meant that ought inferences can be made but only with good argumentation.

Philosophical realism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_logic 

Philosophical realism—usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters—is the view that a certain kind of thing (ranging widely from abstract objects like numbers to moral statements to the physical world itself) has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it exists even in the absence of any mind perceiving it or that its existence is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder. This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding. This can apply to items such as the physical world, the past and future, other minds, and the self, though may also apply less directly to things such as universals, mathematical truths, moral truths, and thought itself. However, realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality altogether.

Realism can also be a view about the properties of reality in general, holding that reality exists independent of the mind, as opposed to non-realist views (like some forms of skepticism and solipsism) which question the certainty of anything beyond one's own mind. Philosophers who profess realism often claim that truth consists in a correspondence between cognitive representations and reality.

Realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality but that the accuracy and fullness of understanding can be improved. In some contexts, realism is contrasted with idealism. Today it is more often contrasted with anti-realism, for example in the philosophy of science.

The oldest use of the term "realism" appeared in medieval scholastic interpretations and adaptations of ancient Greek philosophy.

The position was also held among many ancient Indian philosophies.

Etymology

The term comes from Late Latin realis "real" and was first used in the abstract metaphysical sense by Immanuel Kant in 1781 (CPR A 369).

Varieties

Metaphysical realism

See also: Metaphysical anti-realism and Mathematical Platonism

Metaphysical realism maintains that "whatever exists does so, and has the properties and relations it does, independently of deriving its existence or nature from being thought of or experienced." In other words, an objective reality exists (not merely one or more subjective realities).

Naive or direct realism

Main article: Naive realism

See also: Indirect realism

Naive realism, also known as direct realism, is a philosophy of mind rooted in a common sense theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world.

Direct Realism

Perceptual realism is the common sense view that tables, chairs and cups of coffee exist independently of perceivers. Direct realists also claim that it is with such objects that we directly engage. The objects of perception include such familiar items as paper clips, suns and olive oil tins. It is these things themselves that we see, smell, touch, taste and listen to. There are, however, two versions of direct realism: naïve direct realism and scientific direct realism. They differ in the properties they claim the objects of perception possess when they are not being perceived. Naïve realism claims that such objects continue to have all the properties that we usually perceive them to have, properties such as yellowness, warmth, and mass. Scientific realism, however, claims that some of the properties an object is perceived as having are dependent on the perceiver, and that unperceived objects should not be conceived as retaining them. Such a stance has a long history:

By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour; in reality atoms and void. [Democritus, c. 460-370 BCE, quoted by Sextus Empiricus in Barnes, 1987, pp. 252-253.]

In contrast, some forms of idealism assert that no world exists apart from mind-dependent ideas and some forms of skepticism say we cannot trust our senses. The naive realist view is that objects have properties, such as texture, smell, taste and colour, that are usually perceived absolutely correctly. We perceive them as they really are.

Immanent realism

Main article: Immanent realism

Immanent realism is the ontological understanding which holds that universals are immanently real within particulars themselves, not in a separate realm, and not mere names. Most often associated with Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition.

Scientific realism

Main article: Scientific realism

Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science, it is often framed as an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" The debate over what the success of science involves centers primarily on the status of unobservable entities apparently talked about by scientific theories. Generally, those who are scientific realists assert that one can make reliable claims about unobservables (viz., that they have the same ontological status) as observables. Analytic philosophers generally have a commitment to scientific realism, in the sense of regarding the scientific method as a reliable guide to the nature of reality. The main alternative to scientific realism is instrumentalism.

Scientific realism in physics

Realism in physics (especially quantum mechanics) is the claim that the world is in some sense mind-independent: that even if the results of a possible measurement do not pre-exist the act of measurement, that does not require that they are the creation of the observer (contrary to the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of quantum mechanics). That interpretation of quantum mechanics, on the other hand, states that the wave function is already the full description of reality. The different possible realities described by the wave function are equally true. The observer collapses the wave function into their own reality. One's reality can be mind-dependent under this interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Moral realism

Main article: Moral realism

Moral realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world.

Aesthetic realism

Aesthetic realism (not to be confused with Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy developed by Eli Siegel, or "realism" in the arts) is the view that there are mind-independent aesthetic facts.

History of metaphysical realism

See also: History of naturalism

Ancient Greek philosophy

Main article: Platonic realism

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. In Plato's metaphysics, ever-unchanging Forms, or Ideas, exist apart from particular physical things, and are related to them as their prototype or exemplar. Aristotle's philosophy of reality also aims at the universal. Aristotle finds the universal, which he calls essence, in the commonalities of particular things.

In ancient Greek philosophy, realist doctrines about universals were proposed by Plato and Aristotle.

Platonic realism is a radical form of realism regarding the existence of abstract objects, including universals, which are often translated from Plato's works as "Forms". Since Plato frames Forms as ideas that are literally real (existing even outside of human minds), this stance is also called Platonic idealism. This should not be confused with "idealistic" in the ordinary sense of "optimistic" or with other types of philosophical idealism, as presented by philosophers such as George Berkeley. As Platonic abstractions are not spatial, temporal, or subjectively mental, they are arguably not compatible with the emphasis of Berkeley's idealism grounded in mental existence. Plato's Forms include numbers and geometrical figures, making his theory also include mathematical realism; they also include the Form of the Good, making it additionally include ethical realism.

In Aristotle's more modest view, the existence of universals (like "blueness") is dependent on the particulars that exemplify them (like a particular "blue bird", "blue piece of paper", "blue robe", etc.), and those particulars exist independent of any minds: classic metaphysical realism.

Ancient Indian Philosophy

There were many ancient Indian realist schools, such as the Mimamsa, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, Nyaya, Yoga, Samkhya, Sauntrantika, Jain, Vaisesika, and others. They argued for their realist positions, and heavily criticized idealism, like that of the Yogachara, and composed refutations of the Yogacara position.

Medieval philosophy

Medieval realism developed out of debates over the problem of universals. Universals are terms or properties that can be applied to many things, such as "red", "beauty", "five", or "dog". Realism (also known as exaggerated realism) in this context, contrasted with conceptualism and nominalism, holds that such universals really exist, independently and somehow prior to the world. Moderate realism holds that they exist, but only insofar as they are instantiated in specific things; they do not exist separately from the specific thing. Conceptualism holds that they exist, but only in the mind, while nominalism holds that universals do not "exist" at all but are no more than words (flatus vocis) that describe specific objects.

Proponents of moderate realism included Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus (cf. Scotist realism).

Early modern philosophy

In early modern philosophy, Scottish Common Sense Realism was a school of philosophy which sought to defend naive realism against philosophical paradox and scepticism, arguing that matters of common sense are within the reach of common understanding and that common-sense beliefs even govern the lives and thoughts of those who hold non-commonsensical beliefs. It originated in the ideas of the most prominent members of the Scottish School of Common Sense, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart, during the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment and flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Scotland and America.

The roots of Scottish Common Sense Realism can be found in responses to such philosophers as John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. The approach was a response to the "ideal system" that began with Descartes' concept of the limitations of sense experience and led Locke and Hume to a skepticism that called religion and the evidence of the senses equally into question. The common sense realists found skepticism to be absurd and so contrary to common experience that it had to be rejected. They taught that ordinary experiences provide intuitively certain assurance of the existence of the self, of real objects that could be seen and felt and of certain "first principles" upon which sound morality and religious beliefs could be established. Its basic principle was enunciated by its founder and greatest figure, Thomas Reid:

If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them—these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd.

Late modern philosophy

See also: Objective idealism, Transcendental realism (Schelling), and Transcendental realism (Schopenhauer)

In late modern philosophy, a notable school of thought advocating metaphysical realism was Austrian realism. Its members included Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Vittorio Benussi, Ernst Mally, and early Edmund Husserl. These thinkers stressed the objectivity of truth and its independence of the nature of those who judge it. (See also Graz School.)

Dialectical materialism, a philosophy of nature based on the writings of late modern philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is interpreted to be a form of ontological realism.

According to Michael Resnik, Gottlob Frege's work after 1891 can be interpreted as a contribution to realism.

Contemporary philosophy

See also: Structural realism (philosophy of science), Australian realism, Modal realism, Critical realism (philosophy of the social sciences), and New realism (philosophy)

In contemporary analytic philosophy, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Karl Popper, and Gustav Bergmann espoused metaphysical realism. Hilary Putnam initially espoused metaphysical realism, but he later embraced a form of anti-realism that he termed "internal realism." Conceptualist realism (a view put forward by David Wiggins) is a form of realism, according to which our conceptual framework maps reality.

Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against the dominant forms of post-Kantian philosophy.

Metaethics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaethics

 

In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought to be and act) and applied ethics (practical questions of right behavior in given, usually contentious, situations).

While normative ethics addresses such questions as "What should I do?", evaluating specific practices and principles of action, metaethics addresses questions about the nature of goodness, how one can discriminate good from evil, and what the proper account of moral knowledge is. Similar to accounts of knowledge generally, the threat of skepticism about the possibility of moral knowledge and cognitively meaningful moral propositions often motivates positive accounts in metaethics. Another distinction is often made between the nature of questions related to each: first-order (substantive) questions belong to the domain of normative ethics, whereas metaethics addresses second-order (formal) questions.

Some theorists argue that a metaphysical account of morality is necessary for the proper evaluation of actual moral theories and for making practical moral decisions; others reason from opposite premises and suggest that studying moral judgments about proper actions can guide us to a true account of the nature of morality.

Metaethical questions

According to Richard Garner and Bernard Rosen, there are three kinds of metaethical problems, or three general questions:

1. What is the meaning of moral terms or judgments? (moral semantics)
   • Asks about the meanings of such words as 'good', 'bad', 'right', and 'wrong' (see value theory)
2. What is the nature of moral judgments? (moral ontology)
   • Asks questions of whether moral judgments are absolute or relative, of one kind or many kinds, etc.
3. How may moral judgments be supported or defended? (moral epistemology)
   • Asks such questions as how we can know if something is right or wrong, if at all.

Garner and Rosen say that answers to the three basic questions "are not unrelated, and sometimes an answer to one will strongly suggest, or perhaps even entail, an answer to another." A metaethical theory, unlike a normative ethical theory, does not attempt to evaluate specific choices as being better, worse, good, bad, or evil; although it may have profound implications as to the validity and meaning of normative ethical claims. An answer to any of the three example questions above would not itself be a normative ethical statement.

Moral semantics

Moral semantics attempts to answer the question, "What is the meaning of moral terms or judgments?" Answers may have implications for answers to the other two questions as well.

Cognitivist theories

Cognitivist theories hold that evaluative moral sentences express propositions (i.e., they are 'truth-apt' or 'truth bearers', capable of being true or false), as opposed to non-cognitivism. Most forms of cognitivism hold that some such propositions are true (including moral realism and ethical subjectivism), as opposed to error theory, which asserts that all are erroneous.

Moral realism

Moral realism (in the robust sense; see moral universalism for the minimalist sense) holds that such propositions are about robust or mind-independent facts, that is, not facts about any person or group's subjective opinion, but about objective features of the world. Metaethical theories are commonly categorized as either a form of realism or as one of three forms of "anti-realism" regarding moral facts: ethical subjectivism, error theory, or non-cognitivism. Realism comes in two main varieties:

1. Ethical naturalism holds that there are objective moral properties and that these properties are reducible or stand in some metaphysical relation (such as supervenience) to entirely non-ethical properties. Most ethical naturalists hold that we have empirical knowledge of moral truths. Ethical naturalism was implicitly assumed by many modern ethical theorists, particularly utilitarians.
2. Ethical non-naturalism, as put forward by G. E. Moore, holds that there are objective and irreducible moral properties (such as the property of 'goodness'), and that we sometimes have intuitive or otherwise a priori awareness of moral properties or of moral truths. Moore's open question argument against what he considered the naturalistic fallacy was largely responsible for the birth of metaethical research in contemporary analytic philosophy.

Ethical subjectivism

Ethical subjectivism is one form of moral anti-realism. It holds that moral statements are made true or false by the attitudes and/or conventions of people, either those of each society, those of each individual, or those of some particular individual. Most forms of ethical subjectivism are relativist, but there are notable forms that are universalist:

• Ideal observer theory holds that what is right is determined by the attitudes that a hypothetical ideal observer would have. An ideal observer is usually characterized as a being who is perfectly rational, imaginative, and informed, among other things. Though a subjectivist theory due to its reference to a particular (albeit hypothetical) subject, Ideal Observer Theory still purports to provide universal answers to moral questions.
• Divine command theory holds that for a thing to be right is for a unique being, God, to approve of it, and that what is right for non-God beings is obedience to the divine will. This view was criticized by Plato in the Euthyphro (see the Euthyphro problem) but retains some modern defenders (Robert Adams, Philip Quinn, and others). Like ideal observer theory, divine command theory purports to be universalist despite its subjectivism.

Error theory

Error theory, another form of moral anti-realism, holds that although ethical claims do express propositions, all such propositions are false. Thus, both the statement "Murder is morally wrong" and the statement "Murder is morally permissible" are false, according to error theory. J. L. Mackie is probably the best-known proponent of this view. Since error theory denies that there are moral truths, error theory entails moral nihilism and, thus, moral skepticism; however, neither moral nihilism nor moral skepticism conversely entail error theory.

Non-cognitivist theories

Non-cognitivist theories hold that ethical sentences are neither true nor false because they do not express genuine propositions. Non-cognitivism is another form of moral anti-realism. Most forms of non-cognitivism are also forms of expressivism, however some such as Mark Timmons and Terrence Horgan distinguish the two and allow the possibility of cognitivist forms of expressivism. Non-cognitivism includes:

• Emotivism, defended by A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson, holds that ethical sentences serve merely to express emotions. Ayer argues that ethical sentences are expressions of approval or disapproval, not assertions. So "Killing is wrong" means something like "Boo on killing!".
• Quasi-realism, defended by Simon Blackburn, holds that ethical statements behave linguistically like factual claims and can be appropriately called "true" or "false", even though there are no ethical facts for them to correspond to. Projectivism and moral fictionalism are related theories.
• Universal prescriptivism, defended by R. M. Hare, holds that moral statements function like universalized imperative sentences. So "Killing is wrong" means something like "Don't kill!" Hare's version of prescriptivism requires that moral prescriptions be universalizable, and hence actually have objective values, in spite of failing to be indicative statements with truth-values per se.

Centralism and non-centralism

Yet another way of categorizing metaethical theories is to distinguish between centralist and non-centralist moral theories. The debate between centralism and non-centralism revolves around the relationship between the so-called "thin" and "thick" concepts of morality: thin moral concepts are those such as good, bad, right, and wrong; thick moral concepts are those such as courageous, inequitable, just, or dishonest. While both sides agree that the thin concepts are more general and the thick more specific, centralists hold that the thin concepts are antecedent to the thick ones and that the latter are therefore dependent on the former. That is, centralists argue that one must understand words like "right" and "ought" before understanding words like "just" and "unkind." Non-centralism rejects this view, holding that thin and thick concepts are on par with one another and even that the thick concepts are a sufficient starting point for understanding the thin ones.

Non-centralism has been of particular importance to ethical naturalists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as part of their argument that normativity is a non-excisable aspect of language and that there is no way of analyzing thick moral concepts into a purely descriptive element attached to a thin moral evaluation, thus undermining any fundamental division between facts and norms. Allan Gibbard, R. M. Hare, and Simon Blackburn have argued in favor of the fact/norm distinction, meanwhile, with Gibbard going so far as to argue that, even if conventional English has only mixed normative terms (that is, terms that are neither purely descriptive nor purely normative), we could develop a nominally English metalanguage that still allowed us to maintain the division between factual descriptions and normative evaluations.

Moral ontology

Moral ontology attempts to answer the question, "What is the nature of moral judgments?"

Amongst those who believe there to be some standard(s) of morality (as opposed to moral nihilists), there are two divisions:

1. universalists, who hold that the same moral facts or principles apply to everyone everywhere; and
2. relativists, who hold that different moral facts or principles apply to different people or societies.

Moral universalism

Moral universalism (or universal morality) is the metaethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is to all intelligent beings regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexuality, or other distinguishing feature. The source or justification of this system may be thought to be, for instance, human nature, shared vulnerability to suffering, the demands of universal reason, what is common among existing moral codes, or the common mandates of religion (although it can be argued that the latter is not in fact moral universalism because it may distinguish between Gods and mortals). Moral universalism is the opposing position to various forms of moral relativism.

Universalist theories are generally forms of moral realism, though exceptions exists, such as the subjectivist ideal observer and divine command theories, and the non-cognitivist universal prescriptivism of R. M. Hare. Forms of moral universalism include:

• Value monism is the common form of universalism, which holds that all goods are commensurable on a single value scale.
• Value pluralism contends that there are two or more genuine scales of value, knowable as such, yet incommensurable, so that any prioritization of these values is either non-cognitive or subjective. A value pluralist might, for example, contend that both a life as a nun and a life as a mother realize genuine values (in a universalist sense), yet they are incompatible (nuns may not have children), and there is no purely rational way to measure which is preferable. A notable proponent of this view is Isaiah Berlin.

Moral relativism

Moral relativism maintains that all moral judgments have their origins either in societal or in individual standards, and that no single standard exists by which one can objectively assess the truth of a moral proposition. Metaethical relativists, in general, believe that the descriptive properties of terms such as "good", "bad", "right", and "wrong" do not stand subject to universal truth conditions, but only to societal convention and personal preference. Given the same set of verifiable facts, some societies or individuals will have a fundamental disagreement about what one ought to do based on societal or individual norms, and one cannot adjudicate these using some independent standard of evaluation. The latter standard will always be societal or personal and not universal, unlike, for example, the scientific standards for assessing temperature or for determining mathematical truths. Some philosophers maintain that moral relativism entails non-cognitivism, while others consider it a form of cognitivism. Some but not all relativist theories are forms of moral subjectivism, although not all subjectivist theories are relativistic.

Moral nihilism

Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the metaethical view that nothing has intrinsic moral value. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is intrinsically neither morally right nor morally wrong. Moral nihilism must be distinguished from moral relativism, which does allow for moral statements to be intrinsically true or false in a non-universal sense, but does not assign any static truth-values to moral statements. Insofar as only true statements can be known, moral nihilists are moral skeptics. Most forms of moral nihilism are non-cognitivist and vice versa, though there are notable exceptions such as universal prescriptivism (which is semantically non-cognitive but substantially universal).

Moral epistemology

Moral epistemology is the study of moral knowledge. It attempts to answer such questions as, "How may moral judgments be supported or defended?" and "Is moral knowledge possible?"

If one presupposes a cognitivist interpretation of moral sentences, morality is justified by the moralist's knowledge of moral facts, and the theories to justify moral judgements are epistemological theories. Most moral epistemologies posit that moral knowledge is somehow possible (including empiricism and moral rationalism), as opposed to moral skepticism. Amongst them, there are those who hold that moral knowledge is gained inferentially on the basis of some sort of non-moral epistemic process, as opposed to ethical intuitionism.

Moral knowledge gained by inference

Empiricism

Empiricism is the doctrine that knowledge is gained primarily through observation and experience. Metaethical theories that imply an empirical epistemology include:

• ethical naturalism, which holds moral facts to be reducible to non-moral facts and thus knowable in the same ways; and
• most common forms of ethical subjectivism, which hold that moral facts reduce to facts about individual opinions or cultural conventions and thus are knowable by observation of those conventions.

There are exceptions within subjectivism however, such as ideal observer theory, which implies that moral facts may be known through a rational process, and individualist ethical subjectivism, which holds that moral facts are merely personal opinions and so may be known only through introspection. Empirical arguments for ethics run into the is-ought problem, which asserts that the way the world is cannot alone instruct people how they ought to act.

Moral rationalism

Moral rationalism, also called ethical rationalism, is the view according to which moral truths (or at least general moral principles) are knowable a priori, by reason alone. Plato and Immanuel Kant, prominent figures in the history of philosophy, defended moral rationalism. David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche are two figures in the history of philosophy who have rejected moral rationalism.

Recent philosophers who defended moral rationalism include R. M. Hare, Christine Korsgaard, Alan Gewirth, and Michael Smith. A moral rationalist may adhere to any number of different semantic theories as well; moral realism is compatible with rationalism, and the subjectivist ideal observer theory and non-cognitivist universal prescriptivism both entail it.

Ethical intuitionism

Ethical intuitionism is the view according to which some moral truths can be known without inference. That is, the view is at its core a foundationalism about moral beliefs. Such an epistemological view implies that there are moral beliefs with propositional contents; so it implies cognitivism. Ethical intuitionism commonly suggests moral realism, the view that there are objective facts of morality and, to be more specific, ethical non-naturalism, the view that these evaluative facts cannot be reduced to natural fact. However, neither moral realism nor ethical non-naturalism are essential to the view; most ethical intuitionists simply happen to hold those views as well. Ethical intuitionism comes in both a "rationalist" variety, and a more "empiricist" variety known as moral sense theory.

Moral skepticism

Moral skepticism is the class of metaethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal, claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Forms of moral skepticism include, but are not limited to, error theory and most but not all forms of non-cognitivism.