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Reductionist Contractualism: Moral Motivation and the Expanding Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David W. Shoemaker
David W. Shoemaker*
Affiliation:
California State University, Northridge, CA91330-8253, USA
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Extract

According to a popular contemporary contractualist account of moral motivation, the most plausible explanation for why those who are concerned with morality take moral reasons seriously — why these reasons strike those who are moved by them with a particular inescapability — is that they stem from, and are grounded by, a desire to be able to justify one's actions to others on grounds they could not reasonably reject. My belief that an action is immoral, on this account, triggers this desire, this source of my moral motivation, and consequently I am moved to refrain from such an action by the fundamental desire that my actions be adequately justifiable. Furthermore, it is this desire to which contractualism appeals in its account of the wrong-making feature of certain actions: an action is wrong if it would violate a set of rules which no one could reasonably reject.

There seem, however, to be two general worries about this picture: one, that the range of its application is too extensive; the other, that the range of its application is too limited.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 2000 , pp. 343 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2000

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References

1 I draw explicitly here from a version of contractualist moral motivation articulated by Scanlon, T.M. originally in ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism,’ in Utilitarianism and Beyond, Sen, Amartya and Williams, Bernard eds. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press 1982)Google Scholar, and more recently (and more robustly) in What We Owe To Each Other (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1998), esp. Chapter 4, ‘Wrongness and Reasons.’ In the latter work, Scanlon alters the formulation of the ideal of justifiability, changing the contractualist motivational focus from a desire to be able to justify one's actions to a reason to desire to be able to justify one's actions (see, e.g., 154). Scanlon makes this move because he now believes the notion of a desire must be ‘understood in terms of the idea of taking something to be a reason’ (8), rather than vice versa, if it is to fulfill its ordinary role in explanation and justification. Consequently, it is reasons, rather than desires, that are motivationally basic on Scanlon's new contractualist picture. Nevertheless, in this paper I will stick with the earlier account of moral motivation as being grounded on a certain sort of desire for three reasons. First, the most prevalent (and, to my mind, most plausible) contemporary accounts of motivation in general are still desire-based accounts (see, e.g., the flood of papers- too many to cite- following, and more or less in line with, Harry Frankfurt's seminal desire-based hierarchical account of the self and motivation in his 1971 paper ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’ reprinted in Frankfurt, Harry The Importance of What We Care About [Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press 1988]CrossRefGoogle Scholar). An account of moral motivation in keeping with this quite popular account of motivation in general will thus have a built-in widespread appeal. Second, I am ultimately interested in providing a bridge between the foundations of two different contemporary strands of contractualism, one essentially Kantian, the other essentially Hobbesian. Scanlon's view has much in common with the Kantian strand (which Scanlon admits on 5-6 of What We Owe To Each Other), but I believe that by continuing to formulate the contractualist account of moral motivation in a desirebased way, I will have articulated a fairly general contractualist view that is perfectly compatible, at its foundations, with the Hobbesian strand as well (given that the Hobbesian strand clearly takes desires as motivationally basic). Although I do not argue explicitly for this latter point in the present work, I believe it will be obvious by the end how such a move could be made. Third, I believe the desire-based account Scanlon offered originally in ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism’ remains -for better or worse- the most influential articulation of contemporary contractualism, and the cornrnunitarian and amoralist worries I cite in the text are worries repeatedly expressed in the literature to this version of contractualism. Scanlon takes what he is doing in the first part of his book (in which he changes the focus from desires to reasons) to constitute, in part, a response to these sorts of worries. But if we can resist these worries without altering the original focus on desires as motivationally basic, we undercut any cornrnunitarian/ amoralist attempts to repackage the same old worries in the new terms of Scanlon's latest project. Of course, doing so also undercuts part of the stated motivation for Scanlon's own reworking of the contractualist view, but this strikes me as neither here nor there. Consequently, I refer to the contractualist view sketched in the text as Scanlonian, rather than as Scanlon's, and I will still refer, where relevant, to Scanlon's 1982 articulation of the view in ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism.’

2 Scanlon, ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism,’ 110Google Scholar; and What We Owe To Each Other, 153

3 Scanlon, What We Owe To Each Other, 153Google Scholar

4 Scanlon, ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism,’ 112Google Scholar

5 It is this last feature that (in part) distinguishes a Kantian contractualism from a Hobbesian contractualism, in which morality involves the recognition and protection of others’ interests as merely a matter of mutual advantage. See Kymlicka, Will ‘The Social Contract Tradition,’ in A Companion to Ethics, Singer, Peter ed. (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell 1993), 188Google Scholar.

6 Scanlon, ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism,’ 116Google Scholar. In What We Owe To Each Other, 155-6, he claims that his (slightly altered- see note 1 above) contractualist account of moral motivation seems ‘to be phenomenologically accurate’ and can best account for certain significant complexities in moral motivation.

7 As opposed to, say, their objective, morally real, status in the world.

8 Scanlon, ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism,’ 118Google Scholar

9 I have in mind especially Williams's, Bernard ‘Persons, Character and Morality,’ in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stocker's, Michael ‘The Schizophrenia of Modem Ethical Theories,’ Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976) 453–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wolf's, Susan ‘Moral Saints,’ Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982) 419–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 I take it that this is Scanlon's current view. See What We Owe To Each Other: ‘These values [e.g., love, friendship, etc.] themselves, properly understood, give way to morality's demands when conflicts arise’ (161). It is clear that Scanlon thinks the worry articulated in the previous paragraph - that the pursuit of certain crucial human goods is precluded by the contractualist account of moral motivation - is unjustified, given that contractualist ‘principles could reasonably be rejected on the ground that they left no room for valuing other things that are important in our lives’ (What We Owe To Each Other, 160).

11 This is a case Williams discusses on 17-18.

12 See my ‘Utilitarianism and Personal Identity,’ The Journal of Value Inquiry 33 (1999) 183-99.

13 Parfit, Derek Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1984), 210Google Scholar

14 See, for example, ibid., Section 90.

15 Ibid., Section 101. The word ‘I,’ then, would refer only to my present self.

16 We might say, then, that the second person's life is more deeply integrated than that of the first person.

17 One reason for advocating this last view might be that the only units that could justifiably be targeted for morality and prudence are non-reductionist units (e.g., Cartesian egos), and if such units do not exist (given the truth of reductionism), then the unities generated by both psychological continuity and connectedness are themselves irrelevant. The only ‘units’ left, then, would be momentary experiencers.

18 See my ‘Selves and Moral Units,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (1999) 391-419. I also defend this version of reductionism from certain Kantian objections in ‘Theoretical Persons and Practical Agents,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 25 (1996) 318-32.

19 One might try and press the issue by positing these entities as having certain basic, primal interests, e.g., the desire to get pleasure now, or the desire to cease pain now. But this move will not work either, insofar as the most plausible versions of hedonism view pleasure and pain as functional states, so the mental state of pleasure is a sensation such that the person who has it wants it to continue and will thus take actions to prolong it, and the person having the mental state of pain undergoes a sensation such that he wants it to cease and will thus take actions to stop it. So to experience pain/pleasure is just to be an entity we can only think of as having a future beyond the immediate present. On this point, see Brink, David ‘Rational Egoism and the Separateness of Persons,’ in Reading Parfit, Dancy, Jonathan ed. (Oxford: Blackwell 1997), 112Google Scholar.

20 Obviously, much more needs to be said here. For that ‘much more,’ see my ‘Selves and Moral Units,’ where I also attempt to provide a robust metaphysical argument for Moderate Reductionism, and I spend a great deal of time defending this view from various other Extreme and Conservative Reductionist attacks. My primary interest here, however, is to suggest a few considerations in favor of Moderate Reductionism, and then show how that view could actually provide some crucial foundational support for contractualism. One might be inclined to suggest that the support provided for contractualism by Moderate Reductionism actually counts as an argument in its favor, but of course it will only do so for those sympathetic to contractualism to begin with. Instead, I prefer the position that there are good, independent metaphysical grounds for going with Moderate Reductionism (detailed in ‘Selves and Moral Units’), and that the truth of this view would have certain important implications for contractualism. I ultimately think, then, that metaphysical considerations are prior to, and provide the foundation for, ethical considerations (although I certainly do not argue for that view here).

21 The image of bargaining between ex ante and ex post selves is suggested by McClennen, Edward F. in Rationality and Dynamic Choice: Foundational Explorations (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press 1990), 217CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Parfit, in Reasons and Persons, notes that this revision ends up breaking ‘the link between the Self-interest Theory and what is in one's own best interests’ (317).

23 Parfit himself seems quite leery of such a move, however, maintaining that psychological continuity, for example, cannot hold between two simultaneously-existing persons (and implying, therefore, that neither can psychological connectedness). See, e.g., ibid., 302. Nevertheless, I believe his implied reluctance to allow interpersonal connectedness is arbitrary, a panicky ad hoc designed to forestall the anticipated (and obviously wrong-headed) objection that his view would imply that different selves could simultaneously be the same self. As we shall see, the natural implication of a view like Moderate Reductionism is instead that the boundaries of an individual self are much wider than is normally thought to be the case.

24 See ibid., 339, for example.

25 This is what Parfit calls the Narrow Psychological Criterion. See ibid., 207-8.

26 In what follows, the account of interpersonal connectedness I argue for may appear to be similar to an account David Brink has offered for what he calls interpersonal psychological continuity in ‘Self-Love and Altruism,’ Social Philosophy & Policy 14 (1997) 122-57, esp. 141-3; and ‘Rational Egoism and the Separateness of Persons,’ esp. 126-8. There are some important differences between our two accounts, however, that are worth noting. First, Brink insists on the relation of importance, both intrapersonally and interpersonally, as being psychological continuity, which places him in the camp of the Conservative Reductionist. As I have argued briefly here (and have argued in great detail in ‘Selves and Moral Units’), I believe Moderate Reductionism is the more plausible reductionist view. Second, Brink's view is ultimately intended to provide support for a kind of egoistically based consequentialism, which is more or less in line with Parfit's own view. As is already obvious, however, I believe the most plausible reductionist view provides significant foundational support for a version of contractualism. Finally, Brink emphasizes a specific kind of causal account of interpersonal continuity, according to which it is psychological interaction with certain others that shapes the interacting parties’ mental life and is constitutive of the continuity a tissue (see, e.g., ‘Self-Love and Altruism,’ 141). I wish to maintain, however, that the type of psychological connectedness at issue here is one that may obtain between individuals who have never even met and have thus had no causal influence over each others’ psychological properties, for reasons I spell out in the text. Nevertheless, there do remain important similarities between our basic models of the ways in which certain psychological relations of importance for identity may in fact hold interpersonally, so in that respect I have found Brink's claims to be quite insightful and valuable, and I will make reference to them where appropriate.

27 Here I categorize the general list of direct connections Parfit briefly mentions in Reasons and Persons, 205-7.

28 Brink, for example, in ‘Self-Love and Altruism,’ seems to focus only on the causal significance of ‘experiences, beliefs, desires, ideals, and actions’ (141) without discussing the other relations Parfit actually thinks are quite important in connectedness, viz., memory and intentions.

29 I am grateful to an anonymous editor at the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for articulating the worry in this way.

30 This is the case Parfit calls ‘My Division.’ See Reasons and Persons, 254-5.

31 See ibid., 220-3. For the original discussion of quasi-memories, see Shoemaker, Sydney ‘Persons and Their Pasts,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970) 269–85Google Scholar.

32 Here I use and extend the criterion for quasi-memories Parfit discusses in Reasons and Persons, 220.

33 Cf. Brink, in ‘Self-Love and Altruism’: ‘Membership in various sorts of associations will affect the beliefs, desires, expectations, and plans of members so as to establish significant interpersonal psychological continuity among the association's members’ (141; emphasis mine).

34 We might add here the special type of connectedness, via experience-memories, that is instantly recognized and appreciated by survivors of various horrific events, e.g., the Holocaust, once they meet for the first time. Even though two survivors may have been in different concentration camps, say, the wrenching and unspeakable nature of the experience, and their memories of it, serves to unite them in a way that someone who didn't undergo such an experience can never understand (and which the survivors simply cannot articulate).

35 I am grateful to Gary Watson for this way of putting the matter. Also note the general similarity here to a claim of Brink's, in ‘Self-Love and Altruism’: ‘We can think of the degrees of connectedness and continuity in terms of a set of concentric circles, with myself occupying the inner circle and the remotest Mysian occupying the outer circle. As we extend the scope of psychological interdependence, the strength of the relevant psychological relations appears to weaken and the weight of one’s reasons to give aid and refrain from harm presumably weakens proportionately’ (152). It bears repeating, however, that Brink's focus is on the relation of continuity, while mine is on connectedness, and his conclusions for morality are consequentialist, while mine are contractualist.

36 Scanlon, ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism,’ 112Google Scholar. See also What We Owe To Each Other, 338-42.

37 Stuart Hampshire raises an objection of this sort in his review of Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other in The New York Times Review of Books (22 April1999), 22. Robert Bernasconi and Mark Timmons have also pressed me to consider this point.

38 Wolf, Susan ‘Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility,’ in Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions, Schoeman, Ferdinand ed. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press 1987)Google Scholar

39 Although there are several women who were born into such cultures who now protest this practice. Whether or not the girls and women in these cultures indeed agree with the reasonableness of the practice is actually irrelevant, though, for the general theoretical problem remains. It is possible, it seems, for there to be a society like the one I have described.

40 Perhaps along the lines of Brandt, Richard in A Theory of the Right and the Good (New York: Clarendon Press 1979)Google Scholar.

41 I am well aware that the move I am making may simply push the general problem back a step, forcing us to focus now on the aprudentialist, someone who wonders why he should cultivate the desire to justify actions to himself However, this would seem to be a far less pressing issue than that involved with the prudential amoralist. Indeed, I find it rather hard to imagine people who are truly uninterested in any aspects of their own future well-being. Nevertheless, I suppose I must grant this as a logical possibility, but I fail to be much worried by it. I still consider the way I have provided to counter the move presented by the prudential amoralist to be a fairly significant result.

In contrast, neither the Extreme nor the Conservative Reductionist view yields precisely this result. On the one hand, the Extreme Reductionist targets momentary experiencers as the significant prudential/ moral units, and so, as explained earlier, because these entities would not even be agents concerned to advance interests, there would not even be a question of their having a desire to justify their present actions to any ‘future stages’ of themselves, let alone to anyone else. Indeed, they could not even have a coherent conception of the good. On the other hand, the Conservative Reductionist-someone who targets entities unified by psychological continuity as being significant for prudential/moral matters -would perhaps favor a more impersonal, impartial, and universalist construal of morality, if only because it seems likely I would be equally continuous with all, or nearly all, persons. Remember, psychological continuity consists in overlapping chains of psychological connectedness, so because (a) continuity is not a matter of degree, (b) continuity is a transitive relation, and (c) there are probably not that many ‘degrees of separation’ between each of us and any other person in the world, we are all probably (equally) psychological continuous with one another. Brink (in ‘Self-Love and Altruism’) thinks this version of reductionism favors a kind of egoisticallybased consequentialism (although I hasten to point out that in ‘Rational Egoism and Separateness of Persons’ he argues that there can be degrees of continuity as well, an argument about which I am quite dubious), but I doubt this is the only possible implication. It might equally yield a kind of robust universal contractualism more closely aligned with Kantian morality. Nevertheless, I find this type of view to be implausible as an account of ordinary moral motivation, insofar as most people concerned with morality care far less about being able to justify their actions to everyone than they are to be able to justify their actions to those with whom they are actually connected. Consequently, I find the implications Moderate Reductionism has for the issue of moral motivation to be much more compelling and natural.

42 I am much indebted to Derek Parfit, Gary Watson, Alan Nelson, Eric Cave, Andrew Cross, Mark Timmons, Robert Bernasconi, Bill Harms, Kenneth Himma, and the referees at the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for their extremely helpful comments on various parts of earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to the colloquium audiences at Texas Tech, the University of Memphis, and the 1999 Mid-South Conference for their comments and criticisms of portions of the material contained herein.