I heart Singapore...

... And so apparently does Jet Li, well, enough to actually get Singaporean citizenship. Apparently many of my fellow singaporeans do not like the fact that another rich and famous guy can so easily get citizenship, and just as easily give it up when it becomes inconvenient.

This doesnt actually bother me. Actually, I want such priveleges expanded to every non-criminal in the world! Really!! What really bugs me about immigration is that it is not open enough. Immigration in all countries should be as free as possible, without having to sacrifice national security. So Lets start at home.

Of course, at the heart of this, it is about the legitimacy of the social contract and the state. One of the pitfalls of social contract theory is that, well, people did not really sign social contracts. The fact that citizens receive benefits and that the better option is to sign the social contract does not in itself make the social contract legitimate.

However, ideally, if people don't like a society, they can leave and find another one that suits them better. But people cannot just leave, and people who wish to live in a society cannot just enter. There are often high entry and exit barriers. Therefore, people are often stuck in contracts which they are not signitories to. This is a lot like the situation where you are stuck in a traffic jam, and a homeless man just comes and cleans your wind shield, then demands that you pay him. Yes, you have received the services, but since you did not ask for them in the first place, it is not clear whether you are obligated to pay for them. However, if you go to a car wash, you choose to freely go there. Hence, even if you do not sign any explicit contract, or even physicall ask for the service, your mere presence is indicative that you desire to be there and will pay for the service. In that case, of course you have a moral responsibility to pay for the wash. The analogy can be extended to societies and the benefits of citizenship too.

Lowering entry and exit barriers to 0, therefore means that you are there in a country because you have agreed as if by contract to be there. Of course in practice, this is impossible. However, it would be really good if entry and exit barriers were lowered as far as possible. To the extent that we could leave if we wanted to, we agree to be subject to the laws of the land by staying here. Therefore, the power that government holds over us becomes more legitimate. Here is a graph that explains how the relationship works:

The main article is here. Here is another article on the issue. Of course entry and exit barriers are not the whole thing. Secularism is an issue also, but not central to this post.

Dont mistake me. I love my country deeply and would stay here  in Singapore among all other places on earth. That is why I want to change Singapore. Just because I love my country doesnt mean that I think that it is perfect. I love my country and I want to share it with everyone who loves it too. However, I dont think I should have to share it with people who don't want to stay here. That is why we lower entry and exit barriers: So that the people who are here really want to be here

Open thread: SIWOTI, fascism

Just some ramblings.

1. This is so me. I've definitely got SIWOTI syndrome. Someone Is Wrong On The Internet

2. Now, on fascism. If you are reading this and have not read this, you should. In order to cover my arse, I will explicitly state what I mean when I say fascist.

Mussolini's definition of fascism is about the aligning of corporate interests and state power. While, in principle, this also ought to be avoided, this is not a particularly stinging or accurate charge with regards to Dr Thio. If we are to take mussolini's definition seriously, most governments are Fascist. But corporatism, while producing a somewhat incentive structure, is not what Dr Thio was doing.

Another definition of fascism has to do with the state taking control of the military-industrial complex in order to put the country onto a permanent war footing. That is what mussolini did, and is a reasonable definition. It is also a serious charge to level, but against Dr. Thio, is not accurate (at least I hope not).

Her views against homosexuality and gay marriage is basically like preventing non muslims from eating non-Halaal food or even banning inter-religious or inter racial marriage, or banning divorce. If those are unconscionable impositions, so are bans on gay marriage. She is not precisely theocratic either. As she says, the views that she advances are shared by more than christians. Therefore, we cannot say clearly whether she has a specifically christian  theocratic agenda which happens to dovetail with the views of other religious ultra conservatives. However, her agenda is illegitimately authoritarian, and  in our common parlance, we like to call such authoritarianism fascist.

3. On idiocy. Since I'm on the topic, we do not lightly call people who make mistakes stupid. For example, if you are a non biologist who is a creationist, while not utterly blameless, you are not stupid. You're either ignorant, or just have a blind-spot in your thinking. It is even somewhat excusable if you only work with cells and molecules. However, if you are an ecologist in the 21st century, or a geneticist, and see the evidence every day, your intellectual prowess and acuity comes into question. It is like when someone is drinving, there is a blindspot in the mirror just behind the driver's seat. Withouit checking our blindspot, we can sort of muddle our way through even though to our destination as long as traffic is kind of low. However, if a whole section of your windscreen is blacked out, one has serious problems and cannot be remotely trusted to even get to the petrol station safely.

Similarly, how can we trust the legal arguments of Dr. Thio, when she makes such an obvious mistake about discrimination? Repealing bans on gay marriage does not impose on the religious conservatives. They are still free to do their own thing. Lawyers are supposed to know the prima facie effect a law has. She, apparently doesn't.

4. This thread is open to random comments and suggestions and anything even off topic stuff. Just dont be abusive.

On Autonomy and Rationality

Here is an old post by philosopher Richard Chappell from philosophy etc.

Here is an important extract:

(8) Reasons responsiveness: the ability to recognize and respond to reasons.

Arpaly suggests that only the last of these is strictly necessary for moral responsibility. (It's also true that someone incapable of agent-autonomy won't be a moral agent, but she suggests that this is because both have the same precondition: being a reflective creature.) In any case, Arpaly seems right in observing that mere lapses in agent-autonomy don't excuse: there are plenty of blameworthy akratic actions (and some praiseworthy ones too, cf. Huck Finn).

A couple more notes:
* Authenticity is also relevant to (the degree of) moral responsibility, insofar as we are more praiseworthy or blameworthy, on her account, when the morally significant concerns behind our actions are deeper concerns of ours.

* Historicism about responsibility (the view that whether S is morally responsible in phi-ing depends on extrinsic historical facts about how S came to be the way she is) may partly be motivated by confusing 'independence of mind' [which is an uncontroversially historical notion] with other -- more important -- ahistorical senses of 'autonomy'.

* In light of all this ambiguity, we might do better to retire the word 'autonomy' in favour of whichever precise sense we have in mind: self-control, mental independence, authenticity, reasons-responsiveness, or whatever.

Here's why this is important. The broadest meaning of what it means to be rational is to do what one has good reason to do. i.e. the ability to repond to reasons is rationality. A rational action is one that is properly motivated by reasons, while an irrational one is insufficiently motivated by reason. i.e. it is out of proportion to the reasons for doing it. Whether or not we actually have free will, the rationality (an therefore the morality) of our actions depends only on what motivated it and to what extent, whther or not what actually motivates us was pre-determined by prior events. i.e. we take it for granted that to be moral is to be rational. (That we have reason to be moral)

What follows is a tentative theory of action.

1. We necessarily do what we are motivated to do. i.e. Unless we are externally constrained (i.e. shackled, too far away, imprisoned etc), it is necessarily the case that if we did something deliberately (not accidentally), we were motivated to do so. However, if we are not motivated to do so, it is not possible for us to freely preform an action (for whatever minimal definition of free)

2. We have reasons to act and these may or may not motivate us. This is because we are imperfect beings. Ideal rational agents are perfectly motivated by reasons. This is why, there is such a thing as akrasia. Imperfect beings are akratic, perfect beings are not.

Where Dr. Thio Su Mien is a religio-fascist idiot

This monday, first of june, Dr. Thio Su Mien, 'feminist mentor' of Aware Scandal infamy posted the following absurdity

Militant religionism? It's family values 


I REFER to last Saturday's letter by Mr John Hui, 'Militant religionism the real threat to social harmony', which made serious, inflammatory and inaccurate allegations against me. Mr Hui adopted the propagandistic, pejorative technique of labelling me a 'militant Christian', alluding to 'militant exclusionist religionism' which 'already generated disharmony'. He alleged that I persuaded Christians to join the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) to 'push forward Christian moral values'. 

What view is he demonising as an imposed Christian value? Apparently, this relates to sexual morality norms and defining 'family'. I share the Government's view that 'the conventional family, a heterosexual stable family', is society's building block. If espousing this view of the family constitutes 'militant exclusionist religionism', then most Singaporeans are guilty militants. 

Mr Hui's mischievous mischaracterisation of a mainstream value as an imposed religious value incites anti-religious hostility, threatening social disharmony. 

Aware did much to promote women's concerns. However, I found its apparent recent shift to advocating the homosexual agenda alarming. I encouraged people not to be passive bystanders but to participate in shaping our common good. 

My concerns were validated when the Ministry of Education (MOE) suspended Aware's Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programme, removing Aware from the external vendors list. 

The CSE instructors guide contained 'explicit and inappropriate' content which conveyed 'messages which could promote homosexuality'. This violated MOE guidelines that sex education must promote 'family values'. This proved the presence of the homosexual agenda in our schools for at least two years, which understandably upset many parents. 

Upholding family values most Singaporeans share is not a religious imposition. Undermining family values through school programmes disrespects valid parental concerns and the morality of the majority. Which really threatens social cohesion? 


Dr Thio Su Mien

I sent a reply to the straits times forum which they did not publish. I will reproduce it below:

I refer to Monday's letter by Dr. Thio Su Mien, "Militant religionism? It's family values". She claims that just because the Singapore government and most Singaporeans share her views about homosexuality, that they have a right to impose these views on everybody else. The point of religious freedom is that people have a right to their religious views and practice, which in principle cannot be overridden by any number of people. Secularism is therefore about the government being neutral between different values (religious or not). The only laws that a government can legitimately make are those based on formal logical principles derived from pure practical reason which are value neutral (like laws against murder, coercion, theft, deception etc). Hence even if 99.99% of the nation consisted of conservative religious people, it is wrong for the government to institute laws that ban sodomy, gay marriage or gay adoption because that will unjustly impose on the religious practice of the 0.01% who are non religious and have no reason to abstain from such practices. However, legalising these practices does not impose on the religious because they are still free to marry, free to do what they have done all the time. Only now, the LGBT community is also free to do whatever they want as long as the individual adults consent to it. It is also wrong for the government to take the official position that family values are better than other values. Tax funded schools should not be in the business of imparting values at all. That is the provenance of the family and the clan or the church or madrassah etc. These are the institutions where it is appropriate to teach these values.

Yes, yes, its a bit rushed, but I make very important points. Why am I so harsh with Dr Thio?

1. She is a religio fascist because she wants to impose conservative religious views on the rest of us. Even though religious liberals, the non religious and the atheists form a minority in Singapore, we have a right to our religious practice and views. This is a right that, prima facie, ought not to be violated.

Looking at the forum page (both print and online), I see that a lot of my fellow Singaporeans do not seem to be getting this. Many understand that it would really screw up the social fabric if narrow religious views were imposed on a majority or even a significant minority. But this already cedes half the argument to Dr Thio and her ilk. If a purely religious law merely imposes on an already socially marginalised minority (which already exerts very little political pressure) then whoopee, the social fabric can absorb the discontent and the fascists win.

That is why I want to talk about rights. Rights represent lines that should not be crossed. There are very few cases where rights to treligious freedom may be violated. The only relevant case I can think of now are Jehova's Witnesses. They are a branch of christians who do not swear oaths (no pledge) and therefore would not serve NS. They would mooch off the govt (going to tax funded schools etc using tax funded roads) without giving back. The state can legitimately ban Jehova's witnesses from migrating here and obtaining citizenship, or banish Jehovah's witnesses who refuse to do NS and even send defaulters to DB because conscription (in Singapore's case) is necessary to the continued existence of the state. But, other than narrow cases like this, there are no exceptions to this rule.

Banning sodomy, gay marriage and gay adoption have no justification but religious ones. To keep these laws, or to write them into the statutes, prevents the nonreligious, or the religious liberals from doing things for no other reason than someone else's religion says so. In fact it even imposes on conservative christians. People should be free to sin and be bad christians if they want to. It is up to a person's personal conscience what type of Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist or Satanist he wants to be.

2. One has to be either stupid or evil not to realise the assymetry between imposing a religious law and lifting it. I would rather not think of people whom I personally do not know as evil. But, owing that she used to be the Dean of the Law Faculty in NUS, she should know the difference, or else her credibility as a lawyer becomes questionable since she has such a large  blindspot on the issue. The alternative is that she has an agenda to impose her conservativism on the rest of society and only pretends ignorance of this fact. 

As I stated earlier in my reply, laws that ban sodomy, gay marriage and gay adoption are an unjust imposition on the non religious. It violates their religious freedom. On the other hand, legalising gay marriages, and allowing them to do their own thing does not impose on the religious rights of the conservatives. They are still free to believe what they like, marry how they like, and preach whatever they want within the boundaries of discourse in Singapore. (Another issue I've got problems with, but another battle for another day)

Dr Thio, would like to suggest that legalising these would be an imposition on the religious majority. Since the government has to impose either way, better to impose on a minority right? But how does allowing gays to do their own thing impose on the rights of the religious? Doesn't make sense right? Not unless they think that they have a right to force everyone else to follow their religious/cultural taboos.

In so far as the government is complicit in this type of mindset, the government is wrong. However, the government has indicated that it believes that gays must have the space to pursue their own lifestyle. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean liftting bans on gay sex, marriage and adoption. The PAP is very gradualist in its mindset. They may very well have a timetable to start liberalising in this area. Gradualism is a smart political strategy given a bigoted populace. The government can affirm a commitment to the people's pregudices while gradually giving Gays more and more freedom. I am however, more impatient. For this particular issue, the government should move faster.

This brings us to another point I wanted to make

3. The general populace is bigoted if it believes that gays shouldnt have the right to marry eachother etc. They being in the majority, and this being a socially acceptible form of bigotry does not make it any less bigoted or any less wrong. Espousing the view that only heterosexual families are legitimate is militant exclusionary religionism, no matter how widespread or how many people high up share this view.

4.The statement the conventional family, a heterosexual stable family', is society's building block is either meaningless, trivially true or false outright. What do they mean when people say this?

a) Everybody in society can be said to be a part of a heterosexual family unit in one way or another. A person is often a father, a mother, son, daughter, sibling, in-law, aunt, uncle, cousin, husband, wife, etc. But this is a trivial descriptive fact. It does not make any argument as to why gay marriages should remain illegal.

b) One could further argue that these relationships impose duties. I have duties towards my parents and my siblings, and I will take on duties to my wife when I get married, and duties towards my children when I eventually have children. These familial duties are part of what makes society society and are part of the very fabric of scoiety. Buth this would be true of any family, heterosexual or not. Even from a more normative concpetion of society, we can see how family and marriage are good institutions that must be maintained. But the important aspects of these institutions in no way suggests why these institutions should only be restricted to heterosexuals. In fact, the argument suggests expanding these institutions to include gays. Our society would be more cohesive if they were included too and were not marginalised.

5. Talking about the homosexual agenda is basically importing the culture wars from the US into Singapore. There is no homosexual agenda. Gays are not out there to rape your kids or convert straight children into gays. In fact, gays are not sexually attracted to children. Most pedophiles are straight. Apparently, any depiction of gays which does not demonise them and condemn them must be the work of the homosexual agenda. Apparently, having sex education and talking about gays in a neutral manner in order to conduct value neutral lessons is succumbing to the gay agenda. For these people, anything short of lynching them and burning them at the stake must be part of the gay agenda. They are religious extremists. Once people start talking about the gay agenda, you know that they are talking nonsense. That is because, other than to obtain equal rights for themselves, there is no such thing as a gay agenda.

Value neutrality is important as a philosophy of government. Future posts will explain why value neutrality is necessary. For now, here is a point that I would like people to consider. Value neutrality is not a necessary compromise between various factions. It is, as part of the aim of being a just overnment an ideal which all governments should strive to achieve. Moreover, it is a precondition to legitimacy of government. The further away from value neutrality a government goes, the less legitimate it is, i.e. the less right it has to exist.

Rational Action

Just some ideas on what rational action consists of.

When we talk about free will, rational natures etc, all  that we require is a responsiveness to reasons. (All though I do not necesserily concede the impossibility of supernatural libertarin free will)

1. From the previous post, Rational action is driven by universalisable maxims.

2. Similar reasons for acting yield similar actions. i.e. Treat like cases alike - The principle of procedural justice. This says nothing as to what are the relevant bits of information that go into how to treat a case.

3. Treat two cases differently only insofar as the two cases are relevantly different. This is the principle of proportionality. We should not treat two slightly different cases very differently from eachother.

Ideal Agent Approach

In this post, I will try to briefly outline this approach to ethics. This will be stated in point form

1. There are many entities that give reason to act. Value is one but there are possibly others. In general, let us call them maxims. (Note, we use the word more broadly than Kant did)

2. It is only rational to act on true maxims. False maxims do not provide any reason to act.

3. Ideal agents will act only on true maxims. They know what the true maxims are. They know what duties we have, what it means to be perfectly virtuous etc. This supposes that imperfect agents can act on false maxims.

For example, we can conceive of cases where imperfect agents like us desire things that to an extent that exceeds how much value they have to us. Or we desire certain things insufficiently. Addiction may be an example, where we desire something in excess to how much value it provides. e.g. desiring cigarettes in excess of the pleasure that they provide.

Note: This means that we may have to reject notions of value where somethings are valuable merely because we desire them, we always desire things which are valuable to the extent that they are so, and that value and desire have nothing to do with eachother.

4. An ideal agent is logically possible. 

Some things have to be said about this agent. For starters, the agent has perfect judgement, and is not limited by others. i.e. if an agent sets his mind to a logically possible goal, there is no reason why the agent does not achieve that goal. i.e. he is nomologically omnipotent.

5. A society consisting only of ideal agents is logically possible.

This has to be argued a bit. For  a start, it would seem odd if a society of perfectly virtuous people is not possible. From a perspective of reasons, if X is the ultimate reason to act, then X must be true for any and all agents. i.e. there should be no reason as to why any ideal agent cannot act from X. This is especially true when the agent is among other ideal agents. (As opposed to a situation where a virtuous agent is among malevolent agents who may be able to block the agent''s actions etc).

6. Maxims, which all ideal agents cannot act on simultaneously, cannot be what truly give reason to act. This follows from 5 as such a maxim which all ideal agents for some reason or another cannot act on cannot truly contain the ultimate reason from which to act.

7. The maxim must also be able to retain its meaning under universalisation.

For example, a pro thievery maxim would be incoherent as theft contains meaning only with respect to property rights. However, under universal thievery, there are no meaningful property rights. Therefore theft is unacceptable.

8. Given 2, 6 and 7, rational action by any agent is constrained by a filter. To qualify as rational, an action must be such that its driving maxim is universalisable.

Essay: Consequentialism And Value

The following essay pretty much is a restatement of my post Consequentialism (2): On Value. It is more precisely stated, and there is an interesting bit I want to develop towards the end.

Consequentialism and Value

Consequentialism simply is the theory that the only relevant considerations when making a moral evaluation are the consequences of the action, motive, rule etc depending on whether we are talking about act, or rule, or motive consequentialism. Its attraction lies in the intuition that it is a good thing (or at the least not impermissible) to make the world a better place. The aim of this paper is to propose that such an intuition is not as justified as it appears. Making the world a better place is not something that is easily defined. Once we start asking in what ways the world can be made better, it seems that we come across a problem of metrics. By what measure/metric do we judge that the world is better or worse? Another way we could say this is: what is the standard of value? Different consequentialist theories give different accounts of what is valuable. However, most of the classical consequentialist theories like utilitarianism propose that value is agent-neutral. 

Much has been said about agent-neutral value (of which some of the arguments may be repeated here) such that it is often plays a role in the many criticisms of consequentialism. One criticism is that many of our moral intuitions require a theory that incorporates agent-relative elements (Portmore, 3,2001). For example, it seems that we ought to avoid murdering an innocent even if it will prevent the murder of two innocents. Douglas Portmore argues that it is not necessarily the case that consequentialism involves agent-neutral value. He proposes that consequentialism can incorporate agent-relative value. I will try to show three things in this paper. First, I will show that agent-relative consequentialist theories are subject to a reductio. Then I will argue that agent-neutral value is under-motivated. Finally, I will argue that the limits of a theory of value suggest a move to deontological ethics.

Value, according to Scanlon, is simply that which gives us reason to act. The questions to be asked, of course, are “what type of value?”, and “what type of response. If we are rationally required to do that which we have most reason to, then we are rationally required to maximise value. Following this reasoning, consequentialists can be said to apply the basic principle: “Act so as to promote value”. It is Portmore’s contention that the agent-neutral / agent-relative distinction is not the same as the consequentialist / non-consequentialist distinction (Portmore, 11, 2001). Hence, it is possible to have a theory where an agent can value his own commission of one murder far less than he does the commission of a number of murders by other people. 

There are a number of things wrong with this. The most obvious criticism is that there is no hard and fast rule about how the two balance out. (Portmore, 19, 2001) Portmore actually argues that the balancing point where the value of ‘not being a murderer and a number of people being murdered’ outweighs the value of ‘being the murderer who murders one person’ is different for different people. Nominally, this point could be anywhere. Taken abstractly, there is no reason why any particular person may not set the threshold at one; i.e. he or she places a positive value on being the murderer. Hence, in some ghastly macabre version of Amartya Sen’s Prude and Lewd, our sadistic Prude would be morally obligated to be the murderer whenever he encounters a situation where an innocent would be murdered anyway.

Portmore says that this objection would be true only under particular theories of value where the value of the state of affairs is dependent on the agent/evaluator’s subjective desires (Portmore, 15, 2001). What type of desire independent, agent-relative value could there be? Portmore seems to be talking about cases where the facts of what happened may be agreed upon by two people but their evaluation differs and both are still correct in their evaluation. For example if A lets the murder of five others take place by refusing to murder an innocent, A will evaluate himself as doing the right thing while a third party C would evaluate A as have done wrong. He justifies the move by using the sunset example (Portmore, 19, 2001). At a particular point in time, the statement the sun is setting is true for someone standing at the east coast of the US but not at the west coast. Hence, the truth value of a factual issue is dependant on the location of the observer. The example is problematic in that the two situations seem to be disanalogous. In the sunset situation, the position of the sun in the sky at any point in time is necessarily dependent on the position of the observer on earth. This would necessarily have to be the case given the shape of the earth and the fact that light travels in a straight line. However, it does not seem to be the case that morality is such a creature that A’s moral judgement of a situation, could be different from B’s of that same situation and yet, both be right at the same time. It is not enough that A judge that it is wrong for A to murder in order to prevent five other murders. A must not only judge it impermissible when A murders one to prevent the murder of five others, but also judge it impermissible when B does the same thing. However, Portmore’s agent-relative consequentialism does not deliver this.

One curious aspect of consequentialist notions of value and the good are that they are not desire dependant. In order to avoid the nihilistic conclusion that it is right for one to do as one desires no matter what that desire is, consequentialists have often moved towards agent-neutral value. This seems to make sense in that agent-neutral value is definitely desire-independent. However, this seems to conflate agent-relative value and desire dependent value. But, is this conflation justifiable? One could ask, in what way does an agent/evaluator say that A is a better state of affairs than B? A would be a better state of affairs than B if and only if A was greater than B along the dimensions X, Y and Z, where X, Y and Z are the only dimensions along which it makes sense to measure the state of affairs. i.e. X, Y and Z are final goods and are the measures of value which all other measure are dependent on. To take the example of utilitarianism, let pleasure be the good. In what sense is pleasure valuable? It seems to be that pleasure is valuable in virtue of its desirability for its own sake.  

Actually, I have made an assumption here. There are actually three possibilities, only two of which can hold in order for the last sentence of the previous paragraph to make sense.
1. Pleasure is valuable only because it is desirable
2. Pleasure is valuable because it is desirable, but things may be valuable for other reasons as well.
3. Pleasure is desirable because it is valuable.
The first two statements pertain to what is under discussion in the previous paragraph. The third possibility will be dealt with later in this essay. The problem then lies with whether anything other than its desirability can make something valuable. If something is not desirable, there seems to be no reason to pursue it. The only way it could be a conceptual truth that value is what gives us reasons to act is if value is desire dependent. This means that we should be sceptical about the existence of desire independent value. This would apply equally to agent-relative desire independent value as well as agent-neutral value. This seems to provide a strong argument against consequentialist ethical theories.

The consequentialist could however argue that pleasure and other final goods are desirable because they contain value. This would put value as a constitutively basic concept, with desirability as the epistemic process by which we access value. If desire is an accurate epistemic guide to what contains value, then we are still reduced to pursuing only what we desire. If we, however, propose that our desires are not accurate guides to identifying what is valuable, how do we know what is valuable? Perhaps an idealised evaluator’s desire would track value perfectly. This would change the syllogism to: do what an idealised actor has most reason to. However, this still poses an epistemological problem. We seemingly have neither access to the desires of an idealised actor (excepting religions which state that God, the idealised actor has revealed his preferences in their religious texts), nor any desire independent access to value. We are therefore unable to really decide whether any quality is really valuable in any desire independent manner. Hence it seems that the only coherent notion of value has to be intimately tied to desire.

How about the maximisation of preference satisfaction? If we find that only the satisfaction our personal preferences and desires are valuable, then shouldn’t we aim to maximise this? No, we only value the satisfaction of our own preferences and only have sufficient reason to satisfy our own, not other’s preferences. But it is not clear that we care about everybody’s preferences, maybe just our own and our loved ones’. Therefore, according to the consequentialist framework, there seems sufficient reason to maximally satisfy our own desires but not other people’s. This is unsatisfying in a moral theory as a moral theory must at the very least conform to some basic intuitions like: it is immoral to kill innocent strangers.

One of the basic flaws in the consequentialist formulation is that while values do give reasons to act, they are not the only things that do so. One way of remedying this is to add in Ross’s list of prima facie duties. These prima facie duties are supposedly self evident and in themselves give reasons to act. Hence, some ad-hoc theory which incorporates both prima-facie duties as well as values that are deemed to be self evident would work. However, Ross’s duties are subject to the same criticism as consequentialist value in that there is no way to independently verify that these values or duties exist. 

Another approach is to consider higher order reasons that would order an agent’s desires. If we take higher order reasons into account, we may be able to find a way to decide what type of desires an ideal agent may act from. Consider an idealised agent in a polity consisting of other ideal agents. If such an idealised world is to be logically possible, then, an idealised agent would not choose any desires which would destroy another agent. For if our idealised agent was to act from those desires, then all other agents would also act from those desires and they would surely destroy themselves. Of all the desires, duties and values that any common agent can have, an ideal agent can only act from those desires which would leave our thought experiment logically possible. If we are to act only the desires and duties that an idealised agent could have, we have higher order reasons to choose such desires. These higher order reasons are prior in consideration to the first order duties and desires as, without them, we would incorrectly choose the reason giving forces from which to act. When phrased in the context of non-ideal agents, these desires, values and duties, maxims, if you will, must be universalisable. This principle could be formulated as such: Act only on maxims which can be universalised. This bears much similarity to Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it becomes a universal law” (Kant, 15, 1785) Hence the categorical imperative is a formal basic principle that is prior to other substantive maxims.

To summarise, we have explored various notions of value and concluded that the best notion of value is a desire dependent, agent relative one. Moreover, since this notion of value is unsuitable to a serious consequentialist ethic, a move to Kantian ethics was made using an idealised agent approach. Kantian ethics, however, are a deontological ethical system. Further criticism of this system is the work of other papers. More work can also be done in justifying the ideal agent approach to derive the categorical imperative.


Reference:
Kant, Immanuel - Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785, translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott
Portmore, Douglas W – Can an Act Consequentialist Theory be Agent Relative? American Philosophical Quarterly 38 (2001): 363-377

I will indeed wish to say more about this ideal agent apprach in future posts