“Moral Relativism Defended” (1975?) Harman is trying to defend a version of moral relativism comprised of what I’m going to call The Relativity Thesis and The Conflict Thesis.
The Relativity Thesis (RT) says that “the judgment that it is wrong of someone to do something makes sense only in relation to an agreement or understanding.”
The Conflict Thesis (CT) says that “an action may be wrong in relation to one agreement but not in relation to another.”
Together, these two claims amount to the version of moral relativism Harman wants to defend. The interesting thing is that this version of moral relativism is supposed to be just a “soberly logical thesis” that emerges from an ordinary language analysis of the logic statements like, “A ought to do D.” My problem is that his linguistic intuitions are completely bizarre and I think his (explicit) assumption that Humean motivational internalism is to blame.
Here’s how I would sketch his argument out:
(1) The judgment that somebody was wrong to have done something is an “inner judgment.”
(2) It only makes sense to make inner judgments about somebody who is capable of being moved to do something by the relevant considerations.
(3) A person is capable of being moved to do something by the relevant considerations only if he or she has certain motivational attitudes (moral beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.).
(4) So for two people S and A, A is capable of being moved to do D by the relevant considerations C that S offers only if S and A have some kind of agreement between them, namely an agreement in their motivational attitudes (from 3).
(5) Hence, S can make inner judgments like “A ought to do D” only if there is some kind of agreement between them. (from 1, 2 and 4)
(6) Hence, (RT) the judgment that it is wrong of someone to do something makes sense only in relation to an agreement or understanding. (by generalizing 5).
Premise (1) is supposed to be true by definition and (2) looks plausible enough It’s just a version of “ought implies can”. We don’t say “the dog morally ought not to chase the cat” simply because the dog isn’t the kind of creature who could be impressed by the relevant reasons we might be able to give him not to do so. It would indeed seem like a person was committing a sort of category mistake to utter that sentence.
It’s (3) that I think is the problem. Harman is explicitly assuming that Humean motivational internalism is true, and he gives us a little story to pump our purportedly Humean intuitions about the usage of the word “ought”:
“Suppose that a contented employee of Murder, Incorporated was raised as a child to honor and respect members of the ‘family’ but to have nothing but contempt for the rest of society. His current assignment, let us suppose, is to kill a certain bank manager, Bernard J. Ortcutt. Since Ortcutt is not a member of the “family,” the employee in question has no compunction about carrying out his assignment. In particular, if we were to try to convince him that he should not kill Ortcutt, our argument would not provide him with the slightest reason to desist unless we were to point to practical difficulties, such as the likelihood of getting caught. Now in this case it would be a misuse of language to say that he ought not to kill Ortcutt or that it would be wrong of him to do so, since that would imply that our own moral considerations carry some weight with him, which they do not.”
To my ear at least it doesn’t sound like a misuse of language at all to say that the contented assassin “ought” not to kill Ortcutt, regardless of the assassins depraved upbringing. There are two ways we might respond here. (i) We could take issue with the claim that saying someone ought not to do something implies that our own moral considerations carry some weight with that person. Or, (ii) We could take issue with the idea that the contented assassin really does have such a radically alternative set of motivations.
To take the first route, we’d presumably just look to offer our own ordinary language analysis of ought and try to show that when S says that A ought to do D, that this doesn’t imply that S and A have some agreement. Interestingly, Harman thinks it’s possible that there are other kinds of moral judgments such as that such and such kinds of acts are evil that don’t require agreement. This sounds even more bizarre to me: Harman thinks that we can perfectly properly say that it would be evil to kill someone for money, but not it would be wrong of the contented assassin to kill Ortcutt for money.
I’d opt for the second route, though. There are at least two good lines of argument against the idea that we could imagine this contented assassin with such a radically alternative morality. The first line would be to leverage some kind of Davidsonian argument against the idea of “radically alternative conceptual frameworks” to show that there actually must be more moral agreement between us and the assassin than disagreement, on pain of his moral beliefs being simply untranslatable.
The other line you could take would be to adopt a kind of naturalism and say that just insofar as we are human beings there are going to be some desires, goals, or whatever that are hardwired into us. And so, even if Harman were right about the motivational internalism, you still couldn’t get relativism off the ground because you have some moral universals built in.
I would most certainly take a naturalistic option, but am puzzled why our own beliefs, desires, and attitudes are given so much weight. Why can’t we look at the objective circumstances of our flourishing in our various human powers, including our inherent reliance on the general society for providing the preconditions of those powers’ working properly. I think that this consideration, for example, makes it a matter of a practical contradiction insofar as we harm that which sustains us when we attack the social order.
Now, maybe Murder, Incorporated is self-sufficient and not just surreptitiously destroying a society on which it is parasitic. Maybe it’s just, either functionally or in fact, a competing political entity over against the outside society.
But even in this case, I think there is another objective feature of our natures which explains why we should not murder those across our political borders. Put simply, I think the ability to empower is far more impressive than the ability to destroy. Now, sometimes we need the ability to destroy and it is</em, quite sadly, in those cases more virtuous to have destructive abilities and an unshakable will to carry out what needs to be done. But those cases in which destruction is good and preferable have to be demonstrably shown to genuinely increase total human power in the long run. Otherwise, you have just decreased the total power in the world through your agency.
Why is decreasing the total power in the world through your agency bad? Because your agency is the expression of your power and when you use your power to empower others, you replicate your power in those others such that your power then functions to some small or even great extent through them. This makes you more powerful. When we destroy others’ power without increasing the net power in the world as a further consequence, our effect on the world is to make for less excellent functioning in the world, our power destroys the very sorts of excellent functioning on which it itself depends. There seems to be a practical contradiction in that too.
Dan, I think what’s behind Harman’s intuitions here is a Humean theory of motivation that says that nothing can count as a motivation for me without also appealing to one of my desires.
(4) So for two people S and A, A is capable of being moved to do D by the relevant considerations C that S offers only if S and A have some kind of agreement between them, namely an agreement in their motivational attitudes (from 3).
(5) Hence, S can make inner judgments like “A ought to do D” only if there is some kind of agreement between them. (from 1, 2 and 4)
Both of these premises appear to be extremes. The words “only if” imply that there is only one way that any of this can happen.
First, we might have some control over what desires we have. If one desire is preferable (to care for others), then it might be possible to nurture that desire within ourselves. If intrinsic values exist, then agreement is unnecessary. You could try to care about that which has value.
Hence, S can make inner judgments like “A ought to do D” by knowing that A increases the value of D and A can desire D even if they don’t do so currently.
Additionally, it’s not clear how “relativistic” Harman’s theory really is. Agreement isn’t arbitrary. We agree when we think something will be mutually beneficial and an ideal agent would agree to whatever really is mutually beneficial. There could be objective moral facts involving what counts as beneficial (e.g. maximizes desire fulfillment). The fact that agreement is involved with morality appears to be a fairly superficial observation considering that moral facts can be quite objective either way.
Dan, I’m not convinced by your power illustrations. There is competition for resources and so forth. I think it is quite possible to benefit from harming others and be virtuous in a sort of evil way.