Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Essays in Honour of
David Braybrooke
Engaged Philosophy:
Essays in Honour of David
Braybrooke
Edited by
Susan Sherwin and Peter Schotch
ISBN 0-8020-3890-5
Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1 Introduction:
About David Braybrooke
Susan Sherwin
1.1 David Braybrooke, the Personal Story
1.2 David Braybrooke, the Scholar . . .
1.3 Overview of Essays . . . . . . . . .
1.4 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
xi
3
5
11
14
20
21
23
23
26
27
28
31
31
32
34
35
37
38
40
42
45
47
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
vi
CONTENTS
51
52
55
57
61
65
69
77
78
78
80
83
83
84
84
87
88
89
89
90
92
vii
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
101
102
106
111
117
122
125
126
131
131
134
139
142
145
147
149
150
152
153
161
165
168
170
173
175
CONTENTS
viii
7.5
7.6
7.7
7.8
Ockhams Razor . . . . . . . . . .
Ministry of Transport Investigators
Which Is the Better Story? . . . . .
Is the Tiger REAL? . . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
191
177
182
185
187
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
193
194
195
201
210
220
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
221
221
225
227
231
234
237
241
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
249
250
252
254
256
259
263
264
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
ix
.
.
.
.
.
.
271
273
277
279
283
287
299
301
301
303
306
310
312
315
321
323
323
325
327
328
328
332
334
336
339
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
CONTENTS
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
350
353
358
359
359
360
360
362
Appendix A
AnotherLiterarySide of David Braybrooke: The Comic
Dialectician
Excerpt from Faculty Council Minutes, 29 September 1983 .
Excerpt from Faculty Minutes, 11 October 1983 . . . . . . .
An Open Letter from David Braybrooke . . . . . . . . . . .
365
368
369
369
Appendix B
David Braybrookes Publications 1955-2005
Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Journal Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapters in Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Book Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
373
373
374
378
383
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Notes on Contributors
387
References
391
Index
410
Acknowledgments
The editors and contributors to this volume are grateful for the generous support received from various individuals and offices of Dalhousie
University, especially the Vice President (Academic and Research), the
Dean of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Department of Philosophy.
ENGAGED PHILOSOPHY
Chapter 1
Abstract
This chapter introduces the reader to the life and work of David Braybrooke. It identifies key themes in his extensive list of publications and
explains the significance of the essays in this collection.
This collection of original essays has been produced by faculty members who have been colleagues or students of David Braybrooke in his
years of full-time teaching at Dalhousie University (1963-90).1 Our intention is to express our collective affection, admiration, and respect for
this important philosopher on the occasion of his eightieth birthday by
reflecting on aspects of his life and work as they have inspired our own
philosophical thinking.
By happy coincidence, the publication of this volume coincides with
the momentous publication of his own book, Analytical Political Philosophy: From Discourse, Edification, the fourth in a series of books
Braybrooke has published with University of Toronto Press since 1998.
Thanks
to Richmond Campbell and Steven Burns for editorial advice on this chapter.
1 He has been a very active Emeritus Professor since 1990, retaining a summer home in Halifax
and spending three to four months per year in Nova Scotia, enthusiastically engaged in philosophical activities. Hence, all who are themselves situated in Halifax still count themselves among his
current colleagues
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
2 I am very grateful to David for his assistance and patient cooperation in piecing together
some of the elements of a rich and complex life in a couple of personal interviews in June 2004.
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
As a result of having published and perished at Yale, David decided he would retire early by moving to a site where he would be free
to teach and live as he liked with little of the pressure to publish that
characterized life in an Ivy League institution. His goal now was to enjoy other aspects of his rich, self-directed intellectual life. Fortunately
for the contributors to this volume and for thousands of others he has
taught and inspired, he selected Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, for that retirement from the fray of academic intensity. When
he arrived in 1963, he found Dalhousie to be a small, provincial university by the sea that concentrated on undergraduate education and the
training of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. The philosophy
department had only recently been separated off from psychology, and
its few other members had little interest in publishing; they exercised
no research demands on him. Moreover, he was able to secure a position that was to be half-time in philosophy and half in the department
of political science; in other words, his interdisciplinary interests were
acknowledged and valued at his new academic home.
At that time, there were only about a half-dozen serious scholars in
the humanities and social sciences at Dalhousie, and it was easy to get to
know each of them well. It made for a stimulating, interdisciplinary, intellectual community in which David thrived. And while the Dalhousie
library was small compared with what he had become accustomed to at
Yale, at least it had the advantage of having the books it owned ready at
hand since there was so little competition for the books that interested
him. It is worth noting, though, that this calm backwater atmosphere did
not last very long. Co-incident with his time at the university, Dalhousie
has evolved into a serious research institution with strong departments
of philosophy and political science. David played no small part in this
transformation, and he is rightly proud of his contribution to a stimulating and supportive environment.
I can speak most authoritatively of his impact on the philosophy department at Dalhousie since it has been my own academic home for the
past thirty years. Here, David has shown both intellectual and personal
leadership. On the intellectual front, he has always shared his work with
colleagues and students and encouraged critical discussion with those
10
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
11
12
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
13
erally understood is too problematic a measure for this task, though its
principal insight of considering the welfare of everyone is sound. Braybrooke argues that a conception of human needs can better serve the
role of evaluating the social worth of public policies. Such a concept
must distinguish between mere wants or preferences and the things that
are necessary to a life worth living. Thus, public policies should be
held accountable for first meeting the latter and, then, for allowing as
much room as possible for individuals to pursue their own preferences.
Needs may be either course-of-life (what is required for life or health)
or adventitious (what is required for meeting particular goals), and it
is important to understand the distinction to ensure that policies do not
lose track of course-of-life needs in responding to vocal demands for
meeting particular adventitious needs.
While some course-of-life needs are clearly universal by virtue of
biological requirements for nutrition, hydration, shelter, sleep, and so
on, others are not (e.g., medical care), and adventitious needs may be
very diverse indeed. Hence, public policy must be evaluated in terms of
the needs of a specific reference population; those responsible for determining these needs will belong to a policy-making population, which
may not be the same as the reference population.8 It is, ultimately, a
matter of general public debate what shall be deemed needs that must
be met for a given population, the minimum standard of provision of
those needs, as well as the policies that should be pursued to meet those
needs. Clearly, then, the rules for that debate become very important.
So, too, is a measure for comparing the effectiveness of different policies at meeting the needs of the population in question. Braybrooke
introduced the census notion (described below) to solve that problem.9
Braybrookes work on the concept of rights is intertwined with his
work on the concept of rules.10 He argues that rights attach to individu8 I follow Braybrookes terminology in his recent work here; it is far more accessible than the
alternative form Selfgovliset which he used in the original Meeting Needs book.
9 The census notion requires agreement on minimal standards for provision of a need (e.g.
what would constitute adequate nutrition for a 150-pound adult), and then everyone in the population is to be surveyed to see whether they are receiving enough calories and vitamins to meet this
minimum; priority is then placed on bringing everyone up to the minimum (for their particular
size).
10 The first substantive discussion of rights appears in his 1968 book, Three Tests for Democ-
14
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.3
The rest of the essays in this book take up several of the major ideas
in Braybrookes work and are divided into two major blocks reflecting
racy. His work on rules appears in many places but is most thoroughly discussed in Logic on the
Track of Social Change.
15
the general theme of the book and of Braybrookes work. Part I, Practical Engagement, deals with ways in which Braybrookes ideas connect
up with the practical world of public policy or personal responsibilities. Part II, Theoretical Engagement, consists of essays that explore
the philosophical underpinnings of his work and look more closely at
some of the theoretical debates that occupied him.
More specifically, chapters 2 through 4 focus on his very important
work on needs. In chapter 2, Nathan Brett brings this framework to
bear on the subject of private education. He explores the threat to
justice of increased moves to privatization of education for families who
can afford it. Braybrooke views education as a basic need of human
beings and warns that justice requires us to ensure that this need is met
to a reasonable standard for all young people. With this concern for
equal educational outcomes, Brett examines some of the current debates
regarding private versus public education services and examines the
negative impact on equality of private schooling. He concludes that the
trend to increased use of private schooling is resulting in reductions of
social justice.
In chapter 3, I take up Braybrookes work on needs to explore a
pressing question about how we should address the potentially growing
set of medical demands for services that test for genetic dispositions
to contract life-threatening illnesses. I look specifically at the topic
of access to tests for genetic susceptibility to inherited forms of breast
and ovarian cancer. By reflecting on Braybrookes distinction between
course-of-life needs and adventitious needs, and drawing on feminist
work on relational understandings of personhood and needs, I am able
to help refocus the debate and find a basis for distinguishing genuine
health needs from health desires; while the latter may be strongly felt,
only course-of-life needs should be given priority in allocating limited
public health resources.
Duncan MacIntosh (chapter 4) takes up the arguments of chapter 3
and some in Braybrookes book, Meeting Needs (1987). He considers several possible solutions to the problem Braybrooke first identified
as the bottomless pit of medical needs for technological support of
those whose lives could be extended. MacIntosh argues, contra Bray-
16
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
brooke, that there is no clear and reliable distinction to be drawn between course-of-life needs and adventitious needs. He proposes a strategy that will constrain the bottomless pit of medical demands by only
permitting communities to recognize as needs with attached rights those
projects that are in fact co-feasible within that community.
Edna Keeble (chapter 5) pieces together some of Braybrookes ideas
about democratic theory and questions of state and personal responsibility in order to address some urgent questions in the philosophy of
international relations. She reviews his proposals regarding the personal responsibilities of individuals living in rich countries to relieve
the miseries of people living in less fortunate countries. Keeble draws
on his philosophical ideas about responsibility to explore the meaning
and possibility of global justice in the post-9/11 era, when national security has become the preoccupation of governments. She appeals to his
ideas about cosmopolitan ethics while discussing some of his proposals
for practically deploying such an ethic and draws from his work a more
optimistic view of international relations than is evident within current
government policies.
In chapter 6, Sharon Sutherland traces Braybrookes insight into the
importance of incrementalism to debates in public policy that he takes
up throughout his career, beginning with his very first book, A Strategy of Decision: Policy Evaluation as a Social Process, published with
C.E. Lindblom in 1963. In his ongoing efforts to make public policy
responsive to needs, Braybrooke has always recognized the importance
of developing institutional processes that ensure debate and revisability
as policymakers evaluate the impact of their efforts. She shows how
this approach is central to his major contribution to specific policy in
his work on traffic congestion (a subject of lifelong interest to him as
the son of a highway designer). This dynamic strategy is taken up and
vigorously argued most recently in his 2004 book Utilitarianism.
The section concludes in a different mood, with Steven Burnss essay Life of Pi and the Existence of Tigers (chapter 7). While Burns
does not discuss Braybrookes publications per se, he does demonstrate
an important aspect of Braybrookes well-known views about how an
individual ought to live ones life. As noted above, Braybrooke has
17
18
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
Campbell joins him in asking why egoism is the default account of human motivation; she argues for an alternative starting point that begins
with reliance on moral sentiment as the basis for a more social theory
of motivation. Like Sherwin and Ralston, she finds within Braybrookes
work a conceptual apparatus that is very close to the work of feminist
philosophers, though she also sees that his work would benefit from
making these connections more explicit and holding more firmly to the
vision feminists have developed.
In chapter 10, Richmond Campbell continues exploring questions
regarding the role of sentiment in moral judgment and focuses on an
important question in moral epistemology and meta-ethics. He discusses some of Braybrookes ideas regarding moral justification and
moral judgment. Richmond Campbell revisits a familiar philosophical impasse between cognitivists, who argue that moral judgments are
a form of belief that can be true or false, and non-cognitivists, who
claim that moral judgments are expressions of feeling or desire. These
are always represented as mutually exclusive options. He seeks to resolve this apparent impasse by drawing on an idea found in Natural
Law Modernized (2001), where Braybrooke suggests that David Hume
can be viewed as someone who embraces aspects of both positions. By
building on this insight, Richmond Campbell is able to offer a novel interpretation of moral judgments as constituting a complex, hybrid state,
thereby dissolving the apparent opposition between reason and emotion.
Chapters 11 and 12 continue to examine the implications of Braybrookes work for questions in moral epistemology. Both Michael Hymers and Tom Vinci use a recent essay of Braybrookes titled What
Truth Does the Emotive-Imperative Answer to the Open-Question Argument Leave to Moral Judgments? to discuss themes about the nature
of moral knowledge. Hymers (chapter 11) discusses the importance of
Braybrookes claim that ethical justification does not have to be traced
back to meta-ethical justification. Taking a Wittgensteinian approach
to the nature of moral propositions, Hymers proposes that justification
and, in particular, certainty of moral propositions are a function of epistemic context, not semantic or empirical content. Vinci (chapter 12)
takes a different approach to the issues raised in Braybrookes stimulat-
19
ing paper. He argues that Braybrooke situates his account of moral rules
within a theory of meta-ethics. Vinci discusses the structure of this account within the broader theory of formal foundationalism with analogy
to epistemic justification. This connection provides a useful model for
understanding Braybrookes account of moral justification, but it is not
without difficulties of its own.
We then follow Braybrooke in his decision to turn to formalism to
capture some of the important ideas regarding the ways in which societies actually come to decisions and set (and change) policies. In chapter
13, Peter Schotch explores the intersection between Braybrookes interests in moral philosophy and social science. Through graphic representations, Schotch helps to make accessible the formal work he, Braybrooke, and Brown have done on rules in order to render more visible
Braybrookes understanding of the place of political economy in a rulebased picture of morals. This essay draws together the ways in which
the concept of rules runs through a substantial body of Braybrookes life
work.
In chapter 14, Bryson Brown continues to expand on the important
and difficult role that rules play in Braybrookes approach to moral and
political thought. He reminds us that in Logic on the Track of Social
Change the authors explain how rules combine both descriptive and
normative features. In this essay, Brown draws on the work of Wilfrid Sellars to help elaborate the nature of normativity that is built into
their shared understanding of the nature of rules.
Together, these essays pay our respect to David Braybrooke in the
best way we know how, by critically engaging with his work. It reflects
his teaching that philosophy is a conversation, best pursued through
open discussion. David describes his principal interest in all of his work
as that of being useful. In that, he has admirably succeeded.
I trust this Introduction has given the reader a sense of the importance of David Braybrookes contributions to the literature in many dimensions of philosophy. That sense will surely be confirmed by reading
the full volume. I may not, however, have succeeded in conveying the
other side of David Braybrooke: his irreverent, irrepressible determination to have fun. At his urging, we have included, as Appendix A, some
1.4
References
Braybrooke, David. 1965. Philosophical Problems of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan.
1968. Three Tests for Democracy: Personal Rights, Human Welfare, Collective Preference. New York: Random House.
1987. Meeting Needs. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1987. Philosophy of Social Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Foundations of Philosophy Series.
1998.Philosophy of Social Science, Contemporary Theories (Schools).
In E. Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8: 838-47.
London: Routledge.
1998. Moral Objectives, Rules, and the Forms of Social Change.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
2001. Natural Law Modernized. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
2004. Utilitarianism: Restorations; Repairs; Renovations. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
2005. Analytical Political Philosophy: From Discourse, Edification. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Braybrooke, David, Bryson Brown, and Peter Schotch. 1995. Logic
on the Track of Social Change. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Clarendon
Library of Logic and Philosophy.
Braybrooke, David, and C.E. Lindblom. 1963. A Strategy of Decision: Policy Evaluation as a Social Process. New York: The Free
Press.
Part One:
Practical Engagement
Chapter 2
Abstract
This paper looks at some of the issues raised by recent moves toward
privatization in education. I begin the debate over private-versus-public
services by considering the claim that a private system is a more efficient
way of achieving the goals of education. The next section takes up this
question of differences in goals by examining some basic differences in
the normative structures of the public and private spheres. Using (and defending) David Braybrookes principle of equality in meeting needs, the
paper concludes by arguing that the privatization of educational services
undermines in important ways the pursuit of equality of opportunity.
2.1
Introduction
David Braybrooke has been a stern critic of moves toward privatization that began with the Thatcher and Reagan regimes in Britain and
the United States respectively. In his work he has treated education
An early draft of this paper was present at the Society for Applied Philosophy Meetings:
Education in the 21st Century, Oxford, England, June 2002. I would like to thank Steven Burns
and Susan Sherwin for their helpful editorial comments. Thanks also to Caroline Sequeira for her
help in editing.
23
24
as a need that requires a public response. This paper explores the implications of moves toward privatization in education and attempts to
show why education should not continue down this path toward privatization. This will involve considering some basic differences between
public and private enterprises. It will also explore the implications of
Braybrookes views that education is one of the basic needs of human
beings and that a just society aims at equality in meeting needs.1
Judged from the viewpoint of equality, the political regimes that
have held power in much of the West over the past twenty-five years
have been a disaster. We have witnessed a widening of the gap between the rich and the impoverished countries of the world. Wealth has
become concentrated in the hands of fewer individuals. While some
people are enormously wealthy, average real wages and employment
in full-time work have decreased. In North America (and elsewhere)
more wage earners have been moved into flexible categories of work,
where they do not have job security or health and retirement benefits.
Meanwhile, the power of labour unions to resist these changes has been
greatly diminished by the globalization of production and markets.
These changes toward greater social inequality have also been evident in the reorganization of our educational establishments. Over the
past ten years, for example, the amount of public money going to Canadian universities has (in real terms) been reduced, while the costs of
this education have continued to rise. One result has been dramatic increases in university tuition. In my own province (Nova Scotia), tuition
has increased by 100 per cent over the last ten years. This is not exceptional. A recent study of state-supported universities in the United
States found somewhat lower rates of tuition increases (107 per cent
over twenty years) but reflected the same shift toward university education accessible only to those who can afford it.2
1 See (Braybrooke, 1987a) Chapter 2 Section 2 Course of Life Needs, and Chapter 4 Section
5 Equality in Meeting needs, 143-50. See also Section 6 below.
2 Jacques Steinberg, More Family Income Committed to College, New York Times, 2 May
2002. While the average amount each state spent on higher education per student rose by 13
percent over that period, to $6,747, state institutions raised their tuition and fees by 107 percent, to
$3,512, the study [Losing Ground] found. See Losing Ground: A National Status Report on the
Affordability of American Higher Education, p. 9, http://www.highereducation.org/
reports/losing ground/affordability report final bw
2.1. INTRODUCTION
25
It does not take an expert to see that these changes will foster greater
social inequality. Given that education is a central need of human beings
and that it connects in dramatic ways with the meeting of other needs,
this inequality is an important source of injustice.
There is a corresponding differentiation of opportunity within the
universities, as administrators (like their counterparts in industry) have
sought a cheaper and more flexible workforce by increasing the proportion of untenured and part-time employees, who lack security and
benefits and work for about one-third of the salary of tenured faculty.3
At the same time, universities have become more and more dependent
on private corporations to fund research programs. This has meant that
private enterprise has sometimes been in a position to determine what
questions will be investigated and even what findings will be made public.4 Though this is a direct affront to the ideals of a liberal university,
it may not directly contribute to inequality. But indirectly it does. Since
these very corporations are the chief sources of the hierarchal dispersion
of wealth, research that contributes to their power will ultimately have
an inegalitarian impact.
Public schools, too, have experienced undermining cuts to their funding. The Halifax School Board recently decided to cut the funding for
French immersion schools. Private schools will be the beneficiaries of
this change, as parents who can afford it move their children to the private schools. In some provinces (and many states in the United States),
such moves to private schools are being reinforced by tax policies that
allow tuition to count as a tax deduction. There is a corresponding removal of funds from the public system. Like the universities, public
schools have sought partnerships with private industry as a replace3 See Wesley Shumar, College for Sale: A Critique of the Commodification of Higher Education (London: The Falmer Press, 1997), 52-6. Shumar claims that underpaid part-time faculty now
do 50 per cent of the teaching on average in U.S. universities. Canadian faculty have been resisting
this trend. (Though it took a protracted strike to settle all of the issues, the Faculty Association at
Dalhousie University was successful in holding the line at 10 per cent.)
4 In Canada the names David Healy and Nancy Olivieri come to mind in connection with
corporate attempts to control findings about dangerous side effects of products. (These researchers
brought to light attempts to control their negative findings about pharmaceutical drugs.). See J.
Thompson, P. Baird, and J. Downie, The Olivieri report: The Complete Text of the Report of the
Independent Inquiry Commissioned by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (Toronto:
James Lorimer, 2001), http://www.dal.ca/committeeofinquiry.
26
ment for public funding. The results can be alarming: corporations with
poor environmental records, for example, are sometimes supplying the
video materials used in classroom discussions of environmental issues.5
I begin the debate over private-versus-public services by considering the claim that a private system is a more efficient way of achieving
the goals of education. This brief discussion supports two (related) conclusions. The claim of greater efficiency is (often) used in a way that
makes it true a priori, though it poses as an empirical claim. Second, efficiency comparisons will not be valid if public and privatized systems
have different goalsthat is, assume different answers to the question,
Efficient at what? The next section takes up this question of differences in goals by examining some basic differences in the normative
structures of the public and private spheres. The account contrasts the
impartiality of public norm structure with the partiality of that which is
private. This account is then applied to the question of equality in education. I argue that the privatization of educational services is an important
step away from conditions of social justice. In defending education as
a public service (comparable to a public health system) I utilize David
Braybrookes views that education is one of the basic needs of human
beings and that a just society aims at equality in meeting those needs. I
conclude that the shift of educational services into the private sector is
an important step away from conditions of social justice.
2.2
examples, see Maud Barlow and Heather Robertson, Class Warfare: The Assault on
Canadas Schools (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1994): A Dow Chemical sponsored video, Traces
of Today, created in conjunction with an educational marketing company, Modern Talking Pictures
Service, claims scientific studies and practical experience around the world have shown that
incinerators are an environmentally safe method for disposing of combustible material, including
plastics (81).
27
defending their positions. The former see increased efficiency as a necessary result of removing a non-competitive public bureaucracy. The
latter see privatization itself as necessarily introducing extra layers of
profit-makers and hence expenses.
2.2.1 Efficiency
The ideology of neoconservatism, currently dominant in the political decisions of Western democracies, views privatization as progress,
a change toward increased efficiency, reduced taxes, and ultimately a
higher standard of living. Bringing services into the private sector is,
for many proponents, a moral imperative. Even if public operation of
the education or health care systems provided care equivalent to that
provided by a private system at less cost,6 many proponents of privatization would be against it because opportunities for private enterprise
are lost. But many advocates of this new economy would find the
idea of greater efficiency in a public system simply incredible. On this
view, a public service bureaucracy is inefficient by definition. Moreover,
state-run monopolies on health care or education involve an absence of
competition, which protects inefficiencies. Adherents of this political
view seem not to notice that the market itself can produce monopolies
and provide room for vast corporate bureaucraciesorganizations that
impose costs and exercise power but contribute nothing of value to others in society.7
There is an ideology of the left that might be described in equivalent
terms. According to this view, whatever is done for profit is necessarily done at someones expense and is therefore less efficient. Hence, a
direct provision of services through the public sector is inherently more
6 According to the Council of Canadians (www.canadians.org) total health care spending in
Canada - under public health careis $3,298 per person as compared with $7,000 per person
under the private system in the United States. The Canadian system covers all persons; one person
in seven is not covered under the U.S. system. In terms of life expectancy, Canada rated secondhighest worldwide, the United States twenty-fifth.
7 Many private sector institutions can be described in these termse.g., those involved in
currency speculation, misleading advertising, and organizations of the sort revealed by the collapse of WorldCom and Enron in the United States. Scrutiny of such cases reveals that sometimes the removal of red tapederegulationhas contributed remarkably to the inefficiency of
our economies.
28
efficient. In both of these positions one can find a claim that is true a priori. Clearly, eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy will reduce costs. Of
course, there is a cost in providing government services that we ignore
at our peril when we speak of health care or public education provided
free of charge. On the other hand, it is true that privatization involves
the introduction of profit-makersor perhaps layers of theminto a
system that provides these services; and these changes necessarily introduce costs. The huge cost of private medical health insurance in the
United States is a case in point. But in neither account is it a necessary
truth that the overall cost will be greater.
2.2.2
Benefits
Surely we can compare a publicly run British Rail with its privatized
counterpart, and compare them across several dimensions, in arriving at
an assessment of greater or lesser efficiency. But to do this, we will have
to ensure that we take into account any change in benefits. If privatized
trains no longer run on time, or no longer service outlying areas, or are
more prone to deadly crashes, the fact that less is being spent shows
us nothing about efficiency. Similarly, if changes in the provision of
medical or educational services turn out to be less expensive because
only those who can afford them get treated or educated, then we can
hardly say that this is more efficient until we have reached agreement
about this change of benefits. Typically, changes toward privatization
end up serving a smaller part of the population and differentiating in the
level of benefits received by those who are served.
The opposition between these alternatives, therefore, is not merely a
question of fact about the best way of doing the same things. The centre
of the dispute is inevitably a normative dispute about goals. In the case
at hand, it involves disagreement about the proper aims of education.
To privatize is to move in the direction of exclusion and competition. A
public solution, on the other hand, demands inclusion and cooperation.
Moreover, there are different criteria of desert and entitlement that lie
in the normative backgrounds of the two approaches. Even the ideal of
equality is differently interpreted, depending on whether the approach
29
30
because of) the fact that the Mercedes was manufactured by a profitseeking corporation and the Lada was not. The process of extracting a
profit does not entail that automotive standards were sacrificed. On the
contrary, the successful producer is efficiently producing what people
want. And what people want must meet certain standards. Likewise,
it may seem, the goals of education could be pursued and enhanced by
corporations dedicated to making a profit by advancing the same goals
endorsed by public education. On the other hand, a system of public
education may be producing the educational equivalent of a Lada, not
doing a good job of serving the goals of liberal education.
One problem with this argument is the assumption that profit-driven
exchanges in the market can provide and enhance whatever we value.10
If this were true, then prostitution would be the ideal form of sexual intimacy. Not all that we value can be reduced to or mirrored by commodity value.11 Education is a part of what makes us fully human, and to allow profitability to dictate its goals is to treat humanity as a mere means.
A second problem is the oversimplified conception of the market that is
assumed when we claim that the markets can provide superior means
to whatever we want. A missing element in this picture is the modern
markets role in producing the educational needs that it then satisfies.
To survive in the competitive modern economy, vendors of a product
or service must stimulate consumer demand through advertising. Another key to success in modern markets lies in selling products that must
be replaced and services that will need to be repeated. Of course, advertising and obsolescence can work together. Building obsolescence into
products may backfire unless one also builds it into the thinking of con10 Why isnt everything for sale? asks Elizabeth Anderson in Value in Ethics and Economics
(Cambridge Harvard University Press, 1993). Her answer is that we have a plurality of values,
many of which cannot be captured in commodity values (chap. 8).
11 But here a common point of the defenders of privatization arises: teachers are paid for what
they do. If profiting were incompatible with what we value about education, then it is hard to see
why it is not already devalued. That teaching is financed and organized under a market system
instead of a tax-based public system will not alter the fact that teachers are already teaching for
profit. One reply to this is that teachers would be doing something else if their motivation were
simply to profit from what they are doing. This reply has some salience: teaching is not (most of
the time) alienated labour; it is generally valued intrinsically. But the point seems to remain: if pay
cheques do not corrupt teaching, why would it be changed for the worse through full incorporation
into the market? We will have to dig deeper.
31
Exclusion
32
Partiality
33
leader of a corporation will work for its goals and those of its shareholders over the interests of others. Within the outlook that the privacy
of property establishes (taken by itself), the owner of private property
need not concern himself with the fact that others have far greater need
for these resources than he does.
All of these partial viewpoints exist in contrast withand often in
tension withpublic viewpoints that demand impartiality. In some
contexts, the types of loyalties that define the relationships just considered become matters of unfairness and injustice. A judge cannot take
pride in giving lighter sentences to her friends. A teacher treats his students unfairly if he plays favourites. There is, in fact, a perspective of
public reason from which all such specific relations of partiality can appear to be vices. This viewpoint has sometimes been thought to define
the outlook of reflective morality.13 But it is a mistake to suppose that
partiality can be eliminated from a defensible reflective morality. It is
true that loyalties can easily be, and often have been, taken to excess. A
normative world constructed entirely from such partial relations would
be one from which justice had disappeared. But the partialities involved
in friendship and citizenship are notlike (say) racismsomething that
we should strive to overcome. A world of wholly utilitarian impartiality,
in which people are rendered free from commitments to specific others,
and in which caring (in this sense) and loyalty disappear, is itself not
a worthy ideal of human perfection. A justifiable social system will
incorporate and protect both of these normative structures.
In claiming that partiality is a constitutive feature of what is private, I
am not saying that impartiality plays no role within areas of life that are
predominantly private. It has often been said that a good parent treats
her children equally. But this is not to deny that relations of partiality are a constitutive element of the family. My contention is that such
relations of partiality are essentially involved in the private spheres un13 This claim represents a tradition that includes most of moral philosophy, including philosophers as diverse as Plato and Hume. For a critique of the view, see, e.g., Bernard Williamss
discussion of integrity in A Critique of Utilitarianism, in J.J.C. Smart and B. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), and Nagel, Equality
and Partiality. The view has also been questioned by some feminists who defend an ethic of
care, e.g., Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Womens Development
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
34
In our everyday social world the public and private do not exist as neatly
isolated spheres (despite our use of this term). The normative differences between the public and private that I have described in this section are ideal types that never correspond precisely to our actual situation. In the real world the public and private exist in combination with
each other. Systems of private property and enterprise, for example, are
always dependent upon public law to provide a basis for a certain organization of ownership and competition. Public services, on the other
hand, are always provided in ways that involve some dependence on
private markets in goods and services. Moreover, public services are
generally15 provided by decisions of government, and the government
(in a democratic state) is the representative of the public interest. But
governments can (of course) fail in this task of representation. Governments can become the representative of private corporations, for exam14 I am also not arguing or assuming that partiality (and hence privacy) necessarily connects
with egoism, with the pursuit of self-interest. Not all forms of partiality involve the promotion of
self-interest, although, of course, this is a highly important manifestation of partiality. The kind of
partiality that is involved in carefor example, care for the members of ones familycan involve
great sacrifices of the time and energy that might have been devoted to ones own projects. The
chair of a department can impose costs on herselffor the sake of the department. In times of
conflict, the partiality of loyalty to a state can cost a person his life.
15 There are also non-governmental organizations.
35
ple, and act in ways that are contrary to the public interest. In light of
these features of our actual situation, one might wonder whether there
is any point in drawing the sharp contrast between public and private
that I have elaborated. One might infer from the complex integration of
public and private that there is no real division between these two and
that privatization is itself intelligible only as an abstraction.
This would be a mistake. It would be comparable to the mistake
of thinking that there is no useful division between utilitarian and Kantian (or respect for person) ideals, because in our world of everyday
decisions and institutions these ideals are integrated with each other in
complex ways. These different norm systems sometimes complement
and sometimes combat each other; but there is no adequate understanding of the normative bases of our institutions that does not include both
perspectives. There is a difference between policies that move us further
toward an entrenchment of individual rights, for example, and those that
subordinate such rights in the pursuit of a higher level of general welfare. The 1982 entrenchment of a Charter of Rights in the Canadian
Constitution is an example of the first sort of change (though the Charter itself aims to achieve a careful balance between consideration of
individual rights and the public good). More recently, we have seen the
introduction of anti-terrorist laws in both the United States and Canada
that impose new security measures at some cost to individual rights to
privacy and freedom from search. Understanding the abstract differences between these two theories is essential to understanding what is
going on in our social world despite the fact that the real world does
not provide examples of institutions which exemplify either in isolation from the other. It is in this same spirit that the normative division
between public and private should be understood.
2.4
Obviously no answers to questions about privatization in education follow directly from these abstract differences between the public and private spheres. But these contrasts suggest importantly different visions
of education, both of which capture matters of importance to us. One
36
37
Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 136-42.
17 The difference principle permits inequalities only where they are to the advantage of the least
38
(e.g., between middle-class, suburban neighbourhoods and the innercity schools, or between urban and rural schools). Recently in the
United States, Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of equal treatment
have provided the basis for legal decisions against the inequalities that
have often resulted from differences in the property tax base from which
schools generally have derived their funding; but other judgments, in
both the United States and Canada, protect parental choices in relation
to the education of their children.18
2.4.2
Free-Market Choices
On the other side (call it the right) is the complete elimination of public schools in favour of a free market in education.19 Education, on this
view, should be opened up to a free market and treated as a product like
any other within that market. Like food and housing (which, of course,
are necessary to meet basic needs), and like automobiles and computer
systems (which satisfy less vital interests) under a private system, educational products would not be available at uniform price or quality.
Opened to freedom of choice, the educational market can be predicted
to disperse educational opportunities as widely as the market has dispersed the quality of other products that we consume (think of the range
in quality and price of food, houses, computers, automobiles). Proponents of free-market education might ask, rhetorically, what crude form
of materialism would permit individuals to reflect their values in the
choices they make over wines or automobiles but deny them this opportunity in relation to the education of their children?
There are versions of both libertarian and conservative political
moralities that support such an educational policy. Consider a libertarian view. If children are taken to be the property of their parents (in a relatively strong sense), then parents are free to invest in their childrenor
to put their money elsewherejust as they are free to invest in improve18 A 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case, Rodriguez v. San Antonio Independent School District,
actually held that inequalities of funding were not a violation of equal protection, since education
is not a fundamental interest subject to judicial review and states do not have to provide education
at all. But subsequent decisions in many state supreme courts have found reason to disagree and
have held that unequal funding is unconstitutional. See Lieberman, Public Education, 206.
19 Lieberman defends such a proposal in Public Education.
39
20 See Jan Narveson , The Libertarian Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988),
chap. 19, for a discussion of The Problem Children, in which Narveson explores some of the
troubling implications of the view that children are private property.
21 Narveson, chap. 20.
40
41
his political community, in his private life would be defective. The second ideal dominates our political life. The just
citizen, in his political life, insists on equal concern for all.23
The liberal answer to this conflict follows from the priority of justice:
A competent overall ethics must reconcile these two ideals.
They can be reconciled adequately, however, only when politics actually succeeds in distributing resources in the way
that justice requires. If a just distribution has been secured,
then the resources people control are morally, as well as
legally, theirs; using them as they wish, and as special attachments and projects require, in no way derogates from
their recognizing that all citizens are entitled to a just share.24
Applied to the issues raised by privatization in education, this resolution of the conflict between public and private values would cut fairly
deeply into the (supposed) right of individuals to provide privileged education for their children. It would also provide grounds to limit the
ways in which the market can disperse the resources of a community
and thereby lose the initially fair distribution of opportunities.
But here we should again return to the real world. We are not at all
likely ever to arrive at a new beginning in which the resources to which
individuals have access are evenly divided. In practice we will have to
live with incremental change, and we will have to be vigilant about incremental changes that take us even further from conditions of justice.
In devising social policy we will have to assume a wide dispersion of
wealth. It is against this background that we must consider how to structure the institutions that provide educational opportunities. Privatization
will move us further in the direction of choices that reflect private loyalties and interests. We have witnessed these changes in many industries,
from coal mining to airlines, and we can presume that these changes
23 Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2000), 235.
24 Ibid.
42
2.6
43
needs.29
Consider the first of these claims. In the sense at issue here, what
people genuinely need is what is necessary to their thriving as human
beings; and, conversely, the absence of what is needed undermines their
ability to function physically and in the social roles that make us human.
This is a thesis of modern natural law theory (natural law naturalized,
one might say).30 But this claim, too, captures what is common knowledge and common sense.31 As human beings, we need food and water
because without them we will cease to function at all; and with inadequate supplies well be impaired. Similarly, we need to acquire some
language abilities in order to function in the social roles that give us
our identities as individuals and members of cultures. A lack of some
linguistic abilitiesfor example, the capacity to read and writeleaves
a person unable to function well in the social roles required by modern
societies. The need for education is a generalization over a wide range
of capacities of this sort. But it also recognizes that a general level of
shared information is itself a condition of functioning adequately within
a modern society such as our own.
Second, given this conception of needs, the priority principle seems
to require little by way of justification. It is more important that we retain the capacity to function as human beings than to get exactly what
we want. The utility calculus of individuals will reflect this. But in aggregating preference satisfaction, there is no guarantee that the needs of
a few will not be outweighed by the preferences of many. That an automobile factory contaminates its immediate environment, leaving those
nearby without an adequate supply of clean air, may be deemed a small
price to pay for the greater wealth and economic opportunity that is generated by growth in an unregulated industryif we are simply trying to
maximize the satisfaction of preferences. Similarly, if we have a free
29 Ibid.,
44
market in educational services, the costs of providing for those with special needs will be deemed too high and the benefits to low to be justified
in terms of economic good gained by the stockholders of competing private businesses. Of course, we could introduce legislationand some
communities have done sorequiring educational corporations to take
the responsibility of meeting such needs. But this is just to say that
we could hold the line on privatization by retaining public control over
this aspect of education. Neither the pursuit of utility nor the pursuit of
profit in a free market can be expected to capture the (intuitively plausible) policy of giving priority to needs over mere preferences.
Finally, what justification can be given for the idea that a just society
will afford its citizens an equal opportunity to meet their needs? I will
assume, as the context of this discussion, a level of affluence like that
of modern Western societies, in which there are more than sufficient
resources to meet the needs of the people. It is not necessary for some
to die in order that others live or for some to remain at home in order that
others receive an education. In these circumstances the argument is very
simple. The requirement of equality in meeting needs follows directly
from the priority principle. If there is enough to meet needs, but the
needs of some are not met, the allocation system is permitting some to
satisfy mere preferences while others do without what they need. Given
what needs are, this system will treat some people as if it did not matter
that they lack the resources to lead fully human lives while others are
able to enjoy luxuries. Braybrookes own argument against this degree
of imbalance involves showing that it constitutes ideal conditions for
exploitation.32 Some will be unable to meet their needs without serving
the interests of others. Far from being consistent with social justice, a
system of affluence that does not provide equal opportunity for meeting
needs maintains the essential conditions of oppression.33
But here we must consider an objection. Food is obviously a need
of human beings. It clearly does not follow directly from this that food
should be equally distributed or that there is something wrong with the
32 Meeting
Needs, 152-5.
152-5. Charity is a possible alternative to exploitation. It is not, in the circumstances
described, an escape from oppression, since it maintains the relation of dominance. For this reason
it is resented by those who are aware of the injustice of their condition.
33 Ibid.,
45
2.7
Fair Opportunity
46
47
persons effort or choices. In the real worldas opposed to that of theories in which we can contemplate a total reallocation of wealthpublic
education is one of the few institutions that has the potential to move us
toward conditions of distributive justice. Arguably, no other institution
has the same potential to redistribute resources in a way that achieves
some main aspects34 of the ideal of distributive justice that liberal theorists such as Rawls and Dworkin have defended.
At the centre of arguments for privatization in education, of course,
is a rejection of this liberal ideal. But (to translate this into one of the
metaphors of advocates of free enterprise) it is hard to see how one
could defend as fair a race in which some participants are allowed to
start well ahead of others. Pessimism will lead some to view this situation as inevitable. Self-interest may lead those who are well placed
to defend their advantage (perhaps by embracing this pessimism). But
what excuse shall we find for those philosophers who manage to convince themselves that it is a matter of entitlement that from the beginning some individuals have opportunities for self-improvement that others are denied?35
2.8
Teaching Class
48
49
Chapter 3
Abstract
This chapter appeals to Braybrookes conceptual work on needs and tries
to pick up where he leaves off at the end of Meeting Needs when he throws
up his hands in an honest admission that his theory cannot deal with the
bottomless pit of medical needs. I explore how the new genetics is expanding the scope of perceived medical needs and look particularly at the
genetic test for hereditary breast cancer now on the market. Building on
Braybrookes category of course-of-life needs, this chapter proposes developing a relational understanding of persons and of needs as a way to
avoid the deeper bottomless pit of medical need attached to the availability of genetic testing. If, as Braybrooke advises, we are careful in our
application of the concept of need, the pit takes on a different structure
and requires different strategies than is commonly assumed.
I had the opportunity to present earlier drafts of this paper at the University of British
Columbia (W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics), the University of Toronto (Joint Centre
for Bioethics), and Dalhousie University (Philosophy Department). I am very grateful for all the
thoughtful feedback I received on these occasions. I am especially grateful for the careful attention
provided by Lori dAgincourt-Canning, Jeffrey Nisker, and Christy Simspon.
51
52
3.1 Introduction
In his important book Meeting Needs, David Braybrooke (1987) restores
the concept of human needs to a central place in policy considerations.
He is responding to a widespread tendency among modern economists
and liberal political theorists to substitute individual preferences for
the traditional role assigned the concept of needs in social policy deliberations. Braybrooke seeks to stem this tide and restore the concept
of needs to its rightful place where it can provide firm guidance in
the choice of social policies (5). He argues that without a clear understanding of what are legitimately classified as needs, it is difficult to
know how to organize government priorities and how to evaluate specific policies according to norms of justice and beneficence. The aim of
his book is to develop and defend a substantive, and usable, account of
the concept of needs.
Rather than producing an analytic definition of needs in terms of a
set of necessary and sufficient conditions, Braybrooke offers an account
of how the concept can (and should) be used in the practical evaluation
of social policies. He finds it necessary to distinguish between two types
of needs: course-of-life needs and adventitious needs. The former
deals with the needs associated with normal functioning in society and
the latter addresses conditional needs that derive from specific projects.
Thus, course-of-life needs are common to all and adventitious needs
reflect personal preferences. He believes that social policies should try
to ensure satisfaction of both types of needs, but, in most circumstances,
priority should be granted to course-of-life needs.
This comprehensive and persuasive account of the concept of human
needs makes a very important contribution to the role of ethics in public policy. Unfortunately, as Braybrooke is well aware, his insightful
account faces serious limitations. At the conclusion of the book, with
characteristic honesty and humility, he cites two problems he finds intractable. In each case, the concept of needs breaks down in the face
of needs so enormous that they threaten to drain all public resources.
The first area concerns efforts to apply a single, normative concept of
needs to the global community because the scale of scarcity and hu-
3.1. INTRODUCTION
53
54
55
56
Although genetic testing has been around for some time, BRCA testing represents a major shift. Where earlier tests were primarily used on
fetuses (or on potential parents worried about the possibility of genetic
disease in future children), this test is targeted at adults regarding their
own future health status. As well, where some earlier tests did investigate future illness in adults, such as Huntingtons disease, they tended
to be limited to a small, identifiable group of people at risk; breast cancer, in contrast, threatens more than half the population. With a one in
nine incidence rate, breast cancer affects many Canadian families, and
popular media have ensured widespread awareness of the threat of the
disease. A genetic test associated with such a widely distributed and
highly feared disease is potentially of interest to a very large segment
of the population (even though the test is meaningful only for those
women who come from high-risk familiesthat is, less than 1 per cent
of women).1 Myriads decisions to aggressively market its version of
the BRCA test and to try to enforce its patent right internationally also
signify important changes to the ways in which genetic tests may be
affected by corporate agendas.
Because BRCAnalysis raises so many serious ethical questions that
will surely be compounded when it is joined by other genetic susceptibility tests, I propose to explore some of these questions as they relate
to the place of dispositional genetic tests within the complex array of
medical services that should be understood as meeting significant needs.
If we do determine that BRCA testing meets a medical need that should
be addressed within a public (or private, for that matter) health system, we must be prepared for the possible arrival of a host of additional
genetic tests for susceptibility to adult-onset diseases. Together, such
tests could easily swamp an already leaky health care system and generate enormous confusion among a population increasingly encouraged
to look for single causes and straightforward, technology-based solutions to complex, multi-factorial diseases. It is, therefore, urgent that
we seek to identify and resolve the complex question of whether or not
1 Those who might carry the BRCA mutation are thought to come from families with a history
of two or more closely related family members with the same or related cancers, a pattern of cancer
in two or more generations, and cancers diagnosed at an early age.
57
58
also learn that they have a 50 per cent chance of passing on this mutation to their children. And if they do develop breast or ovarian cancer,
they face a significant risk of dying an early and difficult death.
It is not hard to see, then, why women who come from families with
high rates of breast cancer might want to know their personal BRCA
status. Those who undergo testing face one of three possible outcomes:
a positive result indicating that they have the specific BRCA mutation
that has affected family members; a definitive negative result indicating
that they do not have the BRCA mutation found in their close relatives;
or an indeterminate result that could mean either they do not have a genetic risk of breast cancer or that there is no definitive test for the genetic
anomaly that affects them (Sutcliffe et al., 2001). If they are fortunate
enough to have a definitive negative result, they will likely be relieved
of an enormous emotional burden. They may feel freer to have children
of their own, and they may have an easier time getting employment,
health and life insurance, and perhaps even a spouse. Those who test
positive have available to them an option that could make a significant
difference to their life expectancy: if they decide to undergo prophylactic surgery to remove both breasts and both ovaries before any of
these organs becomes diseased they will be able to dramatically reduce
(though not eliminate) their likelihood of developing breast or ovarian
cancer (Eisen and Weber, 2001; Meijers-Heijboer et al., 2001). It is less
clear how those with indeterminate results will respond.
If we turn to Braybrookes account of needs, we can make a case for
the claim that access to BRCA testing should be classified as meeting a
course-of-life need and, therefore, that society is responsible to provide
for this option. Braybrookes account is explicitly social and situated.
He does not try to derive an exhaustive, timeless, universal set of human
needs that every society is responsible for meeting. Rather, he situates
needs within the context of a particular linguistic community and tries to
capture the sorts of things members of that community recognize some
obligation towards addressing. Hence, course-of-life needs are the sorts
of needs that members of an existing society (or linguistic community)
recognize as important to their pursuit of almost any project one might
choose in that society. They are the sorts of conditions necessary for
59
living a life that members of that community recognize as characteristically human. In the most straightforward sense, this includes the ability
to continue to live and function normally. Thus,
Being essential to living or to functioning normally may be
taken as a criterion for being a basic need. Questions about
whether needs are genuine, or well-founded, come to the end
of the line when the needs have been connected with life or
health. (31; emphasis added)2
Since being connected to life or health generates a course-of-life
need, we can make the case that, at least for women from high-risk
families, BRCA testing satisfies such a need, since those who test positive may seek medical interventions that will dramatically reduce their
risk of contracting breast or ovarian cancer. In this way, we can connect
BRCA testing quite explicitly with the core intuition of course-of-life
needs.
Further, Braybrooke extends the notion of course-of-life needs beyond mere survival. Like many others, he recognizes that human beings
are essentially social creatures and we need to attend to the conditions
under which most people live and the contexts in which they satisfy their
needs. Human existence involves some core relationships that help to
structure our lives and shape the ways we seek to satisfy core needs.
Braybrooke identifies four basic social roles that he claims are sufficiently generic and central to the majority of adults in modern society
to be considered as constituting the sites for addressing course-of-life
needs: parent, householder, worker, and citizen (48).
Braybrooke reviews some of the many lists others have offered of
basic human needs and seeks areas of consensus. Rather than choose
any single account, or offer any particular definition (set out by a list of
necessary and sufficient conditions), he offers us a criterion for inclusion that captures the intuitions underlying the family of lists of human
2 He then goes on to offer a rather puzzling but intriguing comment in the context of a discussion of breast cancer. He claims, Indeed they may already have come to the end of the line [for
justifying something as a course-of-life need] when the needs have been connected with keeping
important parts of the body (31).
60
61
ing this need for all who are likely to benefit significantly from the test.
Similar arguments would have to be considered for any other genetic
susceptibility test that is developed.
Let us turn now to some of the complexities of BRCA testing and
explore reasons (beyond the potentially high financial costs) why we
might want to resist the implication that such tests be seen as falling in
the category of a course-of-life need.
3.4
The case in favour of treating access to BRCA testing as a course-oflife need was based on the potential of allowing women who know their
BRCA status to take steps to reduce their risks of contracting breast cancer if they test positive or more confidently pursuing some of their core
social roles if they do not. The situation is complicated, however, as so
many things in medicine are, by the fact that there is plenty of uncertainty attached to the actual impact of a BRCA mutation in a particular
womans life. Women who undergo testing must come to grips with the
fact that they may receive misleading information. Like other medical
tests, BRCA tests are vulnerable to the possibility of inaccuracy: they
may provide false positives or false negatives. In this case, the costs
of the test, the rush to market, and the significant emotional burden attached to such testing have created a situation in which there has not
been enough experience with the test or enough research to indicate the
precise degree of accuracy of the various BRCA tests (Kaufert, 2003).
Moreover, they face the daunting task of making sense of the probabilistic information that derives from identifying such a mutation. Unlike purely predictive tests for single-gene disorders such as Huntingtons disease, there is no perfect correlation between breast cancer and
BRCA mutations. Even women who test definitively negative are not
assured that they will not develop breast cancer, only that they will not
face a higher rate of risk than other Canadian women (that is, a normal
rate of one in nine, or perhaps one in ten when we remove statistics of
women carrying BRCA mutations).3 Breast cancer is multifactorial,
3 From
a medical perspective, the absence of a BRCA mutation does not confer the absence
62
and genetic mutations are just a small part of the causal story (less than
10 per cent), though it is a very important part for the minority of women
with family histories of BRCA mutations.
For those who test positive, there is no way of determining their
personal level of risk because gene penetrance (that is, the percentage of
individuals affected who will go on to develop the disease) varies widely
with particular mutations (ranging from 36 to 85 per cent) in ways that
are not easily predicted. For nearly all of the thousands of variations of
BRCA1 or 2 mutations, it is impossible to make accurate predictions of
personal cancer risk.4 In addition to the mysteries of penetrance, there is
the further complexity that these numbers speak of lifetime risk; there
is a set of probabilities to interpret to estimate whether the particular
genetic variation will affect particular women in their youth, middle, or
old age.5
Adding to the difficulties of determining the value of BRCA testing is the fact that there is no particularly satisfactory response available in the face of a positive test. The options are primarily those of
surveillance, chemoprevention, or surgery. Surveillance can be pursued
through breast self-examination (BSE) along with frequent mammograms. Besides the fact that neither technique actually prevents breast
cancer, both face other obstacles: BSE has been shown to be not particularly effective as an early detection strategy and there are risks attached
to performing frequent mammograms on young women, especially in
light of the fact that there is speculation that BRCA-associated breast
cancer may be radiosensitive. Chemoprevention - that is, taking tomoxifen or other powerful drugsis unproven with BRCA-associated
breast cancer and carries high risks of iatrogenic illnesses (current data
of risk. If a person tests negative, it could be because the mutation is not present, but it could also
be because the person has a mutation that cannot be detected by current technology or because
there is a mutation in another gene not yet identified. So negative BRCA tests are meaningful only
when the specific BRCA mutation has been identified for a high-risk family. Hence, most negative
tests are considered indeterminate and the person is still considered at risk because of the family
history (Sutcliffe, 2001).
4 In fact, penetrance levels are so uneven with BRCA mutations that the NIH warns that The
penetrance of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations has yet to be determined for other than mutations
commonly found in Ashkenazi Jews or Icelanders. www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo.
5 Statistically, however, women with BRCA1/2 mutations develop breast cancer at an earlier
age than other women.
63
64
risk of developing breast cancer choose prophylactic mastectomy (Stefanek et al., 1995). It is worth noting, however, that more recent studies
that take into account our ability to identify many BRCA1 and BRCA2
mutations are giving a different picture. For example, 2001 studies that
specifically address the effectiveness of prophylactic surgery for those
with identified BRCA1/2 mutations indicate there is definite benefit attached to undergoing surgery; unfortunately, these studies are limited to
a three-year follow-up period but most women seek longer-term information (Meijers-Heijboer et al., 2001; Eisen and Weber, 2001).
So, here we have a technology that is promoted as serving the function of a course-of-life need, yet we find many women uncertain whether
to even avail themselves of the test. In fact, Myriad Genetics, the company that patented the BRCAnalysis test, has been surprised to find that
women have not been demanding testing in the large numbers anticipated despite an active direct-to-consumer advertising campaign. If so
many of the women who might be BRCA-positive are resisting the test,
should it really be classified as a course-of-life need? It is worth noting
here that Braybrooke does not require that every person avail themselves
of all of the opportunities classified as matters of need, even course-oflife need; there are often good reasons why individuals choose not to
claim something that falls under the category of need. So the fact that
many women who are at particular risk of BRCA mutations choose not
to undergo testing is not necessarily proof that genetic testing should
not be classified as a course-of-life need. It should, however, give us
pause: the ambiguity in determining the specific harms and benefits of
testing for particular women make it difficult to situate BRCA testing in
the realm of course-of-life needs.7
7 Perhaps, in light of the uncertainty of outcome and the weighty combination of benefits and
burdens attached to testing, we should, for the present at least, treat such tests as responding to
adventitious needs, according to how they fit within particular womens values and life plans.
Adventitious needs are captured by a relational formula of the form: x needs y in order to do z;
that is, they are relative to the particular ends an agent has adopted, and, as a result, they function
largely like preferences. The urgency of an agents need for y to accomplish z depends on the
importance of z to that agent. Given the wide variety in goals individuals set for themselves, and
the wide variety of responses to those goals adopted by their fellow citizens, Braybrooke quite
wisely avoids recommending making satisfaction of the large range of adventitious needs a moral
requirement of social policy.
65
66
67
ular social contexts. In addition, he notes that some needs are derived
from scientific discoveries that support practices capable of sustaining
course-of-life needs; medical care seems clearly to fall under this category (83). It is important, then, that we examine the contexts of scientific discovery that generate specific course-of-life needs if we are to
resolve the difficult sorts of questions associated with determining medical needs. For example, in the case at hand, it is worth reflecting on the
processes that have led us to the current levels of genetic knowledge and
those that have led us away from other types of approaches to breast cancer and other diseases (as well as those that generate technology-laden
services to extend life for the critically ill and ignore such factors as the
value of literacy in increasing life expectancy).
There are additional insights feminists can build on within Braybrookes theory. He offers explicit recognition that persons are essentially embodied beings. Feminist relational accounts add to this insight
the fact that many of the bodily characteristics of persons carry important social meanings. Within contemporary Western society, social and
political significance is attached to such features as sex, race, disability,
sexuality, and age. These features are the basis of social groups that
exist in relations of oppression or dominance with other social groups,
and a persons classification within the complex array of social groups
will affect her or his life experiences. In other words, relational persons are inseparable from their particular historical, social, and political
circumstances; they cannot be properly understood in abstraction from
these contexts.
If we accept the need to understand personsthe focus of liberal
concernas relational rather than self-contained beings, then we must
modify the ways we understand our principal moral and political obligations to them. In particular, we need to revise the ways in which we
understand the traditional liberal concerns of autonomy and justice in
order to reflect the fact that persons are now conceived of as a different
type of entity. ( Feminism, in my view, does not require us to abandon
commitment to the core liberal values of autonomy and justice, but it
does demand significant reinterpretation of each concept.) Because social group membership is a principal component of feminist relational
68
69
70
BRCA testing is provided in settings where trained genetic counsellors are available.) Braybrookes approach is a significant improvement
since it urges us to develop an understanding of course-of-life needs
that would take precedence over matters of individual preference and
choice; hence, it allows us to see that not all decisions can be reduced
to matters of consumer choice. Unlike adventitious needs that are a
form of preferences, course-of-life needs are meant to capture something more urgent than the things individuals happen to choose.
From what we now know of BRCA testing, it seems plausible to regard it as a course-of-life need for the small minority of women whose
family history suggests there is a high likelihood they are at risk of carrying an identifiable BRCA mutation (less than 10 per cent of the 13
per cent of women who will contract breast cancer in their lifetimes).
This means that those women who meet strict eligibility criteria, based
on scientific evaluation that they are at high risk of having such a mutation, should be granted access to the test (should they so choose) and
any follow-up therapy they decide upon in consultation with medical
experts. Other womenthat is, the vast majority, including many with
breast cancer in their familieshave such a low likelihood of carrying
an identifiable BRCA mutation, however, that testing should not be seen
as a course-of-life need. Nor should it be described as an adventitious
need, to be available upon informed request. Rather, it should be seen
as not meeting any need at all.9
A relational understanding of personhood, autonomy, and justice
helps us to understand why it is not acceptable to allow individuals who
do not meet scientific eligibility requirements for testing to exercise personal choice in seeking out such tests. Relational theory directs us to
pay close attention to the prevailing climate in which women are asked
to make these difficult decisions. It is a climate in which all women,
especially those considered vulnerable to hereditary breast cancer, are
regularly warned about the threat of breast cancer and advised to pursue
every avenue that might reduce their personal risk no matter the actual
impact of specific measures in their circumstances. In the current con9 In fact, this has been the way BRCA testing has been handled in Canada to date. It is
available only to women who meet strict scientific eligibility requirements.
71
72
73
74
It may appear, however, that we are now even deeper into the bottomless pit of medical needs for expensive life-prolonging therapies
that caused Braybrooke to despair of a solution within his systematic
account of needs. I believe we have made some progress, though. First,
it should now be clear that we can deploy Braybrookes conception of
course-of-life needs to legitimately limit access to genetic susceptibility tests to those for whom the proposed test is indeed likely to meet
a course-of-life need: that is, to those at significant risk of carrying an
identifiable mutation for a life-threatening disease with a potential lifesaving therapy available. We can, in good conscience, deny it to others
who may very much want to know their BRCA status: they have no
need for such testing.
Second, it now seems clear that we should not concentrate solely on
determining whether or not to treat BRCA and future genetic susceptibility tests as meeting course-of-life needs for some individuals; we
should also reflect on how we have arrived at this difficult decision. In
other words, we need to think about how our health care system has
evolved and where it is heading. We cannot make satisfactory progress
in determining how to categorize individual types of medical technology on a case-by-case basis alone, even if the technologies in question
do promise to save or prolong lives. Instead, we need to reflect on how,
collectively, we ought to approach matters of life and health throughout
our social policies.
Such reflections make clear that we are obligated to ensure that the
scientific projects our society funds and the delivery systems it devises
reflect the general health needs of the population. Our goal should be
to foster those policies most conducive to protecting and promoting the
lives of all citizens. Social justice requires us to work particularly hard
at addressing the health needs of those members of society whose health
is seriously harmed by pervasive patterns of injustice in society. Hence,
we cannot wait to respond to the demands of frightened individuals who
seek access to technologies that private corporations have determined to
be profitably marketable. In fact, we should make clear from the start
that we will not allow our health system to respond to requests for tests
that meet, at best, adventitious needs in a consumer-driven climate. Our
75
Chapter 4
Abstract
David Braybrooke argues that meeting peoples needs ought to be the
primary goal of social policy. But he then faces the problem of how to
deal with the fact that our most pressing needs, needs to be kept alive
with resource-draining medical technology, threaten to exhaust our resources for meeting all other needs. I consider several solutions to this
problem, eventually suggesting that the need to be kept alive is no different in kind from needs to fulfill various projects, and that needs may
have a structure similar to rights, with peoples legitimate needs serving
as constraints on each others entitlements to resources. This affords
a set of axioms constraining possible needs. Further, if, as Braybrooke
thinks, needs are created by communities approving projects, so that the
means to prosecute the projects then come to count as needs, then communities are obliged to approve only projects that are co-feasible given
the worlds finite resources. The result is that it can be legitimate not to
funnel resources towards endless life-prolongation projects.
My thanks to Heidi Tiedke, Susan Sherwin, and Richmond Campbell for helpful discussion.
My thanks also to Sherwin and to Peter Schotch for their editorial work on this volume, and, of
course, to David Braybrooke, for the stimulation of his ideas and for the example of philosophical
collegiality which he has constituted in the philosophy department at Dalhousie University.
77
78
4.1
Introduction
In his book Meeting Needs(1987), David Braybrooke argues that meeting peoples needs ought to be the primary goal of social policy. He
distinguishes two types of needs. First, there are course-of-life needs.
These are needs which everyone has and which must be satisfied for
people to function normally in society when performing any of the roles
of which the society approves and advancing any of the projects it permits people to choose. Second, there are adventitious needs, ones varying from project to project, and which must be satisfied in order for
people to advance the specific projects for which they have individual
preferences. Social policy should be organized to try to satisfy needs in
their order of importancecourse-of-life needs first, adventitious needs
second.
In this paper I moot several possible solutions to a problem that worries Braybrooke. The problem is that using costly, resource-intensive
medical technology to meet the basic needs people have to be kept alive
at what would otherwise be the end of their lives will consume all the
resources available for meeting needs in general. If grounding entitlements in needs is correct, we must find within the concept of needs a
way to limit this crisis in a morally acceptable way. Many of the solutions I shall consider have difficulties, but discussing them will refine
the problem and point the way to a workable solution.
4.2
79
or having mixed her labour with it. For these latter pretexts presuppose
principles of justice in the acquisition of goods characteristic of institutions of private property, institutions themselves needing grounding;
and, arguably, they are defensible only if their existence results in peoples needs being met. True, such institutions have been defended by
Nozick as being required in order to afford everyone unfettered liberty
(Nozick, 1974). But on reflection, surely there are things more important than that kind of freedom, specifically, the meeting of peoples basic, undeniable needs. There seems, then, to be something foundational
and irrefutable about someones having a title to something on the basis
of needing it.
Taking entitlement to ground in needs has the further advantage
that the question of whether someone has a need seems to be empirical,
something that can be ascertained by investigation, and on which there
could be a consensus compelled by the non-moral facts. Thus it would
make entitlement objective. And this would mean that, in one stroke,
we had answered three questions of meta-ethics:
1. Question: how can morality be factual? Answer: the question,
what, morally, ought to be done, reduces to the question, who
needs what, and so who should be given what?
2. Question: how can we infer from statements about what is (true)
to statements about what ought to be (true)? Answer: by the
mediation of needs: if it is true that someone needs x, it ought to
be made true that they are given x.
3. Question: how can apprehending moral facts be reason-giving in
the sense of motivating? Answer: our moral duties are to meet
needs, and seeing that someone needs something tends to incline
one to procure it for them.1
Taking needs as the basis of moral entitlements also provides a basis
for forming policy on how to distribute resources among people, for
we could then compute which policies are correct from knowledge of
1 For
more on this constellation of issues, see Richmond Campbells essay in this volume.
80
4.3
Braybrookes Problem
Unfortunately, there are at least two problems for this view, problems
deriving from the possibility of two kinds of needs monster, on analogy with the notion of a utility monster. Utilitarians hold that a world
is morally better the more happiness there is in it. There are at least
three versions of utilitarianism. On one, what matters morally is how
much happiness there is in the world, not how many people share in that
happiness. But on this version, if there were a creature who, by being
given all of the worlds resources, would be made more happy than the
sum total of everyone elses happiness on any other distribution of resources, that being should get all the resources; and this seems unjust.
(This creature is hyper-efficient at converting resources accorded to it
into its own happiness, and therefore hyper-appetitive for resources.)
Suppose we say instead that a world is better the more happiness
there is in it, provided everyone is made equally happy in that world
total quantity of happiness is not all that matters; it matters too how the
happiness is distributed. But then there could be another kind of utility monster, a creature so ineffective at converting resources accorded
to it into its own happiness that, even distributing most of the worlds
resources to it at our expense, so that the rest of us have only enough
resources to live lives just barely above being miserable, this creatures
life will still just barely be above being miserable. (If the first creature is
the efficient utility monster, the second is the inefficient utility monster,
and it too is hyper-appetitive of resources.)
This suggests a third kind of utilitarianism, one in which both the
total amount of happiness and its distribution matter, but the distribution
required is not perfect equality. Instead, if vastly more people could be
made vastly happier by not trying to make the inefficient utility monster
happy, then that is how resources should be distributed. Equality matters, but only to a degree; it can be outweighed by other considerations
using some discounting factor. People do not have an absolute right
81
82
be available to support the activities that make peoples lives worth living. Pretty soon, we will all be inefficient utility monsters. We will all
be said to require for our happiness more and more of the ever-moreavailable but ever-more-costly technologies needed to prolong our lives.
The analogous problem for a needs-based morality is obvious, and it
is a problem Braybrooke admits he is unsure how to solve (Braybrooke
(1987a) chap. 8): if people need anything, they need the prerequisites
for being alive; and as our bodies inevitably age, we will all come to a
point where only longevity-prolonging technology can keep us alive
we will all need this technology. But not all of us can have it, or at
least not without other people, at some point in their lives, not getting
the resources to have a decent life. Meeting peoples needs for lifesustaining technologies can only be met at the cost of not meeting many
other needs. Perhaps these other needs are less important. And yet they
are needs which, if they go unmet, make it dubious whether life is much
worth living.
On the face of it, Braybrookes problem is not solvable. Surely
needs should be met in the order of their importance; and surely it is
more important to meet someone elses need to be kept alive (assuming
they will have some minimally decent quality of life) than to meet my
need to have a life more than minimally decent in quality. It then seems
morally obligatory to distribute resources in such a way that as many
people as possible are kept alive as long as possible, even if this is to be
at the expense of the overall quality of peoples lives.
Indeed, the problem seems even more pressing for needs-based
ethics than for utilitarianism, or at least the third form of utilitarianism. For the utilitarian can say that all extending a persons life by a
day does is increase one persons happiness by one day; and if there is a
more efficient way to increase more peoples happiness, then since the
total level of happiness would be higher that way than by using otherwise deployable resources in heroic medical efforts for one person, that
is how they should be used. But it seems that, on needs-based ethics,
the need a person has to be alive trumps all other non-life-and-death
needs of any and all other persons.
83
4.4.1
One solution is to claim that the problem makes empirically false assumptions. Maybe it will not prove all that expensive to extend lives;
maybe this can be done without much sacrifice in the meeting of other
needs, and in the meeting of the needs of other people who do not yet
require medical technology to live. For one thing, extended lives may
wind up being extended in productivity as well, so that, as the need
for life-extension technology expands, so will those resources constituted of a robust workforce. And so we will have resources to meet
these needs: people with longer lives will be able to work to pay for
ever-longer lives.
It may also be possible to innovate not just in inventing life-sustaining
technologies, but also in their resource costmaybe they are likely to
become cheaper and more efficient, especially as they are pursued in an
ever-expanding market.
Further, maybe meeting some peoples prolongation needs will result in others needs being metthe person whose life we save can now
continue in the workforce; and with her productivity there, she can contribute not only to maintaining her own life, but to meeting the needs
of other people, and to meeting needs of other sorts than those of life
prolongation. This solution, however, banks on empirical hopefulness
and so cannot be counted upon.
84
4.4.2
Another proposal recognizes that the needs of a given person or population may be defeasible and may have to yield to the more pressing
needs of other persons or populations, so much so that those whose socalled needs are defeased never really had them. To take an example,
all women might have been thought to need to be tested for the gene
for breast cancer. But in fact, unless there is a specific pattern of breast
cancer in ones family, it is unlikely that one has the gene. So the people with breast cancer in their families need the test more than people
who do not; and if the test requires resources that are also in demand for
many other, more pressing needs, maybe the people who do not have
this known risk factor do not really need the test at all.3
There are attractions to the proposal: it seems right to meet more
pressing needs first and to expend resources where they will do the most
good. However the proposal presupposes that we have some general
principle for balancing out the distribution of resources to people, and
this has not yet been deduced from the concept of needs as bases of
moral entitlement. Besides, there is no guarantee that, even giving resources first to those who need them most, there will not come a time
when resources will be exhausted even by this principle. After all, everyones life comes to an end if it is not extended by medical technology, and no ones need to live a longer life is, other things equal, more
pressing than anybody elses. We will all eventually need costly heroic
medical technology. We will all still become inefficient needs monsters.
4.4.3
85
86
needs except derivatively from the needs of the group.5 Thus your need
for aid in having your life extended merely gives you title to what a
policy that advances the longevity of older people in general would give
you. So you are specifically entitled only to what, on average (to take
one example of a criterion for assessing the state of a population), best
serves older people. And since having expensive technology for you
would mean not having community-based medicine for the many others
who could benefit by it compared with your having your technology,
you do not have a need for that technology, but only for the services of,
say, community-based medicine.
Problems remain, however, for we can still face conflicts of needs
between groupsthe quality-of-life needs of young people versus the
life-and-death needs of old people, for example. We might try to evade
that by treating everyone as members of one giant group, therapizing the
needs of the population as a whole rather than individual by individual,
and giving to each individual only the form of treatment which benefits
the most members of the population as a whole.
But while no doubt we are all in some sense defined relationally
to everyone else, we also have sub-relations in which inhere some
needs; and these, again, can conflict with the needs inhering in other
sub-relations, or even in ourselves as between the several sub-relations
in which we participate. (For example, I am now relatively young but
will one day be old.) Moreover, the larger we make the population in the
group, the more the problem of what to do for its members becomes our
original problem; for the more inclusive we make the group, the more
heterogeneous we make its membership, and so the more potential for
conflict of needs defined in sub-relations there is among its members.
If the group contains the young and the old, for instance, it seems more
likely that there will be a conflict of needs between the groups members. While if we say that what each member is entitled to is determined
by the needs of the group, then this presupposes that we have figured out
how justly to balance the distribution of resources to people generally.
Thus in reconceiving the locus of needs onto groups and away from
5 Again, I am indebted to Sherwin for her work on relational conceptions of persons; there is
a close connection between what I am considering here and aspects of her proposal.
87
individuals, I have perhaps illicitly assumed that, once needs are located
as inhering in groups, the notion of needs would permit helping as many
people as possible, and helping them as much as possible; and this may
be problematic for allowing us to ignore someone whose inclusion in
our policy would reduce the total number of people we could help, or
the degree to which we could help them. For how is this to be justified? After all, they too are members of the population. So why are
we allowed to ignore them? The answer is presumably that we have
not ignored themthey are getting the same treatment as everyone else
( community medicine, say)it is just that it is not really doing them
much good. But then it seems we should have a way of deducing from
the concept of needs itself, not just that needs inhere in populations
rather than individuals, but also the correctness of using a certain conception of what it is for a populations needs to be adequately met. For
why should not the test be, say, that the least well-off person in the group
is made better off by the correct policy, rather than that most people in
the group are made better off? But if the former is the correct test, we
have our problem back, for the least well-off people will again become
inefficient needs monsters relative to us. While if the latter is the correct
test, we are efficient needs monsters relative to them.
Finally, even waiving this conceptual issue, and even if we can go a
long way towards meeting the needs of a group conceived at the group
level with low-tech manoeuvres, ones low in resource cost, sooner or
later, the only way to go further will be with expensive technology and
research, and we will have our problem back; we will once again all be
inefficient needs monsters.
4.4.4
Another way to solve Braybrookes problem might be to challenge directly the idea that the mere fact that something would be a means to
extending a persons life means she needs that thing; for it is disputable
whether a person needs to live a very, very long life. Suppose there
were a way to keep a rabbit alive indefinitely: does the rabbit really
need to live forever, especially if the means involves virtually starving
all the other rabbits? Now suppose we can do this for a person. Does
88
89
90
Braybrooke himself in effect provides the materials for a more promising solution. He sees needs as functions of the extension of the term
needs in a linguistic community. This extension is determined by the
projects which the community endorses as permissible or important,
with the most basic needs being things that are means to the pursuit of
virtually any project. But then it might be an option to have a community alter its conception of appropriate projects, thence to alter what
will count as needs; and perhaps one factor in any such self-chosen
cultural evolution would be the co-tenability of its projects given finite
resources. A community might choose, then, to have the project of living a very long life not be among the projects it recognizes as important.
To be sure, there are issues this proposal raises:
91
92
I do not have room to deal with all of the difficulties with the previous proposal. But I see a way to begin rehabilitating it if we combine
it with some conceptual analysis of the notion of needs. The problem
has turned out to be that of how to resolve conflicts of needs, the conflict between basic and less basic needs, and between the basic needs of
some persons and the less basic needs of others. It is obvious from the
medical technology problem that there is no purely practical solution to
the conflict: if living a long time is an acceptable project, then the basic needs of people seem expandable indefinitely as life-prolongation
technology improves. The only hope of a permanent solution, then, is
conceptual. And the form of conceptual solution I shall suggest is that
the logic of needs is more like that of rights: just as your rights and mine
stand as mutual limits on each other, so my needs and yours mutually
limit each other. This could work in either of two ways: it may be that it
cannot be true that you have a certain need if some need of mine would
have to go unmet in order to meet yours. Or it may be that, while we can
have needs in conflict, the status of ones needs as serving as a basis for
93
94
95
96
be co-tenable given finite resources. We can then say that people who
plead that they have a need, where their having the so-called need met
would involve a total drain on resources, never really had that need in
the first place, because the project that is costing all of these resources
was never correctly approvable.
This meets the concern of another point raised above that it is wrong
to refuse to meet peoples extant needs just because they have become
huge resource drains. For the needs in question are now revealed never
to have been legitimate, since they violate the needs axioms. But what
about the procedural justice issue, people having a right not to have
their projects cancelled without notice? Again, axiom(e) to the rescue: the projects of those who are having resources drained away by
the longevity project of others also have such rights; it is sad that the
resource drain was not anticipated, but we now have a tie on claims;
and this can be resolved, again, by political negotiation and symmetrybreaking.
Note that all of this solves the problem as I formulated it earlier in
terms of needs monsters. For this solution makes both kinds of monster impossible, since both drain all resources in ways we now see are
incompatible with the axioms that conceptually define needs as bases
of moral entitlements: no one can be allowed projects whose existence
would create needs which would consume all the resources required to
meet other peoples needs, on pain of violating axioms (f), (h), and (i).
Still, there are troubles. For one thing, this solution relies on the
claim that somethings being a means to your not dying does not make
it something for which you have an especially pressing need. But if that
you will die without x does not constitute your having a pressing need
for x, what on earth does? Surely there is something special about needs
for things required in order for one to go on living. Well, perhaps what
is special about continuing to live is that the end of life is not just the
failure to advance a project, but the end of all possibility of projects. On
the other hand, if life-prolongation needs consume all resources, that
constitutes, in its own way, the end of all possible projects too for those
denied resources by their deployment on life-prolongation needs. So
maybe there is nothing special about life-prolongation needs after all.
97
98
The co-tenability constraint no doubt leaves a lot of latitude; probably there are many ways to meet it, and so many different kinds of
communities approved projects could pass it. But it is also a real constraint. And it may be that, given this, certain projects may be legitimately community-endorsed only by the consent of all needs claimants
in the community. Imagine, for example, a community that has become
obsessed with astronomy: by consensus vote, it approves the project
of devoting most of its resources to producing an extremely long-lived
astronomer; the hope is that she can be kept alive long enough, with
extraordinary medical and technological efforts, to witness the remaining history of the universe, even unto its eventual heat-death billions of
years from now. This would be a case where a co-tenable collection of
needs has been created: the astronomer needs to live indefinitely to witness the end of the universe; and all others in the culture are like worker
bees who need to do their part in making sure the astronomer lives to see
the end. (Offspring are raised to have the same projects.) But had the
community not come to a consensus on this enterprise, the astronomer
would have been an inefficient needs monster relative to some people in
the community, and her needs would not have had automatic title to be
met.
99
9 These questions figure in another problem which worries Braybrooke: as part of the internationalization of culture, we in the developed countries have begun to see those in the undeveloped
countries as members of our linguistic community, so that the extension of our use of the term
needs now includes their needs. But then we are obliged to provide resources for meeting their
needs, again, possibly at the expense of making everyones life just barely above miserable in
terms of met needs.
10 This may afford a start on a solution to yet another worry of Braybrookes, namely, that some
needs are prima facie immoral, or at least morally embarrassing; but yet as needs, surely they have
title to be met, possibly in competition with prima facie moral needs. How can we justify meeting
the latter over the former from the concept of needs? Well, the needs axioms, particularly the
co-feasibility constraint, may so constrain genuine needs as to rule out the immoral ones. This
connects with work I have done trying to prove that all of peoples possible preferences must
be such as to be co-tenable in the sense of being co-advanceable, this ruling out preferences to
exploit other people in the sense of arranging the non-satisfaction of their preferences as a means
to the satisfaction of ones own. Note that this would require all beings with preferences to see all
other such beings as in the same community, and this would help answer some of the questions of
the preceding paragraph in the main text. Similar sorts of moves could be used to rule out for a
morality of needs, various extreme, selfish conceptions of ethics, e.g., needs egoism. For more on
the required co-tenability of preferences, see (MacIntosh, 1998).
Chapter 5
Abstract
101
102
5.1
Introduction
In A Progressive Approach to Personal Responsibility for Global Beneficence, David Braybrooke opens with the question What personal responsibilities do we, people living in rich countries, have for relieving miseries in the less fortunate countries?1 With this one question,
Braybrooke presents an immediate challenge to students of Canadian
foreign policy both to reflect on the notion of responsibility in the international arena and to focus on the role of individual Canadians who
live in a rich, developed state to alleviate poverty and hardship abroad.
On the one hand, Braybrookes challenge is a familiar one: students of
Canadian foreign policy have become acquainted with what responsibility may mean, given the prominent role that has been played by the
Canadian government in establishing and promoting the work of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS)
to create a new international norm appropriately labelled the responsibility to protect. On the other hand, Braybrookes challenge is a novel
one: students of Canadian foreign policy have looked at the responsibility of the Canadian state, not that of individual Canadians, in addressing
global problems and in understanding problems as global in scope. Indeed, the extent to which the individual figures prominently is in terms
of the shifts in government thinking (but not, so far, in continued government action) away from simply making the state and individuals at
home secure to making individuals and their communities abroad secure. This people-centred rather than state-centred approach to security is what distinguishes thinking about human security, which the
Canadian government has espoused but has failed to pursue fully, from
the more familiar national security thinking.
My contribution to this volume is reminiscent of Bernard Weiners
article in The Monist which appeared in the same issue as Braybrookes
noted above. Weiner, a social psychologist, points out that he is not a
philosopher but seeks to bring empirical data that might inform philosophical debates regarding responsibility inferences.2 Trained as a po1 Braybrooke
2 Weiner
(2003a) 301
(2003) 165
5.1. INTRODUCTION
103
litical scientist, specifically in international relations and Canadian foreign policy, I also find value in the intersections between academic fields
but seek to do the reverse of Weiner and utilize some of Braybrookes
philosophical ideas about responsibility to rethink the notion of human
security with respect to its empirical application. This is an important
task because human security thinking, which can be arguably grounded
within a framework of cosmopolitan ethics,3 has lost currency with
the Canadian government. Indeed, the turn to human security thinking
could be seen as a harbinger of global justice with Canada, if not in
the lead, at least marching in step to create new norms in the international arena, not merely with governmental and intergovernmental actors but more importantly with non-governmental ones. The 1997 ban
on anti-personnel landmines, referred to as the Ottawa convention,
stood out as a prime example of the realization of Canadas human security agenda. This was followed by the 1998 Rome statute to establish
an International Criminal Court in which Canada also played an important role.
It has been commonplace in the field of international relations to distinguish between the post-Cold War era and the post-9/11 era. It may be
that the post-Cold War era was indeed a time of optimism for states because the national security question became less pressing with the end of
the nuclear confrontation between East and West. But that era which began with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and quickly
followed by the final dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas day
1991 came to an abrupt end with the events of 11 September 2001. The
world has changed, it is argued, and in the post-9/11 era, national security trumps all. I make the claim that it is precisely because we are in
an age of terrorism that human security as opposed to national security
thinking becomes even more important. With the United States in the
lead, the focus on retribution as opposed to distribution in the international arena will only serve to undermine the security of all, including
Canadians. Human security is rooted theoretically in a cosmopolitan
ethic, but this is not being realized by current government practices. My
central argument is that Braybrookes ideas about personal responsibil3 See
Penz (2001)
104
ity help us to think about how this ethic might be more effectively put
into practice, and in so doing, point to a rethinking of human security as
a shared responsibility between the state and individuals in the society.
The literature on cosmopolitanism, as David Hollinger reminds
us, has exploded in recent years in critical and democratic theory.4
Samuel Scheffler states that despite different conceptions of cosmopolitanism, at its root it is the idea that each individual is a citizen of the
world.5 The problem, according to Scheffler, is that the idea of world
citizenship calls into question the normative status of an individuals
attachments to particular individuals and groups, so that an apparent
incompatibility arises between an individuals commitment to equality
and his or her special responsibilities to family, friends, and communities. However, Scheffler argues that this incompatibility only arises
in extreme forms of cosmopolitanism, but moderate cosmopolitanism
insists only that ones local attachments and affiliations must always
be balanced and constrained by the interests of other people and that
substantive norms of global justice [exist] in addition to the norms that
apply within a single society.6
This chapter is based on Schefflers conception of moderate cosmopolitanism which allows for multi-layered citizenship so that an individual can have ethical commitments to those both within his or her
state and outside of it. Beyond that, I also take as a given that there is
state responsibility, particularly if the state is a democratic one.7 The
4 Hollinger (2001) Hollinger presents the most prominent features of the new cosmopolitanism [even] at the risk of rendering the movement more unified that it is (236) in order to
distinguish cosmopolitanism from Martha Nussbaums universalism and Will Kymlickas pluralism. An interesting contrast to Hollingers review of some of the literature is to be found in
Nyers (2003). Nyers uses the term cosmopolitanisms because to think of cosmopolitanism in
the plural is to upset much of the received knowledge we possess on the subject (1072). Nyers
prefers the term abject cosmopolitanism not only to bring out the familiar us/them relations of
Western cosmopolitan theorists versus the global poor of the Third World, but also to problematize
the cosmopolitanism of the abject to bring out their voice.
5 Scheffler (1999) 258
6 Ibid., 260. Scheffler points out that the conviction that we have responsibilities to our families, friends, and communities is so deeply embedded within common-sense moral thought that
the idea of moderate cosmopolitanism appears to be stating the obvious (262-3).
7 According to David Miller, the concept of outcome responsibility as opposed to moral
responsibility allows us to talk about national as opposed to individual responsibility, particularly if
the political community is open and democratic. By virtue of enjoying the benefits of membership
5.1. INTRODUCTION
105
106
like Sens of functionings (in Braybrookes case, as citizens, householder, worker, parent) and, accordingly, includes needs for companionship, social acceptance, freedom from harassment, and recreation
(including also sexual activity).9 This should do something to restore
Braybrookes credit with champions of human development. In that
way, Braybrooke offers a way for us to rethink human security and find
avenues for individuals (and not only states) to exercise their responsibilities abroad.
5.2
(1987a)
(2001) 46
11 Ibid. 43
10 Penz
107
the states calculus, such considerations would apply only to its own
citizens. If politics stops at the waters edge12 a phrase that implies
that national security issues are not subject to debate and the democratic
state must proceed with one voice in the face of the outside worldthen
ethics is also territorially bounded, and this suggests a Machiavellian
understanding for rulers when the states interests are threatened. Security in this sense is defined primarily in military terms with the state
dealing with external threats in an interstate system characterized by
self-help and anarchy. National security must be a foreign policy priority in order to ensure the survival of ones own state. The state must
procure weapons, build armies, and enter alliances in order to prevent
foreign attacks. The Cold War that protected Western states, including
Canada, under the American nuclear umbrella against Eastern countries,
which were in turn protected by the Soviet nuclear arsenal, was predicated on nuclear deterrence. The order created by the balance of power
between the two sides was also referred to as mutual assured destruction (MAD), given the devastating consequences of a full-fledged war
between the Soviet Union and the United States. Accordingly, considerations of international order necessarily preceded international justice
because the high politics dealing with the survival of the state (and
the planet) in the event of a third world war between East and West
took precedence over different philosophies regarding the organization
of political and economic life. Essentially, it was a good thing that the
two sides could co-exist. With each side having second-strike capability, no first-strike took place; and when the Cold War ended with the
West emerging victorious, a new world order infused with liberal optimism began to renew considerations of international justice and, more
specifically, to reorient the purposes of national militaries.13
As the likelihood of interstate warfare involving Western countries
declined in the 1990s, intrastate warfare in many parts of the world became more prominent. From northern Iraq to Bosnia to Somalia to
12 This oft-quoted phrase comes from Michigan Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg (18841951), an isolationist turned internationalist, who was a key supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). Vandenberg sought to create a bipartisan foreign policy for the United
States.
13 See Rosemary Foot and Hurrell (2003)
108
Rwanda to Kosovo Kosovo, internal conflicts erupted onto the international scene in ways unprecedented. The distinction between combatants and non-combatants was no longer respected, and the horror,
viciousness, and inhumanity of such conflicts were revealed by media
outlets covering conflict zones. Gone were the rules of international
humanitarian law which governed interstate warfare and protected innocent civilians. These were not wars of one countrys armies against
another, but rather conflicts arising out of ethnic cleansing, warlordism, and genocide, where the enemy was the state or specific ethnic
groups within it, as governments or self-proclaimed warlords terrorized,
maimed, and killed citizens within their territories. These violations of
human rights gave rise to humanitarian actions in which foreign militaries intervened on behalf of innocent civilians and challenged the
sovereignty of Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, and Serbia. But such acts of
international intervention were arguably justified.14 Drawing from the
just war tradition, and the ethics of the use of force, Jean Bethke Elshtain develops a doctrine of equal regard as opposed to a model of international victimization as the basis for the use of force as a remedy
under a justice claim. She states: human beings qua human beings deserve equal moral regard ... [which] means one possesses an inalienable
dignity that is not given by governments. When governments commit [a]cts of aggression, whether against [their] own people or against
those who cannot defend themselves, [these] are stipulated as cases of
injustice that warrant the use of force.15 In essence, these governments had failed in their obligations to provide human security to their
citizens, thus triggering justice claims by their citizens on other states.
The focus on the rights of individuals is the cornerstone of the
responsibility to protect doctrine. Created in September 2000 and
14 The idea of humanitarian intervention is very controversial. As Nicholas Wheeler points
out, some question the rights of states to risk the lives of soldiers and other non-military personnel to save strangers; others point out that the international order among states is predicated on
differing conceptions of justice and that states, not individuals, are the primary bearers of rights
and duties in international law. Mohammed Ayoob highlights the critiques of postcolonial states
of essentially the actions of the West against the rest. Wheeler provides a powerful case for humanitarian intervention, whereas Ayoob carefully examines its major shortcomings.See Wheeler
(2000); Ayoob (2004)
15 Elshtain (2003) 67
109
releasing its report in December 2001, the twelve-member International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, co-chaired
by Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, has shifted international
discourse from the right to intervene by foreign militaries to the
responsibility to protect individual citizens.16 Although this responsibility is borne, first and foremost, by governments, thus reaffirming the
sovereignty of the state, governments can no longer do whatever they
please to their own populations. The Commission extends the responsibility of protecting vulnerable and innocent populations outside of the
states borders to other states if the state fails in its obligations or, indeed, is the source of the violations. Recognizing that military force is
a deadly instrument, the Commission sees it as but one element of the
responsibility continuum: the responsibility to prevent, the responsibility to react, and the responsibility to rebuild. The focus on the
justness of military interventionthat is, the responsibility to react
comes about because the use of militaries for humanitarian purposes is a
relatively new norm, exemplifying human security thinking. Indeed, the
personnel of foreign militaries who may have to fight in order to protect
vulnerable populations are arguably just warriors because the actions
of their governments have been legitimated by the fulfillment of six criteria: right authority, just cause, right intention, last resort, proportional
means, and reasonable prospects.
The ideal of responsibility of states conceived in this way, however,
brings up questions of how it would come into force. One of the primary
reasons for the establishment of the Commission was to rectify the inaction of the international community for the massacres in Rwanda, in
which 800,000 people were killed as other states stood by and did nothing to help the population. The prevention of another Rwanda impelled
the Commission to think realistically about how the responsibility to
protect doctrine could become a guiding principle for state action; it
led the Commission to place the authority in the hands of the United
Nations Security Council and to reaffirm the centrality of certain states
and their militaries. In that way, the responsibility to protect doctrine,
which would nominally obligate each state, was in reality a principle for
16 See
110
large states and was therefore not unlike the collective security principle
already enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which placed responsibility and authority in the hands of the five permanent members of
the Security Council (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia,
and the Peoples Republic of China). As Mohammed Ayoob points out,
the unrepresentative character of the Security Council and the threat of
veto that hangs over humanitarian decisions makes the Security Council
a less-than-satisfactory medium for the determination of international
will regarding humanitarian emergencies.17
Moreover, with the end of the Cold War only one state in the world
has the military capability to undertake the sorts of interventions that
could ensure some reasonable amount of success.18 That is why Elshtain argues that international justice, construed as an equal claim to the
use of coercive force deployed on behalf of individuals victimized by
their own governments, can only be realized with the United States disproportionately undertaking the burden.19 Invoking what she refers to
affectionately as the Spiderman ethic that with great power comes great
responsibility, Elshtain sees the United States, itself premised on a set
of universal propositions concerning human dignity and equality, as
the only country able to enforce international justice as an equal regard
norm.20 Although the United States will likely often act in coalition
with others (but not likely through the United Nations because Elshtain
sees the power of veto crippling UN action), American commitment to
the enforcement of the equal regard norm will result, she argues, in the
reversal of the lesson of the Melian dialogue: The strong do what they
must in order that the weak not suffer what they too often will.21
After 11 September 2001, the apparent vulnerability and complacency of the United States galvanized a Republican administration under George W. Bush to undertake a war on terrorism predicated on
17 Ayoob
(2004) 102
might argue that France and the United Kingdom also have the ability to intervene,
but it is not altogether clear that they would act alone without the United States. The examples of
Bosnia and Rwanda stand out in this regard.
19 Elshtain (2003) 64
20 Ibid. 73-4
21 Ibid. 75
18 Some
111
the principle that youre either with us, or youre with the terrorists.
American military interventions are occurring, as is clearly evident in
Afghanistan and Iraq, but these are being justified, not as exercises of
the responsibility to protect, but as pre-emptive attacks to protect American national security from, for example, al-Qaeda, who were being territorially housed by the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, who apparently
had weapons of mass destruction.22 Although the United States government has argued that the Taliban and Hussein regimes were oppressive,
and Afghanis and Iraqis are now better off, humanitarianism was not the
reason for going to war. The American government also highlights that
young Afghani girls are now in schools after having been denied the
right to education by the Taliban, but again the oppression of women
was not the reason for military action. As Mary Kaldor has pointed out,
the Bush administration describes itself as on a moral crusade in which
sovereignty is conditional for other states, but unconditional for the
United States because the United States represents good.23 Liberal
optimism regarding the humanitarian purposes of national militaries has
been eclipsed as the post-Cold War era has given way to the post-9/11
era. The 1990s may simply have been a hiatus, an interregnum, made
possible because Western militaries had spare capacity and time to do
human rights work.24 This was a period reminiscent of the two decades
between the two world wars, when idealism abounded in the international community. But these periods seem to be anomalies; the normal
state of affairs appears to be one in which responsibilities of states do
not extend beyond their own borders.
112
enforce claims to protection of vulnerable populations. Human security is a much broader concept that includes meeting the basic needs of
individuals worldwide and that is predicated on an ethical responsibility to reorient security around the individual in a redistributive sense,
obligating those who have to those who have not.25 This conceptualization draws our focus away from world conflict to world poverty, and
especially to the extent to which the worlds resources are controlled
and consumed by a small, rich minority who should take responsibility for the impoverished, desperate, and often fatal circumstances of the
worlds majority. This rich minority, of course, lives primarily in the
West, and the problem is that most of us in the West do not feel the
weight of responsibility for the worlds poor. Indeed, Thomas Pogge
provides compelling explanations as to why global structural and institutional arrangements that benefit the rich harm the poor, asserting
that most of us do not merely let people starve but also participate in
starving them, by failing to fulfill our more stringent negative duty
not to uphold injustice, not to contribute to or profit from the unjust
impoverishment of others.26 H uman security defined broadly encompasses global economic injustices and includes demands for changes to
the existing socioeconomic order. This more expansive understanding
of human security is found in the work of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which introduced the concept of human
security in its 1994 Human Development Report as encompassing economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political
security.27 Referred to as the sustainable human development view of
human security, it is predicated on ensuring freedom from want and on
fusing the broadened security discourse with the development agenda to
address fundamental socioeconomic inequalities and the lack of social
justice in the global arena.28 In this case, the obligations of states are
not solely or even chiefly met by deploying their militaries for humanitarian purposes but by using development assistance, trade, investment,
monetary, and other policies to address global economic injustices.
25 Newman
(2001) 240
(2002) 214, 197
27 Programme-UNDP (1994)
28 Hampson (2002)
26 Pogge
113
114
NGOs.32 For Canada, working with NGOs and other like-minded states
became central to advancing its human security agenda. This was a different type of politics founded on rethinking state-society relations in
which the process was opened up to groups that had been traditionally
marginalized in foreign policy development: peace activists, social
justice activists, womens groups, cultural groups, minorities, students,
and so forth. Many of these groups found common cause with the governments human security agenda as the government adopted notions of
economic justice, gender equality, and human rights in its policies.
In that way, the revisioning of security along human security grounds
included changing the process to bring in societal voices, if not values,
to the making of state policy.
C ivil society engagement is crucial for bringing about change because NGOs represent the realignment of political identities that are
based not simply on national but also on transnational attachments.
For example, although the United States remains a non-signatory to
the anti-personnel landmines convention, it was an American, Jody
Williams, who co-founded the U.S.-based ICBL as six NGOs in 1992
and expanded it to over 1300 members in over 85 countries; who fought
tirelessly to ensure a successful treaty by working with other NGOs, like
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and with states,
like Canada;33 and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her international humanitarian efforts. Similarly, although the United States
voted against the Rome statute to establish the International Criminal
Court, it was also an American, William Pace, the executive director of
the New York-based World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global
Policy, who headed the CICC and who approached then foreign affairs
minister Lloyd Axworthy to enlist Canadas support for the establishment of a new court to hold individuals responsible for war crimes when
national judicial systems fail.34 Thus, human security reflects a politics
32 McRae
115
(2004)
4
37 Ibid., 3
38 When Paul Martin took over as prime minister, the Liberals undertook major reorganizations
of federal departments. Apart from creating the Department of Public Safety and Emergency
Preparedness, the government also separated out International Trade from Foreign Affairs, creating
two new departments.
39 I take up what this means for Canadian foreign policy and Canada-U.S. relations in Keeble
(2004).
36 Ibid.,
116
(2001)
117
to individuals abroad. How might we revive attention to human security in Canadian foreign policy thinking with the effect of giving greater
weight once again to what person-to-person responsibility can amount
to in the international arena?
118
specific agencies of the United Nations, such as the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF).
3. Such individuals have taken on the sorts of responsibilities that
move in the direction of a world community.
In Where Does the Moral Force of the Concept of Needs Reside
and When? Braybrooke juxtaposes his concept of needs with Amartya
Sens concept of capabilities. I discussed in the last section that it was
the UNDP that first introduced an expansive understanding of human
security by conceptualizing it in terms of sustainable human development. The UNDPs human development approach, encapsulated in its
Human Development Report published annually since 1990, is predicated on Sens ideas on capabilities: the idea that the purpose of development is to improve human lives by expanding the range of things that
a person can be and do, such as to be healthy and well-nourished, to be
knowledgeable, and to participate in community life.43 Sens influence
on development thinking has been pronounced,44 and his capabilities
(also referred to as freedoms) approach has clearly informed understandings of human security as freedom from fear and freedom from
want. Indeed, Sen, along with Sadako Ogata, former UN Commissioner for Refugees, co-chaired the Commission on Human Security,
which presented its final report to United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan in May 2003.45
Braybrooke argues that the needs and capabilities approaches should
be combined, but that the concept of needs has greater moral force even
with those who might be less willing or indeed outright sceptical of
43 Fukuda-Parr
119
giving aid to those less fortunate than themselves. He reasons that individuals will be more willing to place others needs ahead of their own
preferences but most likely quite unwilling to place others preferences
in terms of leading to further capabilities (e.g., enlargement of their
choices) before their own. Braybrooke points out that needs, often not
as expressed as such but rather in surrogate ways such as thirst, starvation, exposure, or illiteracy, point to a sense of urgency that often moves
people to act by essentially pulling on their heartstrings. Indeed, needs
expressed in this way tend to eliminate considerations of desert because
the needy could not possibly be responsible for their present situations.
That may be why Sens capabilities approach, which does allow for
greater agency on the part of the needy, may be less appealing to those
who would address the need. Given the international disparities in the
global context, we are talking about persuading those in the rich, safe
countries in the West, like Canada, to take responsibility for meeting
the needs of those abroad. Every human being does have a right to be
treated the same, but the treatment (e.g., food, shelter, health) under
consideration must be seen in light of those who need it and those who
have it and also can provide it to others. The argument for the moral
force comes in when we focus not on those in need but on those who
could respond to the need.46
In what ways do individuals in rich countries like Canada take responsibility? In A Progressive Approach to Personal Responsibility
for Global Beneficence, Braybrooke argues that individuals take on responsibilities in relation to social organizations. He focuses on charitable organizations as opposed to governments or corporations in setting
up a climate that encourages individuals to give. Braybrooke asserts
46 This statement will appear counter-intuitive to international development specialists who
have seen the change in approach to development from basic needs to human development.
Although the basic needs approach places people at the centre of development, it has been seen as
defining human well-being in terms of commodities as opposed to capabilities, therefore denying
(or being silent on) human rights, freedoms, and agency of those in the developing world, placing
them in a further subservient position to donors. See Fukuda-Parr for comparisons between the
neoliberal, basic needs, and human development approaches. However, as I stated in the introduction, by bringing Braybrookes Meeting Needs into the discussion, we can see more clearly how
Braybrookes and Sens conceptions intersect, thus restoring in part Braybrookes credibility with
champions of human development.
120
(2003a)310, 316.
312
49 Ibid. 315-16
48 Ibid.,
121
for example, providing clean water, increasing literacy, redressing human rights violations, or instituting peace processes. When individuals support these organizations, they help to bring about a sense of
the common human good beyond their own state, and if participation
could be strengthened ... we would have on the international scene robust elements of a world community, people organized to pursue public
goods on the world scene.50 This would necessitate what Braybrooke
refers to as a movement from the mailbox relation to active community practices,51 predicated on a multi-stage program that would in the
end bring together donors, the national staff of the NGO, staff in the
field, and recipients, creating robust attachments. Braybrooke accepts
that our special responsibilities to families, friends, and fellow nationals
may work alongside our general responsibilities to others, particularly
those in need, throughout the world. He states that the multiplication of personal activity, along with the works of NGOs, would help
to bring into fruition Samuel Schefflers conception of moderate cosmopolitanism,52 predicated on new allegiances which transcend states
and national cultures. This may unsettle the self but in the context of
creating a melange of identities that allows the individual to flourish.53
In the end, individuals taking responsibility for global beneficence by
supporting organizations that work for the world common good may
be more likely to pressure their government to act in the same way.
As Braybrooke states, Judiciously developed, these motivations might
achieve a delicate balance between private giving and support for governmental beneficence, so that the very people who gave most generously privately would be most vigorous in supporting humanitarian po50 Braybrooke,
51 Ibid.
52 Braybrooke applauds Schefflers work as do I. According to Scheffler, in Conceptions of
Cosmopolitanism, moderate cosmopolitanism about justice will be a compelling position only if
it proves possible to devise human institutions, practices and ways of life that take seriously the
equal worth of persons without undermining peoples capacity to sustain their special loyalties and
attachments (275).
53 Braybrooke also applauds Jeremy Waldrons work. Waldron fears the cultural exclusiveness
of the identity politics of community (113-14) and argues instead for the identity of the self predicated on the management of a variety, a multiplicity of different and perhaps disparate communal
allegiances (110). See Waldron (1995)
122
5.5
(2003a) 318
123
Axworthy, the strongest proponent of human security in Canadian foreign policy, had seen it not only as new way forward but also a way to
maintain Canadas role as a leading voice on the world stage,55 a voice
separate from that of the United States. Axworthy stated explicitly that
the best Canadian foreign policy remains an independent policy and
that Canadians want their country to be more than a junior partner to
the United States.56
However, Braybrookes arguments bring out that conceptualizations
of human security should include relationships between individuals and
charitable organizations. By locating some degree of responsibility at
the level of the individual in this way, we begin to see that Canadians through their actions may continue to keep alive the goals of human security despite the governments apparent reluctance to make it a
prioritysuch reluctance seems to be a response either to pressure exerted by the United States or to its own (mis)perception of greater threats
at home. Ensuring freedom from fear and freedom from want can be
achieved both abroad and at home. National security may not trump
all if Canadians as private persons continue to take on responsibilities
that move in the direction of a world community. Many of the organizations that are part of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC), an umbrella organization of approximately one hundred
Canadian non-profit organizations working to end global poverty and
achieve sustainable human development, receive support from the contributions of individual Canadians. If human security is to be revived
in Canadian foreign policy, we must see that responsibility is a shared
undertaking between the state and individuals and that the individuals
connection to the world common good through NGOs is perhaps the
path to cosmopolitanism.
55 Axworthy
56 Axworthy
(2001, 2003)
(2001) 8
Chapter 6
Abstract
125
126
6.1
This chapter is an analysis and appreciation of David Braybrookes continuing exploration of how to improve the strategies under which public
policy is formulated in regard to their responsiveness to needs and their
attentiveness, in deliberative stages, to intelligibility, feasibility, and
public safety. His Utilitarianism: Restorations; Repairs; Renovations
(2004) recommends an incrementalist-utilitarian policy and decisionmaking strategy that would encourage citizen examination and discussion of policy problems, interventions, and outcomesactivities that
could improve and amend appreciation of the problem environments.
He continues his renovations in his further work on needs, rights,
and consequences (Analytical Political Philosophy, 2005), in which he
shows how the concept of needs can inform deliberation.
In an encyclopedia entry on decision-making systems for individuals
and collectivities, Braybrooke notes that there is a public good in having
a political system that meets at least the minimal conditions for popular
participation and control. Control by citizens can only come about if
they participate; if they see their opportunities and feel it their duty to
learn about and correct short-sighted policy results from the market or
from political bargaining:
A polyarchal system of decision-making will work as intended by its advocates only if this control in all its aspects is
effective (an empirical condition) and a large portion of the
population participates (a definitional condition ...). But no
system for decision-making will work unless the people who
have parts to play in the system actually take part. (Braybrooke (2000), 3316.)1
His strategy is constituted of his prescription to increase participation in deliberation, plus his alternative to the dominant approaches to
decision-making in policy literature.2 This latter is an alternative in sev1 Polyarchy is a term originated by Robert Dahl to describe political regimes of the real world
that are, comparatively, inclusive and open to public contestation. See Dahl (1971), 7-9).
2 Does Utilitarianism Require Perfect Information about Consequences, Leaving Coordination Problems Aside? No. Braybrooke (2004), chap. 2).
127
128
for example, Robinson et al. (1972), particularly chap. 12, Attitudes toward the Political System, 441-82. L.W. Milbraith and M.L. Goel Milbraith and Goel (1977) present an
excellent summary of this literature. For another view, also empirically based, see Sutherland and
Tanenbaum, Submissive Authoritarians Sutherland, S.L. and Tanenbaum (1980) and also their
Irrational vs Rational Bases of Political Preference: Elite and Mass Perspectives (Sutherland,
S.L. and Tanenbaum (1984), 173-97).
129
for which local authorities have jurisdiction, such as traffic management, as opposed to policies like air pollution that exhaust or exceed
the resources and authorities of the jurisdiction nominally dealing with
that issue, but even there he believes that participation is feasible.
It is also important to take into account how pervasively if fantastically the synoptic or rational-deductive ideal once saturated fledgling
political science, with lasting impact in the policy area. Here the work of
Braybrooke, Lindblom, and Simon is importantly corrective. Synoptic
ambition was particularly striking after the early computers seemed to
promise unlimited, instant, and cheap computational labour, and systems theory modelled on biological models took hold. One sample of
Harold Lasswells thinking, as he laid it out in his 1930 Psychopathology and Politics, expresses a typical form of confidence:
As it is today we are on the threshold ... of assessing the realism of the intelligence maps upon which people base their
[political] choices. As an aid in this huge enterprise it will
be essential to improve the coverage and the depth of the
current flow of information that appraises unconscious as
well as conscious factors throughout the world social process. For the United States the following questions suggest
some of the major points to be covered ... Is the weight of
the super-ego becoming less severe upon Americans than it
was a generation ago? ... Is the rate of change different in
New England, the Middle Atlantic States, and other regions?
(Lasswell (1968), 318)
In an earlier article, Chicagos Old First Ward: A Case Study in
Political Behavior, (Lasswell (1923), 127), Lasswell wanted to first
describe and then predict human political behaviour as a first step to
control of political behaviour.6
6 See Robert Horowitzs essay, Scientific Propaganda:
130
While not everyone was interested in mapping and regulating relative weights of the collective superego from one region to another,
the same idea that cheap computational power could generate powerful predictive theory from empirical observations spurred speculative
work in social indicators theory and systems theory. Both social indicators theory and the most comprehensive systems theory were taken
up in government through the 1960s and 1970s. In the management and
allocation aspects of public policy work, this era saw trials across the industrialized world of planning, programming and budgeting systems
(PPBS), which were abandoned and modified without being thoroughly
understood by practitioners. PPBS is by design synoptic and centralizing, intended to increase productivity in hierarchical programs but
also to discern and manage horizontality, including redundant programming, all based in a fantastic efficiency calculus of both nested and
horizontal cost-benefit results.7 The thinking behind the development of
PPBS and its comprehensive, scientific, results-oriented style of evaluation (to inform budgetary decisions) is still important in the public policy process, although many practitioners assume it has been replaced by
the New Public Management. But the New Public Management, which
dominates the modern industrialized world, more nearly incorporated
PPBS than it superseded it, and one sees synoptic assumptions underlying the haphazard prescriptions and practices in results measurement
in contemporary federal Canada. Because hazard and small p politics by administrators can fill in where the synoptic method invariably
failsand in principle must failpolitical space is lost in public policy
areas.
The general purpose of this paper is to put Braybrookes highly original contribution into the context of what I take to be, as a student of government, the most influential work on how decisions are and should be
made. I present, first, an indication of what it is to try to be synoptically
rational in decision-making and then move to the first developed alternative to synoptic or comprehensive rationality: Herbert Simons idea that
analysts and decision-makers could make efficient strategic choices in
7 On PPBS, it is difficult to best Herman van Gunsterens The Quest for Control: A Critique
of the Rational-Central-Rule Approach in Public Affairs (van Gunsteren (1976)).
131
information seeking, leading to tolerable outcomes as opposed to maximizing. I ncrementalism is the only really seriously developed alternative to satisficing, and Charles Lindblom and David Braybrooke are the
dominant figures in incrementalism. In the parts of its development that
they do not share, their paths are complementary rather than contradictory. Braybrookes strategy, drawn from chapter 2 of his 2004 book on
utilitarianism, is summarized to give the reader a fair idea of its comprehensiveness and richness. The paper then closes with brief examples
of successful incremental policies in an area of Braybrookes interest
traffic congestioncontrasted with policy failures that attempted major
change in one concentrated effort.
Brian Fry, in his Mastering Public Administration (Fry (1989), 18990), finds in Simon himself a fairly complete version of the classic set
of requirements for the individual rational decision-maker who would
maximize chosen or assigned values. To select the alternative that will
be followed by the most desired (valued) array of consequences, the
analyst knows at least the following:
all the relevant aspects of the decision environment;
8 Braybrooke does credit P.H. Wicksteeds The Common Sense of Political Economy (Wicksteed (1910)) with a paradigmatic formulation of rational-comprehensive reasoning but obviously
cannot rely on reader familiarity with it.
132
133
134
appropriate means to the desired ends; that every factor is taken into
account in analysis; and that theory is important to the exercise. For the
branch method, he notes the direct contrasts: that value goals and empirical analysis are closely intertwined and not really distinguishable,
and thus means-end analysis is problematic; that the test of a good policy is that it will be recognized as such by analysts who nevertheless
may not agree that it is the one best way to reach an agreed objective;
that analysis is limited and a succession of empirical comparisons will
reduce the importance of theory. Despite the clarity with which he expressed the idea that while, ideally, the root method does not exclude,
in practice it must (80), and that successive limited comparison is a
method in itself, not a fallback, commentators misrepresented his work.
The piece was often used in discussions in policy courses as proof that
incrementalism was another word for drift, and that there was no alternative to attempts to achieve full understanding. Perhaps the main
difficulty was that professional policy analysts working in government
felt uncomfortable about analysing means as containing their own values; this would be not value clarity but a threat to their perception of
themselves as value-neutral and to the elected or political leadership.
6.2.2
135
136
137
of the actor. And not even the structure of the task environment can
always provide good information because it can be misunderstood: decisions begin with goals and values, and are strongly conditioned by
organizational loyalties and perceptions (Simon (1990), 7). Simon had
nevertheless created an expectation that there were discoverable environmental heuristics that could guide routine decisions to good results
(in contrast to definitionally uncertain unprogrammed or one-off decisions).
There are objections. Those that are most applicable in the public
sector have to do with Simons steering attention to what appears to
be most readily doable, in the efficiency calculus of an organization,
whereas the most serious problems that administrators, analysts, and
political leaders seek to ameliorate are defined by and exist in a valuebased or political framework. Theodore Lowi, in the course of his
address (Lowi (1992)) to the American Political Science Association on
assuming his presidency, directed a stinging attack on Simons work.
He calls it reductively apolitical, because of its minute focus on the
decision or decision premise and says it had aided and given comfort to
the shift in political science from judgmental and evaluative analysis to
a rationalist reduction of government to just one aspect of the economic
system.
Braybrooke and Lindblom for their parts each generously acknowledge Simons role in encouraging theorists and practising analysts to
move away from the economics model. But they are not wholly uncritical of Simons bounded rationality. Lindblom, in his The Science of
Muddling Through (Lindblom (1959)), offers a succinct explanation
of why the choice of an aspiration level cannot do much to limit the
margins of a current problem to create a good fit of a received model
with a new situation, even if it appears of a type: the problem of sorting
through values is always a problem of adjustments at the margin [and]
there is no practical way to state marginal objectives or values except in
terms of particular policies (86)particular decision situations. This
is an example of his settled view, as I understand it, that feasible policy
designs are more limited in number than the problems to which they
might be applied, so that analysts could readily recognize an attractive
138
139
time.
Mary Douglas (Douglas (1995)) suggests that Simon made an inferential leap from Chester Barnards idea of the zone of indifference in
the preferences of any employee in the organization (allowing for their
performance of directives without hesitation and thus the accomplishment of organizational goals) to what would appear to be the real organizational world such that desires can be satisfied within the organizational context without optimization, and therefore without the calculus
(106). I take Douglass remark to mean that Simon extended Barnards
notion that persons would execute organizational duties most efficiently
when duties are indifferent to them in the light of their own convictions, to another idea that the environment behaves similarly: that most
factors in the decision environment itself would be irrelevant or neutral
in relation to what one could call core causation in the environment,
and so could usually be safely ignored. Douglas should surely not be understood as saying that Simon would have either believed or argued that
satisficing could be a more efficient way of optimizing, but she can perhaps be read as saying that Simon made a leap to a certain isomorphism
between the limitations of the decider and the apparently massive clues
in the decision environment under routine conditions. Overall, practitioners do tend to accept satisficing as a procedure for operationalizing
pragmatism, a local theory of usefulness, in their decision-making environments. Thus, in my opinion, Simon left his field without providing
actual robust substantial assistance to practitioners. And, as Lowi said,
Simons endorsement of the view that facts and values can and must
be separated is a problematic contribution to policy studies, although
intended to separate politics or values leadership from administration
(Lowi (1992), 105).
6.2.3
140
141
The scout honeybees collective choice is, in all the occasions observed by the scientists, objectively the absolutely best choiceon the
survivalist criteria the human scientists use to rank honeybee housing,
and impute to the scout honeybees, to be sure. The persistence of siteoriented dancing correlates with the presence of a number of features
describing the site: such features as entry dimensions that afford the
hive and its food protection, adequate food storage capacity for the winter, and proximity to a source of food. Scout honeybees stay on topic
in the hive site evaluation. No scout honeybee has concerns other than
those that define a workable site; no uncle is in bee real estate. Nonfunctional criteria would manifest as irrational scout dancing persistence for a site that is mediocre on the criteria necessary to the hives
survival. There is no such irrational persistence promoting sites that
are poor, again as assessed by the scientists.
I conclude, despite the title of Seeleys engrossing article, that it
is irrelevant whether honeybee masses are poorly informed. What is
important is that the scouts accurately communicate to one another relevant empirical information for a closed model that defines the best site
and that their collective dancing achieves an accurate site comparison.
(It is also fortunate in this problem that scouts whose preferences fall by
the wayside switch to dancing for sites still in contestation, and that the
rest of the hive swarms with departing scouts.) Each site factor in the
equation is necessary but not sufficient; all factors must be present for
the site to be chosen by the scouts of a hiving swarm. Thus the hiving
problem unfolds by formula. Seeley is cited above as saying that the
skill of the hive or the aggregate is in part the outcome of the apparent
simplicity of each bee, and there is a lesson in this remark: simplicity
is a form of discipline and it surely works for the scouts hiving decision. The aggregated wisdom of all scouts is not a simple extrapolation,
but the differences in the preferences of the scouts can be negotiated and
summarized in the danced discussions without serious lossas judged
by outcomes. The success in choosing a good hive seems almost less
important than the idea that the bees have a formal public process by
which the scout bees obviouslybut only somehowaggregate and
communicate their information. It is not fully intelligible to the human
142
Incrementalism
For problems that change over time, where information is not complete
and may always be misleading to some degree, a strategy that can make
doubt part of the decision process is necessary. What is available is
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
In addition, there are other benefits that arise from situating the strategy in a collectivity. Most are part of the shift itself. The traditional
ethical-theory focus on the single agent is superseded. In the place of
the single agent, one finds, more fittingly in social and political life, a
multiplicity of actors with roles and information, and communal discussion and negotiation.
Just as the criterion of need guides means and ends for the substance
of policy decisions, the spirit of the constituting rules of the overarching
system is protected by respect. Participants in ordinary political activity
should not exploit by stealth constitutive features of the political settlement.16
Recommended features for collective policy discussions include:
P artisanship and fragmentation: Fragmentation in the body politic
becomes an advantage for bringing forward information and alternatives. First, under the strategy, the community makes use of what Braybrooke calls the revisionary process (the various levels of evaluative
deliberation available) to generate richness for future redesign phases.
The collective will work on a problem until it is as intelligible as possible, design rules, and devise institutional insurance.
With many groups at work, the stimulation could lead groups to vigorous analysis of different policies. Such constructive competitiveness
would uncover bias. And bias itself contains information about fears
and desires. Many analysts, deliberating, will also be alert to supersession, as discussed above.
F ixing jurisdictions: Subsidiarity suggests the approach. The jurisdiction that is closest to the manifested problem and has the authority
to address it will be the focus for group contributions. Ideally, the authority will implement public policy changes and take responsibility for
the prudential considerations and consequences, any program of action
taking place through many iterations. Thus the formal or state jurisdictions, including legislatures and their committees, will, as now, be the
agent of change drawing from public resources. But voluntary associ16 In developed democracies, intense partisanship is a considerable danger to institutional performance. For an argument that actions that evade the deliberative phases of judgment constitute
a moral offence against the collectivity, see (Thompson (1993)). For an extended application to
other cases of Thompsons formulation, see (Sutherland, S. L. (1995)).
152
Braybrookes Cautions
One would expect that, in a process designed with both individual rights
and group welfare in mind, there would be a good number of cautions.
Centrally, some interests will be ignored or given a low priority. The
dangers of passionate contention are also real. I nstitutionalized interests are vigorously promoted to the public. As well, partisan misrepresentation of policies may capture popular understanding, blocking change that could almost incontestably increase the welfare of most
people. The certainty of realization of desired outcomes is always in
doubt. The only comfort is that, on the basis of previous experience,
there is a good probability that a change that comes through such a process will help to meet needs. But a probability is just that. Institutional
insurance might also fail. Braybrooke insists that the capacity of a political organization to produce remedies for its own failed policy, one
it undertook and insured, is one of the tests of an adequate political
organizationindeed, of an adequate social organization of any kind
(Braybrooke (2004), 60-1).
Braybrooke identifies clusters of situations in which the open process of incrementalism cannot be successful: when there is a factually
or perceived overwhelming external threat; when an initially promis-
153
6.4
154
155
a week was established. Another salient point is that the charge does
not affect those living in Londonthat is, the voting basebut it does
affect people who were adding to the congestion but paying their property taxes elsewhere. Because almost 90 per cent of people coming into
Londons congestion zone already travelled by public transport, reducing car traffic by less than a fifth affects only a small proportion of the
total commuter flow (although a sizable portion of drivers). Thus the
vast majority of people felt the road charge was reasonable. Once this
had been ascertained, it could be anticipated that any appetite for protest
would be manageable.
The close involvement of affected communities in decision-making
and planning for evaluation is also incrementalist. The business community, which experienced sales losses, was engaged in what might
be called supersession activity, helping to work out the overall impact
by including benefits, such as lower costs to them for goods transport
through the congestion zone.
The Authoritys evaluation of its initiative has been continuous, bulletins being indicator-based and issued regularly. Scrutiny of the implementation has aimed at continual squeezing all the error out of the
system (Men (2003), 2). One can see that the insurance calculations
before implementation have worked out: at six months in, only 110 persistent non-payers have had their cars impounded. Even outsourcing
provided opportunities to show firmness in evaluation. The company
hired by the Greater London Authority to implement and administer the
policy failed its targets in some respects (targeted revenue was bled
by the unanticipated heavy compliance). Stringent penalties were applied in contract renegotiation and were well publicized. In the first
six months of operation, compliance with fees increased strongly, payment rates for penalty charge notices increased, calls for information
dropped from 167,000 per week in the first weeks of operation to 70,000
a week, and the penalized publics use of the appeal system dropped
from more than half of all those who received fines to 16 per cent. After
six months, people were being educated and were mostly reconciled.
Transport for Londons 2005 document Central London Congestion Charging Scheme Impacts Monitoring Summary Review: January
156
2005 covers the period between the previous review and the autumn
of 2004. Overall, traffic levels in 2004 were very similar to the period
immediately following the introduction of charging, when the numbers
of cars entering the charging zone during charging hours plummeted,
with most of the displaced commuters moving to the bus service, for a
total increase in bus patronage of close to 50 per cent from 2002 to late
2004. The average reduction in congestion remains at 30 per cent, with
reduction in delays for peak-hour car journeys still significantly reduced
(compared with the night travel rate). Road traffic accidents have been
reduced somewhat further over the gains registered in the year 2002-3.
Journey times for buses improved, with a further 15 per cent reduction
in 2004 on the indicator, excess waiting time over the 24 per cent reduction achieved in 2003. The enforcement process in 2004 resulted in still
further increases in compliance and payments, and in reduced numbers
of appeals over the previous period. Interestingly, the Authority continued to press through 2004 for improvements in call centre performance
and enhancements to the options for payment of the charge. A survey
in the period found that more than 80 per cent of those who used the
system were now satisfied with the service, although the media report
some sentiment that the initiative involves too much revenue-seeking.
Another incremental policy with several related but decoupled facets
was initiated in France in late 2002 to reduce deaths and injuries on
roads. The president of France, elected in May of that year, had signalled his determination to reduce road deaths throughout France. The
government established an inter-ministerial committee, assisted by a
planning and policy secretariat made up of members with a significant
interest in road security. In February 2003, a bill was presented to Parliament that envisioned three main semi-independent initiatives aimed
at the same goal: steeply increased penalties for road offences, particularly for repeat offenders; an automatic system for identifying and
fining driving offenders; and a general and evolving reinforcement of
severe prevention strategies. At the end of February, the government
announced that judges would be given the authority to double the current penalty in aggravating circumstances. Drunk driving and reckless
157
net.
19 Le
158
6,000 compared with about half that in Britain, whose road density is
very similar. (The further reduction of 2004 does however bring France
closer to the British figures.) And French politicians are taking positions
on the radars that reflect their constituents impatience over the limitation of freedom, the severity of the fines, and the apparent lack of any
margin in speed before a fine is levied, such that some fine-payers characterize the income aspect as a racket (Le Monde (2004b), 8). Thus the
policys gains require steady discussion and marginal adjustments. But
over time it becomes clearer to all that it would be next to impossible
for policymakers and politicians to insure against the resulting certain
loss of life that removing the radars would cause. In other words, the
policy has succeeded because the public understands it and wants it and
it lowers the death rate.
I ncremental policies are more often accumulated over time in public
organizations, than they are politically led, intricate, multi-stage initiatives such as the two described above. Each of the two examples depends on a complicit if not convinced public, although the two reforms
are both attractive and good examples of incrementalist policy. Speaking generally, it is difficult for officials to incite politicians to launch and
lead full-scale reviews of accumulated policy in areas that seem routine,
are technical, and affect large numbers of the public, because the work
will be detailed and based in legal and management concepts that are
difficult to master. Also, some of these policies are invisible, until something goes wrong. But developments in other technical areas like food
safety make it clear that it could be important for politicians to interest
themselves in accrued policy in apparently settled areas. Who would
have anticipated, for example, that an established policy of feeding animal waste to ruminants (in this case, cattle), in operation in Britain since
1926, would have become consequential for humans more than half a
century later, when temperatures for rendering animal waste into fertilizer and animal food (an almost unregulated activity within the industry)
were lowered to save fuel? A single decrement, the lowered temperature that did not kill a particular organism, eventually led to the form
of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) that is able to move from
meals to humans. Unfortunately BSE is now an all-too-familiar exam-
159
Moran (2001); Hood et al. (1999); Bovens and THart (1996); Hall (1981).
160
6.5. CONCLUSION
161
6.5 Conclusion
In a world characterized by under-examined great leaps and received
policy that holds unexamined problems, Braybrookes forward-looking
policy strategy looks helpful and important. He wants to engage more
people in active deliberation on public policy in a style of analysis that
amounts to taking apart mentally and incrementally policy elements that
were often put together in small increments over long periods of time in
the real world. Braybrookes claims are modest: relatively incremental
policies are more democratic in daily practice because they are more
intelligible and therefore more amenable to supervision by those most
affected. They are relatively safe in comparison to policies undertaken
as tightly coupled single pass undertakings and, further, persistent incremental changes in a consistent direction can lead to great change
over time. Incremental policies are closely planned to be reversible, and
contingencies are closely monitored so that damage can be repaired.
The attentiveness to detail in policies planned under incremental strategies becomes more attractive and important as the scale of operations
increases (Braybrooke (1998a), chap. 16), because with detail the probability of a smooth implementation improves. The French approach
to lowering the number of road deaths is a large-scale policy that took
place along with several decoupled but complementary policy innovations, each aspect requiring interventions with individuals. With careful planning for intelligibility, public acceptance is more readily earned
(328). As Bailey and Braybrooke note in their essay on Dahl, frustration with unintelligible policy issues feeds the tendency of politics as a
meaningful activity to vanish from the lives of more and more citizens
(Braybrooke and Bailey (2003), 111).
Over time, the alienation of citizens from the democratic process undermines genuine self-government and autonomy. The loss of peoples
civic faith and activismtheir intelligent support, energy, resources,
goodwill, and insight applied to meeting their own needs and those of
otherscauses incalculable harm to the quality of public life and incurs danger. Still more serious, and under-noticed by client-citizens,
is the fact that the national political space addressable by those whom
162
the vote puts into power is much less than it was. P olitical parties
were, until at least the final third of the twentieth century, reasonably
effective mechanisms for organizing, aggregating, and creating citizen
preferences for fundamental state policies. Now central banks direct
economies in a globalized world. The efficient part of apparatuses that
govern us, to nod to Bageot, has moved beyond national borders, and
economic power is not itself subject to national governments. To quote
Gunter Grass, Parliament is degenerating into a subsidiary of the stock
market.
What is interesting, even in a world with fewer points of access and
influence, is how constructive Braybrookes strategy is. Braybrooke is
clear that people in groups can with effort and intelligence create new
political space around workable ideassolutions that attract the interest
of people whose values differ. Braybrooke would have citizens organize
around a problem without partisanship or fixed interests (the process of
deliberation will identify interests in any case), and proceed by investigation and debate to parse their problem into the smallest possible uncoupled elements until good starting points can be identified and plans
and actions developed. His strategy does not assume that all or even
very many citizens must be mobilized for a reasonable start. Nor does
it assume that issue-oriented groups must have the ear of power from
the beginning. Rather it is more likely that a groups work will attract
those with resources once it is well formulated and workable.
So-called ordinary people accomplish great things when they collaborate. The Canadian prairies, particularly Saskatchewan, had a large
and thriving system of cooperatives in the middle of the twentieth century. Town populations, whose knowledge society consisted of a doctor, a banker, and the school teachers, found in themselves the ability
and persistence to understand commodities markets, run businesses, and
provide leadership to professionals. And they still have it. One sees international renewed interest in health cooperatives, where citizens have
a voice in the priorities of medical clinics and provide feedback to their
practitioners.
Changes in scale, like feelings of impotence, can erode the empathy
citizens feel for one another, reducing potential cooperation. In refer-
6.5. CONCLUSION
163
Chapter 7
Abstract
As a tribute to David Braybrookes interest in the arts and his ecumenical
work in philosophy, this essay gives a critical reading of Quebec novelist
Yann Martels Life of Pi. Martel offers in his novel both argument and
illustration of the thesis that, not a principle of parsimony, but a principle
of richness and persuasiveness governs which explanatory entities are to
be given status in an account of the truth. Pi, as an extreme case, is a
believing Christian, Muslim, and Hindu who claims that belief in God
is justified by the excellence of the stories that the religions tell. In this
essay, attention is focused on the existence of Pis tiger companion, which
is both denied and held to be necessary in the story. Even in the face
of contrary evidence, belief in the existence of the tiger is said to be a
prerequisite for appreciating the story at its best. Objections to Martels
best story hypothesis are developed against the background of Anthony
Saviles parsimonious account of best explanation in aesthetics, and an
ontologically more modest reading of Pis story is proposed.
The
first version of this paper was delivered to the Visiting Speaker Series at the University
College of Cape Breton, January 2004. Subsequent versions have been discussed with colleagues
at the Zentrum fr Kanada-Studien at the University of Vienna and at Dalhousie Universitys Philosophy Colloquium. I am indebted to the habitus of the Boys Book Club with whom I first
discussed Martels novel, and I am grateful to many others who have also helped me to make my
story clearer.
165
166
167
(1985) (Editors note: the essay appears in this volume as Appendix A.)
which brilliantly analyzed the writings of Hardy, Meredith, Carlyle, Mrs.
Humphry Ward, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and others, was an educational experience
that had few equals in the country, wrote a former student, T.A. Goudge, in Goudge (7 68), (542).
Goudge was by then chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Toronto and had
been invited to write this pioneer essay on the history of Canadian philosophy by none other than
David Braybrooke.
5 Yann Martel, Life of Pi (Toronto: Random House, 2001). The book won the Hugh MacLennan Prize, the 2002 Man Booker Prize, the 2004 German Book Prize, and in 2003 was selected by
4 Stewarts course ...
168
The book has four parts. There is an Authors Note at the beginning,
and other, smaller, authors notes scattered through the text. They are
printed in italics. Up to a point the authors story matches Martels biography, and I shall call him Martel, but the more sophisticated reader
will insist that this author is also a fictional character. The body of the
book is in three parts; it is the story of the life of a person named Pi,
which is short for Piscine Molitor Patel. Part I is called Toronto and
Pondicherry, because Pi grew up in the south of India, in the Frenchcolonial city of Pondicherry, where his father was the zoo-keeper, and
then emigrated to Canada, where he studied at university and now lives
as a middle-aged man with his wife, two children, a dog, and a cat.
As the author says at the end of Part I, This story has a happy ending (103). It is a story that can make your spirit soar. Part II is called
The Pacific Ocean. This is the most famous, and longest, part of the
novel, in which the sixteen-year-old Pi spends more than seven months
in a lifeboat accompanied by a 450-pound Bengal tiger and very nearly
starves to death. It can strike you with terror and make your heart ache.
Part III takes place in the infirmary in Mexico where Pi finally came
to shore after his extraordinary ordeal. It is only thirty pages long, but
it makes your head swim. Together these four sections constitute a remarkably unified novel, made of strikingly diverse parts. I shall begin
at the beginning.
7.1
Authors Note
The authors note tells us two key things. First, he went to India to
work on his next novel. It was to be set in Portugal, but India was a
cheaper place to live, and besides, Thats what fiction is about, isnt it,
the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its
essence? What need did I have to go to Portugal? (vi). That novel was
eventually abandoned. It had many virtues:
Your theme is good, as are your sentences. Your characters are so ruddy with life they practically need birth certifia CBC panel for the Canada Reads national radio program. In what follows, citations by page
number alone are to this edition.
169
170
7.2
A word about our heros name is in order. His uncle had loved swimming and had studied in Paris. Piscine Molitor was the name of his
favourite swimming pool, so he suggested that name for his nephew.
Piscine Molitor Patels schoolmates, however, found Piscine an odd
name; they teased him and called him Pissing. So one school year,
Piscine renamed himself Piequals 3.14, he added. It stuck. (So,
too, did the association with water and the idea of mathematical science.)
Two important themes are established in the first one hundred pages:
God and nature. Nature takes the form of wild animals. Pi studies both
religion and zoology when he finally gets safely to Canada and attends
university. In fact we first meet him explaining his research on the threetoed sloth. He found its calm and introspective demeanour soothing to
his shattered self. In fact, [s]ometimes I got my majors mixed up ...
[The sloth] reminded me of God (5). Much more instructive is Pis
childhood experience. His father was owner of the Pondicherry Zoo,
and he thought his childhood was paradise on earth (15). He was
wakened by roaring lions in the morning, soothed by the benevolent
gaze of bison and orangutans, and delighted by the brilliant colours of
the birds. In the midst of this Garden of Eden he learned that the most
dangerous animal in a zoo is Man (31). It is not that the great carnivores
are not dangerous; in fact the reader will not quickly forget the scene in
which Pis father takes his sons to watch a live goat being released in the
cage of a hungry Bengal tiger. Tigers are very dangerous, his father
shouted above the snarling of the beast. I want you to remember this
lesson for the rest of your lives (37). Pi later comments: It was enough
to scare the living vegetarian daylights out of me (39).
We are then given a lesson on how humans can create an environment for a wild animal that will allow it to be emotionally stable and
stress-free even in confinement. In these pages of ingenious lore about
zoos and lion-tamers, and about wild animals that are more interested
in comfort and safety than in what we think of as freedom, Martel is
clearly preparing us for Pis great adventure, but we have as yet no idea
171
why or how this is going to be relevant. Even less do we know how the
God theme is going to be relevant. When he visits Pi in Toronto, the
author describes his house as a temple. It has shrines to Hindu gods
Shiva, Krishna, Shakti, and Ganesha; it has icons of the crucified Christ
and the Virgin Mary, and it has an Arabic prayer rug next to a veiled
Koran (chapter 15). His university degree in religious studies was not
something that he forgot about after getting his parchment. But this
interest in religion begins in his youth. The young Pi is a kind of religious genius. He is raised a Hindu and loves its sculptured cones of
red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets; he feels
at home in its rites and rituals, and the universe makes sense to [him]
through Hindu eyes (53). There is a moving lecture on this. We are
introduced to the concept of Brahman nirguna, the original oneness,
without qualities, beyond understanding and beyond language. There
follows Brahman saguna, with qualities, with moral attributes and taking the forms of the distinguishable gods mentioned above. But Brahman is also atman, the breath of the spirit within each of us, a pilgrim
spirit which seeks to find its karma, to be at one with the Absolute.
Pi is a well-content Hindu when at fourteen he encounters Jesus
Christ. In his community Christians have a reputation for few gods
and great violence (56), but he meets a kind priest who teaches him
the extraordinary story of a God who became a humble human, was humiliated, and put to death. Imagine, thinks Pi, if my father had said to
me,
Piscine, the lions are killing the other animals in the zoo.
The situation has become intolerable. Something must be
done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for
their sins is if I feed you to them. Yes, Father, that would
be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to
wash up. (58)
What a weird story. Pi asks for a different story, but finds that the
Christians only have the one Story; it is about love and humility. So Pi
finds himself haunted by this new god and becomes a Christian.
172
Islam had a reputation worse than Christianitysfewer gods, greater violence (64), but a year later, at fifteen, Pi meets a Muslim teacher
whose humble friendship leads him to discover the postures of Islamic
prayer, the ritual recitation of the ninety-nine names of God, the soothing beauty of a religion of brotherhood and devotion (67). Pi has not,
however, abandoned Hinduism or turned his back on Christianity. He
believes all three. He is in love with God. I was a practising Hindu,
Christian and Muslim (71). Of course he is attacked by the representatives of all three faiths; you can only be one of those, they say; the
others are heresies or superstitions! But the youngster quotes Mahatma
Ghandi: All religions are true. I just want to love God (76). And so
he does.
It is not at this point clear what this aspect of Pis character has to
do with his great adventure. It is not obviously his faith in God that gets
him through his ordeal on the Pacific. Nor is it clear what his survival
adventure has to do with his faith. He believed in the Divinity of all
three religions before he left India for Canada. So Martel has created a
vivid character as a comment on our relation to nature on the one hand,
and our relation to the spirit of religion on the other, but has given us few
clues about how this is to relate to the story that will make us believe in
God.
There is one minor theme in Part I that should be mentioned. Recall
the authors opening remarks about fiction, the story that transforms
reality, and his warning that we should not sacrifice our imagination on
the altar of crude reality or we will end up believing in nothing. That
theme is given some new words by the adult Pi as he retells his story.
Dry, yeastless factuality is one phrase. The better story is another
(70). The two phrases appear in what we might consider an argument in
favour of believing in God. Imagine an agnostics last words as he slips
from life: if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to
dry, yeastless factuality, he might try to explain the warm light bathing
him by saying, Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,
and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story (70).
173
(2001), 10.
174
complex, consider what happens when we allow that some people are
more capable of believing than others. Some people have big hearts
there are scarcely limits to how much they can love, and those close to
them might well wish that they love less smotheringly. Others may love
as much as they can, and one might wish that they could have loved
more. So it is with the capacity for belief. On an Aristotelian scale,
those deficient in belief go through life as sceptics or ironists, while
those with an excess of the capacity are as it were gluttons of belief. Pi
seems to be a belief glutton. I think that if he believed 0.51 p, he would
believe p a great deal more than would an ironist who believed 0.51 p.
These are two different scales of degrees of belief.
Let us construct a paradox: Pi is undecided about something, q; he
believes 0.5 q and 0.5 not-q. An ironist, let us say, believes only half
as hard as Pi. If she believed 100 per cent q she would be in the same
psychological state as Pi with regard to q. She is capable of that. She is
also capable of 100 per cent disbelief that q. Now if she were in exactly
the state that Pi is in, she would not be undecided, as he is, but would
be believing 1.0 q and disbelieving 1.0 q. That is plainly a problem,
indeed approaching absurdity. Yet the state is possible, because Pi is in
it. Perhaps an Aristotelian prescription for this muddle would be apt.
A virtuous believer would be one who sought the mean between these
extremes, who believed p to a degree supported by the evidence for p,
but no more than that. She would be neither a belief-ascetic nor a beliefglutton, but a moderate or virtuous believer. Aristotle, of course, wisely
warns us not to treat the mean as a mathematical point, and says that we
should expect no more precision in such matters than is appropriate.8
Nonetheless, on this sort of account we might conclude that Pi is not
a virtuous character; he believes much too much, too freely, and too
heartily; but of course we should not doubt that he is possible.
8 See, for instance, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I:3. See also II:7, on truthfulness as a
mean, and III:9, where after a long discussion of courage he concludes that from this we can form
at best a rough conception of its nature (1117b).
175
176
sort of whip. He even marks his end of the boat with his urine. The
tiger eventually settles into his comfort zone at the other end of the
boat. And so they travel. Pi catches fish and turtles, and feeds Richard
Parker. He figures out the water treatment equipment, and keeps them
in a minimum of fresh water. Eventually, It was Richard Parker who
calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me
witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose,
I dare say even wholeness (179). When a school of flying fish, who are
in turn being hunted by predators, fly over and into the boat,
Richard Parker ... raised himself and went about blocking,
swiping and biting all the fish he could. Many were eaten
live and whole, struggling wings beating in his mouth. It
was a dazzling display of might and speed. Actually, it was
not so much the speed that was impressive as the pure animal confidence, the total absorption in the moment. Such a
mix of ease and concentration, such a being-in-the-present,
would be the envy of the highest yogis. (201)
They develop routines. There are the inevitable sharks, some huge
storms (chapter 83!), a ship that steams by without seeing them (chapter
86), cycles of boredom and terror, elation and despair. But scarcity of
food and water eventually wears them down. They seem about to die.
The tiger, gaunt and barely panting, lies in the bottom of the boat. Pi
goes blind, begins to hallucinate. There is a conversation with another
lifeboat that seems to be imaginary.
Then the most wonderful delirium takes over. Pi sees an island,
an island of floating algae, with trees growing out of pure vegetation
(285). There is edible seaweed, pools of fresh water, and marvellous
inhabitants, the gentle, sociable meerkat. This story, with its rejoicing
and rejuvenation, its secret dangers and surprises, has to be read to be
believed. It is an astonishing tour de force, a chapter of thirty pages in
a book whose other chapters average three pages each. Within another
page their boat is washed up on the shores of Mexico. Richard Parker
jumps right over Pi.
chapter 71.
177
7.5
Ockhams Razor
178
enormous challenge to the philosophy of his time. Its central characteristic is known as realism. Realism is a peculiar term in philosophy.
In ordinary language we know that it means roughly this: the world
around us is real, we can grasp it with our minds, the world that we are
conscious of is not a figment of our imaginations, it is not dependent
on our minds at all. It is there whether we think of it or not. Reality is
independent of our ideas of it. When philosophers speak of realism in
connection with the Middle Ages, however, they mean something quite
different. They mean that Platonic Ideas are real. This has its roots
in Platos teaching that the Forms are the reality of which the empirical world is just the appearance. Forms are the stable and knowable
objects of the intellect. What we perceive through the senses is constantly changing; they are objects of belief, but never of knowledge. By
Ockhams time the doctrine was that
the human intellect discovers in the particulars apprehended
by sense experience an intelligible order of abstract essences
and necessary relations [which are] ontologically prior to
particular things and contingent events and that from this
order the intellect can demonstrate necessary truths concerning first causes and the being and attributes of God.14
Ockham rejected this realism, maintaining that our knowledge is
based on direct experience of particular things and events, not on grasping an intelligible essence. He was realist in the ordinary sense, for he
thought that the world is real and that we can have knowledge of it, but
he was a nominalist in the medieval sense. He thought that the separate
forms or essences are not real. The names we give them are just that,
names (nomina), words that do not stand for real entities.
The name Ockhams razor is given to a principle that Ockham did
not invent but often used. It is often called the principle of parsimony,15
and is usually given as Do not multiply entities needlessly. Ockham
14 William of Ockham, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (London: CollierMacmillan, 1967), 8: 307
15 Probably first found in Aristotle, Physics I:4, 188a, 17-18: it is better to assume a smaller
and finite number of principles.
179
likely did not use exactly this formulation,16 for the good reason that
it seems to imply an ontological interpretationthat a logical principle can lead us to conclusions about the existence or non-existence of
thingsbut he frequently used near neighbours: Plurality is not to be
assumed without necessity and What can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with more. These slogans are intended to mean
that if you have some things to explain, and two possible explanations
of them, the one that requires fewer extra principles, or which is simpler,
is the better explanation, the one more likely to be true.
What makes a story simple? Compare what makes an explanatory
system simple. Leibniz thought that this is the best of all possible worlds
because God chose, among all those possible worlds, the one that had
the greatest variety of phenomena with the least number of laws. Imagine a world in which when you drop a pencil it falls most of the time.
The other times it rises, or floats, or dances a jig. That would be a world
with more phenomena, more odd things happening, but much more
complicated natural lawsgravity would be overruled by who knows
what other varied explanatory principles. (Imagine a world in which the
human female had her teats where a cow does, or in which the human
male had his penis where a pig has its tail. That would certainly be odd
enough. I suppose that the missionary position would cease to be a preferred form of reproductive activity. That would be sad, since having
sex face to face is one of the things that makes humans a more loving
species, but perhaps we could get used to it. But what if some men had
theirs rear-mounted and others forward; or if some women had theirs up
and others down? That would not only be a world with weird standards
of beauty, but one in which biology was an even weirder science; either
the laws of genetics would vary inexplicably, sometimes producing one
type and sometimes the other, or else they would be more complicated
in ways I shall leave the reader to imagine.)
On the other hand, Leibniz thought that if there were fewer explanatory principlesfor example, that all bodies seek rest and there is no
principle of inertia to keep motion goingthen soon all motion would
cease. That would be a world with vastly less variety of phenomena. So,
16 As
180
he thought: this actual world is the one chosen by the creator because it
is the best solution to the problem of how to get the greatest variety of
phenomena with the simplest explanatory principles.
Ockham and Leibniz, of course, used God as a first principle. They
did not intend that Ockhams razor be used against the idea of a creator,
let alone to reduce the number of entities in the universe by one, but
in fact that is what has happened. The modern world discovered that
it did not need God as a hypothesis to explain what could be explained
more simply by natural science. So the principle of parsimony is used to
adjudicate between competing scientific theories: given equal predictive
power, the theory with simpler laws or presuppositions is the better one;
and it is used to show that we do not need the concepts of Platonic Form,
soul, or God, any more than we need the concepts of phlogiston or aura.
Adding God to our explanatory system does not help to explain anything
more than what we can explain by other meansit just indicates that we
have not discovered the explanation yet. So, to put it in the familiar (if
perhaps mistaken) ontological form, God is an extra item in the list of
things in the universe, one that is not necessary, and we should not
multiply entities beyond necessity.
It is in this spirit that Anthony Savile wrote his account of best explanation in aesthetics.17 His main aim in this paper is to explain the place
of the artists intention in appreciating a work of art. His conclusions
are that so far as determining the full basic text of the work is concerned
the artist has the last word, but so far as determining the correct reading
of the text is concerned the artist only has the first word.18 The idea that
there is a correct reading of a work of art is of course controversial,
but invariably some readings are better than others, and typically one is
better than all the others. We can call it the best available reading and
use this as a gloss on correct. This view, that the artist does not have
the last word about what is the correct understanding of his or her work,
requires Savile to provide an account of how such a judgment is to be
justified. His idea, borrowed from Wittgenstein, is that judgments in a
17 Anthony Savile, The Place of Intention in the Concept of Art, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 69, n.s. (1968-9). I shall refer to it as reprinted in Harold Osborne, ed., Aesthetics
(Oxford University Press, 1972), 158-76.
18 Ibid., 164.
181
court of law can provide a useful model.19 When a sentence in a contract needs to be interpreted by a court, the signatories intentions are
not decisive; they are what is at issue. What the court tries to determine
is what the sentence in its contractual context means, what the correct
reading of it is. Here Savile writes:
The closest I have been able to come to finding an account
which meets these various demands is to say that the objective meaning of a string of words uttered in a given context
is given by that reading of those words which (a) accounts
for the presence in that string of as many relevant features
of that string as possible and in the best of cases accounts
for all of them; (b) which is as simple as any other equally
complete reading; (c) which gives as unitary an account as
possible of that string; and (d) which makes the production
of the string appropriate in the intersubjectively identifiable
circumstances of its utterance.20
The correct reading of a work of art, that is, is the one that accounts
for the greatest number of relevant features of the work, while being
as simple and unitary and appropriate as the competing readings. This
gives for aesthetic judgment a set of principles very much like the razor.
If you are trying to account for the greatest number and variety of phenomena with the most parsimonious set of principles possible, then you
are trying not to multiply entities beyond necessity.
There are problems with such an account. I shall not pursue them
here, but it should be mentioned that Savile gives us no guidance about
how to choose between two readings of equal explanatory power, one
of which is simpler and the other more appropriate or unified. Nor does
he explain why we should prefer a reading that accounts for a few more
relevant details but is much less simple and unified, to one of much
greater elegance but slightly less explanatory power. Nonetheless, he is
clearly in the tradition of Ockham and Leibniz. The best reading of a
19 See G.E. Moore, Wittgensteins Lectures in 1930-33, in Philosophical Papers (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1959), 315.
20 Savile, The Place of Intention in the Concept of Art, 169-70.
182
work of art will not multiply entities needlessly. I have introduced this to
my discussion of Pi because Martel explicitly disagrees with this sort of
view. He favours the baroque, he admires multiplicity, he is tolerant of
contradictions and incompatibilities, he denies that necessity is a virtue,
and he champions the imaginative transcendence of mere factuality. The
remainder of my reading of Pi will be aimed at adjudicating this dispute.
7.6
In the final section of the novel, Martel creates a second framing device
for his story. Two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport,
Mr Chiba and Mr Okamoto, assigned to investigate the lost ship, are
sent to Mexico to interview the lone, and entirely unexpected, survivor.
Pi is now in the local infirmary, beginning to recover from his ordeal.
The Japanese officials have imperfect English, so they record their conversations with Pi. These exchanges are very amusing, but also very
disorienting. Chapter 96 reports them as asking Pi to tell them what
happened to him, with as much detail as possible (323). Chapter 97
just says, The story (324). That is, the whole story of the ordeal in
the lifeboat (chapters 37 to 94) is first told here. What we have read
in Part II is Martels version of an older Pis version of the story that
he told to the Transport Ministry men. Presumably, Chapter 97 was
shorter and less detailed than the version we have just read. The big
shock, however, is that the officials do not believe the story. Suddenly
we as readers are shifted from our suspension of disbelief. We have
read the story, of course, as a believable adventure. Reality is stranger
than fiction, we say, and when we read a story we are in believing mode.
Suddenly someone is saying, What about this algae island you say you
came upon? ... [It] is botanically impossible (326). Now about the
tiger, were not sure about it either (328), and so on. Pi in these pages
is a very self-assured teenager. He retorts, What you dont realize is
that we are a strange and forbidding species to wild animals. We fill
them with fear. They avoid us as much as possible (329).
In a lifeboat? Come on, Mr. Patel, its just too hard to
believe!
183
184
him for hitting her son. Pi killed him the next day, when the cook
perhaps mad, perhaps overcome with remorsedid not bother to resist.
Pi concludes, Solitude began. I turned to God. I survived (345). This
story is sometimes viscerally brutal. I shall not quote the gory bits, but
I am reminded of a scene in Martels earlier novel, Self, in which the
female narrator is raped.22 He is capable of evoking profound horror
and disgust.
The Japanese investigators ignore the horror and quickly point out
what the reader has probably already noticed: the two stories match.
The zebra and the sailor both have a broken leg. And the hyena bit off
the zebras leg just as the cook cut off the sailors (345). So the zebra is
the sailor, the orangutan is Pis mother, and the hyena is the cook, which
means that the tiger is Pi! This is a version of the shipwreck story with
four people in the lifeboat instead of one person and four wild animals.
We are reminded of several hints in the story itself that this may be
the truth. In Pis first version, he sees wild animals running about the
sinking ship. It is quite unlikely that the zoo animals would have been
freed from their cages. It is quite likely that hysterical people would
have galloped about the deck in terror, seeming quite beside themselves.
We are being led right from the start into Pis hallucination, his sense of
the incredible story that he is going to experience, and his disconnecting
from his everyday sense of reality in order to cope with the extremes into
which he is about to be plunged. Again, Richard Parker disappears for
three days at the beginning of the story and reappears when Pi has been
without food, water, or sleep for all that time. Perhaps it is no wonder
that he hallucinates a Bengal tiger.
My first reaction, at this point, was to think that the gentle sixteenyear-old Pi is traumatized by these events to such an extent that he must
cast the story in terms of animals. This would achieve two purposes: it
would allow him to think of the terrible cruelty of the cook as the natural
behaviour of a hyena; it would help him to acknowledge the murder of
his mother while treating it as more like the killing of a favourite zoo
22 Yann Martel, Self (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1996), 282-312. Martel often pursues
cosmic themes. Ways of dying is the subject of at least two of the four stories in his first book,
The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1993), including
the title story. The other two deal, like Life of Pi, with the relation between art and reality.
185
animal. So there are psychological reasons for his having told his tale as
one involving animals. That, however, would not make the story true.
186
187
Bengal tiger (354). This sentence is presumably deliberately ambiguous. Literally it says that no castaway has survived in the company of
a tiger (and thus, not Pi either). As English is colloquially understood,
however, it means that no other castaway has survived in the company
of a tiger, as Pi has. In its context (the report contains phrases like an
astounding story of courage and endurance; unparalleled in the history
of shipwrecks), the sentence is bound to be taken in the latter sense. If
the Ministry of Transport officials accept Pis story of Richard Parker,
how could we readers not recognize it as the one worth accepting? Similarly, the story with God. We believe in the tiger, and we should believe
in God.
188
189
created the tiger. It was a tiger, after all, that had first scared the living
vegetarian daylights out of him. Now when he really confronts the fear
of death it takes the tigers form. When things have settled into a routine, and the tiger has been suitably subdued, we get a knowing chapter
on fear (chapter 56). It is followed by a line that I have already quoted:
It was Richard Parker who calmed me down, says Pi. It is the irony
of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the
very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness
(179). That wholeness, I am proposing, is the reunification of Parker
and Pi.
I have told a story about a story about a storymy story about Martels story about Pis story. It is not the only story that could be told
about it. A reader of Life of Pi can surely appreciate it as a simple adventure tale, as a story of survival in a lifeboat with a tiger. Or as a
coming of age story: a story of growing up, leaving childhood, going
through the tribulations of leaving ones family behind and struggling
with teenage abandonment, before arriving safely at adulthood. Or as a
religious allegory: a story of being forced out of paradise, put through
the agonies of earthly life, and received at the end in a heavenly afterlife. Or as diasporic biography: a story of leaving India and suffering
huge dislocation and disorientation, before finding a new home as an
immigrant to Canada. It sustains all of those readings quite effortlessly.
The reader need not see it as a doppelganger story, with the tiger as Pis
alter ego, in order to have appreciated the book.
My story, however, has advantages. My account of what is going on
in Life of Pi does not have real animals in the lifeboat, and it requires
fewer miracles, fewer amendments to the laws of nature, than does the
one that Martel recommends.26 My story requires some extra psychological complexity, but overall it is simpler, it is more appropriate to our
other convictions, and it explains at least as many of the novels relevant details. It does not reduce the story to yeastless factuality, but it
26 One should not discuss a story of a boy and a tiger without mentioning Calvin and Hobbes.
Bill Wattersons cartoon Hobbes is a stuffed animal tiger who comes to life only when he and
Calvin are alone together. Hobbes is much more than a figment of the childs imagination; indeed
he takes the initiative and often raises the philosophical tone of their discussions. Nonetheless, he
is not a real tiger.
190
does not accept Martels claim that we should believe whatever flight
of imagination commands our fancy. It should follow that I also do not
accept Martels claim that Pis story should make us believe in God. I
shall leave the drawing of that conclusion, however, to my reader.
Finally, I wish to emphasize a different but very important lesson:
that the real interest and life in such an investigation begins with the
work of literature. Margaret Atwood says that this is a terrific book.
Its fresh, original, smart, devious, and crammed with absorbing lore.27
She is reminding us that it is the novel that is of first importance. I think
that Martel is right that you miss the better story if you are not gripped
by Pis predicament, and so share his terror and his courage, and believe
in Richard Parker. But the considerations that have led me to read it as
I have, and to argue that it makes a false claim about metaphysics, have
a life of their own. They are the stuff of philosophy.
27 Margaret Atwood in a Sunday Times review, quoted on the front cover of the paperback
edition of Life of Pi.
Part Two:
Theoretical Engagement
Chapter 8
Abstract
This chapter will examine David Braybrookes contribution to the philosophy of social science, specifically, and to feminist epistemology, indirectly, through an assessment of his 1987 book Philosophy of Social
Science and his 1998 updates in Moral Objectives, Rules and the Forms
of Social Change (chapter 13) and The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His detailed examples from naturalist, interpretive, and critical
social science illustrate how the three sides of social science contain and
complete the others. The chapter will show how his articulation of the
mutual support and stimulation within the philosophy of social science
has paralleled, and in some ways anticipated, feminist critiques of epistemology and the development of feminist methodologies themselves. To
do this, I will look at the traditional field of the philosophy of social science, examine what Braybrooke has added to the debate, and look at how
his ideas resonate with the latest ideas in feminist epistemology and philosophy of social science. I will argue that his belief in a unity of method
between naturalists and interpretive social scientists melds with a naturalized feminist epistemology of the kind espoused by Richmond Campbell
and Lynn Nelson, and may help overcome what seems to be the inherent
relativism of Sandra Hardings feminist standpoint theory.
193
194
8.1
Introduction
195
point theory.
196
197
198
199
program, for instance, is used to show how two galaxies might look after colliding with each other, based on the known elements of the two
galaxies. Astronomers then use observational tools to look for similar
patterns in the cosmos to see what, if anything, most closely resembles
the modelled simulation.
Naturalists agree that prediction is difficult in the social sciences
but believe that common patterns can be found and human subjectivity,
goals, and motivations can be used as social variables and part of the
antecedent conditions of the explanation. The goal of a rigorous scientific method should be adhered to because, they argue, it is still the
best way that we know of at this point in history to understand natural
phenomena. As one scientist friend reminds me, no matter who does
the testing, if you drop something it will fall and hell be able to predict
how long it will take to hit the ground, just as one of Newtons laws
predicts. Or put another way, naturalists believe there are facts about
the world, regardless of whether we have discovered them yet (that is,
regardless of who is the knower). Pluto (as either a planet or asteroid)
would continue to exist whether we had found it or not. Most scientists
have faith that though the scientific method isnt perfect it eventually
weeds out theories and ideas that are found to be falsefor instance,
that the sun revolves around the earth, that the earth is flat, that the universe was created only 5000 years ago. The scientific method, then, is a
useful tool to undermine ideas that cant be tested, like creationism, or
fantastical ideas such as the popular science fiction theme in movies like
The Matrix that the world has only actually existed for a few minutes
and that all our memories, lives, and ideas are continuously re-created.
Though it is still the goal of some scientists to elaborate a grand theory that will unify, for example, the fields of electricity, magnetism, and
gravity, most scientists recognize that different views are debated until
a consensus in the community is reached and that they come into the
experiment or simulation with preconceptions and assumptions about
certain laws and theories (Kuhn (1962)). Further, we should not forget that in terms of justification of scientific knowledge, philosophers of
science like Popper and others argued that since theories can never be
positively confirmed, scientists can only falsify theories one at a time.
200
Theories that are not eliminated then may be true or may be very probably true. This indicates a far more nuanced view of truth than interpretive and critical theorists usually give scientists credit for. Perhaps the
most one can say, even for naturalists, is that truth, or properly justified true belief in philosophical terms, is to be seen as an attainment
goal or concept, not as truth itself, and always relative to the particular
scientific context (Kuhn (1962)).
The third traditional school in the philosophy of the social sciences is
critical theory. Developed from the Marxist critique of ideology, critical theorists see themselves as doing emancipatory work, uncovering
what had been hidden and finding the realities masked behind dominant
ideologies (Nielsen (1990)). Knowledge is socially constructed and the
context of knowledge is all important to understanding, explaining, and
uncovering knowledge. Critical theorists reject the idea of objective
knowledge and the disinterested, neutral knower of naturalism, and the
emphasis on meaning and understanding in interpretive theory. The
point, as Marx famously put it, is not merely to understand the world
but to change it. Critical theorists want to unmask ideologies that go
against many peoples best interests but are seen to be the only possible
ideas or systems, for example, the idea that capitalism is the only efficient mode of production. Or that human nature is naturally aggressive
and competitive.
There is no value-free knowledge, according to critical theorists, because knowledge is socially constructed and situated. Undermining naturalisms fact-value distinction is crucial for critical theorists because
separating the two out makes it appear that there is such a thing as
facts on the one hand (objective and true) and mere values or opinions on the other (subjective and perhaps false). This separation, according to critical theorists, hides the ideology and biases that occur
even in so-called facts and within the underlying values of the research
itself. For instance, if a quantitative research study concluded that because of the massive abuse of the welfare system by welfare recipients
people on welfare should be cut off from their support, critical theorists
might question what were the essential values and world-view of the
researchers in the first place. Do they believe that people on welfare are
201
lazy or, alternatively, do they see them as victims? Is the study simply
confirming what the researchers think about poor people and/or, more
broadly, what a capitalist mode of production needs in order to function
efficientlythat is, have a large reserve army of labour?
Critical theorists also began the work of standpointthat is, that disadvantaged groups have the potential for a more holistic view of reality
because of their oppressed position in society. As a tool for survival, according to critical theorists, the proletariat, the black slave, and women
have a better or more complete view of the world than their bourgeois,
white, or male counterpart. The connections between critical theory,
anti-relativism, and feminism will be developed below.
8.3
Outlined so starkly, there seems to be little overlap and agreement between the three schools within the philosophy of social science, and this
is Braybrookes starting point. He also indicates the helpfulness of an
influential article by Brian Fay and Donald Moon, called What Would
an Adequate Philosophy of Social Science Look Like? (Fay and Moon
(1977)). In this article, the authors ask three questions aimed at establishing that the division between naturalism and interpretive theory is
unnecessary: What is the relationship between interpretation and explanation? What is the nature of social scientific theory? And what is the
role of critique? These questions provide the framework for a sophisticated argument outlining how each side is lacking: the naturalists dont
see the need for interpretation of meaning, and the interpretive theorists
dont see the need for explanation and theories. An adequate account
of the social sciences needs both, according to Fay and Moon, and also
needs the questions asked only by critical theory.
Braybrooke agrees. In his 1987 book, he begins by outlining the
distinguishing characteristics of the three sides of the social sciences.
Naturalism, as stated above, relies on the methods from the natural sciences and looks for causal generalizations and regularities. Interpretive
theory attempts to bring to light what the actions that people do signify,
202
looking for settled social rules. Critical theory refuses to take at face
value the rules cited by the interpretive view or the causal regularities of
naturalism (Braybrooke (1987b), 4). Regardless of the real differences
between the three sides, his aim is to show how robust are all three and
how complexly interconnected (4). None of them has exclusive truth
and the differences coexist with a great number of parallels (5). Critical theory, he argues, asks different questions but its methods reduce
to those of the other two. Therefore, there is a unity within the social
sciences. In his 1998 update, he goes further, suggesting that a settled
social rule presupposes the existence of corresponding causal regularities in social phenomena and vice versa (Braybrooke (1998a), 251).
Moreover, he argues regularities found in social phenomena would not
have the foundation in personal choices and actions that they must have
to be fully explained in our eyes as producers of social science or as
consumers of it if they did not have a foundation in choices and actions
guided by rules (257). In his 1998 essay in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he also takes on the contribution of postmodernism
to the debate about the philosophy of social sciences and claims that
though aspects of postmodernism are helpful in understanding the limits of knowledge, some of the claims are so radically sceptical as to undermine the possibilities of knowledge and social science itself, and this
he does not want to do (Braybrooke (1998b), 846). Therefore, though
postmodernism can be seen as a separate (fourth) option to naturalism,
interpretive, and critical theory, Braybrooke takes postmodernism as a
variation of critical theory, in terms of his claims about unity (Braybrooke (1998b)).
These are strong claims, and adherents of all three schools (and particularly of postmodernism) will object to the explicit idea of a unity.
How does he make these claims? First, he shows how naturalism tends
to concentrate on different questions, facts, and concerns than interpretive theory, specifically in looking at group facts, that is, how groups
operate as opposed to how individuals operate within those groups.
As mentioned above, naturalism is definitely in the minority among
philosophers and social scientists today: as Braybrooke says, its quite
out of fashion (Braybrooke (1987b), 7). He asks the questions, Are all
203
204
interviewed the men. He concluded that they start out their adult lives
looking for jobs, but because they lack higher education, they are only
able to get menial jobs. The menial jobs dont pay very much and the
men dont get much respect. Their future looks bleak so they give up
and dont work at all. This affects their relationships with the women
in their lives and particularly the mothers of their children, whom they
dont treat very well. Liebow then asked the question, Why do these
men act as they do? His answer: because they cant be good family
providers, they set up alternative rules, and act in ways that support a
macho image of themselves, to deal with their failures as husbands and
fathers. Its an interpretive study, according to Braybrooke, because the
study is qualitativeLiebow deals with the meaning behind the actions
of the menand because its about social rules and conforming or failing to conform to rules.
For critical theory, Braybrooke doesnt articulate a specific real-life
example but instead uses critical theory to critique the naturalistic and
interpretive examples. From a critical theorists point of view, Epsteins
example would be banal or uninteresting at best, an ideological obfuscation at worst. Epstein takes the current system at face value, doesnt
look at whose interests the political system serves. And the study could
rationalize the current system because it fails to show that any opposition is a sham anyway, because no parties will threaten the interests of
the property-owning groups. Braybrooke says Liebow would fare better, but, even so, critical theorists would most likely have issues with
Liebows assumptions about capitalism and the welfare statethat is,
that the market is imperfect but generally beneficialand his lack of
recognition that alternative arrangements are available but hidden from
the masses by a dominant ideology. None of this deeper critique is done
by Liebow, so his example would be considered limited as well, by critical theorists (Braybrooke (1987b), 17-18).
Though critical theorists ask different questions and see themselves
as delving deeper into critique than naturalist or interpretive theorists,
Braybrooke argues that they use the same methods as interpretive theory and naturalism. The interpretive side of critical theory lies in the
emphasis on comparing what social scientists aim at doing, under cer-
205
tain rules that express their recognized aims and their activities, with
what they are doing unawares or unawares omitting to do (70). Critical theorists tend to rely on qualitative methods and try to understand
the meaning behind or underneath something, like interpretive theorists.
Support for pluralism within political science, for example, according
to a critical perspective, leads either to ignoring unorganised groups
or to postulating that they have special means of representation (70).
The naturalistic side of critical theory comes out in the Marxist critique
of ideology in that it upholds a specific theoretical explanation of the
omissions and distortions which it finds in subcritical social science
(76). That is, a causal connection is used to explain how change occurs
historically because of changes within a particular class structure. The
major problem for admitting the naturalist bent of critical theory will
occur with the fact-value distinction and critical theorys opposition to
this distinction. Braybrooke argues that this should be a problem for
critical theory only because it is a fallacy, according to him, to argue
that because a study can be found to be ideological, that every statement in that body ... has an ideological cast and import (81). Put even
more starkly, he argues that every single statement in a set of statements about social phenomena can be true, yet the whole set can have
ideological, distortive consequences for peoples thinking (81). The
difference between the two (the possibility of statements of fact vs the
ideological impact of those facts and of the study as a whole) must be
sorted out and supported by evidence. This will be important later when
we look at Sandra Hardings work.
Braybrooke also argues, convincingly, that Marx himself used both
naturalist and interpretive methods. Marxs social science was, according to Braybrooke,
naturalistic in explaining the ideas of subcritical social scientists as determined ultimately by the roles given them in
social arrangements that are causal consequences of the current system of production. It is interpretative in the details
with which this determination works out, including the rules
that social scientists accept and conform to because of their
class position. (83-4)
206
207
rule that tells individual MPs to vote as a bloc explains why. And vice
versa. Canadian political parties are more cohesive than American ones
because individual MPs vote as a bloc, and individual MPs vote as a
bloc because of elements of the Canadian political system that make
political parties more cohesive than American ones.
Braybrooke outlines how even loose regularities can be helpful, how
laws can be developed, even if transitory or specific to a community, and
how the model-theoretic view in naturalism could be used by interpretive social scientists. In his 1998 essay, he particularly concentrates on
the model-theoretic view and shows how this approach relieves social
science of the burden of finding regularities that hold for all societies
(Braybrooke (1998b), 840). As he states, even the natural sciences have
revised the view that laws hold for all time and now use a system that
sets up models that are true for that model only. The model is then used
to show how other models resemble one range or another of phenomena closely enough to be more useful than other models in prediction
and explanation (840).
In Liebows study, we see the development of social rules that are
conformed to, denied, or changed. The men on Tallys Corner start by
following a rule that says they cannot have respect unless they are regular providers, and in order to retain self-respect (because they cant follow this societal rule) they oppress the women in their lives. Braybrooke
then shows how this example, though clearly interpretive, has naturalist
tendencies. The conformity or lack of conformity to rules are solutions
to problems (how the men cope with their circumstances); the solutions
are the explanation and can be put into the form of a logical argument (if
you are a married man and want respect, you must provide for your family (the law); this man is married but cant provide (the facts); therefore,
he gets no respect and treats his family badly (thing to be explained);
and Liebows findings are empirical, meaning he observes the men, he
is looking for repeated patterns of behaviour, and the study can be replicated with a similar group and verified or falsifiedall characteristic
of naturalism, not interpretive social science. Further, these facts could
have been quantified (say, more than 50 or 75 per cent of the men in
this area act in similar ways), and therefore, statistical regularities can
208
209
In the case of this article, the increased rate of fatal collisions this particular year was an anomaly to be explained by the increased speeding
of drivers, itself a rule that has been violated (Lipscombe (2004), A1).
Rules and regularities, therefore, presuppose the other.
Braybrooke concludes his 1987 book with a caveat about generalizations: the fact that the generalization applies only to one agent does
not prevent it from being a generalization (126), and he accepts as fact
that generalization is the ambition of social science (128). In his 1998
update, Braybrooke addresses the postmodern challenge inherent in
any claim about generalization by undermining the claim of universality even in naturalism. As mentioned above, scientists no longer think of
themselves as searching for the truth but argue that scientific success
happens in local contexts and only for a time (Braybrooke (1998b),
839). The postmodern concern with grand narratives and globalizing
discourses (844) has led to recognition that discourse is power and that
claims for knowledge become conflicts of power or to wills to truth
(844). Postmodernists attack the idea of a unified view of the world,
yet even Foucaults theory comes with claims of truth, or at least some
approximation of truth (844). According to Braybrooke, even these
sweeping pronouncements can be accommodated by the three schools
(845). Braybrooke argues that postmodernists
like Foucault and Lyotard bring back the study of rules ...
with an emphasis more thorough-going than any other philosopher[s] ... But if there can be models of systems of rules
just as there can be models of regularities then how far a
model fits a real system, in regard to any universally quantified statement that figures in the model, is a matter for
quantitativestatisticalstudy just as much with rules as
with regularities. (845)
Methodologically, therefore, both interpretive and naturalist questions are in play with postmodernism and now in a form that is ready
to receive the insistence of postmodern writers on truth being local, a
matter of limited context that is always subject to supersession (845).
Though Braybrooke acknowledges the impact of postmodernism on the
210
8.4
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
1996)). She argues that communities construct knowledge because communities are prior to individuals. What I can know is only what we know
(Nelson (1993), 124). She draws on Quines work on naturalized epistemology to show how radically interdependent methods and knowledge are, and how we begin knowledge with the historical, social, and
scientific practices of a community. She argues that knowledge is socially constructed and constrained by evidence (129). Her example of
man-the-hunter theories is illustrative here. Quoting Longino, when anthropologists or archaeologists have examined chipped stones and then
theorized that the stones were used by the men for hunting (as opposed
to the women for gathering), they are filling in the gap between theory
and data with their own assumptions, stereotypes, and biases about the
relations between men and women (143-4). There is no direct evidence
for either theory. Therefore, we have to make gender relations part of
the research project itself. Her conclusions suggest that we do not need
to reply on one timeless truth even as we demand more empirically
adequate knowledge (151).
Similarly, Richmond Campbell and his work on naturalized epistemology would be helpful to Harding, as he seems to accept her view that
the influence of feminist values can make the process of testing more
likely to track the truth and hence more objective than it would otherwise be (Campbell (1998), 2-3). He wants to give a realist conception
of objectivity [that] is compatible with feminist political goals, that, in
fact, requires them, and he doesnt want to reject the idea of truth or the
possibility of impartial inquiry (6). What he does that she doesnt (and
probably should) is accept that values and knowledge can be socially
constructed and objective. For example, dont feminists want to be able
to say that women are oppressed by such and such and heres how? That
womens subordination exists and is wrong (socially constructed and
objective)? (2). Campbell, similar to Braybrooke, recognizes there is
a corresponding interdependence between facts and meanings and that
meaning and value cant be ascertained independent of each other (3).
Many of the arguments he develops over the course of the book align
with Braybrooke and would probably help Hardings own arguments:
political values dont make objective inquiry impossible; science is not
219
220
8.5
Conclusions
In this chapter, I have tried to show how Braybrookes work has influenced the development of the philosophy of the social sciences and how
it has paralleled certain feminist critiques of science, social science, and
epistemology. Braybrooke argues that there is a unity of method in
the social sciences, and I would argue that though a debate still goes
on in some circles, many feminists accept that claim as well. He gives
good grounds for not dismissing quantitative methods out of hand, and
shows how both can and should be used in research projects. He recognizes the changes within naturalism and the natural sciences, which
would make feminist criticisms of the fact-value dichotomy more mainstream than before, and less problematic for the dilemma of relativism.
The complementarity between naturalism and interpretive theory resonates with the multi-methods of feminists, and a naturalized feminist
epistemology would go some distance in addressing standpoint theorists concerns about the philosophy of social science. Though not his
definitive words on the subject, Im sure, Ill leave the final words for
Braybrooke:
Once the relations within and between the schools have been
assessed again, with the lessons about postmodernism allowed for, the relations can be described as relations of inquiries
inquiries concerned with rules, concerned with regularities,
concerned with texts, concerned with subjective experience.
If one likes, the distinction between the schools, having served
all the purposes mentioned, can then be left behind as a historical curiosity. (Braybrooke (1998b), 840)
Chapter 9
Abstract
In Natural Law Modernized, David Braybrooke raises the important question of why default egoismthat is, egoism as the default account of human motivationcontinues to dominate the imagination of philosophical
ethics. In this paper, I use recent work by Braybrooke and by Nancy Sherman to argue that reliance on moral sentiment theories can re-inscribe
egoism in accounts of moral motivation that attempt a more social starting place, and that this re-inscription blocks our understanding of group
identifications. Default egoism slips into Braybrookes own account of
motivation with his use of Humean moral sentiment. Braybrooke, however, also offers a naturalistic picture of our moral development as persons, which picture is independent of his use of moral sentiment theory.
Braybrookes conception of moral education does dislodge default egoism, and I highlight the conception of persons that allows him to move
away from egoism.
9.1
Introduction
222
9.1. INTRODUCTION
223
self who are concerned with issues of group hierarchy, group conflict,
and the need to theorize cosmopolitan alternatives to present relationships of group exploitation and harm. Braybrooke raises the important
question of why default egoismthat is, egoism as the default account
of human motivationcontinues to dominate the imagination of philosophical ethics.
A number of ethical theorists have seen our emotional capacities for
empathy or fellow feeling as an alternative to grounding ethics in our
undoubted capacities for self-interest. In this paper I test Braybrookes
insights and concerns about default egoism against two such theories of
moral motivation. I draw the first from recent work by prominent virtue
theorist Nancy Sherman (Sherman (1998b); ?). The second account is
Braybrookes own, from Natural Law Modernized (2001). Both Sherman and Braybrooke have insisted that philosophers move away from
an exclusive focus on reason and pay more attention to emotion in accounts of moral motivation. Indebted to the history of moral sentiment
theories, both focus on human capacities to sympathetically engage with
others feelings and argue that our sociable capacities befit us to support
the good of others.1 I pose a potential dilemma for Sherman and Braybrooke: highlighting our capacities for fellow feeling in order to direct
an alternative to an ethics of self-interest may simply continue to reinscribe egoism as the default case of moral motivation.
I use Shermans work on empathy and cosmopolitanism to highlight
and expand on the importance of Braybrookes concerns about default
egoism. Shermans theory of empathy represents persons as egoists in
ways that conflict directly with the empirical research on which she relies. Default egoism is an assumption of her view. Braybrookes insight
is that default egoism thwarts our attempts to properly conceive the conditions of communal thriving. Sherman offers empathic altruism as a
solution to egoism; in her theory, however, it is merely egoisms Janus
face. I shall argue that the motivational frame of egoism/altruism both
fails to capture our collective identifications and blocks attention to their
presence. If we do not understand these identifications, there is no possi1 Sherman defends the possibility of moral cosmopolitanism; Braybrooke defends the more
modest possibility of a widespread commitment to common goods.
224
225
ory (Lloyd (2000), 113). Lloyd points out that when we confront a familiar theoretical model of the self with an undertheorized area of experience, we often become aware of the inadequate fit between the model
and experience. This dissonance can make salient certain unexamined
features of our models of the self and press us towards understandings
more adequate to the experiences we are discussing. My intent is to
make salient how we represent or imagine persons as egoists through
accounts of empathy and fellow feeling, and to use Braybrookes work
on moral education to suggest an alternative.3
226
they are responding or would respond. Adam Smith, Shermans preferred touchstone, writes: By the imagination we place ourselves in
his situation ... we enter, as it were, into his body and become in some
measure the same person with him; and thence form some idea of his
sentiments, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is
not altogether unlike them (Smith (1759), 47-8, quoted in ?, 88).
There are two familiar aspects to Smiths attempt to make concrete
empathy as a mechanism for gaining access to others thoughts and feelings: an offer of spatial metaphor involving change of location (we
enter, as it were, into his body) and reference to the human capacities
or tendenciesin this passage, imaginationwhich might defend the
appropriateness of such metaphors. The dual way of concretizing empathy occurs throughout Shermans account. On the one hand she refers
to empathy as a kind of active transport (?, 87). On the other, and crucially given her commitments to a naturalized moral psychology, she
offers an extensive survey of recent empirical work on childrens capacities for motor mimicry, shared attention, and imagination, specifically
role-playing.
For example, three-day-old neonates can and do mimic mouth opening and tongue extension, as well as the crying of similarly aged neonates. Children and their caretakers engage in mimetic synchronies,
picking up shared rhythms of behaviour (?, 104). Moreover, children
are robust pretenders, and this, Sherman writes, undoubtedly contributes to their learning to role play in a way required for understanding
others beliefs (106). Sherman takes the studies she surveys to support
claims about the biological nature of our empathetic capacities and the
ubiquity of our empathetic responses. In addition, Sherman refers to
studies that allegedly support the thesis that empathy predisposes us to
sympathy towards others and thus motivates us to behave altruistically.
Altruism is sometimes understood as acting on others interests in ways
that compromise ones own welfare. Sherman uses the term to mean
simply that we act on others interests while putting aside our own. This
latter use is relatively standard in philosophical texts that contrast egoism and altruism, and I follow it in this paper.
Finally, there is a distinction in Shermans work between two modes
227
of empathic engagement, which distinction is important to understanding her representation of the empathic self. In imagining Ellas situation, for example, I might try to imagine myself as Ella, attempting to
grasp her response through an act of self transformation. Alternatively,
I might imagine myself in Ellas situation, an act of projection, then
analogizing from my own response to Ellas likely response. This latter
mode of inference remains empathy-like in its objective of trying to gain
access to others perspectives in order to share and thus understand their
responses. Sherman allows a greater role for projective empathy than
most theorists yet concedes that this mode may at best give us information about how we ourselves would respond to a situation. Transformative empathy remains Shermans ideal of empathetic engagement, a
normative heuristic for our empathy projects, and she suggests our early
capacities for mimicry can be seen as its developmental building blocks
(101-2).
Sherman joins a number of other recent theorists in hypothesizing
that empathy is a fundamental way of understanding others. She suggests that the empirical work she discusses gives credence to claims
that empathy grounds our ability to form shared conceptions, to form
attachments with others, to achieve the self-knowledge that comes from
understanding how we are seen, and the self-esteem that comes from
feeling understood ((1998a), 84). Most important, empathy should hold
pride of place in our accounts of moral motivation. Through empathetic
engagement we overcome both egoism and cultural parochialism and
develop altruistic tendencies that extend beyond family, associates, and
fellow citizens to those outside our borders (Sherman (1998b), 103).
9.3
228
229
230
231
of default egoism, these allegiances are very clearly a problem for the
cosmopolitan ethicist and they take forms whose variety can only be
obscured by the claim that when we see how empathy can help us transcend egoism, we will see that it can help us with parochialism. I take
Shermans inability to deal at all realistically with group identifications,
allegiances, and hostilities to be the most serious cost of default egoism
in her account. Whether Braybrooke can deal realistically with these
allegiances will be a test of his account.
The unstable positioning of default egoism in Shermans account,
and the problems it causes both for coherence and the promise of an
approach to ethics that highlights our capacities for empathy, raise the
question of why she is committed to egoism/altruism as a conceptual
framework for thinking about empathy. Is there something about Shermans understanding of empathy that tends to drag egoism in its undercarriage? It is important to address this question if we are to avoid the
common philosophical tendency to re-inscribe egoism in our theorizing.
9.4
232
233
234
235
236
finally with more difficulty to distant others. First, we find again the immediate separation of self-interest from other-interest. We are moved to
support what is useful to our fellows when [our] own interest is not in
question (Braybrooke (2001), 129). Braybrooke implies that our interests will either conflict with others interests or lead us to be indifferent
to others. Second, we put aside our own interests in order to assume
the perspectives of others. The sentiment of humanity depends on our
being normal human beings, fully equipped with the capacity to feel in
a disinterested perspective (139).
Finally, because distance attenuates sympathy, we are reinforced in
the idea that the main impediment to communal thriving is disinterest
in distant others, a preference for our near and dear. Humes moral
sentiment theory does not involve trading places in imagination. But it
does continue to represent the egoist self as at a spatial distance from
others, moving towards them through bonds of sympathy. Moreover,
Humes use of distance takes on a metaphorical cast. He remarks that
we sympathize more with our acquaintances than with strangers; with
our countrymen than with foreigners, but given his account of fellowfeeling, we should sympathize equally with all who are spatially contiguous to us, be they strangers or friends (Hume (1978), 580). Felt
separateness from others becomes troped once again through the notion of spatial distance. Humes account may at best explain why we
must make exceptional effort to become emotionally engaged with distant others, but not why those spatially contiguous to us, who may differ
from us in class, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and
so on, do not have our sympathy.
Joan Tronto has argued that if we think of the actual historic context of moral sentiment theory, it is not odd that the sympathetic self
and the egoist self are reciprocally reinforcing representations. In the
eighteenth century Europe saw significant transformations in collective
life. While humans grew more distant from one another and the bonds
between them became more formal and more formally equally, they
also had to expand their gaze beyond the local to the nation, and indeed
sometimes to the global level (Tronto (1993), 31). Because of the erosion of close communal forms of life, the strength of self interest as a
237
9.6
The description of empathy as distance-reducing and as thereby encouraging other-directed interests is so familiar as an account of moral sociability that we may wonder what our options are. In the chapter on
moral education in Natural Law Modernized, Braybrooke elaborates
an account of universal childrearing that shows how we develop into
persons via our enlistment into common projects and purposes. I shall
argue that Braybrookes account of moral education offers us the option of relational interest as well as an account of human development
that supports its centrality. In the final section of this chapter, I align
his writing with recent feminist accounts of the self and emotion to argue that it provokes and requires a very different kind of philosophical
imagining for the self than that found in moral sentiment theory, one
more adequate to theorizing group hierarchy in complex cultures.
Like Shermans, Braybrookes theory of motivation is modestly naturalized. But it is an account of our natural capacities as trained. Braybrookes theory of motivation is a description of moral education, an
account of how children are raised to be sociable in ways that may lead
them to support rules and laws that have as their end the good of the
community. The core of the account is that, universally, we raise children to be persons by continually enlisting them in joint activities. The
success of these cooperative activities requires that the participants de-
238
velop mutual intentions and commitments towards a common end, understood as the good of that activity.
Briefly, parents and other caretakers initially give significance to the
innate responses of their infants; that is, they attribute to their infants
desires, intentions, frustrations, and so on, and do so in order to devise
patterns of interaction that will eventually make room for the child as a
partner. As the child develops, the child and the adult come to rely on
each other to fulfill their responsibilities in the partnership. Braybrooke
writes:
Children, like dogs and horses, can normally rely on commitments forthcoming from their mentors in return for the
commitments that they themselves make. If Kate desists
from throwing her porridge upon the floor, she will be left
to eat in peace; it will be supplied in due quantity at due
times. If Frank stays out of the street, the walks to the park
will continue. Moreover, when things are working well, the
commitment leads to achievement of common goodsthe
Common Good of each joint activity or ritual: Both mother
and child act with the object of having the child regularly
fed under a form of civility that both respect; both father and
child act with the object of walking to the park and doing so
in decent order and safety. (Braybrooke (2001), 204)
Through these common activities, childrens needs are met in ways
that enlist them into partnerships in which they share intentions and
goals with others. Children develop not only pride in themselves for
their contributions, but also trust in and concern for their partners, a
valuing of mutual pleasure in the success of realizing shared intentions
and interests, and cooperative dispositions towards other such activities.
Parents and children have interests in common, but these interests
are also shared interests. Braybrookes description of types of interests
through which infants are eventually socialized into persons is not to be
confused with a familiar philosophical picture of parallel but solitary
interests served by a common scheme of cooperation (64), that is, of
self-interested individuals who act together in narrowly pragmatic ways.
239
Participants in a shared activity take on responsibility for their contribution to the activity and hold themselves to be answerable to others
for their contribution. But they also often take some responsibility for
the contributions of others. They develop mutual care and concern for
each other through their interactions and develop emotional dispositions
that take as their object the activity as shared. For example, they take
pleasure in shared achievement. Finally, they have a commitment to the
shared activity. To think of my interests as parallel rather than shared
suggests that when my hypothesized solitary interests would clearly be
better met by an alternative arrangement, I would shift to that arrangement. But my commitment to a shared activity may make me reluctant
to undertake such a shift. Put simply, if Franks father is sick and cannot
go to the park, Frank may well decide to stay home and keep him company instead of going for his walk with someone else. As I understand
Braybrooke, the responsibility, emotion, and commitment that characterize shared interests are neither conceptually nor developmentally independent. The emotional attitudes developed in the course of shared
activitiesfor example, Franks concern for his fathers well-being
are partly constitutive of our having shared interests and commitments
and act as evidence of them.
Braybrooke is aware that too much of a disposition towards cooperativeness can lead to exploitation and that a sensible upbringing will
encourage independence and autonomy as well as cooperativeness. But
independence and autonomy are not conceived as deriving from egoism: the point of departure . . . is not a person who is bifurcated between being sociable and being self-striving . . . The independence will
be an independence that has a cast reflecting the development of cooperativeness (207). I gloss this remark by pointing out that our independence and autonomy as persons are cultivated in the kinds of developmental partnerships that Braybrooke describes. Braybrooke also allows
that persons have egoistic as well as cooperative tendencies, and that a
healthy adult community will include parallel interests.
What Braybrooke insists on is that the kind of engagement in joint
activities that he describes, engagement through which we develop as
persons, puts the partners to the activities outside of egoism in their re-
240
241
tives. Nevertheless, Sober and Wilsons use of desire to sketch an alternative to egoism/altruism leaves open the possibility of an agent with
solitary interests in the context of shared activity. Braybrooke offers
a model where the motives of individual agent derive from the shared
interests formed through their collaborations with others.
242
243
fore as a point of tension, they can help us see the wide base of shared
interests out of which we act.
Philosophers who want to defeat the egoist have sometimes imagined this figure as a psychopath,6 but this imagining has been not been
effective in locating and dislodging default egoism, the kind of egoism
of Shermans theory that is compatible with the claim that people arent
really egoists because they have transcended egoism. To think about
our experience of self and agency in ways made possible by Lloyd and
Braybrooke gives us a better way to ask what we are imagining when we
understand persons through a motivational structure of egoism/altruism.
The interest structure offered by egoism/altruism and offered in Shermans account of empathy gives us a portrait of people who have the
capacity to sharply distinguish self- and other-interest in ways that fail
to reflect common experiences of self and moral agency.
The alternative model of motivation that I have forefronted in Braybrooke becomes richer when we follow Lloyds advice and move explicitly from picturing selves spatially to explicitly contemplating the temporal dimensions of selfhood. Like Braybrooke, Lloyd regards taking
on responsibilities and forming bonds of identification, bonds through
which our interests become shared, as reciprocal movements in our development as persons. But she would argue that Braybrookes account
of moral education gives only a snapshot of human sociability; it captures at a time an ongoing process of developing allegiances that shape
ones sense of self. We may think of this process narratively. We come
to think of ourselves as persisting subjects by interpreting and appropriating the events of our pasts through narratives about who we are and
why we acted thus (Schechtman (1996); Walker (1998b)). Many of
these narratives will, like Sassoons, be narratives of relation, and each
of us will have many such narratives. The fact that a self is intrinsically
something that has a past means that there is an internal multiplicity to
selfhood (Lloyd (2000), 122). Lloyd affirms with Braybrooke that the
formation of selves is a collective matter (118) but adds that we must
understand persons as bearing this complexity in the way that they experience their identities, responsibilities, interests, emotions, and oppor6 See,
244
245
our attention from sympathy to the wider range of emotions that play a
role in our group life.
Margaret Urban Walker has argued, for example, that our emotional
responses form one of the primary ways in which we are collectively
shaped to maintain political hierarchies (Walker (1998a)).7 She draws
attention to the work of Lillian Smith, an anti-racist activist in the
American south in the 1940s and 1950s. In her autobiography, Killers
of the Dream, Smith writes, I do not think our mothers were aware that
they were teaching us lessons. It was as if they were revolving mirrors
reflecting life outside the home, inside their memory, outside the home,
and we were the spectators entranced by the bright and terrible images
we saw there (Smith (1950), 83). These words, which invoke Lloyds
account of our complex subjectivities, are part of Smiths introduction
to The Lessons. In this chapter, Smith details how white southern children learned lessons about cleanliness, food, sin, and sexuality in ways
interwoven with training in racial segregation:
The lesson on segregation was only a logical extension of
the lessons on sex and white superiority and God. Not only
Negros but everything dark, dangerous, evil must be pushed
to the rim of ones life. Signs put over doors in the world
and over minds seemed natural enough to children like us,
for signs had already been put over forbidden areas on our
bodies ... Each lesson was linked on to the other drawing
strength from it. (90-1)
Moreover, these lessons involved the inculcation of emotional responses that would maintain this segregation as a joint activity of white
southern culture. The mother who taught me what I know of tenderness
and love and compassion also taught me the bleak rituals of keeping Negros in their place (27, quoted in Walker (1998b), 70).
The emotional responses that characterize racist and ethnocentric hierarchies often have nothing to do with physical distance or emotional
disinterest, but shape hierarchy in the context of proximity. David
7 have previously linked Lloyd and Walker (Walker (1998a)) on this point in Campbell (Camp-
bell).
246
247
Chapter 10
Abstract
Is moral judgment a state of belief or a state of feeling and desire? Cognitivists about moral judgment answer: true or false belief; non-cognitivists
answer: feeling and/or desire. What is at stake in this disagreement is the
possibility of moral knowledge, for if moral judgment is not a state of
true or false belief, it cannot embody moral knowledge. Those who defend the possibility of moral knowledge, however, face a dilemma. They
must reject, on pain of inconsistency, one of two plausible Humean views:
(1) that moral judgments themselves contain motivation to act, or (2) that
motivation cannot arise from belief alone. In Natural Law Modernized
David Braybrooke portrays Hume as defending the possibility of moral
knowledge, thus apparently committing Hume to an inconsistent triad of
propositions. This essay defends a novel interpretation of moral judgment as a complex, hybrid state of belief and feeling/desire that would
undermine the long-standing dichotomy between cognitivism and noncognitivism and demonstrate how Braybrookes understanding of Hume
does not lead to inconsistency. In doing so, the essay attempts to bring out
the moral significance of the underlying false opposition between reason
and emotion that has been with us since Plato and continues to bedevil
contemporary moral theory.
I am grateful for the extensive comments on an earlier draft provided by David Braybrooke,
Rochney Jacobsen, Duncan MacIntosh, William Rottschaefer, and Susan Sherwin.
249
250
10.1
The Problem
251
Since these views together lead to contradiction, (2) and (3) provide
a Humean argument for rejecting (1). If moral judgments are intrinsically motivating [by (2)see Hume (1978), 413-18] but beliefs are not
[by (3)455-76], then moral judgments cannot be beliefs [contrary to
(1)].
The inconsistency, however, also constitutes a problem with the concept of moral judgment, since each of the three views has merit on its
own. View (3) is embedded in the dominant and widely shared beliefdesire theory of action, according to which both belief and desire are
needed to explain behaviour. I might believe that food is before me but
without any desire to eat. The fact of my belief by itself will not predict my eating. On the other hand, if I desire food but do not believe
that food is before me, the desire by itself will not predict my eating.
In general, only the combination of belief and desire can predict and
explain behaviour on this theory. View (2), that moral judgments carry
with them their own motivation, is equally plausible. I might desire to
do what is right for extrinsic reasons, say to protect my reputation, but
thinking something is right is, it would seem, motivating just in itself.
Unfortunately, views (2) and (3) entail that my thinking something is
right cannot be a belief that it is right and hence that view (1) must be
false. But to reject (1) is surely contrary to common sense. It appears, in
sum, that one of these views must be wrong, yet it is hard to understand
how any one of them can be given up.2
In his Natural Law Modernized David Braybrooke proposes to interpret David Hume as a natural law theorist and thus as a philosopher
committed to the possibility of moral knowledge (Braybrooke (2001),
130-5) and therefore the truth of (1). It is clear that the problem just
posed is as pressing for Braybrookes Hume as it would be for any
philosopher who defends the possibility of moral knowledge. Indeed, it
is more so, since Hume endorses the very propositions that seem inconsistent with that possibility! Is Braybrookes non-standard interpretation
of Hume incoherent in light of this apparent inconsistency?
2 Michael Smith (Smith (1994)) formulates a closely related problem in terms of rational
belief and motivation. See my What Is Moral Judgment?Campbell (2005) for how it bears on
this problem.
252
10.2
I will be assuming that moral realism, the position that moral knowledge is possible, is the default position in moral theory. Moral realism
agrees with common sense and is backed by powerful theoretical considerations that are well developed in the literature (see, e.g., Copp
(1995), 15-19). For example, moral realism simplifies our understanding of logical inference in moral reasoning by allowing us to apply the
standard of truth preservation for valid inference. It also adds coherence to our understanding of normative claims in general, such as claims
about validity of inferences or mistakes in language. We think we know
that some inferences are valid, that some uses of languages incorrect,
despite the evident normative character of these claims. Why should
normative claims in morals have a different epistemological status from
normative claims about logic and meaning? Braybrooke presses similar questions in his article What Truth Does the Emotive-Imperative
Answer to the Open-Question Argument Leave to Moral Judgments?
Braybrooke (2003c)
Critics of moral realism attempt to counter these defences and to
raise objections of their own. Space does not permit even cursory dis-
253
cussion of all the main lines of objection to moral realism, though I have
reviewed them elsewhere (Campbell (2003)). Here I confine myself to
objections that bear on the central problem for moral judgment just outlined. Prominent among these objections is Mackies charge that moral
judgment is subject to systematic error, with the result that all moral
judgments are false (Mackie (1977)). Clearly, if Mackies error theory
is true, moral realism cannot be. His theory is that moral judgments are
about facts that are intrinsically prescriptive and as such imply what is
highly implausible from a scientific perspective. Moreover, nothing in
science would explain how we could know such facts. For these reasons
commonsense moral thinking is dubious metaphysically and epistemologically. Does Mackies theory serve to reinforce the doubts just raised
about the coherence of moral judgment?
The inconsistency among (1), (2), and (3) is more reasonably viewed
as being as much a problem for Mackies theory as it is for moral realism. The reason is just that his theory is committed to the same three
inconsistent propositions. His theory entails that moral judgments are
false; hence, his theory entails that moral judgments are beliefs rather
than merely states of desire or feeling. Moreover, his theory does not
deny either that moral judgments are intrinsically moving or that the
leading scientific account of motivation is true. Indeed, his theory implies that even if no intrinsically prescriptive facts exist, we are moved
in judging that they exist and he believes that we should accept what
science says about motivation. Thus, he is committed to (2) and (3) as
well as (1), at least until science offers a better account of what moves
us to act. In sum, he shares with moral realism the central problem with
moral judgment outlined above.
Moral realism has, of course, other ways to address Mackies objection. It can, for example, deny that moral realism entails a commitment
to intrinsically prescriptive moral facts. Naturalistic forms of moral realism attempt to do precisely that. Nevertheless, even if they can succeed (as I believe they can), the central problem remains a problem for
moral realism. Moral realism seems committed to (1), since it is hard to
see how there can be moral knowledge without moral belief. It must,
therefore, reject either (2) or (3). It must, that is, answer Humes argu-
254
ment from (2) and (3) to the denial of (1). The next two sections will
consider two approaches prominent in the literature on moral realism.
10.3
The externalist moral realist rejects (2) in favour of (1) and (3). Why
reject (2)? The standard answer, perhaps best developed by David
Brink (Brink (1989)), is that we can easily imagine someone who judges
something to be morally wrong but just doesnt give a damn. Not only
can we imagine such a person, sociopaths exist who apparently agree
that what they want to do is wrong but feel no compunction about doing it. Then there are ordinary folks who at times feel no inclination to
do something that on balance is right from their point of view, such as
rendering a small courtesy. How can moral judgments be intrinsically
motivating in the face of these cases? The standard reply in defence of
(2)the internalist replyis that the cases are described incorrectly.
The person who doesnt give a damn doesnt really believe that the act
in question is wrong (or right). Instead the person thinks that the action
is wrong (or right) only in the non-literal sense that this is what most
people regard as wrong (or right).
Admittedly, it may be difficult or even impossible to settle this dispute, since the cases present conflicting evidence about which description is correct. The person says one thing but the persons behaviour and
feeling are reason not to treat what is said as being intended literally.
The externalist, however, provides a way out. She can present a positive
account of how motivation arises in cases of moral judgment without
necessarily conceding that (2) is true. An example from Braybrookes
discussion of natural law theory illustrates how such an account might
unfold. According to this theory, to judge something to be morally unacceptable is to judge it to be contrary to rules that must be obeyed by
and large in order for members of society to thrive (Braybrooke (2001),
3). The concept of thriving, let us suppose, can be given empirical content through reference to meeting basic human needs, say according
to Braybrookes theory of needs (Braybrooke (1987a)). Thus, on this
understanding of what is meant in judging something morally unac-
255
256
10.4
The defender of (1) and (2) must reject (3). The difficulties facing those
who take this option are equally grave. One that has been mentioned
already is that (3) is part of a well-established theory of motivation according to which beliefs motivate only when coupled with desires. As
McNaughton puts it: Desires without beliefs are blind; beliefs without desires are inert (McNaughton (1988), 21). Many would say that
this understanding is part of our folk psychological theory of why we
do anything. It is this theory that is reflected also in Bayesian models
of rational decision-making. There subjective probabilities of possible
outcomes stand in for degrees of belief that those outcomes will result
if a given decision is taken and individual utilities of outcomes stand
257
258
259
260
than the semantic forms of the dichotomy that generates the problem,
and we can easily reformulate the inconsistent triad of positions in semantic terms (see my What Is Moral Judgment?). Interestingly, the
labels used for the semantic distinction imply that cognitivism and noncognitivism are to be understood as contradictories. We need only add
that the terms internalism and externalism applied to forms of realism are meant to be contradictories too, so that there is no in-between
position possible. Once we have set aside error theory, only three possibilities appear to remain: externalist moral realism, internalist moral
realism, and non-cognitivism. Moreover, each view faces serious objections given the inconsistent triad, since each view must reject a member
of the triad despite the independent support enjoyed by each member.
What is at fault, I now want to argue, is not any of the claims comprising the triad but the underlying framework used to generate the problem. In particular, I contend that contrary to appearances and contrary to
the assumption made throughout a century of meta-ethical discussion,
the view that moral judgments are or express states of belief and the
view that moral judgments are or express states of feeling, desire, and
attitude (non-cognitivism) are either not contraries or else not contradictories. On either alternative the problem of moral judgment dissolves
and room is left for a more adequate understanding of the complexity of
moral judgment. Let me explain.
Once the debate around how to resolve the moral problem moves
beyond simple statements of the competing alternatives, it turns out
that positions corresponding to (1) invariably are interpreted to entail
that moral judgments are or express only beliefs. Positions corresponding to the denial of (1), correspondingly, are invariably interpreted so
that they entail that moral judgments are or express only feeling, desire, or attitude (not belief). The alert reader will already have noted
this phenomenon in the above exposition of the reasons for and against
the main forms of moral realism. Of course, with the key qualification
only made explicit, it is abundantly clear that the positions are contraries and not contradictories. Even though they are officially defined
without this qualification so that the truth of one entails the denial of
the other, with the qualification the situation is logically different. Al-
261
262
263
264
tend to meet you tomorrow for lunch, I both believe that I will meet you
for lunch and desire that I will (Millikan (1996)). If I dont meet you,
say because I am unexpectedly detained, then there are two separate
failures, one of belief and another of desire, with different implications.
The intention, however, was not impossible. It would be especially odd
to think the difference in directions of fit is a problem for moral judgment, since what is desired on the hybrid account (that we do not steal)
is not the same as what is believed (that stealing is wrong).
Another worry is that I do not specify the content of moral belief.
Notoriously it is difficult to specify the content of moral belief in a way
that will win wide support. Of course, any adequate defence of moral
realism needs such an account. But the point of the present theory is to
offer an alternative framework that resolves the problem of moral judgment. Admittedly, the alternative leaves other matters concerning moral
realism exactly where they were. The hybrid theory is offered as a better analysis of moral judgment. It can be right in this respect even if
moral realism is false. Indeed, the present suggestion actually is compatible with error theory, since the hybrid theory is not committed to
the position that moral beliefs are true. It would be unfair to saddle this
theory with the task of fully defending moral realism. It does, however,
provide an advance over the standard internalist and externalist forms
of moral realism simply because it avoids the inconsistency with which
we began. In the next section, though, I will suggest how the content of
moral beliefs might be specified in a Humean form of moral realism.
10.7
265
identifies moral judgment with feeling and desire. In light of the beliefdesire theory, however, it may pay us to take a second look.
Consider first the question whether the belief-desire theory of moral
judgment can be squared with Humes understanding of moral perception and judgment as involving sentiment. We have framed the former
mainly in terms of belief and desire rather than belief and feeling, but it
should be evident that nothing in the structure of the theory proposed or
in the arguments supporting it should stop us from incorporating feeling
and emotion of specific kinds into the dual conception of moral judgment. If I condemn the gratuitous, senseless cruelty of some action, I
not only want it to stop and not to be repeated, but also feel displeasure,
perhaps revulsion and disgust, in thinking about it, and my emotional
reaction arguably is as inseparable from condemnation as my desire to
prevent the action. It is the same when I condemn my own action and
feel shame and remorse for what I have done. These feelings are as
much a part of my condemnation as my desire never to repeat it. We
can of course imagine special cases where we make the negative judgment but feel little or nothing, just as we have imagined cases where the
desire is absent. In the normal case, though, feeling and desire together
go with the judgment.
What about moral belief? The argument can be made that feeling
does not exclude moral belief as part of the judgment any more than
desire does. The hybrid theory accommodates both belief and the combination of feeling and desire. In this respect Humes recognition of
sentiment as part of moral perception is compatible with the alternative approach to moral judgment that I am advocating. Hume did argue
that, since morals excite us to feel and move us to act, morals are not
based on reason, which tells us only what is true or false. But this argument is just the argument, in slightly different words, from (2) and
(3) to the rejection of (1). We have already seen that this argument is
subject to more than one interpretation. If the rejection of (1) is properly interpreted as rejecting the extreme position that moral judgment is
only belief, then the argument is sound but does not establish that moral
judgment does not contain belief in addition to desire and feeling. In
short, Humes argument can be taken to show that morals are not based
266
solely on reason, not that reason plays no part in the content of moral
judgment or in its appraisal. It is true that Hume doesnt explicitly formulate his position in these terms, but it would be uncharitable to saddle
him with the logically stronger, less reasonable position since he does
not explicitly exclude it either.
We should examine, in any case, Humes understanding of moral
judgment when it is couched in the context of his more general theory of morals. Two parts of that theory stand out as directly relevant.
First, Hume holds that the feelings that are internal to moral judgment
are feelings that arise when contemplating the object of those feelings
impartially and therefore are separate from feelings aroused by selfinterest. In a familiar passage Hume writes:
Nor is every sentiment of pleasure or pain, which arises from
characters and actions, of that peculiar kind which makes us
praise or condemn. The good qualities of an enemy are hurtful to us, but may still command our esteem and respect. Tis
only when a character is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest, that it causes such a feeling
or sentiment as denominates it morally good or evil. (Hume
(1978), 472)3
The complementary part is Humes understanding of human nature
such that when we do contemplate aspects of character, bracketing our
own interests, we are in fact moved with pleasure in contemplating those
aspects that are useful to persons (either to themselves or others, either directly or indirectly) and we are moved with displeasure by the
opposite. When the first part, a key ingredient of his theory of moral
judgment, is put together with the second part, his idea of a sentiment
of humanity that is generally shared, the result is a broadly utilitarian
account of moral virtue and vice. Aspects of character that are useful
are judged properly to be virtuous and those that are hurtful are judged
properly to be vicious.
3 See also Humes appendix on moral sentiment in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals (Hume (1966)).
267
Braybrooke would question the description of Humes view as utilitarian, since Humes focus is not on maximizing utility narrowly defined, but the issue of what to call Humes view need not detain us. The
understanding of Hume I am proposing is about the status of moral judgment rather than the details of his normative theory. It does not depend
at all on how we interpret usefulness as applied to character. All that is
essential to assume is that the usefulness of a character is real enough
that almost everyone will respond to it positively when they consider it
impartially and the opposite when a character is hurtful. For the sake of
argument, then, let us grant this Humean assumption. What follows for
the status of moral judgment? Can it embody moral knowledge?
My argument in support of Braybrookes reading of Hume has three
steps. The first is to note that Humes understanding of moral judgment,
that it is a feeling of a certain kind, obviously allows the feeling to be
subject to rational appraisal. This can happen in two general ways, as
Hume makes clear. Someone can make the case that the person making
the judgment is not viewing the subject matter impartially. If the feeling
of pleasure or dissatisfaction arises from self-interest rather than from
taking a general perspective, then the feeling is not justified as a moral
judgment. Whether self-interest explains the feeling is, moreover, a factual matter that can be debated on rational grounds. Second, the feeling
can be faulted because it is based on a false view of the facts. The feeling of displeasure can arise from believing that a certain person is in
pain when he is not. Again, the validity of the feeling would be undermined based on a matter to which reason can be applied. No defender
of non-cognitivism should want to deny any of this, since it is all commonplace and doesnt by itself entail that the feeling embodies moral
knowledge.
The second step, however, takes us significantly further along the
road to moral knowledge. Suppose our moral judger is not making any
mistake about the facts (facts that anyone would concede are facts) and
is thinking of the subject matter in a frame of mind that allows his feelings to respond to what is judged apart from its bearing on self-interest.
Then, given the broad Humean assumption one paragraph back that we
are accepting for the sake of argument, there exist facts that account
268
for the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and this feeling is the moral
judgment. Although this implication does not obviously reduce to saying that the judger is having feelings about moral facts, it isnt clear why
we should resist this conclusion if we take Hume seriously. The feelings
are moral feelings on his view; moreover, they are feelings that would
arise in exactly the same way for virtually anyone who is not mistaken
about what these facts are and views them apart from their bearing on
self-interest. Why not say, then, that the feelings are about moral facts?
The answer that the non-cognitivist will urge is that the facts are not
really moral facts but quite ordinary facts. We have a situation in which
someone has (by Humes theory) moral feelings about non-moral facts.
This response is, of course, classical non-cognitivism, but we dont have
to read this situation that way. To insist that we do would be questionbegging. One alternative is familiar from the literature. It is to treat
Hume as an ideal observer theorist who holds that a moral fact about
virtue (say) is a fact about what someone would feel who is in an ideal
position to observe the subject matter (has an accurate view of the garden variety facts, is thinking about them impartially, is normal, and so
on). Thus, Henry Aiken writes: Hume holds that any morally good act
is one which, in the last analysis, would be approved by an impartial
spectator as useful or agreeable to ourselves or others (Aiken (1948),
xxxviii). This alternative has familiar problems, for example, that the
judgment is not directly about the object judged but about someones
reactions to it, even though the moral judgment appears to be directly
about the object judged. A better alternative is to say just that the commonplace fact cited earlier about the usefulness of a certain character is
a moral fact; and it is a moral fact because it explains what is for Hume
almost a universal feeling of pleasure when this fact about usefulness is
considered impartially. One could say without too much exaggeration
that the moral feelings experienced represent the moral fact to which
they are a natural response, at least if one accepts Humes understanding of moral judgment and human nature.
We are now in a position to take the third step. When we feel the
pleasure in this way we also normally believe (rightly or wrongly) that
the feeling experienced is justified or warranted by the subject matter.
269
270
Chapter 11
Abstract
In What Truth Does the Emotive-Imperative Answer to the Open-Question
Argument Leave to Moral Judgments? David Braybrooke claims that the
justification of a moral claim is independent of the justification of morality generallythat ethical justification does not have to be traced back to
meta-ethical justification. I support this claim by appealing to a contextualist theory of epistemic justification. Drawing on the work of Michael
Williams and Robert Brandom, I contend, first, that every claim is justified by default and requires articulated reasons only when it is challenged.
Not every challenge is a reasonable challengeonly those that share the
burden of proof are. Second, I hold that sceptics about moral truth and
justification, such as J.L. Mackie, are committed to a substantive philosophical position, closely linked to foundationalism, that Williams has
called epistemological realism, insofar as they hold that moral claims
are intrinsically less certain than claims about non-moral facts on which
moral facts might be taken to supervene. But there is no reason to believe that any propositions are intrinsically more certain than any others.
Certainty is a function of epistemic context, not semantic or empirical
content. Therefore, although moral claims may presuppose the truth of
some meta-ethical claims, the justification of moral claims does not depend on the justification of meta-ethical claims.
In
writing this essay, I have benefited greatly from conversations with and presentations by
271
272
In What Truth Does the Emotive-Imperative Answer to the Open-Question Argument Leave to Moral Judgments? (Braybrooke, 2003c), David
Braybrooke arrives at a conclusion that may provoke some disquiet
among those with strongly objectivist intuitions about moral judgments:
We have, in this conception of moral realism, as explained
meta-ethically, true used within one structure of ideas that
figures among many logically possible structures, in this case,
a structure of ideas ultimately invoking thriving, personal
and social, and empirical evidence about thriving. It is a
loose enough sense of thriving to accommodate some minor variations in conceptions of thriving. At the same time,
true is used unselfconsciously, without thinking of metaethics, within moral discourse itself with no apprehension,
and no compelling reason to apprehend, that the basis for using it is liable to being supplanted. Just so we can habitually
rely on one calendar, knowing that it is just one among many
possible calendars, many of which have bizarre features, and
none of which may be accurate astronomically. (350)
The objectivists whom I have in mind will regard Braybrookes use
of the distinction between ethics and meta-ethics as artificial and illegitimate, contending that applications of the truth-predicate to moral
claims are justifiable only if meta-ethical claims about basic moral principles and objective grounds of value are also justifiable. Such objectivist impulses will drive these philosophers either to become Platonists about value or to become subjectivists about value (because they
conclude that the conditions necessary for true moral judgments are
absent).
I shall argue here that the objectivist impulse that leads to these
results arises, at least in part, from a commitment to what Michael
Williams has called epistemological realism (Williams (1996), 89134; Williams (2001), 84, 193), the doctrine that there are natural relations of epistemic priority among our beliefs and claims. Rejecting this
Mason Cash, Richmond Campbell, and Jenna Woodrow. Thanks also to Tom Vinci, Nathan
Brett, and David Braybrooke for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
273
274
dience, and both emotions and imperatives are essential to their being
so (343). This much, indeed, remains compatible with giving an account of which moral judgments are justifiable or right, for although
the expressivist holds that moral judgments are not truth-apt, she may
yet agree without contradiction that the attitudes expressed or imperatives issued can be measured against some standard of evaluation. For
example, some attitudes and imperatives may be held justified because
they promote the thriving of a society (343) and others unjustifiable
because they detract from that thriving.
So, at a glance, it seems that there is no role for the concept of truth
in moral theory. Ethics can . . . work, both at the level of immediate
moral judgments and at the deeper level on which these judgments are
justified, without invoking the concept of truth (344). However, matters
are more complicated than this in Braybrookes view. He argues that
attempts to dismiss the concept of truth from ethics (344) lead their
proponents into two kinds of awkwardness.
First, there is the awkwardness involved in the fact that truth is the
concept to which we appeal when we are engaged in any sort of serious endorsement (344), whether such endorsement should arise in
the context of particle physics, of history, of small talk about middlesized dry goods, or of big talk about ethics. It is, says Braybrooke, a
feature of ordinary moral discourse (345) that we judge to be true
those moral claims to which we commit ourselves. And so, deviations from such ordinary practice demand some extraordinary reason.
Such an extraordinary reason is not provided by expressivist accounts
of moral discourse, such as emotivism and prescriptivism. These positive views concerning moral language arose in response to prior critiques of the truth-evaluability of moral claims and do not themselves
provide any such critique. Indeed, Braybrooke argues, a moral realist
someone who holds minimally that moral claims are truth-evaluable and
that some of them are truecan happily endorse much of what the expressivist wants to say about the pragmatic force of indicative sentences
containing morally evaluative terms without supposing that the meaning of such terms as good has thereby been settled. What is needed is
simply a plausible story about how to distinguish the distinctive crite-
275
ria for endorsing moral judgments from the grounds for endorsing or
making scientific propositions or common sense reports of perception
(345). If truth is a term of serious endorsement, then we are entitled
to apply it to moral judgments so long as we try to work out a general
theory of warranting judgments, in which warranting moral judgments
would proceed in some respects differently from warranting reports of
perception, and warranting aesthetic judgments more differently still
(345). We might, for example, say that just those moral judgments are
warranted that are certified by justified moral rules, most plausibly,
rules that promote the thriving of societies and the people who belong
to them (345).
Second, says Braybrooke, when we assert that particular moral rules
are justified, we seem clearly to be committing ourselves to the truth of
such statements. He summarizes the point:
A rule cited to warrant a moral judgment praising an honest
action is endorsed as according with the appropriate grounds
or criteria for adopting such a rule, the grounds or criteria
for justifying it. Here the place of truth is secure, whether or
not what is justified by the justification are themselves truthbearers, as in some case, they clearly are not, as long as what
are to be taken as appropriate grounds or criteria have been
identified, even if only by fiat, and accepted. (345)
So, even if we were to retreat and allow the expressivist point that moral
evaluations are not genuine assertions, but expressions of (dis)approval
or exhortations to act or refrain, and so not truth-value candidates,1 it
would not follow that such expressions cannot be candidates for justification, nor that there is no truth of the matter concerning whether or not
they are justified.
Now it may seem that in trying to hang on to truth in ethics Braybrooke runs afoul of the very open-question argument that he wanted to
1 As Rockney Jacobsen in Jacobsen (1997) has argued, this inference is suspect. The meaning
of a sentence is unaltered by the pragmatic force with which it used on a given occasion, but if
meaning and truth-conditions are inter-related, then it is not clear that a change in pragmatic force
from assertion to exhortation should have any effect on whether or what truth-value a sentence
expresses.
276
treat expressivism as a response to, because his appeal to the certification of moral judgments by rules that promote the thriving of societies
and the people who belong to them (345) looks suspiciously like a definition of good. Does such a definition not dogmatically forestall debate on goodness in just the way Moore argued was unreasonable? No,
says Braybrooke, because Moore failed to distinguish between ethics
and meta-ethics (347)between the making of moral judgments and
the discussion or consideration of them without endorsing themand
one can quite coherently express ones commitment to a particular definition of good in ones ethical judgments, while still acknowledging
at the meta-ethical level that such a definition is just one among many
possible definitions (347-50).
There may, for example, be variation among people concerning what
thriving amounts to (348), even though most agree that conduciveness
to thriving is a key criterion for the justification of moral claims. Or,
indeed, there may be disagreement about whether the notion of thriving has any role to play in defining good. But neither of these facts,
thinks Braybrooke, need impair our commitment to the specific criteria on which we wish to take a stand (349). The long course of human
experience, he seems to want to say, makes certain criteria of thriving uniquely compelling (349) grounds for the justification of moral
judgments. And so, Braybrooke concludes, we can endorse the truth
of moral claims, even while allowing that the principles that may be invoked to justify them are contingent principles that we might never have
adoptedthat there are, indeed, other principles that reasonable people
might well prefer.
But it is at this point that the objectivists I alluded to in my opening remarks will want to interject with the following dilemma: either
the uniquely compelling nature of Braybrookes principles of thriving
consists in our believing them to be the correct definition of good, or
we cannot possibly be moral realists, for the kind of warrant required
if moral judgments are to count as true must derive from the truth of
Braybrookes principles of thriving. In short, the distinction between
ethics and meta-ethics that Braybrooke relies on is illegitimate because
it masks the fact that one can get moral truth only by denying that the
11.2. DEFLATIONISM
277
11.2 Deflationism
As I remarked earlier, I plan to defend Braybrookes reliance on the
ethics/meta-ethics distinction by appealing to a contextualist account of
epistemic justification and to an analogy with Wittgensteins conventionalist treatment of mathematics. I want to begin, however, with some
remarks about the notion of truth most suitable to Braybrookes moral
realism.
Proponents of various deflationary accounts of truth may well give
Braybrooke a commendatory pat on the back for his proposal that we
preserve the place of truth in ethics by work[ing] out a general theory
of warranting judgments, in which warranting moral judgments would
proceed in some respects differently from warranting reports of perception, and warranting aesthetic judgments more differently still (345).
This is because a recurrentthough perhaps not universalfeature of
such accounts is their acknowledgment that the application of the truthpredicate is (a) something that can be appropriately done to any wellformed declarative sentence of natural language that can play a role
in inferences and be a patient undergoing the standard logical operations, and (b) a distinctive speech act whose pragmatic force consists
in the serious endorsement, to use Braybrookes words, of the claim
at hand.2 However, Braybrooke sees in such intellectual chumminess
a disguised criticismnamely, that truth has no interesting role to play
in ethics because the application of the truth-predicate to moral claims
amounts to no more than the reiteration of those self-same claims (348).
At least one relevant contrast here involves some sort of correspondence theory of truth. For a correspondence theorist, to call a moral
claim true is to commit oneself to there being some objective fact in
2 I want to avoid an issue that divides deflationistsnamely, whether a sentence or what a
sentence expresses counts as the appropriate vehicle of truth. My own sympathies lie in the latter
camp, but I do not thereby wish to be committed to an ontology of abstract, sentence-like entities
called propositions. Trying to clarify how that is possible would take me too far afield to be
worthwhile here. (See Glock (2003), chap. 4, especially at 134). My fellow deflationists should
be able to recast what I say here in terms of Brandoms version of the prosentential theory of truth.
See Brandom (1994), chap. 5).
278
the world that makes the moral claim true and which does so in a way
that explains or grounds the truth of the moral judgment. Truth has
a substantive nature, and moral truth does, too. Starting from these assumptions, the deflationist may seem to be saying that insofar as nothing
in general explains truth, nothing in general explains the truth of moral
judgments, and so attaching the truth-predicate to such judgments is
unconstrained by any moral reality. Indeed, the judgments themselves
are similarly unconstrained. They are, perhaps, mere expressions of
feeling or personal preference or prescriptions by which we hope to influence the behaviour of others, and the fact that we can apply the truthpredicate to them does nothing to make them more cognitively robust.
It seems to me that this interpretation of deflationary treatments of
truth reduces them all to some form of redundancy theory of truth
(347), according to which (b) above exhausts both the pragmatic and
semantic roles of truth. However, there is no reason to suppose that
deflationism is committed to such a theory, which is doubly implausible.
First, it ignores the fact that true sometimes has other pragmatic roles
to play than endorsement, as when I caution someone that what she
believes might well be true, but I see no justification for it,3 or as when
I judge that if a valid arguments premises are true, then so must its
conclusion be, without thereby endorsing any of the premises or the
conclusion. Second, it collapses an account of the pragmatic use of
true into an account of the semantic role of truea mistake entirely
analogous to the one Braybrooke accuses expressivist accounts of moral
discourse of having committed (i.e., supposing that an account of the
pragmatic force of moral claims tells us about the semantic role of
morally evaluative terms). Even someone who thinks that pragmatics is
logically prior to semantics should be wary of that mistake.4 A wiser
deflationism insists on keeping these two dimensions of truth distinct.
Still, it may seem that deflationism has little to say about the application of true and false to moral judgments beyond the observation
that moral judgments are expressed by well-formed sentences that can
3
See Rorty (Rorty (1991), 128) for this cautionary use of true.
Robert Brandom (Brandom (1994), chap. 5), who holds just such a priority-of-pragmatics
thesis argues that the mistake of the classical pragmatists was precisely to confuse the pragmatics
of truth with the semantics of truth.
4
279
280
Williams defines contextualism as the view that standards for correctly attributing or claiming knowledge are not fixed but subject to circumstantial variation (Williams (2001), 159). This view is best understood in the context of considering how to respond to two kinds
of scepticism, which I follow Williams in labelling Agrippan and
Cartesian. Agrippan scepticism is so named because of its relation
to Agrippas trilemma (Williams (2001), 62; Williams (1996), 60),
also known as the Munchhausen trilemma. For any knowledge claim
that is advanced, the Agrippan sceptic demands some justification in
support of that claim, but the presentation of evidence or argument in
favour of the original claim results only in a further challenge from the
Agrippan, who incessantly demands of us how we know that which we
cite as justificationand so the conversation continues. The Agrippans
challenge seems to leave us with only three options: embark on an infinite regress of reasons for reasons (and so never complete the task of
justifying the initial claim), argue in a circle (and so, fail to give a genuine reason), or dogmatically assert the truth of some claim (and so, fail
even to try to give a reason). Because none of these seems to constitute actually justifying our original knowledge claim, we are placed in
the uncomfortable position of having to concede that we are ignorant
where we thought we knew. Because such a sceptical argument can be
launched against any knowledge claim, the scope of our ignorance is
immense.
Both foundationalism and coherentism are often presented as attempts to answer the Agrippan sceptic. The foundationalist contends
that our beliefs can be classified into two kinds: (i) basic beliefs, which
do not rely on any other beliefs for their justification and which are intrinsically credible (Williams (2001), 82)justified by their very nature; (ii) non-basic beliefs, which acquire what justification they can get
from being inferentially connected to one of more basic beliefs. Such
basic beliefs serve as stopping points for the sceptics infinite regress
without being dogmatic (or so it is contended).
The coherentist, by contrast, contends that the foundationalist adheres to an incorrect linear model of justificationa model shared with
the Agrippan sceptic. This linear model is mistaken because it is linked
281
to a dubious semantic atomism (102) without which the idea of a basic belief cannot be made intelligible. In order for the foundationalists
basic beliefs to wear their justification on their sleeves, they must be intelligible in radical detachment from any other beliefs. If their content
is determined, even in part, by their inferential connections with other
beliefs, then it seems that their justification must also be, and so they
fail to be basic beliefs.7
Doubts about this sort of semantic atomism make the coherentist dubious that there are any such things as the basic beliefs described by the
foundationalist, to which the epistemic credentials of all other beliefs
can allegedly be traced. On the contrary, justification must proceed
holistically, according to this view. A belief counts as justified only
insofar as it belongs to a justified system of beliefs, and a system of beliefs counts as justified, in turn, only insofar as it is a coherent system.
But coherence is not mere consistency. A coherent system of beliefs is
rich in inferential connections (both deductive and non-deductive), and
it is more coherent to the degree that it is both comprehensive and explanatory. All local attempts at justification, the coherentist holds, are
ultimately beholden to a broader global coherence of this sort.
Williamss contextualist thinks that foundationalism and coherentism are both committed to two controversial assumptions that lie at
the respective hearts of our two kinds of scepticismAgrippan and
Cartesian. The first of these Williams calls the Prior Grounding Requirement (24). (The second, to which I shall return below, Williams
calls Epistemological Realism.) The Prior Grounding Requirement,
in brief, says that one is not being a responsible epistemic agent unless
ones beliefs are based on adequate evidence (24). This entails, on the
one hand, a thoroughgoing internalism, according to which the only
justifiers are those within the ken of the would-be knower, and, on the
7 Thus Descartes is led to the view that he has an immediate and utterly simple intuition of
his own existence as a thinking thing, and empiricist foundationalists like Schlick find themselves
clinging to ostensibly atomistic judgments or expressions of immediate sense experience such as
Red here now. In order for such Konstatierungen to serve as justifiers for any other beliefs, they
must be propositional in form. But it seems that as soon as they are propositional, they involve
concepts whose meaning or content is determined in part by their applicability on other occasions.
This makes them vulnerable to error, and such vulnerability to error threatens their status as foundations (recent attempts to articulate a modest or moderate foundationalism notwithstanding).
282
other hand, a commitment to the view that ones belief is justified only if
no further evidence would serve as defeating evidence. A consequence
of setting the standards of justification so high is that it is easy for a
critic to challenge ones justification. All she need do is ask, How do
you know that? and the Agrippan trilemma is immediately brought into
play. The burden of proof lies entirely and squarely on the shoulders of
the knowledge claimant so that every epistemic claim is, as Williams
puts it, guilty unless proved innocent (149).
This legal analogy suggests an alternative. If we adopt the view that
beliefs are to be considered innocent until proven guilty, then we get
something like what Robert Brandom calls a default and challenge
(Brandom (1994), 177; Williams (2001), 36) model of justification. According to this view, every belief has the normative status (Brandom
(1994), 16-17) of being justified by default, and it loses this status only
if it is brought into question by a reasonable challengea challenge
that either gives positive reasons for thinking that the claim is false or,
at a later dialectical stage, gives positive reasons for doubting whatever
justification may be marshalled in defence of a claim that has been confronted by a reasonable challenge. This model, Williams submits, does
better justice to our actual practices of giving and demanding reasons,
according to which the burden of proof is something to be shared by the
parties involved in a critical exchange. It denies the sceptic the undefended right to enter naked challenges (Williams (2001), 150).
It might be wondered what, in principle, prevents the Default and
Challenge model from leading disputing parties into an infinite regress
of reasons. The answer is, Nothingin principle. If people had unlimited lifespans, few practical concerns, and vast intellectual resources,
they might continue to debate forever. (Indeed, some debates seem
interminablewe politely call them philosophy.) But in practice many
debates do come to an endan end at which no further reasonable challenge is forthcoming, or an end at which the knowledge claimant fails
to respond to a reasonable challenge. Such ends are not the intrinsically
credible basic beliefs of the foundationalist, but they are not cases of
acquiescing in dogma either. They are reasonable resting points, sometimes temporary, sometimes very stable, and they vary from one context
11.4. CONTEXTUALISM
283
of debate to another.8 There is no reason, prima facie, to expect all reasonably resolved debates to end up in the same place. It makes no more
sense to ask which points are intrinsically stopping points than it does
to ask which points in Ohio are starting points? (Quine (1980), 35).
Such resting points help to define a context of debate or inquiry.
Unlike the classical foundationalists basic beliefs, they are not intrinsically beyond doubt, but to entertain doubts about them is to mistake
or change the context of inquiry. Thus, to respond without joking to
my claim that I left my wallet in my office with the challenge How do
you know? You might just be dreaming is to enter a challenge that is
inappropriate in the context, although it may well have a place in some
other context of debatea class on epistemology, for example.
But the latter-day foundationalist will demur, insisting that insofar
as all knowledge of the world around us comes from the senses, we can
expect that all debates one way or another can be properly resolved only
by tracing reasons back to basic beliefs about sense experience. And the
coherentist will insist that the temporary or stable resting points at which
many debates actually stop do not count as anything more than justification for practical purposes. Such local justification becomes justification proper, only when it has been pursued to the global level (Williams
(1996), 290).
284
we could identify and describe the reality that we assume to lie beyond
appearances. This is because the Cartesian sceptic offers a rival hypothesis for the explanation of experience. Unlike the Agrippan sceptic, she
does not simply ask, How do you know that? Rather, she suggests
that the hypothesis that there is a world beyond my mind, populated by
objects, events, and other minds, lacks explanatory power because the
evidence in its favour is also evidence in favour of the hypothesis that
I am the victim of some evil demons deceptive activities. Cartesian
scepticism is thus committed to what Williams refers to as epistemological realism (Williams (2001), 84, 193; Williams (1996), 89-134).
This is the view that beliefs get their epistemic status from their content,
so that some beliefs are by their very nature epistemically prior to others. It is the alleged intrinsic epistemic priority (as opposed to causal
priority) of beliefs about immediate experience that makes the Cartesian
underdetermination problem pressing. If epistemic priority is a matter
of context and not content, then the Cartesian problem can be avoided
in many contexts.
Williams thinks that both foundationalism and coherentism are also
committed to epistemological realism. This commitment is most obvious in the case of the foundationalist, for whom basic beliefstypically
beliefs about the immediate contents of experiencehave an intrinsic
epistemic priority over non-basic beliefs. But Williams argues that it
also characterizes the case of the coherentist, who is committed by
a more circuitous route to granting epistemic priority to principles
of logic (needed for making assessments about coherence) (Williams
(2001), 135; Williams (1996), 301) and to meta-beliefs (Williams
(1996), 302) concerning the coherence of ones own total system of
beliefs (Williams (2001), 136-7). (Either the meta-belief that my system of beliefs is coherent is justified, or it is not. If it is, then that must
be because it belongs to a more encompassing system of beliefs, about
whose coherence I now require a further meta-belief whose justification
is in question. If it is not, then I have no reason to think that my belief
system is really coherent after all and no justification, ultimately, for
any of my beliefs.) Coherentism is foundationalism in disguise (137).
Contextualism, then, is characterized in part by a rejection of episte-
11.4. CONTEXTUALISM
285
mological realism (and with it, foundationalism, coherentism, and vulnerability to Cartesian underdetermination problems) and of the Prior
Grounding Requirement, in favour of a Default and Challenge Model
of epistemic justification. Can more be said in the way of a positive
characterization of the view? Briefly, Williams outlines five kinds of
constraints on epistemic contexts that determine whether a given belief
or claim should be taken to be justified.
First, if we are to be engaged in meaningful inquiry or debate at all,
we must assume as justified a significant bundle of background beliefs.
A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt ( Wittgenstein
(1972), 450). This is just a corollary of the default and challenge
model, which holds a belief justified unless challenged and requires
that challenges be reasonable. Williams (Williams, 1996) refers to constraints of this kind as intelligibility or semantic constraints (159). Related to, but less general than, such semantic constraints are methodological (160) or topical or disciplinary constraints (117). Such
constraints treat certain propositions as methodological necessities
(Williams (2001), 160; Williams (1996), 123), exempting them from
doubt in a way that serves to define a context of inquiry. Thus, it is a
methodological necessity of particle physics that there are subatomic
particles. If one doubts this, then one has ceased to do particle physics
and has moved to a new epistemic contextthe context of some radically new physical theory, perhaps, or, more likely, the context of instrumentalist philosophy of science. Similarly, it is a precondition of historical inquiryWilliamss favourite examplethat historians assume
that the Earth existed long before we were all born. Such methodological necessities, as we saw earlier, are not themselves indubitable. But
to attempt to cast doubt on them is either to misunderstand the context
of inquiry or to try deliberately to change it.
Once one has embarked on a particular inquiry, ones claims and
questions become subject to a third kind of constraintdialectical
constraints (Williams (2001), 161; Williams (1996), 117). Whether my
claim that Arthur Wellesleys failed night attack at Seringapatam made
him leery of such attacks in the future is justified or not depends on
what has already been said by military historians on the subject. If
286
evidence has already been presented that offers some rival explanation
for Wellesleys preferences, then my claim will not enjoy the status of
being default-justified. But if I am the first one to broach the matter,
then default justification is mine.
Of course, how stringent we are about demanding justification depends on how much time we have, and what the stakes are in a given
debate. The more severe the practical consequences of being wrong
are, the tighter the economic constraints (Williams (2001), 161) will
be. When my life hangs in the balance, I apply a higher standard of justification to the claim that the cup on the left, not the cup on the right,
contains the poison than I would if I were doing a high school chemistry
experiment.
Finally, if my claims about Arthur Wellesley at the battle of Seringapatam are to be justified, it must not only be the case that there is no
contrary claim already in play and that sceptical (or, in the case of
pre-history, evangelical) doubts about the age of the Earth are held in
abeyance; it must, additionally, actually be true that the Earth existed
long before we were born. If the Earth is not more than two hundred years old, then no claim about Arthur Wellesleys early exploits
is justified at all. Such situational constraints (Williams (2001), 162;
Williams (1996), 117) make it clear that contextualism is not a purely
internalist picture of justification because my beliefs being justified depends in part upon the instantiation of facts that may be well beyond my
ken. Similarly, it must be the case that my eyes are functioning sufficiently well if my claim that the driver who almost ran me over was at
the wheel of a sports-utility vehicle and not a sedan is to be justified
even though the proper functioning of my eyes may be in certain respects beyond my own ability to discover. Contextualism thus acknowledges that reliabilism points to something important in our practices
of justification, but declines any attempt to reduce normative concepts
like justification to ostensibly non-normative ones, like causation by a
reliable process.9
9 As Williams points out, reliability is a covertly normative term (Williams (2001), 33), since
a process is reliable to the extent that it produces results that we value. I take this to be much the
same point that John Pollock makes (Pollock (1986), 118-201), when he complains about the
287
288
289
290
is the justification for such a rule? continues the second in his sifting
humour. At this point, the first philosopher may respond by citing some
general principlethe categorical imperative, perhaps, or the greatest
happiness principle, or, as Braybrooke would have it, a principle which
says that moral rules are licensed insofar as they contribute to a thriving society (Braybrooke (2003c), 342; my little dialogue, here, follows
the pattern of Braybrookes). But why, responds the second, should
we care about the thriving of a society or about the greatest happiness
of the greatest number or about treating others as ends in themselves?
Why think that any of these things tells us about moral goodness? Why,
indeed, think that there is any such thing as moral goodness? Isnt
goodness, after all, a rather queer property to expect to find being instantiated by anything in the world?A property that has the power to
motivate those who apprehend it?13
This debate over the rightness of a particular social practice quickly
turns into a debate about whether there are any such things as moral
properties or facts. It moves from the ethical level to the meta-ethical
level as if that were the most natural dialectical move in the world, and
up until the last step the second philosopher employs the very spare tool
kit of the Agrippan sceptic, asking why? whenever the first philosopher makes an assertion and insisting that the first philosopher bear the
burden of proving these assertions.
Non-philosophers surveying the debate will, I contend, think that the
second philosopher has missed the point or is merely playing games of
some sort,14 and if the context of the exchange is as part of a public
debate about whether or not to invite the South African vice-consul to
campus, then they will be right. Justification of a moral claim does not
depend on the justification of any general meta-ethical principle, and
in this context it is precisely the moral claim that is at issue, not the
meta-ethical principle. Why?
Let us apply the default and challenge model of justification to the
debate. According to that model, remember, the challenger cannot simply enter naked challenges. Challenges must, rather, be reasonable,
13
14
See Mackie (Mackie (1977), 38-42) for this argument from queerness.
As I said, Im not making this up.
291
where a reasonable challenge is one that either shows fault with some
justification already given or provides some reason for thinking that
the conclusion being advanced is false. By this standard, the second
philosopher is obliged to show either that appeal to a rule or general
principle fails to support the claim that apartheid is wrong or that there
are positive reasons for thinking that apartheid is morally acceptable after all. In doing so, his position becomes vulnerable to criticism, too,
and the Agrippan road to moral scepticism about particular principles,
or about the objectivity of morality generally is blocked.
However, the second philosopher may well agree to these terms and
still try to make a sceptical case (i) about the particular moral claim
(apologists for apartheid used to try to meet this criterion by arguing,
for example, that the abolition of apartheid would lead to a civil war
that would produce far greater suffering than the policy of racial discrimination itself produced), or (ii) about the general principle (The
notion of thriving is too vague, might be the complaint) or (iii) about
the very existence of moral facts ( Mackies argument from queerness
shows us that no moral property is ever instantiated).15 The default
and challenge model of justification offers us no ground for complaint
here because the sceptic is in fact shouldering some of the burden of
proof. These challenges are clothed, not naked, and in this respect they
resemble the challenges of the Cartesian sceptic, who does not simply
ask How do you know? but tries to offer positive reasons for thinking that we do not have much of the knowledge that we naively assume
ourselves to have.
That much resemblance is too little for us to draw any interesting
conclusions about the plausibility of such moral scepticism. But there
are deeper resemblances, and they deserve our attention. In particular, the philosopher who tries to push the debate from stage (i) to stage
(ii) assumes that claims made at stage (i) lack proper justification unless a justification has been given of general moral principles. And the
15 Of course, there is another kind of moral scepticism, which has no obvious or plausible
counterpart in the case of global scepticism about the senses, corresponding to the question Why
should I be moral? Thats a philosophical chestnut that does not need roasting here, though
it is importantly connected with the internalism assumed by Mackies argument from queerness
(Mackie (1977), 38-42), to which I shall return.
292
philosopher who tries to push the debate further to stage (iii) assumes
that neither particular moral claims nor general moral principles have
proper justification, unless it has been shown that there really are such
things as moral facts. In both these moves, I detect epistemological
realism.
Consider the move from stage (i) to stage (ii). If I am to know some
particular moral claim to be true, then, the sceptic seems to be saying,
I must know some general moral principle that certifies that particular
claim (a necessary condition, not a sufficient one). The justification of
the particular claim is only provisional until we have presented the certifying general principle. This is to say that in virtue of their content,
particular moral claims are dependent for their justification on another
category of claims, also demarcated by their content general moral
principles. And this is to commit oneself to the idea that there are natural relations of epistemological priority (Williams (2001), 192). A reason to doubt epistemological realism is thus a reason to doubt that the
justification of particular moral claims is incomplete until those claims
have been traced to general moral principles.
This is not to deny that whatever general principles my particular
moral claims may presuppose must be true if I am to have knowledge
of those particular claims. As we saw earlier, justification is subject
to various situational constraints. But it is enoughsubject to our
other contextual constraints on justificationthat those principles be
true for my claims to be justified. I do not also have to have demonstrated them.16
The situation here is analogous to one that arises in the context of
our knowledge of cause and effect. Humeans about causation hold that
wherever there is some cause-and-effect relationship, there is also some
general causal law of which the particular case is an instance. But it
is not obvious that from this we should conclude that in order to have
knowledge of some particular instance of that relation I must have a
16 As Tom Vinci reminds me, a foundationalist can make sense of my not having to give a
justification for a general principle in order for a particular claim to be justified by invoking a distinction between there being a justification that could be given and that justifications having been
given. Such free-floating justifications that wait around to be given smell too much of Platonism
for my contextualist nose, but that is another debate.
293
294
295
296
297
298
11.6. CONCLUSION
299
11.6 Conclusion
I conclude that Braybrookes invocation of the ethics/meta-ethics distinction is defensible. Moral claims can be justified by reference to
moral principles even though no justification has been given for those
principles because moral principles are default-justified and cannot be
challenged without changing the context of inquiry or discussion. Consequently, if the proper application of the truth-predicate to claims is
governed by contextually specific criteria of justification, true may
be used of moral claims unselfconsciously, without thinking of metaethics (350), even though it may be applied within one structure of
ideas that figures among many logically possible structures (350). The
case of ethics is thus much like the case of mathematics, according to
one kind of conventionalism. What contextualism helps to show us is
that one can be a conventionalist (at the meta-ethical level) and a realist
(at the ethical level) at one and the same time.
23 I think the problem is exacerbated both here and in the mathematical case by commitment
to a correspondence theory of truth, but I already have too many axes in the fire (to coin an
expression).
Chapter 12
Abstract
In his paper What Truth Does the Emotive-Imperative Answer to the
Open-Question Argument Leave to Moral Judgments? David Braybrooke
develops several themes in ethical theory, including an account of the nature of moral justification. I discuss his elucidation of the structure of
moral justification within a broader account of how formal foundationalism, a doctrine of the structure of epistemic justification, can provide
a useful protocol for understanding his account of the structure of moral
justification. I conclude by raising some difficulties.
12.1
Introduction
301
302
own natural law approach to morality2 and in the classical emotiveimperative accounts of Stevenson3 and Ayer.4 There is an apparent
tension between these two theories regarding how to handle the concept
of truth in contexts of moral justification: natural law theory seems to
favour its application to moral claims; emotive-imperative theory does
not. One of Braybrookes concerns is to show how a theory that incorporates elements of both approaches assigns truth to moral claims in
ways that does violence to neither.
I approach Braybrookes paper as an epistemologist rather than an
ethical theorist. For much of the twentieth century, epistemology and
ethical theory have been concerned with apparently distinct subject
matters, each developing its own set of problems and methodsships
passing in the night. Yet there have been some close encounters in
both directions: epistemology looking to ethical theory and ethical theory looking to epistemology. An example of the former is Roderick
Chisholms program in epistemology;5 another example is virtue epistemology.6 In the other direction, one project looks at whether models
of knowledge developed within contemporary epistemology can be applied to ethics moral epistemology as it has come to be called. For
example, Robert Audi has recently catalogued various models of knowing in epistemologyempiricism, rationalism, intuitionism, and noncognitivismand considered which best fit various positions in ethical
theory. (He proposes that a moderate version of intuitionism is the best
fit for the most plausible version of ethical theory.)7
My own contribution to this volume falls within the general heading of moral epistemology. I am not, however, as Audi is, interested in
taking a substantive position in epistemology but rather in looking at a
formal account in epistemology about the way in which justification can
be transmitted from the general to the particular, Sosas formal founda2
David Braybrooke, Natural Law Modernized (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).
(1944)
4 Ayer (1936)
5 Chisholm (1966), 11ff.
6 See, for example, Axtell (1997)
7 Audi (1999)).
3 Stevenson
303
(1980), at 12ff.
The passage is from Braybrooke (341); the internal quotation is from G.E. Moore, Moore
(1903), 21.
9
304
Braybrooke considers several proposals among emotivist-imperativist (EI for short) theoreticians10 about what is expressed by an utterance of a declarative sentence concerning the moral status of doing X:
(1) negative feelings I have about doing X; (2) an injunction, softer perhaps than an ordinary imperative for others to feel the same way; (3) an
injunction for me to act appropriately, e.g., by way of making reparations (341). The combination of these three is what may be described
as the emotivist-imperative theory (342).
Braybrooke is not very sympathetic to the idea that when we say
Thats good truth or falsity is simply inapplicable. He notes that we
quite properly and naturally respond to moral claims by saying Thats
true (344-5) and is not sympathetic to the idea that this is a sense of
truth less robust that we apply to factual assertions (345). But Braybrooke also finds in the EI approach something that is right and valuable both in its commitment to the role of emotions and injunctions
in moral judgment and in its giving a satisfactory response to Moores
open-question argument. What is a bit tricky here, and requires careful
navigation by Braybrooke and his readers, is combining the idea that
truth is applicable in a robust sense to the objects of moral evaluation
with the idea that those objects are to be understood on the emotiveimperative model. Braybrooke does this by connecting truth and endorsement: The word True is the normal form of serious endorsement in ethics as in other branches of discourse (344). Now there is a
high road and a low road between truth and endorsement. The low road
is the truth-deflationary road: Thats true just stands in for whatever
expression that refers to anaphorically. In the case where the expression Thats good, for example, is understood as expressing an emotion
or an injunction rather than a proposition, that status is preserved even
when the expression is given in proxy form: Thats true. Indeed, Braybrooke mentions some deflationary accounts, including one of the classic redundancy versions, the pro-sentential theory,11 but does not think
that these accounts have all the goods on truth: there still seems to be
some room for endorsement that cannot be occupied by merely repeat10
11 Grover
305
306
12.3
Explorations
12.3. EXPLORATIONS
307
Thanks to Michael Hymers for helpful suggestions around the issue of relativism.
308
plied freely by the agent. The effect of this is that the truth of specific
judgment formulations, Doing X is wrong, will vary relative to the different extraneous commitments of moral agents. Whether we say that
this variability is due to the assertions taking on different meanings in
a way that systematically varies with these commitments or that it is
due to assertions having the same meanings but with an extra parameter in underlying logical form systematically varying with these commitments, the point is still that truth varies with parameters supplied
from outside. As evidence that Braybrooke recognizes the relativismlike characteristics of his account, I note that he spends considerable
time in mitigating the consequences of his account for those who would
be squeamish about moral relativism (348-9).
Finally, we come to the matter of the justification of particular injunctions. On Braybrookes account these get their justification derivatively, by being instances of justified rules. So, showing that a particular
injunction, You, do X now, proceeds in two stages. First, there is the
justification of the basic injunction, You, do X now, what Braybrooke
calls moral judgments of the first instance, by appeal to the fact that
this injunction falls under a general rule, Always do X in circumstances
C (345). Then there is the justification of the rule itself. The following
two propositions represent these two stages:
A The injunction You, do X now is morally justified in circumstances C if there is a morally justified general rule, Always do X
in circumstances C.
B The rule Always do X in circumstances C is morally justified iff
the general practice of following the rule will promote the thriving
of society according to a conception T of thriving.
Following Stevenson, proposition B is intended by Braybrooke to involve a persuasive definition (347n22). A persuasive definition does
not purport to report logical equivalences in a set of antecedently existing concepts but is a stipulation of how one will use language, the
upshot of which is that we are committed to replace occurrences of the
definiendum with occurrences of the definiens in ordinary (non-metalinguistic, non-modal, etc.) contexts. Persuasive definitions are not,
12.3. EXPLORATIONS
309
therefore, true or false. We can then take B as the definition form for
which various specific versions are possible depending on which conception of thriving we specify. Different people will now choose different definitions depending on which conception of thriving they are
committed to. Proposition A does not seem intended as a definition but
serves, rather, to express the way in which particular injunctions receive
justification from general injunctions.
There is, however, some question of exactly how proposition B involves a persuasive definition. We have been operating on the assumption that what is being stipulated in B is the meaning of the words on the
left side of the biconditional, The rule, Always do X in circumstances
C, is morally justified. This is what the solution to the open-question
problem suggestsmany possible definitions of the evaluative language
on the left side of a definition form, x is EV iff x is F, where EV is a
suitable evaluative term and F is a suitable descriptive predicate. This
reading is also suggested by the following passage:
what . . . Stevenson called a persuasive definition, [was] in
this case, that wrong is at bottom a matter of running against
the thriving . . . of ones society. There could be other persuasive definitions, for example, unattractive ones like the one
that makes wrong at bottom a matter of interfering with the
of the Uebermenschen,
then the only substitution that gets made is a replacement of the former by the latter. Call this the partial-substitution
reading.
14
310
There are reading has its advantages and disadvantages. The fullsubstitution reading gives a justification for statement Bit is true by
stipulation-but generates a problem with the justification of particular
injunctions, a problem I develop later. The partial-substitution reading
avoids the validity problem but raises another: what justification can
now be offered for the biconditional comprising statement B if it is no
longer true by stipulation? The latter problem seems the more damaging to Braybrookes program, at least to its meta-ethical dimension, a
dimension to which Braybrooke assigns considerable importance (347,
350). So, until further notice, I shall operate with the full-substitution
reading.
I now turn to a discussion of meta-ethics, its various forms, and what
role, if any, it plays in Braybrookes account. This topic, of interest in
its own right, will also serve as a bridge to epistemology and the notion
of formal foundationalism, an account of the structure of epistemic
justification that I plan to use in section 6 as a model for interpreting
Braybrookes account of the structure of moral justification.
12.4
311
312
12.5
313
The term and account is due to Sosa. See Sosa (1980) at 12ff.
The position that I presenting here is a simplified version of Laurence Bonjour (1985), 87-
18
93.
314
has been employed in the proof.) Of course the question arises whether
the premises are true. If pressed as to the principle at line (1), for example, I could, if I am schooled in epistemology, give a reply, perhaps
along the lines of
5a (1a) is justified because it leads to consequences that best accord
with our commonsense epistemic intuitions.
Line (5a) is a second-order epistemic claim, the argument for which
occurs in meta-epistemology. But I do not need to be able do metaepistemology in order to have demonstrated that Joness belief that there
is an apple on the table is justified: saying in response to a request for a
defence of (1) Thats another question is a legitimate way to terminate
a dialogue without abandoning the legitimacy of ones claim to (4a).
Now consider the following pattern of reasoning:
Reasoning Pattern B
(1b) Whenever it looks to S as though p and there are no countervailing
indications, then p is true.
(2b) It looks to me as though an apple is on the table.
(3b) No countervailing indications are present. Therefore,
(4b) There is an apple on the table.
Suppose that Jones believes (4b) and we ask her to justify the claim.
Suppose that initially she offers the premises (2b) and (3b). But now I
am dissatisfied with the answer because the argument as it stands is not
formally valid and I want to find out what premise Jones might offer to
remedy this. Jones provides (1b). Finally, suppose that all the premises
are true and that Jones believes them all. Is Jones now justified in believing that there is an apple on the table? Notice that the conclusion of
this reasoning does not assert that she is, unlike the case with pattern A.
If she is justified, what would the source of the justification be? In this
case it is an inference. Formal foundationalism says that justification
has to come from one of two sourcesa warrant principle or by inference from a justified belief in accord with an acceptable transmission
315
12.6
316
317
318
319
tions.19 Stipulative definitions, as we have seen, are conventions, commitments to replace one set of words (the definiendum) with another (the
definiens) in normal contexts. The underlying logical form of a stipulative definition is not a biconditional but an injunction. In the case of the
stipulations regarding the language of rule justification at issue here, the
commitment is this:
Commitment made in stipulating a definition of rule justification
The stipulator is committed to replacing, in normal contexts,
the words, The rule, Always do X in circumstances C is
morally justified, with the words, The general practice of
following the rule will promote the thriving of society according to a conception T of thriving.
It follows from this commitment that our agent is committed to replacing the words, The rule, Always do X in circumstances C is
morally justified, in line (3f) with the words, The general practice of
following the rule will promote the thriving of society according to a
conception T of thriving, yielding
(3f*) The general practice of following the rule will promote the thriving of society according to a conception T of thriving.
But now the inference expressed in argument F*argument F* is obtained from argument F by replacing (3f) with (3f*)aborts. Note that
argument F successfully confers inferential justification on the particular injunction at line (6f), as intended. This is because argument F
correctly employs a transmission principle to get from (3f) to (6f). But
argument F* fails to confer inferential justification at line (6f) for the
19 Mike Hymers has raised doubts about whether I have the notion of stipulative definition
right here. He suggests four alternative accounts: that the definition might be simply latent in
our moral practices; that we might invoke a theory of implicit definitions; that we might simply
be able to re-substitute the left side of the definition for the right after having done the reverse
following our commitment in making the stipulation in the first place; and that the definition
might be understood as a meaning postulatean analytic statementin Carnaps sense. All of
these are interesting suggestions but it is not clear that they are primarily suggestions for me rather
than for Braybrooke. In any case, they all require careful responses which shall have to be left for
another occasion.
320
reason that there is no justification present in line (3f*) to be transmitted.20 (Readers will note that this problem is akin to that identified by
Moore under the heading of the naturalistic fallacy.) So Braybrookes
account of a structure of reasoning by means of which we can show
how particular injunctions acquire their moral justification, formulated
within the protocol of formal foundationalism and in terms of the fullsubstitution reading, fails.
There is, however, as noted above in section 2, an alternative reading of the scope of substitution in the stipulative definitions, the partialsubstitution reading. On this reading we are required to replace, not the
whole left side by the whole right side of a definition, but only occurrences of the thriving parameter (T) with specific kinds of thriving to
which our speaker is committed. In the case of argument F this means
that the speaker is not committed to replacing 3f with 3f*, so a crucial
move in the objection fails: the account of how particular injunctions
acquire justification on the formal foundationalist model still stands, in
the form of argument G:
Argument G
(1g) The rule, Always do X in circumstances C, is morally justified
iff the rule, Always do X in circumstances C, promotes societal
thriving.
(2g) I stipulate that by societal thriving I mean T.
(3g) The rule, Always do X in circumstances C, is morally justified
iff the rule, Always do X in circumstances C, promotes T. (substitution by stipulation)
(4g) The rule, Always do X in circumstances C, promotes T.
20 I anticipate the following objection: A correct definition, A = df B is always
symmetricalone can replace the left side by the right, but also the right side by the left. So, in the
present case, we simply replace f* by f, thus re-introducing the required injunction-justification
premise. I reply that this holds only for reportive definitions, not stipulative definitions. The former are, if successful, true necessary bi-conditionals; the latter are not true statements at all, hence
are not necessarily true biconditionals. They are, rather, commitments to act in certain waysand
the ways are asymmetrical.
321
322
Chapter 13
Abstract
David Braybrooke has long been interested in the project of applying
moral philosophy to social science. In this essay I attempt to show how
various bits and pieces of his lifes work actually might be seen as accomplishing that far-reaching aim. Part of the difficulty which others have
encountered with such central pieces as the theory of rules presented in
Logic on the Track of Social Change, has more to do with the formality of the presentation of that material (which the authors admit demands
at least some technical facility on the part of the reader and a considerable store of good-will besides). In order that these same difficulties not
reappear, the Track theory is presented in a (new) graphic format which
simplifies the concepts but not to the point of triviality. Within this newly
minted approach, various issues are raised including a novel presentation
of some well-trodden moral theory and the place of political economy in
a rule-based picture of morals.
13.1
Introduction
When I came to Dalhousie in 1972, my relationship with David Braybrooke went through a shake-down period during which we were both
wondering what to make of each other. I was a brash young man and
323
324
325
326
developed in his ?
327
have hit on the former were it not for our struggles to get the latter
correct, or at least not obviously incorrect.
13.3
is an analogy to be made here with the phase space approach to physical science.
328
13.4
13.5
Actions
But doing things, either what we ought to do or some other thing, results in moving from one alternative social state to another. So knowing
what to do (or at least what we ought to do) is tantamount to knowing
which alternative social state is to be (or at least ought to be) selected as
our new home, given that we find ourselves in such-and-such a present
alternative social state.
3 And it might be no exaggeration to say that how exactly a principle is to be unpacked is the
fundamental problem of practical ethics.
13.5. ACTIONS
329
termination set
Intermediate States
Starting State
330
times say that these are the only states in which the action might be
running once it has been started (if it starts at all) in its starting state.
This should not be taken to mean that each of the cone states will in fact
be visited, only that no other state will be. Similarly, the ice-cream part
contains the only states which can result (if any do) after the action is
performed. We might think of the ice-cream states as the ones that can
be reached (if any can) by performing the action beginning in the starting state. Similarly the cone states are those through which we might
pass as a result of performing the action beginning in the starting state
(if indeed the action can begin there). This picture of the action is decidedly non-deterministic but that can be taken to reflect only our lack
of knowledge about what the other actors will do in the circumstances
contemplated by the picture we here present.4
Compared to the literature (on the formal theory of actions), this
account is new in adding the cone. In other words, previous accounts
characterize actions entirely in terms of which states result once the action had been performed (providing that it can be performedthere is
no guarantee of this in general). So for these theories, actions are essentially and only what we might term bringings about. We, on the other
hand, characterize actions not simply in terms of what they bring about,
but also in terms of how they bring about whatever it is, if anything, that
they do. Our view is perhaps closer to common sense, even though
such a remark is sometimes thought pejorative in connection with formal work. For us, two distinct actions might bring about precisely the
same result. This would also seem to be the burden of a number of old
sayings many of which involve violence to cats.
Just what happens when we string a series of actions together (by
concatenation as we saywith the resulting object often referred to as
a concatenate) is nearly but not exactly what you think will happen.
Another picture will help.
In this we see that the cones (intermediate states to give them their
technical title) get aggregated into a kind of super-cone for the concatenate. In addition, all the ice cream of the last actions in the se4 This leaves open the question of whether or not the non-determinism runs deeper than the
epistemican important question no doubt but one that we have been glad to dodge.
13.5. ACTIONS
331
...
...
...
332
state as a starting state. But why you will want to know should an
action type even have a cone for every social state? Indeed that would
make action types rather more abstract than we would like. We must
thus allow cases in which a given starting point does not have a cone, or
at least one of the usual sort.
13.5.1
The standard pathology of actions is confined to those which do not terminate. These are actions with no ice-cream so-to-speak and thats their
graphic representation. And if actions are conceived as the bringings
about (of the truth or falsehood of propositions for instance), then these
are the only actions which fail.
But in our account of action types there is the cone to consider as
well. In this case there is clearly the possibility of another form of
misfire.. It might be that the action in question cannot even be started.
13.5. ACTIONS
333
334
13.6
Rules
Which brings us to the center of Track and to the notion that must bear
a great deal of the weight when morals meet sciencethe theory of
rules.
The theory as presented in Track might be termed forbidding in
more than one sense, alas. In the first sense, the introduction of the idea
of actions blocking one another allowed a simplification of the theory
in that all rules can be cast into the form of rules of forbidding. An
earlier effort9 had already reduced all rules to those in the top row of the
square of oppositionforbidding and permitting. But with blocking in
our arsenal, we can parse rules which permit the action r as rules which
forbid all those actions r which block r.
Unhappily the theory also seems have been forbidding in that it presumed too much in the way of formal science to be easily digestible by
its target audience.
Given our current graphical turn however, we can see what a rule is,
at a glance. Consider figure 13.6.
Here we see the universe of alternative social states from the perspective of a particular subset of them, those which satisfy the condition
C, of a certain collection of rules Fi . These are the states, the C-states,
where the rules apply. We refer to actions that start in C as C-state actions. What each Fi does, in simplest terms, is to forbid certain C-state
actions (to a certain class of agents, those within the so-called demographic scope of Fi . To avoid complicating the exposition, we typically
suppress mention of these agents).
8 The illustration of these two in Track is in terms of tying shoe laces. You can block my tying
my shoe laces by untying whichever lace I have just tied. So long as you perform your untying
action, my tying action cannot terminate. This is an example of the second way of blocking.
Alternatively you might make away with my shoes while I take a reckless nap, which will ensure
that my tying action cannot start.
9 By Charles Hamblin, see ?
13.6. RULES
335
336
13.7
Utilitarianism
For much of his philosophical career David Braybrooke has been interested in utilitarianism. Given his interest in rules, we can see at least
one reason for such an interest. To put the matter in the whimsical idiom
of the previous section, one wants to know whether or not the movie has
a happy ending.
The thing is, a given society of individual agents who are bound by
a sequence of rules (which come into effect as they progress from one
13.7. UTILITARIANISM
337
alternative state to another) will, since portions of the state space are
forbidden by the rules, tend to move to the other states, the ones which
are not forbidden. At least this will happen if sufficiently many people
who are bound by the rules, actually comply with them.
Waiving that (interesting) consideration for a moment, suppose that
the society in question follows the rules as they evolve from one frame
of the movie to the next. The question is: what should happen? Or
better: If the rules are properly constructed, what should happen? To
put a moral slant on things: what would be a good outcome to following
the rules?
This is a bit tricky but only only a bit and only because we arent yet
equipped with the concepts we require in order to adjudicate the matter.
The first thing we need is the notion of a goal . In this context a goal is a
subset of the space of social alternatives. Which subset? Evidently, one
in which we would like to live, one in which we want the actual social
state to be. We shall shortly take up the issue of how we decide on our
goal, but first we may need to be convinced that such a notion actually
has a role to play.
It should be clear that the function of rules is to restrict which alternative social states are accessible, which is to say that following the
rules amounts to staying within a certain corridor. But what if that corridor doesnt lead anywhere? What if following a certain set of rules
meant only that any alternative social state was as likely as any other as
our destination (subject only to the laws of nature)? To put the question
more bluntly, what incentive would we have to actually bind ourselves
to following such rules?
There has been and remains an intuition on which it may turn out that
following a rule is less advantageous in the short-run than not following
it, but even so, following is the right thing to do. An extreme version
of this view has it that some rules are just correct, pure and simple.
Following them is always the right thing to do and not following them
never is. It would seem then such folk as these would answer the blunt
question that our incentive for following rules can never be more or less
than the rightness of doing so.
At this point we might ask for a list of the right-making properties
338
and a great controversy will ensue. Instead, we shall take the position
that even if the journey be worth more than the destination, the latter has
to count for something. In particular, there must actually be a destination
as opposed to a random walk through social space. This separates us
from the extremists just canvassed. We may think of the region into
which a set or rules leads us, as the goal of, or relative to, that set of
rules.
It also brings us closer to something resembling utilitarianism. Once
we restrict our attention to those collections of rules which have what we
called a goal,11 there remains the question of how to adjudicate between
rival collections. Evidently we can raise the question of whether one
goal is preferable to another and as soon as we do that, we have become
some flavor of utilitarian. Strictly speaking there is a whole range of
alternatives here only some of which are really utilitarian. What we
require is some evaluation of the alternative social states which is to say
a preference ordering.12 How utilitarian we are depends upon how this
preference ordering is used.
I think David Braybrookes contributions to this part of the account
are numerous. One which we might highlight first is the notion that the
goal, whatever subset it eventually turns out to be, has a kind of core.
In other words in order to belong to the goal set of social alternatives,
there is some list of minimal conditions which, while it may not, indeed
probably doesnt, fully characterize the goal, yet gives us a starting point
for calculating which states are likely candidates. Perhaps we can say
that although we may not be in a position to identify the goal with much
precision, we are prepared to say immediately that social states of suchand-such a kind will definitely not belong.
I look at Braybrookes work on needs as being of this sort. Whatever other properties a state satisfying a (social) goal might turn out to
have, within the goal the needs of the individual members of society
will be met according to some well-defined standard of provision. In
11 There is another technical matter concerning goals. A goal should be not only a subset of the
state space which we eventually reach, but a subset which once entered, we do not subsequently
leaveat least not without a change in the rules.
12 Utilitarians, of the later generations at least, came to regard preference which a jaundiced
eye. They it were who coined Better Socrates unsatisfied than a pig satisfied.
339
340
social states is that a number of different individuals can have wildly varying preference orderings
on the states and yet have wide agreement on the orderings of sets. This fact makes it more
plausible that a relatively small number of representatives can accurately reflect the preferences of
341
If we were to presume, which we assuredly do not, that all the decision makers have perfect information, then we could allow an agenda to
contain every proposition. But that would be an idealization extending
into what we called the absurd.
In our picture, a group of adjudicators, decision makers, or the representatives of the interested parties (who are themselves, we presume
also interested parties) confront the list of propositions (issues) on a
given agenda. Some of the propositions might well be agreed to by everyone (or their negations agreed to) and those will go on to form part of
the goal, pending agreement on the package. Many, it may be presumed
will be preferred by some but not by others. Here there is the possibility
of so-called log-rolling. You care nothing for P one way or the other but
are committed to Q while for me the two attitudes are reversed. There
is the material for a bargain here. Further bargains might result from
my weak preference for P retiring in the face of your strong preference
for not-P , so long as my strong preference for Q similarly trumps your
relatively weaker preference for its negation.
Eventually we get as far as we can go. What are left are the issues
concerning which we can not secure agreement. Some of us prefer P
as a matter of deeply held principles while the others prefer not-P on a
similar basis.
Various means have evolved to produce a decision in these cases
too but we shouldnt ignore the possibility of simply dropping the more
contentious issues from the agenda. If the value of the bargain consisting of the package of issues already agreed to is sufficiently high,
then there is that much incentive to find a way to complete the bargain.
When strongly held principles stand in the way of a valuable bargain,
we dont discard the principles (for the most part) but that need not prevent us from discarding the occasion on which the principles become
inconvenient.
An added incentive to pull back from a game of duelling principles
is that this whole procedure, from agenda formation to final decision, is
one that is going to take place again and again. If our principles clash
today, whos to say that tomorrow you wont be converted to my point of
quite a large constituency.
342
Chapter 14
Abstract
In Logic on the Track of Social Change, David Braybrooke, Peter Schotch,
and I developed a theory of rules, including both a definition of rules and
a logic explicitly designed to enable us to express their contents in an illuminating way. This paper sketches an account of the relation between
the normative and the descriptive elements of that theory. The account
draws on a bootstrap argument due to Sellars, who used it to ground an
account of how an agent can come to be aware, and justified in asserting,
that she is a reliable observer. Sellarss argument relies on a distinction
between descriptive assertions about episodes and their normative interpretation. This paper relies on the same distinction to explain how an
agent can come to be aware, and justified in asserting, that she is normatively engaged with a system of rules.
14.1 Introduction
In Logic on the Track of Social Change (1995; hereafter Track), Braybrooke, Brown, and Schotch present a definition of rules that includes
both causal and intentional elements. Our definition appeals to a technical notion of imperatives, which we identify as blocking operations.
Blocking operations must be causally efficaciousthat is, they must
343
344
actually (in some relevant and substantial range of cases) prevent actions of a certain type on the part of some agent(s). But they must also
be intended to have this effect. A rule is identified with the class of
imperatives (whether actual or merely possible) targeting the actions
forbidden by the rule.
How this blocking is accomplished varies with the blocking operation employedwith young children, direct physical intervention (for
instance, holding on to a child to prevent her running out into the street)
is fairly common. Even with adults, this form of blocking may be used,
for instance, when trying to correct a flaw in how an athlete performs a
swimming stroke, a dance step, or a gymnastic move. But saying dont
or no or stop can also be blocking actions, since some agents in some
circumstances respond to these utterances (on the part of certain other
agents) by not doing something they would otherwise have done. And
of course there are many more examples. In all these cases, however,
the action qualifies as a blocking action if and only if it is both of a kind
which, with a fair degree of regularity, causally prevents agents from
doing actions of the targeted type, and is intended to have that effect.
Our principal aim in Track was to develop and apply a rich, formally structured account of rules. The resulting account, linking rules
and causal relations without reducing the first to the second, links two
distinctive approaches to the social sciences. An emphasis on the importance of rules is characteristic of what Braybrooke calls interpretive
social science.1 But a focus on regular correlations and causal hypotheses invoked to explain them is characteristic of what he calls the naturalistic approach. Drawing on both, we proposed an approach to rules
that integrates the descriptive evidence of regular correlation and causal
analysis while allowing an important role for intentions as well.
However, in Track we left the relation between these causal and intentional elements unexplored. In this paper, I examine both sides of
our proposed definition and sketch a bootstrap argument that tries to
1 For more on these two approaches to social science, as well as a third (the critical), see
Braybrooke (1987b), chap. 1). Braybrookes case for a more ecumenical view of these approaches
to social science (as contrasted with the widespread view that they are mutually exclusive) is an
important inspiration for this papers efforts to understand the relations between the natural and
the normative.
14.1. INTRODUCTION
345
account for how causal interactions underlie but do not constitute the
intentional/normative component of rules. A striking epistemological
argument due to Wilfrid Sellars is the main inspiration for both the
account I will give of the distinction between these elements and the
account I offer of how the intentional, normative dimension arises from
the natural causal order.2 For reasons of space and time, I will not attempt a detailed reading of Sellarss argument. My aim at this stage
of the work is only to indicate how some aspects of Sellarss views,
especially the possibility of retroactively assigning a normative status
to past events,3 contribute to a promising understanding of the roots of
normativity. I believe the resulting account, though only an outline at
this point, has a virtue characteristic of Sellarss approach to many issues: It is conceptually rich, but also metaphysically economical (even
austere).
There are two entangled but distinct purposes for which we might
use an account of social rules. They correspond to two very different
sorts of explanations that we can give of human behaviours. For the
purposes of naturalistic explanation, human behaviour is just part of
the natural goings-on in the world around us. Like other cases of related
phenomena that constitute what Dudley Shapere (Shapere (1982)) has
called domains, behaviour is distinguished from other phenomena by a
commitment we have made to treat it as calling for an explanation in
terms of a common set of principles.4 Broadly, behaviour is distinguished from other kinds of goings-on by the different regularities and
principles we invoke to predict and explain it. But the regularities and
principles at work in such behavioural studies are not different in kind
2 For Sellarss distinction between the natural and the logical order see, e.g., Being and Being Known and Some Reflections on Language Games. Sellars (1960, 1954) The bootstrap
argument presented here is modelled on Sellarss well-known bootstrap defence of an empiricist/inductivist account of perceptual knowledge in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.
3 Something that is only possible because such assignments are interpretive rather than descriptive.
4 See Sellarss remarks on behaviourism in Philosophy and the Scientific Image of
Man,(Sellars (1962)) and in Science, Perception and Reality (Sellars (1963)) (hereafter Science),
23ff., where behaviour is distinguished from other phenomena involving living things. Sellarss
discussion of worm behaviouristics, together with the distinction between nature and character in
the prediction/explanation of human behaviour (see Science, 13ff.), reflects an interesting perspective on the contextual constraints that circumscribe our use of certain explanatory principles.
346
from the regularities and principles applying to (for instance) what water does when cooled to 0 Celsius, or once heated (at standard pressure)
to 100 Celsius as net heat is removed or supplied, respectively. They
are commitments regarding how we shall project from what we observe
of people and their doings to a fuller, but still purely descriptive, story
of people in the world.
Its worth noting that these behavioural principles are limited to
contexts in which something like standard conditions hold for the organisms involved; further, not just anything that humans or other organisms do is grist for the mill of behavioural science. We learn to draw
distinctions at mothers knee, recognizing circumstances and kinds of
goings-on that are part of behaviour as separate from other aspects of
the nature of things. Its worth noting that these distinctions are rich
and complex in ways we dont often notice.5 But the point I want to
make here is just that social science in this vein is an entirely naturalistic affair. It treats us as part and parcel of the natural world, subject
to the same kind of scientific description and explanation as any other
aspect of that world. This explicitly monist approach has a substantial
prima facie edge over dualism, both of conceptual economy and coherence: Dualism (at least when taken at its metaphysical face value) posits
mysterious, non-physical aspects of reality that are declared to be importantly connected both to the natural world and to a separate realm of
norms. Deep and troubling puzzles have arisen in philosophers efforts
to explain how a mere addition (however exotic) to descriptive reality can bridge the gap between descriptions and norms. But however
these questions are to be resolved, they are no concern of naturalistic
social science. The aim of that endeavour is to capture and explain behavioural regularities. The normative interpretation of behaviour plays
no role there.
5 For our purposes, not much hangs on exactly where we draw the line between what is
and is not behaviour. What we would normally describe as deliberate actions certainly count as
behaviour; so are typical responses to sensory stimuli (shutting or covering the eyes when suddenly
exposed to a very bright light, pulling ones hand off after touching a hot surface, etc.). But falling
to the ground when thrown out a window does not (though a lot of behaviour would probably occur
along the way): this is something that happens because of features we share with all heavier-thanair physical objects, while behaviour turns on certain kinds of features that we share (broadly) with
living things.
14.1. INTRODUCTION
347
6 Here Davidsonian remarks regarding charity and the presupposition of rationality come in
although in our presentation, they arise explicitly as part of the methodological task of connecting
hypotheses about rules in force with observations of behaviour, rather than as presuppositions of
interpretation.
348
14.2
In Track we specified the content of a rule in terms of three components: volk is the set of agents to whom the rule applies, wenn is the
set of circumstances in which the rule applies, and nono is the set of
actions forbidden (to those agents in those circumstances) by the rule.
But our definition of rules begins with a technical notion labelled (for
obvious reasons) imperatives. An imperative, in our sense, is a blocking operation, verbal or otherwise. A blocking operation, in turn, is an
action kind whose instances characteristically (in some important range
of circumstances) prevent some agent(s) from performing an action(s)
of a certain kind, and which is performed with that intent(34). Blocking
operations need not always succeed; a blocking operation qualifies for
the title if it works sometimes for some people . . . when conditions are
suited to its succeeding (34; emphasis added). A rule, in the abstract, is
a set of such imperativesthat is, a set of blocking actions, directed at
the volk, under the wenn, and against the nono. Finally, a rule in force
is a rule sufficiently many7 of whose imperatives actually occur.
This definition appeals to natural facts, but it combines them with
normative/intentional facts. The range of possible blocking operations
is determined by the natural causal influences that some available action
types have, in various circumstances, on the actions of certain agents.
But they are not blocking operations just in virtue of these natural causal
powers. To be a blocking operation, what someone does must be done
with the intention or purpose of preventing someone from doing something.
This picture of rules leads us to the final image of a triptych, three
panels representing different stages in the application of a rule for a
given subject: In the first panel, the subject is exposed to a range of
imperatives aimed at ensuring that her behaviour accords with the rule.
In the second panel, subjects in whom the rule has been successfully inculcated govern themselves: They now possess an internal system that
(often enough, under what we might call normal psychological oper7
Sufficiently many, that is, for the purposes of instruction and enforcement.
349
It is clear that there is a normative side to this notionbut we will not try to untangle it from
its descriptive aspects yet.
9 This is reminiscent of Humes remarks on abstract ideas, according to which the idea of the
counterexample to a mistaken generalization is called to mind automatically when we contemplate
the generalization; the result is that acceptance of the generalization is blocked by our awareness
of the counterexample.
10 Sellars identifies this middle ground in Some Reflections, in Science, 321-58.
11 In this middle ground, though it is false that we are consciously following the rules, the
subjects behaviour is still correctly interpreted in terms of the rule: The subject does as she does
because the rule is in place, even though she does not explicitly represent the rule to herself in a
meta-language and constrain her behaviour by means of that representation.
350
psychology. Given that background, it may turn out that certain types
of imperatives are particularly effective in driving the transition from
panel 1 in our triptych view of rules in force, where imperatives arise in
the course of training, to panel 2, in which the rules have been successfully inculcated in someone subject to them. Further, some rules are so
naturally and thoroughly inculcated (and any violations that persist of
little enough concern) that panel 3 plays almost no role in keeping violations down. On the other hand, others obviously require systematic
and expensive enforcement efforts.
14.3
Some Worries
351
352
353
14.4
Thus far this discussion has focused on the relation between hypotheses regarding rules in force and descriptive facts about the behaviour of
those subject to them. But the specifically normative aspects of such
hypotheses about rules relate not just to direct behavioural evidence
and how it fits the hypothesized rules, but to interpretive commitments
regarding how we will construe (some aspects of some peoples) behaviour. These commitments can be vindicated by successful application, which involves not merely examples of behaviour conforming
13 See Some Reflections for more details. Crucial to Sellarss account of rule-governed
behaviour is the identification of a middle ground between this strong sense of obedience and
mere conformity to a rules demands. According to Sellars, behaviour can be guided by a rule
without the subjects having to represent the rule in some meta-language. This middle ground
allows Sellars to escape a regress that threatens the thesis that learning a language is learning to
obey the rules of that language.
14 Closely related to this is the injunction to legislators that laws must be such that it is clear to
anyone aware of a laws provisions whether what they are doing violates it.
354
to the rule, but also giving an account of how conformity to the rule is
elicited and enforced. The evidence in hand goes beyond whether or not
certain behaviour violates the rules to include an examination of the behaviour in its social context, including efforts at teaching, inculcation,
and enforcement of the rules.
We will not begin with rules explicitly formulated in words. Focusing on this admittedly central case seems to produce an irresolvable
regress: we cannot communicate the contents of such rules to each other
without presupposing a shared system of rules. This leads to an obvious question: How could we communicate the contents of these rules,
so that communication can get underway? Assuming the existence of a
built-in system that we all share ab initio might provide an escape from
this worry, but empiricists will want to avoid simply cutting the Gordian
knot.15
Instead, we will begin with development. The key question will
be: How do individuals make the shift from merely behaving to acting
deliberately, in recognition of rules that apply to them and to others?
Our answer must account for how we acquire concepts including the
concepts of a rule, of authority, and of commitment, and how we come
to be justified in applying these concepts to ourselves.
Along the way I will draw explicitly on Sellarss work to illuminate
these difficulties and point towards a strategy for dealing with them.
Sellars aims to take empiricist scruples about evidence seriously, while
finding room for rationalist ideas about the fundamental importance of
rules and concepts to our understanding of the world and of each other.
This aim is apparent in Sellarss careful examination of the descriptive,
naturalistic underpinnings of his account of how someone can come to
be an observer. In his epistemic bootstrap argument, Sellars explores
how an individual knower can appeal to a kind of induction to justify
her claim to be an authority on certain perceptible aspects of her surroundings. In doing so, she enters into the normative game by meeting
its demands. We begin with an account of Sellarss view of sensations
15 Note that this does not rule out sharing certain matter-of-fact dispositions that make it easier
to train individuals to obey rules of a particular kind. See Some Reflections for a very careful
approach to escaping this regress.
355
356
normally triggered by sensory exposure to a particular kind of stimulus. But they can also be triggered by other circumstances as well (thus
explaining, in outline, how perceptual illusions occur).
On Sellarss account, the ability to have sensations is not acquired.17
It constitutes the natural basis that allows us to learn to make perceptual reports. But the ability to perceivethat is, to know certain facts
about our surroundings by means of a non-inferential response to our
sensationsis acquired. Knowing requires more than just reliable noisemaking. Knowledge requires also an awareness of ones own authority
as knower. This in turn requires developing not just the ability to respond reliably to different sensations, but also the concepts and skills
required to produce justifications of the claims we make.
The transition from mere thermometer reliability to having epistemic status as an observer in ones own right requires that one learn
to defend a claim to the authority to make such assertions in such circumstances.18 Suppose that our ability to come to know facts about our
environment by means of our senses is something that we learn. Empiricism requires that the recognition of this ability in oneself be grounded
in a kind of induction: what grounds our claim to authority in a present
report is our demonstrated past reliability as reporters of certain facts
(the redness or triangularity of an object, or that a certain note is C ).
Now consider the first occasion on which one can correctly claim such
authority. It seems that the past episodes we need to draw on for this induction couldnt be cases of knowledge themselves: Ex hypothesi they
occurred before we had the conceptual sophistication and/or a sufficient
body of past experience of our reliability as knowers of such facts in
such circumstances to give an inductive justification of our claim to authority.19 But without past cases of perceptual knowledge to appeal to,
17 Though it arises in the course of normal neuronal/sensory development, and so might reasonably be said to be acquired in a broader sense.
18 My concern here is with the second hurdle of the two Sellars considers. Passing the first hurdle requires only that others be in a position to treat the observer as an authority; being a reliable
thermometerthat is, being disposed to make correct reports under a range of circumstancesis
enough. But the second hurdle requires that the observer be in a position to recognize her own
authority.
19 A theme I am short-changing here is Sellarss holism, according to which having a single
concept (redness, for instance) requires having a more-or-less complete set of concepts including
357
we seem to be stuck: until we have the inductive base in hand, we cannot use induction to justify our claim to authority, and we cannot build
an inductive base of past justified knowledge claims to generalize on
unless we have a justified claim to authority already in hand.
Sellarss solution to this regress is to claim that the status of such
an episode as a knowing is not an occurrent, natural fact about the
episode. Instead, it results from locating it, conceptually, in a normative,
evaluative context. And we can do this after the fact. That is, we can
retroactively recognize a past report as a case of justified perceptual
knowledge even though at the time that the report was made, we lacked
either (or both) a sufficient grasp of the normative business of justifying
our claims or a sufficient inductive base of similar cases in which our
reports proved correct. Thus Sellarss account of our status as perceptual
knowers holds that at a certain point in our development we come to
have both the conceptual sophistication to justify our knowledge claims
(in certain kinds of circumstance) by appeal to inductive evidence of
their reliability, and sufficient experience of our past success, derived
from a retrospective application of these inductive standards, to provide
the inductive evidence required. Then and only then do we meet the
normative standards applying to knowersbut the cases in which we
then recognize ourselves as meeting the standards extend back into the
past, as well as forward into the future.20
What I want to do here is to apply this kind of argument more
broadly, to sketch the origin of normative concepts including standards
of evidence, commitments, and contents. There will be an evolutionary
element in the series of steps I will describe, as well as a prospective,
commitment-based view of the openness of norms to interpretation. Finally, there will be a meta-linguistic element in the account of our talk of
norms (rather than a metaphysical one). The key element that I will borrow from Sellarss bootstrap argument is the possibility of retrospective
concepts of the conditions of observation, and related concepts (of coloured items and of other
colours, for instance). The bootstrap argument may well also be aimed against the broader regress
puzzle that this view of concept acquisition suggests.
20 If this were claimed to be a descriptive change in the facts about these earlier episodes (as a
reductive account would demand), it would require a bizarre and implausible kind of retro-causal
influence by means of which a subsequent state or activity of the knower could causally alter the
facts about his own epistemic past.
358
14.5
The proposal I offer here is tentative and sketchy, but I believe that it
is suggestive. I believe that its components make crucial contributions
to a correct understanding of norms. As I present it here, the proposal
has five components, forming a series of steps beginning on the naturalistic side, but arriving finally at an account of the normative. The key
normative concept that I will focus on is the notion of a commitment . I
believe that the other normative concepts we have been considering can
be subsumed under this notion and, more narrowly, under the notion
of a negative commitment, a commitment not to do something meeting a certain description. In particular, I assume here that paradigmatic
rule-governed behaviour is just behaviour that is constrained by a fullfledged, conscious commitment not to do anything forbidden by the rule.
But our story begins with a much weaker, merely behaviour-predicting,
form of commitment.
14.5.1
359
Evolutionary Advantage
Being able to signal willingness to make and engagement in a commitment has substantial evolutionary advantages. For example, we can
deal with coordination problems including some forms of prisoners
dilemmas by signalling willingness to cooperate with anyone willing
to reciprocatethe signal could of course be such that it only takes
effectthat is, is only to be relied onif a signal indicating reciprocation is received. At its simplest, this kind of signal could simply be
a flag flown at all times, indicating an inclination to cooperate with
anyone else flying a suitable response flag. Suppose we have a subject
who begins the process here by making a friendly nod towards someone
whose cooperation she needs to enlist in food gathering. By working
together, the two can gather more than twice what each could gather
individually. But each will have an opportunity to make off with all the
food as the end of the day approaches. The nod is returned, and the two
go off to gather food. If these nods are sufficiently reliable indicators of
cooperative behaviour, the benefits of relying on them to establish trust
will outweigh the risk of losing all the food to a sneak. Evidently, when
commitment- signals, linguistic and otherwise, are reliable symptoms
of reasonably durable behavioural dispositions, they can be of considerable value to social organisms. Although the effectiveness of such
signals creates opportunities for cheaters to prosper by manipulating or
faking them, enforcement efforts can make cheating risky enough that
the value (and so the use) of the signals can be sustained.
14.5.2
Naturalism
The signals involved here are to be thought of as natural-linguistic signals of commitment; they need only predict behaviour with sufficient
reliability. The reliability of this prediction can in turn be grounded
in the sort of behaviour the naturalistic side of our account of rules
involvesthe inculcation of rules (in the sense of behavioural regularities) by interaction between trainees and teachers using natural blocking operations, together with enforcement if needed.
360
14.5.3
Metalanguage.
Having developed a simple language in which we can give and acknowledge a variety of such commitments, we can go on to develop language
in which we talk about this practice. Words like commitment, rule,
enforcement, and so forth, come into use here, as part of a complex
linguistic response to the various behaviours involving such signals,
others responses to them, and the broader responses (of teachers and
enforcers, in particular) to behaviours that accord with or violate the signals regular accompaniments. In our example, we may hear our subject
and her partner saying that they have an agreement to work together
and share the proceeds; others may be disposed to comment in various
negative ways should our subject abscond with the days proceeds.
14.5.4
The bootstrap
Here we finally begin to approach the realm of norms. The retrospective element of the bootstrap considers past behaviour and interprets it in
terms of newly acquired normative concepts. Normative concepts themselves originate in meta-linguistic reflection on the language in which
we undertake and acknowledge commitments. Like other aspects of
language use, there are complex natural regularities connecting the use
of these words with other aspects of our behaviour.21 Normative words
are regularly connected to a number of other aspects of language use,
including the language of psychological explanation, allowing forgetfulness or inattention to serve as explanations of failures to act on commitments made. These also include the language of excuses, connected
in turn to various conditions which (when brought to the attention of
concerned parties) have the effect of reducing various social signals,
linguistic and otherwise, that serve to enforce the natural practice of
commitment indication and acknowledgment. At this point, reflection
on patterns of behaviour in our object-level use of descriptive language
may also lead us to apply this metalanguage of rules, commitments, and
21 See Sellars, Sellars (1960), especially 50ff. on the relation between such descriptive regularities (linking language use to other features of the world) and the normative order of signification.
361
362
The account of norms proposed here applies to us because we view ourselves (as our use of this kind of language demonstrates) as subject to the
norms (and to the explicit linguistic expressions of norms) that emerge
from our reflective engagement with each other and with actual language use. It is tempting to say, echoing some versions of relativism,
that we make ourselves subject to norms solely by agreeing to speak of
ourselves in normative terms, and that what those norms demand of us
is simply a matter of what our community decides they demand. But to
say this is to ignore the naturalistic, descriptive facts out of which our
363
Appendix A
AnotherLiterarySide of David
Braybrooke:The Comic
Dialectician
Abstract
In the following little-known but much appreciated piece, David Braybrooke demonstrates his skill as a wit, in a way which his more serious
writing would never allow.
365
366
APPENDIX A
as well, because even during the recess, teaching goes on with graduate students and in two consecutive summer sessions for undergraduates. When their research consists of reading and writing, however,
their working time tends to spread out over the whole recess. Whatever
vacation is taken is taken little by little, in an afternoon here, a day off
there.
Among the professors for whom this is true we find a certain professor of philosophy. Lets call him Green. Green is perhaps an exception
in keeping up his writing all through the year, in term-time and out; and
an exception, too, in doing his writing entirely in his office, to which
he repairs every morning, seven days a week, holidays included. Many
other professors, however, put in the same amount of work year by year,
though they work on different patterns. They may, for instance, do their
reading during term-time; when the term has ended, they put in days at a
time at their typewriters. Green does his intensive reading of scholarly
material, except for the reading (rereading) tied to his classes and the
minimum necessary to keep on with his writing, in the summer.
A typical summer day for Green begins at 7:30, after exercises, a
shower and breakfast. Until about 9 oclock, with some short breaks
for household chores, he reads some philosophical workchapters in
a book; an article in a journalrelated in at least a general way to the
topic that he is writing about. If the topic is the relation between mind
and body, he will be reading an intricate discussion in the Journal of
Philosophy of the extent to which computers can perform mental functions that in human beings can be performed only consciously. At 9
oclock or thereabouts, Green goes to his office, sits down at his typewriter and writes or rewrites 3 or 4 pages of a projected book or article.
Now and then, a student will drop in to ask for a bit of advice; in the
summer, he or she is likely to be a graduate student, working on a thesis. Or maybe a colleague, maybe a secretary, will come in to do some
business, about a calendar entry, or a regulation to be reformulated. By
and large, however, Green sticks with his project until he has finished
his daily stint, and the ideas no longer flow freelyuntil sometime between 11:30 and 12.
367
368
APPENDIX A
will have a chance to draw upon some of the information in this book
next week, in a debate with other philosophers about the power that private property gives some people over others.) An interruption occurs at
8:20: another member of the team with which he is collaborating on a
picture book about 19th Century architecture in Halifax calls to discuss
the current stage of this project. At 9:30, he turns to lighter reading,
though even this may have a bearing on his work. He is currently reading Edmund Wilsons diary for the 1940s, and he takes that up again,
putting it down after a while to look through a book of 20th Century
watercolors. At 10:30 Green is ready for bed; and to bed he goes.
369
addressing these questions seriously. The Dean said that was the committees view. Professor B. said there were no paragraphs in the brief
itself which bore on this question.
The motion was carried with one dissenting vote and three abstentions.
370
APPENDIX A
371
pointed out, If any of that stuff had been in the account, it would have
struck even more people as completely frivolous. Exactly, he said;
yet it would have been truer to life.
I put it to him: Do you mean to say that the picture as it stands is
more serious than frivolous? I do, he said. But, I asked, dont you
realize that either way it has jeopardized your chances of exercising any
influence in faculty affairs? What chance, for example, do you now have
of being elected to the tenure committee, or the promotions committee,
or Faculty Council? He grinned; but it was not merely a grin; it was a
gleeful, even exultant expression. It was as if, to everybodys surprise,
including his own, he had just pulled off a minor coup.
It may be worse for you, I said, if youre seriously taken to be living by such a standard of industry. A look of concern crossed Greens
face. I wouldnt want to be taken, he said, to be leaving no room for
joie de vivre. Shouldnt any serious academic find joy in his work, research as well as teaching? We work, declares Delacroix, not only to
produce but to give value to time. If enjoying work at least as much
as I do is uncommon at Dalhousie, then I must say it will be a better
university when the enjoyment is more common. I hope some people
who feel the same way will continue to creep into those committees, if
only by accident.
I asked, Where did you get that nugget from Delacroix? He answered, From my frivolous side; I was reading a book of aphorisms,
when I should have been doing something more ambitious. Joking
again, I commented; what are you going to do now, spared for the
rest of your career the prospect of serving on any of those committees?
This time he smiled, just like Moore, seraphically. Ah, he said, Ill
never want for something to do.
Appendix B
David Braybrookes Publications
1955-2005
Books
With C. E. Lindblom. A Strategy of Decision: Policy Evaluation as a
Social Process. New York: The Free Press, 1963. Paperback edition,
1970. Translated into Portuguese as Una Estrategia de Deciso Social.
Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editores, 1972.
Philosophical Problems of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, 1965. Edited, contributing an introduction and an integrating running commentary.
Three Tests for Democracy: Personal Rights; Human Welfare; Collective Preference. New York: Random House, 1968.
Traffic Congestion Goes through the Issue Machine (in the United
Kingdom, 1963 1968): A Case Study In Issue Processing, Illustrating a
New Approach. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974.
Ethics in the World of Business. Philosophy and Society Series. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983. Edited, contributing several
chapters (see below, under Chapters in Books) and an integrating running commentary.
Philosophy of Social Science. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
1987. [Foundations of Philosophy Series].
Meeting Needs. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.
With B. Brown and P. K. Schotch. Logic on the Track of Social
Change. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. [Clarendon Library of Logic
and Philosophy].
373
374
APPENDIX B
Social Rules: Origin; Character; Logic; Change. Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press (HarperCollins), 1996. Edited, contributing several chapters (see below, under Chapters in Books) and an integrating
running commentary.
Moral Objectives, Rules, and the Forms of Social Change. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1998.
Natural Law Modernized. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2001.
Utilitarianism: Restorations; Repairs; Renovations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2004.
Analytical Political Philosophy: From Discourse, Edification. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2005.
Journal Articles
Farewell to the New Welfare Economics. Review of Economic Studies
22 (June 1955): 180 193.
Berkeley on the Numerical Identity of Ideas. Philosophical Review
64 (October 1955): 631 636.
Professor Stevenson, Voltaire, and the Case of Admiral Byng. Journal of Philosophy 53 (November 1956): 787 796.
Vincula Vindicata. Mind 66 (April 1957): 222 227.
The Expanding Universe of Political Philosophy. Review of Metaphysics 11 (June 1958): 648 672.
Diagnosis and Remedy in Marxs Doctrine of Alienation. Social
Research 25 (Autumn 1958): 325 345.
The Relevance of Norms to Political Description. American Political Science Review 52 (December 1958): 989 1006.
Authority as a Subject of Social Science and Philosophy. Review
of Metaphysics 13 (March 1960): 469 485.
The Ethical Control of Politics. Ethics 70 (July 1960): 316 321.
With Others. Some Questions for Miss Anscombe about Intention.
Analysis 22 (January 1962): 49 54.
Collective and Distributive Generalization in Ethics. Analysis 23
(December 1962): 45 48.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
375
376
APPENDIX B
JOURNAL ARTICLES
377
378
APPENDIX B
Chapters in Books
The Public Interest: The Present and Future of the Concept. In Carl
J. Friedrich, ed., The Public Interest (Nomos V). New York: Atherton
Press, 1962, 129-154.
An Illustrative Miniature Axiomatic System. In Nelson W. Polsby,
Robert A. Dentler, and Paul A. Smith, eds., Politics and Social Life.
Houghton Mifflin, 1963, 119-130.
Marx on Revolutionizing the Mode of Production. In Carl J. Friedrich,
ed., Revolution (Nomos VIII). New York: Atherton Press, 1966, 240246.
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
379
Economics and Rational Choice. In Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. II. New York: Macmillan & Free Press,
1967, 454-458.
Ideology. In Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
vol. IV. New York: Macmillan & Free Press, 1967, 124-127.
The Duality of Politics and Ethics. In The Seventh Inter American
Congress of Philosophy: Proceedings of the Congress. Quebec: Les
Presses de lUniversite Laval, 1967, 150-161.
Skepticism of Wants, and Certain Subversive Effects of Corporations on American Values. In Human Values and Economic Policy
(N.Y.U. Institute of Philosophy for l966), edited by Sidney Hook. New
York: New York University Press, 1967, 224-239.
Let Needs Diminish that Preferences May Prosper. In Studies in
Moral Philosophy, American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph Series, no. 1. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968, 86-107.
Values and Managers: Private Production of Public Goods. In Kurt
Baier and Nicholas Rescher, eds., Values and the Future. New York:
Free Press, 1969, 368-388.
The Logic of the Succession of Cultures. In Howard E. Kiefer and
Milton K. Munitz, eds., Mind, Science, and History, Vol.II of Contemporary Philosophic Thought: The International Philosophy Year Conferences at Brockport. Albany: State University of New York Press,
197O, 270-283.
Revolution Intelligible or Unintelligible. In Robert H. Grimm and
Alfred F. Mackay, eds., Society: Revolution and Reform, Proceedings
of the 1969 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy. Cleveland: Press of
Case Western Reserve University, 1971, 93-118. Reply to comment by
Marshall Cohen, 129-134.
Comment on re apportionment and political democracy. In Nelson
W.Polsby, ed., Re apportionment in the 70s. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1971, 112-118.
With Alexander Rosenberg. Vincula Revindicata., In Tom Beauchamp,
ed., Philosophical Problems of Causation. Encino & Belmont:CA Dickenson, 1974, 217-222.
The Meaning of Participation and of Demands for It. In J. R. Pen-
380
APPENDIX B
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
381
382
APPENDIX B
BOOK REVIEWS
383
Book Reviews
Of W.D. Lamont, The Value Judgment. In Philosophical Review (April
1957): 255 8.
Of Peter Laslett, ed., Philosophy, Politics, and Society. In Philosophical Review (July 1958): 418 421.
384
APPENDIX B
BOOK REVIEWS
385
386
APPENDIX B
Notes on Contributors
Nathan Brett is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He teaches philosophy of law and politics
and the history of modern philosophy. Publications include many papers
on Humes views and discussions of political and legal issues relating
to consent, discrimination, punishment, collective rights, property rights
and justice, and patents on living organisms. (nbrett@dal.ca)
Bryson Brown is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge. His philosophical interests center on logic, especially paraconsistent logic, and philosophy of science. He is co-author,
with David Braybrooke and Peter Schotch, of Logic on the Track of
Social Change (1995). Recent articles include Chunk and Permeate
(with Graham Priest) in the Journal of Philosophical Logic, and The
Pragmatics of Empirical Adequacy in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. (brown@uleth.ca)
Steven Burns is Professor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University and
Professor of Contemporary Studies at the University of Kings College,
and has served as Chair of both programmes. He has recently published
investigations of Otto Weiningers influence on Wittgenstein (see, e.g.,
Wittgenstein Reads Weininger, eds. D. Stern and B. Szabados, CUP,
2004), and is currently working on some studies of moral philosophy
in literature. He has been a colleague of David Braybrooke since the
1960s. (burns@dal.ca)
Richmond Campbell is George Munro Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University. He is the author of Illusions of Paradox: A Feminist
Epistemology Naturalized and Self-Love and Self-Respect and co-editor
of Naturalized Moral Epistemology and Paradoxes of Rationality and
Cooperation. His publications include articles in moral theory, epistemology, feminist theory, logic, philosophy of biology, and philosophy
387
388
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
389
Schotch has become much more interested in applications of formal science which explains his interest in collaborating with David Braybrooke
and Bryson Brown on the book Logic on the Track of Social Change.
(peter.schotch@dal.ca)
Susan Sherwin, FRSC, is a University Research Professor at Dalhousie University. She is a Professor of Philosophy, Bioethics, and
Womens Studies. Her principal research interests are in feminist approaches to health care ethics. Her publications include No Longer
Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care(1992), and The Politics of
Womens Health: Exploring Agency and Autonomy, with the Canadian
Feminist Health Care Ethics Research Network (1998).
(susan.sherwin@dal.ca)
S. L. (Sharon) Sutherland, FRSC, is Visiting Professor at the School
of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, working closely with
the Public Administration Program of the School. She is also adjunct
professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie, where she
benefited from David Braybrookes collegiality in the 1970s, and a consultant to government. Beginning her career in attitude theory in political and social psychology (for example, Patterns of Belief and Action,
University of Toronto Press, 1981), she later switched to study of the
representative institutions and bureaucracy (Bureaucracy in Canada,
Control and Reform, University of Toronto Press, 1985), ministerial responsibility, machinery of government (the politics of institutional design), and management policies and their political implications. She has
published a number of journal articles in these areas, as well as in the
ethics of office holding.
Tom Vinci is Professor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, arriving there upon completion of his Ph.D in Philosophy at the
University of Pittsburgh in 1977. He has been a colleague and friend
of David Braybrooke since then. Professor Vincis publications include
a book on Descartes, Cartesian Truth (Oxford, 1998), and articles in
Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Decision Theory and the History
of Modern Philosophy. He lives in Halifax with his wife and three children. (vinci@dal.ca)
References
Acharya, A. (2001, Summer). Human security: East vs west. International Journal 56(3), 44260.
Aiken (1948). Humes Moral and Political Philosophy. New York:
Hafner.
Alberta, A. G. (2004, July 27). Report of the Auditor General on the
Alberta governments BSE-related assistance programs. Government
of Alberta.
Anscombe, G. (1963). Intention (2nd ed.). Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
Audi, R. (1999). Moral knowledge and ethical pluralism. In J. Greco
and E. Sosa (Eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Axtell, G. (1997). Recent work on virtue epistemology. American
Philosophical Quarterly 34, 126.
Axworthy, L. (2001). Introduction. In McRae and Huber (Eds.), Human Security and the New Diplomacy: Protecting People, Promoting
Peace. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.
Axworthy, L. (2003). Navigating a New World. Toronto: Knopf Canada.
Ayer, A. (1936). Language Truth and Logic. 2nd(1946). London: Victor
Gollancz.
Ayoob, M. (2004). Third world perspectives on humanitarian intervention and international administration. Global Governance 10, 99
118.
391
392
REFERENCES
393
394
REFERENCES
Brink, D. (1989). Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, B. (2003, Fall). Notes on hume and skepticism regarding the
senses. Croatian Journal of Philosophy.
Brown, B. (2004, June). The pragmatics of empirical adequacy. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82(2), 242364.
Campbell, R. (1998). Illusions of Paradox: A Feminist Epistemology
Naturalized. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
Campbell, R. (2003). Moral epistemology. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. on-line.
Campbell, R. (2005). What is moral judgement?
Campbell, R. and J. Woodrow (2003). Why Moores open question
is open: The evolution of moral supervenience. Journal of Value
Inquiry 37(3), 353372.
Campbell, S. Remembering who we are: Responsibility and resistant
identification. Forthcoming.
Chernomas, R. and L. Donner (2004). The cancer epidemic as a social
event.
Chisholm, R. M. (1966). Theory of Knowledge. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Cohen, Michael D., J. G. M. and J. P. Olsen (1972). A garbage can
model of organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly 17,
125.
Connolly, T. (1980). Uncertainty, action and competence: Some alternatives to omniscience in complex problem-solving. In S. Fiddle
(Ed.), Uncertainty: Behavioral and Social Dimensions. New York:
Praeger.
395
New York:
396
REFERENCES
397
REFERENCES
398
New Jersey:
Hollinger, D. A. (2001). Not universalists, not pluralists: The new cosmopolitans find their own way. Constellations 8(2), 23648.
Hood, C. et al. (1999). Regulation inside Government: Waste-watchers,
Quality Police and Sleaze-busters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hume, D. (1966). An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
(1751 ed.). New York: Free Press.
Hume, D. (1978). A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Hymers, M. (2000). Philosophy and Its Epistemic Neuroses. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
Jacobsen, R. (1997). Semantic character and expressive content. Philosophical Papers 26(2), 129146.
Kaldor, M. (2003a). American power: From compellance to cosmopolitanism? International Affairs 79(1).
399
400
REFERENCES
401
MacIntosh, D. (1998). Categorically rational preferences and the structure of morality. In P. Danielson (Ed.), Modeling Rationality, Morality
and Evolution, Number 7 in Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science,
pp. 282301. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Penguin.
March, J. and H. Simon (1994). Organizations (2nd ed.). Cambridge
MA: Blackwell. First published by Wiley, 1958.
Mayor of London (2002). Proposed london-wide transport strategy implementation targets. Technical report, London.
McClosky, H. (1964). Consensus and ideology in american politics.
American Political Science Review 52(1), 376.
McNaughton, D. (1988). Moral Vision. Oxford: Blackwell.
McRae, R. and D. Hubert (Eds.) (2001). Human Security and the
New Diplomacy: Protecting People, Promoting Peace, Montreal and
Kingston. McGill-Queens University Press.
Meijers-Heijboer, H. et al. (2001, July 19). Breast cancer after prophylactic bilateral mastectomy in women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2
mutation. New ENgland Journal of Medicine 345(3), 159164.
Mele, A. R. (2001). Self-Deception Unmasked. Princeton and Oxford:
Princeton University Press.
Men (2003, May/June). The men behind ken. London Bulletin, 2.
Meyers, D. (1989). Self, Society, and Personal Choice. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Milbraith, L. W. and M. Goel (1977). Political Participation (2nd ed.).
Chicago: Rand McNally.
Miller, D. (2004, January). Holding nations responsible. Ethics 114,
24068.
402
REFERENCES
403
404
REFERENCES
Rorty, R. (1991). Pragmatism, davidson and truth. In Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, pp. 126150. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rose, D. (2001). Revisiting Feminist Research Methodologies: A Working Paper. Ottawa: Status of Women Canada.
Rosemary Foot, J. L. G. and A. Hurrell (Eds.) (2003). Order and Justice
in International Relations, New York. Oxford University Press.
Rothman, B. (1986). The Tentative Pregnancy: Prenatal Diagnosis and
the Future of Motherhood. New York: Viking Press.
RTP (2001). The responsibility to protect: Report of the international
commission on intervention and state sovereignty. Technical report,
International Development Research Centre, Ottawa.
RTP2 (2001). The responsibility to protect: Research, bibliography,
background, supplementary volume to the report of the international
commission on intervention and state sovereignty. Technical report,
International Development Research Centre, Ottawa.
SAOS (2004). Securing an open society: Canadas national security
policy. Technical report, Government of Canada, Ottawa.
Sayre-McCord, G. (1988). Introduction: The many moral realisms. In
G. Sayre-McCord (Ed.), Essays on Moral Realism. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Schechtman, M. (1996). The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Scheffler, S. (1999, November). Conceptions of cosmopolitanism. Utilitas 11(3).
Schelling, T. (1978). Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York:
W.W. Norton.
Schlosser, W. S. (1983). Ockhams razor.
405
406
REFERENCES
407
408
REFERENCES
409
Index
Meeting Needs, 53
flexible categories of work, 24
impaired thinking, 143
open question argument, 273
open-question argument, 301
partisan mutual adjustment, 143
scientific political science, 127
single-pass solution, 133
411
INDEX
412
commitment
central position of, 358
commitments
interpretive, 353
commodity value, 30
communal discussion, 151
community medicine, 87
community-approved projects, 92
complex problems, 148
comprehensively rational method,
131
comprehensively rational prescriptions, 133
computational routines, 132
concept of national responsibility,
105
conflict prevention, 113, 116
consequences
of action, 329
constraints, 77
constraints on epistemic contexts,
285
constructive competitiveness, 151
contemporary feminist epistemology, 17
context of debate, 283
contextual constraints on justification, 292
Contextualism
rejects epistemological realism,
284
contextualism, 279, 287
of use to Braybrooke, 289
Williams definition, 280
conventional policy goals, 148
413
David Braybrooke
direct inference, 352
directions of fit, 263
critic of privatization, 23
disabled
David Cohen, 143
many easily helped, 81
David Haekwon Kim, 245
discounting factor, 80
David Hollinger, 104
disinterested perspective, 235
David Lewis, 279
disjointed incrementalism, 147
David Miller, 104
dispositional genetic tests, 56
David Sloan Wilson, 240
distinction between ethics and metadecision environment, 139, 140
ethics, 272
decision-making in policy literature,
distribution of resources, 80, 93
126
Default and Challenge Model, 285 doctrine of equal regar, 108
default and challenge model, 290 dominance of terrorism, 105
Dudley Shapere, 345
default egoism, 223
as an account of moral moti- Dworkin, 40, 48
dynamic problems, 144
vation, 228
as misleading, 229
economic justice, 114
difficulty of avoiding, 228
in Shermans account of moti- education, 24
as a commodity, 29
vation, 230
not compatible with re-imagining, public vs private, 31
241
education as a human need, 42
definition
efficiency calculus, 137
persuasive, 306
efficient needs monsters, 87
definitions, 312
efficient utility monster, 90
deflationism, 278
egoism
Feinberg and Shavers work,
democracy
224
western industrialized, 12
Elliot Sober, 240
democratic deliberation, 128
Department of Public Safety and Elshtain, 110
Emergency Preparedness, eminist relational accounts
115
of social justice, 68
Descartes, 281
emotions and imperative, 273
development assistance, 112
emotive-imperative, 302
dialectical constraints, 285
emotivism, 274
414
INDEX
415
following a rule
deontological view, 337
foreign policy, 105
formal foundationalism, 302, 306
formal philosophers, 326
foundationalism, 280, 313
foundationalist, 283
foundations of policy analysis, 342
Fragmentation, 151
free market, 43
free-market, 38
freedom from fear, 111, 116
freedom from want, 111, 116
full rationality, 135
functionings
Sens concept of, 106
fundamental principle
of science, 350
happiness, 80
Harding, 215, 217
Hare, R., 261
Harold Lasswell, 129
hedge-clipping models, 144
Hegel, 215
Herbert McClosky, 128
Herbert Simon, 130
Herman van Gunsteren, 130
heuristics, 140
hidden optimization, 138
hierarchical programs, 130
historical inquiry, 285
human beings
as relational entities, 54
human development, 105, 146
416
INDEX
417
418
INDEX
419
420
INDEX
core concepts, 12
course-of-life, 13, 52, 5861,
78
and scientific discoveries, 67
as relational, 65
attached to disease, 72
BRCA testing, 61, 69, 70
difficulty of BRCA testing
as, 64
genetic test as, 72
health and life, 75
limit access to genetic testing, 74
priority of, 66
some universal, 13
take precedence, 70
technology as, 64
threatened by geneticization,
73
tied to social roles, 65
tracking, 13
created by projects, 77
criterion for inclusion, 59
defeasible, 84
effectiveness of different policies, 13
feminist consideration on, 15
for life extension not more pressing than other needs, 88
for life-extension technology,
83
for life-prolongation, 90, 95
have moral force, 117
individualist analysis, 85
legitimate classification as, 52
421
less empirical, 91
their role in evaluating public
policy, 13
location of, 84
needs and capabilities, 118
locus in groups, 86
making public policy respon- needs ethics, 94
needs monster
sive, 16
two kinds, 80
medical, 54, 55
medical demands for services, needs monsters, 96
15
needs-based ethics
medical technology for life expressing problem for, 82
tension, 15
needs:for indefinitely long life, 87
meeting them as a goal of so- needs:for life-prolonging medical
cial policy, 77
care, 54
minimum standard of provision, Nelson, 217
13
New Public Management, 130
no reliable distinction, 16
Nicholas Wheeler, 108
not grounding entitlements, 92 non-basic beliefs, 280
of a population, 87
non-governmental organizations, 105,
of citizens, 11
122
of older people, 85
normal decision-making, 147
of others as a limit, 93
normalization of prenatal testing,
68
ordered by importance, 82
normative
plasticity of, 97
facts, 348
policy should meet them, 127
no reduction to descriptive, 363
possibly determined by some
normative concepts
preferences, 99
grounded in natural facts, 362
potetial for conflict, 86
provide guidance for social pol- normative developments, 113
icy, 52
normative discourse, 306
purpose of public policy, 12
normative ethics, 311
quality of life, 86
normative status
relational understanding of, 65
of beliefs, 282
relative to projects, 90
normativity, 19
require public debate, 13
norms
the rejection of philosophical
explicit linguistic expressions,
egoism, 17
362
422
INDEX
423
424
INDEX
condition, 336
contents, 354
demographic scope, 334
development, 354
difficulty of defining, 326
in general, 325
rule explanations
vs explanation by natural principles, 353
rule-utilitarian, 305
rules, 344
a definition, 343
function of, 337
normative dimension, 345
not constituted by causal relations, 345
triptych representation, 348
Rwanda, 108, 109
Sadako Ogata, 118
Saddam Hussein, 111
Samuel Scheffler, 104
Sandra Harding, 212, 214
satisficing, 131, 134, 135, 138, 149
no guarantee of success, 136
Sayre-McCord, G., 259
scepticism, 280
Schechtman, 243
Schlick, 281, 289
scientific method, 195, 196, 199,
212, 214
second-order discourse, 312
Sellars, 347, 349, 354
semantic atomism, 281
semantics of action, 329
semi-autonomous agencies, 122
425
426
INDEX
Waismann, 289
Walker, 243
war on terrorism, 110
warlordism, 108
warrant principles, 312
warranting judgments, 279
warranting moral judgments, 277
Wilfrid Sellars, 19, 345
Will Kymlicka, 104
William Pace, 114
Williams, 283, 284
Williams, M., 287
Wittgenstein, 18, 277, 279, 285, 288,
298, 307
womens groups, 114
world citizenship
problem og, 104
427